![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_7a.gif)
Gold and Silver • Silver To Soar A Stunning 400% & Gold $1,500 In 10 Months
Silver To Soar A Stunning 400% & Gold $1,500 In 10 Months
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ … onths.html
With continued uncertainty in the gold and silver markets, today a 56-year market veteran told King World News that silver will advance 400% from current levels and gold will soar $1,500 in less than a year. He also added predictions regarding longer-term price objectives.
Here is what 56-year market veteran Ron Rosen had to say: “The HUI and gold have have had three major buying opportunities since the bull market started roughly 12 years ago. Each one has led to huge profits and we are now at the fourth bottom which will produce the greatest amount of profits since the bull market began.
So we’ve hit the bottom and now we are headed higher, and there is no limit as to how high gold and silver can go from here. Looking back, this will be seen as the greatest opportunity of all if someone has the guts to get in the market now….
“KWN readers have to understand that you only see these types of opportunities every three years or so and they don’t last long. This is the fourth opportunity over a 13-year period, and it’s been like clockwork. Gold and the gold complex have had the purist bull market of any complex I’ve ever seen in my 56 years in this business.
This next leg of the gold bull market will see two important milestones in terms of price. The first move will take gold to $2,800 in the next 12 months. So we are talking about a roughly $1,500 move for gold in a short period of time. The full advance of this particular leg will see gold hit $3,700 in just over two years. This means the price of gold will close to triple during that time frame.
This will be the biggest move in gold. It will be the biggest in term of the price advance and also in terms of the percentage of the advance. So it will be the largest since the bull market started. This move that is coming in gold, contrary to expectations and bearish announcements from Wall Street firms, will be absolutely stunning.”
Rosen had this to say regarding silver: “I call silver a ‘cantankerous metal.’ It follows gold, but it will scare the hell out of you in doing so. Gold won’t scare you but silver will. But even though silver will scare the hell out of people, it will also perform magnificently if you have the guts to hold on to it.
The bottom in silver just took place and it will have a large advance along the same timelines as gold, but the trip in between will be like flying in an airplane and hitting an air pocket. It will take your breath away. Silver should advance to $92 in about 10 months.
So you are talking about a 400% advance in that metal in less than a year. Past that you are looking at a $130 price for silver as gold hits $3,700. This means silver will advance 600% as gold roughly triples in price. So silver will have an enormous move, but it will give you a heart attack because of the way it will trade during that massive advance. Silver will outperform gold, but you will have to be able to stomach the gyrations if you want to take advantage of the massive price rise.”
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Wed May 22, 2013 2:33 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • HKMEX TO CEASE TRADING, WILL CLOSE OUT & CASH SETTLE
HKMEX TO CEASE TRADING, WILL CLOSE OUT & CASH SETTLE OPEN CONTRACTS MONDAY!
http://silverdoctors.com/hkmex-to-cease … ts-monday/
MAY 18, 2013 BY THE DOC 24 COMMENTS
When the Rothchild’s HKMEx was launched in 2011, much of the metals community assumed that the COMEX & LBMA, were they not to outright default, would fade into irrelevance with the advent of the new Asian metals exchange.
Two years to the day after the exchange’s launch however, in perhaps the most glaring evidence of physical gold & silver shortage to date, the HKMEx has announced it will voluntarily cease trading, and all open positions will be closed out and financially (cash) settled on Monday 5/20!
2013 Silver Eagles As Low As $3.79 Over Spot at SDBullion!
As Commodities Now reports, the HKMEx has voluntarily made the decision to cease trading and close out all open positions:
The Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange (HKMEx) announces today it has decided to voluntarily surrender the authorisation to provide automated trading services (“ATS”) granted by the Securities and Futures Commission (“the SFC”). With immediate effect, no new orders may be placed and all open positions will be financially settled at the settlement price determined by HKMEx and its designated clearinghouse.
The HKMEx’s Chairman claims that their priority is to protect members’ interests by closing their positions:
“The favourable conditions under which HKMEx was founded have not changed. Global commodity demand continues to shift towards Asia as the region undergoes sustained growth, presenting great opportunities that we will continue to exploit,” said Barry Cheung, Chairman of HKMEx. “Our priorities now are to protect members’ interests by ensuring effective closing of open positions while strengthening our shareholding base and developing new products that play to our distinctive strengths.”
