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CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: John Williams, The “Recovery” Faked By Phony Gov. Numbers. John Williams, of Shadowstats, stated in his latest commentary, “The recovery is an illusion.” There are two graphs in this piece from Williams, which show highly manipulated and phony government GDP reporting versus the inflation corrected real GDP. The difference between the two graphs is a shocking revelation of government propaganda at its best. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/726cgz9

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Check Out How Much Less Money Americans Are Making Than Before The Crash. This chart from Bill McBride at Calculated Risk shows one reason why the economy is still sputtering along: Because Americans are still making much less money than they were before the recession. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/75tr2n9

-CHART OF THE WEEK: How Many Minutes A McDonald’s Employee Has To Work In Order To Afford A Big Mac. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/845b28x

-The U.S. faces numerous “cliffs” at the end of 2012 when the George W. Bush tax cuts expire: More than $1.1 trillion will be cut from the budget, about half of which will come from defense because of the infamous “sequester” of last year; the payroll tax cut will expire, as will the “patch” in the alternate minimum tax. “If you add all those up,” “it’s probably $7 trillion worth of economic events that are going to occur in December. And there’s been little to no planning for that.” Erskine Bowles Co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s budget-deficit commission

-US Economy Faces Risk of ‘Fiscal Cliff’: Fed Officials. Two Federal Reserve officials warned that the U.S. could be heading for a “fiscal cliff” at year’s end if mandated tax increases and spending cuts are implemented. Charles Evans of the Chicago Fed called the cliff a “big uncertainty” while Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said there could be a “financial shock” if markets begin to anticipate that Congress and the White House do little to address this situation. The expected tax increases and spending cuts were triggered when a congressional “super committee” failed to come up with a way of closing the federal budget deficit. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cxgbweh

-US Treasurys Are ‘Junk,’ Dollar Headed for Collapse: Peter Schiff. The greenback and the U.S. bond market are headed for a collapse as the U.S. Federal Reserve loses the ability to service the nation’s debt with “artificially low” interest rates, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital told CNBC. “Unfortunately, we are going to get more QE than Rocky movies, because the only thing keeping this phony economy going is this QE,” he said. “And the minute you take it away, it’s going to collapse.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/79u36js

-We Are in Age of ‘Late Great Depression’: Robert Shiller. The world is in a state of “late Great Depression,” and is in a “new age of austerity,” well-known economist and author Shiller told CNBC. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqnfbxg

-‘Ocean’ of Credit Will Boost Growth, but Carries Risks: Bill Gross. Central bank policies will induce growth in developed countries this year but will create inflationary risks down the road, Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, said in his regular monthly letter to investors. He reiterated that investors should target bonds “in the five-year range” and stocks that pay dividends around three to four percent. He also recommends real assets and commodities. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c27cdox

-Jim Rogers: The Next Economic Slowdown Is Coming And It’s Going To Be Much Worse. Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/796czku

-Hugh Hendry: My Greatest Fear Is That Europe Will Confiscate My Assets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/792guy5

-Bill Black: Our System is So Flawed That Fraud is Mathematically Guaranteed. Read and listen to more here-http://tinyurl.com/6ofqgsj

-Marin Katusa: The Media Won’t Touch This Story About The End Of The US Dollar. There’s a major shift under way, one the US mainstream media has left largely untouched even though it will send the United States into an economic maelstrom and dramatically reduce the country’s importance in the world: the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89twrfe

-Falling Government Spending. Government’s contribution to gross domestic product is slipping. Government consumption expenditures and investment fell by $51.7 billion to an annualized $2.462 trillion, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year declines. A fall in government spending, which was driven by defense cuts, was a big reason for the slower pace of gross domestic product growth in the first quarter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8y2y95

-Greg Hunter: The Illusion of an Economic Recovery. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cag5dyd

-Economy Face Off: Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/7e4zxah

-Krugman Says Fed ‘Reckless’ to Allow High Jobless Rate. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman suggested Federal Reserve policy makers led by Ben S. Bernanke are “reckless” for refusing to pursue higher inflation, which he said could lower U.S. unemployment. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c3vltzk

-The 86 million invisible unemployed. Last year, 86 million Americans were not counted in the labor force because they didn’t keep up a regular job search. Most of them were either under age 25 or over age 65. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/76cux2d

-Payroll Survey Signals U.S. Jobs Slowing as Orders Drop. Private employment increased by 119,000, the smallest gain in seven months, after rising by 201,000 in March, Roseland, New Jersey-based ADP Employer Services said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/78wb48w

-U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas. Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/82tavmw

-No End in Sight to Global Jobs Crisis: UN Agency. Fiscal austerity and tough labor reforms have failed to create jobs, leading to an “alarming” situation in the global employment market that shows no sign of recovering, the International Labour Organization. In advanced countries, especially in Europe, employment is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels of 2008 until the end of 2016 two years later than it previously predicted in line with a slowdown in production.

An estimated 196 million people were unemployed worldwide at the end of last year, forecast to rise to 202 million in 2012 for a rate of 6.1 percent, according to the United Nations agency’s annual flagship report, “World of Work Report 2012″. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnky825

-The No Retirement Plan: More And More Americans Plan To Work Forever. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6nwrva5

-Obama Fails to Stem Middle-Class Slide He Blamed on Bush. Barack Obama campaigned four years ago assailing President George W. Bush for wage losses suffered by the middle class. More than three years into Obama’s own presidency, those declines have only deepened.

The rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s has generated relatively few of the moderately skilled jobs that once supported the middle class, tightening the financial squeeze on many Americans, even those who are employed. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/88a4srh

-Banking regulators shutter five banks across U.S. Federal and state banking regulators shut down five banks across the country on Friday, bringing the total number of bank failures this year to 22, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said. Two of the failed banks were in Maryland. The others were located in Minnesota, South Carolina, and California. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5hlabq

-Canadians Dominate World’s 10 Strongest Banks. Banks from Citigroup Inc. in the U.S. to BNP Paribas SA in France are racing to shed assets and raise money ahead of new global capital rules that start taking effect in 2015. For Canadian lenders, these moves have created the opportunity to go on a shopping spree. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/76aoj5v

-This Meal Will Cost You $200,000 By Retirement. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7zfhzcf

-Inflation Gone Wild: Look How Much Cheaper Everything Used To Be. The dollar has lost 90 percent of its value since the early 1900s. This dramatic devaluation has crushed anyone who kept money in cash, and it has hurt workers when wages failed to keep up with inflation. There’s also a psychological impact for Americans who can remember when a bottle of Coke cost only 5 cents. It’s not surprising people are obsessed with gold these days. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qfuy5j

-Indonesia’s Inflation Accelerates to Seven-Month High of 4.5%. Indonesia’s inflation accelerated to a seven-month high in April, rising above 4 percent and putting pressure on the central bank to hold off on further cuts in interest rates. Consumer prices rose 4.5 percent last month from a year earlier, the Central Bureau of Statistics said in Jakarta. That compares with a 3.97 percent increase reported in March. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85×6sh6

-Simon Black: The Combination Of Austerity And Liquidity Can Lead To Only One Thing. But there is one outcome from the 1970s that is genuinely to be feared the risk of which seems to be rising every day, if it has not indeed already arrived: Stagflation.

Stagflation the utterly painful combination of stagnating growth and steep inflation that marked the 1970s and will be the natural side effect of extended central bank quantitative easing during a period of widespread deleveraging. In other words, stagflation is the consequence of printing money that nobody wants.

Moreover, an outbreak of serious stagflation will decimate conventionally managed debt and equity portfolios. And given that most people invest with the crowd, with conventional investments or conventionally managed portfolios, stagflation will wipe the savings and livelihoods from untold masses. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bsub9a3

-ECB leaves rates steady but hints at future cut. European Central Bank officials voted Thursday to hold interest rates steady, even as the euro area economy slides towards recession. But ECB president Mario Draghi appeared to hint that there could be rate cuts in the future. In a widely expected move, the ECB left its main overnight lending rate at 1%, a level the bank has maintained since late last year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cswv2l8

-Australia Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate by Half Point. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point as inflation pressures abate, delivering a bigger-than-forecast reduction that sent the local dollar and bond yields tumbling. Governor Glenn Stevens and his board slashed the overnight cash rate target to a two-year low of 3.75 percent from 4.25 percent, the deepest reduction in three years. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bog4kha

-Bolivia Seizes Unit of Spanish Power Company Red Electrica. Bolivia is nationalizing the local assets of Spain’s Red Electrica Corp., giving the government control of the Andean nation’s power grid two weeks after neighboring Argentina seized its biggest oil company. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/buxltlm

-Drivers Pay Secret Road Tax in $15 Billion for Car Repair. The U.S. Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for road and transit projects in Washington and all 50 states, has been bailed out by Congress three times since 2008 for a total of $34.5 billion.

The gasoline tax that supports the fund hasn’t been raised in 19 years, and with the cost of materials such as steel and asphalt on the rise, the fund is expected to have a deficit of about $10 billion this year. Car owners already are shelling out far more than that to repair damage done to their vehicles by America’s ruined streets and highways, industry and academic researchers say.

Motorists pay $67 billion annually for increased fuel consumption, body dents, worn tires and premature wear wrought by pitted roads, according to The Road Information Program, a Washington-based research group. That works out to $324 per licensed driver, says Frank Moretti, TRIP’s director of policy and research. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cxb6lg4

-Russia threatens to strike NATO missile defense sites. Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would pre-emptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall.

“A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6utf64c

-Roubini: Iran is the greatest looming threat. Nouriel Roubini gives an audience no shortage of scenarios to keep them up at night, but his number one worry right now is the looming threat of Iran building nuclear weapons. Specifically, it’s the risk of a confrontation between Israel and Iran, or the United States and Iran, Roubini told Michael Milken in front of hundreds of onlookers at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c87ro6z

-Bin Laden worried he wasn’t in control, documents show. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7xqr6s8

-Documents reveal al Qaeda’s plans for seizing cruise ships, carnage in Europe. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lup7wd

-Madoff Costs Surpass Victim Payouts as Strategy Fails. Irving Picard, who said last year he hoped to pay investors in Bernard Madoff’s defunct firm as much as $65 billion, has only put his hands on about $2.6 billion to actually give back to customers. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c34mryy

-One in seven thinks end of world is coming: poll. Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012, according to a new poll. The end of the Mayan calendar, which spans about 5,125 years, on December 21, 2012 has sparked interpretations and suggestions that it marks the end of the world. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c6b8b4z

-Report warns of weather satellites’ ‘rapid decline.’ Predicting the weather is tricky enough. Now a new government-sponsored report warns that the USA’s ability to track tornadoes, forecast hurricanes and study climate change is about to diminish. The number and capability of weather satellites circling the planet “is beginning a rapid decline” and tight budgets have significantly delayed or eliminated missions to replace them, says a National Research Council analysis out Wednesday. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6rov356

-Class of 2012: Not so different from mom and dad. Most in the class of 2012 were born in 1990 a year when automakers struggled and gas prices climbed to almost $2 a gallon. They grew up with Harry Potter but without rotary phones and spent more time texting and less time talking. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bmbpevk

-Here’s What Apple Could Buy With Its Huge 110 Billion Cash Pile. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7o98adv

-“The Scream” sells for record $120 million at auction. Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” sold for a record $120 million at auction on Wednesday at Sotheby’s, far exceeding pre-sales estimates of about $80 million. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dxlg749

-The 10 Most Expensive Works Of Art Ever Sold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7pnoe45

-Titanic II Planned by Billionaire Palmer in Chinese Yard. Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer plans to build a 21st-century replica of the Titanic and sail it from England to New York accompanied by the Chinese navy by the end of 2016. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/boct4g6

-The World’s Tenth Richest Man Explains Why He Has To Become The World’s Richest Man. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dxpx74l

-Richest Ukrainian Makes $3 Billion on State Asset Sales. Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, added $3 billion to his net worth in the past six months by buying state-owned energy assets sold by his hometown political ally, President Viktor Yanukovych. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mhf56v

-Wealthy Americans Queue to Give Up Their Passports. Rich Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship rose sevenfold since UBS AG whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld triggered a crackdown on tax evasion four years ago. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/735ol55

-The 10 Most Outrageous Purchases People Made In April. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5blfpd

-Noma Keeps World’s Best Restaurant Title, Fat Duck Sinks. Noma, a waterside establishment in Copenhagen where chef Rene Redzepi serves Nordic dishes such as poached sea urchin and powdered cucumber, was named the World’s Best Restaurant for the third straight year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3uyj5v

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Featured Diamond is a 1.51 Carat Oval Cut Fancy Light Yellow Internally Flawless Diamond. The Tiffany Yellow Diamond is one of the largest yellow diamonds ever discovered; it weighed 287.42 carats in the rough when discovered in 1878 in the Kimberley mine in South Africa, and was cut into a cushion shape of 128.54 carats with 90 facets, 32 more than a traditional round brilliant to maximize its brilliance.

The diamond is known to have been worn by only two women during its lifetime. It was worn by Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse at the 1957 Tiffany Ball held in Newport, Rhode Island, mounted for the occasion in a necklace of white diamonds. It was subsequently worn by Audrey Hepburn in 1961 publicity photographs for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Harold Seigel-See video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/6g37q2r

-”The really huge money is paying record prices for rare works of art and one-of-a-kind gems. And I mean the prices are in the multi-millions. It is thought that many of these buyers are Russian or Asian billionaires. The number of billionaires on earth is now counted in the thousands.” Richard Russell

-Diamonds Are a Great Way to Diversify. Diamonds are an attractive option for investors looking to diversify portfolios because they don’t move in relation with other assets such as commodities and stocks, according to David Riedel, President of equity research firm Riedel Research Group.

“Over the past decade cross-asset correlations have nearly doubled, (but) diamonds have exhibited very low correlations to other assets making them an attractive source of diversification. They have almost no correlation to anything else commodities, gold, equity markets,” Riedel told CNBC.

In 2011, the RapNet Diamond Index for one carat polished diamonds rose 19 percent outpacing gold, which rose 10 percent. And supply constraints are expected to take diamond prices even higher in the coming years, says Riedel.

He estimates demand for diamonds will grow 50 percent between now and 2015, driven by consumption in the United States, China and India, while production will rise by just 24 percent. Sotheby’s annual spring sale of “Magnificent Jewels” in Hong Kong this week highlighted Asia’s booming interest in diamonds.

The highlight of the auction was the sale of an 8.01-carat blue diamond ring for $12.7 million the second highest price per carat for a blue diamond at an auction. When choosing between buying a diamond ring and loose diamonds as investment, Riedel says they both “work” and retain value. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lmap8u

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GOLD

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Gold Bull’s Long Term Trendline, The Indispensable Chart. Although they cannot resist its inevitable climb because of the changes in the global monetary system and the ongoing currency wars, the Western central banks wish the increase in the price of gold to remain ‘orderly.’ Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/74ds4th

-Gold Still Americans’ Top Pick Among Long-Term Investments. Investing in gold has gained in popularity in recent years as low interest rates have made traditional savings instruments less attractive, and instability in the stock and real estate markets has undermined the mass appeal of those options.

Meanwhile, the rising trajectory of the price of gold over the past several years apparently offers more of the returns and stability investors seek. Although gold prices dipped in the last quarter of 2011 after hitting an all-time high of $1,924 per ounce in September, and have yet to fully recover, more Americans continue to consider gold the best long-term investment among the major options available to consumers. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7eolnrz

-”Gold and silver are the only safe currencies in the world today.” James Turk

-“Ultra-loose monetary policies of recent years don’t look like they’re going to end any time soon.” “The problems in the euro zone don’t look like they’re going to end any time soon. We’ve had a dip, and our advice to clients is always to buy the gold and silver dip.” Mark O’Byrne-GoldCore

-”The hyperinflation will come as a result of governments printing unlimited amounts of money. During this hyperinflationary depression, people will see currencies falling in value against real money, gold. In a hyperinflation, nobody benefits from the money creation except the ones standing nearest to the printing press.

This is the first time in history that we will see hyperinflation occurring simultaneously in many countries. Previously, this type of event has been isolated to one country at any one time. Gold will be an extremely important means of survival and payment during this hyperinflationary period.” Egon von Greyerz

-Elliott Wave Gold Update: In the article “What Happened to Gold” dated 1 March 2012, the “other possibilities” mentioned in the event of gold dropping below $1650 related firstly to the 61.8% retracement of the prior rise. The prior rise was from $1523 to $1792, so the 61.8% retracement was $1626. There was a further possibility of the retracement being 2/3 of the prior rise, also a Fibonacci relationship.

That produced a figure of $1612. The first number $1626 did provide some support to the market but the absolute low was $1612.8 on 4 April 2012. This low came at the culmination of a double zig-zag correction, which adds to the validity of that low. The odds now suggest that the gold correction bottomed at $1612.8 on 4 April 2012 and that the gold market is in the early stages of a sharp upward move. Alf Field-April 28 2012

-The crisis in Europe, which seems destined to come to a head soon, will bring this arrangement with the US Fed into focus. This is the time when the precious metals may make a dramatic upward move. Warren Buffett may not understand it, but this is why people buy gold and other precious metals, as an insurance to protect their savings and wealth in times when the threat of financial or economic catastrophe appears to be inevitable. Alf Field

-Gold may touch $7,000 per ounce before end of uptrend. While gold’s latest price gyrations may seem excessive to some investors, Bank of America analyst MacNeil Curry said the volatility was nowhere near extreme enough to convince him the precious metal’s long-term uptrend was nearing the end.

In fact, at last week’s Market Technicians Association symposium he said of gold’s secular bull trend, “From an Elliott Wave perspective, we have seen a nice, solid, orderly advance.” Curry said any long-term commodity advance tends to end with, “a massive speculative blow-off.”

“They don’t end quietly,” the technician told conferees. He projects gold will ascend to levels somewhere between $3,000 to $5,000 and potentially $7,000 per ounce before the rally, now in its 11th year, comes to a close. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5ktpgr

-Citibank Analyst Extraordinarily Bullish Gold, Oil & US Dollar. Tom Fitzpatrick is a 28 year veteran and top analyst at Citibank, which has $1.3 trillion in assets. “We are very much biased to believe that what we are in at the moment is a consolidation in gold, a platform before it moves higher again.

In particular we’ve looked back at this whole bull market in gold, since 2001/2002.” “With the exception of 2008, when everything obviously came down together in a mass washout in financial markets, gold has never been able to really move down much below its 55 week moving average. In every period it has done that, it’s been the platform for the next move higher.

We’ve done that again here, and the present pattern we look at is setup similarly to that of 2006. In 2006 we had a similar type of consolidation and sideways moving pattern, which eventually gave way to a significant push to the topside. We believe the same thing is happening again here.

We’ve already iterated a target in the more medium to long-term of $3,400, and over the next twelve months as high as $2,400. We believe gold is now set up, with a bullish weekly reversal last week, to make its next move higher. It might not explode in the near-term. “It might be, initially, more gradual, but we are very biased to think gold is going significantly higher from here.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7apbkm7

-Egon von Greyerz: Swiss Refiners Say “Demand for Gold is Massive.” “The gold market may appear quiet right now, but underneath the quiet there is a great deal of action in the physical market. Swiss refiners are telling me they are working ‘round the clock’ because demand for gold is so massive.”

At the same time, we are reading that a number of central banks are buying gold. So the nonsense coming from the mainstream media that people are not interested in gold is completely false. We are seeing massive accumulation of physical gold. This decline today is clearly only in the paper market.

Once people wake up to the fact that the paper market is not even a real market, meaning it’s a false market that can never deliver the real goods, once investors realize this, that is when people will really panic. The paper market will then be either non-existent or we will see a massive premium between physical and paper. I think those days are not far away. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/836c2dq

-Aden Sisters: Gold Volatile Within A Bull Market. Gold’s Bullish Factors. As Q2 gets underway, stocks declined. With tensions in the Eurozone resurfacing, uncertainty is coming back. This is helping to build a good foundation. In Europe, for instance, Spain is becoming a real worry and it’s much larger than Greece.

Concerns the Eurozone may be unable to handle the brewing potential problem as easily as it did in Greece is weighing on stocks and pushing up gold. At the same time, demand is also an ongoing factor that is keeping a solid floor under the gold price.

Central banks have been steady buyers as they grow weary of the Fed’s monetary actions and build their gold reserves, and China remains at the forefront. Not only is China the world’s biggest gold producer, it’s also the world’s biggest gold buyer.

Like the central banks, big successful investors have also been buying all along. This too is a sign that gold is likely near a bottom. Plus, don’t forget that inflation is brewing due to the Fed’s policies while real interest rates are below zero. Both are very bullish signs for gold. These are the main reasons why we believe gold’s bull market will continue on its upward path.

Gold’s Calm For 7 Months Creates More Bears. After a steady consistent rise in gold for 11 years, we can understand why some feel the bull market is over. But don’t be fooled, a trend is in motion until it’s over. This is a simple yet powerful phrase, and it tells us to stay invested until the move is over.

It’s amazing to think that gold has risen 660% since 2001, or even better, it rose 170% from the 2008 low to last September’s record high near $1900, without much of a decline along the way. Yet the decline from its September peak has so far been less than 20%.

And even if gold were to decline below $1600 to last December’s low near $1540, it would still be a mild decline compared to the rise. This is where you want to keep your focus during these sluggish times because they could last a bit longer. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d9nbl9g

-Jeff Clark recently caught up with Charles Oliver, the senior portfolio manager of the Sprott Gold and Precious Minerals Fund.

Jeff: Gold has been stuck in a trading range since last September. In your view, what’s kept the price from advancing?

Charles: I think one issue is that in December the Europeans embarked upon their version of QE. They called it the “long-term refinancing operation,” where they effectively put 500 billion euros into the hands of the banks of Europe and just like quantitative easing, it had a big effect on the markets and all assets rose, including gold. Then on February 29, the Europeans did their second round of the LTRO, and the early expectations were that we’d see between half a trillion and a trillion dollars, but they announced at the low end of expectations, 530 billion euros. We saw a big selloff in the markets, along with the gold price. So although we’ve seen a major amount of printing over a trillion euros in the last few months the market was somewhat disappointed.

That money is getting into the economy, but it’s a bit slower than expected and the market wants to see more. They’re already asking the Europeans for more actions in terms of printing or other methods of stimulating the economy.

Jeff: It sounds like you’re saying the gold bull market might be over if governments don’t resume printing some in the mainstream make this claim. Is that the primary driver for gold now, or are there other factors that will push the price higher?

Charles: I keep hearing the gold bull market is dead, year after year. Certainly one of the biggest themes for gold over the last decade has been the debasement of currencies, so this has been one of the most important factors. And I do think they’re going to print again, because there’s been no solution to the debt conundrum. It’s my belief that it’s only a matter of time until they embark upon their next binge of money printing.

That said, if you go back to long-term fundamentals, you’ll see that countries around the world continue to run large budget deficits, and this is very bullish for gold, too. You also have to look at supply and demand. There was an uptick in mine production last year, but supply has been fairly flat over the last decade. The more compelling data has been with demand increasing investment demand and burgeoning demand out of China.

Remember that individuals in China were not allowed to own physical gold as recent as a decade ago, and now they just imported about 760 tons, roughly a quarter of mine production. So they’ve gone from zero to 25% of worldwide demand in a very short period of time. And they’re still only a fraction of US GDP, with a population that’s more than four times bigger.

They have north of $3 trillion of reserves, about two-thirds of which is in US dollars, and they’ve been saying they don’t like the way the US is debasing their currency and are looking to diversify into hard assets. Add it all up and they could very easily add 10,000 tons of gold to their reserves, an amount that represents about four years of the total global mine production. So I’m expecting this trend into gold to continue for many, many years.

Jeff: You mentioned that gold hits $2,000 this year.

Charles: Yes, I believe that’s going to happen. One of the things I’ve been watching for the last four years is the trend line that started during the financial crisis of 2008 we’re near the bottom of that trend line now and $2,000 is squarely in the middle of it. So if we stay within the trend, which I think we will, we’ll hit $2,000 by year end. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpwtlc3

-John Embry: This is What I’m Doing with My Own Money Right Now. “Today I took delivery of more physical gold because I think this is a great time to be adding to your position. Eight months ago it was over $1,900 and today it’s $1,650. Savvy investors will buy these dips in bull markets and that’s what I’m doing personally. Once gold exits this range that it’s been in now for a considerable period of time, it will exit violently to the upside. I keep saying it, but the physical market is gradually overcoming the paper market, and the paper market, in a word, is preposterous.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/74kdauz

-Eveillard: This Fed Manipulation is Incredibly Dangerous. “Even though I’m positive towards commodities, I don’t look at gold as a commodity. At the current level, I look at gold as a substitute currency. What matters is whether there is investment demand or investment supply. In other words, there has been good investment demand over the last ten years.

Today, the central banks and a number of individuals like me, who are worried about the future, have been buyers. So, gold, I don’t look at it at all as a commodity. I’m saying that I continue to hold gold and possibly buy more because I think that the policies that are being followed will have negative unintended consequences that will appear at some point.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cqbf3u5

-Leeb: We Will See Unbelievable Chaos Going Forward. But what I’m saying is the Western world is going to need even more easing, more money. All of this is incredibly bullish for gold longer-term. I do think you have to navigate the end of the euro before the next massive move in gold, but that’s coming.

It’s possible that gold may get hit initially as the euro fails, but you have to buy it if it does. In the end, the only way this is going to work out is with massive liquidity and inflation. This inflation is already much more prevalent than any of the numbers suggest. But once the public realizes inflation is heating up, you will see a mad dash for gold.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7g8xxat

-Leeb: Spain Flirts With Disaster As Europe Ready To Blow Apart. “Gold may get hit if Europe does fall. There might be selling of gold for liquidity. If gold does get hit, it will be one of the greatest buying opportunities people will see in their lifetimes, but it may not happen.

My point is if you are fully invested in gold, stay there. In a few years you will find you are very wealthy. If you are 50% invested, buy the dip if one materializes. China is buying gold because they know what is happening. This is a recipe for the Chinese yuan becoming the new reserve currency because they are accumulating a lot of gold that will probably be used to back the yuan.

What is that going to mean for the dollar and inflation in the West? It’s going to go to levels that we’ve never seen before. This is a when, not if event. And the when is, when is gold and silver going to soar to the sky? I don’t even have a target for gold anymore. Investors need to be careful with anything that is denominated in dollars and paper. You have to be in hard assets in order to survive this cycle.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/86z3xnc

-Richard Russell: A Chapter of the World Has Come to an End. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6s2egdn

-Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price: Elites Plan to Control the World. The problems we are seeing in the West are not going to be resolved in any positive way. What we have had in the West, in recent decades, has been the welfare state. The welfare state is, in my view, what I would call, ‘socialism light.’ We’ve had ‘socialism light’ and now we’re going to transition to full-blown socialism.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85lb5c8

-Hugo Salinas Price: The gold price the reds against the blues. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11319

-Michael Pento: Love Affair With Inflationary Policies To End in Disaster. If Krugman and Bernanke were correct in believing inflation has a positive influence on the workforce, Zimbabwe and Argentina would both be paragons of how to achieve full employment. The truth is that a high unemployment rate is the simply the result of a weak economy. And an economy can suffer through a recession while experiencing either inflation or deflation.

But when an economy experiences a rising rate of inflation, it always ends up with an unemployment rate that goes along for the ride. We can only hope that central bankers in the developed world assent to that principle very soon. However, the ECB, BOJ and Fed continue to believe a positive rate of inflation must be maintained at all costs. If they persist with this misguided policy, this will end in disaster.

This careless and irrational thought process, on the part of the Fed and other central planners, is one of the primary reasons why investors must maintain gold in their portfolios. Gold has proven to offer protection against reckless monetary policy for centuries and will continue to do so in the future.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83eqk4r

-Robert Fitzwilson: There Is No Solution, Only Catastrophic Outcomes. Nobody is in favor of an economic collapse. We have now transitioned into an economic ‘no-man’s land,’ the magnitude of which has never been seen. There is no solution, only outcomes that have to be managed.

We must now print to infinity and hope that unexpected events will provide a positive path out of this morass. So, what should investors be doing with their money? For portfolios, history and common sense tell us that real assets should be the predominant allocation. One should also include high growth companies taking advantage of pockets of global demand. Solid, high yielding global companies should also be considered as well as a foundation allocation to energy, gold and silver.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7qq5tre

-Eric Sprott and David Baker: When fundamentals no longer apply, review the fundamentals. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11300

-Eric Sprott: Global Shocks Coming, Investors Need to Prepare. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wn3sxa

-Futures magazine interviews gold advocate Jim Sinclair. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11295

-Keith Barron: The World Will See More QE, Inflation & Revolution. I think you are going to see the European Central Bank throwing money at the various crises, in Europe, that are continuing to unfold. I do think QE3 is coming before the US elections. I think there is continued bad news coming both in GDP output and in employment figures for the US, and they are going to throw money at this.

So this is all very inflationary and it is very bullish for gold. I would not at all be surprised to see another huge bounce in the gold price, like we saw last August. Traditionally and typically these things don’t happen in the summer, but certainly we had a huge surge in price last August.

Maybe we are going to get that again this year because the cycle is moving further and further ahead in the year. So, perhaps we are going to get that big bounce in the gold price in August, rather than in September. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/828a4y5

-Big commercials don’t see metals going lower, Arensberg reports. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11299

-Schiff: Possible Rally Tomorrow & Investors To Be Blindsided. “At some point you’re going to see some kind of a breakout in gold. We’ll see tomorrow (Friday May 4) if we get a much weaker than expected jobs number, and we get strong talk of QE, that could cause gold to rally.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6v8zma7

-’Fat finger,’ Wall Street Journal? No, government’s heavy hand on gold. Gold futures ended nearly unchanged Monday, after a large early-morning sell order roiled traders and slashed prices by almost $15. The CME Group Inc.’s Comex division recorded an unusually large transaction of 7,500 gold futures during one minute of trading at 8:31 a.m. EDT. The sale took out blocks of bids as large as 84 contracts in one fell swoop and cut prices down to $1,648.80 a troy ounce. The overall transaction was worth more than $1.24 billion. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11306

-Dan Norcini: Traders Are Literally on the Edge. Norcini had this warning about the move in gold, “The so-called ‘fat finger’ trade in the gold market the other day, I don’t think it was a ‘fat finger’ trade at all. I think it was yet another takedown attempt. Look at what that trade did. It wiped out the bids and took the gold market down $15 in one minute.

If someone had $1,000,000 in their futures account, and they were long 300 gold contracts, that move cost them $450,000 in just 60 seconds. This is reality of how these markets operate for the traders that choose to use extremely heavy leverage.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7cg68g5

-Norwegians take big broker’s trading algos for an expensive ride. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11316

-MineWeb’s Williams says U.S. uses gold to control dollar’s devaluation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11312

-Amity Shlaes: Nutty would be not considering return to a gold standard. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11317

-Dutch central banker’s memoirs confirm gold price suppression. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11304

-The Moneychanger interviews GATA secretary about gold and silver suppression. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11303

-Russia Today’s ‘Capital Account’ interviews GATA’s Bill Murphy. Watch more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11307

-Mining CEO McEwen cites GATA’s work on Bloomberg. Watch more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11301

-If U.S. had ‘Yamashita’s gold,’ they’d put it in Cracker Jack boxes. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11309

-Nike Is Releasing Five Pairs Of Sneakers That Are Dipped In Real 24 Karat Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73g26nd

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”The price of silver began to climb in earnest in the late summer of 2010 from about the $18 level to roughly the $31 level by the end of the year as physical silver began to grow tighter. My basis for the physical tightness explanation is that there was no net speculative buying in futures contracts on the COMEX for that period. In fact, the net speculative long/commercial short position declined by almost 25% from the mid-September through year end 2010.

Almost 99 times out of 100, it is COMEX positioning that drives the price of silver. So if it wasn’t speculative buying on the COMEX that was driving the price, by process of elimination, it had to be something else. That something else was demand for physical, as evidenced in the collective 100 million oz growth in various silver ETFs (like SLV, PSLV, SIVR, etc) over that time period.” “After correcting to $27 in late January 2011, the price of silver surged to $49 in three months to the end of April.

Once again, after some gyrations in the COT structure, the total net commercial short position was lower by the end of April, proving that it wasn’t buying by speculators on the COMEX that drove prices to historic highs; it was continued physical buying in ETFs and elsewhere and commercial short covering into the highs. The changes in the COT structure prove that the COMEX commercials on the short side were in a bind and were clearly panicking into the end of April.

It was not a speculative bubble in any true sense of the word. I do admit that a good chunk of the buying in the silver ETFs was obviously momentum buying on rising prices and that was the metal that was subsequently liquidated on the May 2011 price smash. But it would be a stretch to call that a bubble. In retrospect, it was a shortage of silver, more than anything else that drove prices to the highs.” “Had the big COMEX commercials not collusively banded together [starting on the evening of May 1st and continuing to this day] to manipulatively rig prices lower, we would be looking down at $50 silver, instead of looking up to that price now.

There’s no real way of telling how high we may have gone had the physical silver shortage into April 2011 jumped the fire break and spread to the world’s industrial users. Such a development would have created a situation where the fire would need to burn itself out by prices moving irrationally higher. I don’t know if the commercials knew on May 1st that they would be able to trip off the metal liquidation in SLV and the subsequent liquidation in COMEX contracts, but I am inclined to think that their backs were up against the wall and it could have gone the other way.

Let’s face it if the commercials were in such total control, they never would have let silver have gotten to such extremes with them so close to being overrun to the upside. The commercials miscalculated from $18 on up and only got lucky on their desperate last-gasp sell-off a year ago.” Ted Butler via Ed Steer Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/72alvq5

-Jeff Clark recently caught up with Charles Oliver, the senior portfolio manager of the Sprott Gold and Precious Minerals Fund.

Jeff: What’s your long-term outlook for the silver price?

Charles: We’re incredibly bullish on silver. One argument we’re making is that the gold-to-silver ratio [gold price divided by the silver price] should be closer to 20:1 rather than its current 50:1. If you look at the last 2,000 years, the long-term gold-to-silver ratio has been 16:1 about 90% of the time. At 16:1 and gold at $1,600, you’d expect the silver price to be closer to $100, which would be roughly a triple from the current level.

Look at history, too: the Roman exchange rates of the time were 16:1. And the United States mandated in the Coinage Act of 1834 that when somebody asked for a dollar’s worth of gold or silver for their $1 paper currency, the government would given them metal in the ratio of 16:1. Why 16:1? The reason is because that’s the ratio in the earth’s crust: for every one ounce of gold there exists about 17.5 ounces of silver.

So if you’re a miner, it should cost you roughly the same amount of money to extract an ounce of gold as 17.5 ounces of silver. So if the production costs are about the same, they should have roughly the same price. That’s why for most of the last 2,000 years that ratio has been in place. What changed was when the US decided about 130 years ago to leave the silver standard, and in that process they sold down their inventories. Then the European banks sold down their inventories, then the Chinese, and in this process the gold-to-silver ratio went up to the level of 50:1 where it is today.

Jeff: It sounds like you see some explosive potential with silver.

Charles: Absolutely. I would also point out that if you go back to 1980, the silver price briefly touched $50 and gold hit about $850, so for a small period of time we did get close to that 16:1 ratio. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpwtlc3

-Stephen Leeb: Silver Market Update. “Once gold gets going, people will be amazed at how fast the silver price moves. You are going to see three digit silver in the next couple of years. Going forward, there simply isn’t enough silver available to satisfy both the industrial demand and investor demand. We will start to see strains in the physical market in silver at some point in the future. When that happens, silver will be off to the races.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7g8xxat

-James Turk: Banks & Governments Will Collapse Together. I have been speaking with a lot of people about precious metals lately, and one common theme emerges. Just about everyone is describing this correction as ‘brutal, painful, vicious’ or words to that effect. I can understand that negative sentiment, but I describe this correction differently. To me the best word to describe it is ‘long.’

