Gold has faced stiff headwinds lately as investors abandon alternative investments to chase record-high stock markets.  Probably the most significant has been the major selling hammering the flagship GLD gold ETF.  It has suffered such intense differential selling pressure that its custodians have been forced to dump enormous quantities of physical gold.  What are the implications of this flood of new supply?
The amount of gold bullion GLD has hemorrhaged recently is amazing.  To put it into perspective, earlier this week the rumor that embattled Cyprus may be forced to sell its official gold reserves made news.  The Cypriot government owns 13.9 metric tons of gold.  But on a single trading day alone in February’s gold capitulation, GLD had to sell 20.8 tonnes!  The supply recently added by GLD dwarfs everything else.

"The crash is over", says an economist. "Housing can only go up," says another. "I think the market has bottomed out," says one builder. "It appears we have turned the proverbial corner," says a second.

• Europe's debt crisis.
• European political crisis.
• Charts flashing danger signals.
• What U.S. stock investors should know NOW.
• Sentiment analysis.
• Tech Stock signals for Apple, Google and Amazon
• NYSE margin debt signal.
• Facebook special.
• And much more, including detailed Elliott wave charts and insights on gold,silver, bonds, the U.S. dollar, the economy, inflation vs. deflation and real estate

A shipping and trade index created by the London-based Baltic Exchange that measures changes in the cost to transport raw materials such as metals, grains and fossil fuels by sea.

Glencore International Plc paid nothing to hire a dry-bulk ship with the vessel’s operator paying $2,000 a day of the trader’s fuel costs after freight rates plunged to all-time lows.
Glencore chartered the vessel, operated by Global Maritime Investments Ltd., a Cyprus-based company with offices in London, Steve Rodley, GMI’s U.K. managing director, said by phone today. The daily payments last the first 60 days of the charter, Rodley said. The vessel will haul a cargo of grains to Europe, putting the carrier in a better position for its next shipment, he said.

“They’re doing this because you can’t just have ships sitting. If they sit too long, then that’s hard on the ships. They have to keep them loaded and moving from port to port,” said Darin Newsom, senior commodities analyst at DTN.

Shanghai shipping volumes contracted sharply in January as Europe's debt crisis curbed demand for Asian goods, stoking fresh doubts about the strength of the Chinese economy.

As I have been telling you recently, there is some unprecedented data coming out in petroleum distillates, and they slap me in the face and tell me we have some very bad economic trends going on, totally out of line with such things as the hopium market - I mean stock market.
This past week I actually had to reformat my graphs as the drop off peak exceeded my bottom number for reporting off peak - a drop of ALMOST 4,000,000 BARRELS PER DAY off the peak usage in our past for this week of the year.

German industrial production fell 2.9 percent in December from the month before, according to official data released Tuesday, suggesting the country's economic slowdown could be worse than expected.

Regular readers know that ever since 2009, well before the confidence destroying flash crash of May 2010, Zero Hedge had been advocating that regular retail investors shun the equity market in its entirety as it is anything but "fair and efficient" in which frontrunning for a select few is legal, in which insider trading is permitted for politicians and is masked as "expert networks" for others, in which the government itself leaks information to a hand-picked elite of the wealthiest investors, in which investment banks send out their "huddle" top picks to "whale" accounts before everyone else gets access, in which hedge funds form "clubs" and collude in moving the market, in which millisecond algorithms make instantaneous decisions which regular investors can never hope to beat, in which daily record volatility triggers sell limits virtually assuring daytrading losses, and where the bid/ask spreads for all but the choicest few make the prospect of breaking even, let alone winning, quite daunting. In short: a rigged casino. What is gratifying is to see that this warning is permeating an ever broader cross-section of the retail population with hundreds of billions in equity fund outflows in the past two years. And yet, some pathological gamblers still return day after day, in hope of striking it rich, despite odds which make a slot machine seem like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In that regard, we are happy to present another perspective: this time from a hedge fund insider who while advocating his support for the OWS movement, explains, in no uncertain terms, and in a somewhat more detailed and lucid fashion, both how and why the market is not only broken, but rigged, and why it is nothing but a wealth extraction mechanism in which the richest slowly but surely steal the money from everyone else who still trades any public stock equity.