In closing out the open positions, the Exchange has developed a plan in consultation with the SFC to ensure the process is orderly and that investors are well informed of the matter. The Exchange will disseminate settlement prices to its members the morning of next Monday, 20 May 2013.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Cheung claimed that defaulting on metals contracts has no impact on investors:
HKMEx chairman Barry Cheung Chun-yuen told the Sunday Morning Postthat the decision to surrender the trading licence and not reopen for business tomorrow would have no impact on investors and that client contracts would be honoured.
“There is no question of not getting your money back or anything like that. People absolutely do not have to worry about that and I don’t think they are.
“The only thing they will want to know is what settlement price will be used,” Cheung said.
HKMEx was working with LCH.Clearnet – the world’s largest clearing house for financial transaction settlements – to arrange settlement pricing on the exchange’s roughly 200 outstanding contracts, Cheung said.
The tiny number of outstanding contracts reflects the difficulty HKMEx has had in attracting trades to the platform that officially opened almost two years ago to the day on May 18, 2011.
We suspect that come Monday morning, more than one Chinese investor who believed he owned a gold position (and learns that in fact he held paper) will immediately attempt to source and take delivery of physical metal. As the Shanghai Gold Exchange appears to have stopped delivering gold as well, we suspect that the LBMA may be in for a bit of a physical run.
The first domino appears to have fallen in the ponzi fractional gold system.
Got PHYZZ?
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sun May 19, 2013 1:24 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • Gold & Silver Smashdown=Mining Industry Collapse!
Gold & Silver Smashdown=Mining Industry Collapse!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HREWH-vi … e=youtu.be
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sun May 12, 2013 8:05 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • World Wide Gold & Silver Demand Has Exploded
Gold Blog – World Wide Gold & Silver Demand Has Exploded 02 May 2013 01:19 #512
http://www.thebullionblog.com/index.php … view=topic
World Wide Gold & Silver Demand Has Exploded In April After Major Price Drop!!! Gold’s biggest drop in three decades caused what has become an ongoing global rush into physical gold. Reports are still flooding in at the same pace from around the world, confirming the extent of recent purchasing and persistent shortages. The U.S., Britain, China, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Dubai and Australia are topping the charts for physical precious metals demand.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Thu May 02, 2013 12:56 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • Maguire – Elaborates On The LBMA Default & Ensuing Panic
Maguire – Elaborates On The LBMA Default & Ensuing Panic
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ … Panic.html
Today whistleblower Andrew Maguire spoke with King World News, providing even more details by elaborating on the events surrounding the LBMA default. Maguire, who recently appeared in the extraordinary CBC production titled, “The Secret World of Gold,” also told KWN about the ensuing panic which has taken place in the aftermath of the LBMA default. Maguire described entities as “panicking.” Below is what Maguire had to say in part II of his remarkable and exclusive interview.
Eric King: “Inside that piece (“The Secret World of Gold”) you talked about gold leasing and the mechanics of that. Jim Sinclair wanted me to bring that up to you, the gold leasing, the mechanics of it, can you talk about that?”
Maguire: “We did a piece on King World News about it, about the LBMA bullion bank default. Stepping back, how did they get to such a mismatched (trading) position where they had so little gold and silver in their inventory to be able to back up people coming and asking for their gold and silver? They never anticipated that this would happen….
“But what had happened was, over the years, basically what you would do is you would sell gold, sell silver, financed almost for nothing, take that money and invest it. Then, obviously incentive was there because it had built up to such a large (short) position, they were so over-collateralized, that it was important to defend the price (of gold and silver) from rising because they didn’t actually have the physical.
What’s happened now is they are in a position where that leased gold is being asked for and they don’t have it. I know of a very large client who actually turned up for his bullion, was refused his bullion, and told he would be settled in cash. I felt I should go public with that (on KWN).
…(ABN AMRO) really was the tip of the iceberg. What happened was that we saw that first bullion bank create the first visible default of the LBMA fractional reserve system. I hear of other clients who are now panicking, and what happens? You get an official intervention. That’s what it (the takedown in gold and silver) was all about.”
Eric King: “Andrew, you were getting contacted by people all over the world after KWN did the interview with you regarding the LBMA default situation.”
Maguire: “I must say I had some really distressed emails. What they were asking is, ‘What should I do?’ All I could say to them is, ‘If I had physical stored in any bullion bank related warehouse, whether it be COMEX or LBMA, I would remove it right now.’