Because it has been ‘long,’ this correction has been extremely frustrating. But we shouldn’t let any of that negative sentiment cause us to take our eye off the ball, particularly at times like these. As investors, we need to think rationally, and avoid emotion. To do that, we need to focus on fundamentals and these remain very positive.

So every month I continue to do what I have been recommending to KWN readers for years. Every month I buy some precious metals, and will continue to accumulate them as long as they remain undervalued. Of late I’ve been buying silver. It’s the better value. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6rlbjsm

-Steve St. Angelo: Critical Factors that will Impact Silver. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bo3lkz5

-Silver Institute: April 2012 Newsletter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mwl984

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-CHART OF THE WEEK: European Youth Unemployment. Spanish youth unemployment climbed to 51.1 percent in March, from 50.9 percent the previous month. This number was 6.2 percentage points higher than the 44.9 percent youth unemployment rate a year ago. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ceztfnn

www.chartoftheday.com

-Eurozone unemployment hits record 10.9%. Unemployment in the eurozone rose to 10.9% in March, another sign of the broad economic weakness and possible recession across the continent.

The unemployment rate across the broader 27-nation European Union remained at 10.2% in March, according to a organization report Wednesday.

But the 17-nation eurozone unemployment edged up from 10.8% in February. The EU and eurozone rates are the highest since the creation of the common euro currency in 1999.There are now 13 nations in Europe struggling with double-digit percentage unemployment, led by a 24.1% rate in Spain, which was a record high, and 21.7% in Greece. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d2l9e92

-Spain Slips Back Into Recession in First Quarter. Spain’s economy contracted in the first quarter, putting the euro region’s fourth-largest economy into its second recession since 2009. Gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent, the same as in the previous three months, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/794uc7y

-Spain Default Could Hit US Market 10%-20%: Economist. Spain’s newly announced recession won’t be ending any time soon and it could force the U.S. stock market to fall anywhere between 10 percent and 20 percent, economist Harry Dent told CNBC. “Spain is going to default. The markets are in total denial on this,” Dent, author of “The Great Crash Ahead,” told CNBC. “It’s a question of whether it’s going to happen sooner or later.”

Spain’s problems are far worse than what happened in Greece, he added. “Spain has higher unemployment than Greece, higher total public and private debt than Greece,” as well as a bigger housing bubble, a higher percentage of subprime mortgages, and the country has “one of the highest percentages of debt owed to foreigners,” Dent said. He called Spain one of those nations that are “too big to fail, too big to bail.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yvosnk

-S&P Downgrades 16 Spanish Banks; Country in Recession. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bn9qygg

-Hugh Hendry On Europe “You Can’t Make Up How Bad It Is.” Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/cn4275h

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-CHART OF THE WEEK: You’ll Be Afraid Of Older Generations After You See These Charts. In a long analysis of the effects of an aging generation of Baby Boomers, Credit Suisse analysts led by Neal Soss conclude that the U.S. faces steep challenges in paying for a massive generation of retirees who have saved poorly.

Concerns about entitlements have formed the center of debates on the sustainability of U.S. public debt. and this charts show just why. First dependence on transfer payments or the money people receive as part of redistributive government programs has more than quadrupled in the last fifty years, while the share of income generated by wages has sunk 20 percent not to mention the rising costs of social security. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/brpsoor

-U.S. Perfecting Formula for Budget Failure, Says Bowles. Erskine Bowles co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s budget-deficit commission, came to New York City to talk sense about the nation’s perilous fiscal condition. “I think today we face the most predictable economic crisis in history,” he told an audience on April 24 at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Fortunately, I think it’s also the most avoidable. I think it’s clear, if you do simple arithmetic, that the fiscal path that the nation is on is simply not sustainable.” Bowles, a Democrat, then laid on the crowd some pretty simple, but devastating, arithmetic. He explained that 100 percent of the tax revenue that entered the Treasury in 2011 went out the door to pay for mandatory spending such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and to pay the interest on our staggering $15.6 trillion national debt.

That means that every single dollar we spent on everything else, including two wars, national defense, homeland security, education, infrastructure, high-value-added research and the like, was borrowed. “And,” he warned, “half of it was borrowed from foreign countries. And that is a formula for failure in anybody’s book.”

He said the U.S. is now paying $250 billion a year in interest on the debt, and that is only because, mercifully, interest rates are at historic lows. That’s chiefly because investors are more worried about the risk of default by European nations, and because the Fed is doing everything in its power to keep interest rates low. “It’s because we’re the best-looking horse in the glue factory,” he said.

If interest rates were normalized, Bowles said, the annual bill would be $600 billion a year. “We’ll be spending over $1 trillion on interest alone before you know it,” he said. He offered the example of the country’s obligation, by treaty, to defend Taiwan in the event that China decides to invade the island. “There’s only one problem with that,” he said. “We’ll have to borrow the money from China to do it.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7zdjj2o

-California Tax Revenue Is Coming Up Wildly Short Of Expectations. Since April 1 this year, the State has collected a net total of $6.735 billion in personal income taxes. The Governor’s latest budget estimate projects income taxes will total $9.132 billion by the end of the month. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bsg4pms

-Providence Eying Bankruptcy Cuts Pensions in Rhode Island. Providence, Rhode Island’s biggest city, will halt cost-of-living increases for retirees among steps to overhaul a $422.8 million pension system and avoid becoming the state’s second municipal bankruptcy. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/budmcom

-States Scaling Back Worker Pensions to Save Money. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/76tapn2

-Judge Andrew P. Napolitano: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c28xm6k

-107 People Charged With $452 Million in Medicare Fraud. Federal authorities charged 107 people with Medicare fraud in a multistate operation, alleging schemes involving about $452 million in false billing, officials in Washington announced. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7fvkrx2

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REAL ESTATE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: U.S. Homeownership Hits Decade Low. The 62% of Americans who say they own their own home marks a new low since Gallup began tracking self-reported homeownership in 2001. The current level of homeownership marks a decline from 68% in 2011. For most of the prior decade, roughly seven in 10 Americans reported owning their own home.

While the recession and financial crisis took place in 2008-2009, homeownership rates didn’t begin to reflect the bursting of the housing bubble until 2010, when 65% of Americans reported owning their own home the lowest level recorded before this year.

Record-Low 53% of Americans Say Their Home’s Value Has Increased. Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their house is worth more today than when they bought it, down significantly from 80% in 2008 and 92% in 2006. It confirms that many Americans are underwater in terms of the value of the home they currently own. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6r9swt3

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The #1 Reason The Housing Recovery Is So Slow. David Zervos and a team of economists repeatedly blame one thing for continuing sluggishness in the U.S. housing market: tight lending standards. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cr7hv7y

www.chartoftheday.com

-U.S. Home Ownership Rate Slides to 15-Year Low. The share of privately owned U.S. homes fell to a 15-year low in the first quarter, government data showed on Monday, suggesting that falling house prices are discouraging Americans from being homeowners.

The home ownership rate slipped to 65.4 percent, the lowest since the first quarter of 1997, the Commerce Department said. The rate was at 66.0 percent in the fourth quarter. Homeownership was lowest in the West, while higher rates were reported in the Midwest. House prices have dropped about 32 percent from their peak at the end of 2005, leaving millions of Americans with houses worth far less than their mortgages and pushing many into renting.

In the first quarter, the median asking sales price for vacant homes on the market was $133,700, the lowest since the first quarter of 2005, the Commerce Department said. That compared with $133,800 in the fourth quarter. The data showed the residential rental vacancy rate dropped to 8.8 percent in the first three months of this year from 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/culd5vm

-Brooklyn Shelters Homeowners With Longest Foreclosures. New York’s Kings County, also known as Brooklyn, wears the crown as the U.S. community where it takes longest to foreclose on a delinquent homeowner. Lenders took an average of 1,187 days more than three years to repossess a home in Kings County during the last three months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 10 U.S. counties with the longest foreclosure timelines were all in New York and New Jersey.

While delays give some struggling homeowners time to renegotiate loan terms and limit supply on the market, they eventually depress housing values by postponing the inevitable for borrowers who can’t pay their mortgages or maintain their properties, said Jonathan Miller, president of New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. “You aren’t doing anybody any favors in the long run,” he said in a telephone interview. “In markets where it takes longer for the foreclosure process, it takes longer to recover.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cuezcsk

-Falling home prices drag new buyers under water. More than 1 million Americans who have taken out mortgages in the past two years now owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, and Federal Housing Administration loans that require only a tiny down payment are partly to blame.

That figure, provided to Reuters by tracking firm CoreLogic, represents about one out of 10 home loans made during that period. It is a sobering indication the U.S. housing market remains deeply troubled, with home values still falling in many parts of the country, and raises the question of whether low-down payment loans backed by the FHA are putting another generation of buyers at risk.

As of December 2011, the latest figures available, 31 percent of the U.S. home loans that were in negative equity – in which the outstanding loan balance exceeds the value of the home – were FHA-insured mortgages, according to CoreLogic. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7c4vx3d

-Toronto, Vancouver Housing Vulnerable, Economists Warn. Toronto’s condominium market is showing signs of overbuilding, says an economist at the city’s largest university, while Royal Bank of Canada says Vancouver housing is vulnerable to a “marked correction.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpt947g

-Australian House Prices Fall for Fifth Straight Quarter. Australian house prices declined in the three months through March in the longest losing streak in at least a decade as the central bank maintained the highest borrowing costs among major developed nations. An index measuring prices for established houses in eight major cities dropped 1.1 percent last quarter from the previous three months, when it fell a revised 0.7 percent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney. House and apartment prices slumped 4.5 percent in the eight cities in April from a year earlier, according to real estate researchers RP Data and Rismark International. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3e6al3

-Madness in Spain Lingers as Ireland Chase Recovery. In the stages of death of a real estate boom, Spain is still in denial. In Ireland, they’re moving toward acceptance. The first auction of one of 2,000 unfinished housing estates takes place at the Shelbourne Hotel in central Dublin, with sales expected to fetch cents on the euro, showing the Irish may be closer to the end than the beginning. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/873u7gv

-Hong Kong Sells Land Below Estimates on Rising Supply. Hong Kong’s government sold land in one of the city’s most exclusive areas for less than analysts estimated, underscoring developers’ concerns that increased housing supply and slowing global growth may stall home prices. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/72qgp5l

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STOCK MARKET

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Earnings Growth Fails to Sway S&P 500 Outlook. U.S. companies are poised to repeat their first-quarter success in exceeding analysts’ earnings estimates, according to Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. market strategist at UBS AG. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/77×2m5r

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Sell in May? U.S. Financial-Stock Gains Say No. Financial companies are sending a signal that U.S. stock investors may be better off without a “sell in May” strategy this year, according to Ari H. Wald, a Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. analyst. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85ka8sn

-Equity Fund Redemptions in April Are Largest in 17 Years. Global investors this month pulled the most money from stock funds in any April in at least 17 years amid escalating concerns that Europe’s economy is faltering. Equity funds had net redemptions of $18.6 billion through April 25, according to data from EPFR Global, a research firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The April withdrawals were the largest since at least 1996, the first year for which comparable data is available. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xsqtgr

-NBER’s Martin Feldstein Bashes The Deplorable US Economy, Says Bernanke Has Engineered Another Stock Bubble. Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/7v2p67o

-Greenspan Says U.S. Stocks ‘Very Cheap,’ Likely to Rise. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said U.S. stocks offer good value and are likely to rise as corporate earnings increase over time. “Stocks are very cheap,” Greenspan said at a summit, citing “a very low price-earnings ratio.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d38xefh

-John Hussman: This Is One Of The Worst Times To Buy Stocks In History. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8×66sz4

-Buffett Trails S&P 500 for Third Straight Year. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholders missed out on better returns from the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index by sticking with Chairman Warren Buffett after each of his last three annual meetings. Berkshire fell 2.4 percent from the firm’s April 30, 2011, meeting through yesterday, compared with the 2.8 percent advance in the S&P 500. This year’s gathering, planned for May 5 in Omaha, Nebraska, concludes three years in which Berkshire climbed about 32 percent, trailing the S&P 500’s gain of around 60 percent. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cruhnaf

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OIL-NAT GAS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Crude April Trading Range Tightest Since 1995. Oil’s April trading range is the tightest for any month in 17 years as concern eased that supplies would be disrupted and reports showed slower U.S. economic growth. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9emvth

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Natural Gas Forecasts Never Been So Wrong. U.S. natural gas price forecasters are having their worst year on record as producers boosted output amid the mildest winter in 12 years. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cnklgwa

-Wien Bearish on Oil for First Time as Production Swells. Byron Wien, the 79 year-old chairman of Blackstone Group’s advisory services unit, is forecasting an annual drop in oil prices for the first time in his career as swelling production pushes global inventories higher. Wien, said the U.S. will extract more crude by fracking rocks and expects the furor over a potential conflict with Iran to dissipate. Brent crude lost 2.8 percent last month after surging 14 percent in the first quarter on concern Iran may disrupt Middle East exports in retaliation for a European oil embargo. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6u5taac

-T. Boone Pickens: Natural gas has bottomed. Natural gasprices may have finally bottomed out, after hovering around 10-year lows for weeks, said energy magnate T. Boone Pickens. Prices have slowly started creeping above the $2 mark after settling below that level just a couple of weeks ago. “The price for natural gas has smoothed out pretty good,” Pickens told reporters on the sidelines of the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. “I think it’s bottomed.” Pickens said he wouldn’t be surprised to see natural gas prices at $3 in a year’s time.

Pickens also thinks oil prices will continue to rise. “I think you’re going to find oil will get pretty tight this summer,” he said. “The Saudis don’t have as much oil as they say they do.” Pickens says that anything Saudi Arabia produces above 10 million barrels a day will come from storage and not new production. And it could come just as demand heats up. Pickens forecasted prices for Brent crude Europe’s benchmark to hit $150 a barrel by this summer. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ckesy9z

-T. Boone Pickens: Of Course We Should Build The Keystone Pipeline. “Of course you should do it. The Saudis claim they have 250 billion barrels of oil. They don’t. Probably 150, 175. But there’s 250 billion barrels in Alberta, and that’s the pipeline. That’s Keystone.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cmm6×44

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CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Apple Needs More Exceptional Profit Than Usual. Apple Inc. needs to surpass earnings estimates by a wider margin than most of its peers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to satisfy investors, if history is any guide. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7luulsh

-Apple Profit Rises 94% on Growing Global IPhone Demand. Apple Inc. profit almost doubled last quarter, reflecting robust demand for the iPhone in China and purchases of a new version of the iPad, allaying the growth concerns that sliced shares 12 percent in two weeks. Net income in the fiscal second quarter climbed 94 percent to $11.6 billion, or $12.30 a share, as sales rose 59 percent to $39.2 billion, Cupertino, California-based Apple said in a statement. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bllpt87

-Apple’s iPhone Is Now The Most Profitable Business In The World. Apple is the most profitable company in the world. The company should generate $45-$50 billion of profit this year. That’s way more than the next-most-profitable company in the world, ExxonMobil, which generated about $30 billion of profit last year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9f6tvw

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Carney Cements Canada 2012 Rate Increase View. Investors have increased bets that the Bank of Canada will move this year to raise interest rates after Governor Mark Carney said on April 17 that removing stimulus “may become appropriate” in light of stronger growth and inflation. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qxk2×4

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Cheaper Milk Signals Taming of U.S. Inflation. Lower milk prices are signaling that inflation will be less of an issue for U.S. consumers, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bulkpah

-”If our stock market & economy is so dominated by one stock (Apple) & its daily fluctuations, be careful.” Bill Gross-Pimco

-”Financial markets floating on an ocean of credit. Central banks must continue to write checks or the ship will sink.” Bill Gross-Pimco

-Steve Kroft: Do you believe the balance sheets of big Wall Street firms if you read them now? Matthew Lee: These numbers are so big and the financial instruments are so complex that, you know, nobody stands a chance, really, of understanding. I’d have more fun investing in crap tables in Las Vegas than Wall Street firms. 60 Minutes feature on The case against Lehman Brothers

-”Money printing is the only tool available to keep the US titanic economy boat afloat. If printing stops, the iceberg is revealed and the ship sinks. This tool may keep the “economy” afloat, if you call frequent transactions with a deteriorating dollar an “economy.” Morris Hubbartt

-”The nation is hurtling toward what has been called “taxmageddon,” the enormous tax increases and spending cuts scheduled for the beginning of 2013. At around the same time, we will also be spending some more quality time with our old friend: the debt limit. No one can yet see a plausible way through the coming storm. But even though they are not particularly inspiring, paths away from catastrophe do exist.” Peter Orszag

-Jim Rogers: Something Is Wrong In The Stock Market And You Better Be Worried. Commodities guru Jim Rogers was on Fox Business News predicting disaster for 2013. “First of all, we have tax increases January 1,” warned Rogers. “Secondly, we’ve had recession every four to six years. Next year, it’s four to six years.” In addition to that awful economic back drop, Rogers is concerned about a contradiction in that markets.

“Now I’ve been investing for a long time and I have noticed when good news comes out and stocks go down, something’s wrong. So you better be worried,” warned Rogers. “I don’t know what’s wrong. But I know we’ve had a great first quarter. One of the best first quarters in history. And now good news is coming out and stocks are going down.” Rogers is short stocks and long commodities. Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/cnvkxa6

-Michael Pento: Decoupling Is An Illusion And Europe’s Demise Will Crush Global Markets this summer. The global slowdown will put further pressure on the U.S. economy and the earnings of multi-national corporations. Downward pressure on the U.S. economy is already becoming apparent.

Data on home sales, industrial production, jobless claims and regional manufacturing surveys have all recently disappointed. U.S. productivity has fallen from 4% during 2010, to just 0.4% during all of 2011. S&P500 earnings growth has already plummeted from 14% during 2011, to just a 3% annualized rate in Q1 2012.

The fact is that we have a global economy that is intricately intertwined. And at this juncture there is no such thing as decoupling. Because of this, it is my view that equity markets will fall significantly this summer, as earnings fall and PE ratios contract. That will be the primary catalyst that brings global central banks back into play.

The Fed, ECB and BOJ will most likely launch further quantitative easing later this year in an effort to combat falling stock prices. If that is the case, precious metals and equities will be the primary beneficiary.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6rrnv62

-Gary Shilling: Here’s Why The US Is About To Plunge Into A New Recession. The U.S. economy is overdue for a recession. I believe that it entered the down phase of the long cycle in 2000, and the five to seven years that remain in the age of deleveraging are part of this period of weak economic growth and more frequent recessions. History reveals an average business cycle length of 3.7 years in the down phase. The economy peaked in the fourth quarter of 2007, meaning the present cycle is long in the tooth. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/clfrs6p

-Richard Russell: After the Calm Comes the Storm. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7xdcufd

-Richard Yamarone: We Are Literally Witnessing a Collapse. “I’m fortunate enough to travel and speak to chambers of commerce with 300 to 500 people in the audience. They all tell me, ‘Hey, listen, I am letting go of workers. I’m hiring them back at a fraction of what I used to pay them.’ You hear from the other side, ‘Hey, I finally got a job after two years of being unemployed.

I used to make $100,000 (each year), now I’m making $45,000 or now I’m working part time.’ You look at the last two recessions, in ’90/’91 and the 2001 recession, they were jobless recoveries. We don’t respond to monetary policy the same way because we are no longer that manufacturing behemoth.

So the Fed cuts rates at the first sign of trouble and it takes, during those recessions, forty months for us to get back all of the jobs we would lose. In this current recession, we are not even close (to getting the jobs back) and that’s 50 months and counting.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6tpxo4e

-60 Minutes: The case against Lehman Brothers. Steve Kroft talks to the bank examiner whose investigation reveals the how and why of the spectacular financial collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bankruptcy that triggered the world financial crisis. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/6woxp3x

-Parsons Blames Glass-Steagall Repeal for Crisis. Richard Parsons, speaking two days after ending his 16-year tenure on the board of Citigroup Inc. and a predecessor, said the financial crisis was partly caused by a regulatory change that permitted the company’s creation. The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated banks from investment banks and insurers made the business more complicated, Parsons said at a Rockefeller Foundation event in Washington.

“To some extent what we saw in the 2007, 2008 crash was the result of the throwing off of Glass-Steagall,” Parsons, 64, said during a question-and-answer session. “Have we gotten our arms around it yet? I don’t think so because the financial- services sector moves so fast.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7lsrjk

-These Were The Best Moments From Frontline’s Incredible Financial Crisis Documentary Last Night. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bvu75yh

-Bank of America Corp.’s backlog of pending demands for refunds on soured loans reached a record $16.1 billion as a dispute deepened between the second-largest U.S. lender and Fannie Mae. Outstanding claims rose 28 percent in the first quarter from $12.6 billion in the last three months of 2011, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank told investors.

At the same time, the company set aside less than $300 million to cover repurchases for a third straight quarter, helping the mortgage unit post a narrower first-quarter loss. “You’ll see those numbers pile up, and they won’t reserve for them,” said Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. “Ultimately, my guess is that Fannie Mae takes Bank of America to court. If they lose that lawsuit, where does that leave them on reserves?” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cs844lp

-Infographic: How 9 Banks Are Exposed To $200 Trillion Worth Of Derivatives. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xreddf

-Don’t Like Austerity? Try ‘Financial Repression.’ Indebted governments will have to find ways of “rigging the financial system to suit themselves,” because there is no decent economic growth in the West, and there aren’t coherent fiscal consolidation plans to help governments bring down budget deficits, according to HSBC Chief Economist Stephen King. “Financial repression results from policies which allow governments to fund their borrowing through imposing costs on others,” King wrote in a market note. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cp4q6e3

-Geithner Says Economy Faces Risk From Europe Crisis, Iran. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. faces risks from the crisis in Europe while the confrontation with Iran has helped drive up oil prices. “We still face some risks ahead,” Geithner said to the Portland City Club today. “We still live in a dangerous and uncertain world, with Europe confronting a severe and protracted crisis. The world is engaged in a critical struggle with Iran, which has added to upward pressure on oil prices.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8552q7h

-Global food price rise on costlier oil: World Bank. Global food prices rose in the first four months of 2012, pushed higher by volatile world oil prices, strong demand for food imports from Asia and adverse weather conditions in parts of Europe, South America and United States, the World Bank said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ccr2jyh

-Infographic: Why Gas Prices Are Too Damn High. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctoh497

-Michael Kinsley: Too Old to Get Hired, Too Young to Retire. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ccqrjpd

-Cooling U.S. Labor Market Takes a Toll on Confidence. More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week and consumer confidence declined by the most in a year, signaling that a cooling labor market may restrain household spending. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6vyc2qo

-For first time since Depression, more Mexicans leave U.S. than enter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7agkjms

-Jack Cafferty: What does it mean when one in seven people in the U.S. gets food stamps? Forty-five million people that’s one in seven living in the United States received food stamps last year. That’s a 70% increase from 2007, according to a shocking new report by the Congressional Budget Office.

It shows that in 2010, about three out of four food stamp households included a child, a person older than 60 or someone who is disabled. Most households getting food stamps were very low income, only about $8,800 per year. The average food stamp benefit per household was about $290 a month, which comes out to $4.30 per person per day. The worst part is food stamp use is only expected to grow. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8mjma8

-Food Stamp Rolls to Grow Through 2014, CBO Says. The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7czvoff

-Zimbabwe’s New Currency Problem Is The Opposite Of Hyperinflation. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cjx62p6

-El Nino May Cool U.S. This Summer, Cutting Electric Need. The possibility of an El Nino, a warming of the mid-Pacific Ocean, has forecasters predicting lower temperatures across the U.S. this summer, which may mean less electricity will be needed to run air conditioners. May will probably be warmer than normal, and then “we are expecting a much different type of pattern” than last year, said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at Weather Services International in Andover, Massachusetts. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7a6c2z3

-Feds And Utilities Face Off Over The Electromagnetic Pulse Threat Coming In 2014. As scientists warn of an impending solar storm between now and 2014 that could collapse the national power grid, thrusting millions into darkness instantly, a debate has flared up between utilities and the federal government on the severity of such an event. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6rxbjbg

-Tiger Moms Craving SUVs Drive Next Wave of Chinese Demand. Zhou Na, a 37-year-old Beijing mother, says she knows why sport-utility vehicles are the fastest-growing segment in the world’s biggest automobile market: kids. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cden87d

-Google Chairman Schmidt Received $101 Million Last Year. Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt was paid $101 million last year, including stock awards and options that vest over a four-year period, as he turned over control of the company to co-founder Larry Page. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7urxxhl

-60 Minutes: Even in tough times, contemporary art sells. Morley Safer is back on the art beat, and although he doesn’t like much of what he sees at Miami’s Art Basel, there’s no denying that sales are strong. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/bvf3gqw

-60 Minutes: The trouble with treasure. An amateur diver says he’s discovered tens of thousands of raw emeralds at the bottom of the ocean but it may be years before he can profit. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/7g8zwd8

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Television’s Highest Paid Celebrity Judges. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cd9kqvn

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Diamond is a 0.37 Carat Radiant Cut Fancy Intense Purplish Pink Argyle Diamond. Buying a pink diamond today is like buying a Picasso painting while he was still alive. More than 90 per cent of the world’s pink diamonds come from the Argyle mine in the East Kimberley region in the far northeast area of Western Australia. Large pink diamonds tend to go to museums, are gifted to royalty or end up at auction houses such as Christie’s. Christie’s has auctioned only 18 polished pink diamonds over 10 carats in its 244 year history. Harold Seigel-Watch video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/cjkhn76

-Legendary 400-year-old Beau Sancy diamond expected to fetch up to £2.5million at auction. It has been coveted by royalty and the fabulously rich for more than 400 years. Now the ‘Beau Sancy’ one of the world’s oldest, most famous and sought after diamonds in private hands is about to go up for sale. Weighing in at 34.98 carats, the sparkling gem with a rare pear cut is expected to fetch up to £2.5million when auctioned at Sotheby’s Geneva on May 14. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7tcl75l

-This Guy Just Bought $18.2 Million Worth Of Diamonds. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8xwl3q

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GOLD

-”The mood is very negative. Keep the faith. My work forecasts gold will rise to $2100 and $2300, with both targets acquired during 2012. From there, I see $2800 being acquired by March of 2013.” Morris Hubbartt

-Gordon Chang: China will buy gold to pay for Iranian oil. Beijing is planning to avoid U.S. financial sanctions on Iran by paying for oil with gold. China’s imports of the metal are already large, and you can guess what additional purchases are going to do to prices. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11277

-Jim Sinclair: The implications of China paying in gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11282

-Jim Sinclair: Western economic sanctions inadvertently remonetize gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11281

-Jim Sinclair: New European treaty guarantees QE to infinity. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11284

-Jim Sinclair: Shorts Now Trapped & Gold Could Gap Up to $3,000. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7×6fe3d

-Are markets arranging a de-facto return to the gold standard? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11280

-Reuters, Russia Today interview gold standard prophet John Butler. John Butler says a return to the gold standard is “inevitable” possibly as soon as within the year and $10,000/oz gold is on the cards. Jamie McGeever interviews Butler about his opinions in his new book, ‘The Golden Revolution : How to Prepare for the Coming Gold Standard.’

Butler has 18 years’ experience in the global financial industry, having worked for European and US investment banks in London, New York and Germany. The book says that the era of paper currency is coming to an end and a return to a gold backed dollar is basically inevitable. McGeever starts the interview by saying that far from gold being expensive at $2,000/oz, gold may be “the bargain of a life time” especially “if the world returns to some form of gold standard.”

Butler says that this “could happen as early as next year” due to BRIC nations dissatisfaction with the dollar reserve standard, “they will start to move formally back to gold.” There are many ways that this can happen according to Butler including one country becoming a first mover, surprising the world and the United States, by pegging its currency to gold. He points out that Russia may be the country who could do precisely that.

This could lead to a run on the US dollar and financial assets and could see the dollar lose 20% in 24 hours as investors pour into real assets such as oil and gold. This could lead to a depression in the U.S. There could be a Bretton Woods style “crisis meeting” where the U.S. decides it must reinstate the gold standard or else the dollar “may lose its reserve status entirely.” Gold at $5,000/oz should happen and possibly over $10,000/oz in that scenario as gold will be a “de facto monetary asset in cross border balance of payments transactions.” Read and watch more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11294

-Mexico Raised Gold Reserves in March, IMF Data Shows. Mexico added 16.8 metric tons of gold valued at about $906.4 million to its reserves in March as nations including Turkey, Russia and Kazakhstan increased their holdings of the metal, International Monetary Fund data show.

Mexico raised its reserves to 122.6 tons last month when gold averaged $1,676.67 an ounce, data on the IMF’s website showed. Turkey added 11.5 tons, Kazakhstan 4.3 tons, Ukraine 1.2 tons, Tajikistan 0.4 ton, and Belarus 0.1 ton, according to the IMF. The data shows Russia boosted gold reserves by about 16.5 tons after its central bank said on April 20 they were higher. The Czech Republic reduced bullion reserves by 0.1 ton. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cstufrd

-Argentina ignored record-high gold to boost reserves. Argentina added to its gold reserves for the first time in nearly six years in September 2011 as the price hit record highs, mirroring the trend among emerging central banks to diversify further from paper currencies such as the U.S. dollar. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/797cy5t

-Are Taxi Drivers Buying Gold or Apple? CNBC recently aired a segment that asked people walking along the Santa Monica Boulevard boardwalk in California which item they would rather have: $600 in cash, one share of Apple stock, an iPad 2 or one-third of an ounce of gold. While it is not a perfect example of the taxi driver indicator, it showed insight to how some, if not most Americans think.

All items available to choose from were valued around $600, but the respondents had different views on the best pick. Despite being called a bubble numerous times in the past few years, very few respondents picked the gold coin. In fact, only one man chose the gold coin and when asked why, he responded, “because gold’s going to $3,000.”

The one share of Apple or the iPad 2 was the more popular choice. This simple yet eye-opening segment portrays the typical investment mindset in America. After an 11-year bull market run, the average Joe is still unaware of the benefits that gold offers. To call gold a bubble is not only short-sided, but wrong. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7pt446r

-Hathaway: Fed to Print More Money & Gold to Hit New Highs. So, I think investors need to understand why they have exposure to gold. We are in an environment where central banks are trying to debase currency. Ultimately that has to be reflected in the gold price and the performance of gold stocks.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6twbre3

-Clive Maund: Gold Market Update. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8a6qwkw

-Jeffrey Nichols: As investors lose faith in dollar gold will win out. Gold is currently treading water but Nichols believes that the chances of a breakout to the upside are significantly greater than the probability of a breakdown with the gold bull having five to ten years of life ahead. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84u9v8c

-Lawrence Williams: Fact, opinion and fiction in the rising gold price scenario. There are almost as many opinions in gold price forecasting as there are analysts out there but the investor needs to be wary of some of these opinions which may be expressed as facts and are nothing of the sort. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7kbk95u

-Greyerz: Bankrupt Nations Desperate to Save Financial System. “Gold has been under pressure for the last week or so and we’ve gone sideways for almost eight months. But we have to remember we are going sideways at a very high level. Depending on your currency, gold is only down 10% to 13% from the peak.

So, I think gold is behaving extremely well. If you look at the physical gold market, all of the sovereign banks are increasing their holdings. None of our investors are selling physical gold. They know what’s coming. All of the pressure is in the paper market and that market is going to disappear in the next few years because people are not going to trust the paper market.

Technically it looks as though gold has made a bottom. I said we had made and bottom in January and now gold made a higher low yesterday. We have seen the end of this correction and I think a major move is coming. It (gold) is like a coiled spring. There is massive energy in the gold and silver market now, and that energy is going to release very soon now in my view.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c3g6q8v

-John Hathaway: 8 Key Charts, Gold, Fed & The Big Picture. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6plampd

-James Turk: The Most Important & Extraordinary Chart for 2012. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7pkjc34

-Robert Fitzwilson: Sleight-of-Hand Won’t Save Global Financial System. In the mid 1970s, a product was introduced into the United States called the ‘Roach Motel.’ It was designed to lure roaches into a compartment that included a sticky substance, effectively trapping the roaches inside. The tag line for the advertisements was ‘Roaches check in, but they don’t check out!’

As more and more debt is created by the central banks, more fiat money is being created. Rather than fostering economic growth, it is being trapped into the figurative monetary Roach Motel. It is just a matter of time and simple arithmetic before this magical scheme and the sleight-of-hand are relegated to the dustbin of history. Time is running out for those who wish to protect their savings through the purchase of real assets such as energy, gold and silver.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/chvxgrj

-Norcini: If History is Any Guide, This is Going to End Badly. When people ask themselves, ‘What can I do to protect myself and my family?,’ the answer is no different than what is was many centuries ago, as Rome was collapsing. Get your hands on honest forms of money. Back then it was physical gold and silver, and it remains the same today.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7snk3gp

-Eric Parnell: Gold The Fate That Awaits Once Fed Stimulus Ends. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7uwn9h4

-John LaForge: Indicators Predict Gold Trend to Continue. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/825v3sp

-Rick Rule: Why I’m Excited About This Gold Market. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/75ulpyd

-Rick Rule: Scary Math & The Dow Fall Off a Cliff Here. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7l79uuz

-TrimTabs: Talking Gold with Eric Sprott. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/82lvkpr

-Infographic: Everything You Need To Know About Investing In Gold. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/87ej5gy

-Central banks rig gold market to ensure orderly rise, Jim Rickards says. Rickards calling for $7,000 gold. Read and listen to more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11271

-Future Money Trends interviews GATA Chairman Bill Murphy. Read and listen to more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11276

-Harvey Organ tells Chris Martenson about gold and silver futures market rigging. Read and listen to more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11278

-Embry: Market Manipulation More Blatant & There’s More of It. “I would dare say that the manipulation (of gold) today is perhaps more blatant and there is more of it than I’ve ever seen. They (the manipulators) don’t care anymore. You see these 3 o’clock in the morning precipitous drops. You see drops when the COMEX opens and when the London PM fix is in.

There are always these times they attack, and no market that wasn’t being manipulated would trade with that regularity. I am of the mind that the paper guys have overplayed their hand and they have pushed the price too low. The people in the East, in particular, the Russians, the Chinese, etc., know perfectly well the situation.

They are using this as a wonderful opportunity to take on more and more physical at what I would consider to be bargain prices. I was fascinated by what Jim (Sinclair) had to say, that he thought there could be an air pocket in gold to the upside. That would really be something, but it wouldn’t shock me.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7xldxp4

-Holders of treasuries and paper gold may have their own tungsten to worry about. Italian financial police have seized U.S. securities with face values of about $1.5 billion and gold certificates worth more than 3 billion euros as part of an investigation into a possible international financial scam. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11272

-Which gold price are new trade transactions using? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11290

-Alasdair Macleod: A plea for sanity. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11291

-Haynes, Norcini review gold and silver for the week at KWN. Listen to more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11273

-’Real’ trading in U.S. markets is down to 16 percent; the rest is machines. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11288

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”Most silver investors should focus on owning physical metal because its price is so volatile. That has been, and will continue to be, the best way to make money in this mighty metal.” Morris Hubbartt

-Silver Below $32 May Attract ‘Bargain Hunters,’ Commerzbank Says. Silver prices below $32 an ounce should attract “bargain hunters,” Commerzbank AG said in a report. “The hybrid character of silver store of value and participating in an economic upswing due to its mainly industrial use should mean that silver remains attractive and in demand,” the bank said. Bloomberg

-Clive Maund: Silver Market Update. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7nbs8g9

-Stephan Bogner: The Silver Megathrust. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dype854

-Peter Cooper: How long until silver breaks out of its consolidation phase and heads higher? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/74wyos6

-Paul Mladjenovic: The Silver Reverse Bubble of 2012. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/772bjz6

-Przemyslaw Radomski: Will Silver and Platinum Outperform Gold in the Near Future? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7js9ynf

-India Silver demand may double to 6000 tons by 2017. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xxjx65

-Mining Companies in Global Talent War. “There are just simply not the people there, and I think it’s going to be the Achilles heel of the industry,” said Bruno Rizzuto, managing partner at Cadre Staffing Inc. “A lot of these projects will not be able to get off the ground because they will not have either the management capacity to do so or the operational workforce.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7o7fgz3

-Tech billionaires bankroll gold rush to mine asteroids. Google Inc executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and filmmaker James Cameron are among those bankrolling a venture to survey and eventually extract precious metals and rare minerals from asteroids that orbit near Earth. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ky7k6t

-Surprised it lasted this long. Soviet-era palladium stockpiles said to be depleted. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7j2dr7r

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FED-QE

-Fed Says Economy Will ‘Pick Up Gradually’; Policy Unchanged. Federal Reserve policy makers said they expect growth to gradually accelerate, while refraining from new actions to lower borrowing costs. “The committee expects economic growth to remain moderate over coming quarters and then to pick up gradually,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement at the conclusion of a two-day meeting today in Washington.

