Switzerland

There are people in the world that go to work every day to end up stating the damn obvious. 

Jansen notes that this is a new record for exports for the small country with a yearly estimate of 2,912 tons for exports.  It is surmised that 1,100 tons of the gold bullion is set to flow East to China or Hong Kong.

In addition to the already noted repeat spike in Chinese overnight repo rates as the PBOC refuses to inject liquidity for nearly a week offsetting the "news" of a better than expected HSBC PMI, the other kay datapoints to hit in the overnight session were various European PMIs which were broadly lower across the board. Of note being the French, which missed both the Manufacturing Index (49.4 vs 50.1 expected, down from 49.8) and the Services (50.2 vs 51.0 expected, down from 51.0) and Germany, which missed in Services (52.3 vs 53.7 expected, same as September), while modestly beating Manufacturing at 51.5 vs 51.4 expected, up from 51.1 last.  On a blended basis, the Composite Flash PMI fell from 52.2 to 51.5, against the consensus expectation of a modest rise (Cons: 52.4). Today's correction brings to a halt a series of six consecutive monthly rises in the Euro area composite PMI.

The rest of the world has had enough of the monopoly of the credit-rating agencies that are largely biased towards the US economy and it’s about time that it all came to an end. 

Faber, whose advice has protected millions of investors in recent years, warned of a global systemic crisis possibly due to the massive size of the global derivatives market which is now worth over an incredible $700 trillion.

He warned “when the system goes down,” and only plastic credit cards are left, “maybe then people will realize and go back to some gold-based system.” He wisely said that, “I advise everyone to have some gold.”

It’s all for play isn’t it when the French Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls summons the US Ambassador?

Dreams usually come to an end when we get to the good part. The juiciest part of the American dream has ended too

As we sit in our comfortable living rooms, loafing back into our sofas, munching on a bar of chocolate and slurping down the coffee whilst checking the smartphone for message most of us have little idea that the chocolate, the coffee and the smartphone were made by resorting to indirect slavery quite probably. 

But I never thought it wise to sell it, because for central banks this is a reserve of safety, it’s viewed by the country as such. In the case of non-dollar countries it gives you a value-protection against fluctuations against the dollar, so there are several reasons, risk diversification and so on.

We already highlighted the return of gold lease rates to subzero yesterday, during the dramatic spike in gold following Gartman's latest sell recommendation. Now, it is time for the banks to also begin admitting that, as SocGen has just pointed out, the gold "physical squeeze returns."

Once upon a time the person that ended up with the Nobel Prize for whatever it might have been was always the single person to be left standing on the podium in the number one position.

It’s obvious that we might sometimes have the impression the freedom has no price on it. But, think again.

We all know that it’s not actually the message that is important but the way that the words are interpreted by those reading them. Never has that been more important than with Twitter. You only get 140 characters, which might be too much when we read some of the comments on there. But, for others it’s far from enough. Traders look like they could be needing a few more pages to get the full picture. Just a few days ago traders made a mistake when they read the tweet posted by the Israeli army on October 10th 2013.

Once upon a time there was a conflict that was based upon ethnic origins in Darfur.

As Warren Buffet openly states that he believes that a default on US debt will be catastrophic and that lawmakers in Congress need to get their act together and get the federal government back to work by passing the budget we might well wonder if it’s just for show or if he really believes that.