Saturday, April 14, 2012

Planned Financial Crash Date From Bank Insider

The following was a letter sent to Steve Quayle.
April 12, 2012

Steve,

I write to you today to let you in on what some of the insiders at RBS, UBS, and Goldman Sachs already know. Greece has defaulted in secret. The strip mining of it's lands, wares, resources, and infrastructure has begun and is in fact final stages.

That is the reason that the current technocrat in power is a former operative at Goldman Sachs. Same goes for Italy. We have already begun the proceedings in secret to absorb more of Greek banking, along with PNB Paribas, SAG, and Satander. They will keep the Euro afloat as long as possible. Next action will be Italy and Spain before the full "public" MSM announcement of Greek default will be official. By then the same strip mining pillage/programs will have already begun finishing their work on the rest of PIIGS. Look for a Euro crash end of 2012 followed by Dollar Collapse two weeks later.

Look to see market slowdown the next few weeks. Plunge Protection team working overtime.

Regards,

V


24 Outrageous Facts About Taxes In The United States That Will Blow Your Mind

The U.S. tax code is a complete and utter abomination and it needs to be thrown out entirely. Nobody in their right mind would ever read the whole thing - it is over 3 million words long. Each year, Americans spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to comply with federal tax requirements. Sadly, it is the honest, hard working Americans in the middle class that always get hit the hardest. The tax code is absolutely riddled with loopholes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy use to minimize their tax burdens as much as possible. Many poor people do not pay any income taxes at all. The dishonest are rewarded for cheating on their taxes (if they can get away with it) and the ultra-wealthy have moved trillions of dollars to offshore tax havens where they can avoid U.S. taxation altogether. Our system is incredibly unfair to the millions of hard working people in the middle class and upper middle class that drag themselves out of bed and go to work each day and try to do the right thing. In addition, the current U.S. tax system is incredibly inefficient, it diverts a tremendous amount of resources away from more valuable economic activities, and it has chased thousands of businesses and trillions of dollars out of the United States. The U.S. tax code is such a complete and utter mess at this point that it can never be "fixed". The only rational thing to do is to abolish it completely, and any politician that tells you otherwise is lying to you.

The following are 24 outrageous facts about taxes in the United States that will blow your mind....

1 - The U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long. If you took all of William Shakespeare's works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.

2 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, U.S. taxpayers spend more than 7.6 billion hours complying with federal tax requirements. Imagine what our society would look like if all that time was spent on more economically profitable activities.

3 - 75 years ago, the instructions for Form 1040 were two pages long. Today, they are 189 pages long.

4 - There have been 4,428 changes to the tax code over the last decade. It is incredibly costly to change tax software, tax manuals and tax instruction booklets for all of those changes.

5 - According to the National Taxpayers Union, the IRS currently has 1,999 different publications, forms, and instruction sheets that you can download from the IRS website.

6 - Our tax system has become so complicated that it is almost impossible to file your taxes correctly. For example, back in 1998 Money Magazine had 46 different tax professionals complete a tax return for a hypothetical household. All 46 of them came up with a different result.

7 - In 2009, PC World had five of the most popular tax preparation software websites prepare a tax return for a hypothetical household. All five of them came up with a different result.

8 - The IRS spends $2.45 for every $100 that it collects in taxes. (more)

Bond gurus Gross, Gundlach, and Fuss agree: QE3 is coming

Bill Gross, Jeffrey Gundlach and Dan Fuss, whose firms collectively oversee about $1.5 trillion, expect the Federal Reserve to conduct a third round of bond purchases as signs of strength in the U.S. economy fade and Europe's sovereign-debt crisis returns.

The managers at Pacific Investment Management Co. and DoubleLine Capital LP favor mortgage debt as Loomis Sayles & Co. purchases corporate bonds. Speculation that the Fed (FARBAST) will buy home-loan debt with quantitative easing has led 2012 returns on government-backed mortgage bonds to exceed Treasuries by 0.96 percentage point, Barclays Plc index data show.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Vice Chairman Janet Yellen and New York Fed President William C. Dudley signaled further easing may be needed if growth lags behind projections, with headwinds ranging from the end of tax breaks to $1 trillion of mandatory federal budget cuts to $100-a-barrel oil eating into consumer spending. The Standard & Poor's 500 has fallen as much as 4.8 percent from an almost four-year high on April 2.

"Should the stock market keep going down, it will be a portent of weaker economic data," said Gundlach, whose $22.8 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund (DBLTX) outperformed 99 percent of peers last year. "It will happen and when it does you will start to hear about more support programs."