“Despite some signs of improvement, the housing sector remains depressed,” the panel said. Policy makers led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke are holding off on additional steps to boost the economy amid signs the more than two-year expansion is gaining strength. Still, the jobless rate isn’t declining fast enough to satisfy central bankers, who repeated their view today that borrowing costs are likely to remain “exceptionally low” at least through late 2014.

Today’s statement said that “strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook.” The Fed has cited the risk from “strains in global financial markets” in its previous five meetings. In March it said those strains had “eased.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqg6jyn

-Bernanke Says Fed ‘Prepared to Do More’ After Policy Unchanged. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank is ready to take additional action if needed to boost the economy, after leaving its policy unchanged. “We remain prepared to do more as needed to make sure that this recovery continues and that inflation stays close to target,” he said at a press conference following a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee in Washington. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqg6jyn

-Bernanke Rejects Criticism He Ignores His Own Policy Advice. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said pushing up inflation to cut joblessness would be “reckless,” and he rejected criticism that he isn’t following his own advice to the Bank of Japan more than a decade ago on how to avert economic stagnation.

“The question is, does it make sense to actively seek a higher inflation rate in order to achieve” a slightly faster reduction in the unemployment rate, Bernanke said to reporters after a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. “The view of the committee is that that would be very reckless.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7dbyx5y

-Jeff Gundlach: Raising Rates Would Be Like ‘Shooting Yourself In The Head.’ Gundlach has long expressed concerns over the government’s mountain of debt. But one thing that’s kept the debt problem from crushing the economy is low rates. As such, Gundlach doesn’t expect the Red to raise rates anytime soon. “With all of this debt building up, one thing that’s been saving us is the interest rate on the debt has been collapsing,” Gundlach said. Raising rates would be “like shooting yourself in the head,” Gundlach said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9rsddw

-Fleckenstein: Fed Idiots Wrong, Big Problems in Europe & US. We know what they are going to do. They are going to ease. The economy is not that strong, the Fed is wrong. What a shock, they’re wrong. Do you remember when Ben (Bernanke) thought the subprime crisis was contained?

They don’t know anything. They’re idiots. They are the cause of the problem. So why do we want to know what the idiots think about the current state of the economy? Given the amount of easing and the size of the fiscal stimulus, we should be having a boom. We can barely get a blip because the economy is broken and they broke it.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vytnet

-Caesar Bryan: Asia To Deploy Stunning & Massive QE. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7k6dban

-Bill Gross: I Don’t See QE Happening At This Point. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bsmrgdh

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-”The implications of the present situation in Spain could be more far reaching than is currently anticipated and the contagion it represents could lead to a fundamental change in the world’s monetary order.” John Browne-Euro Pacific Capital

-U.K. Succumbs to First Double-Dip Recession Since 1970s. The U.K. economy shrank in the first quarter as Britain slid into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s, forcing Prime Minister David Cameron to defend his spending cuts in Parliament. Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, when it declined 0.3 percent, the Office for National Statistics said in London. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8zep39

-Spain’s economy plunges into recession: central bank. Just two years after emerging from the last downturn, Spain slid into recession again with two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, the central bank said in a report. Gross domestic product fell an estimated 0.4-percent in the first quarter of 2012 after a 0.3-percent decline in the last three months of 2011, the bank said.

Spain, whose unemployment rate at the end of 2011 was already the highest in the industrialised world at 22.85 percent overall and nearly 50 percent for the young, suffered a further jobs slump. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c75zx9j

-Spain’s Ratings Cut by S&P on Deficit, Bank Bailout Concern. Spain’s sovereign credit rating was cut to BBB+ from A by Standard & Poor’s on concern the nation will have to provide further fiscal support to the banking sector as the economy contracts. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xylf5k

-Cost of Spain’s Housing Bust Could Force a Bailout. As Spain endures its second recession in three years and unemployment nears 25 percent, an increasing number of debt-heavy Spaniards can no longer meet monthly payments on the mortgages that their banks were all too eager to give.

With a rising portion of Spain’s 663 billion euros, or $876 billion, in home mortgages at risk of default, many economists say it is only a matter of time before some of Spain’s biggest banks will need a bailout. And the Spanish government, staggering under its own debt and budget deficit burdens, may not have the money to come to the rescue. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bwba9uv

-Spain Won’t Create ‘Bad Bank’ for Real Estate: De Guindos. Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos rejected the creation of a state-sponsored “bad bank” to unload real-estate assets from the nation’s cash-strapped lenders. Instead, de Guindos said lenders should move real estate assets into separate “entities” or create “securitized assets” for which they have already set aside provisions so that distressed properties can be more easily valued and sold.

“The government won’t create anything, neither a good bank nor a bad bank and there won’t even be the smallest bit of public money available,” de Guindos told reporters in Washington. “What we have is a process of adjustment in the valuation of the assets, and that in turn should help their sale.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cb6y5q9

-More grief for Greece as recession seen deeper. Greece’s economy will contract a deeper than expected 5 percent this year, the country’s central bank chief said, piling more pressure on to a citizenry already battered by crippling austerity and record joblessness. The projection topped a previous forecast the central bank made in March, when it projected the 215 billion euro economy would contract 4.5 percent after a 6.9 percent slump in 2011. Twice bailed-out Greece is in its fifth consecutive year of recession. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bmx8juw

-Greek Banks Post $37 Billion Losses on Debt Restructuring. Greece’s four biggest banks reported a combined loss of 27.9 billion euros ($36.9 billion) for last year after participating in the country’s debt exchange, the largest sovereign restructuring in history. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cb6sem9

-Art Cashin: A Eurozone Breakup Would Be Cataclysmic. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7v2mvdg

-Soros: Europe’s Social, Economic, And Moral Crisis Could Result In A Soviet-Union Like Collapse. “Europe is similar to the Soviet Union in the way that the euro crisis has the potential of destroying, undermining the European Union,” he said in a debate on public policy education Tuesday. “With the profound social, economic and moral crisis that Europe is in, we can see a similar process of disintegration.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cm28npa

-Investors Face ‘Bumpy Journey’ as Euro Crisis Grows: El-Erian. A diverse set of economic circumstances around the globe are forcing investors to take an equally diverse approach to investing, Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7gramd7

-David Rosenberg: This is What The European Endgame Looks Like. Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/br3yjva

-Merkel Backs Draghi’s Call for Growth to Combat Debt Crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel backed European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s call to focus on spurring economic growth, as German officials rejected charges they are fixated on budget austerity to fight the debt crisis. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/czmzskg

-Merkel Pushes Back Against Hollande Call to End Austerity Drive. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said balanced budgets are the best answer to the debt crisis, rebuffing French Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande’s campaign pledge to reverse Europe’s austerity drive.

As Europe’s two largest economies head toward potential conflict over quashing the crisis, Merkel and her ruling party stood firm on German-led remedies, including the debt-cutting fiscal pact signed last month by all 17 euro-area leaders. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/btkycf2

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-CHART OF THE WEEK: U.S. Debt Greater Than Eurozone and U.K. Combined. This visual says it all. With America’s debt currently at $15.1 trillion and rising, it’s not a pretty picture.

The worst part is that the Eurozone and the U.K combined when taking more than six nations into consideration is still in debt by 2.4 trillion less than the United States is. If we don’t clean up our act and make immediate changes, we may face Greece’s fate sooner than we think. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bpsccx2

-Social Security Fund to Run Out in 2035, Trustees Say. The budget outlook for Social Security is getting dimmer, the U.S. government said, with its primary trust fund now projected to run dry three years sooner than anticipated. The fund that helps finance benefits for 44 million senior citizens and survivors of deceased workers will be exhausted by 2035, the program’s trustees said in an annual report.

Aid would have to be cut at that point if Congress doesn’t intervene. Social Security’s disability program, which helps support 11 million Americans, will run through its trust fund in 2016, two years earlier than predicted. The report attributed the fiscal stress in part to the weak economy.

The main trust fund that supports the Medicare health-care program for the elderly will run out of money in 2024, the report said. The giant retirement programs are straining the U.S. government’s finances, and what to do about them is a central issue in the election-year debate between Democrats and Republicans as President Barack Obama seeks a second term. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6na4kat

-In an apparent first, a public pension plan files for bankruptcy. Northern Mariana Islands plan in deep trench, with $268M in assets, $911M in liabilities. In what’s believed to be a first by a public pension plan, the Northern Mariana Islands Retirement Fund filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The public defined-benefit plan is in a big hole. At the moment, it’s only 38.8% funded, thanks to low investment returns and a benefit structure that’s been increased without raises in funding, according to the bankruptcy filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth consisting of three major islands in the Western Pacific.

Currently, the fund holds $268.4 million in assets, yet faces a staggering $911 million in liabilities. Last year alone, it paid $76 million in retirement benefits, health and life insurance claims and lump-sum death payments. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bw8gan2

-5.4 Million Join Disability Rolls Under Obama. A record 5.4 million workers and their dependents have signed up to collect federal disability checks since President Obama took office, according to the latest official government data, as discouraged workers increasingly give up looking for jobs and take advantage of the federal program. This is straining already-stretched government finances while posing a long-term economic threat by creating an ever-growing pool of permanently dependent working-age Americans. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/88gfua3

-U.S. Lost AAA on Danger of Liquidity Crisis, S&P’s Kraemer Says. The U.S. lost its top credit grade in August because of the imminent danger of a “real liquidity crisis,” and Standard & Poor’s made no errors in its analysis, said Moritz Kraemer, managing director of sovereign ratings.

“Last summer, the U.S. government got extremely close to a real liquidity crisis because the Washington establishment could not agree on the way forward that would have been required to raise the debt ceiling,” Kraemer told lawmakers on the U.K. Parliament’s Treasury Committee in London. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ch5kn2n

-Illinois ‘Treads Water’ as Unpaid Bills Top $9 Billion. Illinois’s backlog of unpaid bills has risen to more than $9 billion because of pension costs and falling federal aid, leaving the state “essentially treading water,” Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said. While revenue grew from higher personal and corporate taxes, “Illinois’ financial position has not improved,” Topinka said in a report. The combination of unpaid bills to vendors and Medicaid obligations, estimated at $8.5 billion in January, means payment delays will persist, according to the report. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/blh72t3

-Chicago Gets Negative Outlook From Moody’s on Pension Gaps. Chicago’s “outsized pension pressures,” unemployment and foreclosure backlog prompted Moody’s Investors Service to assign a negative outlook to the third-largest U.S. city’s general-obligation debt. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cj7eq4k

-Detroit fire boss: Let some vacant buildings burn. Detroit fire boss looks for cost savings, suggests allowing some vacant buildings to burn down. Detroit Fire Department Executive Fire Commissioner Donald Austin said he’s proposing the city allow vacant buildings and homes to burn themselves out but under conditions. “We are in no way looking to ‘let the city’ burn, this is about saving lives and money,” Austin said. “My department is strapped, the budget is strapped, and it’s time to look at a new way of doing things.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qpny45

-Student Loans: The Next Bailout? Here’s what we do know about student loan debt: it’s roughly $1 trillion in size, greater than either auto or credit-card debt and second only to mortgage debt in the U.S. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6t7gkjp

-Geithner’s Full of Crap: The Bank Bailout Wasn’t “Profitable” It Will Cost Taxpayers $120 Billion. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpgh9bc

-Slump Taught Profligate Americans Value of Saving. Americans are likely to keep rebuilding their savings for years to come as the specter of job losses and the meltdown in stocks triggered by the recession lingers, economists say. Households are putting money away at a pace more than double that leading up to the economic slump. The saving rate has averaged 4.8 percent since June 2009, when the 18-month contraction ended, compared with 2.2 percent in the three years leading up the downturn. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctbyfnb

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-CHART OF THE WEEK: Home Prices Down To Late 2002 Levels. From the just released Case-Shiller housing report, a grim reminder of how much time we’ve lost. The 20 city composite is now down to late 2002 levels. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d5y7vve

www.chartoftheday.com

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Jobs Beat Foreclosures as Housing-Market Guide. Employment levels may affect local U.S. housing markets more than the number of foreclosed homes, according to Shawn Snyder, a Citigroup Inc. economist. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d2gtbo7

-Home Prices in U.S. Cities Fell at Slower Pace in February. Home prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped at a slower pace in the year ended February, pointing to stabilization in the real-estate market.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values fell 3.5 percent from a year earlier, the smallest 12-month drop since February 2011, a report from the group showed in New York. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/crup7s5

-Sales of New U.S. Homes Exceeded Estimates in March. Demand for new U.S. homes was stronger than projected in March, showing more jobs and cheaper borrowing costs are helping stabilize the market. Houses sold at a 328,000 annual rate, down from an upwardly revised 353,000 pace in February that was the highest in two years, according to Commerce Department data issued in Washington. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bm6yy98

-Pending Sales of U.S. Existing Homes Increased 4.1% in March. Signed contracts to buy U.S. homes rose more than forecast in March as low interest rates drew buyers back into the market. The index of pending home purchases rose 4.1 percent to 101.4, the highest level since April 2010, after a 0.4 percent gain in February that was revised from a previously estimated 0.5 percent drop, the National Association of Realtors reported in Washington. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7zhrntd

-Foreclosure Activity Returns in Majority of US Markets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d2fu4fn

-Foreclosures squeezing US home prices and sales. Rising foreclosures are weighing on the U.S. housing market, reducing prices and keeping new-home sales weak. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpchugm

-Housing Declared Bottoming in U.S. After Six-Year Slump. The U.S. housing market is showing more signs of stabilization as price declines ease and home demand improves, spurring several economists to call a bottom to the worst real estate collapse since the 1930s. “The crash is over,” Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in a interview. “Home sales both new and existing and housing starts are now off the bottom.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7m6gzot

-Why the housing recovery remains a long way off. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7×79bl3

-Robert Shiller: We Might Not See A Turnaround In Housing In Our Lifetimes. In an interview with Reuters he said a weak labor market, higher gas prices, and lack of consumer confidence would likely see home prices continue to stay low: “I worry that we might not see a really major turnaround in our lifetimes.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7nbs2c7

-Why French Housing May Be Next Bubble to Burst. The French housing market would be the next bubble to pop if the European Central Bank increases interest rates, or if markets begin to perceive the same fundamental weaknesses in France as they currently do in Spain, analysts at Danske Bank wrote in a market note. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7rdzka7

-Chinese, Southeast Asians Purchase Half of New London Homes. Investors from China and Southeast Asia bought one in every two new homes in central London last year as the number of wealthy individuals in the region swells, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. said. Buyers from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore accounted for 51 percent of new-property purchases in central London neighborhoods that the broker handled, up from 47 percent in 2010, Jones Lang said in a report today. Hong Kong buyers led Asia with 17 percent of the purchases, the Chicago-based broker said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8m5pka

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GEOPOLITICAL

-Iran Considers Halting Nuclear Expansion to Avert EU Oil Ban. Iran is considering a Russian proposal to halt the expansion of its nuclear program in order to avert new sanctions, the country’s envoy in Moscow said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bn3qj8x

-This Is How The Swiss Are Making The Oil Embargo ‘No Big Deal’ For Iran. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cor687z

-Iran Prepares Its Submarine Fleet For Blockade Of The Strait Of Hormuz. We reported a couple weeks ago that Iran was demanding all U.S. ships entering the Strait of Hormuz stop and check in with the Revolutionary Guard. Now, they’re saying that move has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz. FARS News Agency, Tehran’s state run media outlet, announced Tehran is continuing a full blockade on all ships entering the Strait, with each undergoing inspection. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cb7z53e

-Report: Iran unplugs oil facilities from Internet. The Iranian oil ministry’s computer network came under attack from hackers and a computer virus, prompting the Islamic Republic to disconnect the country’s main oil export terminal from the Internet as a preventative measure, a semi-official news agency reported. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/735xhus

-Iran readying hacker attacks on U.S. infrastructure, specialists say. Iran is recruiting a hacker army to target the U.S. power grid, water systems and other vital infrastructure for cyber-attack in a future confrontation with the United States, security specialists will warn Congress. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wkgyh9

-North Korea Poised to Rattle Region With Nuclear Blast. Political pressure, a high-stakes bargaining strategy and technical challenges may push North Korea’s new leader to order the country’s third nuclear test any time now. North Korea has been escalating its threats against South Korea and the U.S. in the past month as new leader Kim Jong Un celebrates the centennial of the birth of the country’s founder, his late grandfather Kim Il Sung. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qzw3op

-China Says The US Is Bringing War To The South China Sea. The Obama administration has turned U.S. military attention on China’s neck of the woods by placing more troops in the Philippines since World War II, stationing Marines in Australia, and promoting a list of initiatives that have done nothing so much as anger the CCP. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7woav2g

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Growing numbers of the world’s ultra wealthy are investing in high-end, colored diamonds and gemstones as a hedge against global economic uncertainty and an opportunity for appreciation. The market for these tangible assets is being driven by nervous high-net-worth Westerners and newly affluent Asians, especially in India and China, where colored stones have long been seen as status symbols and good-luck charms.

“Diamonds offer a very attractive alternative to traditional asset classes. They are highly uncorrelated to equities and exhibit extremely low volatility, while at the same time offering very good potential for positive returns,” says Alan Landau, CEO of Novel Asset Management. The Novel Diamond Fund I, a private fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, launched in October 2011, and it is the first in a planned series of funds from Novel aimed at the colored diamond market.

Colored diamonds are some of the priciest and rarest gems in the world. Experts say only one carat of colored diamond is found for every 10,000 carats of colorless or white diamonds mined. (A carat is a unit of weight equivalent to 200 milligrams). Colored diamonds come in a range of hues, including red, purple, green, pink, blue, orange and yellow, as well as a variety of mixed hues. Like other precious colored gemstones, the purer, more intense colors are more rare and thus more valuable.

Landau says his fund operates as a trading vehicle for buying wholesale and selling retail, through the network of Novel Asset Management’s parent company, Novel Collection, a colored diamond trader and manufacturer (it cuts and polishes rough diamonds) with offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Although the fund can purchase colorless diamonds, Landau says it’s extremely unlikely to do so. “The profit margins in trading are higher in color diamonds,” he says.

Source: www.fa-mag.com
Read full article: http://www.fa-mag.com/component/content/article/10221.html?issue=188&magazineID=3&Itemid=211

• Charts of the Week-Quotes-Quick Hits
• RareColoredDiamonds.com
• Gold
• Silver
• QE3
• Sovereign Debt
• U.S. Debt-Deficit
• Oil-Nat Gas
• Real Estate
• Geopolitical

WORLD FINANCIAL REPORT ON RADIO APR 20 2012

CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-”It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.” G. H. Hardy

-”Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” Robert Louis Stevenson

-“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk and to act.” Andre Malraux

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Financial-Stress Index Sends ‘Risk-Off’ Signal. Concern about the global financial system’s stability has grown so much during the past two weeks that investors ought to take less risk, according to Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7op4aso

-CHART OF THE WEEK: This Is Why They Call It Taxmageddon. This weekend, NYT’s David Leonhardt coined the term ‘Taxmageddon’ to describe the huge tax hikes that are coming at the end of 2012 if Congress does nothing. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7576jdy

www.chartoftheday.com

-CHART OF THE WEEK: This Is The Critical Chart For 2013. If there are no changes to current law, 2013 promises to bring a big wave of fiscal tightening. This is due to the fact that spending cuts are kicking in at the same time that the Bush tax cuts are due to expire. According to a chart from Nomura, it’s theoretically possible that fiscal contraction could knock 5% off of GDP. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7olrr5b

www.chartoftheday.com

-Morgan Stanley: This Is What Happened The Last Time The US Economy Faced A ‘Fiscal Cliff.’ Everyone is freaking about 2013 because of the giant “fiscal cliff” that the economy faces. Morgan Stanley’s economics team led by David Greenlaw summarizes:

Under current law, the US economy will experience a fiscal tightening of unprecedented magnitude at the end of this year. The main drivers include the scheduled expiration of the Bush era tax cuts, expiration of the 2010-11 payroll tax cut, expiration of emergency unemployment benefits, a budget sequester tied to the outcome of the failed Super Committee deliberations, other reductions in non-defense discretionary spending attributable to previously enacted budget appropriations legislation, defense spending reductions tied to a scaling back of activities in Iraq/Afghanistan, and the imposition of some new taxes on individuals imposed by the Affordable Care Act that was passed in 2010.

While the total impact to GDP has been subject to debate, most agree that inaction by Congress will shave at least 3 percentage points off of GDP in 2013. All in, Greenlaw’s team estimates this will shave 5 percentage points off of GDP. Bottom line: fiscal cliffs are bad news for the economy, and the current one threatens to send us right back into recession. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89tsgt3

-Banks Seen Dangerous Defying Obama’s Too-Big-to-Fail Move. Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions becoming “too big to fail,” the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the nation’s credit markets seized up and required unprecedented bailouts by the government.

Five banks JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output.

The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, sparking concern that trouble at a major bank would rock the financial system and force the government to step in as it did in 2008 with the Fed-assisted rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. by

JPMorgan and with Citigroup and Bank of America after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history. “Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact,” said Gary Stern, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lwtjjs

-Fed Confirms Banks Must Conform to Volcker Rule by July 2014. Wall Street banks will have two years to implement the so-called Volcker rule so long as they make a “good faith” effort to comply with the ban on proprietary trading, U.S. regulators said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dyr7hst

-Joe Stiglitz’s Presentation On Why The Entire Global Economic System Is Doomed To Fail. The basic idea is: A few powerhouses like China, Germany, and Japan, plus some commodity based economies, have thrived in a system where they do all the exporting, and a few countries like the US run massive trade deficits.

But that system is coming to an end, as countries realize that their trade deficits are unsustainable, and seek to become trade surplus countries at the same time. Of course, not everyone can run surpluses, so this becomes a game of hot potato, with everyone pushing the deficit to someone else, via currency devaluation and other aggressive trade moves. In this presentation, Stiglitz explains why the system is heading towards collapse. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cusf87m

-Gerald Celente: It’s Absolutely Terrifying Where Society Is Headed. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7t9fkqg

-Canada Keeps 1% Rate, Says Increases May Be Appropriate. The Bank of Canada said today higher borrowing costs “may become appropriate,” leading investors to increase bets that policy makers will raise their benchmark rate from 1 percent later this year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cwxvmh8

-CPI Conspiracy Theories Persist Even With Broad Checks. One such critic is John Williams, the author of Shadow Government Statistics, a newsletter that he has run since 2004. Williams says the federal government understates the level of inflation to keep increases in Social Security payments and other costs down.

Williams’s alternate measure of inflation was 10.3 percent for the 12 months through March, compared with 2.7 percent for the Consumer Price Index. He calculates unemployment at more than 20 percent rather than the official 8.2 percent in March. His assessment of gross domestic product has clocked negative economic performance in every quarter since 2005.

The Department of Commerce’s measure turned negative in 2008 and 2009, recording the worst recession since the Great Depression. The economy is nearing “hyperinflationary Great Depression,” he says on his web site. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7sts2gc

-Postage prices to rise 30% as inflation wrecks UK living standards. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11250

-Call for 25% devaluation in Britain. Britain’s exchange rate is “crippling” the economic recovery, and devaluing the pound by as much as 25 percent could push growth back to an annual 4 percent, research group Civitas said. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11256

-25 Signs That Middle Class Families Are Being Wiped Out. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bv52mxj

-Thiel Says Market Returns May Sour Young Investors on Stocks. Poor market returns over the past decade may sour younger clients on equities, said Bank of America Corp. John Thiel. “We’re at risk of losing an entire generation as investors,” said Thiel, who heads U.S. wealth management and the private banking and investment group at Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit. “They’ve been through 10 years of not-so- sterling results.” The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined about 5 percent from the beginning of 2001 through the end of 2010. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7n3bet3

-Infographic: The Real Price Of Counterfeit Money. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bjjs5y

-Generation Lost? Millennials come of age. Annabel Adams has seen a lot in her life: 9-11, the dot-com bust, the housing collapse, the financial crisis, the Great Recession. That may sound like a lifetime of experience, but she is just 28 years old. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bwwejxe

-Vladimir Putin Could Secretly Be The Richest Person In The World. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/75cop6b

-Buffett Has Stage 1 Prostate Cancer, Not Life Threatening. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett has been diagnosed with stage 1 prostate cancer that is “not remotely life threatening,” the billionaire investor said in a letter to investors. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7×5frme

-Electric Cars Cost $1,200 a Year Less to Run, Study Says. Drivers of electric vehicles such as General Motors Co. Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Motor Co.’s Leaf may save as much as $1,200 a year on fuel compared with a new gasoline-powered compact, a scientists’ group found. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6moqslr

-Battery-powered autos proving a tough sell. Electric vehicle sales have been slow out of the box, despite marketing hype, government incentives and the hopes of green car advocates. Total sales last year were 17,425, which is less than 0.1 percent of the U.S. car and light truck market. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vc6nhq

-U.S. wine prices headed higher for consumers. U.S. consumers are going to be faced with a choice this year: pay more for a bottle of domestic wine, settle for lower quality, or buy cheaper imports, the Silicon Valley Bank forecast. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cf2saxn

-Titanium $329,000 Phone Seeks Watch-Loving Deep Pockets. Thomas Pruvot’s frequent requests for the time while his mobile phone was switched off on a long- haul flight to Hong Kong in 2005 led the then 25-year-old Frenchman on a quest for the ultimate accessory. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mzrzn8

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Diamond is a 2.56 Radiant Cut Fancy Yellow Internally Flawless Diamond. Harold Seigel-Watch video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/72na943

-”Natural colored diamonds make up only 1 percent of global production, which gives them unquestionable value. There is a tremendous demand for yellow diamonds, but also blue and pink. There are not enough diamonds to satisfy one-tenth of the new billionaires that every month are created in China.” Bruno Scarselli

-”Reluctant heiress” jewels sell for $21 million at auction. Jewels belonging to Huguette Clark, who was dubbed the “reluctant heiress” after choosing to spend her final years living in hospitals instead of her lavish homes, sold for $21 million at auction. A rare 9-carat pink diamond ring that fetched more than $15 million, nearly twice its high pre-sale estimate, was the top item in the sale at Christie’s on Tuesday which had been expected to total about $10 million.

Known as “The Clark Pink,” the ring set a new auction record for the most valuable pink diamond sold in the United States. The buyer was U.S. diamond, gem and jewelry special Brett Stettner of Stettner Investment Diamonds, according to Christie’s. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/crm9xwk

-9-Carat Pink Diamond Sells for Record $15.7 Million. The applause was heartfelt on the crowded auction floor at Christie’s New York headquarters Tuesday as a 9-carat pink diamond from the estate of Huguette M. Clark, sold for more than $15.7 million, after intense, competitive bidding.

It is the most valuable pink diamond ever sold in the United States at auction, according to Christie’s. The Belle Epoque cushion-cut, fancy vivid purplish pink diamond ring was the prized item in an auction that had 305 lots that included signature jewels, items from several estates and serious diamonds.

The diamond, known as “The Clark Pink,” was estimated to fetch $6 to $8 million so much for estimates. Clark, one of the last heiresses of America’s Gilded Age, died in May, 2011, at the age of 104. Her collection of 12 lots drew intense intentional attention because she lived a reclusive life in her later years and her jewels were believed to have been kept in a vault unseen since the 1940s. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d6yt8yx

-Colored Diamond Auction Results: Christie’s New York Magnificent Jewels Sale, New York City, April 17 2012. More auction Results here-http://tinyurl.com/c42otsn

-Lot 304: A Belle Époque Exceptional Colored Diamond Ring, By Dreicer & Co. Set with a modified cushion-cut fancy vivid purplish pink diamond, weighing approximately 9.00 carats, to the single-cut diamond prongs, gallery and shoulders, mounted in platinum, circa 1910. Estimate $6,000,000-$8,000,000. Price Realized $15,762,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/78ddyks

-Lot 281: A Pair of Diamond and Colored Diamond Ear Pendants. Each suspending a rectangular-cut diamond, weighing approximately 3.00 carats, from a cut-cornered modified rectangular-cut fancy intense yellow diamond, weighing approximately 1.38 and 1.37 carats, to the circular-cut diamond French wire, mounted in platinum and 18k gold. Estimate $130,000-$180,000. Price Realized $170,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/cjteu99

-Lot 267: A Diamond and Colored Diamond Double-Clip Brooch. Each detachable clip set with a bezel-set old European-cut brown diamond, within a shield-shaped single and circular-cut diamond surround, joined by a bezel-set cushion-cut diamond, mounted in platinum and gold. Estimate $100,000-$150,000. Price Realized $362,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/cq2uc7y

-Lot 258: A Pair of Colored Diamond Ear Clips. Each set with either a marquise-cut fancy intense blue diamond, weighing approximately 1.81 carats, or a marquise-cut fancy grayish blue diamond, weighing approximately 1.85 carats, each within a marquise and baguette-cut diamond scrolling surround, mounted in platinum. Estimate $350,000-$500,000. Price Realized $866,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/ccf6kh8

-Lot 252: A Colored Diamond Ring. Set with a circular-cut fancy deep brownish greenish yellow diamond, weighing approximately 10.22 carats, mounted in platinum. Estimate $40,000-$60,000. Price Realized $122,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/cdkej2a

-Lot 242: A Colored Diamond Ring, By Graff. Set with a modified cushion-cut fancy intense yellow diamond, weighing approximately 43.49 carats, flanked on either side by a trillion-cut diamond, mounted in gold and platinum. Estimate $1,000,000-$1,500,000. Price Realized $1,874,500. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cozaju9

-Lot 223: An Unmounted Colored Diamond. The pear-shaped fancy gray-yellowish green diamond, weighing approximately 9.23 carats. Estimate $50,000-$70,000. Price Realized $242,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/bm92824

-Lot 216: A Colored Diamond Ring. Set with a circular-cut fancy light yellow diamond, weighing approximately 21.37 carats, extending a spray of pear and marquise-cut diamonds, mounted in platinum. Estimate $250,000-$350,000. Price Realized $638,500. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctzk38x

-Lot 171: A Colored Diamond Ring. Set with a rectangular-cut fancy intense yellow diamond, weighing approximately 4.27 carats, flanked on either side by trillion-cut diamond, mounted in 18k gold and platinum. Estimate $20,000-$30,000. Price Realized $104,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/blc4ojv

-Lot 102: A Pair of Colored Diamond Ear Clips. Each set with a cut-cornered modified rectangular-cut fancy intense yellow diamond, weighing approximately 3.02 and 3.00 carats, within a circular-cut diamond surround, mounted in platinum and gold. Estimate $45,000-$65,000. Price Realized $86,500. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/cvhf4et

-Colored Diamond Auction Results: Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels Sale, New York City, April 18 2012. More auction results here-http://tinyurl.com/c2myupu

-Richard Russell: Wealthy Continue to Panic Into Hard Assets. (Another) group is attempting to form a diamond ETF. They will buy gem quality certified diamonds up to six 6 carats in size. Russell Comment: Gem quality diamonds are scarcer than gold, but if the fund is established, it should push up the price of gem-quality diamonds, which are growing more expensive by the month. The fund, if it is successful, will also increase the liquidity of diamonds, as well as educating the public as to the intricacies and science of diamonds. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wn9j5s

-Colored diamonds becoming investors’ best friend. Yellow, pink and blue diamonds are catching the eye of investors around the world, according to dealers and industry insiders. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bq8h48g

-Rock-Hard Assets. The world’s super-rich are turning to rare colored diamonds and other gemstones as a store of wealth and a source of growth. Growing numbers of the world’s ultra wealthy are investing in high-end, colored diamonds and gemstones as a hedge against global economic uncertainty and an opportunity for appreciation.

The market for these tangible assets is being driven by nervous high-net-worth Westerners and newly affluent Asians, especially in India and China, where colored stones have long been seen as status symbols and good-luck charms.

“Diamonds offer a very attractive alternative to traditional asset classes. They are highly uncorrelated to equities and exhibit extremely low volatility, while at the same time offering very good potential for positive returns,” says Alan Landau, CEO of Novel Asset Management. Colored diamonds are some of the priciest and rarest gems in the world.

Experts say only one carat of colored diamond is found for every 10,000 carats of colorless or white diamonds mined. Colored diamonds come in a range of hues, including red, purple, green, pink, blue, orange and yellow, as well as a variety of mixed hues. Like other precious colored gemstones, the purer, more intense colors are more rare and thus more valuable. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9ve6rn

-Gem Diamonds expects rise in rough price to continue. Gem Diamonds said rough diamond prices would continue increasing going into the second quarter, with prices both in the polished wholesale market and high-end branded auctions expected to improve. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cj7ayy8

-Diamond prices tipped to sparkle. An expert has tipped the price of diamonds to rise by more than 30 per cent over the next two years because of expected consolidation in the industry and increasing investor interest in the sector. Gemologist Garry Holloway’s tip of a price rise comes as the market speculates about private equity firm KKR looking to buy BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto’s diamond units, which include the Western Australian Argyle mine, to merge the operations.

Such a merger would create the world’s third-largest producer behind De Beers, the South African giant controlled by Anglo American, and Alrosa, which is based in Russia. Mr. Holloway said consolidation of the world’s diamond mines, which he said looked likely given the speculation around KKR, would irrevocably increase the price of diamonds, potentially forever.

