Infinite Unknown

Citigroup forecasts that “gold is likely to regain $1,000/oz by end-08 and to work higher through 2009-2010.”

In their recent Gold Commodity Update, Citigroup metals analysts John H. Hill and Graham Wark also predicted that “longer term, we believe that gold is capable of doubling or tripling from current levels.”

The Citi global metals forecasts have an upward bias, at $906/$950/1000 average in 2008/09/10.

The analysts said “secular and seasonal factors favor gold” during the second half of this year. “We remain positive on gold, based on macro and supply/demand factors. The forces that have propelled gold for 5 years are firmly in place.”

During the second quarter of this year, gold has averaged $896/oz, up 34% from the same quarter of 2007 and down 3% from the first quarter of this year. “Following a series of downside fundamental tests gold appears to have found a floor, and quietly climbed back to $917/oz.”

“Despite extensive hand-wringing, the ‘floor in the dollar’ has inflicted minimal damage,” the analysts noted. “We believe the drivers of the gold bull market remain intact, heading into a favorable period.”

“We see gold as well-positioned heading into Autumn, when fabrication tends to heighten the market,” they added.

Related articles and videos:
- Dow suffers worst 1st half since ‘70
- Fortis Bank Predicts US Financial Market Meltdown Within Weeks
- Barclays warns of a financial storm as Federal Reserve’s credibility crumbles
- Jim Rogers: Avoid The Dollar At All Costs
- Ron Paul on Iran and Energy June 26, 2008
- Marc Faber: ‘Misleading’ Fed Should Let Banks Fail

The Dollar is being destroyed, Wall Street is collapsing, the U.S. are broke.
Of course Gold and Silver! will double and then triple.
Gold and Silver are the only safe haven in the coming meltdown of the financial markets.
It takes an extraordinary bright analyst to come to that conclusion!
More Information here: World Situation & Solution - The Infinite Unknown

Nevertheless, Hill and Wark warned, “It will be important for seasonal/volatility dampened fabrication demand to recover, before gold can move higher.” However, they added,” Longer term, we would not be surprised to see gold double from current levels as the global policy prescriptions for the credit crunch remain powerfully and uniformly re-flationary.”

Continue reading »

Tags: China, Citigroup, Commod, Dollar, Gold, Inflation, Meltdown, Oil, Russia, Silver

This is a talk given at the Nassau Club in Princeton by Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief:

Israel, without the United States, would probably not exist. The country came perilously close to extinction during the October 1973 war when Egypt, trained and backed by the Soviet Union, crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians poured in over the Golan Heights. Huge American military transport planes came to the rescue.

They began landing every half-hour to refit the battered Israeli army, which had lost most of its heavy armor. By the time the war as over, the United States had given Israel $2.2 billion in emergency military aid. The intervention, which enraged the Arab world, triggered the OPEC oil embargo that for a time wreaked havoc on Western economies. This was perhaps the most dramatic example of the sustained life-support system the United States has provided to the Jewish state.

Israel was born at midnight May 14, 1948. The U.S. Recognized the new state 11 minutes later. The two countries have been locked in a deadly embrace ever since.Washington, at the beginning of the relationship, was able to be a moderating influence. An incensed President Eisenhower demanded and got Israel’s withdrawal after the Israelis occupied Gaza in 1956.

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli warplanes bombed the USS Liberty. The ship, flying the U.S. Flag and stationed 15 miles off the Israeli coast, was intercepting tactical and strategic communications from both sides. The Israeli strikes killed 34 U.S. Sailors and wounded 171.

The deliberate attack froze, for a while, Washington’s enthusiasm for Israel. But ruptures like this one proved to be only bumps, soon smoothed out by an increasingly sophisticated and well-financed Israel lobby that set out to merge Israel and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Israel has reaped tremendous rewards from this alliance. It has been given more than $140 billion in U.S. Direct economic and military assistance. It receives about $3 billion in direct assistance annually, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. Foreign aid budget. Although most American foreign aid packages stipulate that related military purchases have to be made in the United States, Israel is allowed to use about 25 percent of the money to subsidize its own growing and profitable defense industry. It is exempt, unlike other nations, from accounting for how it spends the aid money.

Continue reading »

Tags: biometrics, Bush administration, China, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Egypt, G. W. Bush, Gaza, Government, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Military, NATO, OPEC, Palestine, Russia, Surveillance, Syria, U.S., War

One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the U.S. can bomb Iran’s nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete.

It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, “You naughty boys, you.”

Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified.

