Is gold ready for a 'rocket shot'? Gold, like every other asset market, turned in a terrifyingly volatile performance last week. But it managed to close up more than 3%, at a new record high of $910.50. And the gold bugs are still confident. The great $US 5x3 point and figure chart supplied to the public free by Australia's gold Web site The Privateer reversed a mid-week downturn and broke into new high ground. On the basis of the past eight years, gold looks like going a lot higher. This is very much the opinion of James Turk, a veteran gold bug, who in this weekend's issue of his Freemarket Gold&Money Report said: "Moves into new all-time high ground tend to be explosive, which describes gold's current position."
Commodities crime wave sweeps rural US A wave of crime is sweeping rural America, with organized gangs and petty thieves heisting commodities ranging from wheat to almonds, copper wires to hardwood trees. Attracted by the prospect of making easy money, criminals steal onto private and state-owned forests to illegally fell timber, carry off entire shipping containers of almonds, and risk their lives to strip electricity transmitters of their copper wiring."As the price of a particular commodity increases, it becomes the target of crooks because they're opportunists who are looking to make money," said Bill Yoshimoto of the Agricultural Crime Task Force in California's rural Tulare County, where nearly two-thirds of its 311,000 residents live from farming.
Builders slash prices 10%, but sales fall anyway U.S. builders slashed prices by more than 10% in December in a failed bid to boost sales, which dropped about 5% to the lowest level in nearly 13 years, the Commerce Department reported Monday. The grim figures show no relief in sight for a battered building sector and are certain to be a major item on the Federal Reserve's agenda for its two-day policy-setting meeting that begins Tuesday. Sales of new homes fell 4.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 604,000 in December, far below the 645,000 expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch and the lowest sales pace since February 1995.
Broke homeowners linked to arsons Authorities in economically stressed cities see an increase in torched houses. Is the nation's mortgage mess transforming more Americans into criminals? Arson is nothing new in Detroit. It's a time-honored weapon of the angry, vengeful, distressed and dispossessed in a city that gets hurt harder and sooner than others, making it a perfect place to spot early evidence of stress from the real-estate meltdown.The Detroit Fire Department can't draw a definitive link between its rising arson rate (151 arrest warrants in 2007), rising foreclosures (up more than 65% last year) and falling housing prices (the region's median house price dropped 17.3% in the past four years, to $145,173).
Countrywide Financial Corporation and the Failure of Mortgage Socialism Angelo Mozilo is the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the failed Countrywide Financial Corporation. Mr. Mozilo co-founded this company, nearly 40 years ago, in 1969. To be in business for almost forty years, and to become America’s top private home-mortgage lender, are testimonies to genuine business acumen. However, success can breed arrogance, and a sense of supreme power, to the point where a corporate chieftain believes his personal will can override the free market and reshape society according to a grand vision – which, for Angelo Mozilo, entailed making America a better country by bringing home ownership within reach of all and sundry. For Countrywide Financial, unfortunately, Mr. Mozilo’s dream of social engineering demanded that sound credit-underwriting principles be abandoned.
US recession will dwarf dotcom crash The recession facing the United States is of a scale that dwarfs the dotcom slump. The slowdown will cause a damaging regulation backlash as governments attempt to compensate for the financial pain facing families. Britain faces a similar plight, though it may avoid as deep a slowdown as the US. The views of Stephen Roach, one of the world's leading economists, now heading the Asian wing of Morgan Stanley, would have seemed outrageous at last year's World Economic Forum. It is a sign of the times that they are now close to the consensus. This year's event has been dominated by discussions of the stock market slump on both sides of the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve's emergency interest rate cut and the SocGen fraud disaster.
Chavez Urges Withdrawals From U.S. Banks Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis. Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence."We should start to bring our reserves here," Chavez said. "Why does that money have to be in the north? ... You can't put all your eggs in one basket."Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying "that has to do with this summit." "The empire doesn't accept alternatives," Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.
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