Thursday, February 11, 2016
Lines Around The Block To Buy Gold In London; Banks Placing "Unusually Large Orders For Physical"
This is the best quarterly performance for Gold in 30 years...
First, let’s look at the improved fundamentals. Gold bugs will exasperatingly proclaim that fundamentals have been great for the past four years yet the price plunged anyway, so who cares about fundamentals? To this I would respond with two observations. First, large institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds have been anticipating a rate hike cycle for a very long time now. They didn’t know when, but they expected it. The fact that the gold bugs never believed this is irrelevant; what matters is that big money believed it, and it was perceived to be very gold negative. In their minds, this anticipated rate hike cycle would confirm that things were getting back to normal, and if things are normal you don’t need to own gold, right?The problem is that this assumption is quickly being called into question. Sure the Fed hiked rates once, but it is starting to look more and more like a policy error. Meanwhile, other major central banks around the world are going in the opposite direction, toward negative rates. I am a huge believer in market psychology, and the psychology dominating the minds of most institutional investors over the past few years has been that things were slowly getting back to normal. This has weighed on institutional demand for gold in a big way, and been a meaningful factor in the bear market (manipulation aside). If this psychology shifts, the shift back into gold could be very meaningful.While that backdrop is interesting in its own right, what may make the move into gold that much more explosive is the lack of alternative investments…– From the February 3, 2016 post: GOLD – It’s Time to Pay Attention
What a difference a couple of weeks can make. The Telegraph is reporting the following:
BullionByPost, Britain’s biggest online gold dealer, said it has already taken record-day sales of £5.6m as traders pile into gold following fears the world is on the brink of another financial crisis.Rob Halliday-Stein, founder and managing director of the Birmingham-based company, said takings today had already surpassed the firm’s previous one-day record of £4.4m in October 2014.BullionByPost, which takes orders of up to £25,000 on the website but takes higher amounts over the phone, explained it had received a few hundred orders overnight and frantic numbers of phone calls this morning.“The bullion market has been building with interest since the end of last year but this morning things have gone bananas,” said Mr Halliday-Stein. “Some London banks are placing unusually large orders for physical gold.”London-based ATS Bullion added it had been inundated with orders for the past week. The firm has sold 4,000 gold bars and coins since February 1, a 40pc rise on the same period a year ago when it sold 1,500.“It’s been crazy – it’s been the best week since 2012. We’ve had people queuing round the block,” said Michael Cooper of ATS Bullion, a family run firm that trades online and also from an outlet in the West End.
But that’s just part of the story. As reported by the World Gold Council, the buying really started to pick up in the fourth quarter, courtesy of the Chinese and central banks. Reuters notes:
Buying by central banks as well as Chinese investors seeking protection from a weakening currency helped lift demand for gold in the final quarter of last year and the trend looks set to continue, the World Gold Council said on Thursday.Chinese demand for gold coins surged 25 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as consumers sought to protect their wealth after Beijing devalued the yuan currency. But stock market turmoil and a slowing economy knocked consumer sentiment and Chinese demand for gold for jewelry fell 3 percent from a year earlier, WGC said.Central banks have been buying gold to diversify their reserves away from the U.S. dollar and their purchases edged up to 588.4 tonnes last year, second only to a record high 625.5 tonnes in 2013, the report showed.Central bank buying accelerated sharply in the second half of last year and jumped 25 percent in the fourth quarter, from a year earlier, as the need to diversify was reinforced by falling oil prices and reduced confidence in the global economy, WGC said.Chinese demand for gold totaled 985 tonnes last year, followed by India on 849 tonnes. They accounted for nearly 45 percent of total global demand, with consumer demand up 2 percent and 1 percent respectively in those countries.
Think about the lack of gold buying from the U.S. relative to its global wealth and it becomes quite easy to see where the fuel for the next bull market will come from.
Meanwhile, on the supply side…
Global supply of gold fell 4 percent last year to 4,258 tonnes, partly because of slower mine production.Mining companies have scaled back since 2013 in a bid to slash costs and mine production shrank in the fourth quarter of 2015, the first quarterly contraction since 2008, WGC said.
* * *
Keep in mind, all of the above is nothing compared to what may happen in China once gold fever returns to the mainland like in 2013, as Caixin profiled before:
Credit to Zero Hedge
What Are Your Odds of Surviving the UWEX 16 Concentration Camps?
