Utah Considers Return to Gold, Silver Coins

AP


It's been nearly 80 years since the U.S. stopped using gold coins as legal currency, and nearly 40 since the world abandoned the gold standard, but the precious metal could be making a comeback in the United States -- beginning in Utah.

The Utah House was to vote as early as Thursday on legislation that would recognize gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal currency in the state. The coins would not replace the current paper currency but would be used and accepted voluntarily as an alternative.

The legislation, which has 12 co-sponsors, would let Utahans pay their taxes with gold and also calls for a committee to study alternative currencies for the state. It would also exempt the sale of gold from the state capital gains tax.

The bill cleared a state legislative committee on Wednesday, the first of 11 similar bills in statehouses across the country to do so. If the bill clears the House, it would have to pass the Senate before the governor could sign it into law.

Attorney and Tea Party activist Larry Hilton, author of the original bill, said he doesn't foresee any roadblocks.

Original Source: http://nation.foxnews.com/gold-standard/2011/03/03/utah-considers-return-gold-silver-coins

Dollar's Global Fall Will Be 'Disastrous’ for US Living Standard

Billionaire real-estate magnate Sam Zell warns that Americans should brace for a "disastrous" 25 percent decline in the standard of living if the U.S. dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency ever ends.
He says that there are signs in the market that it could eventually happen. As it is now, a Korean manufacturer who wants to sell to Brazil must first buy dollars to complete the deal. If countries decide to bypass the dollar, the effect would be a disaster, Zell says.


Sam Zell

“Frankly, I think we’re at a tipping point. What’s my biggest single financial concern is the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I can’t imagine anything being more disastrous to our country than if the dollar lost its reserve-currency status.”
Although he is “hoping against hope” the dollar remains the standard for international exchange, he warns that “you’re already seeing things in the markets that are suggesting that confidence in the dollar is waning.”
If that happens, the impact on the United States would be deep. “I think you could see a 25 percent reduction in the standard of living in this country if the U.S. dollar was no longer the world’s reserve currency,” Zell said “That’s how valuable it is.”
Zell says that the bond market seems remarkably complacent about the risk. But that could turn on a dime, he warns.
“The worry in the bond market is never there until it’s there. The dollar has gone down 20 percent in the last three or four years,” Zell says. “I don’t know who is buying 30-year fixed-rate debt. I don’t understand TIPs (Treasury inflation-protected bonds) that are projecting 30 years of benign inflation.”
Benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields are around 3.48 percent. TIPs maturing in 2041 have a yield of 1.96 percent.
Once the world turns on the U.S. dollar, if it does, things will change fast, Zell warns. “How could interest rates not go up? Either they go up or the dollar goes down, one or the other,” Zell says.
As for inflation, he estimates that actual inflation is between 5 percent and 7 percent right now, despite government figures showing the CPI flirting with low single digits. Fear of deflation — prices falling out of control — has been the primary motivator at the Federal Reserve to pump up money supply by more than $2 trillion in recent months.

Nevertheless, oil is rising fast and food riots are breaking out in developing countries. The United States has been less affected until recently. Zell points out that our Consumer Price Index tends to hide inflation by counting depressed home prices at 42 percent of the index.

“If you adjusted the CPI to reality you’re probably looking at 5, 6, 7 percent inflation today,” Zell says.

“The reality out there is the costs are going up. The fact that we’ve been massive beneficiaries of Chinese mercantilist policies that have allowed us to buy goods at much less than their fair value. That has hurt us on the manufacturing side, but it has been a subsidy to America. That subsidy is coming to an end.”

Others agree with Zell that the dollar’s world dominance will soon fade.

Ray Dalio, founder & CIO of Bridgewater Associates, told CNBC that it is “inevitable that the dollar's role as the world's currency will diminish from the dominant world currency to one of a few.”

"It will fade probably fairly quickly so the United States which accounts for almost two-thirds of the reserves will probably go down to 50 percent of the world's reserves and it will have an effect on lending," he added.

