Oil rises above $74 as hurricane season looms

Oil prices moved above $74 a barrel Monday, extending gains from last week as markets prepared for what is forecast to be the worst hurricane season in five years.

By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for December delivery was up 54 cents to $74.51 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost 58 cents to settle at $73.97 on Friday.

Trading volume was thin as markets in the U.S. and U.K. were closed for holidays.

The hurricane season officially starts Tuesday. Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted 14 to 23 tropical storms this year, including up to seven major hurricanes. (more)

Guarding Your Money from Government Onslaughts

Grandfather-economic-report.com is famous for presenting whole constellations, in graphic form, of horrors about the mess that fiat money and government, in the hands of incompetent do-gooders, has allowed.

He writes that, in 2009, people worked, “3 times longer per year to pay all taxes more than they pay for food, housing and clothing combined.” Yikes!

This is where I learned that the combined onslaught of government (from local corruption to Congressional corruption) consumes half of all income in the USA! (more)

The U.S. Economic Collapse Top 20 Countdown

So just how bad is the U.S. economy? Well, the truth is that sometimes it is hard to put into words. We have squandered the great wealth left to us by our forefathers, we have almost totally dismantled the world's greatest manufacturing base, we have shipped millions of good jobs overseas and we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of mankind. We have taken the greatest free enterprise economy that was ever created and have turned it into a gigantic house of cards delicately balanced on a never-ending spiral of paper money and debt. For decades, all of this paper money and debt has enabled us to enjoy the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the bills are coming due and the party is nearly over.

In fact, things are already so bad that you can pick almost every number and find a corresponding statistic that shows just how bad the economy is getting.

You doubt it?

Well, check this out.... (more)

China Real Estate Bubble Bursts in Bond Market: Credit Markets

Dollar bonds sold by China real estate companies this year are the worst performers among Asian non-financial corporate debt denominated in the U.S. currency amid concern the nation’s property market is overheating.

Yields on the $3.9 billion of bonds issued by Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., Country Garden Holdings Co. and seven other developers since January widened by an average 2.26 percentage points relative to Treasuries as of last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s more than the 2.05 percentage- point increase in spreads for the seven dollar-denominated bonds sold by other companies in Asia outside Japan.(more)

Warning Signs Of Full Spectrum Collapse Are Everywhere

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and many other European nations has, at least for the moment, open a gap in the wash of financial disinformation that has prevailed in the mainstream media for the past year. The average American is now more aware of the terrible costs of living in an artificially driven and widely manipulated “global economy”, and has also been exposed (at least for the moment) to the very real frailties in our own markets, which have been hidden or downplayed by the government as well as disingenuous establishment economists. Events in the EU, however, are only a glimpse of the greater and more imminent threats we face in the near future. In this article we will look at some of the latest and most disturbing moves by governments and financial institutions, as well as tell-tale signs in our own local cities, which signal that a full-spectrum collapse of world markets and possibly our own currency is not only in progress, but nearing completion. (more)

Energy expert: Nuking oil leak ‘only thing we can do’

BP 'totally in charge of the news' about oil leak, energy expert says

As the latest effort to plug the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico meets with failure, the idea of nuking the immediate area to seal the oil underground is gaining steam among some energy experts and researchers.

One prominent energy expert known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is "probably the only thing we can do" to stop the leak. (more)

Bud Conrad: Dollar to Crash to Zero, Gold Will Surge

The global debt crisis will send the dollar and other paper currencies to zero, and gold will be the beneficiary, says Bud Conrad, chief economist at Casey Research.

“The dollar is coming back right now, but it’s a false recovery,” he told Newmax.TV. “All paper currencies are just that.”

Most money now, of course, consists of digital bits rather than paper, notes Conrad, author of a new book “Profiting from The World’s Economic Crisis.”

A government can create digital bits out of thin air anytime it wants,” he points out. (more)

Freedom Watch – Who Owns the Gold in Ft. Knox? – May 28, 2010

The Looming Financial Holocaust - Is Closer Than We Thought ...

We had expected the broad stockmarket and the resource sector to stabilize and start to recover last week and they did, and while we are likely to see further recovery in the days and perhaps weeks ahead, there have been some ominous developments in the recent past that we would be most unwise to ignore. The market did not go into full crash mode because it was not technically ready to, although it got close to it, and crucial support held - for now. However, heavy technical damage was inflicted and a broad review of long-term charts reveals that a blood-curdlingly dangerous setup has developed across a wide spectrum of markets.

You may recall that day early in May when the Dow Jones Industrials mysteriously plunged by nearly 1000 points intraday. In an effort to placate unnerved investors, the media tried to pass it off as a technical glitch. What actually caused it was a wave of heavy selling caused by those who suddenly "saw the writing on the wall". If this drop was due to some technical glitch then why, after bouncing, did the market drop to even lower levels a week or two later? (more)