We all know that ‘default’ will not be called a ‘default.’ It will be settled with cash. I do not believe for a minute that the Fed can’t print a few billion (dollars), whatever it costs, to bail out the bullion banks for cash. Why wouldn’t they just bail them out with cash? It’s just an electronic keystroke. People will be sitting on the sidelines and they will not get any physical (gold).”
Maguire also added: “It’s been several years since I’ve taken any delivery from the COMEX, or any of my clients have. But I do remember on those prior occasions it was already difficult to get your physical out.
Arranging to actually have the audacity to back up a Brinks truck to the COMEX warehouse door, it just incurred every defensive tactic you can imagine. There were unreturned phone calls. There were questions as to, ‘Why do you want this physical?’
That was a few years ago, so just imagine how many more obstacles there are now. And obviously we are at the point of a critical default unfolding, so I would think think it’s going to be difficult to get your physical out now.”
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:50 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Other • Lies, Damned Lies & Sadistics: The IMF’s Role As Bankster E
Lies, Damned Lies & Sadistics: The IMF’s Role As Bankster Enforcer
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2013
Contributed by Don Quijones, a freelance writer and translator based in Barcelona, Spain. His blog, Raging Bull-Shit, is a modest attempt to challenge some of the wishful thinking and scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by our political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media.
“We make or break human life every day of every year as probably no other force on earth has ever done in the past or will ever do again.”
The above rather dramatic quote comes courtesy of one Davison L Budhoo, a former International Monetary Fund economist who in 1988 broke ranks with the Fund, publishing a scathing 150-page resignation letter. In it he accused the organization of corruption, self-interest, and deceit.
Not that the Fund, then headed by Frenchman Michel Camdessus, was particularly fazed by the allegations. In those days there was no Internet, so the story didn’t exactly go “viral”; in fact, it barely got a mention in the mainstream or financial press. As such, following a spattering of articles in a few specialist newspapers and magazines, Buddhoo’s accusations were quickly forgotten.
The IMF breathed a sigh of relief, brushed off its Brook Brothers jacket and continued about its business. No inquiry or investigation was launched, no changes were made to the Fund’s operational policies and no heads rolled.
Such aversion to change has become a defining characteristic of the Fund. The result is that while the global economy may have changed beyond all recognition in the last 35 years, with countries like China, India and Brazil rising to the fore, the IMF’s role within it seems to have remained locked in time. The only difference of note (apart from the fact that, in the ballsy, perma-tanned Christine Lagarde, it has its first ever female managing director) is that instead of preying primarily on the world’s poorest, weakest and most defenseless nations — many of which have since become big creditors — the IMF, now a protagonist in Europe’s dreaded Troika, has its sights set on much bigger trophies.
The chicken, it seems, has finally come home to roost. Now it is Europe’s turn to feel the sharp taste of the Fund’s medicine. Slowly but surely the hapless inhabitants of struggling eurozone countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland are beginning to realize what many Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans learnt through bitter painful experience in the seventies, eighties and nineties — namely that when the IMF, armed with its balance sheets and a calculator, comes calling, you’d better hope you’re out.
For the IMF is, in plain speaking terms, the global banksters’ number one enforcer — a role it has executed (pun intended) with fervor and aplomb ever since the Bretton Woods agreement (though it wasn’t until Nixon’s launch of the floating exchange regime in 1971 that the organization began forcefully dictating economic policy to supposedly sovereign nations).
The Fund is essentially to the big global banks and corporations what Luca Brasi was to Vito Corleone or, to cite a real-world example, what Francesco Raffaele Nitto was to Al Capone. But rather than use real violence, or even the threat of violence, the IMF’s henchmen have far subtler means at their disposal, as John Perkins, the author of the best-selling book Confessions of An Economic Hitman, explains:
One of my jobs as an economic hit man was to identify countries that had resources like oil and arrange huge loans for those countries from the World Bank and sister organizations. But the money would never go to the actual country; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country like power plants and industrial parks; things that would benefit a few very wealthy families.
So then the people of the country would be left holding this huge debt that they couldn’t repay… That’s when the IMF comes in [saying] ‘We’ll help you restructure your loan, but in order to do that you have to meet certain conditionalities. You have to sell your oil or whatever the coveted resource is at a cheap price, to the oil companies without restrictions.’ Or they would suggest the country sell electric utilities, water and sewage, maybe even its schools and jails to private multi-national corporations.
