Gerald Celente - The Ponzi scheme is collapsing

Gerald Celente : ....the collapse is underway the system is failing in front of us , there is no way of fixing this anymore , Gerald Celente predicted before that when the bailout bubble burst they will take you to war and we see that happening in front of our eyes it is happening now as Obama has started at least two wars in Libya and in Yemen with a possible new war in Syria , The Ponzi scheme is over says trends master Gerald Celente the game is running out the digital money not worth the paper it is not printed on is collapsing the economy worldwide , the ballot box is rigged , what we have is a global financial meltdown , the money scheme is over the Ponzi scheme is collapsing , the unemployment rate is 22 percent according to John Williams of shadow government statistics , I am not telling the people what to believe I am not pushing a agenda says Gerald Celente , the solution is to bring the troops home stop the foreign aid to foreign countries and take care of the Americans first bring all the money home says Gerald Celente , we need to have a direct democracy we should vote like Switzerland , we can vote online

Why Soybean Price Could Double From Here

Risk Hacker writes: While for the past 12 months, corn and wheat prices have nearly doubled with corn price rising 88% by percent and wheat price by 95%, soybean price has been lagging the performance. However several key factors suggest that risk of soybean price is still dramatically skewed upwards.

Societe General’s Dylan Grice made a neat comparison in the 1970s and what will happen to grain in the future. In 1972, Soviets secretly bought grain on the global markets to make up for a shortfall. That led to the“Great Grain Robbery” of 1972. In 1972, Russia’s wheat crop failed. Russia had to dip into the global grain markets to meet demand. Russia’s purchases sent grain prices soaring around the world.

China now faces similar scenarios. With government artificially suppressing edible oil prices by pouring reserves, farmers are expected to plant 20% fewer soybean acres this year. China's overall soybean area, on a harvested basis, was pegged at 8.5m hectares, 200,000 hectares lower than the current USDA estimate and the lowest since 1999. With soybean/corn ratio as unprecedented low level, more farmers tend to switch soybean to higher value crops.

Not only the tight supply balance resembles 1972, technical parallel is equally compelling as well. I overlaid the current 2011 soybean contracts on 1972 and get these.

I remember how Paul Tudor Jones predicted the 1987 crash by looking at a 1920s chart (the famous document ‘trader’). If one believes markets self-resemble, these two charts may give us a clue what’s going to happen. And from a supply and demand side perspective, this makes sense as well. Both the government of China and 1972 Soviet Union interfere with the market, trying to temporarily suppress the grain prices. For a while, they succeeded, led to near-term market prices trending downwards, but later backfire is also expected. Grain prices tend to suffer seasonal weakness in summer, however, with the decades low stock-to-use ratio, any type of supply disruption could trigger the dramatically upward.

The Sotheby's Indicator: Getting Closer To Predicting A Crash: BID

Great intuitive chart here – lifted from the chart compendium put together by Damian Cleusix of Global Tactical Asset Allocation (see here for complete deck):

According to the notes – a signal is given when:

1) The RSI reaches an overbought level (bottom pane – been there and now heading south)

2) The MACD closes below the Green signal line (middle pane – almost there)

3) The monthly close of the stock price is below its 12 month moving average (almost there – it’ll have to rally just under 10% from here to make it back above the MA by the end of June)

Ways to Invest as Faith in Fiat Money Withers

How to profit from the coming Greek default ... Five trades to make before the euro implodes ... You don't exactly need a crystal ball to know what the biggest event in the financial markets of the next 12 months is going to be: Greece defaulting on its debts. This week Standard & Poor's cut its rating on the country to CCC, the lowest of any nation in the world. Only last week we learned that Greek industrial production was down 11% year-on-year. Unemployment has risen 40% over the past year, and now stands above 16% nationally. – Matthew Lynn, Marketwatch

Dominant Social Theme: A silver lining to every disaster.

Free-Market Analysis: This is a good article from Marketwatch's Matthew Lynn in the sense that it gives you something besides gloom about the euro and EU. Matthew Lynn suggests there will be numerous investment opportunities if the euro crumbles because of the Greek (and PIGS) budgetary crisis.

We like it because he doesn't hedge. He is quite sure that Greece is going to default and even take the euro and maybe the EU with it. A year after the IMF "rescue," Greece is back where it started or even worse, he points out, heading toward a depression.

The debt is too high and the deficit is too deep. Greece will default and every one knows it! (Even though no one will say it.) The question is simply one of time and amount. With this in mind, he provides us with five trades based on the unraveling of the euro that he believes are positive.

The first trade is German bunds; buy them and sell the DAX stock index. The deutsche mark that will arise from the ruins of the euro will be a dominant currency. This means German bonds will rise in value as the currency appreciates; at the same, Lynn believes Germany's exports may not have such a good time of it, at least not at first. Eventually German manufacturers will once more figure out how to do business with a strong currency as they did throughout much of the 20th century. But the learning curve will offer pain. Why participate? Sit on the sidelines.

The second trade is the Swiss franc. Sell it. Investors are buying the franc right now, and even the Israel shekel, desperate for a safe haven. What IS safe right now? The dollar? The yuan? The Japanese yen? Most countries are struggling these days one way or another, but if the euro evaporates, several currencies will likely emerge that might definitively claim safe-haven status. The deutsche mark, Lynn writes, will certainly draw money away from the Swiss franc, which will then depreciate.

The third trade is the Belgium index. Another sell. This is an obvious one for Lynn. Brussels, a tiny little pimple of a country, has been in the right place at the right time. The euro and the EU have puffed it up, and today somehow it presides over a super-state the size of America. Maybe not for long. Brussels is chock full of lobbyists, politicians and diplomats, all buying expensive meals and renting luxurious flats. That will change if the euro withers and the EU collapses. The economy shall surely deflate and many Belgium companies along with the stock index.

