Thai Guru's Gold und Silber ... (Informationen und Vermutungen)

Fannie Mae accounting crisis

By Marcy Gordon
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 16, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Fannie Mae's accounting crisis has taken a turn with its outside auditor KPMG refusing to sign off on its third-quarter earnings report, causing the mortgage giant to miss a regulatory deadline for filing it.

Fannie Mae, whose accounting is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, also said Monday that if the agency finds that it has improperly accounted for derivatives -- the financial instruments it uses to hedge against interest-rate swings -- it would show an estimated net loss of $9 billion for the July-September period. And it acknowledged that some of its accounting policies do not comply with generally accepted accounting principles.

Washington-based Fannie Mae, which finances one of every five home loans in the United States, disclosed the SEC investigation on Sept. 22, stunning investors.

The company, recently cited by regulators in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight for serious accounting problems and accused of earnings manipulation, notified the SEC Monday that it would not file the third-quarter report on time…….

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Chuck checked in with similar commentary to mine:

What a battle to keep gold from popping here. How many days before the December contracts expire? It sure feels as though there is a squeeze here. It's also good to see GG blowing out here. Put the rest of your money in the golds so we can break out here. Yuk, yuk! Chuck

Houston’s Dan Norcini in a running conversation with Jesse:

Here's a quote from Oster Dow Jones:

"U.S. wholesale prices rose at the fastest pace in nearly 15 years in October
as prices of energy and food surged. The producer price index for finished
goods rose 1.7%, the biggest increase since January 1990, the Labor Department
said Tuesday."

Now take a look at the Ten year and the Long bond. Yawn! Ho-Hum! ......................... They have barely budged. The CRB is still not that far off its multi year highs. Gold has cracked $440 and still the bond vigilantes are MIA as bonds refuse to break down and provide buyers with rising interest rates. So now we have a situation where we have a falling down with rising inflation as we knew would happen and long term rates that refuse to go up to offset. Hmmm...... I must have been sleeping during those portions of my economic classes.

So what is it going to take to wake bond pitsters out of their sleep of death and their state of denial?

Of course, now the talk turns to the fact that the PPI is "old" and does not reflect the fact that crude oil and energy prices have taken a subsequent dive. The futures markets are forward looking we are correctly informed. Obviously this is a case of selective visual acuity since these "forward-looking" bond pitsters must have been looking backward to the year 2002 or something while crude prices were streaking towards $50/bbl and Northeasterners were paying out the wazoo for heating oil.

As usual, the failure of the bond pit to respond to inflationary news is being interpreted as "safe haven" flows since the indices are having a down day. Those who believe that are prime candidates for some ocean front property in Arizona to quote George Strait. The obvious deduction is that something "stinketh in Denmark" and that the Central Banks are playing a game with the longer end of the yield curve. There is no other explanation.

My compliments to the Land of the Rising Sun. Hey fellas, it would be a lot simpler if you just put us on the Bank of Japan email list and send us the notice in advance. On second thought, never mind, we can read what you are doing just as easily by what is taking place.
Dan

From Jesse:

There is little doubt in my mind that the Fed has been leading a coordinated effort, along with Treasury, to play the long end of the yield curve through coordinated buying of bonds and notes at artificial prices. My study of the custodial accounts and securities lending, the Treasury TIIP program and the TIC reports brought me there beyond all doubt. But why even doubt it when Bernanke laid it right out in its playbook? They believe they have a right, and perhaps even an obligation, to rig the markets 'for the greater good.'

One can question whether they are also capping the price of gold. To that I would say first that GATA has provided sufficient evidence of this, but second, what good would it be to play the yield curve game to cap interest rates and let gold trade freely? It would be like telling only a partial story, and leaving a great gaping marker in gold that shows the falsity of one's actions.

