Infinite Unknown

- Deutsche Bank: “We Fully Understand Why The Authorities Wouldn’t Want Free Markets To Operate Today” (ZeroHedge, May 9, 2013):

A brief stroke of brilliance from Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid: Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Banking, Deutsche Bank, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, Greece, Jim Reid, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Society, U.S.

- Bank Of Ireland Doubles Mortgage Rates, Homeowners Fear More To Come (ZeroHedge, May 2, 2013):

With the Bank of England cutting its wholesale interest (bank) rate to historic lows and now the ECB slashing 50bps off its key rate (as well as remonstrating on the reduction in fragmentation across European nations), it is perhaps perplexing (or simply too obvious) that a bank would raise its mortgage rates. As the Daily Mail reports, government-owned Bank of Ireland (BOI) doubled mortgage rates for 13,500 customers in the UK leaving homeowners with huge increases in their monthly payments. The bank, exploiting small print in the legacy mortgage contracts, will hike the interest cost for 1-in-14 homeowners from 2.25% to 4.99% (raising the spread over the bank rate on these loans from 1.75% to 4.49%). Anger is rife as customers complain “it’s all very frustrating,” adding that they thought this was a ‘tracker’ mortgage but BOI defends their massive rate hike on increased funding costs and the need to maintain higher levels of capital. The disconnect between wholesale gorging provided by the Central Bank and wholesale gouging of the real economy grows ever wider it seems.

Via The Daily Mail,

Thousands of homeowners are facing a huge increase in their mortgage repayments after the Bank of Ireland doubled rates overnight.

…

… will affect some 13,500 UK customers,

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of England, Banking, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Ireland, Mortgages, Society, U.K.

YouTube Added: 03.05.2013

Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Bonds, Central Bank, Collapse, Debt, Dollar, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, Gerald Celente, Global News, Government, Inflation, Ireland, Jean-Claude Trichet, Mario Draghi, Obama administration, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Retailers, Society, U.S., Unemployment

YouTube Added: 29.04.2013

Commentary:

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
- Alan Greenspan

“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
- John Maynard Keynes

Quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!

Tags: Bank of England, Ben Bernanke, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Mario Draghi, Mark Carney, Quantitative Easing, U.S.

YouTube Added: 24.04.2013

Tags: Banking, Bonds, Central Bank, Collapse, Crime, Cyprus, Debt, ECB, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Financial Crisis, Global News, Gold, Government, IMF, Nigel Farage, Politics, Society, Spain

- Just Say Nein: Bundesbank Rejects OMT (Again) (ZeroHedge, April 25, 2013):

The last few minutes have seen markets taking a decidedly negative stance. Led by FX carry, risk-assets in general are rolling over. Some attributed it to Bernanke waking the devil from his slumber:

• *BERNANKE SAYS VULNERABILITIES REMAIN IN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

but it appears that the decision of Germany’s Top court is the market-moving event:

• *BUNDESBANK REJECTS OMT IN OPINION FOR TOP COURT: HANDELSBLATT

Instantaneously EUR is tumbling, financials are dropping, and the ‘promise’ of Draghi’s tail-risk killer is perhaps being removed. Remember, the high court is due to vote in June on whether the ESM is constitutional under German law and this rejection of ‘OMT’ leaves that decision much more in limbo than the market was expecting.

Via Bloomberg: Continue reading »

Tags: Bonds, Bundesbank, Debt, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Germany, Global News, OMT

Compare Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article to …

- Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: The Assault On Gold – Assault On Gold UPDATE

- Fed and Bank of Japan caused gold crash (Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard April 17, 2013):

Commodity prices have been falling since September, culminating in a rout over the past two weeks. That is a classic warning for the global economy.

It is becoming ever clearer that the roaring boom in global equities since last summer has priced in an economic recovery that does not in fact exist. The International Monetary Fund has had to nurse down its global growth forecasts yet again. We are still stuck in an old-fashioned trade depression, with pervasive over-capacity in manufacturing plant and a record global savings rate of 25pc of GDP.

German car sales fell 17pc in March. That should puncture the last illusions that Germany is about to pull Europe out of a self-inflicted slump.

As you can see from the chart below, the divergence between stock markets and the Deutsche Bank index of raw materials is astonishing to behold, so like the pattern in early 1929. Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Banking, Ben Bernanke, China, Collapse, Commodities, Cyprus, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, GDP, Global News, Gold, Government, Great Depression, IMF, Japan, precious metals

- Egan-Jones Downgrades Germany From A+ To A, Outlook Negative (ZeroHedge, April 17, 2013):

The more you try to shut them up, the more they have to say…Just out from Egan-Jones

4/17/2013: Federal Republic Of Germany: EJR lowered A+ to A (Neg.) (S&P: AAA) (3413Z GR)

Continue reading »

Tags: Bonds, Collapse, Debt, ECB, Economy, Egan-Jones, EU, Europe, GDP, Germany, Global News, Government, IMF, Politics, Rating

- Farage Unleashed: “You Are Common Criminals” (ZeroHedge, April 17, 2013):

“Years ago, Mrs Thatcher recognized the truth behind the European Project,” UKIP’s Nigel Farage reminds his European Parliament ‘colleagues’, “she saw that it was about taking away democracy from nation states and handing that power to largely unaccountable people.” In one of his most wonderfully vitriolic remonstrations, the fiery Farage blasts Europe’s leadership, “this European Union is the new communism.” Slamming Olli Rehn and his Troika cohorts for “resorting to the level of common criminals and stealing people’s money”, Farage warns, rather chillingly, that, “it is power without limits. It is creating a tide of human misery and the sooner it is swept away the better.” Simply put, he concludes, the European Parliament is living out a federal fantasy which is no longer sustainable.

Full Transcript:

Years ago, Mrs Thatcher recognised the truth behind the European Project. She saw that it was about taking away democracy from nation states and handing that power to largely unaccountable people.

Knowing as she did that the euro would not work she saw that this was a very dangerous design. Now we in UKIP take that same view and I tried over the years in this parliament to predict what the next moves would be as the euro disaster unfolded.

But not even me, in my most pessimistic of speeches would have imagined, Mr Rehn, that you and others in the Troika would resort to the level of common criminals and steal money from peoples’ bank accounts in order to keep propped up this total failure that is the euro.
Continue reading »

Tags: Banking, Cyprus, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, IMF, Politics

- Buy PHYSICAL Gold. NOW: The Discount of a Lifetime: Or Why You Must Abandon the Fake Paper Gold Market (Gordon Gekko’s Blog, April 17, 2013):

They just showed their hands. The paper Ponzi pyramid is wobbling. It’s time to go in for the kill.

Let me explain. But first let’s get a handle on what’s happening:

“We’ve traded gold for nearly four decades and we’ve never … ever… EVER… seen anything like what we’ve witnessed in the past two trading sessions,”

Dennis Gartman, via The New York Times

“This is an orchestration (the smash in gold).  It’s been going on now from the beginning of April.  Brokerage houses told their individual clients the word was out that hedge funds and institutional investors were going to be dumping gold and that they should get out in advance…it is the Fed’s concern with the dollar because the dollar is being printed in huge quantities at the same time that other countries are abandoning the use of the dollar as international payment.

The exchange value of the dollar is (being) threatened, and if that collapses the Fed loses control over interest rates.  Then the bond market blows up, the stock market blows up, and the banks that are too big to fail, fail.  So it’s an act of desperation because they’ve got to establish in people’s minds that the dollar is the only safe place, it is the only safe haven, not gold, not silver, and not other currencies.

Continue reading »

Tags: ECB, Economy, Global News, Gold