Gross, Fuss

While gross domestic product grew at a 3 percent pace in the last three months of 2011, it will slow to 2.3 percent this year, according to the median estimate of 90 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Gross, the manager of the world's biggest bond fund, boosted holdings of mortgages last month to the most in almost three years. Fuss, a member of the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame, said this week that the Fed may stick with quantitative easing until after the presidential election or the unemployment rate falls to about 6 percent from its current 8.2 percent.

Elsewhere in credit markets, strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) lowered their recommendation on U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds to neutral from overweight, saying that uncertainty about Europe's fiscal crisis will limit returns for the debt.

JPMorgan's Eric Beinstein, head of the New York-based bank's top-rated high-grade strategy team, said in a report today that the extra yield the bonds pay more than similar- maturity Treasuries is unlikely to tighten much in the next few months as the European situation weighs on investor demand.

Default Swaps Rise

"We believe renewed uncertainty in peripheral Europe will limit the ability of spreads to tighten meaningfully over the next couple of months," Beinstein wrote in the report. That will counter expected positive developments in the Chinese and U.S. economies, he wrote.

A benchmark gauge of corporate credit risk in the U.S. rose for the first time in three days, with the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, which investors use to hedge against losses or to speculate on creditworthiness, increasing 3 basis points to a mid-price of 99.8 basis points as of 11:53 a.m. in New York, according to Markit Group Ltd.

The index rises as investor confidence deteriorates and falls as it improves. Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value if a borrower fails to meet its obligations, less the value of the defaulted debt. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.

Bonds of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are the most actively traded U.S. corporate securities by dealers today, with 47 trades of $1 million or more as of 11:55 a.m. in New York, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Mortgage Bonds

The mortgage-bond market is showing investors anticipate more stimulus from the Fed. Yields on Fannie Mae's current- coupon 30-year mortgage bonds ended yesterday at 88 basis points more than 10-year Treasuries, down from about 100 basis points on Dec. 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The type of securities, which most affect home-loan rates because they trade closest to face value, may be targeted by the Fed.

Primary dealers agree with investors, with 15 of the 21 firms that trade with the Fed saying odds are that the central bank will need a third round of bond purchases to bolster the economy, according to a Bloomberg News survey published April 2.

In its first two rounds of stimulus in response to the credit crisis, the Fed bought $2.3 trillion of bonds from December 2008 to June to avert deflation and spur growth. It's now replacing $400 billion of shorter-term maturity Treasuries in its holdings with longer-term debt in a policy traders call Operation Twist.

Policy Makers Meet

Central bankers next meet in two weeks to debate policy for an economy that Dudley and Yellen said may be softening. Projections for GDP growth this year are slower than the 3.1 percent posted in 2005 and 2.7 percent in 2006 before the recession and financial crisis.

Fed officials called for additional stimulus only "if the economy lost momentum" or if inflation stays below their 2 percent inflation target, according to minutes of their March 13 meeting released April 3.

"Considerable uncertainty surrounds the outlook," Yellen said April 11 in a speech in New York. "I consider a highly accommodative policy stance to be appropriate in present circumstances."

'Still Too Soon'

Dudley, in a speech yesterday to business leaders in Syracuse, New York, said "it is still too soon to conclude that we are out of the woods."

Europe's fiscal imbalances are again threatening to infect the global financial system, with yields on Spanish 10-year bonds topping 6 percent this week, approaching the 7 percent level that prompted Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts.

"The problems in Europe are getting bigger," Mohamed El- Erian, co-chief investment officer of Pimco, said April 11 on Bloomberg Radio. "Europe has a debt issue and Europe has a growth issue, and until Europe deals with both, we are going to have these reoccurring periods of nervousness in the market."

Tax reductions enacted by former President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012 and $1 trillion in automatic cuts in government spending will begin in January. Crude oil prices have soared to $103.67 a barrel, from last year's low of $75.67 on Oct. 4.

It's "far too early to declare victory," Bernanke said in a March 27 interview with ABC News.

Hawkish Tone

Some Fed policy makers have struck a more hawkish tone. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee this year, said in an April 3 interview on Bloomberg Radio that he would need to see some "pretty severe circumstances" before he would endorse more quantitative easing.

"With an improving economy, the argument for extraordinary measures frankly becomes less tenable," said Kenneth Taubes, chief investment officer in Boston for Pioneer Investment Management Inc., which oversees almost $30 billion in bonds.