My concern now is to see if this is going to spread to corporate debt markets more directly, and even to the equity markets. Bernanke has implied that this is possible if we reach a certain point. I want to know if we have reached that point. I can dismiss the recent ramp in equities to a 'policy error' as I have shown in some detail in past notes. But the question for me is if we had reached the point where the Fed and Treasury would look at what had happened, and decide to carry on as a policy of more aggressive intervention, and fixing of the problem, by short circuiting even more of our capital allocation and pricing mechanisms?

The jury is still out on that. But each step we take down this path takes us further from free markets, and closer to a centrally planned economy such as that which we spent decades fighting against as an enemy of freedom, and into the malinvestment and unintended consequences that are always attendant on the abuse of power by a few arrogant men who abandon their principles.

So do I prefer that we have a market crash and a depression? Well, have we reached that point where the economy is not longer viable if it is real? Or do we merely keep putting off the inconvenient choices, keep shoving the discomfort into the future, which is perhaps a viable alternative to an elderly man with no children, who has his reputation to consider, but not to the bulk of the people, who realize that we have inherited a country and that it is only ours in stewardship, and we will leave nothing but a legacy for our children by which we will be judged.

***

Dan:

Well said Jesse.
That is EXACTLY the point. Hayek's little work on this subject should have forever settled the issue as to whether a centrally planned economy could ever hope to avoid the inefficiencies inherent in a system in which a small group of fallible mortals attempt to make thousands of decisions whose repercussions are far beyond their limited powers of sight or understanding to grasp.

Yet we seem to have come almost full circle in this country and by DELIBERATE DESIGN placed this nation on the exact same footing as that which Hayek so aptly obliterated as unworkable. Talk about the hubris of men!

This is one of the things that Bill and I and a few others were discussing at dinner one night in New Orleans.

I believe it is a form of modern day FINANCIAL GNOSTICISM, in which an elite few believe that they are endowed with superior insight and wisdom and thus are on a plane above the rest of humanity and not prone to the mistakes of others who in the past have attempted to "improve" society. As if somehow, they and they alone, are able to avoid the lessons of history.
God help us all.
Dan

The lease rates:

Hi Bill:
It is about time for another update on lease rates. Gold lease rates are flat to declining, while silver lease rates have begun to rise steeply. The capping of the gold price over the last two days was done with paper in concert with closed Asian markets representing reduced gold demand. Silver on the other hand has been less than impressive in terms of its spot price, but perhaps lease rate changes can explain this. Silver is in semi-backwardation. Silver lease rates are between 4 and 7 times the rate for corresponding terms in gold. Since 3 to 4 times gold is the "normal" ratio of silver over gold, I suspect that leased metal was used to suppress the rise of silver. There is another interpretation. If the present unprecedented open interest in COMEX silver includes a higher proportion of stoppers, and the commercials know this, a leasing spike may represent sellers of paper silver attempting to acquire physical to make good on their contracts.
Best regards, Rhody.

Down Under Input:
G'day,
Sorry, but I "missed" Monday, as I had a day off.

Gold hit US$440, then pulled back a little to US$439.8. Looking very strong, in breakout mode. Next target is US$450.

The junior explorers and mining companies are not really reacting so far to the Gold price, and generally speaking there is still alot of "pumping and dumping". Beware!!!

The Markets are generally stalling, and after last weeks strong move, are now looking uncertain and fragile.

The US$ idex is a direct negative mirror reflection of Gold, and is looking like "burnt toast", and is headed toward oblivion and hyper-inflation.

Have a good one.
Aye
Ian Miller

Story on Aflease:

http://www.mineweb.net/sections/junior_mining/390541.htm

Café member question:

I am invested in gold and many gold stocks. I enjoy reading your daily comment. However I am tired of watching the price of gold as in Canadian dollars the price does not move. What good will it be if Gold is $525.00 and the Canadian dollar is at par with the US dollar. Is there any hope that we might see gold move up in Canadian dollars. Thanks Ron

Ron,
The Gold Cartel has done this on purpose. Their biggest fear, as they run out of available gold supply, to have Gold Fever out in the world which substantially accelerates demand for gold. One way to minimize investment demand is to make sure the price goes nowhere in terms of other currencies. In the case of the US and the dollar, they do what they can to minimize excitement by not allowing gold to rise more than $6 and change in any one given day.

