The Great IMF Fire-Sale of the UK has Begun

The British Government is about to sell off over half of all UK Forests that are currently under the control of the Forestry Commission to private corporations as the asset-stripping of the UK is begun on behalf of the International Monetary Fund and the Big Six Beast Banks.

Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, has just announced plans to sell around half of our forests to the mega-corporations – that is 150,000 hectares of prime woodland – as well as numerous other properties. The New Forest, Sherwood Forest, and the Forest of Dean could be targeted for sale.

The Sunday Telegraph provided a map of which forests are owned by the state through the Forestry Commission:

The vast majority of these forests are in Wales, West Scotland and the North East of England.

Most of these forests will be sold off to housing developers, timber merchants, power generators and Centre-Parcs Ltd for golf courses and holiday camps. Our right of access to these forests will be severely curtailed, and we will have lost a great natural resource that can never be bought back for the People. (more)

Technically Precious With Merv

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What's Next For Gold? A Technical Look At The Past Week's Big Pullback

You may have expected yet another bumper week for the shiny metal. However, this week marked the first time since mid-summer that Gold has run into some head wind. After a massive bull run reaching new all-time nominal records nearly every week, Gold has retraced about 3% this week. Is this the beginning of the end or was it just a minor pause in an otherwise massive long-term up-trend?

While taking nothing away from this amazing bullish move in Gold during the past decade, we have been expressing concerns about a possible bubble and listed a number of caveats about loading up on Gold indiscriminately. Most notably, the concerns are two-fold: a) Gold is not a traditional investment in that it provides no inherent yield or return other than price appreciation and b) Gold is a commodity nonetheless and as such exposed to significant volatility. You can review some of our previous comments on Gold at FXIS/Gold. With regard to external and fundamental factors causing concerns, John Authors of the Financial Times expresses these concerns much more elegantly than I can. Please consider: Remember 1980: all that glisters is not gold. (more)

CFTC Weekly Options Update: Total Treasury Spec Longs Surge By 40% To 2010 Record, Dollar Inflection Point Reached?

This week's CFTC Commitment of Traders confirms that market momentum schizophrenia is persisting: in the past week Treasury net non-commercial spec long positions across the curve (2s, 5s and 10s) surged from 221k to 311k, a 41% increase. In other words the momo crowd is betting the farm that treasury prices not only won't stop going higher, but that the entire curve with be transposed lower with a slight preference for the belly (as Morgan Stanley now expects). The Combined total is more than half a million contracts compared to early April when the 10 year was threatening to break out of the 4% range (dashed line Chart 1). Yet this is in contradiction to the options activity within selected commodities, which after taking a slight breathers have continued to see increasing spec demand to the upside (Chart 2). Lastly, and probably most importantly, looking at currencies shows that the unprecedented surge in bearish bets in the dollar may be over: for the first time since the end of August, dollar net spec bets have actually gotten marginally bullish.

Commitment of Traders Report Traditional Commodities

Commitment of Traders Financials

California Is Broke – 19 Reasons Why It May Be Time For Everyone To Leave The State Of California For Good

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a seemingly endless parade of pop songs about how great life was in California, and millions of young Americans dreamed of moving to the land of sandy beaches and golden sunshine. But now all of that has changed. Today, millions of Californians are dreaming about leaving the state for good. The truth is that California is broke. The economy of the state is in shambles. The official unemployment rate has been sitting above 12 percent for an extended period of time, and poverty is everywhere.

For many Californians today, there are very few reasons to stay in the state but a whole lot of reasons to leave: falling housing prices, rising crime, budget cuts, rampant illegal immigration, horrific traffic, some of the most brutal tax rates in the nation, increasing gang violence and the ever present threat of wildfires, mudslides and natural disasters. The truth is that it is easy to understand why there are now more Americans moving out of California each year than there are Americans moving into the state. California has become a complete and total disaster zone in more ways than one, and an increasing number of Californians are deciding that enough is enough and they are getting out for good.

Sadly, the state of California is facing such a wide array of social, economic, and political problems that it is hard to even document them all. It is really one huge gigantic mess at this point. (more)

The Government Pulls a Bernie Madoff on Social Security and Lays Out the Sad Truth

When Bernie Madoff realized he could no longer meet all the demands of his investors that wanted their money, he walked into the offices of the SEC and admitted as much.

The government has just pulled a Madoff. They have admitted that they don't have the money to pay everyone out they have promised to pay out via Social Security. Specifically, those under 30 are going to get really screwed.

Business Insider's Bruce Kasting explains how bad the situation is, but keep in mind that this is based on CBO projections, and there is no chance the CBO has run the truly negative scenarios, where the government can't pay its Treasury debt--which is mostly what the Social Security Trust fund holds. Factor that in and the odds drop for everyone that they are going to get paid in full : (more)

King World News Weekly Metals Wrap

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