Meanwhile, Bill Gross, found of bond giant Pimco, recently told investors that the Fed’s heavy thumb on the scales on behalf of low interests was perhaps necessary given the magnitude of the crisis. The second round of easing known as “QE2,” perhaps, also had a role to play.

However, as the deadline for the second round to end looms — it is set to expire in June — there are serious questions about whether a smooth transition to private demand for U.S. debt will appear, Gross said.

Stocks have doubled from the March 2009 bottom and marked steadily upward since the second round was announced in August, which has given some stock investors pause.

“Investors should view June 30, 2011 not as political historians view Nov. 11, 1918 (Armistice Day — a day of reconciliation and healing) but more like June 6, 1944 (D-Day — a day fraught with hope for victory, but fueled with immediate uncertainty and fear as to what would happen in the short term),” Gross said in recent commentary online.

“Bond yields and stock prices are resting on an artificial foundation of QE2 credit that may or may not lead to a successful private-market handoff and stability in currency and financial markets.”

Original Source: http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/Sam-Zell-End-Dollar/2011/03/03/id/388209?s=al&promo_code=BCB2-1

John Hathaway - $50 To $60 Silver, US Dollar In Danger

With gold and silver consolidating recent gains, today King World News interviewed John Hathaway, Senior Managing Director of the Tocqueville Gold Fund. There is a great deal of talk emerging about the strength in the silver market and the weakness of the US dollar. Regarding silver Hathaway commented, “Well it’s on fire obviously. Usually when silver does well you have a set of inflationary expectations.

Hathaway then shocked KWN with this statement, “If we have a continuation of QE2 past June 30th, I wouldn’t be surprised to see silver in the $50, $60 an ounce territory.”
When asked would there be a waterfall decline if the US dollar were to move down and take out the 71-72 area Hathaway responded, “Yeah, I think that would be a real sign that people had given up on the dollar. The market would basically be telling you that the verdict is in and the dollar is in effect beyond redemption in terms of any sort of respectability and I think you’d see a huge move into gold at that stage.”

John Hathaway’s fund has been one of the top performing funds in the world for quite some time and was just awarded a 5-star rating by Morningstar. The complete interview with John Hathaway will be released shortly and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE.

Original Source: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/3/3_Hathaway_-_$50_to_$60_Silver_if_QE_Continues,_Dollar_in_Danger.html

"We are going into a recession damn it, thats it!"

John Taylor, a long-time outspoken critic of flawed monetary policy appeared on Bloomberg TV in the aftermath of Trichet's press conference which had an extremely hawkish tone to it, implying that the ECB may hike rates as soon as April (indicatively, those who play the lottery have a better chance of winning than an ECB hiking any time soon). When asked about his opinion where the Euro is going, the manager of the world's biggest FX hedge fund said "Higher." Although not for long: he believes that the slowing of the global growth is "slowing more in Europe than anywhere else" and logically any attempt to cut off inflation will result in an even further slow down in the European economy. Specifically, Taylor believes the Euro will peak at 1.45 by June, at which point it will start drifting lower as the market realizes the European (read German) export miracle is over. As for the US, Taylor has nothing good to say there either: "We are going into a recession, damn it" - this will be due to the Fed hiking rates at the end of Q3 should the current phase of artificial expansion continue. Taylor predicts a 4,3,2,1% rate of annualized GDP growth by quarter: "by the time the fourth comes, everyone will be screaming - 'Jeez we are going into a recession'." As for the US stock market, Taylor predicts stocks will continue rising for another few months, at which point the "coming recession" will take over. Of course, Taylor's premise is based on the assumption QE does not continue into the end of 2011 and further. Which is a very aggressive assumption. After all, we have trillions in debt to be monetized by some central bank. Alas, it will have to be our own, as everyone will be busy doing the same to their own debt.