He said he believed the big resource companies tended to act in concert, so further consolidation in the industry would equal higher diamond prices at the mine gate. “I estimate the cost of polished diamonds to rise in price by more than 30 per cent in Australian dollar terms over the next two years,” Mr Holloway said. “Diamonds will make an even more attractive value proposition for those looking to invest in an asset class that is both beautiful and lasts forever.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wd3eky

-Diamonds as a Commodity. Could diamonds be the new gold? A small number of investment professionals around the world are competing behind the scenes to turn the gem into a commodity that would be available to investors in the way that gold has been traded through funds on exchanges. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/csrucfu

-Are diamonds the new gold for individual investors? “Only 31% of Chinese brides wear rings versus about 80% for brides in the US and Japan.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cx5o2rk Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/d63xck4

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GOLD

-CHART OF THE WEEK: What is the value of an Olympic gold medal? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6p6ff2l

-”The hate gold mongering continues as an onslaught of bearish forecasts and media articles continue unabated. But somehow gold holds key support around $1,635 and silver actually wants to go considerably higher. As noted previously, it’s best to wait until gold has two consecutive closes above $1,700 before going from defense to offense and worst case scenario is to hold some buying power if we breakdown and head to ultimate support in the $1,550 area. But please don’t hold your breath waiting for such an occurrence.” Peter Grandich

-”Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stock when priced not in dollars but in ounces of gold has declined in value by about 75 percent since 2000 from 280 ounces per share to 70 ounces per share. Put differently, someone who bought gold rather than Berkshire in 2000 could today buy four times as much Berkshire stock using the same gold.” Jim Rickards

-Broker tips US$5,000/oz gold price by 2016. In a very bullish prediction, Sydney-based Martin Place Securities this week tipped a gold price of US$5,000 an ounce by 2016, compared to around US$1,650/oz now. Addressing the first day in Perth of the Paydirt 2012 Australian Gold Conference, Martin’s managing director, Barry Dawes, said he expected a price of at least $2,000 this year with that high to be reached “quite rapidly.” “We are bullish on gold and if you examine the historic price trends for gold, and we have to look long-term, a parabolic curve emerges that comfortably pushes the price to $5,000 in four years time,” Dawes said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7dscnta

-Jim Sinclair: Expect Another $17 Trillion of QE & War in Gold. When asked how he knew there would be ‘QE to infinity,’ before anyone else, Sinclair responded, “How does anyone know an answer to a question? By being told. By having sources. I’m half a century in the business. I’ve constantly kept up my contacts in a very unique and focused way. Quantitative easing was made clear to me, prior to Bernanke’s speech to the Washington group, prior to quantitative easing.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85o5hal

-Leeb: QE3 Is Now 80%-90% & I’m Going All-In Gold If It Dips. I certainly don’t see any reason not to be in gold at this point. Long-term the case is so powerful. Gold and some of these junior gold miners, in a few years you’re not going to believe what a gift you have here. I’m going to stay with my gold. If there is another break (in price), most everything I have will go into gold and perhaps some of those junior gold miners where you are really going to get a big, big boost.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mcxvjx

-NY bureau chief for The Economist says gold is a better currency. Matthew Bishop, New York bureau chief for The Economist magazine, has just given a video interview to The Wall Street Journal advocating gold ownership as a defense against currency devaluation. Bishop has even written a book favorable to gold, “In Gold We Trust? The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty.” Watch more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11259

-Gold May Advance to $1,800 in 12 Months, Gurdgiev Says. Gold probably will advance to $1,800 an ounce in 12 months on a negative outlook for the European economy and China’s real estate sector, according to Constantin Gurdgiev, an economist at Trinity College in Dublin. The global economy by 2014 may have started a cycle of growth accompanied by inflation, increasing demand for gold as a means of protecting wealth, pushing the price to more than $2,200 an ounce, Gurdgiev said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bwp6oae

-Gold investment demand to remain strong in 2012. GFMS’s Philip Klapwijk maintains that gold investment demand will stay healthy through the course of 2012 on the back of continued loose monetary policy and worries about the US and Europe. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cnkxec9

-Hubert Moolman: Gold/Platinum Ratio suggests much higher gold prices are coming. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpb8nrg

-Fund Manager to Lose Hair After Betting on $2,000 Bullion. Charles Oliver, a Sprott Asset Management Inc. portfolio manager in Toronto, will have his head shaved after losing a bet on the gold price. Oliver joined Sprott in January 2008 and told clients at a meeting four months later he was so convinced bullion would reach $2,000 an ounce by April 16, 2012, he was willing to stake his hair on it. Gold was at $945 an ounce at the time.

“We got to $1,923 last September, I thought it was all good and easy straight from there on in,” Oliver, who co- manages the C$500 million ($501 million) Sprott Gold and Precious Metals Fund, said in an interview. “The markets can sometimes tease you.” Oliver, who’s been letting his hair grow out for about two years, said he still expects gold will reach $2,000 and that there’s a “very strong chance” it will get there this year.

Gold prices will rise as countries increase money supplies, he said. Investor demand for gold has surged as the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policy spurred declines in the dollar, boosting the appeal of precious metals as an alternative asset. Gold surged 70 percent from December 2008 to June 2011 as the central bank set interest rates at a record low and bought $2.3 trillion of debt in two rounds of quantitative easing. “Governments are going to continue to run large deficits and to fund it they are going to print,” he said. “That’s great for gold.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cae7wc3

-Adam Hamilton: Bullish Gold Technicals. The bottom line is gold’s technicals are very bullish today despite all the bearish sentiment out there. Irrational lack-of-QE3 fears have driven gold down to its uptrend’s support line which has launched major rallies for several years running now. And relative to its baseline 200dma, gold was recently as oversold as it has been since the stock panic. These technicals reveal awesome near-term upside potential.

And contrary to the bears’ theses throughout gold’s recent selloff, gold’s fundamentals remain strong. Investment demand continues to grow even in this post-QE world, while mined supply remains tightly constrained. And despite gold’s long and strong secular bull, investors remain heavily under-invested in this critical portfolio component. Odds are a major gold rally is imminent, and may have already begun. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bommzpw

-Egon Von Greyerz: Bank Failures, Disorder, Massive Panic & Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6nexcs7

-Eveillard: We Are Looking At Catastrophe Going Forward. Investors should look for protection from this global storm by owning physical gold or even gold mining stocks for that matter because they are so undervalued vis-a-vis bullion. I have no appetite for bonds or cash because every central bank is debasing their own currency and cash yields nothing.

My contention is that the inflationary policies are already in place. As long as they are in place, the upside for gold remains intact. I mean every now and then there will be a correction. Some individuals argue that gold must go much lower before we turn around and make new highs.

All I know is that I do not want to lose my position in gold. If you look at the central planners, there idea right now is ‘let’s create more money out of thin air.’ That’s simply wrong. It will have very negative unintended consequences at some point. When? I have no idea. But it will. It will indeed, it always has.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/brbkyxk

-Peter Schiff: Gold Bears to Get Pummeled, No Crash in Stocks. “The bottom line here is gold is headed much higher and the next big move in gold will be up. People who speculate are betting on a huge drop in gold. That’s what the gold stocks are forecasting. They are forecasting a precipitous decline.

So, do you want to believe the speculators or do you want to stick with the long-term trend? I think a lot of the professional money managers, professional speculators, they’ve been betting against this gold bull market for the the last ten years. Betting against gold has been the wrong trade.

Over time, gold keeps making new highs. The same could be said for gold stocks, albeit at a slower rate. The gold shares reflect the fact that you’ve got a lot of skepticism. This is the antithesis of a bubble. Instead of there being euphoria and people speculating on a gold rally, they are all betting against it. Meanwhile, gold continues to climb a wall of worry.

The gold bears don’t understand the fundamentals. These were the same people that didn’t see the housing bubble or the financial crisis. This is why you will see the few people that bet right on subprime, are also the ones that are betting on gold. These savvy players have a better understanding of the macro-economic fundamentals.

The gold bears, they actually think the US economy is sustainable. They don’t understand the structural problems. They don’t understand the government solutions are actually worsening the problems. These people even buy the government PR campaign that there is no inflation.

Those of us who understand what is going on see the inflation. We don’t buy the government propaganda effort, we look at reality. The government tried to convince us there was no housing bubble, but I trusted what I could see with my own eyes, not what the government was trying to spoon-feed me.

The gold bears think that gold was only going up because of fear or Armageddon, and now they think it has been averted. Now they think gold is going to crash. They just don’t understand the gold market or what’s driving it. I like the fact that so many people are on the wrong side of the trade. The bears will continue to get pummeled.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7gfr2rs

-Rick Rule: I’m Too Old To Wish For Chaos, But It’s Coming. For investors who are frustrated, past is probably prologue. They need to have a sense of what happened in the 1970s market. If you go back to that bull market, you will remember there were numerous occasions, probably 25 or 30 in that decade, where the precious metals prices fell 10% or 15%. The equities associated with gold and silver fell even further.

The grandaddy of all of those declines was in 1975. Now, what’s instructive to know is that nothing changed with regards to the fundamentals for gold and silver. What changed was the official sector’s interest rates and people’s perceptions of the value of gold and silver.

If you were in the market and had the cash and the courage to stay in the market from peak to trough, that is from the bottom of 1975 decline, five years later you were up eight-fold. It’s tragic that some people had the idea behind the bull market, but didn’t have the cash or the courage to stay the trade. Can you imagine getting shaken out of a trade where you were right, and then missing five years of an eight-fold advance?

So, for people who are frustrated with the volatility in this market, especially the downside volatility, simply remember that what is changing are people’s attitudes, not the fundamentals. The market doesn’t care if you are frustrated. The market doesn’t care about your time frame.

The market doesn’t care about anything. The market is merely a facility for buying and selling assets. If you have the courage of your convictions, if you believe, as an example, that gold is a better store of wealth than fiat currencies, then stay the trade.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7lmvtft

-John Embry: What’s Happening in China is Wildly Bullish for Gold. “The gold and silver situation is under control of the paper manipulators at this time. I think they have an agenda to keep the gold and silver space as quiet as possible, in order to keep people away from it.”

“They have a vested interest in making sure people are buying stocks and bonds. In the fullness of time this will be overcome, but in the meantime we have to put up with this. To me, gold is the antithesis of the financial system as we know it. It’s real money.

The problem with the financial system is that it’s built on an unsustainable mountain of debt. The idea that we are going to be able to cure the current problem by creating more debt isn’t going to work. We can’t support the existing debt.

“As this sinks in with a lot of people, and it will as time goes on, gold is going to be seen as a major alternative, if not the major alternative. It won’t take much of that money that’s currently tied up in paper, moving into the gold space, to have an outsized impact on the price.

The Chinese, over the weekend, stated their intention they wanted to make the yuan a much more internationally traded currency. Up to now it’s been so restricted that you couldn’t really deal in it. If this is their intent, and I believe it is, this is a huge step.

This is spectacularly bullish for gold because I think the Chinese will ultimately want to back their money with gold. The Chinese are huge players in the gold market. That’s their agenda, to be seen as a major play in the international currency market.

What the US dollar doesn’t need these days is serious competition in terms of being the reserve currency. If the US dollar starts to move off center stage as time goes on, this will be wildly bullish for gold. One of the things that would destabilize the whole financial system is if people figured out how vulnerable the US dollar is.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6roo3lh

-GoldSeek Radio interviews Eric Sprott on Gold. Listen here-http://www.gata.org/node/11264

-Eric Sprott & David Baker: The [Recovery] Has No Clothes. The equity market rally that began in late December appears to be generated more by excess government-induced liquidity than it does by any raw fundamentals. We continue to scour the data for signs of a true recovery and we are simply not seeing it. Until those signs come through, we would be very wary of participating in the equity markets without a strong defensive stance.

We would also expect the precious metals complex to enjoy renewed strength as the year continues. One bad month does not change a long-term trend that has been building over 10 years. Gold and silver will both have an important role to play as the central bank-induced printing continues, and we expect more on that front in short order. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c33ybft

-Caesar Bryan: Suspicious $1.5 Billion Gold Dump & Bank Runs. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6tfn5jp

-Nigel Farage: There Are Going to Be Serious Banking Collapses. “It was interesting to see massive bullion movements last month, out of Italian banks and into Swiss banks. So, people who have purchased gold for protection and have kept the gold in Italian bank vaults, now their trust in Italian banks is so bad they have physically moved the bullion to Switzerland. I’m still a believer, buy gold on dips.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/br5aak7

-Pento: Inflationary Death Spiral & The Global Credit Card. The sad truth is that Europe, Japan and the U.S. have such an onerous amount of debt outstanding that the hope of continued solvency rests completely on the perpetual condition of interest rates that are kept ridiculously low. It isn’t so much a mystery as to why the Fed, ECB and BOJ are working overtime to keep interest rates from rising.

If rates were allowed to rise to a level that could bring in the support of the free market, the vastly increased borrowing costs would cause the economy to falter and deficits to skyrocket. This would eventually lead to an explicit default on the debt.

But the key point here is that continuous and massive money printing by any central bank eventually causes hyperinflation, which mandates yields to rise much higher anyway. It is at that point where the country enters into an inflationary death spiral.

The more money they print, the higher rates go to compensate for the runaway inflation. The higher rates go, the worse economic growth and the debt to GDP ratio becomes. That puts further pressure on rates to rise and the central bank to then increase the amount of debt monetization and so the deadly cycle repeats and intensifies.

The bottom line is that Europe, Japan and the U.S. will eventually undergo a massive debt restructuring the likes of which has never before been witnessed in history. Such a default will either take the form of outright principal reduction or intractable inflation. History illustrates that ownership of gold will provide a safe harbor for your wealth when paper currencies are being inflated into oblivion.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/78fwuwu

-As sanctions bite, Syria said to be selling gold reserves at 15% discount. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11261

-GoldSeek Radio interviews GATA Chairman Murphy. Listen here-http://www.gata.org/node/11266

-April edition of the Gold Standard Institute’s journal. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11252

-Doug Casey asks for and James Turk delivers the evidence of gold market manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11251

-Patrick Heller: Gold and silver price suppression is now a weekly event. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11265

-BIS trader removes gold ‘interventions’ from his biography. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11257

-GATA tells the past well enough, but we’re not in charge of the future. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11258

-Another attack tries to knock King World News off the Internet. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11247

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”Silver is my second largest holding, just behind gold. I am projecting that silver rises to about $100 per ounce over the next 18 months.” Morris Hubbartt

-Robert Fitzwilson: We Are Witnessing The Largest Financial Bubble In History. The biggest bubble in human history is in sovereign debt, the obligations of governments around the world. The classic signs of a bubble are present. Despite the fact that virtually all governments are insolvent (the Reality), there exists an almost universal belief that sovereign debt is safe (the Perception). There is a massive gap between reality and perception.

What we hear is that gold, silver and oil are in bubble mania. Nothing could be further from the truth. The perception is so far below the reality that we effectively have a negative bubble. Buyers of these three assets are speculating fools according to the mainstream media. The only thing that is foolish is not holding onto positions and not adding as nominal prices periodically come down.

The bubble is in paper assets, particularly sovereign debt. Historic lows in interest rates mean that prices are at historic highs as rates and prices move inversely. Take into account the solvency factor, and the conclusion is inescapable that such paper assets are in the biggest bubble in history.

Sadly, the vast majority of people will not understand this until it is too late and their savings have been destroyed. The current pricing for gold, silver and energy assets is a gift to those with the ability to look at the facts as presented and take a longer-term view.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d34g4uk

-Bob Moriarty: Sprott Will Signal Silver Bottom. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7kyfy3b

-Comex silver stock piles at highest in at least a decade. Stockpiles of silver in comex-monitored warehouses rose to their highest level in 10 years as despite a 13% price rise so far in 2012. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5853ts

-Silver Survey: Investment Key To Silver-Price Action In 2011; Mine Supply Hits Record High. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cssrdqk

-Thomson Reuters GFMS forecasts ‘just above’ $40/oz high for silver. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9sw7nb

-Thomson Reuters GFMS: Silver Volatility Likely; Prices To Gain Traction Later In 2012. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8wlzn8

-Silver’s 2011 Annual Average Price Posts All-Time Record at $35.12. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ccz8cfd

-Silver: The harsh realities behind diminishing supplies. Gaia Vince discovers firsthand the conditions people at a Bolivian mine are still enduring to mine rapidly dwindling supplies of the precious metal. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5a6jzk

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QE3

-Gross to Gundlach Lead Bond Investors Seeing QE3 From Fed. Bill Gross, Jeffrey Gundlach and Dan Fuss, whose firms collectively oversee about $1.5 trillion, expect the Federal Reserve to conduct a third round of bond purchases as signs of strength in the U.S. economy fade and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis returns.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, Vice Chairman Janet Yellen and New York Fed President William C. Dudley signaled further easing may be needed if growth lags behind projections, with headwinds ranging from the end of tax breaks to $1 trillion of mandatory federal budget cuts to $100-a-barrel oil eating into consumer spending.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen as much as 4.8 percent from an almost four-year high on April 2. “Should the stock market keep going down, it will be a portent of weaker economic data,” said Gundlach. “It will happen and when it does you will start to hear about more support programs.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c63lhyu

-Jeff Gundlach’s Epic Presentation: “To QE3 Or Not To QE3, That Is The Question.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6pw345f

-Neel Kashkari: Don’t Worry, The Fed’s Morphine Drip Will Continue To Drip Drip Drip Into 2014. In an interview with CNBC, Kashkari tells everyone to calm down because the Fed won’t be tightening anytime soon.

“Every time the Fed tries to back away from their massive, easing policy, the risk markets react. We saw that last week with the FOMC minutes. This is like a morphine drip. You give morphine to the patient, it makes the patient feel better, it doesn’t cure the underlying disease. The moment you try to take the morphine away the patient wakes up horrified in a lot of pain.

And so I think risk markets are getting addicted to this easy money policy, and I think as the Fed tries to back away risk markets are going to respond, that’s going to put more pressure on the Fed to act. So our central forecast is the Fed will stay easing, maybe even QE3 through the end of 2014 as they forecast, could be even longer.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cx4rgal

-Europe Central Banks May Be Forced to Print More Money. Central banks in Europe are increasingly reluctant to pump more money into markets after already massive liquidity injections intended to kick-start economic growth but, according to analysts, they may have no choice. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lmavyv

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-”The bottom line is that Europe, Japan and the U.S. will eventually undergo a massive debt restructuring the likes of which history has never before witnessed. Such a default will either take the form of outright principal reduction or the central bank to set a course for intractable inflation. History illustrates that the inflation route is always tried first.” Michael Pento

-IMF Gets $320 Billion in New Pledges to Raise Resources. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she expects more contributions after landing pledges of about $320 billion in her campaign for bigger reserves to combat threats to global growth. “I look at this pot of money as an umbrella,” Lagarde said today, “There are clouds on the horizon.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d6nvost

-IMF Says ECB Should Cut Rates, Keep Tools to Bolster Growth. The European Central Bank should cut interest rates and keep its crisis measures in place to help euro-region growth and support the banking system, according to the International Monetary Fund. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d55occj

-Worst Yet to Come as Crisis Rescue Cash Ebbs, Deutsche Bank Says. The worst may be yet to come in the global financial crisis as the central bank spending that kept defaults low runs out, according to Deutsche Bank AG. Credit-default swap prices imply that four or more European nations may suffer so-called credit events such as having to restructure their debt, strategists led by Jim Reid and Nick Burns said in a note. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/724gov6

-Soros warns euro crisis could destroy the EU. Billionaire George Soros warned that the euro crisis is growing deeper, tearing at the fabric of European Union cohesion, because policymakers are prescribing the wrong remedies. “I’m afraid that the euro crisis is getting worse. It’s not over yet, and it is going in the wrong direction,” said Soros.

“The euro is undermining the political cohesion of the European Union, and if it continues like that it could even destroy the European Union,” Soros said. “That is due to a misunderstanding of what the problem is.” Soros said the crux of the problem was that debt reduction was coming at a bad time for the European economy. “You can grow out of excessive debt, you cannot shrink out of excessive debt.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/choln4l

-IMF Says European Banks May Have to Sell $3.8 Trillion in Assets. European banks could be forced to sell as much as $3.8 trillion in assets through 2013 and curb lending if governments fall short of their pledges to stem the sovereign debt crisis or face a shock their firewall can’t contain, the International Monetary Fund said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c25nmce

-Bundesbank Says Euro Nations Must Set Aside Growth Concerns. Germany’s Bundesbank urged troubled euro-area governments such as Spain to set aside short-term growth concerns and press ahead with budget cuts to win back investor confidence. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/crkxojk

-”Not if, but when” for Spanish bailout, experts believe. Economic experts watching Spain don’t know how much money will be needed or precisely when, but some are near certain that Madrid will eventually seek a multi-billion euro bailout for its banks, and perhaps even for the state itself. Read more-http://tinyurl.com/cc6c96y

-This Is How Much It Could Cost To Bail out Spain. Are Europe’s current firewall resources sufficient to bail out Spain? And about how much would this bailout cost anyway? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/broxlfo

-Rajoy Says Spain Needs Austerity for Funding as Yields Climb. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Spain must slash its budget deficit in order to maintain access to financing, as bond yields rose to the highest level since his government came to power four months ago. “The fundamental objective at the moment is to reduce the deficit,” Rajoy told a conference in Madrid. “If we don’t achieve this, the rest won’t matter: we won’t be able to fund our debt, we won’t be able to meet our commitments.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cqyq7oq

-Spain’s Surging Bad Loans Cast New Doubts on Bank Cleanup. Spain’s surging bad loans are spurring doubt on whether the government can persuade investors that it can clean up the country’s banks without further damaging public finances. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cvozhqq

-14 Jaw-Dropping Facts About The Spanish Economy. Last year was about Greece and Italy, but suddenly everyone’s talking about whether Spain will be the too big to save Eurozone economy that explodes the Global economy. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cxcho8h

-Italy to Miss Budget Deficit Targets, Debt to Rise: IMF. Italy will miss its budget deficit targets in 2012 and 2013 and its public debt will rise in both years despite the government’s austerity measures, the International Monetary Fund forecast said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7lmavr4

-Greek town develops bartering system without euro. As Greece wonders whether its debt crisis will eventually spell its exit from the euro, one town in the centre of the country, Volos, has formed an alternative local currency. It works through a bartering system or exchange of goods. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/d94kcp7

-Alasdair Macleod: TARGETing problems in eurozone. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11253

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-IMF tells US to sort out debt, quickly. The International Monetary Fund issued a clarion call to bickering US politicians Tuesday, urging them to solve the country’s debt problems before a still-vulnerable economy is tipped over the brink. In a hallmark semi-annual report, the Washington-based fund warned policymakers on the other side of the US capital that, while the world’s largest economy is improving, they invite trouble by not addressing a looming debt crisis. “The first priority for US authorities is to agree on and commit to a credible fiscal policy agenda that places debt on a sustainable track over the medium term,” the IMF said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xf6mpe

-The $5 Trillion Man: Debt Has Increased Under Obama by $5,027,761,476,484.56. In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government’s debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56. Although he has served less than a term, Obama is now the first American president to see the federal government’s debt increase by more than $5 trillion during his time in office.

During the full eight years that George W. Bush served as president, the federal government’s debt increased by $4,899,100,310,608.44. (Rising from $5,727,776,738,304.64 to 10,626,877,048,913.08.) The $5,027,761,476,484.56 that the debt has increased during Obama’s presidency equals $16,043.39 for every one of the 313,385,295 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7cpz2j7

-More U.S. cities set to enter default danger zone. America’s swelling ranks of fallen municipal borrowers have been blamed in the past year on ‘what-were-they-thinking’ causes, be it a Taj Mahal sewer system in Alabama or an overpriced trash incinerator in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg.

But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or Providence, Rhode Island, their problems have a lot more to do with financial policies that put them on course to live well beyond their means. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6orggej

-U.S. Tax time pushes some Americans to take a hike. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bu725bo

-U.S. Tax refunds being used to pay for bankruptcy filings. More than 200,000 money-strapped households will use their tax refunds this year to pay for bankruptcy filing and legal fees, says a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7cbshc3

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OIL-NAT GAS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Argentine Rigs Drop as Fernandez Seizes YPF. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s seizure of YPF SA will reduce investment in oil fields as energy producers flock to other Latin American countries, WTRG Economics said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/brssjmj

-CHART OF THE WEEK: China to Overtake U.S. as Biggest Tanker User. China will pass the U.S. in 2013 as the biggest user of tankers carrying oil at sea as Asian imports travel over longer distances and fewer cargoes go to the world’s biggest economy, according to Arctic Securities ASA. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/78pbxy6

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Gundlach Sees Natural Gas Like 1997 Gold, Poised to Rise. Investing in natural gas today is similar to buying gold in 1997, before a surge in the precious metal’s price, according to Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer of DoubleLine Capital LP. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ckuwycf

-Obama to Urge Congress for More Regulation of Oil Markets. President Barack Obama urged Congress to bolster federal supervision of oil markets, including bigger penalties for market manipulation and greater power for regulators to increase the amount of money traders must put up to back their energy bets. Obama asked Congress to fund a six-fold increase for surveillance and enforcement staff at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to put “more cops on the beat” overseeing oil markets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ccjwgm9

-Scapegoating Oil Speculators Won’t Ease Pain at the Pump. No one, least of all President Barack Obama, should expect oil or gasoline prices to fall because of the five-point plan he unveiled at the White House. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7q4nv3s

-Argentina Seizes Oil Producer YPF, as Repsol Gets Ousted. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner seized control of YPF SA, the nation’s largest crude producer, ousting Spanish owner Repsol YPF SA after a dispute over slumping oil output and investments.

Argentina took over management of YPF with immediate effect, replacing Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Eskenazi with Planning Minister Julio De Vido, Fernandez said in a speech in Buenos Aires. The government will also send a bill to Congress to take a 51 percent stake in YPF, she said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7lcusow

-Obama Issues Pollution Rules for Gas Wells, Offers Phase-In. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the first rules to combat air pollution from natural-gas drilling, while giving companies until 2015 to meet the most stringent requirements opposed by the energy industry. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bu2tvwj

-Hurricanes to Provide Little Gas Support. A below-average Atlantic storm season in 2012 probably will provide little support for energy prices as natural gas trades at 10-year lows. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cetftda

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REAL ESTATE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: ‘Explosion in Student Debt’ Drags Down Housing. As the cost of attending U.S. colleges and universities surges, student-loan debt is turning into “a significant drag on the housing market,” according to Pierre Lapointe, a Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. strategist. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cuycq9x

-U.S. Previously Owned Home Sales Unexpectedly Fell in March. Sales of previously owned U.S. homes in March unexpectedly fell for the third time in the last four months, showing an uneven recovery in the housing market. Purchases dropped 2.6 percent to a 4.48 million annual rate from 4.6 million in February, the National Association of Realtors reported today in Washington. The median forecast of economists in a Bloomberg News survey called for an increase to 4.61 million. In January, sales at a 4.63 million rate were the strongest since May 2010. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7o5swe

-Short Sales Surpass Foreclosures as Banks Agree to Deals. The number of U.S. home short sales surpassed foreclosure deals for the first time as banks became more agreeable to selling houses for less than the amount owed on their mortgages, according to Lender Processing Services Inc. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7mt7f82

-Zerohedge.com: No Housing Recovery Until 2020 In 5 Simple Charts. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7oebvpa

-U.S. Homebuilder Confidence Fell in April to Three-Month Low. Confidence among U.S. homebuilders fell in April to a three-month low, a sign the industry is still trying to gain its footing. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of builder confidence decreased to 25 this month from 28 in March, the Washington-based group said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bsuv4qo

-U.S. Housing Starts Unexpectedly Drop to Five-Month Low. Builders began work on fewer homes than forecast in March, signaling a sustained industry recovery will take time to get underway.

Housing starts dropped 5.8 percent to a 654,000 annual rate and the least since October, Commerce Department figures showed in Washington. The slump was led by the volatile multifamily category, which at the same time showed a jump in permits, a proxy for future construction. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cys2u4d

-China Home Prices Fall in More Than Half Cities Tracked. China’s home prices fell in a record 37 of 70 cities tracked by the government in March as officials pledged to keep restrictions on property purchases that have sapped buyer demand. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5smsbg

-Spain Has Enough Excess Land for 4 Million New Homes, Acuna Says. Spain has enough land approved for development to build 4 million homes and an existing supply of residences that will take about 10 years to sell, according to R.R. de Acuna & Asociados. There are currently 2 million unsold homes in Spain, the Madrid-based property adviser said in a report published today. In a typical year, there is demand for 200,000 to 250,000 properties, the company estimates. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/77tjteh

-U.K. Commercial Property Values Fall for Fifth Straight Month. U.K. commercial real estate values fell for the fifth straight month in March as the country’s economic woes crimped returns, Investment Property Databank Ltd. said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7za89hl

-The 21 Most Expensive Homes For Sale In New York City. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c85e4ey

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GEOPOLITICAL

-Art Cashin: Veteran Traders Can’t Figure Out Why Markets Are Ignoring The Huge Geopolitical Risks. Veteran traders have wondered for weeks about the markets whistling past a variety of geo-political challenges. Yes! Yes! I know about Spain and Italy but they are potential financial crises not truly political ones. A good example is the deteriorating situation in Egypt.

The Muslin Brotherhood went back on it initial promise and backed a candidate for president. That raised the likelihood of a religious government and possible rule by Sharia law. The ruling generals appeared to counter by encouraging a second Sharia candidate to possibly split that vote. Then they entered a law and order secular candidate to block a shift to religious government. The courts (thought to be influenced by the generals) ruled several candidates eligible (to enable that strategy).

Meanwhile, an election commission threw a wrench in the whole thing by disqualifying ten candidates. As the political outlook disintegrates, the country is running short of both food stuffs and currency reserves. The world’s most populous Arab nation (and Israel’s next door neighbor) looks less stable each day. And then there’s Iran. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/brhwo56

-Pentagon chief: ‘We’re within an inch of war almost every day.’ Defense Secretary Leon Panetta offered a blunt assessment of the threats facing the United States on Wednesday, saying the potential for another war breaking out remains high in places like North Korea.

“We’re within an inch of war almost every day in that part of the world,” Panetta said in an interview, in response to a question about the threats in the Korean Peninsula. “And we just have to be very careful about what we say and what we do.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/788mfhd

-Israeli TV report shows air force gearing up for Iran attack, says moment of truth is near. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d9arly9 and http://tinyurl.com/6urf723

-India Test-Fires Longest-Range Missile to Counter Neighbor China. India test-fired its longest-range missile for the first time, a weapon with the potential to target parts of northern China. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c24rjag

-North Korea Breaks Off Nuclear Accord as Food Aid Halted. North Korea broke off an agreement to halt testing of nuclear devices and long-range missiles after the U.S. canceled food assistance to the totalitarian regime in response to its botched rocket launch last week. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cse43p4

-North Korea’s Kim Says His Regime Can’t Be Blackmailed. North Korea won’t be bullied by its nuclear-armed enemies, third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un said in his first public address at a military parade as South Korea warned that his regime may conduct an atomic test. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7949d4c

-Chinese Espionage Campaign Targets U.S. Space Technology. China is stealing U.S. military and civilian space technology in an effort to disrupt U.S. access to intelligence, navigation and communications satellites, according to a report from the State and Defense Departments. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cfx4f75

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• Charts of the Week-Quotes-Quick Hits
• RareColoredDiamonds.com
• Gold
• Silver
• QE-Fed
• Sovereign Debt
• U.S. Debt-Deficit
• Jobs
• Real Estate

WORLD FINANCIAL REPORT ON RADIO APR 5 2012

CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Apple Is About To Be Worth More Than All The Companies In Spain, Portugal And Greece Combined. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7etm24

-”Any question of why politicians have broken the bank with deficits is answered below. Jim Sinclair

-”War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.” Author unknown

-”Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that will require every citizen to prove they are insured but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.” Author Unknown

-Marc Faber: Rich People Of The World Are About To See 50% Of Their Wealth Destroyed. “Somewhere down the line we will have a massive wealth destruction that usually happens either through very high inflation or through social unrest or through war or a credit market collapse,” he told CNBC. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c2gqldw

-Niall Ferguson: This Is The Study That Shows Why The US Economy Is Doomed. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8pjmu6

-Gary Shilling: Recession Is Coming, And It’s All Due To The Consumer. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c8bzv82

-Doug Kass: Don’t Wait Until May, Sell Stocks Now. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3jlovb

-Peter Schiff: Don’t Catch Recovery Fever. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c3njppf

-Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran’s Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack. The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.

Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran. Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to NATO, warned against an attack on Iran. “Iran is our neighbor,” Rogozin said. “If Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.”

Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia’s defense sector. Russian Defense Ministry sources say that the Russian military doesn’t believe that Israel has sufficient military assets to defeat Iranian defenses and further believes that U.S. military action will be necessary. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/chdyktu

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Record Oil-Gas Ratio May Spur Truck-Fuel Shift. The chart tracks the price ratio between a barrel of oil and a million British thermal units of gas on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The ratio rose above 50 yesterday for the first time since gas futures began trading on the Nymex in April 1990. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cn9agqq

-Troubled euro zone states most at risk from high oil. Oil prices at record levels in euro terms are threatening to rock the euro zone’s economy more than might be expected, with those countries least capable of riding out a shock being the worst hit. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dx9nf3r

-Natural Gas Futures Fluctuate After Drop to Decade Low. Natural gas futures in New York dropped below $2 per million British thermal units for the first time in a decade on a growing supply glut caused by mild weather and record production. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bq5jjwa

-Gas Prices Grow More Under Obama than Carter. Under the Carter administration, gas prices increased by 103.77 percent. Gas prices since Obama took office have risen by 103.79 percent. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7l584jq

-Gas Prices On Catalina Island Pass $7 Mark. For the past two weeks, gas prices on Catalina Island have been an average of $7 a gallon. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wmtjhs

-Anonymous Blamed for Attacks on Technology Group Websites. Two technology trade associations said they were targeted by the hacker-activist group Anonymous as it singled out supporters of proposed legislation to improve U.S. cybersecurity. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ylcsyk

-American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bsqpsfl

-Savings come slowly for hybrid, electric car owners. Buyers who choose Nissan’s all-electric Leaf ($28,421) over its approximate gas-powered equivalent, Nissan’s Versa ($18,640), will likely wait nearly 9 years until they break even, according to a new report by The New York Times that examines the cost of fuel efficiency. For drivers of the Chevrolet Volt ($31,767), the wait is even longer 26.6 years. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d98v9rp

-Bankers Quit Wall Street to Find $50 Million for Wine. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/77j7qtr

-Google Seeks Mona Lisa as Online Art Embraces Van Gogh. Google Inc. has expanded its virtual tours to more than 150 of the world’s major museums, featuring high-resolution close-ups of masterworks by Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Botticelli but not the Mona Lisa. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87clsfv

-Budweiser Is Luxury in China Where Beer Costs 30 Cents. Cheap Beer for consumers in China, it’s a fact of life. Brew in China, the world’s biggest market, sells at one-third the price in the U.S. Now foreign brewers are wooing the Chinese to pay more for brands that are popular worldwide. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/79bkwoj

-Coca-Cola Is Fighting A Family For $130 Million In Stock Found At A Garage Sale. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cq37tzr

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Diamond is a 0.33 Carat Marquise Cut Fancy Intense Pink Diamond. At Argyle, pink diamonds making it to the annual tender are literally one in a million. For every one million carats of rough diamonds produced from the mine, only one polished carat is offered for sale in the tender. An entire year’s worth of production of pink diamonds measuring over half a carat would fit in the palm of your hand. In terms of global diamond production, pinks make up only 0.03 percent. Harold Seigel-Watch video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/6g37q2r

-Sotheby’s Offers More Fancy Colored Diamonds. A fancy vivid yellow 23.02 carats cushion-shaped step-cut diamond is the top item at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction in New York next week. The diamond has a $1.5-$2 million estimate. The $65,161-$86,881 per carat diamond joins a few other fancy color diamonds.

One such item is a fancy pink cut-cornered rectangular modified brilliant-cut diamond weighing 6.03 carats set in a platinum ring, framed by small round near colorless diamonds. Sotheby’s estimates the item at about $1 million. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cptmh6b

-Diamond Jewelry Prices May Rise on Stone Shortages, Bain Says. The $60 billion diamond jewelry market may face structural shortages and price increases, particularly for large stones, as demand doubles by 2020, led by growth in China and India, according to consultant Bain & Co.

Diamond demand in carats will rise more than 6 percent a year until 2020, outpacing the 2.8 percent annual growth in supply, Bain said in a report for the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. Production will reach almost 175 million carats by then, exceeding the peak reached in 2007.

“Even in the most conservative growth scenario, the estimates are clearly very positive,” said Bain, whose forecast is based on a doubling of the middle classes in China and India, which will account for 30 percent of the global market by 2020, the same as the U.S., financial speculation may play a role in the anticipated price increase, according to Bain. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d6lxhmb

-Diamonds Are a Great Way to Diversify. Diamonds are an attractive option for investors looking to diversify portfolios because they don’t move in relation with other assets such as commodities and stocks, according to David Riedel, President of equity research firm Riedel Research Group. “Over the past decade cross-asset correlations have nearly doubled, diamonds have exhibited very low correlations to other assets making them an attractive source of diversification.

