|
|
I’m not sure; I just remember thinking of you more and more and getting less and less done in the process,michael kors!
I remember praying that it was you whenever the phone would ring,supra shoes, but at the same time hoping it wasn’t; because I didn’t know how in the world I was going to sound romantic and impressive when what I felt was anxious and tongue-tied…
Sometimes it still amazes me – how I get so anxious and thrilled and thoughtful about you; I guess maybe it’s because I just keep falling wonderfully in love with you… over and over again.
??????????,christian louboutin uk????????????,casque dr dre?????????????……
I’m not sure when I first fell in love with you… I guess it could have been as early as that first time we held each other,christian louboutin, or the first time I realized that you kind of liked me, too…
I remember wanting you to stay so badly – and being so thrilled at the thought.
????????
an important one
two missing
Home Business the Internet Entrepreneur Way by Anthony Harris
motion the same day by 30 votes to 28 votes in the Senate by the Proponents , including the five Greens MP has checks and balances , a Family First Party members and one independent Members .
Statistics: Posted by tangyidew — Sun May 20, 2012 10:06 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
KING WORLD NEWS INTERVIEW WITH GERALD CELENTE
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldn … lente.html
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sun May 20, 2012 6:39 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
I thought it might go a bit lower, but it may indeed have it bottom. Time will tell. And likely not a long time either.
Statistics: Posted by Deo Vindice — Sat May 19, 2012 11:01 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
How the U.S. Dollar Will Be Replaced
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/784- … e-replaced
Whiskey & Gunpowder
by Brandon Smith
May 17, 2012
After being immersed in the world of alternative economic analysis for several years, it sometimes becomes easy to forget that most people do not track forex markets, or debt to GDP ratio, or true unemployment, or hunch over IMF white-papers highlighting subsections which expose the trappings of the globalist ideology. Sometimes, you just assume the average person knows what the heck you are talking about. This is, of course, a mistake. However, it is a mistake that is borne from the inadequacy of our age and our culture, and is not necessarily a product of weak character, either of the analyst, or the casual reader.
The great frustration of being actively involved in the Liberty Movement is the fact that many people are rarely on the same page (or even the same book) during political and economic discussion. Where we see the nature of the false left/right paradigm, they see “free democracy”. Where we see a tidal wave of destructive debt, they see a “responsible government” printing and spending in order to protect our “best interests”. Where we see totalitarianism, they see “safety”. Where we see dollar devaluation, they see dollar strength and longevity. Ultimately, because the average unaware citizen is stricken by the disease of normalcy bias and living within the doldrums of a statistical fantasy world, they simply have no point of reference by which to grasp the truth when exposed to it. It’s like trying to explain the concept of ‘color’ to a man who has been blind since birth.
Americans in particular are prone to reactionary dismissal when exposed to facts that disrupt their misconceptions. Our culture has experienced a particularly prosperous age, not necessarily free from all trouble, but generally spared from widespread mass tragedy for a generous length of time. This tends to breed within societies an overt and unreasonable expectation of ease. It generates apathy, and laziness. A crushing blubberous slothful cynicism subservient to the establishment and the status quo. Even the most striking of truths struggle to penetrate this smoky force field of duplicitous funk.
In recent articles, I have outlined the very immediate dangers of several potential economic events that are likely to take place this year, including the exit of peripheral countries from the European Union, the conflict between austerity and socialist spending in France and Germany, the developing bilateral trade agreements between China and numerous other countries which cut out their reliance on the U.S. dollar, and the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will announce QE3 before the end of 2012. All of these elements are leading in one very particular direction: the end of the Greenback as the world reserve currency.
In response to these assertions I have received letters from some people (some of them indignant) questioning how it would be even remotely possible that the dollar could be replaced at all. The concept is so outside their narrow world view that many cannot fathom it.
To be sure, the question is a viable one. How could the dollar be unseated? That said, a few hours of light research would easily produce the answer, but this tends to be too much work for the fly-by-night financial skeptic. Sometimes, the job of the alternative analyst is to make the obvious even more obvious.
So, let’s begin…
The Dollar A Safe Haven?
This ongoing lunacy is based on multiple biases. For some, the dollar represents America, and a collapse of the currency would suggest a failure of the republic, and thus, a failure by them as individual Americans who live vicariously through the exploits of their government. By extension, it becomes “patriotic” to defend the dollar’s honor and deny any information that might suggest it is on a downward spiral.
Others see how the investment world clings to the dollar as a kind of panic room; a protected place where one’s saving will be insulated from crisis. However, just because a majority of day trading investors are gullible enough to overlook the Greenback’s pitfalls does not mean those dangerous weaknesses disappear.