From Reddit:  I work in Wall Street and work in hedge fund analysis. I'm the only person in my office who supports OWS
This is a self-post, so I'm not trying to karma-whore or anything. I have a message I want to share with anyone who's interested.
I'm writing this in hopes that the OWS movement can have a better understanding of the hedge fund industry and the financial markets. With OWS being the zeitgeist of current politics, I think it's important to know how exactly the hedge funds, along with the financial markets are destroying the 99%.
Hedge funds. These guys are basically the vehicles of choice for ultra-rich people to get into the financial markets, besides family offices and private wealth managers. What are hedge funds? They are funds that have a 1-5 million deposit minimum, cater to the mega-rich, and can invest in anything without regulatory restrictions, use leverage to pump up their exposure by 15x, and pretty much eat up a vast majority of the industry's profits.
These guys invest in EVERYTHING. Instruments you've heard of - stocks, bonds, forwards, futures, currencies, and instruments that you, me, or anyone else have never even heard of, much less know anything about: commodity future swaptions, FRA/OIS swaps, CLOs, exotic future options, p-notes, index/commodity/equity exposures, and a huge array of OTC (over-the-counter) instruments that no regular investor would ever have access to.
Why I bring this up: the financial markets are rigged. 99% of the investing public has access to services such as basic brokerages, 401k/IRA's, mutual funds, pension plans, etc. Some of these services, especially pension funds, will invest into hedge funds, who take an additional 2 and 20 (meaning 2% of assets plus 20% of capital gains).
What this means is that if you go any of the traditional retail routes, you are utterly screwed facing off against the hedge funds.
First, you are paying exorbitant fees. Commissions on every stock trade. Mutual fund managers taking a cut - an annual % cut, as well as a % per profit cut. If these managers (i.e. pension plans) invest in another fund, that fund is also taking another % cut. You're down 2% the minute you invest your money.
Next, if you're doing the investing yourself, you're paying ridiculous spreads. The bid/ask spread of a stock will cause you to be down another 2-3% the minute you buy the stock. For example, if you're buying a share of company at $4.25, you can sell back at only $4.15.
Furthermore, you have absolutely no chance in terms of access to the best services. Hedge funds have a direct line to investment bank's institutional brokerage teams - these are the guys that spend day and night sucking up to hedge funds, trying to get them the best deals at the cheapest rates. This means that while you're buying stocks and bonds, hedge funds are getting special rights, warrants, sweetheart deals, private placement deals, options, bigger discounts on bonds, and much better bulk commission rates and lower spreads on stocks. If you're paying 4.25$ for a 4.15$ stock, they are paying something like 4.16$. And they are eating alive your profits because when the stock goes up to $4.30, they can activate another warrant to purchase 20m shares at $4.25, diluting the value of your shares.
Next, you lack information and exposure. You have no idea what is going on in the market besides what you see on the news - while hedge funds have analysts working around the clock and a bunch of service providers who give minute-by-minute analysis of their portfolio opportunities and weaknesses in all markets with exposures to nearly everything. Meaning, if there is an opportunity in the real estate market (i.e. legislation), it might take you weeks to get in - hedge funds will have gotten in the minute the legislation was passed. Furthermore, when IPOs come out for companies, hedge funds get top billing on the primary market shares - which means investment banks are selling directly to them. Once the secondary market becomes available, hedge funds are up 15-20% on these investments, sometimes within hours.
Finally, you have no capital compared to these hedge funds. The people who invest in these hedge funds are not just the 1%, they are the 0.1%. These are the guys with 500million dollar bank accounts and the ability to do whatever the fuck they want. Hedge funds know this, and they invest without having to care about whether their clients can pay the rent or send their kids to college. All of that is irrelevant. Their sole purpose is to earn money, not to mitigate risk.
What does this all mean? It means the hedge fund industry is making a gigantic proportion of the profits. The top .1% is earning nearly half of the profits in the industry, through not just hedge funds, but other similar vehicles.
The finance industry is a complete scam, designed to funnel money from the 99% investing public into the hands of the top .1%. Sure, some of you will make good money, but stastically, the rest of us will lose, and who is feeding off us? Hedge funds, and the .1%. You have better odds going to a casino and playing slots, the worst-paying game in the house, but still better than the stock market.
Also, the government is in bed with the financial industry. Tax loopholes give hedge funds and other top players the ability to write off losses and not pay taxes on gains for years at a time. For income they derive from the hedge fund (profits), they pay only 15%, rather than the 35% income tax charged to most people earning 80k and above. Meanwhile, you have to pay taxes for not just your own income but also capital gains.
The worst part by far is that the government "encourages" you to put your money into your 401k through 'tax exemptions', which basically puts your money with the lowest tier of the financial industry - pension funds, retail wealth managers, and retail asset managers. These guys have shit strategies like long-only or domestic equity (which means they only invest in American stocks), and have nowhere near the capability and reach of hedge funds. These guys are even more likely to lose your money than you are, and even worse is they will take a 2.35% cut while doing so. And you get penalized when you try to take your money out early. How f***ed up is that.
In other words, if you aren't in the .1%, you have no access to the derivatives markets, you have no access to the special deals that hedge funds and other wealthy investors get, and you have no access to the resources, information, strategic services, tax exemptions, and capital that the top .1% is getting.
If you have any questions about what some of the concepts above mean, ask and I will try my best to answer. I'm a first-year analyst on wall street, and based on what I see day in and day out, I support the OWS movement 100%.
tl;dr: The finance industry funnels money from the masses to the ultra rich, through vehicles like hedge funds which dominate all of the financial markets.
h/t Scott

source

WHY should Asian stock markets react negatively if America does not create any new jobs? This is the question on everybody's lips, especially those who have argued that Asia can stand alone and Asian growth has decoupled from American growth.

But the news on Sept 5 that most Asian stock market indices dropped appreciably because America did not create jobs in August, must in fact mean that Asia cannot stand alone and is not decoupled from the West. The West can still influence what happens in most Asian economies including Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand because these Asian economies are linked to America and Europe through the real and financial economy.

The real economy in many Asian economies are dependent on and in fact compete for greenfield investments in the form of foreign direct investments (FDI) from America and Europe. They are also dependent on America to absorb the manufactured exports from the multinational corporations (MNCs) operating from Asia. Asian stock markets and bond markets are also open to foreign portfolio investments that are managed by foreign hedge funds.

In fact, it has been said the peaks and troughs of Bursa Malaysia are determined by foreign portfolio investments and the floor of the Bursa Malaysia is maintained by government investments in government-linked companies (GLCs) listed on Bursa Malaysia.

A man looking at a stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo. The Nikkei 225 index added 0.23% to 8 ,741.16 points yesterday. — Reuters

The foreign ownership of stocks in Bursa Malaysia, for example, is quite high and amounts to about 22%. Recently the bond market in Malaysia got a boost because of the large inflow of foreign portfolio investments into the bond market, including the sukuk bond market.