Iraq is a small country compared with Iran. Iran has about 70 million people. Its western mountains border the Persian Gulf. In other words, its missiles and guns look down on the U.S. ships below it. And it has lots of missiles, from short-range to intermediate-range (around 2,200 kilometers).

More to the point, it has been equipped by Russia with the fastest anti-ship missile on the planet. The SS-N-22 Sunburn can travel at Mach 3 at high altitude and at Mach 2.2 at low altitude. That is faster than anything in our arsenal.

Iran’s conventional forces include an army of 540,000 men and 300,000 reserves, including 120,000 Iranian Guards especially trained in unconventional warfare. It has more than 1,600 main battle tanks and 21,000 other armored combat vehicles. It has 3,200 artillery pieces, three submarines, 59 surface warships and 10 amphibious ships.

It’s been receiving help in arming itself from China, North Korea and Russia. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s forces have not been worn down with bombing, wars and sanctions. It also has a new anti-aircraft defense system from Russia that I’ve heard is pretty snazzy.

So, if you think we or Israel can attack Iran and not expect retaliation, I’d have to say with regret that you are a moron. If you think we could easily handle Iran in an all-out war, I’d have to promote you to idiot.

Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries.

For some years now, I’ve worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England - arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw.

The British never dreamed that the “little yellow people” could come ashore by land and take Singapore from the rear or that they would sink the pride of the British fleet, but they did both.

I suppose no one in Washington can imagine the Iranians sinking one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. How’d you like to be the president who has to tell the American people that we’ve lost a carrier for the first time since World War II?

Exactly how the Iranians will respond to an attack, I don’t know, but they will respond.

In keeping with our present policy, our attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe? Continue reading »

Tags: Bush administration, China, G. W. Bush, Government, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Military, Nuclear reactors, Russia, U.S., War

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said on Tuesday.

“A pack of cement used in creating … good weather in the capital region … failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft),” police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti.

Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture.

A spokesman for the Russian Air Force refused to comment.

June 12 was Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating the country’s independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Weather specialists said the cement’s failure to turn to powder was the first hiccup in 20 years.

The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer of 50,000 roubles ($2,100) from the air force, saying she would sue for damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said. Continue reading »

Tags: cloud seeding, Russia, weather, Weather Modification

Downward spiral: Chinese stocks have slumped by almost 50pc since October while Mumbai’s BSE index has lost 27pc of its value

Central banks across much of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe will soon have to jam on the breaks or risk a serious crisis as inflation spirals into the danger zone. As the stark reality becomes ever clearer, this year’s correction in emerging market bourses and bond markets has now accelerted into a full-fledged rout.

Shanghai’s composite index touched a fourteen-month low of 2,900 yesterday. It follows moves this week by the central bank raised reserve requirement yet again, draining a further $60bn from the banking system. Chinese stocks have now slumped by almost 50pc since peaking in October.

In India, Mumbai’s BSE index has lost 27pc of its value as the exodus of foreign funds accelerates. The central bank has raised rates to 8pc to curb inflation and halt a run on the rupee, but critics still say the country waited too long to tackle overheating. The current account deficit has shot up to near 3.5pc of GDP. A plethora of subsidies has pushed the budget deficit to 9pc of GDP.

Russia, Brazil, India, Vietnam, South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Chile - among others - have all had to raise interest rates or tighten monetary policy in recent days. Most are still behind the curve.

“The inflation genie is out of the bottle: easy money is the culprit,” said Joachim Fels, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.

“Weighted global interest rates are 4.3pc, while global inflation is above 5pc. The real policy rate in the world is negative,” he said
advertisement

The currencies of Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia have come under pressure this week as investors scramble for dollars in moves that echo the East Asia crisis in 1997-1998. Several countries have had to intervene to slow the currency slide.

The sudden shift in sentiment appears to follow comments by Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, the heads of the US Federal Reserve and the New York Fed, leaving no doubt that Washington has lost patience with the crumbling dollar.

It is almost unprecedented for Fed officials to take a public stand on the Greenback. The orchestrated move is clearly aimed at halting the vicious circle in the oil markets, where crude prices are feeding off dollar weakness - with multiples of leverage.

The “strong dollar” campaign has switched into high gear. US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has conducted an aggressive lobbying drive behind the scenes in the Middle East and Asia. America’s friends and foes have been left in no doubt that the enormous strategic might of the United States is now firmly behind the currency. From now on, they cross Washington at their peril.

The markets are now pricing in two rate rises by the Fed this year. Investors no longer doubt that the US - and Europe - will do what is needed to restore credibility. This display of resolve has suddenly switched the focus to the very different universe of emerging markets, where a host of countries have repeated the errors of the 1970s.