There is only one factor that shields the dollar from implosion, and that is its position as the world reserve currency. Without this exalted status, the currency’s value vanishes. Backed by nothing but massive and unpayable debt, it sits frighteningly idle, like a time bomb, waiting for the moment of ignition.
The horrifying nature of the dollar is that it is only valuable so long as foreign investors believe that we will pay back the considerable debts that we (the American taxpayer at the behest of our criminally run Treasury) owe, and that we will not hyperinflate in the process. If they EVER begin to see their purchases of dollars and treasuries as a gamble instead of an investment, the façade falls away. Yet again this year Congress and the Executive Branch are “at odds” over the expansion of the debt ceiling, which has been raised to levels beyond the 100% of GDP mark.
Barack Obama has made claims that increases in the debt ceiling are “normal”, and that most presidents are prone to hiking the barrier every once in a while. Yet, back in 2006, when George W. Bush increased debt limits, Obama had this to say:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills…Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next five years…Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
For once, Barack and I agree on something. Too bad the man changes his rhetoric whenever it’s to his advantage.
Today, Obama now asserts that raising the debt ceiling is not an opening for more government spending, but an allowance for the government to pay bills it has already accrued. This is disingenuous and hypocritical prattle. Obama is well aware as are many in Congress that as long as the Federal Government is able to raise the debt ceiling whenever it suits them, they can increase spending with wild abandon. It’s like handing someone a credit card with no maximum limit. For most men, the temptation would be irresistible. Therefore, one can predict with 100% certainty that U.S. spending will never truly be reduced, and that our national debt will mount in tandem until we self destruct.
How has this trend been able to continue for so long? Our private central bank has created the fiat machine by which all economic depravity is possible. Currently, the Federal Reserve is the number one holder of U.S. debt. The Federal Reserve creates its own capital. It prints its wealth from thin air. The dollar, thus, has become its own lynchpin. The secretive institution which has never been subject to a full audit is now monetizing endless debt mechanisms with paper promises. What value would any intelligent investor put on such a fraudulent economic system?
The epic dysfunction of the dollar is rooted in its reliance on perception rather than tangible wealth or strong fundamentals. It is, indeed, like any other fiat unit, with all the inevitable pitfalls built into its structure.
Ironically, the value of the Dollar Index is measured not by its intrinsic buying power, or its historical buying power, but its arbitrary buying power in comparison with other collapsing fiat currencies.
The argument I hear most often when pointing out the calamitous path of the dollar is that it is the go-to safe haven in response to the crisis in Europe. What the financially inept don’t seem to grasp is that the shifting of savings back and forth between the euro and the dollar is just as irrelevant to our currency’s survival as it is to Europe’s. BOTH currencies are in decline, and this is evident by the growing inflationary pressures on both sides of the Atlantic. Ask any consumer in Greece, Spain, France, or the UK how shelf prices have changed in the past four years, and they will say the exact same thing as any consumer in the U.S.; costs have gone way up. Therefore, it makes sense to compare the dollar’s value not to the euro, or to the Yen, but something more practical, like the dollar of the past….
In 1972, just as Nixon was removing the dollar from the last vestiges of the gold standard, a new car cost an average of $4500. A home cost around $40,000. A gallon of gas was .36 cents. A loaf of bread was .25 cents. A visit to the doctor’s office was $25. Wages were certainly lower, but they kept much better pace with the prices of the era. Today, the gap between wages and inflation is insurmountable. The average family is unable to keep up with the flashflood of rising prices.
According to the historic buying power of the dollar, the currency is a poor safe haven investment. With the advent of bailout efforts and debt monetization through quantitative easing, its devaluation has been expedited dramatically. The Fed has left the door open for what I believe will be a final destructive round of publicly announced QE, weakening the dollar to near death.
The question then arises; why do foreign countries continue to buy in on the greenback?
The Dollar Dump Has Already Begun
One of my favorite arguments by those defending the dollar is the assertion that no foreign country would dare to dump the currency because they are all too dependent on U.S. trade. To answer the question above, the reality is that foreign countries ARE already calmly and quietly dumping the dollar as a global trade instrument.
To those people who consistently claim that the dollar will never be dropped, my response is, it already has been dropped! China, in tandem with other BRIC nations, has been covertly removing the greenback as the primary trade unit through bilateral deals since 2010. First with Russia, and now with the whole of the ASEAN trading bloc and numerous other markets, including Japan. China in particular has been preparing for this eventuality since 2005, when they introduced the first Yuan denominated bonds. The bonds were considered a strange novelty back then, especially because China had so much surplus savings that it seemed outlandish for them to take on treasury debt. Today, the move makes a whole lot more sense. China and the BRIC nations today openly call for a worldwide shift away from the dollar.