Pimco's Gross raised the $252.4 billion Total Return Fund (PTTRX)'s holdings of mortgage bonds to 53 percent of assets in March, the highest since June 2009, from 52 percent in February, according to a report on the company's website on April 11. He reduced the proportion of U.S. government and Treasury debt to 32 percent last month from 37 percent in February.

Operation Twist

The Fed will probably shift focus to buying mortgage securities to keep borrowing rates low when its Operation Twist program ends in June, Gross said in a March 28 interview on Bloomberg Television.

"Without QE, the financial markets and then the economy will falter," Gross said in a Twitter post April 4. In a post yesterday, he wrote that speeches this week by Yellen and Dudley damped the probabilities of QE3.

Gundlach said softer economic numbers would push the Fed to act.

"I just don't think that we have a healthy fundamental foundation for the economy and therefore surprises are likely to be on the negative side," Gundlach said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. His fund, which invests in mortgages, had 34 percent of its money in non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities as of March 31, according to the DoubleLine website.

Fuss's $21 billion Loomis Sayles Bond Fund favors corporate bonds, according to Matthew Eagan, one of the portfolio managers. "We like them in a scenario in which the U.S. economy muddles through," Eagan said in a telephone interview. Europe's debt crisis is another issue that may tilt the Fed toward more easing.

"Bernanke, Yellen and Dudley are all biased towards additional easing," Robert Michele, global chief investment officer for fixed income and currency at JPMorgan Asset Management, said in a telephone interview from New York.

Michele, who oversees $125 billion in fixed-income assets, predicted the central bank would come back with more easing “as we get into summer and fall” in the U.S.

Marc Faber interview - The Financial Survival Network



Marc Faber interview by The Financial Survival Network - 13.Apr.2012 , ".....the west is in decline says Dr. Mark Faber : not specifically the US but the entire western world is in relative decline compared to nations that have young populations growing populations and plenty of energy and drive , in the west we are an aging society that has become accustomed to wealth , we have grown in the last 30 years principally because of a rapid expansion of credit consumer debt mortgage debt and that has allowed people to live way beyond their expectations and beyond their means so there will be a payback time ..." says Marc Faber

These junior mining stocks are holding huge amounts of cash

For juniors overall 2011 and 2012, so far, have been a veritable plague. Many a junior market capitalization has painfully shrunk. There are often individual reasons beyond general market malaise for that pain, of course. Some juniors have disappointed (former) investors with lackluster plans for minerals assets. Some may be in project development periods that are too boring for the gambler. But beyond those and other individual causes, it is hard to ignore the greater downward pressure on speculative investing over the past year or so as paramount. And this plague - symptoms of which include feverish risk aversion - has left some members of the broader junior population with, relative to market capitalization, fatty stores of cash.

In a non-comprehensive selection of junior explorers holding cash worth at least 20 percent of their market capitalization - compiled over the course of a few hours research - you'll find some truly astonishing figures. One junior, Gobimin (TSX-V: GMN), with a market capitalization around C$44 million held some $60-odd million in cash at last count (late last year.) Meanwhile seven other junior explorers on the list held, or were set to hold, cash worth more than half the value of their market capitalizations: Canaco Resources (TSX-V: CAN), Canada Fluorspar (TSX-V: CFI), Keegan Resources (TSX: KGN), Metalex Ventures (TSX-V: MTX), Southern Arc Minerals (TSX-V: SA) and a merged Regulus Resources (TSX-V: REG) and Pachamama Resources (TSX-V: PMA, merging now unfolding).



A good number of other juniors were not far behind. Allana Potash (TSX: AAA) held C$55 million cash as compared to a C$113 million market cap. Prodigy Gold (TSX_V: PDG), after a recent financing, will hold some C$63 million cash versus its C$188 million market capitalization. And Exeter Resource (TSX: XRC) has about C$72 million in its kitty and a market capitalization of C$225 million.

A quick look at a few junior producers tells a similar tale of deflated market capitalizations versus inflated cash piles. Nevsun Resources (TSX: NSU) held at least $347 million in cash, about 60 percent its C$578 million market capitalization. Capstone Mining (TSX: CS), with a market cap just over a C$1 billion, had nearly half that in the bank.




This cash bloat has at least one common cause. Over the past year many of these juniors followed a very similar shareprice history: heavily down as the junior market soured. That has inflated cash reserves. Gobimin is trading around C$0.65, which is well off recent highs of around C$0.80. Allana was well over C$1.50 in the first half of last year. Now it's closer to C$0.50. Keegan Resources traded near C$8 during the first half of last year whereas these days it's closer to C$3. Exeter was between C$4 and C$5 for much of last year, but recently hit C$2.50 or so. Canaco Resources was over C$4.00 mid last year. It is now under C$0.86. And, finally, producers such as Nevsun and Capstone are significantly off higher trading ranges that they enjoyed last year.

