Economic Collapse

- “You should be in wealth-protection mode, not in trading mode”
John Williams

Very good audio interview with John Williams of Shadowstats.com released today. Listen carefully:
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/2/6_John_Williams.html

As many of you know Peter Schiff is now running for Senator in the State of Connecticut. Schiff is an American economist of the Austrian School, author, commentator and popular video blogger who regularly appears in the role of a bearish pundit on numerous financial news networks. He predicted the Dotcom crash of 2000 and the Housing crisis of 2007/2008 and like the author of this blog he belives that the US Dollar is heading for hyperinflation. He is a licensed stock broker, the president of Euro Pacific Capital with a 100 employees who successfully protect their clients wealth by moving out of the US dollar and into real money such as gold etc.

If you want a crash course in the problems with the US economy, watch this. A good hour well spent with a lot of information and humor. Enjoy.

Disclosure: I have no vested interest in Euro Pacific Capital nor do I receive any payment for writing this.

Agora Financial, LLC & The Daily Reckoning interview with Marc Faber:
http://bitcast-a.v1.iad1.bitgravity.com/agorafinancial/DR/faber/indexAF.html

India buys 200 tonnes of Gold from the IMF for 6.7 billion US Dollars. Thats more than 7 million ounces and half of the announced IMF gold sale of 400 tonnes. Who will buy the other 200 tonnes? My bet is China. Why are they doing this? They want to get rid of their US Dollars and into hard assets. Gold is the money of kings. Debt is the money of slaves. Just look at the rate of decline in foreign purchases of US debt: Read the rest of this entry »

Rocky Vega of The Daily Reckoning took the effort to transcribe some quotes from a little video clip of Marc Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report:

“There’s this huge debate between the inflationists and the deflationists… I belong more to the camp that looks at inflation and deflation from a different perspective. In the sense that in every system you can have some prices going down up and some prices going up. Say if you have a glut in consumer goods, then consumer goods prices can go up. But if you print money and have a zero interest rate, then home prices theoretically could go up, or stocks, or commodities. In any event your cash purchasing power goes down, that’s a symptom of deflation.”

“The worst investments in an inflationary period, when you print money and have large fiscal deficits are, of course, long term bonds and then cash. The best is to have foreign currency and commodities… also equities can protect you to some extent because they adjust upward as the currency goes down.”

“Regarding the dollar he says, “well, it will go to a value of exactly zero eventually.” When pressed for a timeline he explains, “Looking at Mr. Obama and his administration it should already be there, but I think it will take roughly ten years until people really realize that the fiscal position of the US is a complete disaster.”

My personal favorite from this clip:
On Bernanke: “He’s a money printer. He does that well.”

Just a few minutes ago the zFact.com National Debt Clock turned over to 12 trillion USD. As you all know, the total liabilities of the US is much much higher if you take Medicare och Medicaid etc into the picture.

Compare this to the counter on the left hand side on this page.

Since the Commercial Real Estate Mortgage bubble has begun to pop with the bankruptcy of Capmark that I wrote about yesterday I thought I’d give you some background to the events unfolding before our very eyes beginning now. These mortgages are given by lenders to companies building and operating commercial buildings such as malls, offices, hotels etc. With a declining economy these companies find it increasingly difficult to pay interest on their loans as income from rents keep falling. Consider these statistics from this month of October 2009 reported by facilitiesnet.com:

U.S. Office Vacancy Rates Continue Climb, But Are Slowing
“The office vacancy rate increased, by 60 basis points (bps), to 16.1 percent, at the end of the third quarter. Although this was the eighth consecutive quarter of rising vacancy rates, it was lower than the 80-bps increase in 2Q 2009 and was the slowest pace of increase since 4Q 2008.
The national industrial availability rate increased 50 bps to 13.5 percent in 3Q 2009. This result marks the 8th consecutive quarter of rising availability. The vast majority of industrial markets experienced rising availability, with 56 out of 61 major markets showing increases from the previous quarter.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On the 14:th I wrote in response to a BBC report on Putins visit to Beijing, China:

“Yes, Medvedev and Jintao is moving away from the US dollar and will settle this 20-year-deal in their own currencies. You should also move away from fiat paper of the west and move into your own currency: gold. Be your own banker, as a friend of mine says.”

On the same day the Russian news outlet “RIA Novosti” quoted Putin on the topic:

“Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans,” Putin said.

Now that the Fed is buying almost all the Treasury bills since the demand from foreign buyers is almost gone, the only thing that keeps the US dollar from going down the tube is the petrodollar: Currently buyers of oil, natural gas and other commodities have to first buy US dollars to make their purchases. When these commodities are available in other currencies, the End of the Dollar is here.

I’ve been more busy than usual with projects and clients for a few days, so here’s a recap of what has been going on in the last few days:

A lot of things are happening on world currency markets right now. What we are seeing now is a move away from the US dollar, a diversifying by Central Banks as well a move into the only currency with no counter-party risk: gold. The Metal of Kings rose to a new high at 1.060 USD/Oz during the last trading days and today almost 1.070 for a few minutes. Here is a Gold chart from today (14 October 2009):
Read the rest of this entry »