Beiträge von Schwabenpfeil

There has been a great deal of commentary coming from foreign countries that the US must gets its fiscal situation in order or the dollar is going to get clobbered. There is no sign of any progress on that front.

Bush Says No Payroll Tax Hike for Social Security

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) ruled out raising payroll taxes to help pay for Social Security (news - web sites) reform on Thursday, leaving him few options other than a sharp increase in government borrowing to bankroll transition costs estimated at up to $2 trillion.

"We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem," said Bush, rejecting a solution advocated by some experts and Republican lawmakers.

White House officials defended using government borrowing to finance the transition to personal retirement accounts, saying it would neither undermine Bush's budget-cutting goals nor upset the financial markets.

White House budget director Joshua Bolten said the administration was on "a very clear path toward meeting and, in fact, exceeding the president's goal of cutting the deficit in half by (fiscal year) 2009."

-END-

CARTEL CAPITULATION WATCH

The DOW continues to move up, climbing 59 to 10,552, while the DOG gained 3 to 2129.

However, the US economic news is not good:

08:30 Nov. Import/Export prices reported 0.2% vs. consensus 0.0%
Prior reading revised to 1.6% from 1.5%.
* * * * *

08:30 Jobless claims for w/e 12/4 reported 357K vs. consensus 335K
Prior week unrevised at 349K.
* * * * *

09:18 PG raising folgers roast, ground coffee prices by 14% -- Bloomberg (55.03)
* * * * *

10:00 Oct. Wholesale Inventories reported 1.1% vs. consensus 0.5%
Prior reading revised to 0.6% from 0.5%.
* * * * *

DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Chief financial officers of U.S. corporations are less bullish about the economy in 2005, and are particularly concerned about health care costs and operating in an increasingly competitive economic environment. They also rank the budget deficit and Iraq at the top of a list of items on which President Bush should focus during his second term. And executives at 36 percent of companies report that fears about domestic terrorism are significantly affecting their bottom lines.
These are some of the findings of the Duke University/CFO Magazine Business Outlook survey, which asks chief financial officers from a broad range of public and private companies about their economic projections. The December survey was concluded Dec. 5 and generated responses from 308 executives…..

-END-

The John Brimelow Report

NY sells (& shorts?) East buys

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Indian ex-duty premiums (http://www.vdare.com/jb/041130_indian.htm AM $8.12, PM $$7.85, with world gold at $439 and $437.35. High; ample for legal imports. The Indian rupee continued to soften today, as did many other Asian currencies.

Some might be puzzled that premiums did not rise. As mentioned before, India gold importing appears to be economically efficient. Provided the dealers are not taken by surprise, and if they have the credit lines, premiums ought not, theoretically, to rise above ample for imports, because of competitive pressure.

TOCOM responded with surprising energy to the events of yesterday. Volume rose 73% to equal an almost respectable 38,689 Comex lots, and open interest jumped the equivalent of 2,525 Comex to 110,919 Comex. The active contract closed down 14 yen, but world gold was $2.55 above NY at the end: $439.25. Mitsubishi commented:

"…good Public buying emerged into the market",

and infers that the general public added a startling 15.9 tonnes equivalent to 5,112 Comex lots to their long. Apparently the Japanese think gold cheap. (COMEX yesterday traded a huge 139,593 lots, 29% above the estimate. Open interest dropped 20,427 lots -63.5 tonnes! – to 332,817.)

Others in the Far East think gold cheap too. Gold was back up to $441 just before Europe opened. Reuters reports:

"Some dealers in Hong Kong… said buying at the lower levels had pushed up the gold price to around $440 an ounce…
"It seems (there is) a lot of buying on the downside," said Ellison Chu, a senior manager at Standard Bank London in Hong Kong.

Gold bars were on par to London prices in Hong Kong, compared with a discount of 30 U.S. cents an ounce on Wednesday, on buying interest from jewellers, said dealers."

Premiums on the Shanghai Exchange rose to the highest level since early August, when world gold was in the $390s.