This will change when The Gold Cartel loses control of their rig. With the physical market so firm, this could occur at any time.

The gold shares remain moribund as a group. They are trading as if investors are selling on rallies because surely gold will go down tomorrow. Thus, better sell the shares today before they are crushed in the days ahead. Meanwhile, gold keeps making new highs.

The XAU rose 1.59, while the HUI sold off late to close at 240.89, up 3.93.

HUI
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.c…&o_symb=hui&freq=1&time=8

This says it all and echoes my sentiments:

Bill,
Many penny gold stocks are lower now than at $340 gold.......... After all these years, I cannot believe that these stocks are in the pits as gold is flying while I am being devastated. I remember back when gold was around $275. ANOTHER said on USAGOLD that the stocks will languish while POG explodes. Let's hope that's not a happening.

I view my GATA print with great hope!
Best again,
Bob

The gold share situation will change dramatically in the near future and when it does it will be like a Yukon gold rush. Gold excitement will fill the air.

In the meantime gold remains one of the least understood bull markets of all time. You can thank the cabal bullion dealers in New York and the gold organizations for that.

Listen to all of this. $440 gold and many share investors are completely bummed. Bearishness is rampant everywhere I turn. Won’t be long before this sort of sentiment is a distant memory.

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

MIDAS

Appendix

Comprehensive ETF commentary:

Gold ETF this week?

The first of the gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may begin trading this week. Finally! Two gold ETFs are in registration - one from State Street, one from Barclays; StateStreet just recently filed another amended registration statement. The proposed ticker is "GLD".

Here are three questions to ponder:

How much pent-up demand is there for a gold ETF?
Buying physical gold is expensive and a hassle. Commissions are large relative to the commissions and spreads on buying equities, and owners have to arrange for storage and insurance. Those factors have probably inhibited many people from buying gold.

Yet gold is a distinct asset class from equities, bonds and REITs, and therefore most investors who (correctly) care about asset allocation and diversification will want to own some gold. Sure, gold has been a lousy long-term investment. But in the last couple of years the price of gold has turned upwards, and fears of inflation and a falling dollar are once again stirring interest in gold.

A gold ETF would also stoke a lot of interest from hedge funds. Global macro funds that want to speculate on the price of gold tend to do it with futures. But a highly-liquid ETF is in many ways a cheaper and cleaner way to trade. Remember that ETFs can be shorted.

So the key question is: how much pent up demand is there for gold, once the ETFs remove the hassle and transaction and storage costs of the buying the metal directly? If investors moved just 1% of their portfolios into one of the gold ETFs, the capital inflows would be so large that the price of gold would likely move upwards dramatically.

2. How will the tax status of the gold ETF impact its popularity?

Gold is classified by the IRS as a "collectible". Neither of the two gold ETFs in registration have managed to find a structure that converts that status to one of an equity security. Why does this matter? Because gains on gold are taxed at 28% if held for longer than a year (and as "ordinary income" if held for a year or less). With long-term capital gains on U.S equities at 15%, that puts the gold ETFs at a significant disadvantage for taxable investors.

Here's the relevent excerpt from the GLD S-1:

Under current law, gains recognized by individuals from the sale of "collectibles," including gold bullion, held for more than one year are taxed at a maximum rate of 28%, rather than the 15% rate applicable to most other long-term capital gains. For these purposes, gain recognized by an individual upon the sale of an interest in a trust that holds collectibles is treated as gain recognized on the sale of collectibles, to the extent that the gain is attributable to unrealized appreciation in value of the collectibles held by the trust. Therefore, any gain recognized by an individual US Shareholder attributable to a sale of Shares held for more than one year, or attributable to the Trust's sale of any gold bullion which the Shareholder is treated (through its ownership of Shares) as having held for more than one year, generally will be taxed at a maximum rate of 28%. The tax rates for capital gains recognized upon the sale of assets held by an individual US Shareholder for one year or less or by a taxpayer other than an individual US taxpayer are generally the same as those at which ordinary income is taxed.

