Mexico

To put this in the most basic terms: registration and restriction equals revolution.  Count on it.  It is not a matter of what we "want", it is a matter of what is necessary.  Without a citizenry armed with weapons of military application, we lose our last deterrent to tyranny, and thus, we lose everything.  When backed into a corner, a victim has two options: he can lie down and die, or, he can fight regardless of the odds.  Sadly, this is where we are in America; fear, servitude, subservience, or civil war.

Leaving the highly sensitive topic of "gun-control" aside for the time being, one can't help but wonder if it isn't time that the US government, seemingly hell-bent on regulating virtually everything in its quest to prove (to itself?) that America's population can no longer be trusted with making any responsible decisions on it own (and in the process becoming even bigger), shouldn't be more focused on "fat-control" instead. Why? Because while guns may or may not kill people, the bottom line is that of the 32K or so death attributed to firearms, roughly 20K, or two thirds were suicides, meaning firearm-based homicides were 11,015 in 2010. Putting this number in perspective, every year some 935,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and 600,000 people die from some form heart disease: 1 in every 4 deaths. Net result to society: the cost of coronary heart disease borne by everyone is $108.9 billion each year. And of all proximal factors contributing to heart disease, obesity and overweight is the main one. But of course one can't make a media spectacle out of 600,000 hospital wards where people quietly pass away, in many cases due to a lifetime of ill decisions relating primarily to food consumption. In fact, some estimate that obesity now accounts for one fifth of the total US health-care bill (the part of the budget which no amount of tax increase can offset). Which is why if the topic of gun-control has managed to promptly tear the country into two (or three, or more), just wait until fat-control (far more than the recent tepid overtures into this field such as Bloomberg's NYC sugary soda ban) rears its ugly head and sends the already polarized (and weaponized) US society into a state of agitated hyperflux.

What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a “great job” the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that we have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

• This is signal, the rest is noise: Russia's Putin set for stand-off with EU on Syria, energy (Reuters)
• Boehner's Budget 'Plan B' Collapses (WSJ)
• Boehner has few options in "fiscal cliff" mess (Reuters)
• Maya "end of days" fever reaches climax in Mexico (Reuters)
• Monti Praised by Merkel Favored Less by Taxed Italians (BusinessWeek)
• China probes Yum Brands' KFC over safety of chicken productsa (Reuters)
• Looting in Aregentina: 400 Border Guard officials deployed to Bariloche over looting (BAH)
• Regulatory 'Whale' Hunt Advances - Comptroller Expected to Take Formal Action Regarding JPM's Trading Fiasco (WSJ) - but no punishment
• U.K. Banks Seen Sacrificing Lending to Meet BOE Demand (Bloomberg)
• US banks face rise in bad loans cover (FT)
• Daily Gun Slaughter in U.S. Obscured by Newtown Rampage (BBG)
• China Restricts Bond Sales by Risker Companies (BBG)

Silver will rise as much as 29% to $40.25/oz, from $31.10/oz today, in 2013. This is based on the median estimate of 49 analysts, traders and investors compiled by Bloomberg. Global investment through silver backed exchange traded products reached a record 18,854 metric tons in November, or more than nine months of mine output, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Holdings are now valued at about $19.2 billion. Bullion dealers all over the world report robust demand for silver and there has been a shift in many Asian and Middle Eastern markets from gold to silver - due to silver's relative cheapness and undervaluation versus gold. According to Bloomberg, one of Singapore’s largest suppliers of coins and bars to retail investors, says sales tripled since October, part of a global surge in demand for silver that drove holdings to a record.

• Obama Concessions Signal Potential Bipartisan Budget Deal (BBG)
• Cerberus to sell gunmaker after massacre (CNN)
• With New Offers, Fiscal-Cliff Talks Narrow (WSJ)
• Judge rejects Apple injunction bid vs. Samsung (Reuters)
• U.S. policy gridlock holding back economy? Maybe not (Reuters)
• President fears for Italy’s credibility (FT)
• Struggles Mount for Greeks as Economy Faces Winter (WSJ)
• Abe leans on BoJ in post-election meeting (FT)
• Bank of Japan to mull 2 percent inflation target as Abe turns up heat (Reuters)
• EU exit is ‘imaginable’, says Cameron (FT)
• Mortgage Risk Under Fire in Nordics as Bubbles Fought (BBG)
• Sweden cuts interest rates to 1% (FT)
• External risks impede China recovery, more easing seen (Reuters)

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach. “Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him. “Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied. “Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor. Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote. They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs? The above article is a must read for every American citizen, particularly those that get up in arms about domestic gun control, but never think twice about the horror caused by our foreign policy, which regularly murders innocent children overseas.

