BREAKING….GOLD GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART
The Slog: Remember last week’s Slogpost suggesting that Gold would go through $1300? Well, it’s now struggling to hold $1200.
And yet and yet…..gold mining stocks do not seem to be entirely worried….as in, their index is up 50cUS on the day.
So, if the miners tend to lead the price of gold (as they do) then –
as my New Mexican friend so delicately puts it, “Who the fuck knows
where it’s going from here?”I don’t know the answer to that one either; but this much I do know: this is the biggest divergence we’ve seen between genuine fundamentals and counterfeit printerventionists to date.
Consider: when the stock markets are going up to record levels, and gold is going down, then in the real world of naturally evolving markets, you must surely expect that – in the pipeline – there are at least thirty signs that breakthroughs in immortality pharmaceuticals, highly intelligent search engines, a process for converting well-water into wine, clean car emissions, zero-cost electricity generation, and the secret of transmuting politicians into something genuinely useful are about to come on stream.
Leaked: CIA aims crackdown on leaks inside CIA
RT: The director of the CIA has outlined plans to launch a new campaign
aimed at keeping the organization’s operations secret. The memo, issued
by director John Brennan, was itself leaked late on Wednesday.The ‘Honor the Oath’ campaign has the intention of reinforcing “our corporate culture of secrecy” according to the memo, which was obtained by Associated Press. The document had been labeled unclassified and for official use only.
Brennan wrote that the campaign is a result of a CIA security
review conducted last summer by the organization’s former
director, David Petraeus, after “several high-profile
anonymous leaks and publications by former senior officers,”
were identified, according to Brennan.
It also outlined the necessity to take a harsher stance on former employees who were intending to publish materials about their time in the organization.
The CIA declined to comment on the leak after AP contacted it.
#AngloTapes & Banksters' Trolololing "Pulling numbers out of their arse!" - Max Keiser with Andrew McGettigan
HOW GEORGE OSBORNE DID A COMPLETE U-TURN YESTERDAY…AND USED A SPENDING REVIEW TO HIDE IT
How the new improved Carneybank of England splurged 70 billion quid to save Osborne’s neck….and Balls missed it.
Osborne….only saved by potty tribalism
The Slog: Continuing on from where we were two days ago when I posted about missing legs on the globalist stool,
what we’ve seen over the last 36 hours or so has been a case of
something entirely natural reversed by other things that are obviously
unnatural. When Ben Bernanke let slip via his portable megaphone that he
wanted to withdraw from QE, there was a global sell-off in shares, and
an equally global spike in sovereign bond yields. That is precisely what
most of us expected.
The following day (Tuesday) there was a suspicious reaction in the
bond markets: the spikes were largely wiped out. The Japanese 10-year
note yield fell three basis points to 0.835%: a fall in comparative
terms of some 60%. Humungous. And, um, for me….er, unconvincing.Europe Make Cyprus "Bail-In" Regime Continental Template
Submitted by Tyler Durden: Turns out that for Europe, Cyprus was a "bail-in"
template after all, and following an agreement reached early this
morning, Europe now has a joint failed-bank resolution mechanism.
Several hours ago, EU finance ministers announced that they had reached
agreement on the principles governing the imposition of losses on
creditors in bank 'bail ins'. Having already agreed to establish
"depositor preference" in the pecking order of creditors at risk, the
stumbling block to agreement was the availability of flexibility at the
national level to complement the bail in with injections of funds from
other sources. Under the compromise achieved overnight, once a bail in
equivalent to 8% of total liabilities has been implemented, support from
other sources can be used (up to 5% of total liabilities) with approval
from Brussels.
"The Dark Side of the QE Circus"
Andy Sutton: There may come a day soon where the markets
sell off if one of the whiskers in Big Ben's beard is out of place. Or
perhaps if his tie is a bit crooked. Or maybe we end up with Janet
Yellen as the next puppet in charge over at the local banking cabal and
we fret about her hairdo. I don't know, but one thing that is for
certain is that this central bank so wants to be loved and we are so
under psychological attack with all of this QE nonsense that it isn't
even funny.
QE is the endgame. ZIRP was only the
beginning. QE, or monetization (which they'll never call it because of
the negative connotations), is the heroic measure applied to an already
dead system. Our system, for all intent and purposes, died in 2008. It
ceased to exist. The investing, economic, and business paradigm that has
existed since is drastically different than its predecessor despite all
the efforts being made to convince everyone, including Humpty Dumpty,
that it is in fact 2005 all over again.
CORANDERRK: WE WILL SHOW THE COUNTRY
European student group files complaints with the EU against US tech giants over NSA spying
A European student group known as Europe-v-Facebook (EVF) has filed formal complaints against major US technology firms for working with the National Security Agency (NSA) to secretly collect data on Europeans.
The group specifically named the NSA’s PRISM program in their announcement and stated that their complaints are aimed at the European subsidiaries of US internet giants which worked with the government according to multiple reports.
The complaints were filed by EVF in Ireland against Facebook and Apple, in Luxembourg against Skype and Microsoft and in Germany against Yahoo.
Complaints against Google and YouTube are forthcoming but could not be filed immediately because they do not use European intermediaries. Instead, the group will have to follow a different path since Google has data partners in Belgium, Finland and Ireland.
Since the subsidiaries are based in the EU, the group maintains that they are subject to EU data privacy laws.