Precious Metals are the True Currency- Marc Faber

Global investment analyst Marc Faber says the best and true currencies available in the world today are not US dollar or Pound, but precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
Faber, who is famous for his prediction of the US stock market crash in 1987, said that commodities, especially gold and silver will be the wise investment options for people in the wake of rising inflation and troubled economies around the world.

Faber, who is the publisher and editor of Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, said that if there is a war, gold and silver would be desirable investments to hold.

Faber recommends investors to accumulate gold in response to money supply inflation policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve—policies that have contributed to rapidly escalating commodities prices since the introduction of these unprecedented monetary measures in March 2009.

In his discussion with Prison Planet radio host Alex Jones, Faber said he anticipates the Fed to announce further “quantitative easing” initiatives before the expiration of the Fed’s latest “QE” initiative, QE2, which expires in June.

Faber argues that the gold price is signaling to the market that the U.S. dollar is “no longer a credible unit of account” due to the Fed’s QE plan of purchasing mortgage-backed securities and surplus U.S. government debt not absorbed by the market.

The European Commission has embarked on similar policies to the U.S. Fed regarding the euro—the world’s second-largest reserve currency—and similarly cannot be trusted to maintain the purchasing power of its currency either, Faber believes.

Faber said that the only true currencies that exist today are gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

Faber adds that U.S. authorities inaccurately report inflation in an attempt to give the dollar more credibility and to support a grossly oversupplied U.S. Treasury bond market. Mistrust of government and of its ability to manage public debt and the value of its currency is the recipe for higher gold prices, Faber has repeatedly warned.

“Not to own any gold is to trust the U.S. government, trust that they will ever balance the budget again,” said Faber.

Faber recommends staying away from the U.S. bond market during a Fed-induced negative real interest rate environment. He likes real estate now in the U.S. (especially farmland), but expects a further decline of 10% in residential real estate prices.

When asked to sum up his thoughts, Faber stated, “We are in the end game. But we are currently in a ‘crack-up boom’,” a term coined by the Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973) to describe a period just prior to a total collapse of a currency’s usefulness as money.

Original Source: http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Precious-Metals-are-true-currencies-Marc-Faber-36893-3-1.html

What is gold telling us?

Gold closed $1437.70 on Wednesday, using the CME April contract as the measure, up $28.40 so far this week and breaking through significant technical barriers.
Over the weekend, Australia’s The Privateer had growled: “Just as it has since early November 2010, the area between $1,400 and $1,425 is proving a firm ‘ceiling’ for gold.”
The Gartman Letter was more direct on Tuesday: “Someone … or something … has kept a virtual lid on the gold market at or near $1,414-$1,416 for the past many months and has certainly been at work for the past two weeks making certain that gold does not push upward through that level.”

Consequently the new, adjusted gold chart looks very exciting. Pring Research put out an early Weekly Infomovie Report on Wednesday morning, saying of the (for practical purposes identical to gold) SPDR Gold Trust ETF /quotes/comstock/13*!gld/quotes/nls/gld (GLD 138.12, +0.03, +0.02%) chart: “The break-out is likely to be a valid one. That’s important because these consolidation formations are typically followed by price moves far in excess of that suggested by their size.”

Opinion Journal: Bernanke and Inflation

Columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady critiques the Fed Chairman's congressional testimony.

