Charles Koch: System is ‘rigged’ in favor of wealthy
Conservative billionaire Charles Koch criticizes “welfare for the wealthy” – specifically corporate tax welfare. …read more
Source: Charles Koch: System is ‘rigged’ in favor of wealthy
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Gold In Vaults Beneath Bank of England Worth $248 Billion?
By GoldCore
The gold bullion or “hidden gold mine” of various nation’s gold reserves stored in the vaults beneath the Bank of England have been covered by the BBC:
Under London’s streets lies a hidden gold mine.
It stretches across more than 300,000 square feet under the City, the finance quarter in the heart of Britain’s capital. There, beneath the pavement and commuters of Threadneedle Street, lies a maze of eight Bank of England gold vaults – each stacked with gold bars worth a total sum of around £141 billion ($200 billion).
Stacks of gold bars are arranged on shelves in the Bank of England’s vaults (Credit: David Levenson/Alamy)The bars sit on rows of blue numbered shelves. Every bar weighs precisely 400 troy ounces (about 12kg), making each currently worth some £350,000 ($500,000), comfortably more than the average price of a house in the UK. Each bar looks subtly different depending on where it was refined. Some bars have sloping edges to make them easier to pick up; others look more like a loaf of bread.
There is no smell here: metal has none. There is no noise, either, on account of the vaults’ thick concrete walls.
What there is, however, is one of the world’s most important traded assets. Deals are still done in gold in almost every country in the world. Its price is a crucial barometer for consumer confidence. Prices rise when markets are uncertain, and before US elections – like now.
Read full article here
Recent Market Updates
Silver Prices Up 6% This Week and 25% YTD; Gold Up 1% This Week
Gold Price Set To Push Higher As Inflation Picks Up – RBC
Silver Bullion “Has So Much More to Give” – 5 Must See Charts Show
China Gold Bullion Yuan Trading To Boost Power In Gold and FX Markets
Marc Faber: “Messiah” Central Banks Helicopter Money Printing “Will Not End Well”
Gold News and Commentary
Gold marginally higher ahead of central banks this week (Bloomberg)
Metals hold up in high ground but may need to consolidate (Bullion Desk)
Gold hidden in secret vaults beneath the Bank of England worth $248bn (Independent)
One fifth of the world’s gold is buried in London (The Sun)
Building’s rent can be based on gold prices (Dispatch)
Silver’s New Bull Market (Zeal LLC)
Why Silver May Rally to $25: CPM Group -Video – (Fortune)
Britain should pay more attention to Eurozone crisis (Telegraph)
Gold has everything in its favor – Rally has legs (Marketwatch)
Resurgence Of Gold & Looming “Run On Cash” – Bass (Zerohedge)
Read More Here
Gold Prices (LBMA)
25 April: USD 1,230.85, EUR 1,094.08 and GBP 853.79 per ounce
22 April: USD 1,245.40, EUR 1,104.34 and GBP 868.73 per ounce
21 April: USD 1,257.65, EUR 1,113.21 and GBP 877.01 per ounce
20 April: USD 1,247.75, EUR 1,098.09 and GBP 867.45 per ounce
19 April: USD 1,241.70, EUR 1,095.18 and GBP 867.01 …read more
Source: Gold In Vaults Beneath Bank of England Worth $248 Billion?
A Bird’s-Eye View Of How The US Economy Is Falling Apart (In 4 Simple Charts)
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Tony Sagami via MauldinEconomics.com,
My college-aged kids love him. I’m not talking about Stephen Curry or Justin Bieber (although they love them too); I’m talking about Bernie Sanders.
Whether you support him or not, my guess is that most Americans my age are very surprised about his popularity. However, it shouldn’t be a surprise given the economic stress many Americans face.
The four charts below capture the essence of what I’m talking about…
A shrinking middle class and a growing lower class
Sadly, roughly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line—the largest number in our nation’s history—and the poorest 40% of all Americans now spend more than 50% of their incomes just on food and housing.
Consumer sentiment is plummeting
No wonder that consumer sentiment has been sinking fast, which is a very troubling sign for our consumer-driven economy.
Spending is slowing
That consumer angst translates into a drop in spending. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales dropped by 0.3% in March, well below the +0.1% gain Wall Street was expecting.
The biggest drop was in auto spending, which was down 2.1%. One of the weakest sectors, however, was restaurants.
Wages are shrinking
I suspect the root of the issue is wages… or lack thereof. The reality is that inflation-adjusted wages—despite the recent minimum wage increase in several states—have been shrinking.
A recent report concluded, “In real terms, the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago.”