According to Perkins, it was only when a national leader took a rare principled stand, refusing to sell off all of their country’s resources to international conglomerates at bargain basement prices, that the real goons, or what Perkins calls “the Jackals,” would be sent in, as is alleged to have happened in the highly suspicious deaths, in the early eighties, of Panama’s leader Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera and Jaime Roldos, the democratically elected president of Ecuador.
(For more information on the economic hitmen, watch the videos here and here)
Bad Math
Much of the damage the IMF inflicts on national and regional economies stems from its frequent use of flawed statistical data, which often just so happens to suit its own interests (or at least those of its “bosses”), invariably at the expense of its supposed clients’.
The Fund’s program in Trinidad and Tobago in the late seventies and early eighties, in which Budhoo, the IMF whistle-blower, participated, is a perfect case in point. In his resignation letter Budhoo asserted:
We manipulated, blatantly and systematically, certain key statistical indices so as to put ourselves in a position where we could make very false pronouncements about (the) economic and financial performance of that country… Quite frankly, our ‘program’ is nothing but a hotchpotch of irreconcilable and conflicting elements and objectives; it reduces economics to a farce.
Even when the inaccuracy of the IMF’s statistics was exposed by the Fund’s own statisticians, the IMF neither owned up, nor apologized to the Trinidad and Tobagan government. Nor did it publicly correct its misinformation despite the implications of its judgment for foreign investment.
As well it might, for the IMF knows full well that when it comes to its woefully wayward forecasting and deeply flawed track-record, it is protected by a code of silence, or as the Italian mafia would put it, Omerta. As such, the mainstream media always treats the Funds with the gentlest of kid gloves, rarely, if ever, questioning its methods or mission.
But this is no longer 1988 and thanks to the rise of the Internet and the tireless investigative efforts of new online media outlets, more and more people are beginning to see through the obfuscation to the stark reality of the IMF’s less-than-kosher role in the global economy — and not a moment too soon, for it seems that the IMF’s remedial problems with basic math are part of a much broader degenerative condition, as Zerohedge recently reported:
“That the IMF is the most unwavering optimist despite fundamentals, facts and reality has been well-documented… Over the past year’s six outlook revisions, the IMF has been forced to downgrade, with quarterly precision, its overly optimistic forecasts for virtually every part of the world, from the US, to the Euroarea, to China, and of course, the entire world” (click here to see Zerohedge’s graphic presentation of the IMF’s fumbling predictions skills in all their glory).
A Vast Trail of Ruin
When the IMF was founded, in 1945, it was granted two defining missions: to oversee the fixed exchange rate arrangements between countries, thus helping national governments manage their exchange rates and allowing these governments to prioritize economic growth; and to provide short-term capital to aid balance-of-payments.
Which all sounds well and good, and there can be no doubting that the fund played a crucial role in helping stabilize the post-war global economy. However, since becoming an essential tool of the neoliberal agenda in the 1970s, the IMF has failed to help a single country get its economy back on the straight and narrow. As Buddhoo told the New Internationalist, “I dare anyone in the Fund to point to a country and say it is much better off economically today because of a Fund program.”
The tragic reality is that the IMF’s ideologically-driven program of structural reforms and iron-clad conditionalities has left in its wake a vast trail of economic destruction, political instability, poverty, hunger and sickness. Once a country gets caught in its vice-like grip, economic decline and decay is all but guaranteed, as Greece, Portugal and Ireland are now learning.
And what with the list of European countries falling victim to the Troika’s not-so-short-but-pretty-damned-sharp shock treatment continues to grow, one can only wonder where the trail of carnage will end. Contributed by Don Quijones.
http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/201 … force.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Apr 21, 2013 10:08 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Business • GE, IBM & MCDONALD’S EARNINGS SUCKED
GE, IBM & MCDONALD’S EARNINGS SUCKED
Posted on 19th April 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
earnings, GE, IBM, McDonalds, Recession
Here’s the facts folks.
GE is a worldwide company with annual sales of $147 BILLION.
IBM is a worldwide company with annual sales of $104 BILLION.
McDonalds is a worldwide company with annual sales of $28 BILLION.
They all reported 1st quarter earnings in the last 24 hours. They all sucked. Their sales are decreasing and their profits are falling. Don’t believe the GE press release. You don’t increase profits by 16% when your sales are falling. They use accounting tricks and one-time gains from sales of failing businesses to produce fake profits. IBM is laying people off.