The Aden Forecast’s Wednesday evening Weekly Update has swung entirely positive: “Now that gold is hitting new highs, it’s still to be seen if this is really the start of an A rise or an extended C rise. In either case, it’s very bullish.”
(Last week the Aden Forecast was still entertaining the possibility that gold remained in the undesirable “D” decline phase.)
Can gold go further? MarketVane’s Bullish Consensus appears to say yes. On Wednesday gold rose to a 2011 high of 80% but the previous night a LeMetropoleCafe correspondent pointed out that, prior to the 2008 crash, tops generally involved several days in the 90s. Mark Hulbert’s HGNSI appeared to support this optimism. ( See Mark Hulbert’s March 2 column. — but after Wednesday’s action, HGNSI jumped very dramatically, to 71.9% vs. a record high of 89.58%, which will certainly disturb contrarians.)
What is going on? Obviously, the Middle East and the oil squeeze have to be considered. But two (hopefully) longer-term factors also command attention.
News of a recent stunning acceleration in Chinese imports is spreading. ( See Feb. 7 column.) This week UBS published a report saying China imported 200 metric tonnes of gold in the first two months of this year, which suggests an astonishing and bullish restructuring of the physical market.
Possibly more important are signs of a dramatic slump in confidence in U.S. economic management. Symptomatic of this is the normally somewhat-deferential Gartman Letter.
Discussing Fed Chairman Bernanke’s Tuesday Congressional testimony Dennis Gartman complained of “what we consider to have been one of the worst performances by an American central banker before a congressional delegation that we can remember … but then again we’ve only a memory going back to the days of William McChesney Martin, so our pool from which to draw is limited.”
“The Fed Chairman seemed all too willing to write off the current global price increases of food and energy as simply the result of exogenous market circumstances. … We have heretofore been overt and very consistent defenders of the Fed and of Dr. Bernanke … but the Fed chairman’s denigration of the problems attendant to rising food and energy yesterday caught us off guard, as it apparently caught everyone else off guard also. It was within a few minutes of his discussion that gold prices soared. They should have. They responded properly and they responded well.”
It’s not just Middle Eastern turmoil that is alarmingly reminiscent of the late 1970s


Original Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-is-golds-climb-really-telling-us-2011-03-03

A Conspiracy With a Silver Lining

As Americans know all too well by this point, commodity prices — for corn, wheat, soybeans, crude oil, gold and even farmland — have been going through the roof for what seems like forever. There are many causes, primarily supply and demand pressures driven by fears about the unrest in the Middle East, the rise of consumerism in China and India, and the Fed’s $600 billion campaign to increase the money supply.
Nonetheless, how to explain the price of silver? In the past six months, the value of the precious metal has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce from around $19 an ounce. In the last month alone, its price has increased nearly 23 percent. This kind of price action in the silver market is reminiscent of the fortune-busting, roller-coaster ride enjoyed by the Hunt Brothers, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert, back in 1970s and early 1980s when they tried unsuccessfully to corner the market. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973, the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to $54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver investments and the price plunged. The brothers later declared bankruptcy.

"Accusations that JPMorganChase and HSBC allegedly manipulated precious metal markets are worth looking into".