The Asian banking system is also linked to the West as there are numerous branches of foreign banks in Asia and an increasing number of Asian banks are setting up branches in the West to participate in the financing of trade. The financial links are then kept alive by the banks and the capital markets.

If America does not create jobs then it means that the recovery from the recession is slow and this means that incomes will not grow and hence consumption will not grow in America.

Most of the exports of East Asian countries are destined to the USA and Europe although there has been some growth in exports to China. If American consumption does not grow then the demand for manufactured goods from countries like Malaysia will fall. If this happens investor confidence in the Malaysian economy might turn negative. If American jobs do not grow, then American GDP will not grow and may even fall if the recession gets worse.

It has been found that Asian economies are very sensitive to changes in the GDP of the USA. A study by, for instance, Bank of America (BoA) Merrill Lynch found that if the US GDP declines by 1%, it will have the impact of reducing GDP by 1.7% in Singapore; 0.8% in Malaysia; 0.4% in Thailand, 0.3% in the Philippines and Indonesia. It is clear then that the more an economy is dependent on trade as a percentage of its GDP, the more it is affected by an economic crisis in the USA. The sensitivity of GDP growth to changes in the GDP of the USA is then a function of the trade dependence of the Asian countries. Singapore, for example, is more trade dependent than Indonesia and hence its GDP is more sensitive to movements in the GDP of the USA.

If Asian countries are not able to keep up their export momentum, their incomes will drop and their companies may not generate more profits.

In fact profits might fall and this may lead investors to sell the stocks of the companies negatively affected by the fall in exports. If incomes go down as a result of the drop in external demand then savings will drop and the amount of funds available for margin financing of stocks might fall. Tighter loan conditions or credit conditions may persuade investors to move out of the market and this may cause stock prices and the market index to fall.

So American jobs mean an increase in aggregate demand for manufactured goods from Asia and this translates into increased incomes and increased demand for Asian stocks.

If Asian exports decline then the demand for Asian currencies will decline and this will trigger a depreciation of the local Asian currencies, which will mean that foreign portfolio managers will not be attracted by the prospects of an appreciating local currency.

If the money supply declines as a result of the drop in exports, then interest rates will rise and this will cause the price of stocks and bonds to tumble because there is an inverse relation between asset values and interest rates.

The rate of job creation in a crisis economy such as America, which is linked to the real and financial economies of Asia, has therefore a significant effect on the stock market performance of the dependent Asian economies.

In August, for example, foreign investors sold more than RM3.8bil worth of Malaysian stocks because of the fall in the S&P credit rating of America and the European debt crisis because of the expectation that the external demand for Malaysian exports will decline. As a result, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index fell 6.6% in August.

source

The global banking system that publicly went bankrupt during September 2008 prompting government interventions in the form of capital injections, buying of toxic assets, insurance of bad debts and even outright nationalisation's has started to bankrupt the states that bailed them out, starting with the smaller states with Iceland setting the ball rolling, and this year the bailiffs came knocking on the doors of the Eurozone club members, with first Greece, and now Ireland requiring a Euro-zone bailout (German) to prevent debt default bankruptcy, where if one falls then soon would all of the dominos tumble.

The Euro 200 billion bailout out of Greece and Ireland is in the form of a series of loans set at a 5% interest rate, against which one can measure the relative credit risks in the market as theoretically 5% should be seen as a cap with the view that market rates should be below the 5% bailout rate. However the bond markets are NOT responding positively to Ireland's bailout as they had done during May's Greece bailout, which is evidenced by the yields on 10 year euro-zone sovereign bonds rising across the board:

Greece's 10 year yield continues to trade at a high 12% despite the Euro 110 billion bailout at 5%, because Greek bond holders continue to discount a highly probable eventual debt default / restructuring as a deflating economy has sent public debt to GDP soaring to 135%.

Ireland's yield has surged higher to stand at 9.2%, following Monday's bailout low of 8%, again suggesting debt restructuring given depression inducing public debt at 95% of GDP.

Portugal's yield has crept higher to a new credit crisis high of 7.1% from Mondays low of 6.7%, confirming that a bailout of Portugal at an estimated Euro 40-80 billion is imminent for an uncompetitive economy carrying a rising debt to GDP ratio at 83%.

Spain's yield has now crossed above the 5% bailout rate to 5.2%, which suggests that the market is pricing in a bailout for Spain, which is not surprising given the exposure of Spanish banks to Portuguese debts, official debt is put at 64% of GDP but this does not fully take into accounts Spanish banks bad debts that as with Ireland could easily send Spain's debt to GDP to well over 100%.

Italy's yield has trended higher to 4.42% putting Italy firmly in the queue for a debt crisis blowout given that public debt is already at 120% of GDP.

Belgium's yield rose to 3.7%, which illustrates an elevated risk as a consequence of the failure of the political parties to form a new government and public debt is already at 100% of GDP.

UK - Whilst not part of the eurozone has seen its 10 year yields continue to trend higher to 3.3%, marginally below the recent high of 3.4%. The lower UK yield despite Britains huge debt mountain illustrates the flexibility afforded by being OUTSIDE the euro-zone as it allows Britain to continue to stealth default on its debts by means of printing money induced high inflation that the Eurozone countries cannot do individually I.e. the UK government prints money that it loans to the bankrupt banks at 0.5% to buy UK government bonds at 3.3%, hence why the yields are lower than the likes of Spain and Italy, which acts as a safety valve preventing outright bankruptcy but the price paid is in high inflation, with the doctored official inflation measure of CPI is at 3.2%, the more recognised RPI at 4.5% and real inflation at 6% as the following graph illustrates.

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Fact #1 - There is no FDIC insurance fund.