With the global proliferation of the Yuan, and the conversion of the Chinese economy away from dependence on exports (especially to the West) towards a more consumer based system, the Chinese have effectively decoupled from their reliance on U.S. markets. Would a collapse in the U.S. hurt China’s economy? Yes. Would they still survive? Oh yes. Far better than America would, at least…
In 2008, I warned of this development and was attacked on all sides by more mainstream economists and Keynesian proponents who stated that such a development was impossible. Today, it’s common knowledge that our primary creditors are “diversifying” away from the dollar, though MSM talking heads and those who parrot them still claim that this is not a threat to our economy.
To be clear, the true threat to the dollar’s supremacy is not only due to the constant printing by the private Federal Reserve (though that is a nightmare in the making), but the loss of faith in our currency as a whole. The Fed does not need to throw dollars from helicopters to annihilate our currency; all they have to do is create doubt in its viability.
The bottom line? A dollar collapse is not “theory” but undeniable fact in motion at this moment, driven by concrete actions on the part of the very nations that have until recently propped up our debt obligations. It is only a matter of time before the dollar diminishes and fades away. All signs point to a loss of reserve status in the near term.
What Will Replace The Dollar?
My next favorite argument in defense of the Greenback is the assertion that there is “no currency in a position to take the dollar’s place if it falls”. First of all, this is based on a very naïve assumption that the dollar will not fall unless there is another currency to replace it. I’m not sure who made that rule up, but the dollar is perfectly able to be flushed without a replacement in the wings. Economic collapse does not follow logical guidelines or the personal pet peeves of random man-child economists.
Though, to be fair, and to educate those unaware, there IS a replacement already conveniently ready to roll forward. The IMF has for a couple of years now openly called for the retirement of the dollar as the world reserve currency, to be supplanted by the elitist organization’s very own “Special Drawing Rights” (SDR’s).
The SDR is a paper mechanism created in the early 1970’s to replace gold as the primary means of international trade between foreign governments. Today, it has morphed into a basket of currencies which is recognized by almost every country in the world and is in a prime position to take the dollar’s place in the event that it loses reserve status. This is not theory. This is cold hard reality. For those who claim that the SDR is not considered a “real currency”, they should probably warn the U.S. Post Office, which now uses conversion tables that denominate costs in SDR’s.
So, now that we know a replacement for the dollar is ready to go, the next obvious question would be:
Why would global elites destroy a useful monetary tool like the dollar? Why kill the goose that "lays the golden eggs"?
People who ask this question are simply unable to see outside the fiscal box they have been placed in. For global bankers, a paper currency is not important. It is expendable. Like a layer of snake skin; as the snake grows, it sheds the old and dawns the new.
At bottom, men who promote the philosophies of globalization greatly desire the exaltation of a global currency. The dollar, though a creation of a central bank, is still a semi-sovereign monetary unit. It is an element that is getting in the way of the application of the global currency dynamic. I find it rather convenient (at least for those who subscribe too globalism) that the dollar is now in the midst of a perfect storm of decline just as the IMF is ready to introduce its latest fiat concoction in the form of the SDR. I find the blind faith in the dollar’s lifespan to be rife with delusion. It is not a matter of opinion or desire, but a matter of fact that currencies in such tenuous positions fall, and are in the end replaced. I believe that the evidence shows that this is not random chance, but a deliberate process, leading towards the globalist ideal; total centralization of the world under an unaccountable governing body which operates a global monetary system u tterly devoid of transparency and responsibility.
The dollar was a median step towards a newer and more corrupt ideal. Its time is nearly over. This is open, it is admitted, and it is being activated as you read this. The speed at which this disaster occurs is really dependent on the speed at which our government along with our central bank decides to expedite doubt. Doubt in a currency is a furious omen, costing not just investors, but an entire society. America is at the very edge of such a moment. The naysayers can scratch and bark all they like, but the financial life of a country serves no person’s emphatic hope. It burns like a fire. Left unwatched and unchecked, it grows uncontrollable and wild, until finally, there is nothing left to fuel its hunger, and it finally chokes in a haze of confusion and dread…
Regards,
Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.Com
Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sat May 19, 2012 11:36 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
DAVID PARKINSON
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
If you enjoyed the thrills, spills and chills of the last credit crisis, I have great news. The makings of the next one are looming – large – right in front of us.
