Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Greece- What Happens When Economists Talk Politics / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Raul_I_Meijer
As the “Varoufakis Files” provide everyone interested in the Greek tragi-comedy with an additional million pages of intriguing fodder -we all really needed that added layer of murky conspiracy, re: the Watergate tapes-, a different question has been playing in my head. Again. That is: Why are economists discussing politics?
Why are the now 6 month long Greece vs Troika discussions being conducted by the people who conduct them? All parties involved are apparently free to send to the table whoever they want, and while that seems nice and democratic, it doesn’t necessarily make it the best possible idea. To, in our view, put it mildly.
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Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Is the Gold Price Manipulated? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: Clif_Droke
One of the most commonly held beliefs among gold investors is that the market for gold is heavily manipulated. It has become an article of faith among gold advocates that the price is subject to direct control by government, central banks and other parties who have a vested interest in depressing the gold price. In this commentary we'll explore this belief and try to arrive at a firm conclusion as to its veracity.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
The Gold - U.S. House Prices Ratio As A Valuation Indicator / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Dan_Amerman
The Gold/Housing ratio is a quite useful measure for evaluating relative values between real estate and gold, and also has an interesting historical track record for identifying turning points in long-term gold price trends. In light of the commodities rout occurring in the summer of 2015, and the continuing strength in housing – it is worthwhile revisiting this basic measure, because the results aren't at all what most people likely think they are.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Will Crude Oil Price Decline Continue? -Video / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: EWI
Elliott Wave International's Chief Energy Analyst tells you what he sees next for crude
In this new interview, Steve Craig, editor of Elliott Wave International's Energy Pro Service, shows you what extreme readings in some of his market indicators mean for crude from here.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Stock Market Long Hot July Continued / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2015
By: Ed_Carlson
The Hybrid Lindsay forecast calling for a high in the Dow near Wednesday (July 15) of that week (A Long Hot July) was successful even if a day early. Although both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ continued their advance until the following Monday, the Dow Industrials index printed its high on July 16. That week’s Commentary also mentioned the forecast for a low during the period July 24-31. Let’s see how that is developing.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Gold & Silver Money Has Devolved Into Debt and Plastic / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: DeviantInvestor
Central banks will disagree;
Keynesian economists probably disagree;
Too-Big-To-Fail banks don’t care;
But I think the following is generally accurate regarding the devolution of gold and silver money.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Everything's Starting to Crash! / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
By: Harry_Dent
In a recent update I gave six signs of an impending crash. Just today we have a number of those signs starting to hit.
Despite a $486 billion fund to prop up its market, China’s stocks sunk another 8.5% today – the biggest one-day drop since 2007.
This is following a 35% crash into early July. Now, after bouncing back up to 4,200, the Shanghai Composite is down to 3,750. If it falls another 10% to below its recent low of 3,374, that will be the decisive blow – for us and them.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Buy and "Own Gold Krugerrands" Says Money Expert Jim Grant, Very Bullish on Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: GoldCore
- “I own Krugerrands” says legendary Jim Grant
- He is “very bullish indeed” on gold
- Gold is “investment in financial and monetary disorder” – says Grant
- It thrives in current environment – “uncertainty, turbulence and disorder”
- “One of the most radical periods of monetary experimentation in the annals of money”
- “Gold…is now the conjunction of price, value and sentiment”
- Reminds owners of gold that the original reasons for buying gold have not gone away
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
How to Protect Yourself from China's Crashing Stock Market / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
By: ...
MoneyMorning.com
Shah Gilani writes: Chinese stocks plummeted again yesterday.
The Shanghai Composite tanked 8.48% to 3,725.56, while the Shenzhen Composite fell 7% to 2,160.09. And the ChiNext, China's smaller equivalent of the Nasdaq, fell 7.4% to 2,683.45.
Based on everything the Chinese government and regulators have done to stem the sharp sell-off in Chinese shares and pump them back up, the unexpectedly big drop yesterday, on virtually no discernible bad news, could signal a serious crash ahead.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Quantum Geopolitics / Politics / GeoPolitics
By: STRATFOR
By Reva Bhalla: Forecasting the shape the world will take in several years or decades is an audacious undertaking. There are no images to observe or precise data points to anchor us. We can only create a picture, and a fuzzy one at best. This is, after all, our basic human empirical instinct: to draw effortlessly from the vivid imagery of our present world and past experiences while we squint and hesitate before faint, blobby images of the future.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Saudis Expand Crude Oil Price War Downstream / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
The undisputed king of oil and gas is making some moves that could change the face of the global refining sector.
In June 2015, Saudi Arabia pumped a record 10.564 million barrels a day, a record level. As if being the world's biggest exporter of oil was not enough, the desert kingdom is now looking to conquer the refining sector as it has quickly become the fourth largest refiner in the world.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Geopolitics Hot Summer of 2015 is Getting a Lot Hotter / Commodities / GeoPolitics
By: Atlantic_Perspective
Bill Gates says there was never a better time to be alive. Has he ever been to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mexico, Venezuela, Ukraine, Greece, Moldova and the whole of Central Asia, just to name a significantly big number of countries and regions?