Even experienced observers appear shocked at the ferocity of the selling unleashed when Comex opened yesterday. ScotiaMocatta reports that on:

"The New York open…funds came into the market as massive sellers"

while TheBullionDesk version is

"…opening in the US at $443.25 where the lower prices and stronger dollar was like a red rag to a bull. Huge volumes of funds selling appeared from the opening bell leading gold to gap rapidly lower, quickly breaking $440 and running all the way to a low of $433.50"

Refco Research was moved to motivate about the possibility of short selling. Obviously, the huge drop in open interest must mean that many longs were driven out, but the style of selling suggests there was at least some predatory shorting – as does the weakening close today in NY, and, even more, the Silver massacre.

MarketVane’s Bullish Consensus yesterday dropped 8 points to 71%, the steepest decline in over the 4 years of data immediately to hand.

Massive sell-offs of this type usually take a week or two to repair (although there is no precedent for one starting with the physical market so strong).

While waiting for this episode to be cleaned up, gold’s friends should consider the remarks today by Bridgewater Associates on the dollar, entitled "The Dynamics of an Over-Sold Bounce":

"It is rare to have speculators so plainly on one side of a trade, and the only reason that it will likely work out all right for many is that it is non-profit maximizing central banks on the other side… Overall, the picture is clear to us. The dollar will have significant rallies like it did Wednesday on occasion because speculators are so heavily long and will get spooked occasionally. Nonetheless, government policies across the globe of not allowing the dollar to find its equilibrium level are doomed to fail…. With central banks essentially the only ones willing to buy the dollar and U.S. treasuries at current levels, central banks will continue to collect them until they break."

JB

*Cash buyers salivate any time gold approaches $430 when a wave of margin call selling hits the floor. It happened all session long on the Comex today.

*Once this margin call selling ends, the price of gold is going to fly.

*Last night gold rallied $3 and change after the Comex close. Because of predictable margin call selling, a rally such as this NEVER holds. With gold not going right up, black box selling hit the market in waves today. Many of the spec funds have money management rules and that is it.

*The drop in the gold open interest was large, but not as much as it could have been considering the price drop and the size of the open interest. It fell 20,427 contracts to 332,817. I would expect another sizeable drop to be reported tomorrow.

* The London Am Fix of $437.35 and PM Fix of $437.10 is an indication of the strength in the physical market.

*Gold took out yesterday’s low of $432.80, dropping to $432 and came right back. This is a very constructive technical development.

*Yep, I did not think so many could be right about a correction. Seemed too obvious. Then again, who could have been prepared for the GLD shenanigans? How do its supporters explain what occurred? Fluke or not, it cost gold investors a lot of money.

However, before we hear too much from the "correction camp" congratulating themselves, it is important to remind them gold is still higher than it was at the New Orleans Investment Conference when most all of the gold market commentators were short-term bearish.

If gold goes back up, like I think it is going to do, and they don’t get on board here, what have they gained?

*Silver may be the hardest commodity market of all them to figure out. It just collapses all the time. I am clueless as to why this keeps happening. However, one thing I am sure of. One day next year, silver will go berserk and rally something like $3 in a given day. Those shorts who have overstayed their welcome will be slaughtered. The supply/demand situation in silver is just too friendly.

Perhaps this will help re silver. Our STALKER silver dealer source called from London to say the following:

*The little guy silver buyers have come out of the woodwork in Europe on this price collapse as a result of the dollar gaining strength against the euro and because of the swift dollar price correction.

*He remarked fervently that the physical market is incredibly tight and expects price fireworks by year-end, or even "sooner."

*Says the paper traders are ruining the silver market. Comex is a joke, according to this experienced dealer. "If investors would just buy physical silver, the price would be $20 per ounce," the silver dealer says.

*He is very bullish.

December 9 – Gold $435 down $1.80 – Silver $6.74, down 34 cents

Powerful Cash Market To Take Gold Right Back Up!

Weaklings are those who know the truth, but maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so, and apart from that forsake it . . . Truth is so obscure in these times and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it..Blaine Pascal

GO GATA!!!