In a report last week, Standard & Poor’s said the world faces a mountain of roughly $46-trillion (U.S.) in corporate debt needs between now and the end of 2016. In addition to a $30-trillion “wall” of corporate debt that will come due and require refinancing, S&P estimated that corporations worldwide will need between $13-trillion and $16-trillion of new debt to meet their capital spending and working-capital needs – essentially, to finance growth.
Actually, those numbers are just for the five major borrowing markets in the world (the United States, the euro zone, Britain, China and Japan). A true global estimate would be even bigger. (But what’s a few trillion bucks among friends, eh?)
“This demand for funds will potentially compound the credit rationing that may occur as banks seek to restructure their balance sheets, and bond and equity investors reassess their risk-return thresholds. These factors, amid the current euro zone crisis, a soft U.S. economic recovery following the Great Recession, and the prospect of slowing Chinese growth, raise the downside risk of a perfect storm for credit markets, in our view,” S&P wrote.
Such a “perfect storm” is, essentially, another credit crunch. As you recall from the last one, those pesky things have a knack for choking off growth, fuelling liquidation of financial assets and generally making everyone very nervous – all bad news for the markets and the economy.
And S&P warned that the forces used to counter the last credit crunch – namely, an opening of the fiscal and monetary floodgates – may not be there next time around.
“Governments and banking regulators are now not as well placed to counter another perfect storm scenario, given that they have already expended so much of their fiscal and monetary arsenal to mitigate the problems arising in recent years,” it said.
Now, S&P isn’t saying this is a done deal; it believes the financial sector has recovered sufficiently to at least be able to clear the $30-trillion refinancing wall. It helps that corporate borrowers generally look more credit-worthy now than before the financial crisis, as the majority of them have improved their balance sheets by building up higher cash balances.
“However, the $13-trillion to $16-trillion required to fund future growth could be more at risk,” it said.
More than three-quarters of all global corporate debt is in the form of bank loans. Banks in most of these major lending regions (China being the well-heeled notable exception) face both new regulatory restraints and still-delicate balance sheets, which may prompt them to keep a tighter reign on their corporate lending than in past cycles. If the current euro zone sovereign crisis were to escalate or the economic slowdowns of China and Europe to broaden, already-tight lending policies could all but dry up.
“Given our expectation that certain borrowers may find the availability of bank financing more limited than in the past – and when available, at a higher cost with likely more onerous terms and conditions – alternative providers of debt financing may be set for a new challenge,” S&P said.
That means the bond markets – which may have a lot of trouble absorbing that much new supply. For example, if European companies were forced to turn to the bond market to raise, say, 50 per cent of their new funding needs (compared with 15 per cent historically), that would mean more than $200-billion per year of new issues; only twice in the past decade have European corporate bond issues even topped $100-billion in a year.
While this suggests potential for tremendous growth in corporate bond markets, it also implies a lot of competition for a slice of the bond-financing pie. Companies are going to have to pay higher interest rates to secure their funding, and some won’t be able to raise the money they need on terms they can afford. Higher rates, higher borrowing costs and insufficient available capital are all, at very least, substantial headwinds for healthy, sustainable economic and equity-market growth.
And it would all be exacerbated by heightened risk and economic deterioration, as Europe is already demonstrating. European Central Bank data show that banks’ corporate lending standards have tightened considerably since last fall.
“At best, we are currently at a fragile peace,” S&P concluded. “At worst, we have created the makings of a perfect storm for the future.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-in … le2437407/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri May 18, 2012 11:02 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Ben Davies – The Gold & Silver Liquidation is Over
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ … _Over.html
With continued uncertainty in markets around the world, today Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital wrote the following piece exclusively for King World News. Davies believes the gold and silver liquidation is over: “I humbly believe the seller is done. For one week there has been several but mainly one entity selling Comex gold futures, as well as some physical to liquidate on the open and closes. This suggest to us it was a CTA commodity type fund. They use volume areas of the day to transact.”
“The sell-off in gold is reminiscent of the 2008 deleveraging process but it is more similar in dynamics to 2012 when a notable fund manager had to sell his gold/ ETF holdings. There were buyers of course, seller and buyer volumes must match. But the need to sell overwhelmed the need to buy.
When you have redemptions time is against you to liquidate, so it becomes a case of sell at any price as time becomes finite. Gold buyers picked up some bargains then and they will now.
Before FOMC minutes two nights ago the seller was back at the close. And then the FOMC minutes changed the dynamic of market with the mention by some members that QE would be back if they saw renewed economic weakness. This is the association for us all of why the market stopped going down but in truth the seller was done.
