Switzerland

"We have determined that applying a negative rate was a more transparent and fairer solution for our clientele. This decision on negative rates is costing us a lot of money -- pretty much the equivalent of our entire annual profit last year."

While the initial EUR response was as expected, dropping about 30 pips (but already rebounding on concerns that the Draghi bazooka may truly be empty this time - after all what else can he surprise with as CA's Valentin Marinov said), German Bunds, especially the short-end, were quick to give Mario Draghi the middle finger and the 2Y has dropped to a fresh record low of -0.389%, because all they heard was that the ECB will monetize even more debt.

Central planners around the world are waging a War on Cash because, as Ron Paul so eloquently put it "the cashless society is the [government]’s dream: total knowledge of, and control over, the finances of every single [citizen]." It is perhaps ironic then that Sweden, which became the first country in Europe to issue paper money in 1661, is probably going to be the first in the world to entirely eliminate it.

How can so much gold be supplied to China without someone buying it and thus being genuine demand? It cannot. Chinese gold demand as disclosed by the World Gold Council (WGC) is fallacious. We were already missing 2,500 tonnes from the WGC numbers and now we have to add another 604 tonnes...

Editor’s Note: The tragic events in Paris, terrorism and war throughout the world, show geopolitical risk remains high.  These risks will likely impact economies and financial markets and will see continuing safe haven demand for gold. “The future is uncertain and gold is the most effective insurance against that.”

The flip side of falling interest rates is rising bond prices. Bonds are in a ferocious bull market. It's gobbling up capital like the Cookie Monster jamming tollhouses into his maw.

It’s easy to be frightened by these proposals. But if governments think they can force us to accept negative interest rates on our savings by abolishing cash, they need to think again. It’s preposterous to assume that savers will passively accept outright confiscation of their assets via negative interest rates or a ban on cash. Instead, people will simply revert to other stores of value.

Gold bullion coin and bar demand surged in Q3 as gold’s continuing COMEX driven price weakness in July and sharp falls in stock markets in China and globally in August saw store of wealth buyers internationally again accumulate bullion.

It is important to note that the current weakness of gold is primarily in dollar and sterling terms. For investors in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the EU gold is once again acting as a hedge.

China is playing the long game and they could be low balling their total gold holdings – official central bank reserves and non official, governmental holdings – in order to maintain confidence in their substantial US dollar holdings and to aid their bid to join the IMF.

An "independent" commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency has found that Russia engaged in state-sponsored doping and more importantly, recommended that Russia’s track and field athletes be suspended from Olympic competition in 2016.  The "Independent" commission was led by  Canadian Dick Pound. Joining him on the commission was Richard McLaren, another Canadian lawyer and a long-standing member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as well as Günter Younger, head of department of cybercrime with Bavarian Landeskriminalamt. So two Canadians and a German made up an "independent" commission that now wants to bar Russia from the marquee event of the upcoming olympics.

"The truth is, the debt ceiling doesn’t actually limit government spending. It’s a farce. Every time government debt gets close to the debt ceiling, Congress just raises it.”

Don't forget Forex is countertrend market (generally) - here's a strategy to play the Forex 'fix' 

Bitcoin is an easy way for people to swap out of yuan. Goldman Sachs analysts estimated earlier this year that 80% of bitcoin volume is exchanged in and out of the Chinese yuan. Once converted to bitcoin, the owners can then swap back into other fiat currencies and indeed physical gold.

Overnight, the SNB which unlike the Fed and the other "serious" central bank hedge funds, released a 13-F updating on its latest stock portfolio. We learned that in the quarter in which AAPL stock tumbled to $92 during the August 24 ETFlash crash, the Swiss money printing authority which reported a record $20 billion loss in the second quarter, and a record $52 billion in the first half, added another 909,000 AAPL shares, bringing its new grand total to 10.3 million shares,