Richard Cookson, a strategist at HSBC, advises clients to slash their holdings in these regions.

“Inflation looks like a very real problem in Asia, and the risk is that investors will lose faith in the region’s currencies. Although markets have fallen savagely from their peaks, they’re still looking pricey. We’ re lopping exposure even further, to zero,” he said.

“Where to put the money? We think corporate debt is stunningly cheap compared with equities. Seven-year to ten-year ‘BBB’ [rated] corporate bonds in the US haven’t been this cheap since the Autumn of 2002,” he said.

“Until and unless policy makers in the emerging world - especially those in China - tighten policy dramatically, the inflation rates are unlikely to fall much. Our guess is that most don’t have much will to tighten pre-emptively,” he said.

Russia’s inflation is 15.1pc, yet interest rates are 10.75pc. Vietnam’s inflation is 25pc; rates are 12pc. Fitch Ratings has put the country on negative watch and warns of brewing trouble in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Balkans, and the Baltic states. The long-held assumption that emerging markets are strong enough to shrug off US troubles is now facing a serious test. The World Bank has slashed its global growth forecast to 2.7pc this year. The IMF and the World Bank define growth below 3pc a “global recession”.

There is a dawning realization that China is facing a major storm as inflation (7.7pc), the rising yuan (up 5pc this year), soaring oil prices, and an economic downturn in the key export markets of North America and Europe all combine to crush profit margins. China uses five times as much energy as the US to produce a unit of GDP. It is acutely vulnerable to the energy crisis.

A quarter of the 800 shoe factories in the Guangdong region have shut down in recent months, and several thousand textile workshops are battling to stay afloat. Hong Kong’s industry federation has warned that 10,000 firms operating in the South of China may soon go out of business.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 13/06/2008

Source: Telegraph

Tags: Brazil, China, Dollar, economic crisis, emerging markets, Fed, Federal Reserve, GDP, IMF, India, Inflation, Malaysia, Meltdown, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, Thailand

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blamed “aggressive” United States policies on Saturday for the global financial crisis and said Moscow’s growing economic muscle could be part of the solution.

“Failure by the biggest financial firms in the world to adequately take risk into account, coupled with the aggressive financial policies of the biggest economy in the world, have led not only to corporate losses,” Medvedev told Russia’s main annual event for international investors in St Petersburg.

“Most people on the planet have become poorer.”

The Kremlin leader said investment by cash-rich Russian companies abroad, promotion of Moscow as a major financial centre and use of the ruble as a reserve currency were part of the answer.

These could help solve problems created by what he said was a gap between the United States’ leading global economic role and “its true capabilities.”

The Kremlin leader said economic nationalism had played a big part in triggering the current crisis, which he compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“No matter how big the American market and no matter how strong the American financial system, they are incapable of substituting for global commodity and financial markets,” Medvedev told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The Kremlin leader also attacked big bonuses paid out in the financial world, saying regulators needed to ensure that incentives promoted “rational behavior based on a balanced evaluation of risks and rewards.”

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, who spoke shortly after Medvedev, appeared to reject the criticism.

He said the United States had never based its policies on “economic egoism” and believed in free trade.

“Globalization is in the national interest,” he added. Continue reading »

Tags: Commodities, Depression, Dollar, financial crisis, Oil, Oil Prices, Russia, U.S.

May 31 (Bloomberg) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.S. to a “frightening monster” and urged France to distance itself from its American ally.

“How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?” Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde transmitted live to journalists in Paris yesterday.

Putin, speaking the day after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the U.S. was creating “new Berlin Walls” in Europe by pushing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to expand into ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine.

The Russian prime minister, who passed on the presidency earlier this month to his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, continues to set the foreign and domestic policy agenda. Under Putin’s eight-year presidency, Russia clashed with the U.S. and the European Union over matters such as NATO expansion and a planned U.S. missile-defense system in eastern Europe.

“France, I hope, will continue to conduct an independent foreign policy,” said Putin, whose interview was embargoed until publication by Le Monde today. “This is in the nature of French people, they don’t want their country tied down, and any French leader will have to respect that.”

The election of Medvedev, 42, a lawyer who has called for more dialogue between the East and West, has raised hopes of an eventual thaw. Still, Sarkozy decided to meet with Putin, breaking with the tradition of Group of Eight leaders of dealing with Russia at a presidential level, showing the 55-year-old former KGB colonel’s dominant influence.

Presidential Power

Under Russia’s constitution, the president is supposed to be solely responsible for foreign policy and has more formal authority than the prime minister, who can be fired by presidential decree and is charged with implementing Kremlin policies.