Check out these discouraging numbers:
• 39% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.
• 52% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
• 63% of American workers make less than $40,000 a year.
• 72% of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.
Debt is piling up
And it doesn’t help that Americans continue to rack up debt.
Example: Outstanding auto loans have hit more than a trillion dollars. With an average balance of $12,000 per person, that consumes nearly 8% of the average borrower’s disposable income!
No wonder that an estimated 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
And all of us—low, medium, and high income combined—are working longer than ever to pay a growing tax bill. Tax freedom day (the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough to pay the state and federal tax bill for the year) arrived on April 24, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
That means all the money we made in the first 114 days of 2016 went to taxes.
Actionable investment strategies
So… what do you think all this American angst means for the stock market? Of course, the Wall Street crowd is more concerned about every syllable that comes out of Janet Yellen’s mouth than any economic or corporate statistic.
However, the stock market is butting up against a very serious ceiling of …read more
Source: A Bird’s-Eye View Of How The US Economy Is Falling Apart (In 4 Simple Charts)
The Most Dangerous Divergence
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
The chart below would appear to be in conflict with the results of a recent Gallup poll regarding stock ownership by Americans. The ratio of household equities to money market fund assets is near a record high, 60% above the 2007 high and 30% above the 1999 internet bubble high. The chart would appear to prove irrational exuberance among the general populace.
In reality, the lowest percentage of Americans currently own stock over the last two decades. With the stock market within spitting distance of all-time highs, only 52% of Americans own stock, down from 65% in 2007. As the stock market has gone up, average Americans have left the market. They realize it is a rigged game and they are nothing but muppets to the Wall Street shysters.
The reason the ratio of household equities to money market funds is so high is due to the Federal Reserve’s “Save a Wall Street Banker” policies implemented over the last seven years. When you purposely destroy the lives of senior citizens by reducing interest rates to “emergency” levels of 0% and keep them there six years after the great recession is over, it tends to reduce the amount of savings in money market funds. The divergence created by the Fed’s insane policies is borne out by the data.
The average middle class American has experienced two Fed induced financial collapses since 2000, with another coming down the tracks in the very near future. They have been impoverished by the Fed’s ZIRP and QE policies, sold to the masses as saving Main Street, but really designed to save and further enrich Wall Street. The entire engineered stock market rally has been designed by the Fed, Wall Street bankers, and the CEO’s of corporate America who have bought back hundreds of billions of their stock, in order to enrich the .1% and their lackeys.
The average middle class American has rationally exited the rigged stock market and refuse to be lured back in. Back in 2007, nearly three in four middle-class Americans, with annual household incomes ranging from $30,000 to $74,999, said they invested money in the stock market according to Gallup polling.
Today, only 50% report having stock investments. This 22% drop is more than double the changes seen in stock investing among higher and lower income groups. Millions of middle class families have had to liquidate stock holdings just to survive in this ongoing Main Street recession.
The data indicates an extremely dangerous coming scenario. The middle class is already angry, disillusioned, suspicious of the establishment, and impoverished by Fed induced inflation, Fed induced lack of interest income and Obama induced Obamacare disaster. Those making less than $75,000 are invested in the stock market at an all-time low level, and what they do have invested is a pittance compared to what the ultra-rich have in the market.
The millennial generation also has a record low level of stock ownership, …read more
Source: The Most Dangerous Divergence
Trump Slams "Horrible Act Of Desperation" As Cruz And Kasich Form Last Minute Alliance To Stop Him
By Tyler Durden
In the bottom of the 9th, with two out and the bases loaded, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are attempting one final maneuver to stop Donald Trump from getting the GOP nomination.
As the WSJ reports, top officials from both the John Kasich and Ted Cruz campaigns have announced that the candidates have formed an alliance, and will work together during the remaining primaries in order to make sure Donald Trump doesn’t have enough delegates to win the nomination outright before the convention in July.
Top officials from the Ted Cruz and John Kasich campaigns announced the alliance in a pair of statements late Sunday night. The deal will keep Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor, on the sidelines for Indiana’s May 3 primary, while Mr. Cruz, the Texas senator, won’t compete in contests in Oregon on May 17 and New Mexico on June 7.
“Our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead,” Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe said.
Mr. Kasich’s top strategist, John Weaver, made an explicit call for super PACs devoted to stopping Mr. Trump to follow the two campaigns’ lead.
“We will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon,” Mr. Weaver said. “We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.”