They have almost no correlation to anything else commodities, gold, equity markets,” Riedel told CNBC. In 2011, the RapNet Diamond Index for one carat polished diamonds rose 19 percent outpacing gold, which rose 10 percent. And supply constraints are expected to take diamond prices even higher in the coming years, says Riedel.

He estimates demand for diamonds will grow 50 percent between now and 2015, driven by consumption in the United States, China and India, while production will rise by just 24 percent. Sotheby’s annual spring sale of “Magnificent Jewels” in Hong Kong this week highlighted Asia’s booming interest in diamonds.

The highlight of the auction was the sale of an 8.01-carat blue diamond ring for $12.7 million the second highest price per carat for a blue diamond at an auction. When choosing between buying a diamond ring and loose diamonds as investment, Riedel says they both “work” and retain value. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lmap8u

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GOLD

-”QE to infinity is as sure as death and taxes. The recovery in the US economy is not going to reach any take off speed, but rather return for a second recessionary experience post June of 2012. QE 3 will surpass 1 and 2. Gold will trade next between $1700 and $2111 before moving higher. The Gold Cartel will abandon their shorts over the next three years, having met their match in the marketplace.” Jim Sinclair

-Risk off? Having sold most of its own, IMF now lauds gold as ’safe asset.’ A growing shortage of safe assets poses a new threat to global financial stability, the International Monetary Fund warned. The Fund identified $74.4 trillion of potentially safe assets, including gold, investment-grade government and corporate debt, and covered bonds. But it warned that 16 per cent of the potential safe government debt supply to 2016 could disappear if governments continued to borrow at current rates and hence made their debt more risky. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11241

-Jeff Clark: Is the Correction Over? If not, it certainly seems we’re closer to the bottom than the top, and given the fact that both gold and silver have had more than their fair share of recent corrections, we’re buying. In fact, the question in our minds isn’t whether or not to average down, but how much.

We’re not going “all in,” but we do think current prices represent a real bargain. As far as I’m concerned, the current downdraft in gold and silver is an opportunity to prepare for the next upswing. But remember that the speculative upside is secondary. The primary reason to buy gold (and silver) is prudence; they are the two assets that can protect you from the big monetary and fiscal fallout that’s headed our way. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/breppos

-Jeff Clark: What Happens to Gold if We Enter a Recession or Depression? Mayan prophecies aside, many of the senior Casey Research staff believe that economic, monetary, and fiscal pressures could come to a head this year. The massive buildup of global debt, continued reckless deficit spending, and the lack of sound political leadership to reverse either trend point to a potentially ugly tipping point.

What happens to our investments if we enter another recession or gulp a depression? Here’s an updated snapshot of the gold price during each recession since 1955. Clearly, one should not assume that gold will perform poorly during a recession. Even in the crash of 2008, gold still ended the year with a 5% gain.

And with the amount of currency dilution we’ve undergone since that time, it seems more likely gold will rise in any economic contraction than fall. Indeed, if the response of government to a recession is more money printing, precious metals will be a critical asset to have in your possession. Even if the gold price ends up flat or down this year, the CPI won’t. Gold’s enduring purchasing power is why we hold the metal.

Don’t lose patience with, or confidence in, your gold holdings. What happens to the price over any short period of time is only one chapter in the book of this bull market, and we think you’ll be happy by the time that last chapter is written. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7gscopa

-Ease Up on Stocks, Gradually Accumulate Gold: Marc Faber. Faber has modified his advocacy for gold a bit, in the face of a six-month, 15% slump. While he still supports gold’s long term opportunity, he feels the precious metal is “still in correction phase” and that “individual investors should gradually accumulate gold” because of the outlook for continued money printing by the Fed and other central banks around the world. His advice to investors is ”to hold some cash, hold some precious metals, hold some equities, and hold some real estate,” he says, adding that “if one asset class or the other declines substantially move money into that asset class.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cwjdl2n

-Gold ‘to hit $2,000′ on Spain fears. A looming flare-up in the eurozone crisis over Spain will drive the price of gold towards $2,000 an ounce this year, a leading consultancy predicts. Rising fears about the region’s fourth largest economy will send a fresh flood of investment towards the “safe haven” metal, according to the annual report from Thomson Reuters GFMS. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9xtoc4

-Adam Hamilton: Gold QE3 Scares. The bottom line is quantitative easing is certainly not the only form of monetary inflation. Throughout and after its widely-followed QE campaigns, the Fed has continued to grow both narrow and broad US dollar supplies at very high rates. The magnitude of this core inflation is even more amazing considering the gargantuan bases it is coming from. Such incredible monetary inflation remains very bullish for gold.

So while the QE inflation was undoubtedly great for gold, the lack of QE3 doesn’t mean the Fed has mended its inflationist ways. The QE3 scares that have pummeled gold are merely psychological, not fundamental. Whether QE3 happens or not, gold prices will eventually reflect the continuing mammoth printing of new US dollars. Traders who understand this now have a phenomenal buy-low opportunity. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cvzzxml

-London Trader: Fed’s Global War Against Gold Escalating. We are now to the end game. The bullion banks are so naked short gold and silver it’s unimaginable. They owe so much physical metal to market participants and more physical purchases are being scaled in every day. The sovereign buyers are taking down huge size, we’re talking serious tonnage.

The bottom line here is the leverage by the bullion banks is extraordinarily massive, and players have to remember, eventually it has to get unwound. Jim Sinclair recently stated, ‘Overvaluation in the gold market will be something to behold.’ I can promise you, his statement will be proven correct.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7n225zy

-John Embry: The Powers That Be Would Love to See Gold Collapse. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ssdgcz

-John Embry: Gartman Inept, CNBC Wrong, Gold Demand off the Hook. “I think perhaps the most bullish thing I saw yesterday was that Dennis Gartman has pronounced the end of the gold bull market as a result of the Fed’s actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given Dennis’s unbelievably inept record at calling the gold price, in both directions, I regard this event as wildly bullish.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctyze79

-Eveillard: Mass of Government Debt Underpinning Gold Market. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7hw65bc

-Greyerz: Gold Bottom, $25 Trillion in Debt, ECB & Swiss Franc. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/74jm7s3

-Turk: Gold Shorts in Retreat, Currency Destruction Guaranteed. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6w3vsac

-Norcini: Take That Gold Shorts as Massive Bids Shock Market. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lv87yg

-Pento: Return to the Gold Standard & Real Estate to the Rescue. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8y6pw8a

-Richard Russell: Crime, Chaos, Collapse & Skyrocketing Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73zhzgb

-Rick Rule: The Most Spectacular Opportunity in Ten Years. The fact is markets don’t care what you want or what you need. Markets are merely a facility for buying and selling assets, and assets are on sale. That means one has to be a buyer, not a seller.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6stq9j5

-Frank Holmes: Managing Expectations: Why Gold Should Thrive. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/blm9y4m

-Jim Grant Crucifies The Fed: Explains Why A Gold Standard Is The Best Option. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vu7hc2

-Mike Kosares: Surging central bank gold demand will guide bull market. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11237

-Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold crash on Fed tightening and euro salvation looks premature. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11226

-China investing in foreign mines and buying gold directly. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11225

-Peter Brimelow: China buying gold? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11243

-Lawrence Williams: Are gold and silver bulls clutching at straws? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11213

-India’s gold jewelers call off strike, expecting tax rollback. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11218

-If gold isn’t money, why did Vietnam just outlaw using it as such? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11224

-Jan Skoyles: Vietnam goes nuclear on gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11242

-Von Greyerz: Chinese Imports of Gold are Massive Right Now. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7kqgxps

-Louise Yamada: Gold Update. “Gold has to get through $1,800. $1,600 has to hold in the short-term. $1,550 to $1,600 is okay, but I wouldn’t like to see a move to the lower end of that range because your uptrend and support are coming in right now around $1,600. Gold has a horizontal consolidation in place. I was disappointed gold couldn’t break $1,800 previously, but again, sideways is okay. This sideways action is healthy, this consolidation, but gold now has to prove itself.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7qmjujv

-Chinese woman gets death sentence for gold and futures trading fraud. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85vgu6q

-What’s the central bank endgame in gold? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11223

-Lars Schall: Bundesbank again refuses to answer questions on Germany’s gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11212

-Allan Flynn: Two simple questions would explode the BIS’ gold rigging. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11228

-Exposure of gold market manipulation is producing results. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11227

-Financial Survival Network interviews GATA Chairman Murphy. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11229

-Zero Hedge cites gold as part of currency market manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11214

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”There is no doubt that this wasn’t a spontaneous event. The presentation wasn’t accidental. I’ve watched CNBC fairly religiously for as long as it has been in existence (but with the sound muted for much of the day) and the last firm recollection I have of any mention of a silver manipulation was more than three years ago, when Joe Kernan commented on The Wall Street Journal article on Sep 25, 2008 about a CFTC investigation into silver.

I remember him joking about some new Hunt Bros. plot to drive prices higher. Never again have I heard the silver manipulation mentioned on that network. CNBC has never seriously broached the subject to my knowledge. So I was taken back when the reporter specifically asked about the allegations of manipulation in silver, as if they were widely recognized as common knowledge. I got a special kick out of the reference to all these allegations coming from the “blogosphere.” (As opposed to the mainstream media, I suppose).

“It would be safe to say that the interview tried to present JPMorgan as a contributor to worthy causes, who would never dream of manipulating silver and as a strong proponent of financial regulatory reform. All of JPMorgan’s positions in silver were claimed to be non-directional and only transacted to accommodate legitimate client hedging needs.

To the typical CNBC viewer, who has little interest in silver to begin with, I would imagine that the segment appeared little more than a puff piece on an obscure topic. But I doubt that this was all that it was. There was an intent and purpose to this presentation, as many have already suggested. That’s what makes it so potentially significant.

“To my knowledge, this is the very first time that JPMorgan has openly acknowledged the allegations against it for manipulating the price of silver. Please think about that. It’s been more than three years, dozens of class-action lawsuits and a ton of reputational abuse (remember “sink JPM, buy a Silver Eagle”?) and this is JPMorgan’s first rebuttal?

Years ago, I used to wait for process servers and Fed Ex-delivered cease and desist demands; but I had just about given up on JPMorgan ever responding since so much time had passed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad not be sued; but I am a little underwhelmed with how JPM finally did respond. I can’t help but ask myself why now and in this tepid a manner?” Ted Butler via Ed Steer-Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6shneao

-JPMorgan Hedges Silver for Clients, Masters Says on CNBC. JPMorgan Chase & Co. mostly hedges silver for clients, and large speculative bets aren’t “part of our business model,” Blythe Masters, the bank’s head of global commodities, told CNBC.

Market participants “don’t see all our activity,” and bloggers have “a misunderstanding of the nature of our business,” Masters said today in an interview on CNBC. There is “an underlying client position” involved in hedge or forward trades, she said on CNBC.

A multiyear investigation into the possibility of unlawful acts in the silver market is continuing after regulators analyzed more than 100,000 documents, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in November. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85vun8h

-One of the ‘Masters’ of the universe gets a market manipulation question on CNBC. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11216

-Ted Butler: JPM’s TV appearance hints of major change in silver market. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11232

-Rob Kirby: Blythe Masters lays an egg. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11238

-Credit derivatives market being manipulated by Morgan-U.S. govt. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11221

-Eric Sprott Is Now the Silver Bull. He’s a true believer. “It’s the investment of the decade,” he proclaims. Why? Let us count the reasons.

1. Demand exceeds supply. Annual production is about 900 million ounces per year, including recycling. Industrial usage alone will rise to 660 million ounces by 2015. That leaves only 240 million ounces for coinage, central bank purchases, and investment. The latter category is huge; as of 2010 holdings of physical silver to back up exchange-traded funds was 577 million ounces.

2. Silver is undervalued compared to gold. The historic silver to gold ratio is 16 to one. The geological silver-gold in situ reserve ratio is 17.5 to one. The current silver-gold ratio is 51 to one. The implied price if silver reverts to its historic ratio with gold at US$1,600 an ounce is US$100 an ounce. The actual closing price on Thursday was US$31.73.

3. The silver price is artificially low. There has been speculation for some time that the price of silver has been kept deliberately low by market manipulation. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6vvswyp

-John Embry: Silver Update. “Silver is a more volatile version of gold, and once we get through this agony, silver will explode to the upside. It is worth noting that some people, looking at this amazing blowout in open interest, are very concerned there will be a raid in silver once again. There could be an attempt to knock the price into the mid 20s before the next leg higher begins.

That’s entirely possible. When you are dealing in a market that is this manipulated on the paper side, anything is possible. If that were to happen, it would be an even greater buying opportunity. I’m always nervous when I see massive blowouts in open interest because generally they are setting the market up to take it to the cleaners.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ssdgcz

-Egon von Greyerz: Silver Update. “Right now people are scared of silver. We don’t see the same type of activity in physical silver as we have seen in gold. That’s understandable because volatility will sometimes make market participants take a step back. We still believe that silver will move faster and higher on a percentage basis than gold. It is just not a metal for the faint-hearted. At some point silver will break through the $35 to $37 level and the rise will begin to accelerate once again.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7kqgxps

-Louise Yamada: Silver Update. “You’ve got to watch support at $30. Silver tried to break out and failed, which isn’t great. So, silver needs more work (consolidation). It needs to get through the $35 to $36 area. That will open up a move to $40.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7qmjujv

-Steve St. Angelo: Silver’s Trend & the Death of Technical Analysis. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cx4cb7c

-Przemyslaw Radomski: Does the Ubiquitous Red in the Silver Herald a Trend Reversal or Higher Future Profits? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c72eajq

-Shadow over silver fundamentals. Record-high mine supply and questions over demand have left a long shadow over silver’s underlying fundamentals and talk of a return toward the $50 mark harder to swallow. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9y4qx6

-Silver prices could fall short term as physical market consolidates. Mitsui and Co Precious Metals strategic analyst, David Jollie, says he can see a medium term outlook which is not that negative for silver but in the short term there has to be some concern prices might fall. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6plhgfm

-Money Morning interviews Ted Butler on silver market manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11222

-Russia Today’s ‘Capital Account’ examines gold and silver manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11234

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QE-FED

-Yellen Says Jobs Outlook Warrants Accommodative Policy. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen endorsed the Fed’s view that borrowing costs are likely to stay low through 2014 as the central bank misses its goal for full employment and inflation remains in check. “I consider a highly accommodative policy stance to be appropriate in present circumstances,” Yellen said in a speech in New York.

She also said that allowing the Fed’s program to extend the maturity of the assets on its balance sheet to expire in June wouldn’t amount to a policy tightening. U.S. central bankers next meet on April 24-25 to debate policy for an economy that Yellen said may be sapped by government spending cuts and the European debt crisis. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cqe5ts8

-Jon D. Markman: Negative news means more Fed action. Negative surprises for the U.S. economy are mounting. The latest was the nonfarm payrolls report on Friday, but many worse-than-expected reports have been percolating to the surface in recent weeks in matters ranging from manufacturing output to home prices. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/br4tq3m

-Brazil president Dilma Rousseff blasts Western QE as ‘monetary tsunami’. Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff has attacked Western governments for creating a “monetary tsunami” as they pursue quantitative easing (QE) policies in an effort to revive their economies. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cqu9k2n

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-Richard Russell: Europe Headed into Massive Collapse. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yxprux

-Exceptional Measures Needed to Save EU: Soros. The second bailout for Greece, the epicenter of the euro zone debt crisis, and recent liquidity programs have not resolved the euro zone debt crisis and the EU is unlikely to survive without far-reaching reforms, George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cwapd2s

-Greeks mourn suicide pensioner, vowing to fight on. In a sombre atmosphere in an Athens graveyard, hundreds of Greeks said farewell on Saturday to Dimitris Christoulas, a pensioner who became a symbol of the pain inflicted by austerity when he shot himself in the head outside parliament. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83twh2v

-Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Europe’s poignant wake-up call. For those who missed the story, a 77-year old retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas has shot himself to death in front of the Greek Parliament in Syntagma Square, protesting the degradation of his country. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6tfxewq

-60 Minutes: An Imperfect Union: Europe’s debt crisis. Ten European countries are in recession and three have needed bailouts to avoid default. How could this impact the U.S. economy? Steve Kroft reports. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bmtql6

-Wolfson gurus see euro break-up as dangerous but liberating. A disorderly break-up of the euro would set off a cataclysmic chain-reaction and a collapse of Europe’s banking system, pushing the world into full-blown depression. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8ekbm2

-IMF’s Lagarde Says Europe Still Main Economic Risk. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the main risk to global growth is a return of Europe’s debt crisis, even as data indicate an improvement in economies including the U.S. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7aj4ccq

-John Mauldin: Europe is Destroying Their Currency. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7e3wonj

-Austerity may not be Portugal’s best option, warns IMF. Chasing deficit targets may no longer be Portugal’s best policy if its economic slump deepens more than expected, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/czv4fxa

-Ambrose Evans Pritchard: Spanish epiphany as depression deepens? Spain’s industrial output is sliding at an accelerating rate, as is entirely predictable if you enforce draconian fiscal tightening on an economy in deep recession with no offsetting monetary stimulus or exchange rate devaluation. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7fd7277

-Europe’s banks beached as ECB stimulus runs dry. The European Central Bank’s €1 trillion lending spree over the winter has stored up a host of fresh problems, leaving parts of the banking system more vulnerable than before as the short-term “sugar rush” nears exhaustion. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cazkhnm

-Portugal’s domestic banks tap ECB for record amounts of funding. Bank of Portugal says domestic banks’ use of European Central Bank’s facilities rose to a record €56.3bn in March. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c6k3ev4

-Pension risks threaten UK finances, IMF warns. Britain is at risk of pensions timebomb that could cost the state as much as £750bn, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cor2stx

-Crisis-hit Greece rents police for €30 per hour. Greece is offering a ‘cop-for-hire’ service, renting out policemen for €30 per hour, plus €10 if you want a police car too. It triggered fears that security of people who cannot afford a policeman for hire may be affected in favor of those who can. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bvdyhhw

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-Government records 40th straight deficit month in March. The federal government ran a $777 billiondeficit for the first six months of fiscal year 2012, the Congressional Budget Office estimated on Friday, including a $198 billion hole in March, marking the 40th straight month of deficits. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ty9q8a

-U.S. Budget Deficit Widened to $198.2 Billion in March. The U.S. government’s budget deficit widened 5.3 percent in March, as outlays increased on recurring benefit payments and a subsidy re-estimate for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The shortfall expanded to $198.2 billion from $188.2 billion a year earlier, the Treasury Department said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6ljzcgu

-Egan-Jones Cuts U.S. Rating One Step to AA Citing Growing Debt. Egan-Jones Ratings Co. cut the U.S. credit rating one step to AA, the second downgrade in nine months and two levels below its highest grade, with a negative outlook citing the nation’s increasing debt burden. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cac5hbn

-Household debt casts long economic shadow: IMF. Housing busts and recessions are more severe and last for at least five years when they follow a big run-up in household debt, according to a study released by the International Monetary Fund. The findings suggest that economies of the United States, the UK and other European countries that saw consumer debt balloon along with house prices ahead of the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 may only just be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Weak consumer spending has been holding back a strong recovery in the United States. The UK has a similar problem and has been skirting a second recession, while several euro zone countries are confronting another downturn. The IMF studied advanced economies over the past three decades and found that household spending and national output fall more steeply, unemployment rises further, household deleveraging whether as a result of debt default or debt pay down is more pronounced when a crash is preceded by a large run-up in consumer debt.

The United States, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and the UK all saw a concurrent boom in asset prices that made large debt loads easy to handle. But once asset prices plunged, many households saw their wealth and incomes shrink and found their debt loads less manageable. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c34ppky

-Union Pension Underfunding Time-Bomb Soars By 75% In One Year, Nears $400 Billion. The shortfall in US labor union pension funds is huge and growing rapidly. The latest data, from 2009, from the PBGC showed that these multi-employer plans were 48% underfunded with $331bn of assets to support $686bn of liabilities. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3dvfjs

-California Teacher Fund Targets Pension-Inflating Spiking. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System cut payments to a former San Francisco Bay Area superintendent after concluding that a $61,000 raise in his final year of work was intended to boost his pension.

Yet in another case, plan managers didn’t touch a charter school founder’s retirement pay after finding that a 67 percent increase spread over her last three years of service wasn’t designed to inflate her post-employment income. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7d87svs

-Cost of aging rising faster than expected: IMF. People worldwide are living three years longer than expected on average, pushing up the costs of aging by 50 percent, and governments and pension funds are ill prepared, the International Monetary Fund said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnltddc

-Government Spending Cuts Will Create Economic Boom: Art Laffer. President Obama’s recent criticism of the Republican budget plan misses the mark, former Reagan economic advisor Art Laffer told CNBC. “What Obama is missing is that government spending doesn’t create jobs, it destroys jobs,” he said. “The tooth fairy doesn’t work on the Treasury staff.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cgph6sz

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JOBS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: John Williams Unemployment Rate at a Staggering 22.2%. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d2jcujr

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The ScariestJobs Chart Ever. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6sba4kb

www.chartoftheday.com

-US Adds 120,000 Jobs; Unemployment Falls to 8.2%. U.S. payrolls rose far less than expected in March, keeping the door open for further monetary policy support from the Federal Reserve, even as the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent. Employers added 120,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said last Friday, the smallest increase since October. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7mshwpn

-U.S. Local Governments Cut Payrolls to Lowest Level Since 2006. U.S. local-government payrolls fell to the lowest level in more than six years in a sign that municipalities still face fiscal strains almost three years after the end of the recession. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctaqx76

-Mild winter may have artificially inflated jobs data, economists fear. Economists say the mild winter has artificially inflated job growth. February alone stole as many as 72,000 positions from March and future months, according to Macroeconomic Advisers. Translation: The surge in hiring early in the year may not be as strong as it appeared. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yqjspg

-Bernanke Warning on Jobs Vindicated by March Payrolls Report. Ben S. Bernanke warned last month that payroll gains might slow as companies adjust their labor needs for a period of moderate growth. Last Friday’s Labor Department report may have proved the Federal Reserve chairman right. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7wf9ey

-U.S. Jobless Claims Rise to 380,000, Higher Than Forecast. More Americans than forecast filed claims for jobless benefits last week, a sign the pace of improvement in the labor market is slowing. Jobless claims increased 13,000 in the week ended April 7 to 380,000, the highest since Jan. 28, the Labor Department reported in Washington. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cdaeb7n

-El-Erian On The Bad Jobs Number: ‘The Implications Go Beyond Economics.’ American consumers, as a group, still carry too much debt and have to cope with higher oil prices. The prospects for exports, which have grown markedly, are gradually dimming now that the rest of the world is slowing. Meanwhile, policymakers have yet to find a way to deal properly with a year-end fiscal cliff, the result of Washington’s repeated inability to design coherent fiscal policy. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/chouwv8

-John Hussman: There’s No Jobs Recovery, Just Older Workers ‘Desperate’ To Grab Any Menial Job They Can. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bp82o3h

-Mid-Incomers Suffer in Polarized U.S. Job Market: Economy. Americans at the top and bottom of the income scale are benefiting most from the jobs recovery while those in the middle are getting left behind. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d25pf3r

-Canada Adds Most Jobs Since 2008 as Full-Time Work Soars. Canada added the most jobs since September 2008 last month, a gain dominated by full-time positions that revived what had been a stalling labor market in the world’s 10th largest economy. Employment rose by 82,300 following a decline of 2,800 in February, Statistics Canada said in Ottawa, lowering the jobless rate to 7.2 percent from 7.4 percent. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wku2vx

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REAL ESTATE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Mumbai Is the World’s Least Affordable Home Market. The average Indian would need to work for three centuries to pay for a luxury home in Mumbai, making that city the least affordable in the world for locals, according to an analysis of real estate and wages. The chart shows a 100-square-meter luxury residence in Mumbai costs about $1.14 million, or 308 times the average annual income in India. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/buw6u94

-Americans brace for next foreclosure wave. Half a decade into the deepest U.S. housing crisis since the 1930s, many Americans are hoping the crisis is finally nearing its end. House sales are picking up across most of the country, the plunge in prices is slowing and attempts by lenders to claim back properties from struggling borrowers dropped by more than a third in 2011, hitting a four-year low.

But a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures. “We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People, a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio.

“Last year was an anomaly, and not in a good way,” he said. In 2011, the “robo-signing” scandal, in which foreclosure documents were signed without properly reviewing individual cases, prompted banks to hold back on new foreclosures pending a settlement. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84bescd

-Zerohedge: The Second Foreclosure Tsunami Is Coming, And Is About To Kill Any Hopes Of A “Housing Bottom.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7zm9kew

-Manhattan Apartment Rents Approach Peak as Demand Surges. Manhattan apartment rents surged in the first quarter, coming within about 5 percent of the peak as would-be homeowners struggled to get mortgages and lingered longer in the leasing market. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bpynvhe

-Asians on Record Building Spree in Australia’s Apartment Market. Asian developers including Fraser & Neave Ltd. and SP Setia Bhd. are building a record number of apartments in Australia, betting on a market where local companies have been sidelined by tight financing. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xyhtnc

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• Charts of the Week-Quotes-Quick Hits
• RareColoredDiamonds.com
• HSFineAuctions.com
• Gold
• Silver
• QE3
• Sovereign Debt
• U.S. Debt-Deficit
• Real Estate

WORLD FINANCIAL REPORT ON RADIO APR 5 2012

CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: John Williams, Consumers Crushed & Economy Collapsed. Broad U.S. business activity remains far from being recovered, despite the ongoing GDP-reporting nonsense that shows inflation-adjusted economic activity above the peak levels that preceded the 2007 recession. In an environment where politicians and Wall Street increasingly are hyping an economic recovery. Main Street U.S.A. usually has a pretty good sense of actual business activity, irrespective of the hype out of Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7er3lp9

-CHART OF THE WEEK: PetroChina’s Oil Output Trumps Exxon, Rosneft. PetroChina Co. surpassed global rivals Exxon Mobil Corp. and OAO Rosneft to become the biggest oil producer among publicly traded companies last year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7xkkmzj

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Why Some Countries and Cities Are So Much More Expensive Than Others. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctdu5b6

-”Something that’s been puzzling about this (stock market) rally that started in March ‘09 is that the public hasn’t really participated.” “They pulled $300 billion out of the equity markets over the last three years. And trading volumes have been low, which means the institutions haven’t really been participating in this rally either. Institutional volumes actually continue to shrink.” In other words, the stock market rally has largely been driven by a couple of guys, trading stocks back and forth to each other while most sit idly by on the sidelines. Tom Lee, JP Morgan

-“While corporate insiders are committing plenty of corporate money to repurchase shares, they are massive net sellers with their own money.” “As Wall Street strategists are almost universally urging investors to load up on stocks, insiders are doing the opposite.” “In every market, the house has an advantage because they know more than the players.” “Who knows more about what’s going on, them or you?” Charles Biderman and David Santschi of TrimTabs-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7no29tc

-”#1 question investors should ask themselves is not ‘where can I make the most money’ but rather ‘where can I avoid losing the most money?” Marc Faber

-Marc Faber Predicts ‘Massive Wealth Destruction’ Through Hyperinflation, Social Unrest, Credit Collapse Or War. Runaway government debts have triggered uncontrolled money printing that in turn will lead to inflation that will decimate portfolios, according to the latest forecast from “Dr. Doom” Marc Faber.

Investors, particularly those in the “well-to-do” category, could lose about half their total wealth in the next few years as the consequences pile up from global government debt problems, Faber, the author of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report, said on CNBC.

Efforts to stem the debt problems have seen the Federal Reserve expand its balance sheet to nearly $3 trillion and other central banks implement aggressive liquidity programs as well, which Faber sees producing devastating inflation as well as other consequences.

“Somewhere down the line we will have a massive wealth destruction that usually happens either through very high inflation or through social unrest or through war or credit market collapse,” he said. “Maybe all of it will happen, but at different times.”

“I think that people should own some gold and I think that people should own some equities, because before the collapse will happen, with Mr. Bernanke at the Fed, they’re going to print money and print and print and print,” he said. “So what you can get is a bad economy with rising equity prices.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qwd8mv

-IMF chief calls on US for more cash. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde implored the United States to help back-stop debt-ridden European countries Tuesday, wading neck-deep into bubbling US political waters. Speaking in the US capital, Lagarde said the 187-nation International Monetary Fund needed more firepower to tackle financial crises raging around the globe, arguing it was in the US interest to pitch in and help Europe.

“Americans might ask themselves: why should what happens in the rest of the world concern us? Don’t we have our own problems?” she said. “The answer is simple: In today’s world, we cannot afford the luxury of staying in our own mental backyards.” “If the European economy falters, the American recovery and American jobs would be in jeopardy. So America has a large stake in how Europe fare and how the world fares.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bpz55se

-Fed officials worried US job gains could fade. Fed minutes show some officials concerned that recent US job gains could prove temporary. Federal Reserve policymakers are worried that recent strong gains in hiring could fizzle if U.S. economic growth doesn’t pick up.

Minutes of the Fed’s March 13 meeting show that members expressed those concerns before sticking with a plan to keep interest rates at record lows until at least late 2014. A couple of members said they want to take further steps to boost the economy if conditions worsen or inflation remains tame, according to the minutes, which were released Tuesday. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cogt2wn

-David Zervos Explains How We’ll Pay For ‘The Greatest Monetary Policy Experiment Of All Time.’ It’s inevitable that we will pay for all this easing, most likely through inflation on the back end. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bwyhw3a

-T. Boone Pickens: Oil Could Surge To $148 By Summer. He argued that increased production from Saudi Arabia would not be able to offset the impact of tighter supplies caused by Iran sanctions. Pickens believes that high prices might finally motivate the U.S. to reduce its reliance on high priced OPEC oil. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7nkarqp

-High joblessness in the home of U.S. space flight. With the end of the space shuttle program, Brevard County, Fla., lost its largest employer, and Kennedy Space Center workers lost good jobs that made them proud. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vaddma Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/clwc6j4

-Doug Short: The Stock Market Is Now 34 To 50 Percent Overvalued. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cajeote

-Can Markets Continue to Rise Without More QE? The negative market reaction to signs that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to take part in more quantitative easing soon has led to worries that the market rally will fade. Markets have rallied this year after the Fed’s Operation Twist and two rounds of liquidity injections from the European Central Bank.

Some had expected a third round of quantitative easing from the Fed later this year, but these hopes were dampened by the news that only two of the Fed’s 10 board members backed further easing at its most recent meeting. “Markets are only going up because of central banks’ extraordinary measures and the underlining economy is struggling with severe headwinds,” Stewart Richardson, partner at RMG Wealth Management, told CNBC Wednesday.

“If we don’t get any more QE from the Fed or LTRO from the ECB, markets will take a step back and reassess why they’re going up.” He warned that recent U.S. economic data has been buoyed by the weather and seasonal variations, and data in coming months may show “stall speed.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/chv2lkj

-Obama Signs Ban on Congressional Insider Stock Trading. President Barack Obama signed into law a bill strengthening the ban on insider trading by members of Congress and other government officials who might profit on private knowledge they gain from work. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c9u7t2y

-William D. Cohan: Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street’s Secrets? If our government agencies continue to do everything in their considerable power to keep hidden information that belongs in the public realm, all the regulatory reform in the world won’t end the rot on Wall Street. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bumw2va

-SEC Puts Exchanges on Notice Over Computer-Driven Trades. More than five months before a software error ruined Bats Global Markets Inc. initial public offering, U.S. regulators put exchanges on notice that they need to do more to protect investors from technology gone awry. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnz2fra

-This Hedge Funder Took Home A Stunning $3.9 Billion Last Year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cwf3qqo

-Behavioral Scientists Reveal The Unique Way That The Chinese See The Stock Market. In surveys, Chinese casino gamblers tend to view bets as investments and investments as bets. The stock market and real estate, in the Chinese view, are scarcely different from a casino. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7o96rej

-Food inflation seen back on the table as prices rise. World food prices are likely to rise for a third successive month in March, and could gain further beyond that, with expensive oil and chronically low stocks of some key grains putting food inflation firmly back on the economic agenda. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ce49bx8

-China Becomes World’s Biggest Grocery Market. The onward march of the Chinese consumer continues, with China overtaking the U.S. as the biggest grocery market in the world in 2011, according to new research out of the United Kingdom. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5ckbr3

-‘Apple Fever’ Has Analysts Predicting $1 Trillion Valuation. Apple Inc. rose to a record after two analysts said the stock could surge past $1,000 a share, putting the maker of the iPhone on a path toward becoming the first $1 trillion company. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cnucwsy

-Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff: Five Years After Crisis, No Normal Recovery. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cdrh4s5

-Aging population to impact economy: BoC. The aging of Canada’s population will put upward pressure on wages as the pool of available workers shrinks, and global aging might over time lead to lower interest rates, Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Jean Boivin said on Wednesday. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d5uq3qj and http://tinyurl.com/d4v2h8f

-Ontario teachers’ pension benefits ‘have to be cut, ’ Finance Minister Dwight Duncan declares. The pension fund for Ontario’s teachers is $9.6-billion in the red, and the province wants to fix the shortfall by cutting benefits, not hiking contributions. The heavily indebted province is seeking to shift the onus for solving shortfalls away from taxpayers as part of its plan to put its finances back on a solid footing.

The move is part of a trend in which governments are taking steps to make pensions more sustainable as low interest rates and aging populations threaten retirement funds. Beyond Ontario’s public sector plans, that includes proposed federal changes to Old Age Security. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnp78vh

-The Psychology Of Money: Is $5 The New 99 Cents? Research has proven people are drawn to prices ending in .99, but now it seems $5 is the new pricepoint driving shoppers to spend. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87h7z5c

-The new American household: 3 generations, 1 roof. As the economy continues to take a toll on consumers’ finances, a growing number of people are discovering that becoming roommates with mom and dad, or a 20- or 30-something son or daughter, helps to ease some of the financial pain in tough times. As of 2010, 4.4 million U.S. homes held three generations or more under one roof, a 15% increase from 3.8 million households two years earlier, according to the latest data available from the Census Bureau. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cgcfbj5

-NYC’s Big Yellow Taxi of Tomorrow. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/c2vd8ow

-Atlantic Storm Season to Be Below Average, Forecast Says. A cooler Atlantic Ocean will probably produce 10 named storms in the hurricane season that begins June 1, about half last year’s total, according to researchers at Colorado State University. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84kt75h

-Israel Says The Sanctions Against Iran Absolutely Are Not Working. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bp4oz35

-This Little Chinese Dish Sold For 27 Million Dollars. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yhtrtc

-Masters Champion Wall’s Green Jacket Auction Price Is at $36,000. A Masters Tournament green jacket will be given out April 7, a day before a champion is crowned. Art Wall Jr.’s 1959 championship jacket, an item traditionally given to the winner of the competition at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, is up for auction, with the current price at $36,498, according to Green Jacket Auctions. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bue982x

-Nike Unveils New NFL Uniforms to Boost U.S. Sales. Nike Inc. unveiled its new National Football League uniforms today, skipping the duck-wing and lizard-skin prints that it put on some college teams. The world’s largest sporting-goods provider stuck mainly to the 92-year-old NFL’s traditional look as it begins a five-year licensing deal that may add $500 million in annual revenue, according to Chris Svezia, an analyst for Susquehanna Financial Group in New York. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/846glmt

-Letterman’s New CBS Contract Sets Late-Night Hosting Record. David Letterman, the late-night star of CBS, reached a new agreement with the network to continue hosting his program through 2014, setting the stage to break Johnny Carson’s record of 30 years. As part of the accord, CBS also re-signed Craig Ferguson, who hosts the talk show that follows Letterman’s weeknight program. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bu574ju

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Diamond is a 1.52 Carat Cushion Cut Fancy Intense Yellow Internally Flawless Diamond. Harold Seigel-View video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/ce3usxp

-Diamonds Are a Great Way to Diversify. Diamonds are an attractive option for investors looking to diversify portfolios because they don’t move in relation with other assets such as commodities and stocks, according to David Riedel, President of equity research firm Riedel Research Group.