The money at your bank is insured against loss by the FDIC's insurance fund, right? Nope. That's total fiction. There is no actual money in the fund. The FDIC insurance money has already been looted by the U.S. Treasury which has simply replaced the money with a bunch of IOUs.

Why does this matter? Because it means that if the U.S. government goes into default, so will the FDIC! And that means all your bank funds have zero insurance. That's gonna be a big shock for tens of millions of people when they finally figure this out one day...

Fact #2 - There are no social security funds, either.

When you pay social security taxes, all that money goes into a trust fund that's held for safekeeping until the day it pays you back, right?

Ha! That's the "sucker's view" of social security that only ignorant people believe. In reality, there is no money in the social security trust fund because it too has all been looted by the U.S. Treasury and spent. In truth, social security is already broke. Can't wait for people to wake up and figure this one out, either...

Fact #3 - The U.S. Treasury is stealing money from you every day, even if you pay no taxes!

Here's a mind-boggling truth that most people just can't seem to get their heads around: The U.S. Treasury is stealing money from you every single day by the simple fact that they keep creating new money and handing it out to wealthy banksters. Well, technically this is being done by the Federal Reserve, which isn't even part of the federal government. But it's all done in cahoots with the Treasury, which is eroding the value of your money through these money creation and distribution actions.

That's why prices keep going up all around you, folks: Food isn't suddenly worth more money; the truth is that your money is worth less! That's how the Treasury and the Federal Reserve steal from you without even breaking into your home.

Probably 99.9% of the population has no understanding of this phenomenon -- the erosion of currency valuation through the centralized government printing of more currency. And yet it is a government scam that has been carried out against citizens of the world time and time again, spanning millennia! As history has clearly shown, every nation that goes down the path of printing more currency to pay its bills eventually ends up in a runaway hyperinflation scenario followed by economic collapse. The USA will be no different.

Fact #4 - The "balanced solution" isn't balanced.

Don't you love the quirky White House Press Secretary who keeps spewing out the phrase "balanced solution" even while the debt deal leaves the U.S. budget entirely unbalanced?

When you're spending more money than you're earning, that's not financial balance. When the White House says "balanced" what it really means is "compromised" -- as in, half way between the Republican position (spend us into purgatory) and the Democratic position (spend us into oblivion). Neither party has any real solution to the cancerous growth of Big Government. That's because they are creatures of Big Government!

Politicians can no more solve the problems of Big Government than arsonists can solve the problem of office fires. Because they are, themselves, creatures of runaway debt spending (how else do you get elected these days?), they simply do not possess the cognitive framework from which real financial solutions must stem.

Fact #5 - The government is going to steal everything from you before it collapses

Oh my, this is a tough one for people to get their heads around... especially those who naively trust governments to act in the interests of the People. The simple truth of the matter -- and I've publicly made this prediction before -- is that the government is going to STEAL almost everything you own as it heads toward a total financial implosion. This will include:

• The government theft of private retirement accounts. The feds will claim they're taking them over "for your protection." Yeah, right. And then one day they will simply all vanish. Kiss your IRA goodbye...

• The government theft of precious metals. Within the next 3 years, watch for a national emergency to be declared, followed by government confiscation of gold and silver. The feds will take your gold and hand you paper money in exchange. The paper money, of course, will be all but worthless shortly thereafter. Only the suckers, of course, will actually turn in their metals...

• Government takeover of your bank accounts. As banks begin to fail in the big collapse, the government will step in and take ownership of the failed institutions, just as it did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which used to be publicly-owned companies but are now largely just government finance operations). This will put your bank accounts under the direct control of the White House, which can use executive orders to do things like banning all wire transfers out of the country or limiting daily withdrawals and transfers. Sure, you'll still "own" your money in the bank, you just won't be able to freely access it!

Fact #6 - Most people have no idea about fractional reserve banking, derivatives, the money supply or the Federal Reserve

It's not just that most people don't understand banking and finance; it's that even members of Congress have no idea how all this works. With few exceptions (like Ron Paul), they're just clueless!

Get this: Even most bankers don't even know how fractional reserve banking really works. They don't understand derivatives, either, which is why they screwed them up so badly in the housing boom that crashed in 2007. And because bankers, investors and bureaucrats have no idea how it all works, they unwittingly turn it all into a runaway catastrophe.

Allowing ignorant adults to play with debt and derivatives is like letting infants play with nuclear weapons. It can only lead to something messy.

Fact #7 - Most people are betting their lives on the dollar

People buy insurance for their cars, their homes and even their health. But when it comes to money, 99 out of 100 people in America are betting their entire financial existence on the U.S. dollar! They get their paychecks in dollars, their savings accounts are in dollars, and all their assets are denominated in dollars. As a result, they have no diversity to protect them against dollar devaluation.

That's kinda crazy, considering just how quickly the dollar could collapse in the near future and become totally worthless. That's why smart people are diversifying their assets and converting dollars into land, gold, silver or even storable food. Here in central Texas, even ammunition has a long-term barter value that far exceeds dollars.

Looking around at the financial behaviors of others, I'm just stunned at how many people are betting everything on the dollar because they never realized they had any other option (that's the way the government likes to keep it, of course!).

Coming soon: A huge national finance education of the masses

The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.

news.yahoo.com...
www.huffingtonpost.com...
www.commondreams.org...

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President Barack Obama said he hopes lawmakers can reach a last-minute deal today to avert a government shutdown after a third round of talks with congressional leaders last night failed to end an impasse over the federal budget.

After meeting with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama said issues remained unresolved and he hoped for a breakthrough that would prevent a shutdown, set to begin at midnight tonight.