The revenue and earnings of the biggest companies in the world always fall during an economic recovery. Right?
The results of these three companies reveal that a worldwide recession is under way and it is getting worse. Meanwhile, the Wall Street shysters pretend nothing matters. Bennie will perpetually levitate the markets. Earnings are for suckers. Who needs earnings to drive stock prices higher?
I did notice that the MSM has buried these stories, hoping no one will notice. I noticed.
McDonald’s Sales Sputter In Q1, April Looks Tough
McDonald’s MCD -1.29% reported lighter sales and slightly lower operating income from a year ago, citing tougher comparisons in part driven by an extra day in 2012 due to a leap year.
Global sales were down 1% at the Golden Arches, with the most significant decline in Asia. The restaurant chain said sales dropped 3.3% in its Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa segment, and operating income slipped 1%, “primarily due to ongoing weakness in Japan and negative results in China,” along with currency impacts. (Read the release here.)
In the U.S. comparable sales were down 1.2% and operating income fell 3%, while European sales fell 1.1% with a 1% increase in profit.
Overall, McDonald’s booked $6.6 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 1% from a year ago, while net income was flat at $1.3 billion. Earnings per share of $1.26 were up 2%, but a penny short of the consensus estimate.
Chief Executive Don Thompson said the Q1 results “reflected difficult prior year comparisons and the ongoing impact of global economic headwinds,” and warned that April global comparable sales “are expected to be slightly negative.
On a conference call after the report, Thompson said significant macroeconomic headwinds persist in the U.S. and noted that results in Germany and France were both softer in the first quarter, according to TradeTheNews.com.
General Electric earnings up 16%, revenue flat
By Saabira Chaudhuri
General Electric Co.’s (NYSE:GE) first-quarter earnings rose 16%, catapulting results above Street views, as the conglomerate reported a gain from the sale of its remaining stake in NBC Universal, although revenue was flat amid weakness in the industrial segment.
Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt has tried to reduce GE’s reliance on its financial arm in the past few years while boosting the company’s industrial businesses, which investors tend to value more highly. GE has struggled to improve the profit margins at its industrial businesses given the difficult economic environment.
Friday, the company said revenue from its industrial businesses, which include energy infrastructure and aviation, fell 5.7% to $22.67 billion. Profit from the businesses was down 11% to $2.94 billion.
Mr. Immelt said the company’s markets were “mixed” as the U.S. and growth markets were in line with expectations, but industrial segment revenue in Europe was worse than expected. Overall, power and water markets were worse than expected, and GE saw additional pressure in European power and water services, which also impacted margins.
Still, Mr. Immelt said the company had “always anticipated that the first half of 2013 would be our toughest comparison,” and that GE expects power and water to improve during the year and be positive in the second half. GE ended the quarter with its biggest equipment and services backlog ever at $216 billion.
Revenue from GE Capital rose 1.7% to $11.54 billion, while profit rose 8.7% to $1.93 billion.
GE reported a profit of $3.53 billion, or 34 cents a share, versus $3.03 billion or 29 cents a share, a year ago. Results included a one-time gain in industrial operations of eight cents a share from the sale of GE’s remaining stake in the NBCUniversal joint venture that was partially offset by four cents a share tied to restructuring and other charges. The company’s operating earnings, which exclude pension costs, were 39 cents compared with 34 cents.
Revenue was flat at $35 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected earnings of 35 cents and $34.51 billion in revenue.
Costs and expenses edged down 0.8%.
In February, Comcast Corp. (CMCSA, CMCSK) agreed to buy GE’s remaining 49% stake in the NBCUniversal joint venture for about $16.7 billion, in a deal that gave GE gives a healthy stockpile of cash to return to shareholders and to invest in its industrials business.
Industrial power, oil and gas, and other infrastructure-related businesses are central to the growth plans of the company’s nonfinancial businesses as it continues to shrink its GE Capital arm.
Earlier this month, GE confirmed it agreed to buy Lufkin Industries Inc. (LUFK) for about $3.3 billion in cash to further expand an oil and gas business that GE has built up via a string of acquisitions in recent years.
Shares rose by 21 cents to $22.88 in recent premarket trading. The stock has risen 18% in the past 12 months.
IBM profit machine slows; layoffs planned
By Drew FitzGerald
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — International Business Machines Corp. signaled plans to trim its work force after some software and mainframe computer sales fell short of expectations, causing its core earnings growth to slow.