The Hunts may be gone from the market, but there are still plenty of people suspicious about the trading in silver, and now they have the Web to explore and to expand their conspiracy narratives. This time around — according to bloggers and commenters on sites with names like Silverseek, 321Gold and Seeking Alpha — silver shot up in price after a whistleblower exposed an alleged conspiracy to keep the price artificially low despite the inflationary pressure of the Fed’s cheap money policy. (Some even suspect that the Fed itself was behind the effort to keep silver prices low, as a way to keep the dollar’s value artificially high.) Trying to unravel the mysterious rise in silver’s price is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, replete with powerful bankers, informants, suspicious car accidents and a now a squeeze on short sellers. Most intriguingly, however, much of the speculation seems highly plausible.
The gist goes something like this: When JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008, it inherited Bear Stearns’ large bet that the price of silver would fall. Over time, it added to that bet, and then the international bank HSBC got into the market heavily on the bear side as well. These actions “artificially depressed the price of silver dramatically downward,” according to a class-action lawsuit initiated by a Florida futures trader and filed against both banks in November in federal court in the Southern District of New York.
“The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the defendants substantial illegal profits” in the billions of dollars between June 2008 and March 2010, according to the suit. The suit claims that JPMorgan and HSBC together “controlled over 85 percent the commercial net short positions” in silvers futures contracts at Comex, a Chicago-based exchange on which silver is traded, along with “25 percent of all open interest short positions” and a “a market share in excess of 9o percent of all precious metals derivative contracts, excluding gold.”
In the United States, trading in precious metals and other commodities is regulated and closely monitored by a federal agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In September 2008, after receiving hundreds of complaints that silver future prices were being manipulated downward by JPMorgan and HSBC, the commission’s enforcement division started an investigation. In November 2009, an informant, described in the law suit only as a former employee of Goldman Sachs and a 40-year industry veteran, approached the commission with tales of how the silver traders at JPMorgan were bragging about all the money they were making “as a result of the manipulation,” which entailed “flooding the market” with “short positions” every time the price of silver started to creep upward. The idea was that by unloading its short positions like a time-released capsule, JPMorgan’s traders were keeping the price of silver artificially low.
Soon enough, the informant was identified as Andrew Maguire, an independent precious metals trader in London. On Jan. 26, 2010, Maguire sent Bart Chilton, a member of the futures trading commission, an e-mail urging him to look into the silver trading that day. “It was a good example of how a single seller, when they hold such a concentrated position in the very small silver market can instigate a sell off at will,” Maguire wrote.
On Feb. 3, 2010, Maguire gave the futures trading commission word about an impending “manipulation event” that he said would occur two days later, when the Labor Department’s non-farm payroll numbers would be released. He then spelled out two trading scenarios about which he had been told. “Both scenarios will spell an attempt by the two main short holders” — JPMorganChase and HSBC — “to illegally drive the market down and reap very large profits,” Maguire wrote in an e-mail to a trading-commission investigator.
On Feb. 5, Maguire took a victory lap, writing in another e-mail to the trading commission that “silver manipulation was a great success and played out EXACTLY to plan as predicted.” He added, “I hope you took note of how and who added the short sales (I certainly have a copy) and I am certain you will find it is the same concentrated shorts who have been in full control since JPM took over the Bear Stearns position … I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC’s allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue.”
In March 2010, Maguire released his e-mails publicly, in part because he felt the trading commission’s enforcement arm was not taking swift enough action. He was also unhappy over not being invited to a commission hearing on position limits scheduled for March 25. Then came the cloak and dagger element: the day after the hearing, Maguire was involved in a bizarre car accident in London. As he was at a gas station, a car came out of a side street and barreled into his car and two others; London police, using helicopters and chase cars, eventually nabbed the hit-and-run driver. Reports that the perpetrator was given a slap on the wrist inflamed the online crowds that had become captivated by Maguire’s odd story.
In any case, the class-action lawsuit contends that between March 2010 and November 2010, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC reduced their short positions in the silver market by 30 percent, causing the metal’s price to rise dramatically, but leaving them still with a large short position. Now, with the value of silver rising nearly every day, the two banks are caught in a “massive short squeeze,” according to one market participant, that appears to be costing them the billions they made originally plus billions more. Whether these huge losses will show up on the books of JPMorgan Chase and HSBC remains to be seen. (Parsing through the publicly filed footnotes of derivative trades is no easy task.)
Nonetheless, the conspiracy-minded have claimed that the Fed must have somehow agreed to make JPMorgan and HSBC whole for any losses the banks suffered if and when the price of silver rose above the artificially maintained low levels — as in right now, for instance. (About all this, a JPMorganChase spokesman declined to comment.)
Some two-and-a-half years later, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s investigation is still unresolved, and at least one commissioner — Bart Chilton — thinks that after interviewing more than 32 people and reviewing more than 40,000 documents, there has been enough investigating and not enough prosecuting. “More than two years ago, the agency began an investigation into silver markets,” Chilton said at a commission hearing last October. “I have been urging the agency to say something on the matter for months … I believe violations to the Commodity Exchange Act have taken place in silver markets and that any such violation of the law in this regard should be prosecuted.”
What’s more, Chilton said in an interview last week, that “one participant” in the silver market still controlled 35 percent of the silver market as recently as a few months ago, “enough to move prices,” he said, and well above the 10 percent “position limits” the commission has proposed to comply with Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Since that law’s passage last summer, the commodities exchanges have issued waivers permitting the ownership of silver positions above the limits the C.F.T.C. has proposed, and which were supposed to be in place by January of this year. Yet the waivers remain in place, and the big traders have not been penalized, much to Chilton’s frustration And the mystery deepens: last Thursday, the price of silver fell $1.50 per ounce in less than an hour before recovering. “This was robbery at its most obvious and most vindictive,” wrote Richard Guthrie, a London-based trader, in an e-mail to Chilton. “How many investors lost money and positions to the financial benefit of an elite few?”
It’s getting harder and harder to continue to brush off Andrew Maguire’s claims as the rantings of a rogue trader with a nutty online following. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission should immediately release the files from its investigation into the supposed manipulation of the silver market so the public can determine whether JPMorganChase and HSBC did anything illegal, with or without the help of the Fed. In addition, the commission should start enforcing the 10 percent threshold on silver positions it has proposed to comply with Dodd-Frank law. Basically, the other commissioners must join with Bart Chilton to do the job they are required to do: Protecting the sanctity of the markets and preventing the sorts of manipulation we’ve seen all too often.