"I'm not yet prepared to express wild optimism but I think we are further along," he told reporters. "My hope is, is that I'll be able to announce to the American people sometime relatively early in the day that a shutdown has been averted."

The president canceled a scheduled trip to Indianapolis, where he was to promote his energy policies. He had met with Reid and Boehner earlier yesterday and late on April 6 in an effort to reach an accord.

Without an agreement, the government would begin shutting down for the first time in 15 years. Roughly 800,000 "non-essential" federal employees would be furloughed, affecting a host of government services. National parks would close, those filing paper tax returns wouldn't receive refunds, government permits would be unavailable, and most passport applications would go unprocessed.

Dow Slips

Concern over a possible shutdown helped push down stocks yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 17.26 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,409.49 at 4 p.m. in New York and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 0.2 percent. Futures on the S&P 500 index rose 0.4 percent at 10:30 a.m. in London, indicating the benchmark index will rebound today.

Bond yields in the U.S. are lower now than when the government was running a budget surplus a decade ago even though Treasury Department data show that the amount of marketable debt outstanding has risen to $9.13 trillion from $4.34 trillion in mid-2007.

Treasurys fell today, sending the yield on the 10-year note five basis points higher to 3.60 percent. That's below the average of 7 percent since 1980 and compares with an average of 5.48 percent in the 1998 through 2001 period, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices.

'Extremely Narrow'

Neither Obama nor Reid identified the outstanding issues. Reid said they were "extremely, extremely narrow," yet "the sad part about it, we keep never quite getting to the finish line." He said he is "not really confident" that a deal will be reached, though "I'm very, very hopeful."

Boehner said in a statement with Reid that they had "narrowed the issues" and would "continue to work through the night to attempt to resolve our remaining differences."

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber's second-ranking Democrat, said yesterday that lawmakers are divided by provisions, known as policy riders, woven into a bill funding the government for the rest of this year. They would change administration policies on environmental regulations as well as funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions among other health services.

"It appears that the debate is no longer over deficit reduction," Durbin said. "It has really devolved into a debate over policy questions that have nothing to do directly, maybe even indirectly, with the budget deficit that we face or the money we're going to spend."

Lawmakers had also been debating about $40 billion in cuts from the government's $3.7 trillion annual budget.

Veto Threat

Yesterday, the administration threatened to veto a House-approved measure that would keep the government open for business until April 15, cut $12 billion in spending and fund the Pentagon through Sept. 30, the end of the 2011 fiscal year. The administration called the measure a "distraction from the real work" of forging a compromise.

"Non-essential" federal workers face the prospect of going without pay during the impasse. Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat, is advising federal workers living in his district just outside Washington to conserve cash, warning a shutdown could stretch into next week. With so much concern over the budget deficit, he said, lawmakers may not agree to provide federal workers with back pay as they have in the past.

'Conserve Their Money'

"They're going to have to conserve their money to make their mortgage and car payments – they're going to have to determine what are the essentials," Moran said. He estimated that 100,000 workers in the Washington area may be furloughed.

Many government programs would continue during a shutdown, said Jeff Zients, deputy director of the White House budget office.

Social Security checks will continue to flow, the postal service will deliver the mail, military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya will go on and the air traffic control system will operate, Zients said.

"Generally speaking, services that are critical to safety of life and protection of property are excepted from a shutdown," he told reporters. So too, he said, are programs that don't rely on the budget bill being debated for their funding.

Elected officials, including Obama, Boehner and Reid, would be paid as usual during a shutdown unless Congress changes the law. Democratic Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Joe Manchin of West Virginia all announced they would forgo their paychecks during a shutdown.

Soldiers, law enforcement officials and others whose jobs are deemed essential would continue to work, yet wouldn't get paychecks until the budget impasse is resolved.

Obama said the dispute "could severely hamper the recovery and job growth."

"We've been working very hard over the last two years to get this economy back on its feet," he said. "For us to go backwards because Washington couldn't get its act together is unacceptable."

source

This is a repost of an article from June which was written in the wake of the meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Dublin’s Four Seasons Hotel, an important event expertly ignored by our main stream media.

In light of last weeks peaceful student protests in Dublin and the disgraceful use of force by the Gardai we are reposting this article, as we feel it contains important information on what is actually occurring in our country and the world at this time. RTE viewers may remember the ‘storming’ of the Dail last May, an event which made it straight onto the six o’ clock news that evening. Violence by the public makes the news headlines. Violence by the Gardai doesn’t. Why not? This has been going on in Rossport for a long time and RTE and the other news media are not very interested in it. Why is that?

Here is the report RTE finally aired, and a video of the follow up protest to Pearce Street Garda station, not aired by RTE.

Now tens of thousands of students and members of the public have seen what happens in a ‘free’ country when peaceful people exercise their rights. And also, very importantly, the true nature of those who supply us with the information we use to form our world view. If the information we are supplied with to form our world view was accurate then things would make sense, and our country would not be in this incredible situation. Our media lie, and there is a reason for that.

Ireland is in economic tail spin and be advised everyone, we’re going down. The ‘experts’ in our ‘news’ media can say whatever they like, or rather whatever they are being told to say, we are crashing, and its not an accident. Green shoots? Free cheese? Who writes this stuff, I mean, seriously?

Last weeks events in Dublin have delivered a rude and painful awakening to 30,000 plus angry students and growing numbers ordinary people as the events finally get reported in our so-called ‘news’ media. One glaringly obvious fact sinking in is that our ‘news’ media are not impartial, not unbiased, and not truthful. They are propaganda, very clever, very effective, very selective. Please turn off the tv news, stop buying the newspapers. Its propaganda, an uncomfortable, dangerous fact, explained in this article.