Why aren’t the Syrians being relocated to one of these camps? Is it because the American people would be out of striking distance? Maybe it’s because the honored guests in these facilities are going to be Christians. One of the main emphasis for UWEX 16, is FEMA camp incarceration.
I am in possession of insider informations which speaks to the emphasis UWEX 16, AKA Jade Helm 2, is going to be placed upon mass arrests and FEMA camp incarceration. Within 60 days, I predict the independent media will be obsessed with this information. In the interim, while there is still a chance to do something about this, crickets will chirp and valuable time will be lost.
I find it ludicrous how the country has been conditioned to laugh at any kind of conspiracy theory, as if two evil men would never get together and conspire to do anything. The refusal of Americans to recognize these dangers, and dismiss them as merely wild-eyed conspiracy theories, speaks to how dumbed down our people have become due to a substandard education system and through the controlled corporate media in which only five corporations own over 95% of the entire media industrial complex.
The Trigger Event
Every act of civil disobedience, every act of revolution and every act of tyrannical genocide committed by government, requires a trigger event. For the Nazis, this trigger event included burning down the Reichstag building and blaming the Communists as an excuse to declare martial law. What will be the trigger event for the coming genocidal holocaust committed against American citizens? No one can say for sure. However, history has proven that government gun confiscations from private citizens are the chest pains prior to the heart attack. In the 20th century, there were 17 major genocides committed against civilian populations resulting in a death toll of around 60 million people. Every one of these genocides was preceded by gun confiscation which rendered the intended victims defenseless against the slaughter that awaited them.
It is widely known, that the Obama administration signed the UN Gun Ban Treaty. If he is unable to ram it through Congress, as he is tried before, he is very likely to codify gun control through executive order and he has recently threatened to do just that. When gun confiscation comes, it’s time for people like you and me to run for the hills because if you are caught and sent to a FEMA “re-education” camp, you are probably not coming out alive.
Control of communications is also a necessary prerequisite to carry out tyranny against a civilian population. We know that the globalists corporations control 95% of the establishment media. So, that goal has already been accomplished. However the one medium of communication exchange not under the control of the New World Order, is the Internet. In the same proximity of time that we will see gun control introduced into American society on a widespread basis, one can expect the Internet to be taken down and tightly censored as it is in China. The New American Magazine has reported that Obama has given the codes to the DNS servers, for the Internet, to the United Nations. If this is correct, we are not going to have to wait long for this insanity to unfold. And of course, should all else fail, I don’t doubt for a second that this administration will not hesitate to roll out a false flag attack as a prelude to the declaration of martial law and seize American guns under this pretext.
Are You Ready?
Are you ready for the coming tyrannical crackdown and the complete evisceration of our constitutional liberties? Have you taken the proper precautions that will ensure the safety of you and your family? It is not likely that very many of us have taken any meaningful steps to maximize our chances for survival in what will prove to be humanity’s darkest days. Do you have what it takes to survive in a FEMA camp?
When the FEMA bus rolls into your neighborhood, are you prepared to deal with what lies ahead? Let’s assume for a moment that martial law is declared and you were not able to find a safe sanctuary. Subsequently, you are arrested by the powers that be. Your family will be separated by the authorities as a prelude to sending you to a FEMA camp, and that means that men will go to one facility and women will go to another. Children will have their own facility awaiting them. In all likelihood, this will mark the last time you will ever see your family. How do I know this? Read the Rex 84 documents.
Imagine how a man who is deprived of everyone he has ever cared about, and at the same time this man has lost his house and all of his possessions, how will he survive? There are two primary dangers facing detainees. The first is bad luck. The second danger is the loss of hope. Victor Frankl, the renowned psychiatrist, who spent four years in Auschwitz, thought that the loss of hope was the number one factor associated with prisoner mortality in a concentration camp detention situation. How will you find meaning in your life when you’re separated from everything you’ve ever known and loved?
In the previous days as a history instructor, I used to have survivors of the Holocaust come and speak to my students. Subsequently, I asked all of these former death camp prisoners, what was the number one factor in their survival? Almost to a person, they stated the number one factor in their survival was luck. I was told that the Nazis would herd people to the showers which they knew was a death trap, and they were the next in line, but were turned away, because the quota had been met. It just wasn’t their day to die.