Like the December experience, once the seller is done, the market will snap back. We run intraday correlations just to observe if markets are starting to fibrillate against each other. We could see that risk assets were diverging and SPX was no longer moving with a 1.0 correlation with gold and silver. We took this as a positive sign that the precious metals were decoupling from risk assets.
The seller was being soaked up by multiple buyers. But all week we saw no significant Asian buying until two nights ago when the market went straight up yesterday on the open of the Asian morning.
We run a myriad of indicators to assess trends and where we are in trend. We also use 5 indicators for sentiment and created a weighted index – one of the indicators has never been this low EVER in 12 years — a level I had never seen.
Based on even past but not quite as bearish readings the next 3 months have been some of the highest returns in gold market of the magnitude of 15-20%. So we can potentially expect an even greater magnitude. In all currencies but particularly in sterling terms I particularly would like to be long gold now.
We are currently writing a report on the UK that demonstrates the fiscal position will soon not be tolerated by the markets. A fiscal crisis could spell a currency crisis. People are walking EYES WIDE SHUT in this country. Spain is irretrievable and the exposure of UK banks to Europe is still too high.
We are surprised there is not more widespread withdrawal of money from banks in Europe as, after all, money in circulation is but a small percentage of demand deposits – so availability of physical money is a real issue should depositors rationally choose to withdraw money and place under the mattress.
In gold, in USD, we need to see gold create value above 1600 to 25 for a few weeks and then we will continue to migrate on a bullish trend higher. There is an ever-present systemic risk growing in Europe, plus severe doubts about JPM to contain their issues – so a coordinated effort by central banks to backstop the global economy draws nearer.
This eventuality would see gold trade much higher than the low 1600s in the next few weeks. Any fund manager worth his salt knows the first loss number presented by JPM is not the last but what will final tally be and what risk to the financial system? By observing credit markets and positioning we can see it is not pretty. Others are taking the other side of this risk. If it stinks, it can get really foul. Well, it really stinks.
I would add that gold volatility across volatility term structure has risen – I suspect there are short gamma positions in the gold market that in this scenario act like a short position on gold. If we look at other markets – credit indices and equity volatility — we can see there is risk of higher volatility. This will drive up gold volatility and heighten positioning risk in market.”
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Fri May 18, 2012 11:32 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
On a cold November night in Manhattan, stick-thin women queue outside a late-night bakery so they can buy boxes of cupcakes groaning with so much sugar that you get a head rush just looking at them.
The Magnolia bakery in New York’s West Village kicked off a cupcake craze when Carrie and Miranda visited it in an episode of Sex and the City. I’ve watched the clip of Sarah Jessica Parker pushing a rose-coloured cupcake into her face in slow motion, and it’s a faintly disgusting spectacle. But the truth is that there’s no elegant way to eat a cupcake, which is why customers adopt self-mocking smiles as the fluorescent globules of frosting tumble down their chins.
The episode was screened 12 years ago, and still the craze rages. Yummy mummies in cosmopolitan cities can’t get enough of the things – yet they maintain their gazelle-like figures. I once heard a New York journalist suggest that there must be a parking lot at the back of the Magnolia where the thinnest customers threw them up. Bad taste, I know. But, as it happens, cupcakes are a favourite food of bulimics.
Let’s be clear about this. We think we like cupcakes because they are “retro” and transport us back to our childhoods. Nonsense. The nostalgia thing is an excuse. We actually like them because they allow us to mainline sugar.
Sugar is one of the substances and objects that are carving new patterns of addictive behaviour in a disorientated world. This behaviour is the subject of my new book, The Fix: How Addiction is Invading Our Lives and Taking Over Your World.
Along with prescription drugs, internet porn, computer games and dozens of other consumer items, we are forming an intimate relationship with sugary snacks that supplements and complements the “traditional” addictions to alcohol, gambling and illegal drugs.
These new objects of desire may not be drugs – though they have a drug-like capacity to stimulate the brain – but they mimic the addictive process of replacing the people in your life with things that yield guaranteed but short-term rewards.
Year after year, the West’s love affair with sugar intensifies. But we pay very little attention to our compulsive attitude to the stuff. This is partly because we don’t like to think about it – and partly because we’ve been misled into thinking that our consumption of saturated fat lies at the heart of obesity and eating disorders.
Increasing numbers of doctors think sugar does more harm to our arteries and our waistlines than fat. So does the restaurateur Henry Dimbleby, who runs the award-winning Leon chain of restaurants.