As a brief summary, in light of additional information and events since this article was published, please consider the following:

This economic crash is not an accident, its been long planned. This is well documented and very evident. There is an agenda behind this which is extremely unpleasant. The reason this agenda has progressed is massively due to the stream of nonsense and lies we are being fed by our mainstream media. This is because these media outlets are either owned or controlled by those behind the agenda, also well documented. The information we base our world view on is coming from a small number of vested interests and it is almost entirely false and misleading. If the news we are fed was impartial then last weeks events should have been headlines, but they weren’t.

The root of this whole economic problem is the private ownership of the central banks and the staggering fraud which has been perpetrated on the whole world via the fractional reserve central banking system. There are solutions to this problem, peaceful solutions. The best solution to appear thus far is explained in exact detail in the recently released book ‘Blank of Ireland, this way out’.

Please read this book and pass it to everyone you know, the solution is contained within. This book explains in 84 pages exactly how to solve the debt problem. If you are in debt, loans, mortgage, you need to read this book.

Here is a video of the author interviewed about the book.

The debt is the problem. This book explains exactly how to redeem debts lawfully, how to wipe your debt, gone. Period. If you have a debt, mortgage, loan, student loan, this book explains how to settle it within the law, peacefully, simply by writing letters, by a man who has done it. This thread includes the letter from the bank verifying that his mortgage is settled and offering him further bank services.

All bank debts are fraudulent contracts. If the contract is fraudulent then it is invalid. We are within our lawful rights to ask for proof that our debts are valid, and if they are not then we are within our rights to not pay them. The banks do not suffer losses on loans, they are paid in full the minute we sign the loan application, believe it or believe it not, its true. Another must read, this book explains how the banks are paid in full when we sign the loan forms: How I Clobbered Every Bureaucratic Cash-Confiscatory Agency Know To Man, by Mary Elizebeth Croft.

And if a bank fails? So what? Is that not the nature of business? If your business is not run properly it fails, bye bye. Hard luck. Some other better run business will replace you, welcome to the free market. The world will not end if the banks fail. The banks don’t pay the sun to rise each morning yet.

We are free men and women. The banks don’t own us, neither do the politicians. And neither of them own our country, its OUR country, and we will NOT sit any longer and have it sold from under our feet and the feet of our children and the generations to come while we are mesmerised by the tepid ‘journalism’ and lies being fed to us every day by our trecherous media.

Bravo to the students who stood their ground on Wednesday and returned to voice their outrage at the actions of the Gardai outside Pearse Street station. And shame, eternal shame, on the members of the Gardai who blindly and ignorantly follow orders to beat peaceful students, from a group of people who the entire country, including YOUR former spokesperson Michael O Boyce, knows are simply a group of criminals. SHAME ON YOU. Redeem yourselves in the eyes of you country men and your families by arresting the criminals who have hijacked our government, sold our country and ours’ and our childrens’ futures. The entire country will applaud and protect you, go for it.

SHARE prices on Bursa Malaysia extended their losses today on continuous selling mainly in key blue chips and banking-related stocks, dealers said.

The benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Composite Index (FBM KLCI) fell as much as 25.84 points amid rising concerns that Europe's debt crisis may spread and over reports of North Korea readying its military for a possible confrontation with South Korea over the sinking of a warship.

At 5pm, the FBM KLCI lost 23.56 points or 1.85 per cent to close at 1,250.13, off it intraday low of 1,247.85. It had opened 8.72 points lower at 1,264.97.

OSK Research said the fragile sentiment in the near term was likely to drive extended volatility in the market with the index possibly attempting to consolidate after the sharp losses over the past week with a downside bias.

Richard Russell, the famous writer of the Dow Theory Letters, has a chilling line in today's note:

Do your friends a favor. Tell them to "batten down the hatches" because there's a HARD RAIN coming. Tell them to get out of debt and sell anything they can sell (and don't need) in order to get liquid. Tell them that Richard Russell says that by the end of this year they won't recognize the country. They'll retort, "How the dickens does Russell know -- who told him?" Tell them the stock market told him.

That's pretty intense!

Update: By popular demand, here's more on what he sees in the market. The gist is that the markets recent gyrations are telling him that the economy is in trouble:

And I ask myself, "Am I seeing things? The April 26 high for the Dow
was 11205.03. The Dow is selling as write at 10557 down 648 points
from its April high. If business is even better than expected, then
why is the Dow down over 600 points? And why, if there were 674 new
highs on the NYSE on April 26, were there only 20 new highs on Friday,
May 14? And if my PTI was 6133 on April 26, why is it down 17 points
since its April high?

The fact is that I've been seeing deterioration in the stock market
ever since early-April, and this in the face of improving business
news. The D-J Industrial Average is composed of 30 internationally
known top-quality blue-chip stocks. These are 30 of "America's biggest
companies." If Barron's is so bullish on the future of America's
biggest companies, then why isn't the Dow advancing to new highs?

Clearly something is wrong. But what could it be? Much as I love
Barron's, I trust the stock market more. If I read the stock market
correctly, it's telling me that there is a surprise ahead. And that
surprise will be a reversal to the downside for the economy, plus a
collection of other troubles ahead.

About Dow Theory -- First, we saw the recent April highs in the
Averages. Then we saw a plunge in both Averages to their May 7 lows --
Industrials to 10380.43, Transports to 4298.12, next a short rally. If
ahead, the two Averages turn down and violate their May 7 lows, that
would be the clincher. Such action would signal the certain resumption
of the primary bear market.