Knowing that neither one can win the election by winning the actual popular vote, the men have decided to turn to utter desperation and play the system (which is a technically a valid strategy, as it is how the GOP set it up). The goal is to position themselves for an opportunity to win in a brokered convention, whereby delegates start to become “unbound” after the initial vote, and can vote for any candidate they’d like in the next round.
As we pointed out earlier, Pennsylvania is critical and will test Trump’s ground game as he tries to win over enough unbound delegates that will vote for him at the convention. If successful, he’ll try to replicate those efforts in the remaining states in order to turn the tables on the new Cruz/Kasich strategy.
Here is what The Donald had to say upon learning of the news:
Lyin’ Ted and Kasich are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016
Wow, just announced that Lyin’ Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016
He added that “when two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example …read more
Source: Trump Slams "Horrible Act Of Desperation" As Cruz And Kasich Form Last Minute Alliance To Stop Him
Nine Meals from Anarchy
By Sprott Money
Nine Meals from Anarchy
Written by Jeff Thomas (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)
In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky.
The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport, or even walking, if necessary.
But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbour with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbour and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”
But surely, there’s no need to speculate on this concern. There’s nothing on the evening news to suggest that such a problem even might be on the horizon. So, let’s have a closer look at the actual food distribution industry, compare it to the present direction of the economy and see whether there might be reason for concern.
The food industry typically operates on very small margins – often below 2%. Traditionally wholesalers and retailers have relied on a two-week turnaround of supply and anywhere up to a 30-day payment plan. But an increasing tightening of the economic system for the last eight years has resulted in a turnaround time of just three days for both supply and payment for many in the industry. This a system that’s still fully operative, but with no further wiggle room, should it take a significant further hit.
If there were a month where significant inflation took place (say, 3%), all profits would be lost for the month, for both suppliers and retailers, but goods could still be replaced and sold for a higher price next month. But, if there were three or more consecutive months of inflation, the industry would be unable to bridge the gap, even if better conditions were expected to develop in future months. A failure to pay in full for several months would mean smaller orders by those who could not pay. That would mean fewer goods on the shelves. The longer the inflationary trend continued, the more quickly prices would rise to hopefully offset the inflation. And ever-fewer items on the shelves.
From Germany in 1922, to Argentina in 2000, to Venezuela in 2016, this has been the …read more
Source: Nine Meals from Anarchy
Why Voters Will Stay Angry
By Tyler Durden
From the supporters of Donald Trump to the street protesters of southern Europe, voters around the world are mad as hell. Inequality, immigration, and the establishment's perceived indifference are firing up electorates in a way that's rarely been seen before. As the following charts from Bloomberg show, the forces shaping the disruption of global politics have been building for years and aren't about to diminish…
The world's middle classes are getting poorer
The share of wealth owned by the middle class declined in every part of the world on a relative basis
U.S. workers' share of income has dropped to near the lowest since World War II
And in the past century, the rich have gotten markedly richer
Incomes in Europe's southern crisis countries have fallen since 2009, while rising elsewhere
Things are even worse for young people
In Spain and Greece, unemployment among those under 25 is still close to 40 percent despite a slight improvement in recent years
U.S. student debt is soaring, while median pay for recent college graduates has barely budged
Parents in major western countries are increasingly worried about their children's prospects
Immigration and war are compounding the anxiety
European countries are seeing unprecedented flows of refugees seeking asylum and have little power to stop them within the passport-free zone
As Syria's implosion sends millions of refugees toward the EU, more voters choose immigration as a top concern
Americans worry about immigration more than they did 14 years ago
All this is causing politics to fragment
Last year, only 19% of Americans trusted their government “just about always” or “most of the time” – down from 54% after the 9/11 attacks
As measured by historical voting in the U.S. House of Representatives, the two U.S. political parties have moved away from the center in the past 40 years
It's the same picture in Europe as distrust of government has surged, to a high of 84% in Spain
That's all helping insurgent parties storm the region's national parliaments
Political newcomers have gained far greater share in recent elections, and established parties in some cases have withered away
Asia is bucking the trend. So far
Asia has largely been exempt from the West's discontent, in part because incomes have risen so rapidly
But unrest can't be ruled out, especially as China's growth miracle recedes. Already workers' strikes are becoming more and more widespread
Upcoming elections with potential to cause …read more
Source: Why Voters Will Stay Angry
Bernie Sanders Is A "Testament To American Suckerdom"
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,
This article from the Free Beacon about Bernie Sanders being kicked out of a “hippie commune” in 1971 reads like something from The Onion. Bernie, age 30(!) at that point, was like a bad college roommate who preferred late night political discussions to housework and cleaning. And based on uncontested reports of his nonexistent career path, we can safely assume he contributed nothing to the communal finances.