The Armonk, N.Y., company said it will reduce its work force in some areas to meet its per-share earnings target for this year of $16.70. Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said the company hadn’t yet acted on those plans but expects to report accounting charges related to those reductions this quarter.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) shares fell nearly 5% in after-hours trades, as earnings and revenue missed analysts’ expectations, a rare event for a company that usually grows its core profit even when sales lag.
“The stressors are finally starting to appear on the model,” ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall said. “Investors have been pretty used to the fact that they deliver double-digit earnings growth. Well, for the first time in a long time, they didn’t do that.” IBM said its earnings, excluding certain costs, rose a relatively slow 3.4%.
Separately, IBM is in advanced discussions with Lenovo Group Ltd. (OTN:LNVGY) to sell part of its computer server business, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. At issue is IBM’s business of selling so-called x86 servers, the low-priced workhorses of many corporate and cloud-based data centers.
An exact sale price is not known, WSJ reported, but one of the people said the deal could be worth billions of dollars.
IBM’s results are often read as an indicator of the health of tech spending among government and corporate customers. In recent quarters, the tech giant’s overall revenue has been hurt by weak tech spending and economic uncertainty. But the company has been pushing the growth of its higher-margin software and services businesses, while shedding less profitable lines and cutting costs.
At the same time, IBM has invested heavily in emerging markets, generally helping results in recent periods. In the latest quarter, revenue in IBM’s growth markets, which include Brazil, Russia, India and China, declined 1%.
Overall, IBM reported a profit of $3.03 billion, or $2.70 a share, down from $3.07 billion, or $2.61 a share, a year earlier. Operating earnings, which exclude retirement-plan costs and amortization, rose to $3 a share from $2.78.
Technology and consumer stocks led the market’s decline following a basket of lackluster earnings reports. Chris Dieterich reports.
Revenue fell 5.1% to $23.41 billion, or 3% when adjusted for currency fluctuations.
Analysts most recently predicted earnings of $3.05 a share and revenue of $24.62 billion.
Gross margin widened to 45.6% from 45.1%.
Revenue in IBM’s systems-and-technology unit, which includes its hardware business, fell 17%, its sixth-straight quarter of declining sales performance. Some of the shortfall stemmed from the lack of a retail point-of-sale hardware that the company divested last year, though Loughridge said several profitable mainframe deals “fell short of the goal line” last quarter.
“For systems and technology, this was not the quarter we expected,” he said during a conference call with analysts.
Software revenue eased 0.5%, also hurt by the absence of some highly profitable deals last quarter. Technology services revenue decreased 4.3%, while business services revenue fell 3.3%.
Services backlog increased to $141 billion from $140 billion in the fourth quarter.
Revenue in the Americas–IBM’s largest market–fell 4%, or 3% adjusting for currency impacts.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=52804
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri Apr 19, 2013 12:53 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society Runs Out of Gold…Imp
Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society Runs Out of Gold…Importing from Switzerland and London
Posted on April 19, 2013
Hong Kong’s Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society has been in operations for over a century, and it’s President Haywood Cheung was interviewed by Bloomberg news earlier today. Whoever orchestrated the attack on gold and silver in the last week or so has gravely miscalculated, since the response to the drop has been surging demand for physical gold and silver. While I tend to be skeptical when I hear about silver shortages since these reports have been so exaggerated in the past, the lack of silver coin availability and premiums are the most extreme I have seen since the financial and economic meltdown of 2008. Now we discover that the Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society has essentially sold out of gold bullion, and must wait until Wednesday for shipments to arrive from Switzerland and London.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/04/19 … nd-london/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri Apr 19, 2013 12:12 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • Chris Martenson & Mike Maloney: Why Did Silver & Gold Collap
More Chris Martenson & Mike Maloney: Why Did Silver & Gold Collapse?
Gold & SilverBy Adam Taggart on Tue, Apr 16, 2013 – 6:52pm
http://www.peakprosperity.com/discussio … d-collapse
While Chris Martenson & Mike Maloney were at the GoldSilver offices last Friday (the first day of the smack-down in the precious metals), the media team there filmed this discussion between Chris and Mike Maloney.
In it, they delve into the question Qui bono? (Who benefits?) when precious metals prices are manipulated downward to such grand extent.
From the write-up on GoldSilver.com:
From the 4,500 tons of missing gold Eric Sprott pointed to in U.S. export figures, to the 300-ton German gold repatriation, the questions of who benefited from the plummeting prices and how are all answered in this blockbuster video.