If you are sent to a FEMA camp, there are things you can do to exercise control over the things of which you have influence. The Jews were a very resilient people and were able to manufacture their own subculture. There were those, however, that did resist as they ran from the relocation trains, and/or attacked their captors. In almost every instance, resisting the authorities at the time of arrest, was almost 100% fatal.
For those who arrived at the death camps, a vibrant subculture appeared as the people played cards and actors, musicians, comics, singers, and dancers all entertained small groups who came together for a few hours to forget their daily terror and despair. Singers and poets also perform their craft as well. And of course, people continue to pray even though it was against the rules. People formed bonds with each other, developed a level of affection and respect. In short, they replaced the loss of primary family associations with people facing imminent death every day. The lesson is clear, if you’re ever forced into a FEMA camp, pray for good luck and foster relationships among your fellow detainees and find pleasure in the small things over which you will have some measure of control.
Organized Resistance Within the Camp
What about organizing a resistance in the FEMA camps, would that work? The history lesson which can be derived, from this question, is not promising. In Treblinka, seven hundred Jews were successful in blowing up the camp on August 2, 1943. All but 150 of the inmates perished in retaliation for their efforts. Only 12 Treblinka inmates survived the war. In Sobibor, Jewish and Russian inmates mounted an escape on October 14, 1943. One in ten successfully escaped, about 60 out of 600. The prisoners involved in the escape survived to join the Soviet underground. In Auschwitz, on October 7, 1944, one of the four crematoria was blown up by Jewish workers, whose job it was to clear away the bodies of gas chamber victims. The workers were all caught and killed.
The lesson seems clear, if you allow yourself to be transported to a FEMA camp, you’re probably not coming out alive. Therefore, since resistance within the camp is largely futile, you have three options. One, do not get caught. Two, you can choose to acquiesce and hope your compliance and your search for meaning, within the experience, is successful. Three, you can try to escape. To survive by going along to get along, requires a fair amount of luck to survive. From my perspective, I believe history teaches that mounting an organized escape effort may be the best chance for survival that an inmate has for coming out of the death camp experience, alive.
Will You and Your Community
Resist the Tyranny?
Despite the stereotype which betrays all Jews as willing and meekly going to their slaughter, is not totally accurate. There are plenty of examples where the Jews met force with force and refused to be subjugated. For example, on September 3, 1942, seven hundred Jewish families escaped from the Tuchin Ghetto, located in Ukraine. However, the Nazis hunted them down, and only 15 survived.
By 1943, the ghetto residents, in the famous Warsaw Ghetto, had organized an army of about 1,000 men, mostly unarmed and without military equipment. In January 1943, German soldiers entered the ghetto to round up more Jews for shipment to the death camps. They were met by a volley of bombs, Molotov cocktails, and a few bullets from the sparse number of firearms which had been smuggled into the ghettos. Twenty German soldiers were killed. The action encouraged a few members of the Polish resistance to support the uprising, and a few machine guns, some hand grenades, and about a hundred rifles and revolvers were smuggled in.
The Nazis returned with almost 3,000 crack German troops and eventually overcame the resistance and about 300 Germans were killed. Jewish losses were estimated at 15,000. Some Jews survived and some actually did escape, but not many.
Conclusion
In the above paragraphs, you can see why I get so upset when my government is actively practicing to mass arrest citizens while simultaneously housing them in FEMA camps. I know my history.
According to the lessons of history, there can be no question that being sent to a concentration camp (i.e. FEMA camp) is an almost certain death sentence. We have seen that resistance at the point of arrest is futile. Armed and organized resistance which includes community involvement, produces long odds for survival, but some do survive. Resisting captors inside of the concentration camp, by any means necessary, is nearly fatal in every case. Acquiescing to authority, while one carves out a life under very dire circumstances, provides the best chance for survival. However, under these conditions, one’s survival is highly dependent on being lucky.
To the doubters, I would ask you this: If your government wasn’t planning to incarcerate millions, then why were the camps built? Why is there is legislation covering the camps? Why is UWEX 16 rehearsing these snatch and grab scenarios?
The best chance for survival if you are ever transported to a FEMA camp, is to avoid being caught in the first place.
Credit to Common Sense
Saudi Arabia Makes "Final" Decision To Send Troops To Syria As US, Russia Spar Over Aleppo Strikes
As you might have heard, the opposition in Syria is in serious trouble.
Last summer, Bashar al-Assad’s army was on the ropes, as the SAA fought a multi-front war against a dizzying array of rebel forces including ISIS. Then Quds commander Qassem Soleimani went to Russia. After that, everything changed.