What a couple of days! Exhausting.

The smoke is beginning to clear after yesterday’s debacle. What’s going on out there at the moment:

*The most important input I can bring your way is that the cash market is on fire around the world. Refineries are going all out. Demand for gold on this break is soaring.

*It’s gold and silver margin call time. That has to be cleared up before gold can resume its multi-year bull market move. In years past it would take gold/silver months to recover from a beating. As time has passed, the recovery time has decreased dramatically and in one case this past year, took only days. The reason is simple:

The strong cash market is forcing The Gold Cartel crowd to cover their shorts at a much faster pace than in prior years because there is so much competition from physical buyers.

G’day Bill,
Dear oh dear oh dear,

The US$ has been knockin on the 80 in the Index door over the last few days. Tonight it stands 82.37:. at the start of a rally?!

Gold, has been, yet again short sold.
The Australian Gold stocks have been sold off during the last three sessions, and with tonights Gold action, these stocks have zero life in them.

It is quite amazing that here in Australia, in particular Western Australia, that exploration companies are always trying to seek a window of opportunity to raise funds, via a rising Gold price.

Exploration companies, in general, still fail to address the Native Title issue, and here in Western Australia, some 12,000 pending mining tenements are still waiting to be granted, and are subject to the “Right to Negotiate” by the Traditional Owners.

Based upon a Section 35 process under the Native Title Act 1994, one company has recently gained Land Access on one tenements after a year of discussions, negotiations, and process thru the Native Title Tribunial. To take things to the extreme, it “could” take, in theory, some 12,000 years to get all 12,000 tenements granted.

This does not bid well for the future of the Industry.

An observation that I have made is that the Traditional Owners work in the “dream time:, and certainly not in the “Swiss watch time”. They are in no rush, none at all.

The Western Australian Government is losing money “hand over fist”, and they require for example $500 million a year to fund hospitals and the police force.

The State Government intends to ammend the Mining Act some time in middle 2005, whereby tenement holders will be required to “use it or lose it”, and will be required to negotiate with the Traditional Owners over a 4 month period, and will only get a Mining lease granted conditional upon a Notice of Intent and a JORC reserve being defined; this information will have to be provided to the Native Title Group, in orderr for them to be fully informed, which is not required at present.

Recently I have negotiated a Land Access Agreement with the Wongatha People to get Land Access in any part of their claim, which covers 25% of all tenements in Western Austrlia. This Agreement is unique within the Australian Mining Industry. I am also negotiating similar deals with other Native Title Groups. In essence, the Agreement will open up the land for my company.

So, what is next for the Mining Industry? It looks like the hyperinflationary cycle has now started in the US economy. The “powers that be” really do not care abount the creation of additional debt and credit.. in particult the “Gold Credit card bill” that simply cannot be paid. They are living in “La La Land”, or should I say America!!

This hyperinflation is not good for the Mining Industry, with the ongoing short selling of Gold, until such time as the coffers are totallt emplty of Gold. How long will this take? Certainly not in the “Dream time”!!!

Och aye
Haggis

Without a doubt we are finally making a bottom in the share sector. By early next year prices will be much higher than they are now. MUCH HIGHER! Don’t be left behind. With today’s orchestrated gold slaughter, many of the share prices are trading less than 50% from where they were with gold $12 lower a year ago. The Gold Cartel has done their thing. My bet is they are in there buying all the gold and silver shares they can at the moment.

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

MIDAS

Chuck checked in this afternoon:

This day had the finality feel that I thought must end the entire move from last December. A lot of volume in the shares even in the juniors and some good bounces. This was the first time in a long while that the shares were better than the metal. Let's see where we go from here, although a time of base building would be expected.

Also, when the stock market starts to weaken I anticipate some more help for gold and the shares. This is the third consecutive year where the golds have weakened in December and/or the beginning of January. That is extremely unusual. I strongly feel that it portends a major upward move all through next year. Chuck

To give you some idea of what a charade the gold scam is, take a look at this HUI chart. It goes straight down. Then, collapses earlier today with gold down nearly $20 per ounce, causing near panic selling in the share sector. The HUI drops to 207.77, then reverses course to close at 215.10, down only 3.52. At the same time, The Gold Cartel forces are buying on the Comex like crazy. Here’s dollars to donuts they were doing the same in the share sector.