“Over the past decade cross-asset correlations have nearly doubled, (but) diamonds have exhibited very low correlations to other assets making them an attractive source of diversification. They have almost no correlation to anything else commodities, gold, equity markets,” Riedel told CNBC.

In 2011, the RapNet Diamond Index (RAPI) for one carat polished diamonds rose 19 percent outpacing gold, which rose 10 percent. And supply constraints are expected to take diamond prices even higher in the coming years, says Riedel.

He estimates demand for diamonds will grow 50 percent between now and 2015, driven by consumption in the United States, China and India, while production will rise by just 24 percent. Sotheby’s annual spring sale of “Magnificent Jewels” in Hong Kong this week highlighted Asia’s booming interest in diamonds.

The highlight of the auction was the sale of an 8.01-carat blue diamond ring for $12.7 million the second highest price per carat for a blue diamond at an auction. When choosing between buying a diamond ring and loose diamonds as investment, Riedel says they both “work” and retain value. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lmap8u

-Sotheby’s Hong Kong Jewelry Sale Nets $64M. The top lot of the sale was an emerald-cut, 8.01 carat, fancy vivid blue diamond ring that sold for $12.7 million (HKD 99.2 million), or $1,588,079 per carat. A pear-shaped, 3.28-carat internally flawless, fancy vivid pink diamond and diamond ring fetched $3.2 million at the sale. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wbmh3u

-Colored Diamond Auction Results: Sotheby’s Hong Kong Jewelry Sale, April 3 2012, Hong Kong. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/bvpdo5d

-A $2.5 Million, 10-Carat Pink Diamond At Edmonton Jewelry Store. An Edmonton retail jeweler will showcase a 10-carat fancy light purplish pink diamond from April 13-17. The radiant cut diamond with SI1 clarity is owned by a private collector and is available for $2.5 million. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cfqn4k6

-Fancy Intense 12ct Pink on the Block for $8-10 Million. The largest round fancy intense pink diamond to ever appear at auction is arriving to Christie’s next month. Christie’s estimates the 12.04-carat, offered by a private collector, at $8-$10 million. The rare fancy intense pink diamond will be offered at the Hong Kong Magnificent Jewels on 29 May.

The current owner purchased the diamond from Harry Winston in 1976, the same year, the United States launched its first satellite on a mission to Mars. The Viking Landers were the pioneering spacecrafts to first land on the planet, carrying with them the American flag across millions of miles of interplanetary space.

For Ronald Winston, the color of the 12.04-carat pink diamond was so intense that he named it ‘Martian Pink’ to celebrate the historic event. While most natural pink diamonds exhibit a color modifier like purple, orange or grey, this one shows no trace of a secondary color, according to Christie’s. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73c57nh

-’The Perfect Diamond’ Among Highlights at Christie’s Jewelry Sale. Christie’s New York will hold its Magnificent Jewels auction on April 17 at its flagship Rockefeller Center saleroom. The top lots of the evening, as previously reported, are expected to be “The Clark Pink,” an extremely rare 9-carat pink diamond ring, and The Clark Diamond, a 20-carat D-color diamond ring. Both items are part of the sale from the estate of Huguette M. Clark, one of the last heiresses of America’s Gilded Age. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dxyb8ru

-Estate Jewelry Highlights Sotheby’s New York Sale. Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels sale in New York will be held on April 18 and is distinguished by signed jewels from prominent estate collections. “Each auction season, Sotheby’s sales of Magnificent Jewels includes white and colored diamonds of the highest quality,” said Gary Schuler, the head of Sotheby’s jewelry department in New York.

“This spring, we are excited to offer outstanding examples of yellow, blue and pink diamonds, and a number of charming white diamonds from Estate collections. One such colored stone is an impressive fancy vivid yellow ring with a 23.02-carat, VVS1, cushion-shaped step-cut diamond that carries a presale estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. And a fancy blue diamond ring by Tiffany & Co., circa 1900. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cuuor8n

-Jay Z ‘checks out blue diamonds’ on his fourth wedding anniversary to Beyonce. Jay Z honored his four-month-old daughter Blue Ivy, by selecting a ‘blue’ diamond for Beyonce to celebrate their anniversary. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bw3f9h3

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HSFINEAUCTIONS.COM

-Next Auction is April 10th: 8pm Eastern, 6pm Mountain. Learn more here-http://tinyurl.com/75u975t

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GOLD

-”As you know, I have been very positive about gold and I still accumulate gold every month. But I think that we had an intermediate peak at $1921 on September 6 of last year. Then we dropped sharply to $1,522 an ounce on December 29, 2011. Since then we’ve had a feeble recovery. I think that the correction period is not yet over. I’m not selling my gold because I don’t trust governments and I don’t trust the Federal Reserve, nor would I trust the ECB or other money traders in the world. They are all going to print money. I still recommend to hold gold.” Marc Faber

-It’s interesting that many of the same people who are now abandoning stock markets because of their ‘volatility’ over the last few years are the same people who become affronted at the slightest mention of the possibility of precious metals price manipulation. A moment’s serious contemplation should make things clear.

The precious metals and gold in particular have always been the ‘alternative’ to government promise based on and created out of thin-air money. As such, the precious metals have always been Public Enemy No. 1 as far as the money manipulators are concerned.

Anyone who aspires to intervention in an economy and the political power that it gives, is and always has been an enemy of gold. As long as there is a central bank manipulating money and interest rates, all markets are manipulated by definition. To imagine that the precious metals would be overlooked is ridiculous. Bill Buckler, Gold This Week, 31 March 2012

-Peter Schiff: Reaction to Fed Minutes Wrong, QE3 is Coming. “People that are assuming it (QE) is off the table based on these minutes are wrong. I would really fade this trade. I don’t see why gold would be getting crushed based on these minutes. I looked at the minutes and yes, the Fed didn’t come right out and say QE3 is coming.

They are not going to do that. They are never going to do that.” Somebody is going to have to buy all of those bonds and if the Fed is not going to do it, who will? Right now, the Fed is doing QE. Whether they want to officially call it QE, they are doing it. They are doing Operation Twist and buying government bonds.

“They know that complicates what they are trying to do. The Fed is trying to stimulate the economy with inflation, without letting people know there is inflation. It would complicate this charade if they were to telegraph their intentions because that would make prices rise even faster.

So, they don’t want to come right out and say it, but they leave the door wide open. They basically say if the economy needs it then we’ll do more (QE), but right now we don’t think it needs it. Well, okay, they don’t think it needs it now.

This phony recovery the Fed has engineered with cheap money cannot survive without continuous doses of cheap money. If the Fed denies the economy QE3, it’s going to roll over and die. Then it’s going to have to resuscitate it with more QE, more money printing.

You can’t look at the minutes and say, ‘There is no more cheap money, sell gold.’ There is going to be a lot more cheap money and so you should be buying gold. Ultimately we are going to see a big drop in the dollar and a big rise in the price of gold.” The Fed has to buy government bonds to keep interest rates from skyrocketing.

As they stop, rates are going to go up and when they it will choke off the ‘recovery’ that is dependent on low rates. So, if you take the Fed at its word, this is going to be a bigger disaster (than Europe). I think there is going to be more suffering. If you think that the riots are bad in Greece, wait until you see what the riots are going to be like here.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/78a3a6u

-Further Fed Easing to Boost Gold: Societe Generale. Fears that the U.S. economy may lose momentum this year could build the case for a third round of stimulus from the Federal Reserve and strengthen the price of gold, Societe Generale said in a research note on Tuesday.

“We consider the drop in the gold price to be a buying opportunity as we expect the U.S. economy to surprise on the downside over coming months, which should result in the implementation of QE3,” Robin Bhar, Director, Head of Metals Research at Societe Generale said, maintaining the bank’s medium-term bullish stance on the precious metal.

“The markets remain concerned about the possibility of further QE/liquidity increases in Europe and the U.S., allied to negative real interest rates worldwide.” Tom Essaye, President at Kinsale Trading agreed that the gold price currently looked “pretty compelling” as an entry point. Still, he said he’s nervous in the very short-term about a decline.

“We’re in that transition period where the market expects us to transition out of additional stimulus to an economy standing on its own two feet, and that’s why we saw recent weakness in gold,” Essaye told CNBC on Tuesday in Singapore.

“Nonetheless, I think we’re actually going to see rising inflation here in the U.S. and that’s going to cause real interest rates to turn more negative, which is bullish for gold. So I would be a buyer of gold at these levels with the caveat that in the next couple of weeks you could see a little bit of short-term weakness.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/br9ktqx

-Richard Russell: Hang on to Gold, Massive Collapse Coming. As for gold, I have a long-term position in the yellow metal that I will probably never exit or sell. My thinking is that sooner or later we will be subject to a major correction (bear market) that will wipe out or correct 60 years of inflation and leveraging.

When that happens, I want to own the only kind of money that the Fed can’t destroy. When the big deflation and deleveraging arrives, I see the Fed trying to halt it with QE3 and QE4 and QE5. Why do I say that? Because that’s the way the Fed thinks, and that’s what the Fed does. They did it in 2007 and 2008, and we know that the current Fed head will not tolerate contraction, and has a record to prove it.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/79eawjf

-Clive Maund: Gold Market Update. There is no indication on gold’s long-term chart that its bullmarket is over, it appears to be simply pausing to consolidate after its sharp rise last year. Why should its bullmarket be over when the only solution to the global debt problem is to buy time by creating more debt which makes the problems even worse? It’s true that “they” might throw in the occasional deflation scare as an arm twisting measure to justify bailouts and more QE etc, but other than that the course is set firmly in the direction of fiat worthlessness. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8yz3cwg

-Not one pro, not even Yra who is close to the establishment, believes that the action of all markets were a true price interpretation of the FOMC notes yesterday. Today and yesterday was the product of five gold banks showing the market who in their opinion is boss. It was aimed directly at the confidence in gold.

These gold bank traders are legends, who are the present rulers of the universe, owners of Washington and answer to no one, even to a God. Well, in their mind they are at least. I really think ego has overcome the profit motive in the last two days. This changes nothing as to where gold is going in 2012 and beyond.

It just makes trading impossible and charts useless, leaving only international fundamentals that will not be MOPEd away to make the final determination of the gold price. It coils the spring in the market even tighter than physics will allow, making the break out to the upside when it comes something to behold.

If there is only one lesson you take away from here, it is that margin is a death wish when the head trader at one major gold bank can command the short term action of the gold and silver market. Consider what can happen to gold when 5% of today’s investors wake up to the economic and statistical charade the markets are today. Jim Sinclair

-Jim Sinclair: Fed Minutes, Gold Manipulation & Fool’s Play. Here is what Sinclair had to say about what transpired today in the gold market: “The tactic is always the same. The gold banks enter the COMEX and offer more gold for sale at the market than has been mined in the last five years. Immediately, the locals (pit traders) try to run in front and hit any bids they happen to have on their book or are out there in order to get the price down.”

The net effect is absolutely nothing. The idea that there is a significant, improving economy directly in front of us is absolutely, completely and utterly a fabrication. The only reason car sales are firm is because they are giving away easy credit out there, so much so that even my dogs could buy a Cadillac Escalade.

This is manipulation against the tide of the market and it’s going to fall back on its face because the institutions that will make the most money in this gold market are the gold banks and they will accomplish this by being long of gold. Any true professional knows what is going to happen, gold is going to go to Alf’s number of $4,500. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6o35oln

-Jim Sinclair: Central Banks Buying Gold As Part of the Cure. When asked about Egon von Greyerz comments, on KWN last week, that European leaders were lying and that trillions needed to be printed and maybe even tens of trillions, Sinclair responded, “Let’s look at the fact that there are significant additional amounts of funds required, other than what’s already been injected into the euro system.

Do you think for one moment the powers that be, that operate the euro economies, don’t know what Egon (von Greyerz) knows? Whatever is required will be provided. The mainstream media, the voice to the public, from Big Brother, will be constantly saying we’re going to take liquidity out. We’re going to drain. We might not use it. We’ll think about it, could be, and then, there it comes. Infinite QE is what’s going to happen.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7rj8qb8

-King World News was given exclusive distribution rights to the following piece from 40 year veteran Ross Clark, over at CIBC. CIBC has $120 billion under management and Clark began his career before it was legal for Americans to own gold. Here is what Clark had to say: “I started trading gold before Americans were allowed to own it in 1974.

So, I have been around these markets for a long time. Investors get concerned about the volatility of these markets, but the reality is that the percentage swings are very similar to the gold bull market of the early 70s and the 1976 to 1980 time frame.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qcl8fz

-Bill Fleckenstein: The Fed is Trapped, Stock Market & Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7anphog

-Pento: Global Recession, Monetary Madness & Gold. The Fed’s next meeting will be at the end of April and the following meeting won’t be until June. Until then, traders are anxiously waiting for more QE, while the economy braces for yet more stagflation. If Mr. Bernanke takes a pass this month on further QE, commodity prices and the stock market will hopefully undergo a healthy pullback. However, if the Fed prepares to launch another round of quantitative counterfeiting, the gold market will take off like a rocket, while the economy sinks further into the stagflation abyss.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ogs86h

-Caesar Bryan: Gold & Silver Plunge, Europe in Continued Crisis. I often recall the late Murray Pollitt would often tell me, ‘This is the job of the gold bull market on days like this, to shake us out so we don’t participate on the upside.’ So investors need to hang tough and hold on to their positions on these down days.”

“Obviously, for those long of gold this action is very disappointing. You always have to go back to the fundamental reasons why you are holding gold and gold equities at times like this. The fact is the global economies are experiencing a very weak recovery, if at all, and the monetary authorities are still in an easy mode.

All of this will work to gold’s advantage in the medium-term. At times like this, professionals will revisit why they are in this market and when they come to the conclusion that it makes sense, they will add to or at least maintain their positions. I have been doing this for a quarter of a century and I’ve discovered over time it’s a very easy sector for the weak hands to be shaken out.

“When you get a short-term price correction, it’s easy for the weak-holders to sell. Of course, that’s the wrong thing to do. The reason it’s the wrong thing to do is that we’ve been in a bull market, that’s hardly been noticed by the public, for over a decade. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73gkkyn

-Peter Brimelow: Indian gold buying seems likely to resume. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11206

-60 Minutes: India’s love affair with gold. “No gold, no wedding,” is a saying in India, indicating the importance of gold to Indian culture and tradition. Byron Pitts reports on India’s obsession with gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7rnvxzx

-Jeff Clark: Will India Stop Buying Gold? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/888tj7r

-Alena Mikhan and Jeff Clark: The Critical Number for Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c5dbeb8

-Jeff Clark: Where (and When) to Place Your Investment Bets? Let’s explore the advantages of saving in gold and silver over dollars. Here’s a hypothetical look at what could occur over the remainder of this decade. The charts below compare saving $100/month in gold and silver vs. an interest-bearing money-market account.

For our projections, we assumed gold’s average annual gain of 18% since 2001 will continue through 2020. For the money-market account, we used an annual interest rate of 1% in 2012 and added 0.5% each year, so that by 2020 it’s earning 5%. Here’s what would transpire by 2020. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqkx5xs

If you invested $100/month from January 2012 through December 2020, your total contributions would amount to $10,800. In the money-market account, your savings would compound to $12,959.48, for a gain of 20%. For gold, however, the value of the metal would reach $27,025, for a return of 150.2%. For silver, we’ll assume it matches its 25.3% average annual gain from the last ten years through 2020. Here’s how it would stack up against money saved in a money market account.

The money-market account would again gain 20%, but the value of silver would reach $39,302, for a total return of 263.9%. As you consider these data, keep in mind the power of dollar-cost averaging. Using this strategy to accumulate gold and silver will lower your cost basis automatically because you’ll buy more ounces when prices are low and less when they’re high.

And that highlights another gain: Buying systematically removes emotion from the equation. “Buy on dips” is good advice, but it doesn’t tell you exactly when to buy. A commitment to dollar-cost averaging eliminates that question. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqkx5xs

-J.S. Kim explodes nine myths about investing in gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11210

-Eric Sprott and Rick Rule Skewer the U.S. with James West. Eric Sprott: Well, I think if you took all the currencies in the world the sum value. Now the sum value may have to be cut back because it’s not where you by anything but I think you could make gold reserve currency if the price was $5,000 or $10,000 there would be enough gold in the world to back the currency but it’s just a matter of getting up to that price and you know we’ve gone a long way to getting there.

I mean we were at 250 12 years ago. Today we’re at 1700. Lots of people expect as we north at 2000 before the end of this year. And you know you give it a few more years we might get to that value where it could replace currency depending on how much money they print. Unfortunately, the money printing is almost going faster than it is going faster than the price of gold is going up. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/86nnaqq

-Robert Fitzwilson: Central Banks Stockpiling Gold & Governments Hoarding Oil. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7c79rhr

-Drew Mason: Why Corporations Should Get Out of Cash, and Into Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7dntskz

-Charles Kadlec: Ben Bernanke’s Paper Dollar Embodies Systemic Risk. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cddlwwv

-What happened to gold? ‘Upwards and eastwards.’ Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11202

-South Carolina state treasurer’s report notes gold and silver price suppression. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11199

-Market rigging gets too obvious even for Bill Buckler and Jim Grant. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11198

-GATA figures prominently in ‘America’s Book of Secrets’ episode on Fort Knox. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11205

-GATA’s Ed Steer interviewed by Metallwoche about gold manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11200

-International Business Times notes GATA and gold price manipulation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11195

-In two interviews Biderman stresses bailouts, market rigging. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11201

-Weekly precious metals market review at King World News. Listen here-http://www.gata.org/node/11203

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”In silver, the entire 2,400 contract decrease in the total commercial net short position (now at 29,700 contracts) can be attributed to the big 4 (read JPMorgan). Accordingly, I would now calculate JPMorgan’s concentrated silver short position as being roughly 19,000 contracts. This puts JPM’s silver short position about midway between the 13,000 contract low point of late December and the recent 24,000 contract high-water mark of late February.

Minus all spreads, this means that JPM is holding 23% of the entire COMEX futures open interest. It is not possible for that percentage of concentration not to be manipulative to the price of silver.” “The bottom line is that the COT structures in gold and silver are still favorable. Can the commercials still collusively rig prices lower? Of course, they can, but that will only make the set up better.

In COT terms, there is much more price room to the upside versus the downside. An added takeaway is the hint of a possible very sharp rally given how quick and forceful some technical traders entered the long side of the gold market on Monday’s [March 26th] rally. I would look at that as a harbinger of what may come, namely, strong technical-type buying once the moving averages are penetrated to the upside in gold and silver.

At that point, it will become a question of how aggressively and manipulatively the commercials will be selling. Just make no mistake this paper trading on the COMEX is the sole determinant of short term price movement. This is price setting, pure and simple. This is also about as far removed from the price discovery function of futures markets intended under commodity law as can be imagined.” Ted Butler via Ed Steer Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dxksme9

-Clive Maund: Silver Market Update. We are at a highly advantageous entry point for silver here from a price/time perspective, as the price is likely to advance soon from here. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7b48rv2

-Peter Cooper: Silver outperforms the S&P 500 and gold in Q1. US stocks enjoyed their biggest first quarter rise since 1998 with the S&P 500 up 12 per cent to above 1,400. But the price of silver was up 16 per cent in Q1. Gold trailed behind with a 6.3 per cent increase. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d4ds4cg

-Endeavor Silver CEO explains support for Sprott’s call to treat metal as money. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11204

-Caesar Bryan: Silver Update. “Silver has been more volatile than gold, but the silver price is still over $30 and this is very, very good for the silver producers. The recent lows for silver are around this area and silver still looks good. It’s probably just being buffeted around by what’s going on in the gold market.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73gkkyn

-Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price: World May Go Down in Flames. “I think that unless we see legislation, somewhere, that is rational and recognizes that gold and silver are really different forms of money, and that this whole scheme of paper is unworkable, then the world is going to go down in flames. The only thing that would last will be people’s savings of gold and silver.”

“But what kind of a world that will be? I think it will be a very nasty world. In spite of having gold and silver, that may not be enough to save you. They’re good things to have, but what we actually need to do is save our civilization and not go down in flames.

I think the first thing to do would be to insert silver coins into the monetary system. That would be a healthy thing to do. I was very happy to see Ron Paul pull out a silver coin. To me it’s like he was facing the vampire Ben Bernanke with a silver coin, instead of a silver bullet.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lu9llu

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QE3

-FOMC Saw No Need of New Monetary Easing, March Minutes Show. The Federal Reserve is holding off on increasing monetary accommodation unless the U.S. economic expansion falters or prices rise at a rate slower than its 2 percent target. “A couple of members indicated that the initiation of additional stimulus could become necessary if the economy lost momentum or if inflation seemed likely to remain below” 2 percent, according to minutes of their March 13 meeting released in Washington. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/csnxgcf and http://tinyurl.com/brlsue7

-Bill Gross: The Fed Is Trapped In A Conundrum Of Providing Cheap Liquidity. PIMCO’s Bill Gross told CNBC that chatter over the Federal Reserve’s comments on further easing yesterday were “much ado about nothing or maybe much ado about a little,” downplaying risks that the Fed will not embark on another round of quantitative easing.

Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s March 13 meeting indicated that it would not embark on another round of easing measures unless GDP growth slowed or inflation dropped below 2 percent. This disappointed investors convinced that the Fed would embark on another round of asset purchases by year end to fuel the recovery.

However, Gross believes the Fed as well as the European Central Bank recognizes the importance of the positive market to sustaining economic growth. Therefore, it will eventually be forced to initiate another round of asset purchases to prop up equities markets. “I think a good 5 to 10 percent of the market has come through check-writing from the Fed and the rest has come from economic recovery, which in itself has come through check-writing,” Gross argued.

He continued. “Is the Fed trapped in this conundrum of providing cheap liquidity in order to prop up stock markets and risk markets? I think they are,” adding, “it’s a necessary policy based on where central banks have led us.” Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/cbya2pt

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-Euro Zone Needs a Divorce: Roubini. Like a marriage that no longer works, the euro zone should accept its fate, split up and get divorced, according to Roubini Global Economics. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c6lswdq

-Rajoy Says Spain in ‘Extreme Difficulty’ as Bond Demand Drops. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Spain’s situation is one of “extreme difficulty” and signaled that his budget cuts are less painful than a bailout would be, as demand for the nation’s debt slumped at an auction. “Spain is facing an economic situation of extreme difficulty, I repeat, of extreme difficulty, and anyone who doesn’t understand that is fooling themselves,” Rajoy told a meeting of his People’s Party in the southern coastal city of Malaga. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cpmo4gj

-An Impossible 57% Of Spain’s Budget Is Devoted To Pensions, Unemployment Benefits And Interest. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cjdultu

-Draghi Says Inflation Risks Prevail as Economy Stabilizes. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers are prepared to act against inflation threats if needed, while assuring investors that the ECB doesn’t plan to withdraw emergency stimulus any time soon. The ECB is balancing the threat of inflation in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, against the need to fight the sovereign debt crisis. While nations from Greece to Spain are battling recessions and record unemployment, workers in Germany are winning some of the biggest pay increases in 20 years. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cmx97v9

-CHART OF THE WEEK: This Unemployment Chart Literally Cause People’s Jaws To Drop. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/82hb3yx

-Euro zone unemployment reaches near 15-year high. Unemployment in the euro zone reached its highest level in almost 15 years in February, with more than 17 million people out of work, and economists said they expected job office queues to grow even longer later this year. Joblessness in the 17-nation currency zone rose to 10.8 percent. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/csewdnx

-Will 50% Unemployment Leave Europe’s Young Scarred? The euro zone’s unemployment figures, released on Monday, made for “grim” reading, according to some analysts. But figures for youth unemployment were much worse and experts say that without healthy economic growth, the young will continue to be hit hard by the economic slowdown and the blow will likely leave them scarred. Euro zone unemployment rose to 10.8 percent in February, its highest level in almost 15 years as some countries were plunged into recessions by efforts to cut bulging budget deficits and high debt. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cn4kfn9

-Ranks of Working Poor Grow in Europe. When Melissa Dos Santos leaves her job at the end of each day, she goes home to an unlikely place: a tiny trailer in a campground 30 miles north of Paris, where scores of people who can barely make ends meet are living on a sprawling lot originally designed as a bucolic retreat for vacationers.

“I grew up in a house; living in a campground isn’t the same,” Ms. Dos Santos, 21, said wistfully. Her dreams of a more normal life in an apartment with her boyfriend evaporated when they both took minimum-wage jobs she in a supermarket and he as a Paris street sweeper after months of searching fruitlessly for better-paying work. “People call us marginal,” she said. “Little by little, it’s eating us up.”

Europe’s long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress it has left in its wake is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people are living in campgrounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives, unable to afford the basic costs of living.

These people are the extreme edge of Europe’s working poor: a growing slice of the population that is slipping through Europe’s long-vaunted social safety net. Many, particularly the young, are trapped in low-paying or temporary jobs that are replacing permanent ones destroyed in Europe’s economic downturn.

Now, economists, European officials and social watchdog groups are warning that the situation is set to worsen. As European governments respond to the crisis by pushing for deep spending cuts to close budget gaps and greater flexibility in their work forces, “the population of working poor will explode,” said Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at L’Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ce2v7rd

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-Huge NYT Exposé Reveals Why The Fiscal Timebomb Will Explode Next Year. Nobody wants much to think about it yet, but it’s well understood by everyone in Washington and on Wall Street, that a potentially massive fiscal problem is looming for the economy next year.

The issue is divided into three parts:

• Sometime in late 2012 or early 2013, Congress will have to approve another debt ceiling hike.
• At the same time, all of the Bush tax cuts are set to expire — not just the tax cuts for the rich.
• Thanks to the last debt ceiling deal, some big time spending cuts are due to go into effect starting in 2013. In theory, these could be reversed by Congress, but in the context of everything else it will be challenging.

Trying to figure out how it will shake down is especially difficult since it’s an election year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wdcdch

-Why the U.S. may never have a balanced budget again. some budget experts believe that he federal government is so far in the red that it may not balance the budget again in our lifetime. “We may never, as a country, have a balanced budget again,” said Marc Goldwein, policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “And you know what? We don’t have to.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7k6mn6m

-Untouchable Pensions May Be Tested in California. When the city manager of troubled Stockton, Calif., had to tell city council members why it was on track to become the biggest American city yet to go bankrupt, it took hours to get through the list. There was the free health care for retirees, the unpaid parking tickets, the revenue bonds without enough revenue to pay them. On it went, a grim drumbeat of practically every fiscal malady imaginable, except an obvious one: municipal pensions. Stockton is spending some $30 million a year to pay for them, but it has less than 70 cents set aside for every dollar of benefits its workers expect. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bb44s9

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REAL ESTATE

-Home Prices Seen Dropping 10% in U.S. on Foreclosures: Mortgages. As many as 1.25 million of America’s least cared for homes are headed for auction after a year-long probe into foreclosure practices kept them off the market. Sales of repossessed properties probably will rise 25 percent this year from 1 million in 2011, according to Moody’s Analytics Inc.

Prices for the homes could drop as much as 10 percent because they deteriorated as they were held in reserve during investigations by state officials resolved in February, according to RealtyTrac Inc. That month, 43 percent of foreclosures were delinquent for two or more years, from a 21 percent share in 2010, according to Lender Processing Services Inc. in Jacksonville, Florida.

“The longer a foreclosed home is in the mill, the bigger the losses,” said Todd Sherer, who manages distressed mortgage investments for Dalton Investments LLC, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund that oversees $1.5 billion. “We have a bulge of these properties coming through the system.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7skf2ld

-Apartment Vacancies Decline in U.S. to Lowest Rate Since 2001. Apartment vacancies in the U.S. fell to their lowest level since 2001 as home seizures and a growing pool of young adults forming households boosted rental demand, according to Reis Inc. The vacancy rate fell to 4.9 percent in the first quarter from 6.2 percent a year earlier, the New York-based property-research company said in a report.

It was only the third time since Reis began gathering the data 31 years ago that the rate was less than 5 percent. Renters are competing for a tightening supply of units as more homeowners are displaced by foreclosures, stricter mortgage-lending standards block purchases and young people move out on their own. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/czkrfs2

-Manhattan Apartment Prices Decline. Manhattan apartment prices dropped in the first quarter as new buyers seeking refuge from rising rents drove purchases of lower-cost studios and one-bedroom units to a two-year high. The median price of all condominiums and co-ops that changed hands in the three months ended March 31 fell 0.9 percent from a year earlier to $775,000, New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report. Deals totaled 2,311, down 3.5 percent from the first quarter of 2011. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7l4r7au

-This Reporter Waded Into The Wreckage Of The Foreclosure Crisis And Found Out It Was Far From Over. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ar4tq3

-Canada Boosts Housing Oversight as Banks Warn on Economy. Canadian authorities are stepping up oversight of the nation’s housing market even as lenders such as Bank of Nova Scotia warn that tougher rules could threaten the economic recovery. The country’s banking regulator, known as OSFI, said it will boost supervision of private mortgage insurers while examining “emerging” risks to the financial system in several areas, including residential mortgages.

Policy makers, including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, have said that parts of Canada’s housing market have become overvalued as consumers add to record debt levels, encouraged by some of the lowest mortgage rates in decades. Flaherty said in his budget last week the government will enhance supervision of Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp., a federal agency that insures some mortgages. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bwxtqg8

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• Charts of the Week-Quotes-Quick Hits
• RareColoredDiamonds.com
• HSFineAuctions.com
• Gold
• Silver
• Palladium
• QE3-Fed
• Sovereign Debt
• U.S. Debt-Deficit
• Oil-Gasoline
• Real Estate
• Stock Market
• MF Global

WORLD FINANCIAL REPORT ON RADIO MAR 30 2012

CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Jeff Clark, What Inflation Could Look Like in 2014. Most economists, especially those from the mainstream, will tell you that inflation is widely expected to remain benign for the foreseeable future. And for those who think it could climb higher, it’s usually because they think it should be higher.

History has a message for them: be careful what you wish for. There are plenty of examples in history showing that once inflation takes hold, it can quickly spiral out of control. That’s the danger we face now. Here’s what I mean. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/82n7bad

-“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

-“While corporate insiders are committing plenty of corporate money to repurchase shares, they are massive net sellers with their own money.” “As Wall Street strategists are almost universally urging investors to load up on stocks, insiders are doing the opposite.” “In every market, the house has an advantage because they know more than the players.” “Who knows more about what’s going on, them or you?” Charles Biderman and David Santschi of TrimTabs-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7no29tc

-Art Cashin: If War Breaks Out In Iran, Expect The Dow To Plummet 1000 Points In One Day. When asked how markets would react to a war in Iran, Cashin replied, “No one can fully know. The concern is that you would see a massive spike in oil. Secondarily, you might see the traditional flight to safety. If so, that might mean a huge rush into dollars and given the correlation we’ve seen with rises in the dollar and selloffs in stocks, you could not rule out a 1,000 point move in a day. That is why traders are watching it very, very warily.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/832xvr3

-Iran Tried To Bomb An Israeli Ship As It Passed Through The Suez Canal. Much like Iran did late last year when it allegedly recruited Manssor Arbabsiar to perform a terrorist act in the U.S., Tehran has been caught plotting an attack with three Egyptian citizens along the Suez Canal. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cj8suqf

-A Disastrous War Game Changed America’s Strategy For Iran. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/82ogfzn

-Lawmakers Target Iran’s Energy Sector for Expanded Sanctions. U.S. lawmakers are seeking to expand sanctions on Iran’s energy sector by banning the purchase of its natural gas and prohibiting investment in oil and gas services, exploration and new pipelines. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7tqhojg

-India and China Skirt Iran Sanctions With ‘Junk for Oil.’ Iran and its leading oil buyers, China and India, are finding ways to skirt U.S. and European Union financial sanctions on Iran by agreeing to trade oil for local currencies and goods including wheat, soybean meal and consumer products. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d5pjp4f

-Bill Gross Explains How To Make Money In A ‘Delevering World.’ The latest Bill Gross letter is out, and it’s all fairly subdued by his standards. He discusses what happens when interest rates can’t get any lower, and the rally in long-dated bonds finally comes to an end. The basic story he tells is that in a levering world, financial assets outstrip real assets, and so therefore in a delevering world, real assets will outstrip financials assets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3lovzs

-Jim Rogers: Why You Want To Own Hard Assets In An Age Of Inflation. Read and listen to more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qzttak

-Gary Shilling: This Bullishness Is Ridiculous, Stocks And Houses Are Headed For A Fall. Shilling does not think the economic recovery is gaining steam. He thinks analysts are much too optimistic about earnings for this year, and he thinks the recent resurgence in hiring is not the result of companies being optimistic about the future but because productivity gains are declining and companies need to hire to grow revenue and earnings.

In contrast to those who have recently called the bottom in house prices, Shilling also thinks house prices have another 20% to fall. In light of all this, Shilling still thinks deflation is a bigger problem than inflation. He’s looking for the 30-year Treasury yield to drop back to 2.5%. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cxdj78f

-A Lot of Disbelief About US Recovery: Steve Forbes. Despite signs of an improvement for the U.S. economy, Steve Forbes, Chairman of Forbes Media says the recovery isn’t as vigorous as it should be and claims there’s a lot of disbelief about the turnaround. The rate of growth of 3 to 4 percent, coming off a severe recession should be 6-8 percent, he added. The end of Bush-era tax cuts on capital gains and dividends will also rein in the economy’s expansion. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bv7nqnh

-Greg Hunter: Recovery? Housing says it’s a Hoax. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cjwkrgc

-10 Reasons The Reign Of The Dollar Is About To End. Today, more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in U.S. dollars. But there are big changes on the horizon. The mainstream media in the United States has been strangely silent about this, but some of the biggest economies on earth have been making agreements with each other to move away from using the U.S. dollar in international trade. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d5h2njr

-Citigroup Study Shows Asian Rich Topping North American. The number of Asians with at least $100 million in disposable assets overtook North America’s tally for the first time as the world’s “economic center of gravity” continued moving east, Citigroup Inc.’s private bank said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87sr8tv

-Canada Eliminates Penny Costing Penny-and-a-Half to Make. Canada will withdraw the penny from circulation this year, saving taxpayers about $11 million annually and forcing retailers to round prices to the nearest nickel, the government announced in its budget. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85noz9j

-Harvard College Increases Undergraduate Costs by 3.5 Percent. The cost to attend Harvard College, the undergraduate division of Harvard University, will increase 3.5 percent for the 2012-13 academic year. The $54,496 price, up from $52,652 for this year, includes tuition, fees and room and board and will affect students who don’t receive need-based financial aid. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cz7b6xk

-Magic Johnson Group to Buy L.A. Dodgers for $2 Billion. Basketball Hall of Fame member Magic Johnson and a group of investors that includes Guggenheim Partners Chief Executive Officer Mark Walter won the auction for the bankrupt Los Angeles Dodgers with a bid of more than $2 billion, doubling the previous record amount paid for a major U.S. professional sports franchise. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d9xdzd8

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The Dodgers’ Value Has Increased More Than 500% Since 1998. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnqtmp2

www.chartoftheday.com

-Yankees’ Value Is $2.85 Billion After Dodgers Bid, Analyst Says. The New York Yankees are worth a Major League Baseball-high $2.85 billion after a group led by basketball Hall of Fame player Magic Johnson bought the Los Angeles Dodgers in a $2.3 billion transaction, according to an estimate by a media analyst. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d5enbw8

-U.S. Heat Waves to Intensify From New York to Los Angeles. Heat waves are likely to intensify and last longer from California to the U.S. East Coast as global warming takes hold, according to the United Nations’s most comprehensive report on extreme weather events. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cl4ryub

-Eating Chocolate Regularly May Make You Leaner, Survey Suggests. A survey of about 1,000 Americans that suggests eating chocolate may help people get leaner deserves to be followed up with more study, according to a California-based researcher. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bohkvdm

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s Diamond is a 0.24 Emerald Cut Fancy Intense Pink Diamond. The Argyle Diamond Mine is located in a remote corner of North West Australia and it produces over 90 percent of the world supply in pink diamonds. Since formal records were first kept at the beginning of the 1980s, prices for pink diamonds have increased in value by an average of 20% per year. Because of the high appreciation rate of a pink diamond, it has to be assumed that the sky may well be the limit once the Argyle mine closes. Harold Seigel-Watch video of the featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/br7qf9b

-”Diamond prices jumped 22 percent last year, as measured by the Rapaport Diamond Trade Index. De Beers, the supplier of about a third of the world’s rough diamonds, reported a 27 percent increase in sales last year on higher demand for the luxury gems in the U.S., China and India.” Bloomberg

-Now That’s an engagement ring! Jeweller’s $70m diamond sparkler cut entirely from one 150-carat rock. A Swiss jewellery company has created a ring made from one enormous chunk of diamond. Shawish Jewellery, a company based in Geneva, unveiled what they have billed as ‘the world’s first diamond ring.’ The 150-carat ring has been valued at around $70 million and took one year to construct. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7db99d and Video here-http://tinyurl.com/cfrsdcv

-The 10 Most Expensive Pieces Of Jewelry Ever Sold At Auction. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cw7azk7

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HSFINEAUCTIONS.COM

-Next Auction is April 10th, 8pm Eastern, 6pm Mountain. Learn more here-http://tinyurl.com/7losy5c

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GOLD

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Gold Price Tested. With gold more than $250 off its August 2011 peak, today’s chart provides some long-term perspective in regards to the gold market. Today’s chart provides an illustration of the bull market in gold that began back in 2001. As today’s chart illustrates, the pace of the 11-year bull market has increased over time.

