International Forecaster Weekly

Goldman posted a $2.2 billion first quarter profit on Tuesday, though, so they continue to laugh all the way to...themselves, I suppose.  The attack on gold appears to be a coordinated raid that began with the dumping of 500 tons of naked shorts on the markets on Friday. Bob Rinear reports on Boston: I was sickened by what I saw. An unattended bomb left in an area where completely innocent folks will be maimed and killed is the ultimate in coward maneuvers.

Something that bears close inspection however is that the speed of our innovation has not just doubled or tripled in the last hundred years, it has gone parabolic. There's another technological innovation that we're living through that is going to affect all of our lives in a way that we just don't fully understand yet. The complete transition to a cash-less society.

Force-fed austerity is policy. Banks accounts no longer are safe. Nor are public pensions. Insiders get advance word and flee. While the Fed fiddles, Congress burns. Fiscal collapse will play out incrementally, like a Greek/Cypriot tragedy, in carefully choreographed crises over debt ceilings, continuing resolutions and temporary budgetary patches.

By now you are all familiar with Cyprus. Even if you don't understand global economics, the European Union, the concept of fractional banking, etc.... you have heard that because of too many bad bank debts, Cyprus has folded like a cheap camera. Our lives are completely built around the idea of TRUST in this system.

What does it mean to “control money” in a general sense? Wouldn't that be like 'controlling sand' or 'controlling the waves of the ocean'?  This is precisely where our generally accepted understanding of money breaks against the cold hard shores of reality. The fact is that money is not a physical object, or not merely so. It is a medium of exchange. It is a store of wealth. It is a measure of value. Fundamentally, it is an idea.

Do you see now why I've been preaching that you should own physical gold and silver coins?  Cyprus was the empirical evidence that I needed to prove my point. See, if one day you woke up and turned on the news to find out that all 401K's and IRA's were on holiday for a week because the Government was taking 10% out of all of them... you'd have NO recourse.

Although the BRICS are a rapidly rising force on the world stage, they started off as inauspiciously as any international political organization can: as an idea in a white paper from Goldman Sachs. In June of last year, when the fall of the Euro was still acceptable dinner conversation among the global jetset, Christine Lagarde was going around begging for spare change from the couch cushions of the world's leading economies to capitalize a global emergency fund.

Cyprus about to sink, no vote yet on the Cyprus levy deal, failures have sparked protests against any deal, Europeans rushing back to gold, threats on senior bond holders, bank debt is getting more expensive to insure.

We find out something about the new Pope and Operation Condor, in his home country of Argentina, China hands over power to a new leader, the worlds largest oil importer, economic breakthroughs, bad news in Afghanistan, suicide bombings and massive drug busts.

Is Obama telling the truth or crying wolf? Sequestering will reduce spending by 3%. Given the fragile state of our economy, I’d speculate that an early end to “sequestration” might also coincide with the official beginning of hyper-inflation.   Being the world’s biggest debtor, government can’t survive significant deflation.  Therefore, as an act of self-preservation, I expect government to cause inflation to rise significantly this year.

Jim Cramer actually said something that has merit, why are the markets are still going up? A spiral worm hole for the economy, we wonder what our economy is anymore, a consumption society, if people dont spend, the economy falls apart, Wall Street has created the market the way they want it, You get a bizarro world where markets rise despite a crumbling, debt-laden economy.

Debt looms for students, industry is idle in the gulf, Drones in the sky, guns in the classroom, Panic in Detroit, stocks to crater, Obama buys tanks to go with bullets, Bloomberg sequestered, US Bonds warning,

Five important properties of Money. I was talking about gold crashing, gold as the anti-currency, gold as the ultimate money, Do you really know what money is? The difference between money and currency, and why I am a buyer of metals.

Borrowers still face foreclosure, Farmers making good coin for a change, Feds want your retirement funds, the drug habits in the markets, traders look for more money coming their way with more easy money with monetary policy, Heinz asset freeze.

A time to wonder where all the cash is hiding, now that some companies decide its safe to spend some of that cash, we have found our way back to 2007 highs, Could it be that the street is right and gold is finished? Is Silver really done? Then I look around, I see the fraud, the manipulations, the naked shorting, the collusions, and laugh. If it's done, I can't imagine why.