Just as for years I asked, cajoled, insisted, threatened, demanded,
that my subscribers buy gold, I am now insisting, demanding, begging
my subscribers to get OUT of stocks (including C and BYD, but not
including golds) and get into cash or gold (bullion if possible). If
the two Averages violate their May 7 lows, I see a major crash as the
outcome. Pul - leeze, get out of stocks now, and I don't give a damn
whether you have paper losses or paper profits!

source HERE

Bob Chapman
First 6 months of 2010, Americans will continue to live in the 'unreality'...the period between July and October is when the financial fireworks will begin. The Fed will act unilaterally for its own survival irrespective of any political implications ...(source is from insider at FED meetings). In the last quarter of the year we could even see Martial law, which is more likely for the first 6 months of 2011. The FDIC will collapse in September 2010. Commercial real estate is set to implode in 2010. Wall Street believes there is a 100% chance of crash in bond market, especially municipals sometime during 2010. The dollar will be devalued by the end of 2010.

Gerald Celente
Terrorist attacks and the "Crash of 2010". 40% devaluation at first = the greatest depression, worse than the Great Depression.

Igor Panarin
In the summer of 1998, based on classified data about the state of the U.S. economy and society supplied to him by fellow FAPSI analysts, Panarin forecast the probable disintegration of the USA into six parts in 2010 (at the end of June – start of July 2010, as he specified on 10 December 2000

Neithercorps
Have projected that the third and final stage of the economic collapse will begin sometime in 2010. Barring some kind of financial miracle, or the complete dissolution of the Federal Reserve, a snowballing implosion should become visible by the end of this year. The behavior of the Fed, along with that of the IMF seems to suggest that they are preparing for a focused collapse, peaking within weeks or months instead of years, and the most certain fall of the dollar.

Webbots
July and onward things get very strange. Revolution. Dollar dead by November 2010.

LEAP 20/20
2010 Outlook from a group of 25 European Economists with a 90% accuracy rating- We anticipate a sudden intensification of the crisis in the second half of 2010, caused by a double effect of a catching up of events which were temporarily « frozen » in the second half of 2009 and the impossibility of maintaining the palliative remedies of past years. There is a perfect (economic) storm coming within the global financial markets and inevitable pressure on interest rates in the U.S. The injection of zero-cost money into the Western banking system has failed to restart the economy. Despite zero-cost money, the system has stalled. It is slowly rolling over into the next big down wave, which in Elliott Wave terminology will be Super Cycle Wave Three, or in common language, "THE BIG ONE, WHERE WE ALL GO OVER THE FALLS TOGETHER."

Joseph Meyer
Forecasts on the economy. He sees the real estate market continuing to decline, and advised people to invest in precious metals and commodities, as well as keeping cash at home in a safe place in case of bank closures. The stock market, after peaking in March or April (around 10,850), will fall all the way down to somewhere between 2450 and 4125 during the next leg down.

Harry Dent (investor)
A very likely second crash by late 2010. The coming depression (starts around the summer of 2010). Dent sees the stock market--currently benefiting from upward momentum and peppier economic activity--headed for a very brief and pleasant run that could lift the Dow to the 10,700-11,500 range from its current level of about 10.090. But then, he sees the market running into a stone wall, which will be followed by a nasty stock market decline (starting in early March to late April) that could drive down the Dow later this year to 3,000-5,000, with his best guess about 3,800.

Harold Eatmon (1990)
I had a vision of the stock market soar and then crash. After the crash, many big business corporations and private parties bought up stocks because of the low cost to buy in. Then I saw the market begin to climb again in a short period of time. Then it crashed again bringing tremendous loss, ruin and devastation to all who bought in the first time. This is what I have labeled "Two Black Mondays" . The time period between the Two Black Mondays was very close together. I could not tell exactly how close. There are some tell tale signs indicating the season and the setting. I saw the season to be when *"the leaves fall to the ground"* then the first crash would occur."Like Joseph in Genesis, I believe America will have fat years of financial blessing. I also believe there are coming lean years of financial difficulty for America. [Note: while this doesn't give an exact date, this prophecy was dead on accurate- the markets crashed -777 points on MONDAY 9/29/08, roughly 1 week into the FALL (leaves fall to the ground.) The markets then rebounded OVER A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME (from April 2009 to October 2009 the markets rallied nearly 4000 points!) and everyone bought back in. According to this prophecy, the next huge crash will happen on a Monday. Eatmon even accurately predicted the coming 'fat years' and the now present 'lean years']

Larry Randolph
... there is yet a seven-fold shaking of greater magnitude coming that will produce enormous and perhaps catastrophic disruptions on economic, political, geophysical, atmospheric, and spiritual levels.

Weather Bill
Huge earthquake in America in September 2010. This EQ to come is going to start the swift downfall of America

Andrey Rasshivaev
At the very end of the year of 2007 I have received a revelation from God that the coming 2008 year was going to be the year of the beginning of outpouring of God's judgment upon this world...About half a year ago God has given me a further revelation. He reveled me that the crisis was just the very beginning. The world is going to face the total and complete economical and financial collapse in August-September of this new 2010 year.

Greg Evensen
Economic meltdown and possible martial law in the mid summer 2010.

Rick Wiles
Use the first 6 months of 2010 to prepare for the last 3 months of 2010. Purchase everything you need while you still can. Pay off your debts. Judgment is coming upon America (she will be shaken physically, financially, and spiritually)- not the end of the USA, only TEOTUSAAWKI- supply chain will be disrupted for years, admitted insolvency- handed over to allies for pennies on the dollar. POSSIBILITIES: (not prophecies) EMP attack, China Russia NK cyber attack, delayed Y2K bug.

Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj
Starvation and famine/financial problems will develop. Terrorist attacks. Banks close. Tsunami. 7 new diseases worse than swine flu.

Amos Scaggs
The ultra-rich will go broke. I don’t mean go bankrupt I mean go broke, no money. I saw ultra rich people working for food because they were broke. This will happen by mid-February 2011.

Jimmy "Doomsday"
DOW will fall below 7,000 before mid summer 2010- Dollar will rise above 95 on the dollar index before mid summer 2010- Gold will bottom out below $800 before mid summer 2010- Silver will bottom out below $10 before mid summer 2010- CA debt implosion will start its major downturn by mid summer and hit crisis mode before Q4 2010- Dollar index will plunge below 65 between Q3 and Q4 2010- Commercial real estate will hit crisis mode in Q4 2010- Over 35 states will be bailed out by end of Q4 2010 by the US tax payer End of Q4 2010 gold will hit $1,600 and silver jump to $35 an oz.

Unnamed Economist working for US Gov't (GLP)
What we have experienced the last two years is nothing to what we are going to experience this year. If you have a job now...you may not have it in three to six months. (by August 2010). Stock market will fall = great depression. Foreign investors stop financing debt = collapse. 6.2 million are about to lose their unemployment.

Lindsey Williams
Dollar devalued 30-50% by end of year. It will become very difficult for the average American to afford to buy even food. This was revealed to him through an Illuminati insider.

Richard Mogey
Current Research Director at the Foundation for the Study of Cycles- Because of a convergence of numerous cycles all at once, the stock market may go up for a little while, but will crash in 2010 and reach all-time lows late 2012. Mogey says that the 2008 crash was nothing compared to the coming crash. Gold may correct in 2009, but will go up in 2010 and peak in 2011. Silver will follow gold.

Robert Prechter
Founder of Elliott Wave International, implores retail investors stay away from the markets… for now. Prechter, who was bullish near the lows in March 2009, now says the stock market “is in a topping area.”predicting another crash in 2010 that will bring stocks below the 2009 low. His word to the wise, “be patient, don’t rush it” keep your money in cash and cash equivalents.

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
In my estimation, there is still close to an 80% probability (Bayes' Rule) that a second market plunge and economic downturn will unfold during 2010.

Robin Landry (Market Expert)
I believe we are headed to new market highs between 10780-11241 over the next few months. The most likely time frame for the top is the April-May area. Remember the evidence IMHO still says we are in a bear market rally with a major decline to follow once this rally ends.

Alpha-Omega Report (Trends Forecast)
Going into 2010, the trends seemed to lead nowhere or towards oblivion. Geo-politically, the Middle East was and is trending towards some sort of military clash, most likely by mid-year, but perhaps sooner...At the moment, it seems 2010 is shaping up to be a year of absolute chaos. We see trends for war between Israel and her neighbors that will shake every facet of human activity...In the event of war, we see all other societal trends being thoroughly disrupted...Iran will most likely shut off the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. This will have immense consequences for the world’s economy. Oil prices will skyrocket into the stratosphere and become so expensive that world’s economies will collapse..There are also trend indicators along economic lines that point to the potential for a total meltdown of the world’s financial system with major crisis points developing with the change of each quarter of the year. 2010 could be a meltdown year for the world’s economy, regardless of what goes on in the Middle East.

Eric deCarbonnel
There is no precedence for the panic and chaos that will occur in 2010. The global food supply/demand picture has NEVER been so out of balance. The 2010 food crisis will rearrange economic, financial, and political order of the world, and those who aren’t prepared will suffer terrible losses…As the dollar loses most of its value, America's savings will be wiped out. The US service economy will disintegrate as consumer spending in real terms (ie: gold or other stable currencies) drops like a rock, bringing unemployment to levels exceeding the great depression. Public health services/programs will be cut back, as individuals will have no savings/credit/income to pay for medical care. Value of most investments will be wiped out. The US debt markets will freeze again, this time permanently. There will be no buyers except at the most drastic of firesale prices, and inflation will wipe away value before credit markets have any chance at recovery. The panic in 2010 will see the majority of derivatives end up worthless. Since global derivatives markets operate on the assumption of the continued stable value of the dollar and short term US debt, using derivatives to bet against the dollar is NOT a good idea. The panic in 2010 will see the majority of derivatives end up worthless. The dollar's collapse will rob US consumers of all purchasing power, and any investment depend on US consumption will lose most of its value.

WALL STREET JOURNAL- (2/2010)
"You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late."

Lyndon Larouche
The crisis is accelerating and will become worse week by week until the whole system grinds into a collapse, likely sometime this year. And when it does, it will be the greatest collapse since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Niño Becerra (Professor of Economics)
Predicted in July 2007 that what was going to happen was that by mid 2010 there is going to be a crisis only comparable to the one in 1929. From October 2009 to May 2010 people will begin to see things are not working out the way the government thought. In May of 2010, the crisis starts with all its force and continues and strengthens throughout 2011. He accurately predicted the current recession and market crash to the month.

Richard Russell (Market Expert)
(from 2/3/10) says the bear market rally is in the process of breaking up and panic is on the way. He sees a full correction of the entire rise from the 2002 low of 7,286 to the bull market high of 14,164.53 set on October 9, 2007. The halfway level of retracement was 10,725. The total retracement was to 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009. He now sees the Dow falling to 7,286 and if that level does not hold, “I see it sinking to its 1980-82 area low of Dow 1,000.” The current action is the worst he has ever seen. (Bob Chapman says for Russell to make such a startling statement is unusual because he never cries wolf and is almost never wrong)

source HERE & HERE