It begins, a broken family grieving the loss of their daughter: SAN ANTONIO - Nine days after 24-year-old Lauren Bump was found stabbed to death in O.P. Schnabel Park on the Northwest Side, her life was celebrated in a church service at Community Bible Church. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who visited with the […]
I’m sure that most of you are relieved that I’ve stopped sending out my bathers weekly sometimes daily , and yep sometimes twice a day, well those days are over. There are however certain events that happen that cause me to fire up the old address book and for about 4 hours clik send. Today […]
Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:
Image Credit NASA – Polar Vortex on Venus WUWT Regular “Just The Facts” Currently there is a lot of media hype about the Polar Vortex over North America, but little in the way of coherent explanation as to what a Polar Vortex is and how it affects Earth’s…
"Dozens of office buildings are being erected at quick pace, while residential developments featuring fancy colours and rococo terraces are rising just across the road. Ulan Bator’s construction boom is adding new momentum to the country’s economic growth. Mongolia’s vast, largely untapped deposits of gold, copper, coal and uranium might be worth as much as US $3 trillion. In a country of only 2.8 million people, that represents a huge opportunity. 'By 2030, Mongolia will become one of the three richest countries in Asia by GDP per capita after Singapore and Japan,' Alisher Ali, founder of the investment group Silk Road Finance, said earlier this year in an interview." Continue reading →
"The Nikkei 225 rose 57% for the year – the best year for the index since 1972. Meanwhile, Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe… aided and abetted by new Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda… goosed the annual inflation rate up to 1%. This had the effect of sending the yen down 15% against the dollar. Great for Japan’s exporters. Terrible for Japan’s fixed-income securities. So, we made good money on both sides of the trade last year. By our rough, back-of-the-envelope ciphering, our 'Trade of the Decade' is up about 50% so far… with seven more years to run. What will happen in those next seven years?" Continue reading →
"At some point there will be a breakdown. Real market forces will reassert themselves. But 'when' is not easy to discern. I personally know people who are continually trying to sell this market short and are surrendering over and over because the timing is not right. The IPO market is revving up; top central banking doves are in place; the JOBS Act is ready to pour its promotions on receptive investors around the world; central banks are coordinating money printing in ways never seen before; gold remains down. It is sensible to predict the demise of this empyrean equity fairy tale. But those elite bankers controlling the central banking money printing have different ideas." Continue reading →
"Business cycles are in a sense predictable because the entire economic environment is structured via central bank money printing. It is this artificiality that makes Austrian economic forecasting viable. What one can never predict, of course, is the timing of the 'turning.' Exactly where we are in the business cycle is uncertain, though again, one can certainly point out that we are in a precious metals bull market, even despite the recent difficulties of gold. This particular pro-metals market started early in the 2000s and may well continue until we reach a precious metals 'mania' of sorts as we saw in the 1970s. The only way to puncture something like that in the short term is to raise interest rates." Continue reading →
"Switzerland’s central bank will scrap its annual payment to the government for 2013 after a gold-price decline caused a loss of 9 billion francs ($10 billion). Switzerland’s 26 cantons are the central bank’s biggest shareholders. Together with the government, they receive an annual payment of 1 billion francs if the distribution reserve isn’t negative after appropriation of profit. The SNB’s gold holdings are the target of a popular initiative that demands that at least 20 percent of the central bank’s assets be in the form of gold. The measure would also block the sale of such holdings and require all SNB gold to be located in Switzerland. The SNB is listed on the Zurich stock exchange." Continue reading →
"The U.S. Treasury Department’s anti-money laundering unit has mailed roughly a dozen letters to businesses linked to the digital currency Bitcoin warning they may be money transmitters and be required to comply with federal law and regulation, a Treasury spokesman told Compliance Complete. These letters, sent in recent weeks by Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), are a form of 'industry outreach' aimed at making Bitcoin businesses aware of their potential anti-money laundering compliance obligations, FinCEN spokesman Steve Hudak said." Continue reading →