3. Will gold ETFs help the online brokers?

Until now there was a relatively equal playing-field between the online brokers and the mutual fund companies. If you wanted to buy an index mutual fund, for example, you could set up a direct account with a mutual fund company or you could use a broker. Schwab was first to market with a mutual fund "supermarket", and has succeeded in building a large mutual fund asset base. Ameritrade and E*Trade, in contrast, have negligable mutual fund businesses, despite the fact that E*Trade is the only broker to rebate 12b-1 fees on mutual funds.

The gold ETF is the first product that changes the competitive landscape. Why? Because there is no equivalent to the gold ETFs offered by mutual fund companies. The only fund that offers bullion is a closed-end fund, the Central Fund of Canada, ticker CEF, and that hold a mixture of gold and silver.

As a result, the cheapest way to buy gold now will be to open an online brokerage account and buy the gold ETF. That leads to the question: will the availability of traded investment vehicles that are not available in non-traded forms help the online brokers?

It goes without saying that active traders will probably like the gold ETF. That should also help the online brokers.

Important: Please read the Seeking Alpha disclosures, note that I own stock in E*Trade (ticker ET) at the time of writing, and read why you shouldn't take this in any way as a recommendation.

Links and article tools:
1. The S-1 filing for GLD is a great primer on gold. You can view it here.

2. Until the gold ETF, the ETF providers have focused on asset classes that are already available to investors, and failed to focus on asset classes that still lack investable indices. That criticism was one of points made in Why exchange-traded funds could alter the investment landscape.

3. The ETF Resource Page is the most comprehensive set of annotated ETF links on the Internet. It has a section on index providers, including links to Wilshire, MSCI, Standard & Poors and Russell.

4. A gold ETF would likely be immediately included in many asset-allocation accounts for retail investors. A Better Way to Invest discusses asset allocation, rebalancing and tax-loss selling using ETFs. Does Amerivest compete with hedge funds? You bet! discusses Ameritrade's new asset allocation account using ETFs.

5. Email this page to a friend (uses your own email program so you can add people easily from your address auto-complete or address book).

6. Sign up for (no spam guarantee and easy unsubscribe) monthly email notifying you of new articles from Seeking Alpha here.

-END-

By Edmund L. Andrews

The New York Times
Tuesday, November 16, 2004

WASHINGTON -- It sounds eerily like the worst economic nightmare for President Bush's second term.

Bogged down in a costly war that shows no sign of ending, the United States faces a gaping budget deficit and ballooning foreign indebtedness. The dollar plunges against other major currencies, while turmoil in the Middle East sends oil prices soaring. The rest of the decade is plagued by rising inflation, increased joblessness and sky-high interest rates.

But the president under fire was Richard M. Nixon -- not George W. Bush. The war was in Vietnam, not Iraq. And the dollar crash was in 1973 rather than 2005.

Could it happen again? With the dollar down more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, and hitting new lows since Mr. Bush's re-election, economists are debating whether America's foreign indebtedness could lead to a collapse in the dollar and a global financial crisis.

The United States is spending nearly $600 billion more a year than it produces, almost 6 percent of its annual gross domestic product. Much of that spending has been financed by Asian governments, which bought more than $1 trillion in Treasury securities and other dollar assets in the last two years to help keep the dollar strong against Asian currencies.

Many analysts expect the financing gap to widen and the dollar to decline further. But there are at least three schools of thought on whether a dollar collapse is likely and, if it happens, what it would mean.

One group, which includes the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, contends that global financial markets are awash in so much money that the United States can borrow much more than seemed possible 20 years ago.

The dollar may well decline in value, according to this view, but the decline would be gradual and would help reduce American trade imbalances by making exports cheaper and imports more expensive.