“Sugar is our number one eating problem – I think 40 per cent of the population has some sort of addiction to it,” he says.
“Watch what happens in an office when somebody walks in carrying a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There’s a general squealing sound and everyone rushes over excitedly. You’d think someone had just arrived at a party with a few grams of coke. People descend on it in the same way.”
Is that because sugar is addictive? In February 2011, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, published a report in the journal Nature entitled “Public health: The toxic truth about sugar”. This dismissed the popular notion of sugar as “empty” calories. On the contrary, they were bad calories: “A little is not a problem, but a lot kills – slowly.”
We’ve known for years that refined sugar is also implicated in damaging the liver and kidneys and is the main cause of the worldwide spread of Type 2 diabetes.
“If these results were obtained in experiments with any illegal drug, they would certainly be used to justify the most severe form of retribution against those unfortunate enough to be caught in possession of such a dangerous substance,” writes Michael Gossop of the National Addiction Centre at King’s College, London.
But is sugar actually a drug? Gossop thinks so. As he puts it, if a casual visitor from another galaxy were to drop in on planet earth, he would assume that human beings were even heavier drug users than we already are.
Why? Because vast numbers of us ingest a white crystalline substance several times a day.
We become agitated if we run out of supplies, and produce lame excuses for why we need another dose. We say we rely on it for “energy”, but we’re deluding ourselves. The energy rush from sugar is followed by a corresponding crash: it’s physiologically useless. But it is strongly reminiscent of the ups and downs associated with, say, cocaine.
Evidence published by Princeton scientists in 2008 demonstrates that rats can get addicted to sugar in the same way that they get addicted to cocaine and amphetamines. In contrast, there’s no such damning data in the case of fat. You may have a deep love of Kentucky Fried Chicken and get fat as a result, but you’re less likely to eat it until you feel sick.
Think back to the last office party you attended, and what was left over afterwards. I wonder if there has ever been an office “do” in which people had to clear away half-eaten boxes of chocolates – but didn’t need to throw away any sandwiches because they’d all been wolfed down.
I doubt it. Cake is occasionally unfinished because it’s filling. Even then, however, it tends to be saved for later rather than discarded, unlike the poor sandwiches. Super-sugary doughnuts, however, never make it to the end of the party. It would be interesting to know what proportion of sweet as opposed to savoury food ends up in the world’s bins.
Supermarkets are constantly ratcheting up our anxiety about fatty foods while pushing things called “mini-bites” at us. Speaking as a sugar addict myself, I can only describe these as an invention of the devil.
Mini-bites are targeted at bored office workers. The manufacturers take the most indulgent cakes and desserts and distil them into morsels: chocolate cake, millionaire’s shortbread, raspberry doughnuts and rocky road – all shrunk to a size that absolves you of guilt. If you only eat one, that is. Unfortunately, they’re sold in buckets large enough to be visible from five desks away.
And so the ritual begins. What I’m about to describe happens in my workplace, but I’m sure that it’s replicated, with only minor variations, in offices across Britain and America.
“Ooh!” Somebody has spotted a colleague approaching the desk with two tubs of mini-bites – different varieties, of course. The “ooh!” is shrill with suppressed excitement; everyone looks up. The tubs are deposited on the desk. There’s a moment of silence as the urge for instant gratification does battle with fear of being the first person to crack.
Then one employee – often the head of department – walks up to the tubs and surveys them quizzically, as if this whole “mini-bite” concept is new to him. He opens the lid gingerly, extracts a treat, inserts it into his mouth… and within seconds the gang descends. Some people manage a perfunctory “I really shouldn’t” before diving in. They tend to be the ones who pay the most return visits to the tubs.
Those journeys from desk to mini-bites and back again are fun to watch. It’s hard to do anything surreptitiously in an open-plan office, but people try their best, assuming an expression of studied absentmindedness as they reach out for one last chocolate cornflake cluster on their way back from an unnecessary trip to the photocopier (I speak from experience).
Should we worry? Yes – for several reasons. Cupcakes and mini-bites don’t just play havoc with our blood sugar levels: they reinforce the sense, very strong among hard-pressed urban professionals, that life is only bearable if we reward ourselves with endless “treats”. Yet we also feel guilty when we reward ourselves.
Where once people responded unconsciously to food cues, they now make conscious decisions not to respond, thereby feeling virtuous and deprived at the same time. And nobody can keep that up for long.
