Inflation & Gold-Silver Breakout The gold and silver prices have broken out on the upside, not to register new highs but rather to emerge from a clear bullish wedge pattern in their daily charts. The stage is set for assaults on the 1000 gold high and the 21 silver high. Furthermore, and more boldly stated, the stage was set last January for tremendous moves in gold toward 2000 and silver toward 50 in the next 18 to 24 months, give or take. The crude oil price surged past 100. Next the gold price will surge through 1000, as in SURGE. The key commercial commodity is crude oil. The key financial commodity is gold (silver also). Unprecedented monetary inflation invites unprecedented reaction in the crude oil and precious metal prices, where justice still is enforced. This key cause and effect is sorely missed by slick Wall Street conmen and carnival barkers. They invest privately in secrecy, while they promote publicly with deception, fraud, and influence of public media networks.
Losing a Mint: Curb on Coin Sales Angers Collectors The government rationed food during World War II and gasoline in the 1970s. Now, it's imposing quotas on another precious commodity: 2008 dollar coins known as silver eagles. The coins, each containing about an ounce of silver, have become so popular among investors seeking alternatives to stocks and real estate that the U.S. Mint can't make them fast enough. In March, the mint stopped taking orders for the bullion coins. Late last month, it began limiting how many coins its 13 authorized buyers world-wide are allowed to purchase.
Unsold houses rise to 23-year high in April The U.S. housing market weakened further in April with a flood of homes coming on the market even as sales and prices declined, the National Association of Realtors reported Friday. Resales of U.S. houses and condos dropped 1% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.89 million from 4.94 million in March. Economists expected sales to fall to 4.83 million. Resales have sunk 17.5% in the past year and are down 33% from the peak in 2005. The pace of sales has been relatively stable since August at around a 5 million annual pace. The inventory of unsold homes jumped 10.5% to 4.55 million, an "uncomfortably high" level, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the real estate trade group.
High gas prices force cops to walk the beat more With gasoline climbing toward $4 a gallon, police officers around the country are losing the right to take their patrol cars home and are being forced to double up in cruisers and walk the beat more. The gas crunch could also put an end to the time-honored way cops leave their engines running when they get out to investigate something. Some police chiefs think the moneysaving measures are not all bad, and might actually help them do a better job. But they worry about the loss of take-home cars, saying the sight of a cruiser parked in a driveway or out in front of a home deters neighborhood crime. In Newberry, population 10,000, Chief Jackie Swindler is telling his officers to turn off the ignition whenever they are stopped for more than a minute or so, and to get out and walk around more.
A Dollar Crash Will Have Disastrous Implications for Global Financial Markets The dollar’s slump is of great and immediate concern because, while the dollar has been slipping only gradually in the recent past, the rate of decline has picked up momentum. A dollar crash will have disastrous implications for global financial markets. At the end of 2001, the euro was worth $ 0.8915, but it has been on a steady upward march since then. On the last trading day of the third quarter in 2007, the euro hit a high of 1.4282. A target of 1.50 is very much within range. How do all of those surplus countries play into this falling dollar picture? Remember, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan observed that in economics, the sum of all surpluses equals the sum of all deficits.
Surging inflation will stoke riots and conflict between nations, says report Riots, protests and political unrest could multiply in the developing world as soaring inflation widens the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots", an investment bank predicted yesterday. Economists at Merrill Lynch view inflation as an "accident waiting to happen". As prices for food and commodities surge, the bank expects global inflation to rise from 3.5% to 4.9% this year. In emerging markets, the average rate is to be 7.3%. The cost of food and fuel has already been cited as a factor leading to violence in Haiti, protests by Argentinian farmers and riots in sub-Saharan Africa, including attacks on immigrants in South African townships. Merrill's chief international economist, Alex Patelis, said this could be the tip of the iceberg, warning of more trouble "between nations and within nations" as people struggle to pay for everyday goods. "Inflation has distributional effects.
JP Morgan Chase Launches Major Round of Layoffs Officials at JP Morgan Chase have launched a major round of layoffs in the firm's vaunted investment banking department, axing dozens of executives in an attempt to downsize the unit amid a massive slowdown in business, CNBC has learned. People at the firm say at least two hundred executives were laid off over the past two days - a move unrelated to the firm's recent purchase of Bear Stearns. A spokeswoman for JP Morgan confirmed the cuts and said many of the people leaving were junior bankers. Still, the layoffs are some of the stiffest on Wall Street amid the current profit drought. Most firms have been cutting between 5 percent and 10 percent of their staff; the JP Morgan cuts may run deeper even though the bank hasn't been stung as hard as other firms with losses related to investments in subprime bonds.
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