The Bush administration goes one step further, arguing that America's huge foreign debt simply reflects the eagerness of others to invest here.

"Productivity has been remarkably high in the last few years,"
John Taylor, deputy secretary of the Treasury, said at a recent conference. "Foreigners want to invest in the United States. That's what that gap illustrates."

A second school of thought holds that foreign governments like China and Japan will continue to finance American borrowing and keep the dollar strong because they are determined to sustain their exports and create jobs.

But a third school, which includes officials at the International Monetary Fund, worries about a collapse in the dollar that would send shock waves through the global economy.

That group argues that the dollar needs to depreciate another 20 percent against the other major currencies but warns about a run on the dollar that could reduce its value by 40 percent.

A collapse of that size would severely affect Europe and Asia, which have relied heavily on exports to the United States for their growth.

A steep drop in the dollar could lead to higher interest rates for the federal government and American private borrowers, as foreign investors demanded higher returns to compensate for higher risk. And it could expose hidden weaknesses among financial institutions and hedge funds caught unprepared.

"There is a school of thought that the U.S. can keep borrowing forever," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University and a former chief
economist at the IMF. "But if you add up all the excess saving being thrown out by the surplus countries, from China to Germany, the United States is soaking up three-quarters of it right now."

For Mr. Rogoff and several other economists, the question is not whether the dollar declines - but how fast and how far the fall turns out to be.

The United States current account deficit, which encompasses annual trade as well as the balance of financial flows, has gone from zero in 1990 to nearly $600 billion this year. The United States' accumulated debt to foreign investors is $2.6 trillion, or 23 percent of the annual output of the economy.

But where foreign investors in the 1990's poured trillions of dollars into American stocks and corporate acquisitions, investment from abroad now comes mostly from foreign central banks and goes heavily to buying Treasury securities that finance the federal deficit.

Catherine Mann, a senior economist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, said today's financing gap could be expected to widen. Part of the problem lies with Europe and Japan, which grow more slowly than the United
States and import less than they export.

Higher costs of imported oil will aggravate the trade deficit even more, Ms. Mann said, and the federal government will be paying foreigners higher interest rates on its rapidly growing debt.

"You have a dynamic that links government deficits to current accounts deficits more than has been the case before," Ms. Mann said. "We are going to have a lot of government securities out there, and a very high share of those Treasuries are owned by foreign investors."

But where Mr. Rogoff predicts that the dollar will slide sharply over the next two years, Ms. Mann predicts that Asian countries will continue to subsidize American imbalances to keep their economies growing. A decline in the dollar may be likely, but not a panicky flight by foreign investors.

The American dollar has been through several ups and downs in recent decades. In 1973, it fell sharply against Japanese and European currencies -- the major industrialized countries had already abandoned the system of fixed exchange rates adopted at Bretton Woods after World War II.

The dollar rebounded strongly in the early and mid-1980s in response to higher American interest rates, but then plunged 40 percent after leaders from the United States, Japan, and Europe reached the so-called Plaza Accord in 1986 to nudge the dollar back down. The plunge after the Plaza Accord caused few disruptions for Americans, and foreign investors did not demand higher interest rates on securities.

"One theory is that investors were simply irrational," said J. Bradford DeLong, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. "Others said it was the result of what Charles DeGaulle called the 'exorbitant privilege' of being able to repay your debts in your own currency."

Some economists contend that the United States can postpone its day of reckoning for years. Richard N. Cooper, a professor of economics at Harvard, said the global pool of savings was about 10 times the United States' appetite for foreign capital last year and growing fast enough to easily finance $500 billion a year.

The wild card is that most of the money is coming not from private investors but from foreign governments, led by Japan and China. Rather than profits, their goal has been to stabilize exchange rates and keep their exports from becoming more expensive.

Many economists contend that the Asian central banks have created an informal version of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates that lasted from shortly after World War II until the early 1970's.