As of September 30 the Russian air force began flying combat missions from Latakia, rolling back rebel gains and paving the way for a Hezbollah ground offensive. Once Moscow had stopped the bleeding for the SAA (both figuratively and literally), Iran called up Shiite militias from Iraq who, alongside Hassan Nasrallah’s forces, pushed north towards Aleppo.
Now, the city is surrounded and the rebels are cut off from their supply line to Turkey. In short: it’s just a matter of time before the opposition is routed.
So much for President Obama’s “Russia will get itself into a quagmire” line.
The only thing that can save the rebels at this juncture is a direct intervention by the groups’ Sunni benefactors including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Turkey.
That, or an intervention by the US.
Both the Saudis and the Turkey have hinted at ground invasions over the past two weeks and just this morning, a sokesman said Riyadh's decision to send in troops was "final."
But direct interventions are tricky. Russia has never denied it intends to bolster Syrian government forces against the rebels, all of whom Moscow deems “terrorists.” On the other hand, Washington, Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara cling to the notion that while they don’t support Assad, they’re primary goal is to fight ISIS. Well ISIS is in Raqqa, which is nowhere near Aleppo, meaning there’s no way to help the rebels out in their fight against the Russians, Iranians, and Hezbollah under the guise of battling Islamic State.
Against that backdrop we found it interesting that Moscow and Washington are now delivering conflicting accounts of airstrikes in Aleppo on Wednesday. The Pentagon, without specifying what time the strikes allegedly took place, says Russia destroyed the city’s two main hospitals.
Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov notes that Warren didn’t provide either hospitals’ coordinates, or the time of the airstrikes, or sources of information. “Absolutely nothing,” he said, describing Warren’s report.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, says US warplanes conducted strikes at 1355 Moscow time. “Two U.S. Air Force A-10 attack aircraft entered Syrian airspace from Turkish territory,” Konashenkov said in a statement. “Reaching Aleppo by the most direct path, they made strikes against objects in the city.”
“Only aviation of the anti-ISIS coalition flew over the city yesterday,” he added.
“When asked on Wednesday whether the U.S.-led coalition could do more to help rebels in Aleppo or improve access for humanitarian aid to the city, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said that the coalition's focus remained on fighting Islamic State,” Reuters wrote on Thursday. The group is "virtually non-existent in that part of Syria,” Warren said.
Right. Which makes you wonder what two US Air Force A-10 attack planes were doing bombing in and around Aleppo. Is the US set to conduct airstrikes in support of the rebels, thus marking a fresh and exceptionally dangerous escalation of hostilities in the country?
As for what exactly it was that the US warplanes struck, Konashenkov will have to get back to us. He’s too busy winning a war to care right now:
“I’m going to be honest with you: we did not have enough time to clarify what exactly those nine objects bombed out by US planes in Aleppo yesterday were. We will look more carefully."
* * *
Below, find excerpts from “Will Russian Victories In Syria Spark A Regional War?” by Yaroslav Trofimov as originally published in WSJ
Defying U.S. predictions of a quagmire in Syria, Russia is achieving strategic victories there with this month’s Aleppo offensive. The question now is whether this is a turning point that hastens the five-year war’s end or the trigger for a counter-escalation that will drag other regional countries into the conflict.
Few expect that Moscow’s main target—the moderate rebels backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.—would now be forced settle the conflict on the Kremlin’s, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s, terms.
“Their victory in Aleppo is not the end of the war. It’s the beginning of a new war,” said Moncef Marzouki, who served in 2011-14 as the president of Tunisia, the nation that kicked off the Arab Spring, and who recently visited the Turkish-Syrian border. “Now, everybody would intervene.”
To be sure, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have few easy options to counter Russian military might in Syria. But because of national pride—and internal politics—neither can really afford to have the rebel cause in which they have invested so much wiped out by Moscow and its Iranian allies.
While the Obama administration has long been determined to minimize U.S. involvement there, for Turkey and Saudi Arabia the prospect of Syria falling under the sway of Russia and Iran would be a national-security catastrophe.
“The whole situation, not just for Turkey but for the entire Middle East, would be reshaped. The Western influence will fade away. The question is: Can we accept Russia, and the Iranians, calling the tune in the region?” said Umit Pamir, a former Turkish ambassador to NATO and the United Nations.
Credit to Zero Hedge
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)