Original Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/a-conspiracy-with-a-silver-lining/?hp

QE3? Top Federal Reserve Officials Think More Quantitative Easing Is Necessary

The end of QE2 is still several months away and yet quite a few top Federal Reserve officials are already hinting that more quantitative easing may be necessary. Apparently the U.S. economy is not moving forward as rapidly as they would like. So it looks like "QE3" could be on the way. But did anyone out there actually believe that quantitative easing would come to a complete stop in June? Whether they call it "QE3" or something else entirely, the reality of the matter is that we have now come to a time when the Federal Reserve is going to be continually purchasing a significant percentage of all new U.S. government debt. This is essentially a gigantic Ponzi scheme, but sadly there is just not enough money in the rest of the world to be able to continue to feed the U.S. government's voracious appetite for debt. Right now Ben Bernanke and his cohorts are trying to break the news to us gently, but anyone with half a brain can see what is happening. The only way for the game to keep going is for the Federal Reserve to print lots more money, and that is going to be incredibly bad for the U.S. economy in the long run.

The other day James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, made national headlines when he declared that Fed officials should "never say never" when it comes to QE3 and more quantitative easing. But the truth is that other Fed officials have been dropping public hints about the "need" for QE3 for several weeks now. Just consider the following quotes from top Federal Reserve officials....

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in response to a question about the potential for QE3 at the National Press Club....

"In the end, we'll just ask the same questions. Where's the economy going, and what do various inflation indicator look like? We'll ask those questions. If unemployment is still too low, then we may continue. If we're moving towards full employment, then we won't need to stimulate more."

William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during a recent speech at New York University....
"The economy can be allowed to grow rapidly for quite some time before there is a real risk that shrinking slack will result in a rise in underlying inflation."

James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis during a recent speech at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce....

"The natural debate now is whether to complete the program, or to taper off to a somewhat lower level of asset purchases. Quantitative easing has been an effective tool, even while the policy rate is near zero. The economic outlook has improved since the program was announced."
Charles Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago during a recent interview with The Financial Times....

"The message that comes out of what I think of as high-quality research on this subject is that policy ought to remain accommodative for really quite a while, even a while after conditions start to improve."
So how in the world did things get to the point where the Federal Reserve feels forced to recklessly print gigantic piles of money?

Well, it didn't happen overnight. Back during the 1980s and 1990s there were many people that desperately tried to warn about what would happen if U.S. government debt was not brought under control.

Unfortunately, our politicians did not heed those warnings.

Today, the U.S. national debt has reached a grand total of $14,137,541,098,872.71. It is 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago. It is the largest single debt in the history of the world.

So why don't our politicians just balance the budget now so that we don't keep having to borrow so much money?

Well, there are some huge problems. First of all, when you combine entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare with interest on the national debt, it comes to approximately 64 percent of all federal government spending.

But that is not the bad news.