No doubt there are particular circumstances at work in these - and many other - junior stories that, to varying degrees, make cash holdings look more incredible than they really are. Things like mega projects that will need fullsome financing to go forward or looming capital spending programs set to expand or extend production. But in this cash bloat there is also the far more pervasive current: a general, incontrovertible market sickness eating away at junior market caps and leaving cash constitutions comparably olympic in health.

These cash highs may support an emerging sentiment among analysts that, on the whole, the junior market is oversold. Meaning: it could be time to invest in some juniors. Canaccord's junior mining team recently let it be known it thinks so as far as the gold sector. Making the time-to-buy case in its daily newsletter the Morning Coffee Canaccord put it this way. "Despite all of this negative vibe on gold equities, our Junior Mining Team believes that technically, fundamentally, and intuitively, they appear oversold. The best part is that, when the bulk of investors are nervous, and selling, is when smart money is selling faster. We jest, but is it time to plug your nose and dive in? We think so."

Similarly, Haywood Securities argued in a recent roundup of gold and silver equities that some juniors are looking cheap. "The market selloff that affected much of 2011 has surfaced a number of interesting investment opportunities in the gold & silver space." As advice to shoppers, Haywood added, "Our preference is for companies with the same core advantages that have rewarded investors in the past, including management strength, technical expertise, projects with geological merit and attractive cash to market capitalizations."

Are the wolves to come out then? picking off those juicy stragglers in the junior herd? If they are they will undoubtedly consider cash, among other equally important factors, in making their choices. This is more true now than it was in recent years. Financing sources have gone dry and if tougher financing days are here to stay, then some juniors are going to wither. But that ultimately could be good for investors and juniors as the former separate the the meat from the bones. In recent years, with such a vast number of juniors to choose, some argue a sort of junior cannibalism occurred. Too few investors have spread precious dollars between a glut of competing stories. With fewer juniors stories for sale, however, it would be easier to reward those with promising mineral assets.

GoldSeek Radio – John Embry

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John Embry & Chris Waltzek – April 11, 2012.

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27 Statistics About The European Economic Crisis That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

The economic crisis in Europe continues to get worse and eventually it is going to unravel into a complete economic nightmare. All over Europe, national governments have piled up debts that are completely unsustainable. But whenever they start significantly cutting government spending it results in an economic slowdown. So politicians in Europe are really caught between a rock and a hard place. They can't keep racking up these unsustainable debts, but if they continue to cut government spending it is going to push their economies into deep recession and their populations will riot. Greece is a perfect example of this. Greece has been going down the austerity road for several years now and they are experiencing a full-blown economic depression, riots have become a way of life in that country and their national budget is still not anywhere close to balanced. Americans should pay close attention to what is going on in Europe, because this is what it looks like when a debt party ends. Most of the nations in the eurozone have just started implementing austerity, and yet unemployment in the eurozone is already the highest it has been since the euro was introduced. It has risen for 10 months in a row and is now up to 10.8 percent. Sadly, it is going to go even higher. As economies across Europe slide into recession, that is going to put even more pressure on the European financial system. Most Americans do not realize this, but the European banking system is absolutely enormous. It is nearly four times the size that the U.S. banking system is. When the European banking system crashes (and it will) it is going to reverberate around the globe. The epicenter of the next great financial crisis is going to be in Europe, and it is getting closer with each passing day.

The following are 27 statistics about the European economic crisis that are almost too crazy to believe....

Greece

#1 The Greek economy shrank by 6 percent during 2011, and it has been shrinking for five years in a row.

#2 The average unemployment rate in Greece in 2010 was 12.5 percent. During 2011, the average unemployment rate was 17.3 percent, and now the unemployment rate in Greece is up to 21.8 percent.

#3 The youth unemployment rate in Greece is now over 50 percent.

#4 The unemployment rate in the port town is Perama is about 60 percent.

#5 In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have closed down during the economic crisis.

#6 Greece now has a debt to GDP ratio of approximately 160 percent.

#7 Some of the austerity measures that have been implemented in Greece have been absolutely brutal. For example, Greek civil servants have had their incomes slashed by about 40 percent since 2010.