That Bernie Sanders – a shiftless layabout who openly joined socialist and communist groups – can even sniff the US presidency is a testament to American suckerdom and an enduring fetish for collectivism among rich westerners.
But the question of communes is an interesting one for libertarians. Under what conditions, with what people, and for how long can collectivism work? Economics helps explain why communal living (beyond family groups) tends to fail because of bad incentives, but it alone doesn’t explain the political and sociological elements.
Voluntary communal living is not per se impossible, in small homogeneous groups with close-knit identities and deeply shared values. Israeli kibbutzim are one keen example, although most today employ some elements of private property ownership and differing wages for various jobs. Amish and Mennonite communities in the US are another, with the interesting feature of a “rumspringa” period where young people are permitted to sample modern life before deciding to commit to the church and community.
Milton Friedman, writing in Chapter 5 of Free to Choose, had this to say about kibbutz communities in Israel:
Egalitarians in the United States may object that the fewness of communes and their fragility reflect the opprobrium that a predominately “capitalist” society visits on such communes and the resulting discrimination to which they are subjected. That may be true for the United States, but as Robert Nozick has pointed out, there is one country where that is not true, where, on the contrary, egalitarian communes are highly regarded and prized. That country is Israel.
…
Everyone is free to join or leave a kibbutz, and kibbutzim have been viable social organizations. Yet at no time, and certainly not today, have more than about 5 percent of the Jewish population chosen to be members of a kibbutz. That percentage can be regarded as an upper estimate of the fraction of people who would voluntarily choose a system enforcing equality of outcome in preference to a system characterized by inequality, diversity, and opportunity.
Murray Rothbard, critiquing Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, had a typically trenchant view:
Anyone who wants to can, in a free society, even join a voluntary commune, like Brook Farm or an Israeli kibbutz, and lead as blissfully communistic life as he or she wishes. Since everyone still has the option to do so, since anyone has the option to go off to a desert island or join a commune, why is Polanyi bitter about the market?
Although US communes enjoyed a resurgence in the 1960s and 70s, their …read more
Source: Bernie Sanders Is A "Testament To American Suckerdom"
The British Response To Obama "Why Should We Take Advice From A President Who Has Surrendered The World To Chaos?"
By Tyler Durden
Following Obama’s stunning foray into UK politics with his anti-Brexit oped (which surprised both the pro and anti-Brexit camp as there was little to be gained from Obama’s gracious entrance of an elephant in a UK political China store) on Thursday evening, one person who had a rather visceral reaction was London Mayor Boris Johnson who slammed Obama’s “hypocritical” Brexit diatribe and accused Obama “ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender” on being part-Kenyan.
Needless to say at this point any rational dialog ended, and even though Johnson had many valid points, they all got lost in the quasi ad hominem din.
However, a far more tempered op-ed appeared in The Telegraph by Janet Daley, one in which she does not invoke Obama’s African heritage, but rather his achievements, or lack thereof, in the global arena, and asks point blank:”Why should we take advice from a president who has surrendered the world to chaos?“
Why indeed?
I wonder who in Downing Street briefed Barack Obama’s team on the wording of his friendly warning to the British. Somebody obviously pointed out that the population of this country retained a quaint obsession with the Second World War, and would therefore treat any reference to the glorious dead as irreproachable. So the President invoked the European graves of those American servicemen who died to protect – well, what exactly?
I thought it was the democratic values and reverence for national independence that Britain shared with the US. Did Mr Obama have any sense at all that what he was now urging the British electorate to accept was precisely the surrender of those sacred principles of democratically accountable government and self-determination for which the combined American and British forces had made their ultimate sacrifice?
Could this bizarre intervention have been more cynical or wilfully misinformed? In the end, it seemed to come down to trade advantages – to what might once, back in the day, have been called the global interests of US corporate capitalism. Mr Obama even made specific reference in his article in Friday’s Daily Telegraph to the importance of current negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would reduce barriers to US business interests in the European Union.
On the same day, 38 Degrees – a front group for the more proactive elements in the public sector unions – took out full-page newspaper adverts campaigning against the adoption of TTIP (“…no trade deal should give corporations more power than people”). If the Labour Left were not in such disingenuous disarray, they could be making a meal of this. In any event, unnamed US trade officials were being ominously quoted as saying that, in the event of Brexit, the UK would come very low on America’s list of priorities for new trade agreements.
Then Mr Obama himself abandoned such subtlety in his joint press conference with the Prime Minister. Should the UK go its own way, he said, there would be …read more
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