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

The XAU closed at 98.80, down 1.45.

Today is a day of enormous emotion for many reasons. Thus, Derek Van Artsdalen’s piece of some time back is a good one to review to put this all in big-picture perspective.

Gold Price Volatility: A Gold Bug’s Best Friend

Comparing the current gold market to “the Big One” back in the late seventies, I thought you gold bugs out there might be encouraged by the following information…

By my calculations, there were five double-digit corrections (that is, declines from monthly peaks that were equal to or greater than 10%) in the great gold bull market from 1976 to January 1980. You may be amazed at the secret they reveal!

1) In January ’77, the gold price had declined 12.86% from its peak for the move. Within 10 weeks, the price shot up 27% off its bottom for the move (all data using London PM fix), blowing away the old highs. The POG was now 26% higher than where it began.

2) In June ’77, the gold price had declined 10.71% from its peak for the move. Within 18 weeks, the price increased 20%. Within 18 weeks after that, the price had soared a total of 40%! The POG was now 84% higher than where it began.

3) In April ’78, the gold price had declined 15.32% from its peak for the move (“Holy stop loss, Batman! The Joker has taken over Gotham!”). But not to worry, Boy Wonder, for within 24 weeks the metal came back to life and climbed an astounding 50%. The POG was now 135% higher than where it began.

4) In November ’78, the gold price had declined a heart-stopping 20.33% from its peak for the move (“Please don’t leave me, honey. My broker says I can recoup all our losses by investing in pork bellies!”). Within only 12 weeks of this devastating decline, the price of gold jumped an additional 30%. Gold bugs who hadn’t yet leaped out of high-rise office building windows now enjoyed a POG that was 144% higher than where it began in August of ’76.

Incidentally, with all these impressive boosts in the price of gold, you may be shocked to learn that it was still selling for a measly two hundred and fifty bucks!

5) The final double-digit decline in the POG (before the big blow-off top in January 1980) came in October ’79. At that time, the POG had fallen 12.49% from its peak for the move. Within only 15 weeks — and please read the following statement twice if you’re considering bailing out of the current gold market right now — the price of gold went stratospheric and exploded about 128.00% from its low for the move.

From its humble beginnings at $103.50 less than three and a half years earlier, the price of gold had zoomed up nearly 800%, causing heartbreak and disappointment among non-believers all along the way. Many a gold bug was undoubtedly shaken out of his positions because of his own defeatist thinking.

The point is this: when the prices of the precious metals become most volatile is when they begin their most impressive performances. For precious metals investors and newsletter advisors to keep screaming that the sky is falling shows a complete lack of knowledge of both investing and history. Cabal or no cabal, every market is going to have its ups and downs.

And thank heaven they do! Dull markets don’t make many folks rich (except insider fat cats who rig them for their own nefarious purposes). For us non-insiders, though, it’s the volatile markets where all the money is made. Today’s price action in the metals pits may be just the signal we’ve all been waiting for that big price advances are imminent.

There’s just one problem: you’ve got to be in ‘em to win ‘em! (right, Bill Murphy?)

Unless you’re a nimble trader, stay invested. Don’t panic. Along with momentum, financial imbalances, geo-political realities and plain old common sense, history, too, is on our side.
Derek K. Van Artsdalen
vanartsdalen@hotmail.com

What is likely to be occurring all over the world:

Bill,
Arrived in Canada, at a major bank, standing in line for currency and Gold, longest line, in fact the only line. People in front of me were buying Gold Coins and bars, Indian couple. A girl behind me was quoting the prices to a friend and asked how much Gold she wanted. At that time it was trading around $436 which is the quote the tller gave me. Plus the premiums and etc.
Physical buyers are coming out on any weakness.
Cheers,
John