Learn how unsophisticated investors got “fleeced,” and how this price event and media blitz may go down as one of “the cruelest jokes ever played on the people who get scared away from gold and silver at this moment in history, given where we are.”
This is the first time in history in which currencies around the globe are failing simultaneously, as more and more currency is printed, and confidence in this mathematically untenable system under which debt is “money” collapses.
As gold and silver’s true values are realized, in the market or by revaluation, we will witness the greatest transfer of wealth ever seen in human history. Episode One of Hidden Secrets of Money, our free series, expands on the big picture view—the cycle of behavior across history revealed as it progresses toward the ultimate resolution.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Fri Apr 19, 2013 2:43 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Gold and Silver • Recent Stunning Gold Plunge vs 1970s & What To Expect Next
Recent Stunning Gold Plunge vs 1970s & What To Expect Next
CHECK OUT THE CHARTS WITH THIS ARTICLE THEY SHOW EXACTLY HOW SIMILAR THIS BULL MARKET IS TO THE ONE IN THE LATE 1970S AND EARLY 80S. GO TO:
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/ … _Next.html
Today top Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick’s team sent King World News two tremendous gold charts and important commentary comparing the recent plunge gold to what was seen in the 1970s. KWN is pleased to share this information with with our global readers as well as they expect next. Below is what top Citi analyst Fitzpatrick’s team had to say in their latest report, along with 2 powerful charts.
Fitzpatrick’s Team: “While we remain structurally bullish gold in the medium-term, there is no doubt that the price action of recent days has to be of concern. While we do not believe this is a ‘trend change,’ we need to respect the breaks seen and what they could suggest near-term.
There is a danger that even lower levels on gold than those seen in recent days could materialize in the days/weeks ahead.
Gold has clearly broken the (following):
*Base of the “consolidation” that had been in place since Sept 2011.
*Base of the channel in place since 2001.
*The 200 week moving average.
While we do not yet know if it will close the week below the 200 week moving average ($1,435), it is the first time it has traded below that support since January 2002. In addition, the present break could be construed as a double-top with the break below $1,526. The target for that break would be for a move towards $1,260. Such a move would equate to a high to low drop of about just over 34% (or $1,260)…
.“We have only once seen a drop of that magnitude in gold since the turn off the 1999-2001 lows. That was between March and October 2008 when gold fell just over 34%. Additional long term support (not shown on the chart below) is met at the 55 month moving average at $1,351.
Apart from the major turn in 1980 that saw gold fall from around $850 to a low of $253 in August 1999, the largest correction we have seen was in the 1970-1980 bull market. Between 1975 and 1976 as the equity market bounced sharply, gold had a high to low fall of about 44% before multiplying over 8 times in the following 3 1/2 years.
That period in 1976 was also the only period in that bull market (outside the turn after the 1980 peak) that saw gold retrace below its 55 month moving average. It traded 14% below that average in August 1976. 14% below the 55 month moving average today stands at $1,162, while a 44% fall off the peak would equate to $1,075.
So where does that leave us? During the correction in the 1970’s gold remained under pressure while the Equity market rally continued. However, once the Equity market corrected lower in 1976-1978, gold re-established its uptrend. At this point we are not necessarily convinced that the equity market continues to power higher from here, so a correction lower of that magnitude in gold does not look to be the base case scenario.
We are more focused on the fact that the double-top suggests a correction more in line with that seen in 2008 with its double-top targeting an almost identical move of just over 34% high-to-low. As a consequence, while we remain below the $1,520-$1,526 area, a move towards $1,260 cannot be ruled out. That potential would increase if we saw a weekly close below the 200 week moving average at $1,435.
In addition it is worth noting that we are seeing a number of markets (as well as economic data) follow a path very similar to this period in 2012. That period saw a sharp fall in gold from late February into the year’s low on May 16th, 2012. That became a platform for those losses off the 2012 high to be regained by October that year.
So while we remain below the important pivots mentioned above, the answer to our title seems to be … somewhere close to $1,260 by May (if not earlier) looks to be the “buy zone.”
King World News note – The key takeaway from this piece is just like Fitzpatrick’s team is pointing noting here, after gold ended its mid-cycle correction in the 1970s, the price of gold went up more than a staggering 8 times in price in just 3 1/2 years. As Jesses Livermore said, “Be right and sit tight.”
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:20 am
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com