Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
August 4, 2015
August 31, 2012
Poverty in Europe on the rise
From Bloomberg:
Paulo Oliveira and his wife sold their wedding rings to pay the rent after he lost his job as a builder last month. They were the couple’s last pieces of jewelry.
“We have no more gold to save us from being kicked out this month,” the 46-year-old said as he stood in the area of downtown Lisbon popular with cash-for-gold stores. “Everyone I know is struggling, even the gold stores are empty because nobody has any more gold left to sell.”
“Business has gone from great to terrible in a matter of months,” Luis Almeida, whose family has owned a gold store near Lisbon’s Rossio Square for more than 40 years, said in an interview. “The sad truth is that most of my clients have already sold all of their gold rings.”
Portugal’s gold exports increased by more than five times to 519.4 million euros last year from 102.1 million euros in 2009, according to data published on the Lisbon-based National Statistics Institute’s website.
From The Globe and Mail:
Times are now so tough that Valerio Novelli, a ticket inspector on Rome’s buses, is planning to sell his old gold teeth.
“I can’t get to the end of the month without running up debts,” said Mr. Novelli, 56.
In a country suffering from economic crisis, buying gold off desperate people has become one of the few boom industries.
People are barely surviving based on the gold passed down from generation to generation.
The pawnbrokers, by contrast, can hardly keep up with business. They normally have the gold quickly melted down and sent abroad, making it one of Italy’s fastest growing exports. Official gold sales to Switzerland leaped 65 per cent last year to 120 tonnes, up from 73 tonnes in 2010 and 64 tonnes in 2009.
Read The Globe and Mail article here.
That’s not just gold being exported, that is wealth being exported!
Paulo Oliveira and his wife sold their wedding rings to pay the rent after he lost his job as a builder last month. They were the couple’s last pieces of jewelry.
“We have no more gold to save us from being kicked out this month,” the 46-year-old said as he stood in the area of downtown Lisbon popular with cash-for-gold stores. “Everyone I know is struggling, even the gold stores are empty because nobody has any more gold left to sell.”
“Business has gone from great to terrible in a matter of months,” Luis Almeida, whose family has owned a gold store near Lisbon’s Rossio Square for more than 40 years, said in an interview. “The sad truth is that most of my clients have already sold all of their gold rings.”
Portugal’s gold exports increased by more than five times to 519.4 million euros last year from 102.1 million euros in 2009, according to data published on the Lisbon-based National Statistics Institute’s website.
From The Globe and Mail:
Times are now so tough that Valerio Novelli, a ticket inspector on Rome’s buses, is planning to sell his old gold teeth.
“I can’t get to the end of the month without running up debts,” said Mr. Novelli, 56.
In a country suffering from economic crisis, buying gold off desperate people has become one of the few boom industries.
People are barely surviving based on the gold passed down from generation to generation.
The pawnbrokers, by contrast, can hardly keep up with business. They normally have the gold quickly melted down and sent abroad, making it one of Italy’s fastest growing exports. Official gold sales to Switzerland leaped 65 per cent last year to 120 tonnes, up from 73 tonnes in 2010 and 64 tonnes in 2009.
Read The Globe and Mail article here.
That’s not just gold being exported, that is wealth being exported!
October 18, 2011
April 20, 2011
How Italy tricked its entry into the Euro
Image via WikipediaLTCM was a hedge fund founded by bond guru John Meriwether which suffered a spectacular collapse in 1998 and was subsequently bailed out by consortium of banks at the behest of the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve. Fed and Treasury officials argued at the time that the bailout was necessary because the collapse of LTCM posed systemic implications for the global financial system. Here’s why:
When sovereign gold is lent / leased – it is generally sold into the market to raise cash balances.
The Italians were lending / leasing their sovereign gold and investing the proceeds with LTCM. Italy was no doubt attempting to reverse their sagging fortunes with their substantial sovereign gold holdings due to the reality that their gold holdings were only losing value over that time frame.
The declining gold price was effectively preventing Italy from qualyfing for the Euro by negatively impacting the value of their reserves.
This would have made the Italians highly agreeable to any proposal to help reverse or alleviate that reality.
Thinking that LTCM was infallible – owing to them having a couple of Nobel laureates on staff and also being predisposed to playing fast-and-easy with their gold accounts – Italy still wasn’t done. Next up was a gold loan / lease – arranged by bullion bankers [like Goldman Sachs]. The proceeds were invested in LTCM in the belief they would earn the ‘magical gains’ that LTCM had been delivering to their investors.
When LTCM failed, they had to be bailed out because a public bankruptcy would have:
A] exposed the Italian manipulation of their sovereign gold [which did aid and abet in a wider – globally coordinated - gold price suppression]
B] that Italy was playing “financial accounting tricks” to qualify for the Euro
February 22, 2011
Libya crisis threatening to derail economy
Image via WikipediaThe price of gold jumped $17.60 an ounce today to $1406 an ounce– much nearer its previous peak over $1420. Silver, as well, jumped over $2.00 an ounce to $33.91, precisely the scenario to make silver traders ecstatic. Meanwhile, crude oil, the commodity most directly affected by the intense political unrest, ran up over 5% in price in London to $107.60 a barrel. The last time oil sold at this level was in 2008, just on the eve of an approaching bubble at the $148 a barrel level.
read more here
April 17, 2009
American Bankruptcy is approaching!
It is quite clear from recent authoritative sources that what the Czech president described as a "way to hell" is months away.
Before leaving his office he decided to speak out his mind on Obama's bail out plan which is increasing debts to a level never reached before, he described his bail out plan as way to hell, which could fundamentally cause again the same bubble that was at the origin of this mess.
The scary part though are the recent declarations of China, which is very worried for their massive investments in USA, of course since Fed started to print money like there is no tomorrow everyone should be worried of the sustainability of this plan.
The best description of the hell that will fall on American heads in some months and subsequently on the entire world cannot be better resumed than by Ambrose Evans:
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said.
ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html
Despite the reassurances of Obama and his Wall St. friends, the economy is rotting away day by day and reckon time is approaching!
No doubt massive default will occur, we still have to see how will it be managed and who will pay the stepeest price. FDR described the Great Depression as a great redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, I doubt this time it will be different, the robber barons of capitalism and their political cronies and puppets will suck away any wealth left. Destitution, violence and chaos will reach incredible levels.
Be ready for this summer, August and September are going to be extremely HOT!!
Before leaving his office he decided to speak out his mind on Obama's bail out plan which is increasing debts to a level never reached before, he described his bail out plan as way to hell, which could fundamentally cause again the same bubble that was at the origin of this mess.
The scary part though are the recent declarations of China, which is very worried for their massive investments in USA, of course since Fed started to print money like there is no tomorrow everyone should be worried of the sustainability of this plan.
The best description of the hell that will fall on American heads in some months and subsequently on the entire world cannot be better resumed than by Ambrose Evans:
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds. "We have lent a huge amount of money to the US, so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," he said.
ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html
Despite the reassurances of Obama and his Wall St. friends, the economy is rotting away day by day and reckon time is approaching!
No doubt massive default will occur, we still have to see how will it be managed and who will pay the stepeest price. FDR described the Great Depression as a great redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, I doubt this time it will be different, the robber barons of capitalism and their political cronies and puppets will suck away any wealth left. Destitution, violence and chaos will reach incredible levels.
Be ready for this summer, August and September are going to be extremely HOT!!
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