The system collapsed after the imbalances between Europe
and the United States became impossible to reconcile. Rapid growth is putting similar pressure on China, which has kept its currency, the yuan, pegged at a fixed rate to the dollar.

The growing imbalances, in both China and the United States, is one reason Mr. Rogoff is bracing for a jolt to the dollar and the American economy similar to the one that occurred in the early 1970's.

Then, as now, the United States was running large budget and trade deficits. Then, as now, the United States was bogged down in a war costing billions of dollars a year. And in 1974, a few months after the dollar plunged against the German mark and Japanese yen, oil prices soared.

"It's striking how many parallels there are between today and the early 1970s," Mr. Rogoff said. "The loss of the anchor of the dollar and fixed exchange rates contributed to the inflation we saw in the '70s. It was the worst period in growth we have had since World War II."

hallo,
warum steht eurodollar plötzlich bei 1,3030 und was is mitm gold und silber los?
gabs irgendwelche schlechten wirtschaftsdaten?? ich konnte keinen grund finden.

und warum geht die seite von silberinfo nicht mehr?

gruß, kevincito

Gold explodiert, der Dollar fällt in sich zusammen und vor lauter Freude macht Silberinfo die Lichter aus, um das ganze Feuerwerk besser betrachten zu können.

der grund ist aufkommende inflationsangst

gestern gab es die erzeugerpreise in den usa, welche weit höher als die erwartungen waren. (höchster anstieg seit 15 jahren)

heute 14.30 kommen die verbraucherpreise im amiland, da schaut heute die gesamte börsenwelt hin!!! bis jetzt wird ebenfalls ein anstieg über den erwartungen spekuliert.

also, schauen, was ab 14.30 passiert!

das schöne dabei ist - bisher wurde bei aufkommender infationsangst zinserhöhungen "gespielt", dieses szenario half bisher dem dollar.
mittlerweile (hoffe ich) erkennt man wohl, das schnellere zinserhöhungen gift für das kartenhaus im wirtschaftswunderland sind.
so könnten mehr und mehr fundamentale gründe für einen einstieg in gold sprechen. das würde wohl eine beschleunigte und langfristige goldhausse einleiten.

hier ein link zu tradesignal - auf der linken seite findet ihr dann den link "reuters-news". die sind meist die schnellsten mit dem veröffentlichen der wirtschaftsdaten. ab 14.35 sollten sie spätestens dort zu lesen sein.

zu den reuters-news

eben auf ntv hammse gesagt das gold wär zur zeit so gefragt weil die inder viel kaufen.... jaja, da ham die mainstream-affen wohl glatt ausgelassen dass die weltwirtschaft am abschmieren ist und das wohl der wahre grund sein könnte....

dann kam en programmhinweis: 21:30 in der telebörse (ntv) kommt ein goldexperte!!!

bin ma gespannt was der wieder verzapfen wird...

Panik:

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/leaserates/au_go_0060_lsb.gif]

Abkoppelung Gold vom USD:

[Blockierte Grafik: http://quotes.ino.com/chart/intraday.gif?s=NYBOT_DXY0&t=f&w=1&a=0&v=w]

[Blockierte Grafik: http://quotes.ino.com/chart/intraday.gif?s=FOREX_XAUUSDO&t=f&w=1&a=0&v=w]

bin ich der einzige der bei goldseiten keine bilder mehr hochladen kann? schrecklich

@option
aber warum spekulieren die alle zeitgleich auf höhere teuerung? im chart ist ein riesen versatz drin wie es sonst bei wirtschaftsdaten der fall ist. oder hat hier eine stopp-buy-marke eine rolle gespielt?

bognair, kann es sein dass die forumsoftware die bilder nur annimmt wenn ganz hinten eine passende dateiendung ist?

kevincito

warum muss man immer nach einem Grund suchen. Den tatsächlichen Grund kann dir niemand sagen.

Aber den Grund von goldinvest lasse ich gelten :-))