However, over the past seven months the price of an ounce of the shiny metal has declined more than at any point since 2008. This latest pullback has brought gold down to support (green line) for a second test of its three-year accelerated trend channel. So while the upward trend in gold is still intact, the accelerated trend is once again being tested. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7zpfyjl

www.chartoftheday.com

-Gold, Not Stocks, Wins Over Most Americans. Four months into a stock market rally, and Americans are still going for gold. More so than real estate or even stocks, investors call gold the “best investment” according to CNBC’s latest All-America Economic Survey. The precious metal has mass appeal.

It is the preferred investment not only across income levels, but geographic regions, and even political affiliations. “Gold has taken over perceptions across the public as being a good investment. If not first, gold comes in as a very close second among investors,” said pollster Jay Campbell of Hart Research, which conducts the quarterly survey for CNBC. Overall, 37 percent of respondents said gold is the “best investment,” with real estate at 24 percent and stocks coming in third at 19 percent.

The attraction, say gold bulls, is the notion that the inherent value in a physical asset of limited supply can protect you from long-term inflation and economic uncertainty. Indeed, the survey shows that preference for gold rises as perceptions about the economy decrease. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cyz4vrd

-Simon Black: ‘We Have Entered The Most Favorable Era For Gold Prices In Our Lifetime.’ Gold remains one of the most widely misunderstood assets in the investible world. Indeed, it may be better to refer to it as a means of saving that does not expose the saver to counterparty or credit risk or to the depredations of the monetary authorities.

As Don Coxe makes clear, governments are running deficits “beyond the forecasts of all but the hardiest gold bugs five years ago; central banks are printing money and creating liquidity beyond the forecasts of all but the most paranoid gold bugs a year ago.”

The choice for the saver is essentially binary: hold money in ever-depreciating paper, or in a tangible vehicle that has the potential to rise dramatically as expressed in paper money terms. Gold prices have now softened, offering investors yet another chance to get back on board what is perhaps the most compelling form of money–and portfolio insurance available. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ce6ksrv

-Gold Price ‘Too Low’: Goldman Sachs. The price of gold, one of the most eagerly watched indicators of market confidence, is currently “too low” relative to real interest rates, according to commodities analysts at Goldman Sachs. The analysts forecast that gold will rise to $1,785 per ounce over the next 3 months, $1,840 over the next 6, and $1,940 over the next year.

“By holding more gold central banks are insuring themselves against their own profligacy. They print money. The price of gold goes up. And if they hold a lot of the stuff in their vaults, they are the big winners from the rise in price,” Matthew Lynn, founder of Strategy Economics, wrote in a research note. “If you can pull it off and there isn’t anything to stop you that sounds like an easy way to make a living.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cv5psne

-Macquarie: Buy Gold Now: It’s About To Rocket To $2250. Buy the dip. That’s the advice of Macquarie Private Wealth in respect to gold. Gold has certainly come off quite a bit, form a high of around $1900/oz. late last summer, to around $1650/oz. now. And the improving economy and the rise in real interest rates has made a lot of people turn negative on the metal.

Macquarie advises getting in now for 5 reasons:

• Sentiment towards gold has no reached “extreme pessimism” levels.

• March is seasonally the weakest month for gold.

• Excess slack in the US economy will prompt the Fed to say on hold until 2014, as indicated, keeping short rates low.

• The extent of the long-term rate rise is over. The Fed will ease some more.

• Sovereign risk is not over.

Ultimately, they see it going to $2250/oz. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7db9hb6

-Morgan Stanley Explains The ‘4 Pillars’ Of Gold, And Then Predicts It Will Go To $2175. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqhsbnm

-Aden Sisters: Taking a Breather. Gold and silver have been falling this month. The correction has so far been moderate, but don’t be surprised if gold moves within a consolidation area for a few months. Upcoming weakness will be the time to add to your positions. The markets are sensitive and volatile.

This is why keeping focused on the major trends is important. Staying focused on demand is also vital because a demand based rise is the best and strongest rise in any market. Chart 1 shows gold’s big picture, which is always a good picture to keep focused on. When you see the over 40 year old mega upchannel develop as it has, you can see how close gold is to reaching the $2,500 level, the top of this channel.

We think gold is poised to rise much further than this in the years to come, but for now this is our next target area, once gold breaks above the $1900 record high level. The bull market has completed several milestones with the first one being a rise above $500, then $1000, and now it’s $2500. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bnky5om

-Charles Nenner: Investors Who Miss This Gold Rally Need To Be ‘Educated Better.’ Charles Nenner projects that gold will rise to a $2,500/oz level in the next “year to year and a half.” In addition to his big projection for gold, he expects silver to charge past the $50 barrier.

During gold’s peak last year, Nenner says he sold some gold at roughly $1,900/oz. He expects the cycles for gold and silver to bottom but to pick up again very soon. Nenner recommends holding off until the two markets bottom out, which he states should happen sometime in mid-April.

He is of the opinion that both silver and gold are in similar situations, and although he has no specific price targets to buy each commodity, he recommends becoming long in two weeks. And if you miss out on the rally, Nenner thinks you need to be “educated better.” Read and watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/cnm6kda

-Agnico-Eagle sees $2,000 per ounce gold possible this year. “Can it get to $2,000? Absolutely. Can it do that within the next year? Absolutely,” said Sean Boyd, chief executive officer at the Canadian gold miner, in an interview at the Reuters Mining Summit.

Citing economic troubles in both Europe and the United States and renewed central bank buying of gold, Boyd said strong demand for the precious metal will continue to keep the price high for at least the next several years. “I think it’s just this level of uncertainty that remains out there that is going to keep people interested in gold,” he said.

With credit problems continuing to haunt European countries, such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland, and areas of underlying weakness in the U.S. economy, Boyd said further quantitative easing measures are still not out of the question. “We haven’t really dealt with a lot of the fundamental issues that have driven people towards gold. And it’s still one of the best stores of value and wealth out there,” said Boyd. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d3bgato

-Miner Newmont sees gold at $2,000/oz this year. Newmont Mining’s Chief Executive Richard O’Brien said he believed a gold price at $2,000 per ounce was “reachable” this year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cvsf6th

-BarCap bets on gold as prices hit 2-month lows. The bank is presently betting heavily on gold which it expects to rally around 15% to a lofty $1,850 an ounce by the second quarter due to inflation worries. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/crkvvf2

-Jim Sinclair: US Launches Economic War, Gold Reacting. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cwjuc7q

-Caesar Bryan: Central Banks Aggressively Buying Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6vpagnr

-Caesar Bryan: Watch Gold as Europe Headed Into Crisis Again. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bvqmjk9

-Farage: Western World Collaborated in Giant Ponzi Scheme. Farage, who is also a 20 year veteran of the London Metal Exchange, had this to say regarding gold: “I was in Geneva last week addressing a financial conference with a huge amount of money in the room. There are a lot of people who are currently in equities because they see what the central banks have been doing with the creation of money.

There is a general feeling that in the short-term the equity markets will rise, so there hasn’t been as much of an appetite for gold. I think the remarkable thing is just how steady the price of gold has held. I would have expected it to dip back a bit more than this.

I am firmly of the view that nothing at all has changed. The can has just been kicked down the road. We are actually storing up and building up problems for ourselves in the future that are even greater than we can possibly contemplate and I would firmly think now, that if we do get a dip in the gold market, it should be bought.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8oxyry

-John Embry: Massive QE Near as System Moves Closer to Collapse. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cz2ewq2

-Eric Sprott: Mainstream Bashes Gold, But New Highs Coming. The mainstream bashes gold, including Chairman Bernanke indicating gold was an old, worthless standard that shouldn’t be considered. But I think those of us who have studied what’s going on in the world economic situation, the world money printing situation we’re very aware of the merits of gold.

The merits of gold get better by the day, but the mainstream tries to downplay it. It’s not something new. We’ve gone through this for twelve years now. But the majority of the main prognosticators in the world seems to think that gold is not an appropriate investment.

I think those of us who have championed it (gold) over the last twelve years have obviously been way more correct and we will have our day. There are strange things that happen in the paper COMEX market that negatively affect the prices of both (gold and silver). My view here is that before we end the year we will hit new highs in both metals. Then the (mining) stocks would react. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87an5yk

-Greyerz: European Leaders Lying, Trillions Need to Be Printed. Gold has bottomed in this short-term correction and we will see gold moving strongly higher in April. The critical $35 to $37 level on silver will be broken and thereafter we will also see a massive move in silver.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cbo2ot4

-Greyerz: Physical Gold Demand Enormous & Accelerating. “If I look at the physical market, we are seeing major demand and it’s actually accelerating. Again, we are looking at a paper market which is artificially manipulated short-term. It has no relevance at all for the gold market in the long-term.

There are two key drivers (for gold). One is technical and it looks and to me it looks like the next move (higher) in gold is going to be a big move. In our view it’s the fundamentals that drive this market. There is a lack of solutions (to the world’s financial dilemma), this means there will be unlimited money printing starting very soon.

I feel as confident as ever this is the main investment people have to own in order to protect themselves from what’s going to happen in 2012 and thereafter. “I see a lot of investor groups and recently I made a presentation to a major group of Swiss asset managers. It’s the same story everywhere, they don’t own gold and they don’t understand the virtues of gold.

This is why I’m so bullish on gold because I see gold, having gone up in dollar terms almost 7 fold, and no major group owns gold. I am absolutely certain that this is the next big investment. The institutional investors are going to go heavily into gold and that will totally change the market. As we know there isn’t the physical gold around the satisfy an increase in demand, so that can only be satisfied by a higher price.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yekcum

-James Turk: Quiet Gold Market Masks Important Development. Almost every day for the past couple of weeks gold and silver have tested critical support, which is $1650 for gold and $32 for silver. And every time the precious metals dipped below these price levels, they bounced back. One can only conclude that support at these levels is solid. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7udjveo

-Norcini: Trading “Extremely Violent” & Will End in “Disaster.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/73ma6xq

-Rick Rule: Gold, Silver, Oil, Global Turmoil & Quiet Markets. Rule had this to say regarding gold and silver: “I don’t understand how any KWN readers or listeners can look out at the world we live in today and prefer to accumulate fiat currencies.

Why would they want to hold fiat as opposed to the real mechanisms for the transfer and storage of wealth, which are of course gold and silver. While gold and silver prices have moderated over the near-term, as a consequence of liquidity in the system, longer-term they are much more honest mediums of exchange and superior stores of value.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7pwpye2

-Richard Russell: Gold & Silver Being Bought Up By Billionaires. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/86pdt8h

-Gold investors ditch equity funds for bullion. Investors keen on gold showed frustration at underperforming funds that invest in mining firms as liquidations extended for more than four straight months, while money flowed into funds that invest in the underlying metal, data from Lipper showed. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11165

-GGR examines disgust with Gold mining shares, notes big commercial shorts are covering. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11175

-Gold Prices Projected Higher In 2012 But Records Unlikely: CPM Yearbook. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/dy4doh2

-Frank Holmes: Gold and China: Where the Bulls and Bears Square Off. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qnuehm

-Alasdair Macleod: Asia’s golden future. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11171

-Hong Kong exchange to launch yuan-settled gold, copper futures. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11168

-Turkey increasingly recognizes gold as money. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11180

-Ben Traynor: Gunning for gold. Traynor elaborates on Turkey, India, and Vietnam, three countries whose government don’t mind acknowledging that they have a big problem with freely trading gold, a competitive currency. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11167

-Restore national sovereignty: Repatriate all gold reserves. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11186

-An Annotated Paul Brodsky Responds To Bernanke’s Latest Attempt To Discredit Gold. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8y5s2ux

-Fleckenstein: Bernanke Dead Wrong About Gold Standard. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8y5wh74

-Casey Research: Berkshire, Gold, and the Status Quo. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cb58t63

-The World’s Biggest Markets For Gold Are On Strike. Major Indian bullion and jewelry markets, which are the largest in the world, went on strike 10 days ago after the government announced in its second budget that it would double gold import duties. India is the world’s largest gold importer and imposed a similar hike in January this year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c72gg8d

-Wall Street Journal misses the point about gold twice in one day. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11163

-Zero Hedge: Can gold-plated tungsten be rehypothecated too? Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11173

-Bron Suchecki: Fake Gold bars the facts. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11177

-Paul Mylchreest: Gold price suppression caught red-handed. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11187

-Chris Martenson: Gold is manipulated (but that’s OK). Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11184

-Matthew Lynn: Central banks need gold to manipulate currency markets. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11182

-Eric Sprott and David Baker: Who would dump all that metal so fast? The equity market rally that began in late December appears to be generated more by excess government-induced liquidity than it does by any raw fundamentals. We continue to scour the data for signs of a true recovery and we are simply not seeing it. Until those signs come through, we would be very wary of participating in the equity markets without a strong defensive stance.

We would also expect the precious metals complex to enjoy renewed strength as the year continues. One bad month does not change a long-term trend that has been building over 10 years. Gold and silver will both have an important role to play as the central bank-induced printing continues, and we expect more on that front in short order. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c33ybft and http://www.gata.org/node/11185

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”The current gold structure is as bullish as it was back at the late December price lows, namely, very bullish. And please remember that there was a fairly high volume sell-off after the Tuesday COT cut-off in both gold and silver, meaning that the market structure is even more bullish than indicated in the new report. In silver, we are not back to the extreme COT readings of late December (as we are in gold), but those silver readings were so extreme that I doubt we can achieve them again.

I suppose the commercials could rig lower prices ahead because you never want to say never. But any objective reading of the COTs now strongly favors the upside. As always, lower prices from here would only make the structure more bullish. That’s where we are right now.” Ted Butler via Ed Steer Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c7q9h6t

-”A quick word on [Wednesday’s] price weakness. The current market structure does not suggest a pronounced price decline ahead. The commercials, acting collusively and with dirty market tricks (HFT) at their disposal, can and do put prices wherever they desire on a short term basis.

But it should be clear that the commercials are always the big buyers on these engineered sell-offs. The sell-offs invariably end when there is little speculative long liquidation remaining, as it serves no purpose for the commercials to drive prices lower if they can’t buy more.

It seems to me that we are at, or very close, to that point where the commercials can’t induce much additional speculative long liquidation and new short selling in COMEX gold and silver. There’s no doubt that silver is manipulated in price, but there is also no doubt that even manipulated markets have a rhyme and rhythm. Lower prices are rigged by the commercials to get others to sell to them. Bottoms are defined when that selling runs out.” Ted Butler via Ed Steer Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bemgfl

-Robert Fitzwilson: Gold and Silver Update: “My observation of the patterns in gold and silver is we have been involved in long range trading. There is a limit that central banks have imposed on the price of gold and silver. When it gets to that limit, the central banks pile in and drive the price of gold and silver back down.

The smart central banks then buy the bullion at incredibly cheap and subsidized prices. The market feels to me like it is getting ready to enter a new, higher range. The new, short-term cap on silver as an example, might be $60.

The bottom line is the advance in gold and silver is being managed. So it’s going up, but it’s not time for the mania. We won’t see the mania until they lose control, but we are getting close to something that should provide tremendous upside fuel for both gold and silver.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/caczw6g

-John Embry: Silver Update. When asked about silver specifically, Embry responded, “The breakout is still $35 to $37. We were there not too long ago and JP Morgan and its accomplices basically kicked the hell out of it again. Right now silver is consolidating, but when silver takes out $37 on the upside, there will be a huge move. It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of time.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cz2ewq2

-Egon von Greyerz: Silver Update. “Silver has been under pressure and corrects more than gold when the market is down, but I see this as a mild correction that we’ve had in the last month. When silver turns, I think silver is going to go very fast. Once we go through the $35-$36 level, I could see us going to $40 and beyond in a very short period of time.

Silver is not for the faint of heart because the volatility is enormous. My view is people should hold more gold than silver, but from a profit potential point of view, silver looks very much like it’s going to have a bigger move.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yekcum

-Fractal Analysis: 2012 Silver to $70++. Around this point in the fractal cycle in the late 70’s, Gold busted out of its channel to rise sharply higher, along with Silver. Silver’s channel top will lie up around $68 to $70 over the coming months which we believe will be reached in 2012. The next higher angled resistance bands for Silver run from $112 to $115, and then up at the $123 area. By the end of the Silver Bull, we expect to see Silver reach $500+. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c2mtswd

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PALLADIUM

-Palladium Seen Beating Gold With Record Car Sales. Investors are buying palladium at the fastest pace in more than a year as analysts predict rising demand and declining supply will turn this quarter’s worst-performing precious metal into the best by December.

Palladium lagged behind other metals this year on concern about slowing growth in vehicle sales in China, the world’s largest car market. Autocatalysts account for 65 percent of demand, according to Barclays Capital. Prices are poised to rise because carmakers are still using the most metal ever, with the prospect of shortages because of less supply from state reserves in Russia, the biggest producer, the bank estimates.

“I like palladium the best among precious metals, it’s relatively cheap compared to the others,” said Bart Melek, the head of commodity strategy at TD Securities Inc. in Toronto and the most accurate price forecaster tracked by Bloomberg Rankings in the eight quarters through the end of 2011. “Autocatalyst demand for palladium should grow. Russian government stocks will limit supply growth.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cgbf5fw

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QE3-FED

-Bernanke Says Accommodative Policy Needed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said while he’s encouraged by the unemployment rates decline to 8.3 percent, continued accommodative monetary policy will be needed to make further progress. Reducing the jobless rate further will probably require a quicker expansion of business production and consumer demand, which “can be supported by continued accommodative policies,” he said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cbltxyx

-Pimco’s Gross Says Fed May ‘Hint’ at QE3 at April Meeting. Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said the Federal Reserve will probably signal it plans to arrange a third round of debt purchases when policy makers meet in April.

The end of tax breaks enacted by President George W. Bush and $1 trillion of mandatory federal budget cuts are raising concern that declining unemployment will give way to slower economic growth that requires support from the central bank.

Policy makers under Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have purchased $2.3 trillion of Treasuries and mortgage debt in two rounds of so-called quantitative easing, known as QE1 and QE2, as they try to sustain the expansion. The Fed is “likely to hint” at QE3 at its April 25 gathering, Gross wrote on Twitter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7grj8ch

-Pimco’s Gross Says Fed to Shift Operation Twist to Mortgages. Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Bill Gross said the Federal Reserve will probably shift focus to mortgage securities to keep borrowing rates low when it’s so-called Operation Twist program ends in June. It will be a “twist on another twist going forward,” said Gross. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c383flc

-Rosengren Favors More Easing if Unemployment Stays High. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said the U.S. central bank may need to ease monetary policy if unemployment stays too high. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ckcxv8n

-WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt. The Federal Reserve is propping up the entire U.S. economy by buying 61 percent of the government debt issued by the Treasury Department, a trend that cannot last, Lawrence Goodman, a former Treasury official and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion article published Wednesday.

“Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis,” Goodman writes. Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.””This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bmlrsch and http://tinyurl.com/7n2yfdd

-Bernanke Says Too Early for Victory on U.S. Recovery. “It’s far too early to declare victory,” Bernanke said. “The recent news has been good. But I think we need to be cautious and make sure this is sustainable. And we haven’t quite yet got to the point where we can be completely confident that we’re on a track to full recovery.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c32wqvx

-Bernanke Says Fed Crisis Response Prevented Global Meltdown. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank’s aggressive response to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession helped prevent a worldwide catastrophe. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/csxxcuo

-Bernanke Says Central Banks Should Defuse Financial Threats. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said financial stability is no longer a “junior partner” to monetary policy and central banks should try to defuse threats in the future. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/btdywg4

-Art Cashin: We Now Know The True Motive Behind The Bernanke Lectures. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cjd9rtt

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The Spanish Housing Chart That’s Going To Crush The Banking System. Citi’s Willem Buiter is out with a big call on Spain, and how things are going to get much worse, and how ultimately the country will need outside assistance in some way. Given that Spain is much bigger than Greece, this is a very big deal.

One key element of his call relates to real estate, and his belief that the collapse in that market is not done. In fact, he doesn’t even think it’s close. This chart shows how far the housing market has fallen (back to 2004 levels, as Buiter states) and how much more there is to fall if an Ireland-like collapse completely takes place. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/czcllmw

-Simone Foxman: Spain Is The New Greece And This Time It’s Big Enough To Matter. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7gjxtq9

-David Kotok: ‘Portugal Is Unraveling.’ “In my view, the situation in Portugal is unraveling. This may be the second shoe to drop in the European sovereign debt saga. Now that Greece has paved the way, the speed of unwind with Portugal may be much faster. I do not believe the markets are prepared for that.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c4n6qs7

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-Providence Bankruptcy Seen as Unavoidable on Budget Gap. Providence, Rhode Island’s capital and biggest city, probably will seek bankruptcy court protection to deal with a budget deficit, Robert Flanders, the state- appointed receiver for nearby Central Falls, said.

“I don’t see how they can get out of it without going there,” said Flanders, a former state Supreme Court justice and a partner at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder LLP in Providence. He put Central Falls into bankruptcy in August and has since torn up contracts with city workers and cut pension benefits. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8jr9ty

-Bankrupt Jefferson County, Alabama, Will Miss Bond Payment. Jefferson County, Alabama, will miss a $15 million general-obligation bond payment due April 2, Commissioner David Carrington said in Birmingham. Jefferson County filed for bankruptcy in November after county, state officials, a court-appointed receiver and bondholders failed to implement a deal that would have reduced $3 billion in debt tied to the failed financing of a sewer renovation by about $1 billion. The county also has about $200 million of general-obligation bond debt and $814 million of school-construction bonds. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/d8t9z9k

-Troubled Harrisburg bets on unusual auction. It’s unlikely that a Revolutionary War rifle will save Harrisburg, Pa., but it could help. The financially troubled capital of Pennsylvania is hosting an auction of artifacts this summer in hopes of raising enough money to close the gap between the city’s revenue and operating costs. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yx2uhh

-Caroline Baum. Four Numbers Add Up to an American Debt Disaster. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bol2jgd

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OIL-GASOLINE

-High Oil Prices ‘Unjustified’: Saudi Oil Minister. Saudi Arabia’s powerful oil minister, Ali Naimi, made a rare intervention into overheating oil markets on Tuesday, declaring that high oil prices were “unjustified” and vowing that the kingdom would boost its output by as much as 25 percent if necessary. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ctlatcp

-France Discussing Strategic Oil Release With UK, US. France is in talks with the United States and Britain on a possible release of strategic oil stocks to push fuel prices lower, French ministers said on Wednesday, four weeks before the country’s presidential election. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cdlmque

-Prepare for a New Era of Oil Shocks: Martin Wolf. Oil prices are up. Barack Obama is to blame. Drilling in the US is the solution. This is the mantra from the president’s opponents. All presidents tend to get the blame for high fuel prices. But with the price of gasoline nearing $4 a gallon, Mr. Obama is getting it by the barrel load. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bqbug84

-Gas Prices Have Taken Air Out of US Recovery: Jack Welch. What looked to be a fairly robust economic recovery has turned lackluster thanks to rising gas prices and uncertainty over demand, according to author and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87f9w8r

-Gas tops $3.90 a gallon. The price of an average gallon of regular gas surpassed the $3.90 mark Wednesday, moving to within a dime of the $4 threshold. The average price rose 1.3 cents to $3.911 in the latest daily survey conducted for the motorist group AAA. The price has risen for 19 consecutive days.

The current price compares to just below $3.70 a month ago, and just below $3.59 a year ago. Gasoline averages more than $4 a gallon in 10 states and the District of Columbia. At $4.55 a gallon, Hawaii has the nation’s highest pump price. Prices are less than a nickel away from $4 a gallon in Nevada and Wisconsin. Wyoming has the nation’s lowest gas prices, averaging nearly $3.51 a gallon. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cg9mlag

-Why gas prices vary so much from one place to the next. The price of gasoline can differ wildly depending on where you live. A driver fueling up in Denver will pay, on average, $3.64 per gallon. But just a couple states over in Chicago, gas goes for north of $4.28 for gallon. That’s about a $10 difference to fill up an average gas tank. Why the disparity? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yevq9z

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REAL ESTATE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: House Prices Are Now Back To Early 2003 Levels. Case-Shiller House Price index came in a hair better than expectations (falling 3.78% year over year vs. an expected decline of 3.8%), but the bottom line is that the bottom still hasn’t been hit. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cch4fgu

www.chartoftheday.com

-Home Prices in U.S. Cities Fell at Slower Pace in January. Home prices in 20 U.S. cities dropped at a slower pace in January, pointing to stabilization in the real estate market. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 3.8 percent from a year earlier. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cfgww2t

-Robert Shiller: Suburban Home Prices Will Not Rebound In Our Lifetime. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cfs9fed

-Pending Sales of US Existing Homes at Near Two-Year High. The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes held in February near an almost two-year high, a sign that the real estate market may be stabilizing. The index of pending home purchases fell 0.5 percent to 96.5 after a 2 percent increase the prior month, the National Association of Realtors said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bseos7q

-Bidding Wars Erupt as U.S. Supply of Homes for Sale Falls. Matthew and Carina Hensley offered $10,000 more than the asking price for a three-bedroom house in suburban Seattle, then lost out to one of seven other bidders. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/cr6lco4

-Housing Hype: Recovery Turns to Relapse? Home prices are still falling not because of some lag, but because this housing market is running on sales of distressed properties at the very low end. The rest of the market is still stalled. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wcdrwg

-U.K. House prices suffer worst monthly fall in 2 years: Nationwide. House prices suffered their sharpest monthly fall in more than two years in March, as first-time homebuyers braced for the removal of a purchase tax exemption, mortgage lender Nationwide said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/c6o75lv

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STOCK MARKET

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The S&P 500 with and without Apple. In February, Jonathan Golub at UBS started a new fashion on the Street by publishing two versions of his regular quarterly forecast: one for the S&P 500, and another for what he called the “S&P 500 ex-Apple.”

In Golub’s February calculation, the S&P 500’s Q1 2012 earnings were on track to rise 6.8% with Apple, but would shrivel to 2.8% without. “By stripping away that one single company,” Golub told the Wall Street Journal, “it is like seeing light through a prism you see things more clearly.”

Last week, Dan Sanborn of Ned Davis Research took another look at the S&P 500 through Golub’s prism and saw an even wider spread. Now, according to Sanborn, the index’s total earnings growth drops from 7.8% year over year with Apple to just 2.7% without. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ceb4g98

-‘Cashing Out’ U.S. Stockholders May Be Trendy. U.S. companies are better positioned for “cashing out” shareholders than at any other time in more than half a century, according to Myles Zyblock, chief institutional strategist at RBC Capital Markets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/crgys8e

-US Stocks Are Overpriced by 50%: Author. U.S. stocks are overpriced by 50 percent but corporate buying is keeping them up, at least until there is a decline in the U.S. fiscal deficit, Andrew Smithers, the author of the book “Valuing Wall Street: Protecting Wealth in Turbulent Markets” wrote in a recent research note.

“U.S. equities are around 50 percent overpriced but, absent unexpected shocks, are being kept up by corporate buying. “Listed companies according to CAPE (cyclically-averaged price-earnings ratio) were 53 percent overvalued at the year end and 71 percent overvalued on 20th March,” Smithers wrote.

He said the current degree of overvaluation was similar to the stock market peaks of 1906, 1937 and 1968, which “preceded long secular bear markets,” although they are “well short of the extremes reached at the end of 1929 and 1999.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/bolt6ye

-Spring Stock Selloff? Pros See Signs It’s Coming. Traders fear a major case of déjà vu this spring, where investors pocket their profits, and really do go away. The “sell in May” phenomena occurred in the past two years, after stocks peaked in April.

However, some analysts expect a less severe sell off this year and mostly agree a pullback is overdue. Last year, the S&P 500 lost 21.6 percent between May 2 and Oct. 4. “Everything suggests it,” said Binky Chadha, Deutsche Bank chief global strategist. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/ch3ntac

-Jack Bogle: A $600 Billion Dollar Move In The Mutual Fund Industry Is A Warning Sign For Investors. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/calzzqy

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MF GLOBAL

-MF’s Corzine Ordered Funds Moved to JP Morgan, Memo Says. Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to a memo written by congressional investigators. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7hy6blb

-MF Global’s Corzine May be Liable if Customer Risk Known. Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd.’s former chief executive officer, may face potential legal liability if investigators show he knew customer money might be used when he ordered $200 million transferred to a U.K. account as his brokerage neared collapse, former prosecutors said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/88q3jcu

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• Charts of the Week-Quotes-Quick Hits
• RareColoredDiamonds.com
• HSFineAuctions.com
• Gold
• Silver
• Sovereign Debt
• U.S. Debt-Deficit
• Fed
• Jobs
• Oil-Gasoline
• Stocks
• Real Estate
• Geopolitical
• Apple

WORLD FINANCIAL REPORT ON RADIO MAR 23 2012

CHARTS OF THE WEEK-QUOTES-QUICK HITS

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Commodities and Currency Performance in 2012. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vxma2a

-CHART OF THE WEEK: This Is The Chart That Makes ECRI Scream Recession. Despite signs that the economy is recovering, research firm ECRI has held to bearish predictions for the U.S. economy. ECRI co-founder Lakshman Achuthan spoke to Bloomberg’s Tom Keene to defend his recession call amid an onslaught of criticism.

Achuthan provided a deeper look at how exactly ECRI makes its predictions, saying that it focuses on year-over-year indicators for output, employment, income and sales, and the consumer confidence index. In particular, he pointed to the relationship between year-over-year consumption and employment as perhaps the clearest sign that the U.S. is headed back into a recession.

“People need to understand the sequence,” he said. “I think the hope is that jobs growth will increase consumption in coming months, but in fact jobs growth follows consumption. There are many instances in which job growth precedes a recession.” If we look at a graph of these two indicators, it is clear that past U.S. recoveries have virtually all relied on consumption growth and that consumption growth is slowing down. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87z2y42

www.chartoftheday.com

-Suppose you discovered an envelope jammed behind the drawer of a family heirloom. In it, your great Grandfather had placed $40 in the form of one $20 bill and one $20 gold coin. Which preserved its purchasing power? Jim Sinclair

-”Fed Ex shipments are down which is not good news for the bulls on the US economy. The dollar is becoming yesterday while the Euro and Yuan are the new settlement currencies for international transactions. QE is going to infinity. The global drag on the US will be the cause. The real range for gold in 2012 will be $1700–$2111.” Jim Sinclair

-”You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” Abraham Lincoln

-Lagarde Says World Can’t Be Lulled Into Sense of Security. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde urged policy makers to be vigilant as oil prices, debt levels, and the risk of slowing growth in emerging markets threaten global economic stability. “Optimism should not give us a sense of comfort or lull us into a false sense of security,” Lagarde said at a speech in Beijing at the China Development Forum. “We cannot go back to business as usual.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wgxadt

-Fed’s Dudley Says U.S. Isn’t ‘Out of the Woods.’ Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said signs the economy is improving don’t dispel risks to growth that include higher gasoline prices, fiscal cutbacks and a weak housing market.

“The incoming data on the U.S. economy has been a bit more upbeat of late, suggesting that the recovery may be getting better established,” Dudley said in a speech. “But, while these developments are certainly encouraging, it is far too soon to conclude that we are out of the woods in terms of generating a strong, sustainable recovery.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8yof9yo

-Despite Gains, This Is the ‘Weakest Recovery Ever’: Rosenberg. Recent economic gains have been primarily illusory, driven by weather-related factors that are not sustainable, economist David Rosenberg told CNBC. Rosenberg said the recovery has been extremely weak by historical standards and would be even more so if not for all of the deficit spending and money printing in Washington.

“Is it growing? How could it not be growing,” Rosenberg said. “We’ve got four years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits, we have a Fed balance sheet that’s tripled in size, zero policy rates for three years. Of course you’re going to get some growth.” But it’s the type of growth that causes concern. “If you want to take a big-picture perspective, this goes down as the weakest economic recovery ever, despite all the ramp up in government stimulus, and that really tells you something,” he said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7llnru9

-‘Worst Still to Come’ for Europe: Citi Economist. Despite high-profile measures such as the Greek debt deal and mass pumping of liquidity into the banking system, Europe’s problems have merely been delayed for another day, Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citi told CNBC.

“We have really just paused for breath,” he said. “It (the long-term refinancing operation) really hasn’t solved the problem, and for Europe the worst is still to come.” He also predicted a further “large-scale ECB intervention” later this year or in early 2013. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ypxw36

-Deep Recessions in U.S. May Be the Norm, Say NBER Economists. Deeper recessions and more gradual recoveries will be the norm rather than the exception as the U.S. workforce grows at a slower pace, according to economists on the panel that determines when slumps begin and end.

The typical contraction “will have steeper declines and slower recoveries in output and employment,” according to a paper by Harvard University’s James Stock and Princeton University’s Mark Watson presented at the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity in Washington. “We can expect recoveries from future recessions to be ‘jobless’ as well,” they said, similar to the two most recent rebounds. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7nmya65

-Marc Faber: Beware The Unintended Consequences Of Money Printing. Every money printing exercise in the world leads to unintended consequences at a later point. And, this is the important issue to remember. We don’t know yet for sure what the unintended consequences are. Read and listen to more here-http://tinyurl.com/7hubqon

-Irwin Kellner: Don’t be fooled by the money illusion. Many economic numbers don’t account for inflation. Now that inflation is beginning to pick up, it is vital to distinguish between what is real and what is just an illusion caused by inflation. If one does not, one might very well come away with the impression that the economy is shifting into higher gear when, in fact, it is not. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/78g9qw8

-Volcker Says U.S. Needs Reforms in Finance, Government. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman whose name was given to a provision of the Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial rules, called for reforms of both government and the financial system in a speech.