Walking down a modern high street resembles nothing so much as the arcade games of the Nineties, in which assailants leap out at you from behind doors and shopfronts every few seconds. Only now the assailants aren’t burly mafia hit men. They’re artfully packaged snacks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink … caine.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat May 19, 2012 10:48 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver mining: A Post-Mortem
http://blog.hindecapital.com/?p=357
May 03rd, by Mark Mahaffey (Co-Founder and CFO)
Since its peak in December 2010 the Market Vectors Junior Mining Index is down nearly 50%. The GDXJ ETF which replicates this index is comprised of an average of 85 small capitalised mining explorers, mine developers and producers. The smaller capitalised mining stocks have fared worse with many having collapsed 80% in the last year. In this time gold has risen by 20%. Even the major mining companies (GDX) are down over 30% since Sept 2011.
In anyone’s opinion this has been a disastrous time in the industry. While the Forbes billionaires list will show many fortunes have been made in the mining business, wealth is being destroyed in spectacular fashion today. Despite the near term despair from mining executives to investors, there is still a belief that if they have underperformed the metal by this degree they must be cheap and will recover in a cyclical fashion. But as with many economic issues currently, is it cyclical or structural?
What on earth has happened?
In a word – COSTS – but they come in many forms:
Labour – Wages have risen in all aspects of mining, not least because of the specific tightness in the mining workforce but all nominal wages have increased since 2000.
Quality of labour – The ‘gap’ in the quantity of high quality mining professionals, a throwback from the death of the last mining cycle in the late 1990s has left them spread very thinly and poor labour produce less ounces and hence adding to costs.
Taxes and royalties – The perception by governments or landholders that the miners are “raking it” has increased the demand for higher taxes and royalties raising costs.
Energy – Oil has increased ten-fold since 2000 and up to 50% of any mining extraction costs can be attributed to power usage.
Regulation and bureaucracy – Increased regulation, mostly worthless, is adding costs to all businesses and mining is no different.
Machinery and materials – From rubber tyres to processing plants, capital and operating costs are rising by up to 12 – 15% a year.
Financing – Mining has a long lead time to cash flow, and is a capital intensive business. Mining companies need constant financing to explore, drill, do surveys and eventually construct the mine. This is usually a mixture of equity, debt and forward stream sales. Invariably these companies have to accept worse and worse financing deals which again add to current and future costs even when cash flow is achieved.
Since 2000, gold extraction costs might well have risen from $200/tr.oz to $1300/tr.oz and are still rising. When the individual miners state their costs as a mere $656/tr.oz, this is often the pure Opex (operating expenditure) when the mine is up and running. Incidentally this number is also subject to a lot of deluded hope and optimism.
The total all-in cost must be the one that the industry as a whole bears and that includes;
1) All money raised for drilling by junior mining companies.
2) All preliminary Capex and all sustaining Capex including depreciation.
3) All clean up expenses.
4) All ‘goodwill’ costs paid by acquiring companies for reserve repletion.
Indeed, it would include every single expense borne by the mining industry divided by the number of actual ounces produced. Unfortunately it is this fully loaded cost that is potentially $1200-$1400/tr.oz and rising by double digits yearly that is producing the challenging situation for the mining companies today.
The following table should scare everyone:
If this is correct and that 2015 costs are $1750, while gold is currently trading at $1650 then what is a gold deposit or a gold company worth?
Arguably, if it costs more to produce than you can sell it for, whether it is widgets or gold it is worth nothing. However as the price of gold can rise over time then there is an implicit option (call) value that can be attributed to any mineral deposit, so that should the value of gold rise by X%, the company’s valuation who owns that gold deposit will rise accordingly.
Clearly the cost issue has potentially bullish implications for the price of gold. If the cost push inflation feeding through to the production of gold is rapidly approaching the market price of gold then uneconomic mines will be closed and supply at this price level will be sharply reduced. If demand remains the same, our textbooks will tell us that prices will rise.
A lesson from history
Cycles in anything often come in stages which can be described in many ways.
Despair-hope-faith-euphoria-disgust and back to despair might well describe the stages of the mining cycle, each with its own characteristics and wealth changing opportunities. The most profits are clearly made in the upswing from hope through to euphoria as ‘high’ potential margins encourage more and more companies and investors to participate in the bull market and high returns are made. Reality sets in, over competition prevails, costs rises for many of the reasons above and the biggest losses are made from euphoria back to despair which leads to consolidations and closures.
The last cycle ended in the late 1990s with the usual mine and company closures, inappropriate gold hedging and a wave of merger and acquisitions with a 20 year low in gold price.
The most difficult part of the current equation is to understand that we might well be coming to the end of another mining cycle despite the current ‘high’ price in gold. Despite the appalling returns in the sector over the last 18 months the cycle has more to play out. Now is not the end but perhaps the beginning of the end.