Hi Bill,
Intervention Trumps Fundamentals

Seems five o'clock Charlie finally landed a bomb on target. If you drop enough dumb bombs, eventually you'll hit something. Personally, I'm feeling more like Charlie Brown. Every time I think Lucy won't pull the football away when I go to kick it, she does. I always think she's being truthful when she promises that she won't, but it's always a lie. I always think the economic fundamentals will matter, but intervention trumps them every time. My guestimate is that both the European and Japanese Central Banks have a hand in this trashing of gold, as the game of beggar thy neighbor continues. As distressed as I am with more horrific losses, I take consolation in the fact that when the music is over, I won't be looking for a chair the way these fiat currency players will, because I already have a throne of gold. This too shall pass. We knew the volatility would be violent as these titans battle their currency wars. Nothing has changed in the fundamentals concerning the USD vs. the Euro vs. the Yen. All the Best.
Rich

The GATA camp is looking into the veracity of the contents of the letter. As always, we are only after the right scoop. Any way you look at it, this debunks what Ross Norman of TheBullionDesk stated yesterday about duplicate bar numbers. If this occurred, it was an exception, not the yearly rule for gold bars, as Norman exclaimed.

This broker ought to be fired. From a fellow Café member:

I strongly suspect that some of my PM shares have been shorted as described in several Midas postings including the possible use of counterfeit shares. The last time I broached the subject with my broker he became incensed that I would ask for stock certificates. Do I have a legal right to request them? Can the broker say no? He suggested we might want to close my account.

Please let me know if I can legally demand getting stock certificates for my shares. Thanks.

***

BANK OF NEW YORK-STREET TRACKS
1 WALL STREET
NEW YORK NY 10015
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

7 December 2004

Dear Sir,

With reference to HSBC 's role as Custodian for the Streettracks Gold Trust we are writing to you to clarify why a number of bars which have been allocated to the Trust allocated gold account with HSBC have the same bar number .

This has arisen because in 2002 the manufacturer of those particular bars , Johnson Matthey UK ,changed the shape of the Good Delivery gold bars that they produced. At the same time Johnson Matthey re-wound their sequential gold bar stamping machine back to number 0001 and continued using the sequential numbers up until the end of 2002.

At the beginning of 2003 the sequential stamp was again re-wound back to number 0001 by Johnson Matthey Uk and they continued to stamp bars in sequence up until the closure of their UK production plant in 2004 .

As a result of this there are a number of gold bars that have duplicate bar numbers. However in cases where the bar numbers are duplicated the manufacturing year is different and, in most cases,the fine weight of each bar is also different .

There is no duplication of any gold bar .

We trust the above explanation satisfies your position as Trustee and we can confirm that the bar list provided to you is a completely accurate reflection of the physical gold that is held by HSBC on behalf of the Trust . This of course can be verified by independent audit as required .

Yours very truly,

A.J.DEAN

***

We are making tremendous progress in our continuing efforts to find out the truth about the gold market.

On that note, here is a letter from a bank executive to GATA’s Chris Powell re the duplicate WGC ETF gold bars:

Chris,
I received a reply to the double counting question this morning from State Street Global Advisors (marketing agent for StreetTRACKS). They get the enclosed letter from HSBC (the Custodian).

Not being an expert in gold stamping and the specifics of the rollback, I have no idea if its true or not. Thought you should know.
John

John,
I hope this helps to answer your concerns. This letter is actually from a contact at HSBC, the custodian. Regards,
John Davidson
SSgA Advisor Strategies

* * *

OK, back a tad to this WGC ETF stuff. First, a letter to a veteran Café member, a retired former executive giant in the metals industry:

Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 12:20:43 -0500
From: IMOCC
Subject: RE: James Turk - More Questions About the ETF's Gold
To: 'Hans Buehler'

Dear Mr Buehler:

1. In order to reach Mr. Greene, you need to send your emails to him at Help@sec.gov. IMOCC@sec.gov is not the correct email address for Mr. Greene. I thought I would help you in giving Mr. Greene's direct email address.