Speaking at New York’s Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln was propelled to national prominence with a February 1860 speech, Volcker said the U.S. faces economic and political challenges that present a “grave threat” even if they’re mundane compared to the strife that Lincoln confronted. “It is not only our economic prosperity that’s in jeopardy, but our national security and our ability to play a constructive role in a changing world.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ws79vo

-Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law. This Executive Order was posted on the WhiteHouse.gov web site on Friday, March 16, 2012, under the name National Defense Resources Preparedness. In a nutshell, it’s the blueprint for Peacetime Martial Law and it gives the president the power to take just about anything deemed necessary for “National Defense”, whatever they decide that is. It’s peacetime, because as the title of the order says, it’s for “Preparedness.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bg5o9a

-China Manufacturing Contraction May Worsen, Data Show. A Chinese manufacturing index indicated a worse contraction this month, bolstering the case for Premier Wen Jiabao to add measures to sustain growth even as he prolongs a campaign to cool property prices. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7snemok

-JPMorgan Shuts Down The Account Of The Vatican Bank Due To Lack Of Transparency. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83w9rs7

-Brazil vows to protect manufacturing with currency devaluation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11142

-Emirates Says ‘Whole Load of Airlines’ Will Fail in Fuel Squeeze. Emirates, the biggest airline by international traffic, said more carriers will go bust this year as fuel costs and sluggish economies undermine profitability. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7pa73rr

-Three in 10 young adults live with parents, highest level since 1950s. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/85kyvhx

-The Age Gap: Demographics Threatens Economies. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ngestl

-Living Together Trumps Matrimony for Recession-Wary Americans. The probability of a woman getting married by age 25 dropped to less than half as more Americans opt to cohabitate with their romantic partners rather than tie the knot, a U.S. government study shows. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7xvcajr

-Sweden moving towards cashless economy. Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it’s come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7rjbtky

-FBI Camera Catches American Scientist Trying to Sell Secrets. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/79q2lzn

-U.S. Intelligence Says Water Shortages Threaten Stability. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7tyh8vd

-’I'll be the world’s richest man’: Brazilian playboy tycoon’s boast after building up $30billion fortune from scratch. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ao69tl

-Making Money From Rare Marilyn Monroe Photos. Watch more here-http://tinyurl.com/87h7cpu

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RARECOLOREDDIAMONDS.COM

-Rarecoloreddiamonds.com Featured Diamond of the Week. This week’s featured Diamond is a 0.38 Carat Radiant Cut Fancy Intense Purplish Pink Argyle Diamond. At Argyle, pink diamonds making it to the annual tender are literally one in a million. For every one million carats of rough diamonds produced from the mine, only one polished carat is offered for sale in the tender. In terms of global diamond production, pinks make up only 0.03 percent.

Experts agree that prices for colored diamonds, pinks in particular, are on the rise, noting that a barrier was broken in recent years that thrust pinks previously selling for $500,000 to $600,000 a carat into the $1 million-a-carat realm. Harold Seigel-See video of the Featured Diamond here-http://tinyurl.com/888sa2a

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HSFINEAUCTIONS.COM

-Next Auction TBA. Learn more here-http://tinyurl.com/7losy5c

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GOLD

-CHART OF THE WEEK: John Williams, Inflation Effect Tough to Ignore or Contain. Market conditions remain unstable and highly volatile, and the precious metals and stronger major currencies remain the primary hedges against the coming U.S. dollar calamity. Recent upside pressure on oil prices primarily reflects supply concerns tied to political instabilities in the Middle East, but those pressures have built upon the upside shift in oil prices that was triggered by the Fed’s policies (i.e. QE2) aimed at debasing the U.S. dollar. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6ozf9nj

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Gold and the U.S. Monetary Base.

-3 Great Charts On The Dow vs. Gold. See more here-http://tinyurl.com/7u6o6p8

-I do not agree with the rampant bearishness that has infected the community. This period will be looked back on as just more noise and drama. The US dollar is in harm’s way. QE will go to infinity. Gold will reach $2111. The economic recovery is more in the minds of MOPE than actually taking place.

Who or what will drive the US economy? Car sales which are due entirely to subprime give away lending? Increased employment which is a statistical aberration due to no winter in 2011? Housing starts reported as good, but under estimates not mentioned? Jim Sinclair

-U.S. has launched economic nuclear war, Jim Sinclair tells Ellis Martin. Interviewed by financial broadcaster Ellis Martin, trader and mining entrepreneur Jim Sinclair remarked that gold recently was knocked down to distract from the Greek bond default, that he sees no significant downside risk to investing in gold at the moment, that there is a huge movement away from the U.S. dollar as a trade settlement currency, that the United States is waging economic nuclear war against Iran and threatening to do the same against India, that the United States is likely to suffer similar counterattack against its own vulnerabilities, and a lot more. Listen here-http://www.gata.org/node/11149

-Paul Mladjenovic: Dow vs. Gold vs. Silver since 2008. Here is the tale of the tape: On January 2, 2008 (using the closing price for the first market day). 1) The Dow was at 13,043.96 2) Gold was at $846.75 3) Silver was at $14.93. How did they do? Here is where they were at as of closing on Friday, March 16, 2012 (along with the percentage gain or loss). 1) Dow was at 13,232.62 up 1%. 2) Gold was at $1,658 up 96%. 3) Silver was at $32.27 up 116%. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/74hzj8y

-David Tice: Gold Will Surge To $2,500 And The S&P 500 Will Plunge To 1,000. David Tice, the former chief portfolio strategist for bear markets at Federated Investors, is bearish. His 18-month target for the S&P 500 is 1,000, and he thinks gold is headed to $2,500 within the next two to three years. Tice appeared on Fox Business News.

“We feel just like we did in 1999 and 2007,” said Tice “[During] both of those periods, people were positive about credit being created, the central banks were easy, everybody was complacent, and we ended up having a big accident.”

“Right now the baton has been passed from the private sector leveraging to the public sector leveraging. We broke down the private securitization markets in ‘08, and now the Fed and the ECB have had to enlarge their balance sheets and they’re going to destroy their currencies.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/794zowc

-Bob Janjuah: The Whole Market Is Rigged, And The Dow To Gold Ratio Is Headed For 1:1. I will continue to use the Dow/Gold charts to continue to guide me going forward. The USD price of an ounce of gold and the Dow will, I believe, converge at/around 1, at some point over the next 2 years or so.

I have extremely high conviction on this. What I am not sure on is whether we converge at 7000+/-, or at 14000+/-. Because I do believe that even Bernanke and Draghi cannot do as they wish and that there are some limits to the recklessness of policymakers, I still lean towards a deflationary resolution at/about 7000 in the next year or two. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yt3nbw

-John Embry: $50 Downside on Gold but $1,000’s to the Upside. Embry told KWN gold has virtually no downside at these levels, but massive upside. Here is what Embry had to say: “I wouldn’t worry about it, I think you’re talking $50 to the downside on gold and thousands of dollars to the upside.

These guys (manipulators) are really working on it relentlessly, which suggests to me there are more problems behind the scene than even I imagine.” “They do not want the monetary policy central banks are embarked upon, which is as much money creation as necessary, they do not want people seeing the obvious alternative of gold and silver.

So consequently they lean into it with gusto. It’s so transparent now that anybody with the slightest open mind can see what’s going on. “This is just a wonderful opportunity to acquire physical metal and I suspect the Eastern central banks and the wise people are doing exactly that.

If we’re not at a bottom, we’re very close to it. The sentiment is dismal and you can particularly see that in the stocks which are almost tragic. I’m shocked quite frankly at the valuations and how low they are. In the fullness of time, this will be seen as one of the great buying opportunities of all-time.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qyl4d3

-Greyerz: Gold Will React to the $120 Trillion of Additional Debt. If you look at the debt that has been created worldwide, in just the last ten years, it’s gone up from $80 trillion to $200 trillion. So we have seen an increase of $120 trillion or 140% over the last ten years. You can imagine the effects this will have on the world.

First of all, we know the debt levels are too high today and gold is starting to reflect that. But because less than 1% of world financial assets are in gold, we have yet to really see the gold market react to all of this massive money printing. Once the gold market starts reacting to all of this, that’s when gold is going to go exponential.

It doesn’t matter whether investors are buying gold at $1,600 or $1,800, it’s irrelevant in the long-run. What’s important is they are invested in physical gold in order to preserve their wealth. I believe that QE will and must start very soon. This will either happen in April or the gold market will anticipate its start at that time.

The Treasury bond market, which is going down fast, is already smelling inflation and QE. So I believe we are nearing the time period where gold will have an explosive move to the upside.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83fygta

-John Hathaway: Gold is Making a Very Important Bottom. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7dnjb7q

-Fitzwilson: Hyper-Devaluation, the Electronic Age & Gold. Hyperinflation is in our future. The exact timing is uncertain. However, in the electronic age, its manifestation could be many years ahead. What we do know is that the age of dual use of fiat currencies as a medium of exchange and a preserver of wealth is coming to an end.

People will always need some form of currency, but investors need to focus on historic wealth preservation for the remainder of their non-cash assets. The primary monetary assets in history for wealth preservation have always been gold and silver. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mfo77y

-Rick Rule: Oil Super-Spike Will Take Gold & Silver Higher. When asked about gold, Rule stated, I am expecting real price appreciation in gold, not just nominal. But I think nominal increases in the price are inevitable, that is an increase in gold and silver prices in US dollars. This is because the denominator, the US dollar, is headed lower. All fiat currencies are headed lower.

The only thing I see that would cause the nominal price of gold to decline is the sudden appearance of fiscal restraint in the United States, which I see as highly unlikely. But the reality is all countries are engaged in competitive currency devaluation.

So we see a race to the bottom among various currencies. For years the United States sat that race out, but we’re a very determined society and we are now determined to win that race, even though the race is to the bottom. So gold is headed much higher in the long-term. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89ou69s

-London Trader: Sovereign Gold Buyers to Raise Their Bids. Those that have been calling for gold to collapse to $1,200 are completely unaware of what is taking place in the physical market. Who is going to sell it down to those levels? Hypothetically, if it were to drop below $1,600, China would literally be buying hundreds of tons of gold.

Why would the West give China that gold at discounted prices? Yes, the bullion banks act on behalf of the central banks to manipulate the price, they act as agents, but the central banks and their agents are also aware that the Chinese are building up their gold reserves. This is the bigger picture which the gold bears do not understand. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7z9z47j

-Peter Schiff: Gold, Oil & The Fed’s Greatest Fear. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84vlykl

-Michael Pento: Soaring Oil, Inflation and Households Soaked in Debt. Oil prices are soaring above $100 a barrel, inflation is rising and households are still soaked in debt, sound familiar? Only now the nation’s sovereign debt is at a record level and the country is careening towards insolvency. The only thing holding the economy together is the Fed’s promise of free money forever, but that shouldn’t be misconstrued as a viable and healthy economy. In the end savvy investors must own gold in order to protect themselves against US and global currency debasement. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84xtxer

-Leeb: Easing Policy in China to Create Boom in Commodities. “I can’t say gold’s overall performance has been disappointing. I expected it to be higher, but on the other hand it’s hard to be that discouraged. A better word is frustrated. Gold is definitely going to have its day, there is no doubt about it.”

“There are simply too many things working in favor of gold at this point. Gold production really hasn’t increased since 2001. That’s unheard of given the fact that during that time period gold has increased more than six fold in price. You have actually had a decline in gold production over that period as well.

If six fold increases in price can’t bring on more production, you are in trouble. With peak gold production, there is also evidence that other metals are following the same path, in particular copper and silver. There have been massive increases in price in both of these metals in the past decade, but you’ve had very little increase in production.

What we have seen is a combination of factors that has been holding things back in terms of price and they are not going to hold things back for much longer. The bottom line is I see a lot of uncertainty right now that will eventually pass. With every downtick in the Chinese economy comes a greater probability they will ramp things up again. The last thing they need is a hard landing. I don’t think there will be a hard landing for China, so I believe you will see a significant move higher in these key commodities.

This will translate into a very big move in gold. You have to remember that no one blows a horn before markets take off. You go back to bottoms like 1982 in stocks and the 2009 bottom. Who would have thought the Dow would have doubled in a few years off the 2009 low?

In 1982 the stock market was just wobbling around, not going anywhere. All of the sudden there was a dramatic breakout and we were off to the races. I think we are about to see the same type of thing in gold and silver. These markets are going to explode, gold, silver, copper and many of the base metals are simply going to explode.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/77d3kcc

-Frank Holmes: Why Gold Can Go the Distance. I believe the yellow metal will go the distance, and with bullion below its long-term average, it makes for a rare and attractive entry point for investors today. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7eo5oze

-Gold to average $1800 this year despite big supply surplus GFMS. Thomson Reuters GFMS’s Philip Klapwijk presented his views on gold, silver, platinum and palladium at the Mines & Money conference in Hong Kong. Overall, he was positive relating to gold’s price prospects this year.

However, he did comment that there was the possibility that the price might yet test $1,600 on the downside before peaking perhaps at around $2,000 and averaging $1,800 over the year. For Silver Klapwijk predicts a possible high of $45.05 this year and an average of $34.05 which presupposes that there could be a downside possibility of $26.85 in the short term which would likely coincide with any downturn in the gold price. $50 silver this year, however, as some have predicted, he described as “a bit of an ask!” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89fakue

-Chris Puplava: Central Bank Balance Sheets Put Gold at $1900. Given the extremely high correlation between central bank balance sheets and the price of gold, it is possible to determine the implied price relative to current debt levels. In doing so, we calculate gold’s “central bank balance sheet value” at around $1900 an ounce. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89k8ck5

-Central banks pounce on falling gold, buying it through BIS. A sharp fall in gold prices has triggered large purchases of bullion by central banks in recent weeks, according to several traders with knowledge of the transactions. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11139

-Central bank gold buying accelerates on lower prices. According to an industry source and a Financial Times report on Friday, the buying started after bullion dropped in recent weeks to levels considered “attractive.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/89za3l5

-U.S. Mint gold, silver bullion coin sales rebound from February doldrums. While this year’s bullion coin sales may not match last year’s all-time highs, bullion coin sales are once again building up steam. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7yts8mb

-Deutsche Bank to open London gold/silver vault next year. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ubfnlv

-Indian jewellers protest duty hike, down shutters. Along with the immediate increase in gold prices, jewellers in India are expecting a 30% dent in demand at bigger establishments saying consumers will opt to buy gold from smaller stores without receipts to evade taxes. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/88f6cxp

-Jeff Clark: What’s Really Happening with Gold and Silver in India. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7tdphon

-Turkey targets gold stashes. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11161

-With college kids, Bernanke gets away with dissing gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11151

-New York Sun: Bernanke 101, The Truth about the Dollar and Gold. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11157

-James Turk: Bernanke goes to (my) college. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11158

-James Saft tells Buffett that gold is insurance against bad money. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11143

-U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s rejection of a return to the gold standard this week got some analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman thinking. They asked how much gold would have to rise to back up the U.S. money supply as well as supplies in the euro zone and Japan. The answer? It would take “at least a 10-fold increase in gold prices,” the analysts said. “Less than that would risk triggering a depression and deflation,” they added.

The BBH analysts reason that gold holdings account for about ¾ of the U.S. and many European countries’ total reserves (currencies plus gold). China’s gold holdings account for less than 2% of its reserves. Russia and India’s gold holdings account for about 10% of their reserves. Brazil holds practically no monetary gold, they said.

“The fact that the possibility of a return to a gold standard is so remote does not mean that countries will abandon gold purchases,” the analysts said. Central banks were net sellers of gold between 1990 and 2010, but this year will likely be the third year of net purchases,” they added.

Bernanke on Tuesday said the gold standard poses practical and policy problems, and a country on a gold standard will see more short-term volatility. Bernanke was addressing calls from some politicians to have a return to the gold standard, notably GOP presidential candidate U.S. Rep Ron Paul of Texas. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/84yhzj7

-Embargo of Iran could restore gold standard in southwest Asia. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11133

-Court overturns order to slash Dutch pension fund’s gold allocation. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11138

-Counterintuitive takedowns in gold drawing notice, Norini tells King World News. Listen here-http://www.gata.org/node/11140

-Hinde Capital’s Ben Davies on financial and political repression. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11136

-FT notices ‘financial repression’ again but still doesn’t question central bankers about it. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11145

-CFTC notices market rigging by high-frequency trading but action doubtful. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11134

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SILVER

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $40.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $66.67

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $100.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,000 the silver price would be $133.33

Gold to silver ratio at 50 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $50.00

Gold to silver ratio at 40 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $62.50

Gold to silver ratio at 30 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $83.33

Gold to silver ratio at 20 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $125.00

Gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1 with gold at $2,500 the silver price would be $166.67

-”In silver, there was a scant reduction of less than 200 contracts in the total commercial net short position, bringing that total position to 35,700 contracts. It’s almost not worth breaking down the category change, as they were also in the hundreds and not thousands of contracts change. The main reason for the lack of big change in the silver COT was because prices were remarkably subdued during the reporting week, trading and finishing higher, not lower in price.

However, as a result of Wednesday’s deliberate and high volume sell-off, I would guess the total commercial net short position declined by 5,000 contracts or more.” “The big COMEX silver short, JPMorgan, still holds at least 22,000 contracts net short. This is almost 5 times larger than the proposed position limit according to the formula used by the CFTC.

There is no other such mismatch between the proposed level of position limits in any other commodity and the actual positions that are currently held. No wonder there is such stiff legal opposition by JPMorgan to any type of positions limits. I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. The securities industry (read JPMorgan) is not really opposed to position limits for commodities in general; they are only opposed to position limits in silver.

It’s just that the weasels will never admit that openly.” “After removing all the spread transactions listed in the disaggregated COT report, JPMorgan’s share of the total net COMEX open interest is still over 26% of the entire market. That level of concentration, in and of itself, is manipulative to the price of silver. I know I’m preaching to the choir here in repeating this fact, but it is still widely unknown away from here.

As this fact becomes more widely known, I believe it will take on greater investor interest and regulatory response. That’s the trouble with facts and truth; they can get very stubborn for those trying to subvert and obfuscate.” Ted Butler via Ed Steer-Casey Research-Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wzuwfc and http://tinyurl.com/79zkvrq

-John Embry: Silver Update. When asked about silver specifically, Embry responded, “Nothing has changed. The supply/demand is powerful. I was fascinated they dug some guy up, in Barron’s over the weekend, who trashed silver. His reasons, as far as I was concerned were ludicrous.

They didn’t make any sense. He was equating silver with the euro or something. The only thing you’ve got to focus on is the amount of physical silver that’s available in the world, and the demand for it. The demand for it is overwhelming. Eventually this is going to take out these paper shenanigans which have kept the price under wraps to date.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qyl4d3

-Egon von Greyerz: Silver Update. When asked about silver specifically, von Greyerz stated, “Silver will break out somewhere between $34 and $35. Once that happens silver should move higher in very rapid fashion. Central planners may have delayed the move in gold and silver through intervention, but in the end this delay will look like a blip on a chart. I think, post-intervention, we are building up for quite a big move in both metals.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83fygta

-Silver to Outperform Gold For Most of 2nd Half, BNP Paribas Says. An improving economic outlook means silver may outperform gold for most of the second half of this year and in 2013, BNP Paribas SA said today in an e-mailed report. The bank maintained its gold forecasts for this year and next, and reduced its 2013 estimate for silver to $51 an ounce. It raised its 2012 platinum forecast to $1,840 an ounce and cut its palladium estimate for this year to $825 an ounce. Bloomberg

-Richard Russell: Silver Now Outpacing Gold & Fed Frightened. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7hw29ep

-Hubert Moolman: A Massive Spike In The Price of Silver Is Imminent. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7mwvom8

-Shivom Seth: Investors showing a keen interest in buying one kilo silver bars also known as `chausar’ given the excise duty exemption. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7k63hd8

-Ted Butler: How the Silver Manipulation Scheme Works. Read and Listen to more here-http://tinyurl.com/72gncvn

-The CFTC has already done all it can about silver and everything else. Read more here-http://www.gata.org/node/11159

-Eric Sprott and David Morgan Respond to CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton on Silver Manipulation. Read and Listen to more here-http://tinyurl.com/889bgka

-Finance Council Should Speed Up Speculation Curbs, Chilton Says. A council of U.S. financial regulators should speed up Dodd-Frank Act rules needed to limit speculation on oil, natural gas and other commodities, Bart Chilton, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wdmw6r

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SOVEREIGN DEBT

-Portugal to Be the Next Greece by End-2012: Pimco CEO. Bond fund giant Pimco’s chief executive said he expected Portugal to be the next euro zone country to falter, according to an interview in German weekly Der Spiegel. Asked whether he expected Portugal to have become the next Greece by the end of this year, Mohamed El-Erian told the magazine: “Yes, unfortunately that will be the case.”

Portugal’s economy is forecast to contract 3.3 percent this year its deepest slump since the 1970s as the government implements austerity measures under a 78 billion euro ($103 billion) bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. El-Erian, also co-chief investment officer of Pimco, said he expected Portugal’s first bail-out package will be insufficient, prompting it to ask the EU and IMF for more money. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7cj794o

-Pimco’s Kashkari Says Greece, Portugal to Need More Bailouts. Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Neel Kashkari, who heads global equities at the Newport Beach, California-based investment firm, said Greece and Portugal will need additional bailouts. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6texujg

-Spain Risks Default Now More Than Ever, Buiter Says. Spain has never been so close to default and Greece, Ireland and Portugal may need further bailouts, Citigroup Inc. chief economist Willem Buiter said. “Spain is the key country about which I’m most worried,” Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, said in a interview. “It’s really moved to the wrong side of the spectrum and is now at greater risk of sovereign restructuring than ever before.”

Two years of debt-driven stresses in European markets have eased as Greece avoided a disorderly default, the building blocks of a new euro economic management system fell into place and the European Central Bank pumped over 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into the banking system.

“The European Central Bank has drowned the markets and the banks in liquidity,” Buiter said. “There’s a general feeling of near euphoria at the moment which leads those drowning in liquidity to believe that all troubles are over.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wlkyfb

-Greek Swaps Sellers to Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle Contracts. Sellers of credit-default swaps on Greece will have to pay as much as $2.5 billion to settle contracts triggered by the nation’s debt restructuring. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8y6jhdz

-Osborne Cuts U.K. Top Tax in Budget Keeping Austerity Drive. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne cut the U.K.’s top 50 percent income-tax rate and slapped a levy on purchases of the most expensive houses in a budget that maintained his drive to eliminate most of the deficit by 2017. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6q3ucwt

-Millions of U.K. workers lose pension battle with government. Unions representing millions of workers have lost their Court of Appeal battle against a Government decision to change the way public sector pension increases are calculated. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87cozmf

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U.S. DEBT-DEFICIT

-CHART OF THE WEEK: National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush. The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama’s three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency. The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush’s last day in office, which coincided with President Obama’s first day. The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.

The federal budget sent to Congress last month by Mr. Obama, projects the National Debt will continue to rise as far as the eye can see. The budget shows the Debt hitting $16.3 trillion in 2012, $17.5 trillion in 2013 and $25.9 trillion in 2022. Federal budget records show the National Debt once topped 121% of GDP at the end of World War II. The Debt that year, 1946, was, by today’s standards, a mere $270 billion dollars. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7qtswny

-CBO: Obama budget deepens debt by $3.5 trillion. President Obama’s budget would pile up an additional $3.5 trillion in debt over the next 10 years and shows the government’s trust funds running out of money in 2020, Congress’s official non-partisan scorekeeper said.

In 2012 alone Mr. Obama’s budget would leave a $1.3 trillion deficit $82 billion worse than if none of his policies were enacted. Over the next ten years the deficit would dip to less than a half-trillion dollars in 2017, but would rise again in the later years.

By 2022, a decade from now, the federal government would spend $5.6 trillion and take in $4.9 trillion in revenue both figures far outstripping today’s levels. CBO’s analysis also shows the government’s combined trust funds, including the Social Security trust funds and the cash flow of the Postal Service, will begin running deficits in 2020. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mrag4t

-House GOP unveil election-year budget blueprint cutting $5.3T beyond Obama plan. Conservative House Republicans on Tuesday set up what appears to be a potential re-run of last year’s turbulent domestic policy fight with President Barack Obama, putting forward an election-year budget manifesto that would blend steep social program cuts with reduced tax rates.

The GOP plan released by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would, if enacted into law, wrestle the deficit to a manageable size in short order, but only by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and a host of other programs that Obama has promised to protect. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7bunwte and http://tinyurl.com/73hdwoz

-Alan Blinder Warns of U.S. Fiscal 2013 Cliff. The U.S. economy could be headed toward a fiscal cliff if a few underlying issues go unaddressed, former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said. Federal government spending cuts set to go into effect January 2013 half of them directed toward the Pentagon would cause GDP to contract by as much as 3.5 percent.

Blinder authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, titled “The U.S. Cruises Toward a 2013 Fiscal Cliff,” in which he argued: “It is next to certain that nothing will be done about the fiscal cliff during the election season. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/729k7ra

-Free Lunches Pushing U.S. to Insolvency, Columbia’s Mundell Says. Political competition for votes and lack of fiscal discipline are pushing the world’s largest economy toward solvency issues, according to the Nobel Prize- winning economist Robert Mundell.

“The public is looking for free lunches, and the political competition for votes makes the politicians offer them free lunches,” Mundell, a professor of economics at Columbia University, said in an interview. “That’s what gets us in to the difficulties of insolvency.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/75y3pyx

-California Cities Scramble to Avert Insolvency. When the city of Stockton, Calif., announced last month it would skip some bond payments and enter talks with its creditors, the municipal debt world shuddered. If Stockton were to file for bankruptcy protection, it would be the largest U.S. city ever to do so. Other troubled Californian municipalities might be tempted to follow suit. Predictions of mass defaults on municipal bonds might start to look a little more realistic. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ynthgl

-Student-Loan Debt Climbs to Record $1 Trillion. U.S. student-loan debt reached the $1 trillion mark, as young borrowers struggle to keep up with soaring tuition costs, according to the initial findings of a government study. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6r8dzbn

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FED

-Economy ‘Very Challenging’ as Interest Rates Rise: Bernanke. A recent rise in interest rates has caught the attention of the Federal Reserve, whose chief sees an economy that is showing gradual improvement. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a brief interview with CNBC on his way to teach college students at George Washington University, said he remains concerned with the pace of growth.

“We’re going to continue to analyze the financial data we get,” he said of the current economic conditions. “It’s an interesting period right now. We’ve seen some improvement, but we’ve still got a long way to go.” Today marks the first of four classes Bernanke will lead regarding the central bank and its role in the economy.

He said “it’s fun to engage with them” and he hopes to give the students a broader understanding of the Fed’s unprecedented interventions since the financial crisis. “The economy is still very challenging. Unemployment is still high, and that creates problems for everybody, obviously,” he said.

“I think the longer-term prospects of the country are very good and ultimately things will normalize, but in the short run of course we’re still dealing with some important challenges.” The Fed has found itself in the middle of a market guessing game that has focused on when and whether the central bank will expand its easing programs. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7kl5ha2

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JOBS

-John Mauldin: Here’s Where All The Jobs Will Come From. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/87xmjb7

-Peter Schiff: Trade Rains on the Jobs Parade. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7r6z79x

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OIL-GASOLINE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: SocGen, All Oil Spikes Have One Thing In Common. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/767lfsm

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The Price Of Oil vs. The InTrade Odds Of An Airstrike On Iran. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/887vn6n

-CHART OF THE WEEK: ‘New Middle East’ Seen Lifting U.S. Oil Stocks. Dozens of U.S. companies will benefit as North America becomes “the new Middle East” for energy production during this decade, according to Citigroup Inc.’s analysts. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wf7thw

-IMF sees $160 oil risk despite Libyan boost. Libya’s oil exports have rebounded much faster than expected and will exceed pre-Arab Spring levels as soon as April, plugging a crucial gap in world crude supply as the Iranian crisis comes to the boil. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6sebzxt

-Oil Prices at $200 a Barrel? Some Think It’s Coming. Signs that crude futures may hit much higher levels are converging, say oil traders and analysts, some of whom predict that Brent crude could reach $200 a barrel within the next 12 months. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/795llhq

-Oil Price Will Fall As Iran Tensions Lessen: Blackstone’s Wien. There’s an “Iran premium” built into oil prices right now, and as tensions decline, so will that price this year, said Byron Wien, Blackstone Advisory Partners vice chairman. That puts him at odds with many others who see higher prices for the foreseeable future.

“If the Iran situation, the nuclear weapons fear, declines, I think the price of oil can go down. I’m forecasting a decline in the price of oil this year,” he told CNBC Tuesday. “I don’t think (the tension) will disappear but I do think it will be less intense than it is right now.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6ncawn8

-Saudi Arabian Oil Sales to US Surge. Saudi Arabia is preparing to extend this year’s unexpected jump in oil sales to the United States, adding to speculation about the response of the world’s top oil exporter to sanctions against Iran and a rally in prices.

The Kingdom’s shipments to the United States have quietly risen 25 percent to the highest level since mid-2008, according to preliminary U.S. government data, a sizeable leap that appears at least partly related to the imminent completion of a major expansion at its joint-venture refinery in Texas. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7su55uy

-Oil Price Set for Long-Term Rise: Shell CEO. The chief executive of oil giant Shell predicted that the cost of oil will continue to rise long-term in an interview with CNBC Tuesday. Volatility has returned to the oil price in recent months amid unrest in the Middle East.

“These volatilities are short-medium term. In the longer term we will get back to normal market-driven pricing, which is really a supply-demand function,” Peter Voser said in the interview. “Longer term you will see demand rising and we will need all investments to cope with that demand. In the very long term we will see prices going up because of high demand and as it gets more expensive to get the resources out of the ground.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6mfbm24

-Threat of Refinery Strike Could Push Gas Prices Higher. Union workers at Tesoro’s Anacortes, Washington refinery have authorized their representatives to call for a strike, one month after rejecting a new contract over benefit issues. While no strike deadline has been set, the threat of a walk out by the facility’s 190 union workers comes as gasoline prices in the Pacific Northwest hover above $4 a gallon, due in part due to a production outage at one of the region’s biggest refineries. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/795wkzf

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STOCKS

-Copper-Oil Ratio Signals Drop in U.S. Stocks. Commodity prices are signaling this year’s rally in U.S. stocks will fade, according to Gina Martin Adams, a Wells Fargo & Co. strategist. “When copper is accelerating faster than oil prices, stocks tend to do particularly well,” Martin Adams wrote two days ago in a report with a similar chart. “Much the opposite has been the case recently.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6uusmz4

-Are Retiring Baby Boomers About To Crash The Stock Market? Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6o8p2po

-Stocks Offer Best Opportunity in a Lifetime: Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, in a sweeping report to clients Wednesday, said it is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy stocks, which the firm said are undervalued after 20 years of relative underperformance against bonds. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6wm9k6b

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REAL ESTATE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Housing and Inflation. For some perspective on the all-important US real estate market, today’s chart illustrates the inflation-adjusted median price of a single-family home in the United States over the past 42 years. Not only did housing prices increase at a rapid rate from 1991 to 2005, the rate at which housing prices increased. That brings us to today’s chart which illustrates how the inflation-adjusted median home price is currently 42% off its 2005 peak.

That’s a $112,000 drop. In fact, a home buyer who bought the median priced single-family home at the 1979 peak has actually seen that home lose value (13.7% loss). Not an impressive performance considering that more than three decades have passed. It is worth noting that the median priced home is currently at the bottom of a price range that existed from the late 1970s into the mid-1990s. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/8xmzl3a

www.chartoftheday.com

-CHART OF THE WEEK: The NAHB U.S. homebuilder sentiment index held at 28, below economists’ expectations for 30. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vxma2a

-Sales of Existing U.S. Homes Hold Near Two-Year High. Sales of previously owned U.S. houses held in February near an almost two-year high, adding to evidence the market that triggered the recession is firming. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7wlafj2

-Huge Spike in Repeat Foreclosures. Foreclosure starts surged 28 percent in January from December, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services. More than 230,000 loans began the foreclosure process in January. Even more indicative of this new surge in processing is that repeat foreclosures hit an all-time high in January, representing 47 percent of all starts, according to LPS. Repeat foreclosures are either failed loan modifications, or loans that banks were attempting to modify but couldn’t. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7t4b9mg

-More Seniors Using Reverse Mortgages to Raise Cash. Finding themselves financially strapped, more seniors at an earlier age are trying to get reverse mortgages on their homes in order to survive, according to a new report. The study says the percentage of people aged 62 to 64 applying for reverse mortgages has increased 15 percent since 1999.

The reason for the dramatic upswing among ‘younger’ seniors is simple, the report concludes: They need the money. “The average age for taking out reverse mortgages has been around 71,” explains Sandy Timmerman, director of the MetLife Market Institute who conducted the survey with the National Council on Aging.

“But with job losses, higher debt and living costs, more and more of the ‘younger’ seniors are looking at reverse mortgages as a way to pay their bills and keep their homes,” Timmerman adds. “It shows the devastation some seniors have gone through since the financial downturn.” Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6lsxuwt

-China Home Prices Fall in More Than Half Cities Tracked. China’s February home prices fell in more than half of the 70 cities monitored by the government with only three cities recording gains as the country maintained curbs on the property market. Prices fell in 45 cities last month as compared with January, while 22 cities were unchanged, the National Statistics Bureau said in a statement on its website. That compares with 47 cities recording a decline in January. New home prices in the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou dropped for a fifth month.

Premier Wen Jiabao said China’s home prices remain far from a reasonable level and called on the government not to slacken efforts to regulate the housing sector. Relaxing the curbs could cause “chaos” in the market, Wen said. China’s two-year campaign to rein in home prices has included measures such as higher down payments and mortgage rates, and home purchase restrictions in 40 cities. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7crzko6

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GEOPOLITICAL

-5 Signs That A War With Iran Is Close. The clock is ticking closer to the midnight hour regarding a strike in Iran. Israel might do it alone, but will likely have the backing of the U.S. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7ep9zzf

-The U.S. Navy Is Sending Everything It Needs For A War With Iran To The Strait Of Hormuz. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6qjz3cu

-Iran will attack to defend itself: Khamenei. In the face of aggression from the United States or Israel, Iran will attack to defend itself, Iran’s most powerful figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7najph5

-Ahmadinejad: Iran doesn’t fear bombs and warships. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7gg4m2f

-U.S. War Game Sees Perils of Israeli Strike Against Iran. A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7a2et5f

-Israelis Grow Confident Strike on Iran’s Nukes Can Work. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6oewle3

-Iran Now Says It Will Not Block The Strait Of Hormuz. Hoping to ease concern and soothe the roiling oil markets, Iran has reportedly told Kuwait it will not try and block the Strait of Hormuz that carries nearly 40 percent of the world’s crude. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/77×5loa

-US Exempts 11 States From Iran Sanctions; China, India Exposed. The United States on exempted Japan and 10 EU nations from financial sanctions because they have significantly cut purchases of Iranian crude oil, but left Iran’s top customers China and India exposed to the possibility of such steps. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7hwjcd6

-U.S. Needs `Significant’ Force in Afghanistan, Allen Says. Marine General John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said the U.S. will need to maintain “significant combat power” there in 2013. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/83cpgnj

-North Korea ‘Satellite’ Launch Plan Draws U.S. Rebuke. North Korea plans to launch an “earth observation satellite” in April to mark the 100th anniversary of state founder Kim Il Sung’s birth, drawing a rebuke from the U.S. and a warning such action jeopardizes a food-aid deal. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7km98cs

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APPLE

-CHART OF THE WEEK: Applewill initiate a regular quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in July and will buy back up to $10 billion of its stock starting in fiscal 2013. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/7vxma2a

-Apple to Pay Dividend, Buy Back Stock to Return Some of Cash. Apple Inc. will pay its first dividend in 17 years and buy back $10 billion in stock, heeding investors who urged it to return part of the $97.6 billion in cash amassed by robust demand for iPhones and iPads. Read more here-http://tinyurl.com/6nzwfmu

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