In the years ahead, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt are both projected to absolutely explode.

We are rapidly approaching a time when spending on entitlement programs and interest on the national debt will be significantly greater than all of the revenue that the federal government brings in each year. All federal revenues will be spoken for even before a single penny is spent on defense, education, running the government or anything else.

Either entitlement programs are going to have to be seriously reformed or the U.S. government is going to have to come up with a massive amount of extra money from somewhere or the U.S. government is going to have to borrow increasingly large piles of money from someone.

Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions and most of our politicians are scared to death to touch entitlement programs because it will mean that they will lose votes.

But our entitlement programs were never meant to be as massive as they are today. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.

Obviously something has to be done, because the debt that we are passing on to future generations is absolutely criminal.

For example, every single child born in America today inherits $45,000 in U.S. government debt.

Isn't that lovely?

Of course our liberal friends believe that the answer is just to raise taxes.

Oh really?

The truth is that our taxation system is deeply broken.

Small business owners and middle class Americans are being taxed into oblivion while those at the top of the food chain often pay no federal taxes whatsoever.

For example, did you know that Citigroup did not pay a dime of federal taxes in the third quarter? Meanwhile, their executives continue to bring in bonus packages worth millions.

Did you know that even though Boeing receives billions in federal subsidies every year and even though it has a bunch of juicy government contracts it did not pay a single penny in federal corporate income taxes from 2008 to 2010?

Did you know that while Exxon-Mobil did pay $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a single penny went to the U.S. government? Meanwhile, their CEO brought in over 29 million dollars in total compensation that year.

You can find a lot more examples of this phenomenon right here.

Those at the top of the food chain are experts at avoiding federal taxes. So liberals can raise rates all they want but it won't do much good.

As I have written about previously, the truth is that approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in "offshore" banks. The ultra-wealthy and the monolithic predator corporations that dominate the global economy don't mess around when it comes to paying taxes. They don't care if they aren't paying their "fair share". They simply know how to play the game and they laugh at all the rest of us.

The entire system is broken beyond repair and needs to be reconstructed from the ground up.

But of course that simply is not going to happen.

So what can be done?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a major collapse.

Marc Faber, the author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report recently gave a speech in which he declared that the U.S. financial system is in such disastrous shape that only a "reboot" will be able to save it....

"I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it."

But can we just "reboot" the system and expect things to go back to normal?

Of course not.

The truth is that when the rest of the world completely loses faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries the dominoes are going to start to fall. Eventually we are going to see a financial panic that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic. Our economic system will massively implode as all of the gigantic mountains of debt and paper money collapse like a house of cards.

Right now the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to hold the system together by "papering over" all of the mistakes. But in the end it is not going to work. In fact, what we are witnessing now are the very early stages of hyperinflation. A lot of other nations in the past have thought that they could just print their way out of trouble, but many of those "experiments" ended in total disaster.

Marc Faber is certainly right about one thing - all of this money printing is going to give us substantial inflation to go along with the high unemployment that we already have. This is called "stagflation" and anyone that remembers the 1970s knows that it is not a lot of fun.

But the Federal Reserve seems absolutely determined to print more money. Fed officials are doing the same thing now that they did right before QE2. They are dropping hints about QE3 and they are trying to break it to us gently.

Well, it is about time that someone told the American people the truth. All of this money printing is going to end in disaster and so you had better get prepared.

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Original source: 

Ron Paul To Ben Bernanke "I Want A Definition Of Money!"

Who will buy Treasuries when the Fed stops?

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Gold Buying in China Jumps as Inflation Flares, Boosting Demand, UBS Says

 

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March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Francisco Blanch, global head of commodities research at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, talks about the outlook for commodities and the oil and gold markets. Blanch speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday." (Source: Bloomberg)

Gold purchases in China, the world’s largest producer, climbed to 200 metric tons in the first two months of 2011 as faster inflation boosted consumer demand, according to UBS AG, which said the price may gain to $1,500.