The fourth trading tip is European travel companies. Buy them. A problem with the strong euro is that it has virtually eviscerated the travel business to Southern Europe – one of the reasons the PIGS are having so much trouble economically. But once the pesky euro goes away, the normal balance of Europe will reassert itself. Northern Europeans will continue to enrich themselves and then, in the summer, travel south to Spain, Italy or Greece to relax. The local travel industry will re-establish itself. Even the Greeks will prosper.

The fifth trading tip is the US dollar. Buy. (Imagine that!) He believes the PIGS debt, dumped by German and French banks, has ended up in US hands. Thus, the US economy will take a hit; still, the dollar as a currency will appreciate. There is no alternative. The dollar, he writes, will be the recipient of a second wind and spend at least another decade as the world's reserve currency.

These are logical trading strategies, clearly laid out. Our only disagreement might be with the initial assumption. We're not convinced the euro is going away, nor the EU, at least not any time soon. We would like to think so, but we'll settle for a hampered euro and a humbled EU that cannot do so much damage to people's civil liberties as its handlers would prefer.

The initial idea of the EU as a free trading zone might be seen as a good one. The current monstrosity is a vicious mess that aspires to be an empire, though it's crumbling now. This is one trend worth encouraging.

Sure, Greece may drop out of the euro, even Spain and Portugal. The eurozone might simply default toward the North – Germany and the Scandinavian countries. If there is to be a euro, the northern industrial engine will run on it. They can form a formidable currency block if they wish to.

Lynn's remarks about selling the Swiss Franc seem feasible to us, if we accept the euro lingers on in the North. If so, Brussels won't entirely shrivel away. Too bad.

We are not sure we agree about buying the dollar. The US is in terrible trouble financially; we might be tempted to make it an honorary PIG. The US has been under attack by the power elite for over a century and we have trouble believing that attack will diminish any time soon. They regard the libertarian and republican sentiments of the US with enimnity; they are trying to crush the culture and the economy and these attacks will no doubt continue.

Even a shrunken EU and euro would be an enormous victory and a defeat for the powers-that-be who are trying to use the EU as a stepping stone to a kind of one world order. The most poisonous ambitions of the Anglosphere elite would be lanced. Defeat is a terrific prophylactic.

There would be knock off effects as well. The currency unions that the Western elites have been so assiduously encouraged in South America, Asia, Africa and even the Middle East would likely become less attractive given the euro's implosion. All to the good.

Concusion: There will surely be numerous trades to contemplate as the euro situation evolves. Who knows, they may even hold it all together. We hope not. We would much rather bet against this evolving authoritarian empire than for it.

UK banks abandon eurozone over Greek default fears

UK banks have pulled billions of pounds of funding from the eurozone as fears grow about the impact of a “Lehman-style” event connected to a Greek default.

Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.

Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.

Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

In its interim management statement, published in April, Barclays reported a wholesale exposure to Spain of £6.4bn, compared with £7.2bn last June, while its exposure to Italy has fallen by more than £100m.

One source said it was “inevitable” that British banks would look to minimise their potential losses in the event the eurozone crisis were to get worse. “Everyone wants to ensure that they are not badly affected by the crisis,” said one bank executive.

Moves by stronger banks to cut back their lending to weaker banks is reminiscent of the build-up to the financial crisis in 2008, when the refusal of banks to lend to one another led to a

seizing-up of the markets that eventually led to the collapse of several major banks and taxpayer bail-outs of many more.

While the funding position of UK banks is far stronger now than it was back in 2008, the banking systems of several other major European countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, are showing increasing signs of weakness.

Analysts at UBS have warned that eurozone banks are “particularly exposed” having not done enough since the crisis to cut their reliance on the wholesale funding markets and remain acutely sensitive to the withdrawal of liquidity from the inter-bank market.

Simon Adamson, a banks analyst at CreditSights, said it was clear many eurozone banks had been having trouble funding themselves for several months.

“Clearly there are some banks that are finding it difficult to access markets. I think this is a long term sign of the way the markets are going,” he said.

Spanish banks have become the main focus of market concerns with the latest European Central Bank (ECB) figures showing that Spanish banks have been forced to increase their use of ECB lending facilities and borrowed a total of €58bn (£51bn) in May, up from €44bn in April.

“We have been amazed at the ability of Spanish banks to find ways to fund themselves, but it is clear they are running out of options,” said one senior analyst at a major investment bank.

US Economic Calendar For The Week

TIME (ET)	REPORT	PERIOD	ACTUAL	FORECAST	PREVIOUS
MONDAY, JUNE 20
	None scheduled
TUESDAY, JUNE 21
10 am	Existing home sales	May		4.80 mln	5.05 mln
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22
10 am	FHFA home prices	April		--	-0.3%
12:30 pm	FOMC announcement			0%-0.25%	0%-0.25%
2:15 pm	Bernanke press conference
THURSDAY, JUNE 23
8:30 am	Jobless claims	6/18		415,000	414,000
8:30 am	Chicago Fed national index	May		--	-0.45
10 am	New home sales	May		310,000	323,000
FRIDAY, JUNE 24
8:30 am	GDP revision	1Q		2.0%	1.8%
8:30 am	Durable goods orders	May		1.6%	-3.6%
8:30 am	Nondefense, non-aircraft capital equipment orders	May		--	-2.3%

Jim Sinclair Interview on Gold and Silver

click here for audio