Bill Gates, just like most people sitting at the top of the human pyramid, looks at the world from the perspective of indicators, totally disconnected from the real world.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Europe Running on Borrowed Time / Politics / European Union
By: John_Mauldin
“I am sure the euro will oblige us to introduce a new set of economic policy instruments. It is politically impossible to propose that now. But some day there will be a crisis and new instruments will be created.”
– Romano Prodi, EU Commission president, December 2001Prodi and the other leaders who forged the euro knew what they were doing. They knew a crisis would develop, as Milton Friedman and many others had predicted. It is not conceivable that these very astute men didn’t realize that creating a monetary union without a fiscal union would bring about an existential crisis. They accepted that eventuality as the price of European unity. But now the payment is coming due, and it is far larger than they probably anticipated.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
China Major Devaluation Coming / Currencies / China Currency Yuan
By: John_Rubino
The whole “market economy” thing is turning out to be a little trickier than China’s dictators expected. To set up the story: After the 2008 crash the country borrowed about $15 trillion (an amount that dwarfs the US Fed’s quantitative easing programs) and spent the proceeds on history’s biggest infrastructure program.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Inflation Deniers Emboldened by Gold's Struggles / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: MoneyMetals
The vultures are circling. Precious metals bulls, laid flat by gold and silver prices dropping for the 5th week in a row, are watching deflationists such as Harry Dent and the financial media squawk about the imminent demise of precious metals.
We covered the superficial and condescending coverage of the metals markets in the financial press last week. Since then, the financial press has stepped it up even more.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Gold Mining Stocks to Weather the Storm / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2015
By: The_Gold_Report
With ongoing volatility expected in the gold space, mostly owing to global economic weakness, investors should focus on quality gold names with three key attributes to weather the current metal price environment, explains Joseph Fazzini, vice president and senior analyst with Toronto-based Dundee Capital Markets. Fazzini says those attributes are low-cost, long-life assets; defensive balance sheets; and responsible management teams. In this interview with The Gold Report, Fazzini lists six Buy-rated names with those key attributes and more.
The Gold Report: Many of the people we interview have a theory about why gold is performing poorly this summer despite so much global uncertainty, especially in China and Greece. What's your theory?
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
How to Identify a Classic Market Bubble / Stock-Markets / Liquidity Bubble
By: Michael_Pento
One of the most ironic and fascinating characteristics about an asset bubble is that central banks claim they can't recognize one until after it bursts. And Wall Street apologists tend to ignore the manifestation of bubbles because the profit stream is just too difficult to surrender.
The excuses for piling money into a particular asset class and sending prices several standard deviations above normal are made to seem rational at the time: Housing prices have never gone down on a national basis and people have to live somewhere, the internet will replace all brick and mortar stores, and perhaps the classic example is that variegated tulips are so rare they should be treated like gold.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Markets Macrocosm / Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2015
By: Gary_Tanashian
Below is the opening segment of this week's edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 353. After this theoretical exercise we got down to nuts and bolts analysis, which provided logical 'bounce' targets (provided a bounce is indeed what is in play) for Gold, Silver and HUI, a compelling trend in the Commitments of Traders data and more talk about the trends that will need to be in place before a favorable macrocosmic environment is in place for the gold sector.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Blocks of U.S. Government Incompetence / Politics / Government Spending
By: James_Quinn
There were two accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway last Monday morning. You know what this meant. I had the pleasure of traveling to work on the scenic 30 Blocks of Squalor. The 30 blocks from 69th Street in Upper Darby to 39th Street in West Philly is a tribute to government incompetence, failed government policies, shoddy union labor practices and fiscal mismanagement.
This entire thirty block trek could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes if the hundreds of union government drones in the Philadelphia Streets Department would get off their fat asses and timed the lights. The blocks are identical in distance. They don't need advanced degrees in physics or calculus to set the lights to go green every ten seconds in order. They were timed in the 1970s and 1980s. Would smoothly flowing traffic be such a bad thing? Do they not care or are they really this incompetent? The first light at 61st Street was red when I arrived. It turned green and before you could touch the gas, it immediately turned yellow and red again. I wondered how long they'd allow this to go on. My guess would be days.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Iran Nuclear Deal is Mostly about Oil / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: John_Browne
The recent nuclear non-proliferation agreement between Iran and the U.S. has created a firestorm debate in the Middle East and both sides of the Atlantic. While the deal is supposedly all about nuclear power and nuclear bombs, its practical implications are all about oil. But the conclusions we should make about its impact on the energy sector are far from clear. A ratification of the deal would allow Iran to make lucrative long term production and distribution contracts with foreign energy firms. However, freely flowing oil from Iran would add significant new oil supply into the world markets, disrupt U.S. plans to become an energy exporter, and could potentially put further downward pressure on prices.
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