“China is the big buyer,” Peter Hickson, global commodities strategist at Switzerland’s largest bank, said by phone yesterday, without giving a comparable figure for 2010. The estimate for the two-month period compares with full-year consumer demand from China of 579.5 tons for last year, according to the World Gold Council, a producer-funded group.

Bullion, which rallied 30 percent last year, surged to a record yesterday as uprisings in the Middle East, quickening inflation and currency debasement boosted global demand. China’s consumer prices rose 4.9 percent in January from a year earlier, exceeding policy makers’ 4 percent ceiling for a fourth month.

“Chinese interest is huge,” said Peter Tse, Hong Kong- based head of precious metals at Bank of Nova Scotia. “Demand for physical gold and imports has increased substantially” due to the Lunar New Year holiday, Tse said today, referring to the week-long break that began Feb. 2.

Immediate-delivery gold was at $1,429.05 an ounce at 5:08 p.m. in Singapore compared with yesterday’s peak of $1,434.93. Yuan-denominated bullion rose 0.5 percent to 303.58 yuan ($46.19) a gram in Shanghai, approaching the record 314 yuan, set Nov. 9.

‘Gold Is Attractive’

“Gold is attractive,” Hickson said. “The more the market becomes concerned about inflation or concerns about unrest in Africa, more and more people will look to gold.” The price may rise to $1,500 an ounce in the next six months, said Hong Kong- based Hickson, who’s worked for UBS since 1996.

Blackstone Group LP’s Byron Wien said in January that gold may rise to more than $1,600 this year “as investors across the world place more of their assets in something they consider ‘real’.” The price may reach $1,600 this year, Wayne Atwell, a managing director at Casimir Capital LP said the same month.

Protests partly linked to record food prices have erupted across North Africa and the Middle East this year, toppling leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and boosting oil prices. Libyan rebels braced for renewed clashes today with forces loyal to leader Muammar Qaddafi. Iranian protesters have clashed with security forces in Tehran, Al Arabiya reported.

Gold investment in China, the largest buyer of the precious metal after India, may gain 40 percent to 50 percent this year amid a lack of alternatives, Wang Lixin, China representative for the World Gold Council, said last month. He called that forecast a “conservative estimate.”

Bars and Coins

China’s investment demand in 2010 jumped 70 percent to 179.9 tons, surpassing Germany and the U.S., as buyers sought out bars and coins, the London-based industry group said. Consumption by the jewelry sector rose to a record 399.7 tons, it said. China imported more than 300 tons last year, People’s Bank of China Vice Governor Yi Gang said on Feb. 26 in Beijing.

China may be the “next big buyer” of gold, driven by institutional and retail demand, Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Tom Kendall said in Cape Town on Feb. 7. “If you’re sitting there in China with money in a deposit account, you’re losing between 1-2 percent a year through inflation,” Kendall said.

The boom in gold demand in China is driven by concern about inflation pressure and the poor performance of alternative investments, the producer-funded council has said. Premier Wen Jiabao pledged on Feb. 27 to boost food supplies to hold down costs, and to tackle surging property prices.

Spooked by Inflation

Jewelers at shopping malls across Beijing are witnessing a gold rush as residents spooked by inflation look to protect their money, the China Daily reported on Feb. 28.

Statistics from Beijing Caibai, the city’s largest jewelry store, show sales of gold and other jewelry have totaled about 4 billion yuan so far this year, a 70 percent increase from a year ago, the report said.

China displaced South Africa as the world’s biggest gold producer in 2007. Imports through last October rose almost fivefold to 209 tons from the total shipped in the previous year, according to the Shanghai Gold Exchange. Mine output reached a record 340 tons last year, the China Gold Association has said.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s biggest lender by market value, started physical-gold linked savings accounts in December with the World Gold Council. Account openings have surpassed 1 million, with more than 12 tons of gold stored on behalf of investors, it has said.

Original link here:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-02/gold-buying-in-china-totals-200-tons-so-far-this-year-ubs-says.html