Hope for the future and what to expect
There are potentially over 3000 gold and silver mining companies in existence today. Expect that number to halve over the next 2-3 years through an increasing wave of M&A activity and closures.
Very few companies are safe, large or small but no doubt there will be winners and losers.
We would focus on companies that have current cash flow or imminent cash flow from operations and don’t need to death-spiral finance and we would focus on the highest grade deposits (the difference between 4 grams/tonne resource and 0.25 grams/ tonne, in basic terms means you have to shift 16 times less rock for the same gold which is one of the best ways of controlling costs) and those with largest exploration upside.
Remember that all the cost-push inflation that is reducing the forward margins will ultimately reduce the gold supply which may kick start the next leg up in the gold market and the mining cycle will begin once again. Timing is everything.
Tags: GDX, GDXJ, Gold, Gold miners, Mining, mining cycle
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sat May 19, 2012 12:05 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Eric Sprott – Governments Frightened of Panic Liquidation Event
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ … Event.html
billionaire Eric Sprott told King World News that governments are desperately trying to avoid a “Liquidation Event.” Sprott, who is Chairman of Sprott Asset Management, also warned the the market is liquidating, “irrespective of whether the powers that be want it or not.” Here is what Sprott had to say about the unfolding crisis: “Something has to be done because it’s totally out of control these days. I mean you can’t have bank runs (like we’re seeing). The one thing the powers that be, the central banks and the governments, have tried to do is to avoid what I call a ‘Liquidation Event.’”
“Ever since we saw what happened when Lehman was liquidated, they realized we can’t go there. Fannie was taken over as well as AIG and GM to prevent this liquidity event. But I think the market is just liquidating, irrespective of whether the powers that be want it or not.
I just think that process is picking up into a tsunami…
“…and the world is going to start focusing back on precious metals. We’ve had one Minsky moment in Greece and we’re going to have another one.
As these Spanish yields and Italian yields move up here, it will become a Minsky moment in those countries as well. I would suggest the same would be true for most major developed economies because the obligations of the state are way beyond the productive capacity of the remaining workers to fund those obligations.
I think on a worldwide basis, whether you’re talking Japan, England, the US, and all of Europe, people are going to realize that we have too much debt here. At a certain interest rate cost, we can’t pay the interest.
That’s exactly what I would imagine should unfold here. That’s what’s causing the bank runs. That’s what’s causing interest rates on sovereigns to rise, and I think that’s what will tip over into a mass desire to get involved in precious metals.
You know, the most stunning thing about the bank runs, and I’m going to focus on the one in Greece, I really couldn’t believe that people took 500 million euros out of Greek banks on Monday. This country has had a problem for two years.
had one bond restructuring already, and here we are two years later and people are finally figuring out they should take their money out of the bank. I don’t know why it takes so long for people to put two and two together, but I’m happy they are finally doing it.”
Here was a portion of what Sprott had to say about gold and the recent decline in the gold market: “I put it all down to the shenanigans that have gone on at the COMEX. As you know, some of the major dealers, who are embroiled in some of their own issues outside of the gold market, were short gold and silver.
I think the downtrend was engineered because when you look at the physical aspects of gold, they seem totally different than the paper aspects of gold. The major dealers, who have now massively covered their short positions, orchestrated the takedown in the face of fundamentals that were just screaming to buy gold and silver.
The key thing, Eric, that everyone should focus on is you always have to look at what’s going on in the physical markets. We’ve had some dramatic numbers recently. Of course, the most dramatic one is what’s going on in China.
Yesterday we had the World Gold Council saying that Chinese demand would be up 30%. I would always suggest to people that when somebody says they are going to increase their demand by 30%, in a market where the supply is flat, it’s almost impossible to do that without the price rising.
We’ve seen in the last nine months that exports of gold from Hong Kong into China have increased by a factor of almost ten times. The numbers are truly staggering. For example, in March the exports from Hong Kong (into China) were 64 tons.
I would remind everyone that the available supply to the world, ex-China, ex-Russia because China and Russia consume their own gold, the mining output is only 2,200 tons, which is less than 200 tons per month. When someone comes in and buys 64 tons in a month, that’s over 30% of the market.
How you can satisfy that change in physical demand when there is no increase in supply is mind boggling. I suspect that (Western) central banks have continued to surreptitiously sell gold by leasing gold to the bullion banks. When they go to call in those shorts, obviously the physical is not going to be available.”
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sat May 19, 2012 12:19 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
|
|