2. The SEC is well aware of Mr. Turk's allegations and his urging his readership to start an email campaign to the SEC regarding this matter. The SEC has received all of your emails.

3. As Mr. Greene indicated, as a matter of policy and law, the SEC staff cannot comment on this matter.

Again, if you are going to send additional emails about this matter (or others) it would be more efficient to send them to IMOCC@sec.gov.

Thank you!

Eric Hommelberg has done yeoman’s work of late. It is much appreciated by The Café membership. Yesterday, I managed to foul up his charts. This has been corrected. Some more goodies from Eric:

Hi Bill,
Again some notes regarding the Gold/HUI ratio. Going back three years it’s obvious clear that all bottoms in PM shares are characterized by an extreme undervaluation of these shares compared to Gold. The Gold/HUI ratio suggests according to its own history a bottom in PM shares within two weeks. Why ? Because PM share bottoms are characterized by RSI tops in the Gold/HUI ratio crossing the 70 mark. Each time it happened it didn’t stay there for more than two weeks !

See chart below :

[Blockierte Grafik: http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/img2004/Midas1208F.gif]

So based on its own history we could suggest :

PM shares do bottom at RSI tops > 70 of the Gold/HUI ratio.
RSI tops > 70 mark the beginning of an uptrend in PM shares lasting 2 to 9 month.
Each rally in PM shares which started from a RSI top >70 gained 50 to 130%.
RSI tops > 70 have a very short life span (less than two weeks)
Right now RSI crossed the 70 mark again, so PM shares bottoming within two weeks ?
Expected minimum gain of HUI is 50% within three month, so HUI >300 before end of Q1 2005
Best, Eric

John Crudele of the New York Post is a first-rate journalist. Some excerpts from his column yesterday which reveals the depth of the "spin" coming out of Washington and Wall Street:

JOBS-DATA DISTORTIONS FRUSTRATE EASY COMPARISONS
By JOHN CRUDELE

December 7, 2004 -- BACK in the 1970s, Western economists would chuckle at the way the Soviet Union compiled its economic statistics.

Without fail, for instance, the Kremlin would announce record annual wheat crops even though there were reports nightly on TV about severe food shortages in that country.

That was fraud.

Now consider the U.S., circa 1990 through 2004. I picked those years for a reason so you won't think either political party is beyond gilding the economy.

There's no obvious fraud involved here…..

But changes in the way Washington compiles economic statistics have certainly caused the figures to be misleading. They are numbers on steroids.

At the very least today's official evaluations of the economy may not be comparable to those in the past, rendering useless the historical trends that economists like to follow.

In fact, the chutzpah showed in some of these changes may be causing a disconnect between how Americans feel about the economy gauged through things like consumer-confidence surveys and what Washington says is happening.

Even worse, by changing the way it compiles its statistics, Washington could be leading astray economic experts as well as policy makers at the Federal Reserve.

This column, the second in a series about the new tricks of the economics trade, will continue to look at the sleight of hand used in the employment figures.

Last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 112,000 jobs were created in November. There's no arguing with the fact that 112,000 was a disappointing amount.

It was far below the 200,000 jobs that the experts had been predicting, and was made worse by a large reduction in October's growth. The 112,000 new jobs aren't even enough to keep up with the increasing population.

Worse, Washington could only come up with those 112,000 jobs by adding 54,000 positions it believes but can't prove were created by newly formed companies….

-END-

Extra
Housing bubble is real, report says

Bank predicts a 'hard landing' by mid-2005 and says prices are 'spectacularly and unrealistically high.' But the Fed remains unworried.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P87483.asp

-END-

Here is a strange one:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmp…_on_go_pr_wh/bush_cabinet

Snow to Stay in Bush Cabinet for 2nd Term

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) asked Treasury Secretary John Snow on Wednesday to stay in his administration, and Snow agreed, keeping a key member of Bush's economic team in place.

Snow walked to the White House to have lunch with other members of the team, and met with Bush, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"The president is pleased Secretary Snow agreed to continue to serve," McClellan said

-END-

So much for hit the road Snow.