Putin “remains the pre-eminent power” in Russia, said Michael Emerson, a former EU ambassador to Moscow and an analyst at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “The EU has to deal with the people who are there, both of them.”

Putin, who has threatened to point missiles at Ukraine should it host missile bases as a NATO member, said expanding the military alliance deeper into former Soviet territory risked a return to Cold War competition.

“NATO expansion means drawing up new dividing lines in Europe, new Berlin Walls,” he said. “This time we can’t see them, but they’re no less dangerous.”

Military Infrastructure

Putin said Russia sees “military infrastructure coming closer to our borders,” and denounced the U.S. for seeking a “monopoly in world affairs.” Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, EU, France, Germany, NATO, Nicolas Sarkozy, Russia, U.S., Vladimir Putin

‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and an editor at the Centre for Research on Globalization, www.globalresearch.ca
_______________________________________________________________________________

Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, says Michel Chossudovsky

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.

During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative - ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’ Continue reading »

Tags: Air Force, climate change, Department of Defense, Electromagnetic Weapons, Global Warming, H.A.A.R.P., IPCC, John von Neumann, Michel Chossudovsky, Military, Russia, Star Wars, U.S., weapons of mass destruction, WMDs

There is a time for food, and a time for ethical appraisals. This was the case even before Bertolt Brecht gave life to that expression in Die Driegroschen Oper. The time for a reasoned, coherent understanding for the growing food crisis is not just overdue, but seemingly past. Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, an organization often dedicated to flouting, rather than achieving its claimed goal of poverty reduction, stated the problem in Davos in January this year. ‘Hunger and malnutrition are the forgotten Millennium Development Goal.’

Global food prices have gone through the roof, terrifying the 3 billion or so people who live off less than $2 a day. This should terrify everybody else. In November, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that food prices had suffered a 18 percent inflation in China, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia and India. The devil in the detail is even more distressing: a doubling in the price of wheat, a twenty percent increase in the price of rice, an increase by half in maize prices. Continue reading »

Tags: biofuel, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Condoleezza Rice, Egypt, Food, Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, G. W. Bush, Government, Grain, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Pakistan, rice, Robert Zoellick, Russia, Senegal, Somalia, U.N., Uzbekistan, Wall Street Journal, wheat, World Bank, Yemen

The global free market for food and energy is facing its biggest threat in decades as a host of countries push through draconian measures to hold down prices, raising fears of a new “resource nationalism” that could endanger world food security.

Somali’s demonstrate against high food prices in the capital Mogadishu. At least two people were killed in clashes

India shocked the markets yesterday by suspending trading in futures contracts for a range of farm products in a bid to clamp down on alleged speculators and curb inflation, now running at 7.6pc.

The country’s Forward Markets Commission said contracts for soybean oil, chana (chickpeas), potatoes, and rubber had been banned for four months, even though a report by the Indian parliament last month concluded that soaring food costs had almost nothing to do with the futures contracts. Traders in Mumbai slammed the ban as an act of brazen political populism.

The move has been seen as a concession to India’s Communist MPs - key allies of premier Manmohan Singh - who want a full-fledged ban on futures trading in sugar, cooking oil, and grains.

As food and fuel riots spread across the world, a string of governments have resorted to steps that menace the free flow of food and key commodities. Argentina has banned beef exports, while Egypt and India have stopped shipments of rice.

Kazakhstan has prohibited wheat exports. Russia has slapped a 40pc export duty on shipments, and Pakistan a 35pc duty.

China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philipines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam have all imposed export controls or forms of rationing to ease the crisis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that this lurch towards national controls is becoming a threat to the open global system we all take for granted. “If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others and affect political security around the world,” he said.

A new report by UBS says the scramble for scarce raw materials is turning ever more political, with ominous implications for ill-endowed societies that rely on imports.

“The bottom line is that countries with resources, particularly in food and energy are becoming more protective of these resources,” it said.

(I know I am repeating myself and I know that many are already well prepared. This is for the ones that are not:
Store food and water “NOW”. Do this in a relaxed manner because your brain shuts down when you are under stress and in survival mode. - The Infinite Unknown)

Continue reading »

Tags: Argentina, Ban Ki-moon, Cambodia, China, Commodities, copper, crisis, energy, famine, Food, Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food Riots, Government, Grain, hedge funds, India, Inflation, Malaysia, Mexico, Middle East, Oil, Oil Futures, Philipines, Russia, soybeans, Sri Lanka, U.N., U.S., UBS, Vietnam, Wall Street Journal, wheat