Abu Dhabi

Now that Ben Bernanke is no longer the head of the Fed, he can finally tell the truth about what caused the financial crash. At least that's what a packed auditorium of over 1000 people as part of the financial conference staged by National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the UAE's largest bank, was hoping for earlier today when they paid an exorbitant amount of money to hear the former chairman talk. Bernanke confirmed as much when he said he could now speak more freely about the crisis than he could while at the Fed - "I can say whatever I want."

So what was the reason, according to the man who was easily the most powerful person in the world for nearly a decade?

Ready?

They have promised more than they can possibly deliver, so a lot of their promises are going to be broken before we see the end of this current bust that began in 2000. And that outcome of broken promises describes the huge task that we all face. There will be a day of reckoning. There always is when an economy and governments take on more debt than is prudent, and the world is far beyond that point. So everyone needs to plan and prepare for that day of reckoning. We can't predict when it is coming, but we know from monetary history that busts follow booms, and more to the point, that currencies collapse when governments make promises that they cannot possibly fulfill. Their central banks print the currency the government wants to spend until the currency eventually collapses, which is a key point of The Money Bubble. The world has lost sight of what money  What today is considered to be money is only a money substitute circulating in place of money. J.P. Morgan had it right when in testimony before the US Congress in 1912 he said: "Money is gold, nothing else." Because we have lost sight of this wisdom, a "money bubble" has been created. And it will pop. Bubbles always do.

The winner of a currency war is the country that ends up with the most gold.

• Emerging-Market Rout Seen Enduring on Low Real Rates (BBG)
• After rocky January, markets eye data and central banks (Reuters)
• Europe will feel the pain of emerging markets  (FT)
• Lloyds delays dividend prospect after mis-selling charge (Reuters)
• Snow Set to Snarl New York Commute as U.S. Flights Halted (BBG)
• Rate Decision to Drive Yellen's Early Agenda  (Hilsenrath)
• Thai protesters move to downtown Bangkok in bid to topple PM (Reuters)
• China says Japan's 'hype' on air defence zone spreads tension (Reuters)
• Hedge funds seek 1.8 billion euros damages from members of Porsche's owning family (Reuters)

With Trader Monthly magazine having, ironically, gone out business long ago, all those traders whose egos demanded that their insider trading connections put them at least in one of the iconic "Top X under X" league tables, pardon, rankings, had to bide their time in expectation of one day when their prowess to frontrun others or move markets with repeated calls to 555-7617 (with or without references to Anacott Steel) would be appreciated by such sterling Wall Street "experts" as Anthony Scaramucci. Well, for this year's crop of some 30 traders under 30, the day has arrived. And while Forbes may not be Trader Monthly, the amusement, the hubris and the behind the scenes dealing to appear in such a list, sure are still the same...

Petro-dollars, the word used to describe the billions of dollars earned from the sale of oil and natural gas, have helped change the shape and future of many counties in the Middle East, usually for the better, but not always. In a few short years Petro-dollars have helped shape the Gulf states into the modern and futuristic looking cities of the future that one finds in today’s architecture in Dubai, Doha and Riyadh. But now those petro-dollars are being used to shape the political future of the region and to model specific policies in a number of countries, such as Syria, for example, where petro-dollars are hard at work today.

The latest subjunctive paraphrase, just released by the US State Department: "Please don't panic... well, actually panic just a little bit, but thanks to the NSA's pervasive snooping activity, in retrospect there will have been no need to panic, as any terror threats will have been promptly eliminated (except for those that sneak through the NSA's dragnet like the Boston bombing of course). So all is well... but not really, which is why we are extending embassy closures for a little more, due to highly specific unspecified threats which we can't reveal. Just know the threats are there. But thanks to the NSA, there is nothing to worry about. Unless there is."

• Detroit ‘Gut Kick’ Poses New Test for Long Suffering City (BBG)
• Florida lawmakers urge overhaul of 'Stand Your Ground' law (Reuters)
• Investors pour huge sums into US equity funds (FT)
• Snowden Standoff Threatens Obama-Putin Moscow Summit (BBG)
• China, U.S. companies' great hope, now a drag (Reuters)
• Morgan Stanley stock traders rebuild burned bridges (Reuters)
• Huawei spied for China, claims ex-CIA head Michael Hayden (FT)
• Gorilla Flipping Homes as Rebound Revives Rapid Trades (BBG)
• BRICS joint action at G20 summit may be wishful thinking (Reuters)

The short but profitable tale of how 483,000 private individual have "top secret" access to the nation's most non-public information begins in 2001. "After 9/11, intelligence budgets were increased, new people needed to be hired, it was a lot easier to go to the private sector and get people off the shelf," and sure enough firms like Booz Allen Hamilton - still two-thirds owned by the deeply-tied-to-international-governments investment firm The Carlyle Group - took full advantage of Congress' desire to shrink federal agencies and their budgets by enabling outside consultants (already primed with their $4,000 cost 'security clearances') to fulfill the needs of an ever-more-encroaching-on-privacy administration.

The tension to "liberate" Syria is palpable. It took just 24 hours for the US to do an about face on its position on Syria, where yesterday, as Bloomberg reported, "U.S. officials said they haven’t seen conclusive evidence supporting an assertion by Israel’s top military intelligence analyst that Syrian government forces have used chemical weapons against rebels. Secretary of State John Kerry and spokesmen from the White House and the Pentagon said investigations haven’t produced hard proof that Bashar al-Assad’s regime has used toxic chemicals -- a step that President Barack Obama has said would cross a “red line." Fast forward to today, and we get pretty much the opposite opposite: "The United States believes with varying degrees of confidence that Syria's regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale, the White House said on Thursday."

As is now confirmed, at least one of many JPMorgan margin calls directed at Lehman in the days before the world's biggest bankruptcy became fact, were based on glaringly erroneous information and an error so profound one wonders if this was not a premeditated "hit" on one bank by another bank. Yet a purposeful "hit" orchestrated by one bank, even JPMorgan, would require the involvement of the highest echelons of the US government. So was the US government complicit and give its blessing in this historic liquidation? The Abu Dhabi Investment Council would like to know.

Unmanned systems have become the legal and ethical problem child of the global defense industry and the governments they supply, rewriting the rules of military engagement in ways that many find disturbing. And this sense of unease about where we’re headed is hardly unfamiliar. Much like the emergence of drone technology, the rise of China and its reshaping of the geopolitical landscape has stirred up a sometimes understandable, sometimes irrational, fear of the unknown. It’s safe to say, then, that Chinese drones conjure up a particularly intense sense of alarm that the media has begun to embrace as a license to panic. China is indeed developing a range of unmanned aerial vehicles/systems (UAVs/UASs) at a time when relations with Japan are tense, and when those with the U.S. are delicate.

Last year was a record one for major new discoveries, and 2013 has so far demonstrated that the road to discovery still has plenty of mileage. The past two months alone have netted new finds in Egypt, a flurry of promising exploration results in East and West Africa, some important moves toward commercial viability in Kenya, more gas in the North Sea, an unexpected junior discovery in Brazil - and of course, more gains in Texas. Riding high on a year of brilliant discoveries, companies are drilling deeper and expanding exploration like never before. These are the top finds for January and February that should be on your radar and sure enough as we have been vociferously discussing, Africa is increasingly the focus of developed nations' resource hunting.

You can now get gold ingots at ATMs, and physcially trade physical gold through brokerage accounts, but is it too little too late? Let's look browse through the facts...