Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Silver Train Has Left The Station



As I sit down to type this, Silver has just cleared $19.00 an ounce. Squeeze dem Rat Bastids balls! +1,049,289 ounces of Silver were delivered to the COMEX warehouse today. You borrow Silver, you gotta pay it back.

The Silver chart above was made as Silver soared mid-day today as the US Dollar swooned and Oil broke to new all-time highs. Silver has since blown thru the top of all three trend channels in this monstrous move higher. Traders, protect your profits, investors enjoy the ride. There is no IMF Silver...

To the headlines now:

Energy, food push January's PPI 1% higher
Year-over-year increase highest since 1981; monthly core PPI up 0.4%

The high prices at the wholesale level will add to concern that the nation's economic slowdown is doing little to ease inflationary pressures, with implications for the Federal Reserve and monetary policy.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke will discuss the inflation statistics on Wednesday when he delivers his monetary policy report to Congress.

"It will be hard for Mr. Bernanke to testify...and hold to the fiction of inflation as under control and the Fed as master of tamed inflation expectations," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics.


I don't care what Capt. Ben has to say to Congress, I just want to see if his nose grows any longer.


Americans are 'financially illiterate'

Americans don't understand debt, which may be one reason that they have too much of it, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The survey presented 1,000 people with a hypothetical scenario about credit card debt and asked them to compute how long it would take to pay it off. Only 35.9% of the 1,000 respondents could figure out how many years it would take for the amount they owe on their credit cards to double. A full 18.2% did not know how to respond and 31.9% of those surveyed over-estimated the timeframe.

Of those polled, 26% said they consider the debt they are carrying to be unmanageable, while 61% said their debt level was "just right."

Only in a "Goldilocks Economy" could 61% of Americans say their debt level was "just right". This news is priceless.


Gold Bugs Could Call IMF’s Bluff

...if the IMF receives a go-ahead from the U.S. to sell 400 tonnes of bullion from its inventory. The prospect surfaced yesterday when it was revealed that the Treasury Department apparently has been lobbying Congress to approve the sale, proposed last May by the IMF to cover a widening income shortfall. At a current price of around $939 an ounce, the auction would raise a little more than $12 billion.

That may sound like a lot of money, but in comparison to, say, the quarterly losses that any number of large banks have reported recently, it would be barely enough to shore up the books of even one of them for more than a few months. But those 400 metric tons of gold would look microscopically small in comparison to pent-up demand for bullion from the very largest buyers, most particularly sovereign governments that hold sizable dollar reserves and who presumably are eager to hedge them against further erosion in value.



Bernanke's Recession Is Here: 11 Reasons It Will Last Till 2011

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. -- Remember that hot 1973 Stealer's Wheel song marking the end of the Nixon era? "'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you!"

It's still a perfect metaphor. Testifying before Congress: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the left. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the right. The American public stuck in the middle.

Last summer they assured us the subprime-credit crisis was "contained." We now know that was a big lie. They knew, had the facts, early warnings, lied and are still lying. More proof? They just told Congress: "America will avoid a recession." New data tells a different story.


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