Back in 2010, an explosion at the deepwater horizon oil rig killed 11 workers and resulted in around 206 million gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of three months, before the well was finally capped and sealed. In September an oil sheen was spotted about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, and tests proved that it was indeed oil from BP’s infamous Macondo well. BP sent a probe down and saw that oil was indeed seeping from the containment dome, however by the 23rd of October they were able to declare the leak “plugged”. Despite this declaration more oil, in sheens of varying sizes, continues to surface around the Gulf of Mexico, discovered by satellite photos and aerial videos. Ed Markey, who led the initial investigation into BP after the spill back in 2010, has stated that history is repeating itself, concerned “that substantial amounts of oil could still be leaking from the wreckage," but BP is not releasing information to Congress.

“The Government Has Bought Into the Notion that Too Big to Fail Is Too Big to Jail”

Update: The focus now shifts to the mother, the first casualty of her son's murderous rampage, who was a "big, big gun fan" as the NYT explains, and who went target shooting with her children, one of whom had Asperger's.

As we reported last night, buried inside the NYT biopic of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was arguably one of the most important missing pieces in the story, at least so far, which could provide clues into partially explaining yesterday's tragic loss of young life, namely that the 20 year old man suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism (two conditions which are being merged in the upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) manual of mental disorders), which has been traditionally associated with social communication difficulties, including flat affect, and one which in some clinical studies has been shown to have a causal link to violence. In other words, in addition to the surge in the debate over national gun control and access limitations (ignoring that the perpetrator of the biggest school mass murder in US history - the Bath School disaster - used openly purchased dynamite and no guns, also ignoring that in the US there are roughly 300 million firearms), perhaps there should also be a broad discussion as to the risks of social misadoption of children with autism and other social and behavioral disorders.

• Bernanke Wields New Tools to Reduce Unemployment Rate (BBG)
• Home Seizures Rise as Banks Adjust to Foreclosure Flow (BBG)
• EU Backs Release Of Greek Aid (WSJ)
• Democrats Confident They Have 'Cliff' Leverage (WSJ)
• Americans Back Obama Tax-Rate Increase Tied to Entitlement Cuts (BBG)
• Goldman flexes tentacles: Treasury open to Carney radicalism (FT)
• Launch Fuels Asia Security Concerns (WSJ)
• BOJ’s Unlimited Loan Program Seen Open to Use by Hedge Funds (BBG) - there are Japanese hedge funds?
• Abe Set to Face Manufacturing Gloom as Japan Contracts (BBG)
• US and UN condemn N Korea rocket launch (Guardian)
• Eurozone agrees common bank supervisor (FT)
• Berlusconi Adds to Italy Turmoil by Signaling He’d Step Aside (BBG)

Ever get the feeling that the entire global economy is one big experiment conducted by several former Keynesian economists from MIT with a bent for central planning, who sit down in conspiratorial dark rooms in tiny Swiss cities and bet it all on green until they double down so much nobody even pays attention to the game? No? You should. Jon Hilsenrath, of all people, explains why.

Own Physical Gold Now - While You Still Can!

“Farther from care than danger…”

The title above is a quote from Sir Thomas More’s classic, Utopia, describing a people’s overconfidence in their capacity for navigation given the compass for the first time.

The upcoming week is comparatively less loaded with policy events, though the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations in the US remain one of the key developments to follow. Important is also the FOMC meeting on Wednesday, where Goldman and everyone else now expect the Fed to increase their monthly asset purchase target under the QE3 program to $85bn per month, up from $45bn per month; this will keep the pace of asset purchases constant after the Operation Twist expires at the end of December, as Zero Hedge predicted the day QE3 was announced. There are is a handful of other central bank meetings in emerging economies (Russia, Indonesia, South-Korea, Philippines, Chile) although consensus expects no change to the base-rate in most cases. On the data front industrial production numbers for October will be released around the world including in the Euro-area, US and China. We also get the US retail sales number and December flash PMIs for the Euro-area and China.

Your comprehensive yet concise, one-stop summary of all the bullish and bearish events of the past week.