#8 Despite all of the austerity measures, it is being projected that Greece will still have a budget deficit equivalent to 7 percent of GDP in 2012. (more)

The Euro Currency And The Weakening European Economy

By Alan Bush, Archer Financial Services

There is growing evidence that the economy of the euro zone is stagnating and, in fact, is probably getting worse. While the financial crisis in Greece is off the front pages, at least for now, the financial problems in other euro zone countries are coming to the forefront, especially Spain. There was only temporary support for the euro after a board member of the European Central Bank suggested the central bank might buy Spain's sovereign debt.

Spain

Some of the recent headlines focusing on the latest potential European Union bailout candidate, Spain are:
  • Spain's government increased its budget deficit target to 5.3% of gross domestic product from 4.4%. They also said public debt could surge to a record 79.8% of gross domestic product in 2012.
  • Yields on Spanish debt continue to increase, which underscores Spain's weakening financial condition and suggests there is a growing possibility that Spain may need a European Union bailout.
  • The yield on Spain's 10-year debt recently increased to the highest rate since the middle of December. There were additional concerns after Spain sold less debt at auction than was targeted.
  • Analysts were not impressed with Spain's latest austerely plan, which calls for 10 billion euros of budget reductions. This amount is thought to be insufficient.
  • A recent report showed unemployment in Spain increased again in March.
  • The share prices of Spanish and Italian banks have recently come under selling pressure. One day recently, they were down by as much as 3%.
  • A European Union spokesman said banks in Spain will not need a bailout. (This comment this tells us just the opposite. The denial suggests most Spanish banks will need bailout money from the European Union.)

Greece
  • The recent Greek debt bailout is already starting to show it may have only a temporary supportive impact, especially after Standard and Poor's said Greece may have to restructure its recently restructured debt.

Euro zone
  • German unemployment declined more than anticipated in March.
  • A recent report showed the euro zone manufacturing sector contracted for eight consecutive months.
  • German retail sales unexpectedly declined in February for a second month.
  • An index of economic confidence in the euro zone unexpectedly dropped in March.

Federal Reserve Policy

Interest rate differentials (U.S. interest rates compared to euro zone interest rates) remain bearish for the euro currency and favorable for the U.S. dollar. The euro came under pressure earlier this week due to the bearish influence of the Fed's lack of interest in initiating another quantitative easing program. On Monday evening, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke refrained from discussing monetary policy, suggesting the Fed is not planning a third quantitative easing program, when he spoke on the topic of financial stability at the Atlanta Fed Conference. Several other Federal Reserve officials said, given the recent economic improvement, there is no need for a third quantitative easing program.
The euro was pressured and the U.S. dollar was supported after the minutes from the March 13 FOMC meeting were released. The minutes showed that, even though Fed officials remain cautious about the economic outlook, there is little, if any, support for any new quantitative easing program. Only a few members of the committee were in favor of more accommodation. The lack of any new hints of a QE3 program tended to increase U.S. interest rates relative to euro zone interest rates, which is bearish for the euro.

June 2012 Euro Futures - Daily
June 2012 Euro Futures - Daily
Chart provided by APEX

CONCLUSION

There is a widespread belief among the investment community that the financial crisis in the euro zone will continue and possibly get worse. There is speculation that the financial problems that plagued Greece will eventually spill over to Spain and Portugal. There was only temporary support for the euro currency after euro zone finance ministers decided to increase their overall bailout capacity to 700 billion euros. There was disappointment due to the belief that the increase in bailout funds may be insufficient.

The longer-term underlying fundamentals remain bearish for the currency of the euro zone, including prospects of the euro zone economy slipping into recession this year, while the U.S. economy is showing signs of improvement. Our analysis suggests economic weakness in the euro zone will be prolonged. The main trend for the euro currency is lower.

Marc Faber FOX Business Network exclusive Interview



Marc Faber : We are in a Worse Position Than in 2008 and in 2009 : Investment analyst and entrepreneur Marc Faber spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Liz Claman about the health of the global economy saying 'over the last few months, the market has acted very badly', and predicted this is indicative of 'the beginning of a downward trend'. we can easily see a 10 to 15 percent correction in the markets says Dr Doom Marc Faber.

On the health of the global economy
'Over the last few months, the market has acted very badly. There are less new hires, the volume has dried out, insider sales have picked up, and this is the beginning of a downward trend. We may easily have a correction of 10-20% here. Most stocks are already down 10% from their highs. Markets have more than doubled from the lows in 2009. The global economy has actually deteriorated. 'It has optically improved because of huge government spending but in principle we are in a worse position today than we were in 2008 and 2009. There will be more money printing and if your are hyper bearish, maybe you are better off in equities than you are in government bonds and cash. I also advocate to own some gold'. - Source: Fox Business Network