Financial LINKS

Ecco un apio di links interessanti:
Ne abbiamo gia’ parlato doi oro virtuale…:

http://economicsfreenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/selling-gold-that-grows-on-trees.html

There’s a good reason why bullion traders and investors have nicknamed the COMEX the CRIMEX. Read Robert Moore’s essay below to see why. Moore, a frequent contributor to the Rick’s Picks forum, says bullion bankers have leveraged the commodity exchange’s liberal rules to perpetrate a fraud that would land you or me in jail. RA)

In 2004, two young men named Robert “Buddha” Gomez and James Nichols fleeced thousands of people to the tune of $21 million by selling them “paper” automobiles. Here’s a link to more on this fascinating story by Car and Driver’s John Philips. These two hucksters swindled thousands of people into paying real money for nonexistent cars that were part of the fabricated estate of a fictitious, deceased eccentric millionaire, who declared in his will that these cars were only to be sold to “decent, churchgoing people” at unheard of bargain-basement prices as low as $1,000.

If Gomez and Nichols had known what was good for them, they would have studied the COMEX gold and silver futures market a little more closely before embarking on their little adventure into the exciting world of fraud. We all know that a futures contract is merely a paper promise to deliver a quantity of bullion (or some other commodity) for a pre-determined price at some future date. This is analogous to the paper promise to deliver “miracle cars” at some future estate settlement date; and as long as the promise to deliver can be sold to a willing buyer, then the scam can continue in perpetuity

CMI trovato un supporto?:

http://economicsfreenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/consumer-metrics-institute-growth-index_24.html

Note from dshort: The charts CMI charts are now updated through September 21. In the short term, both the Weighted Composite Index and the Daily Growth Index have hit a contraction plateau.

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The latest commentary from the Consumer Metrics Institute has the intriguing title Has the Bottom Been Reached? Here are two excerpts from the commentary:
During the month and a half from August 1 to September 15, our Weighted Composite Index has improved substantially, rising from recording a year-over-year contraction rate in excess of 9% to recently registering a contraction rate near 3%. This is the largest positive movement that we have seen over half of a quarter since late 2009. The improvement has stopped (at least temporarily) the decline of our 91-day trailing quarter average (our Daily Growth Index)….
Over the past month and a half we have seen a substantial reduction in the year-over-year contraction of consumer demand. That said, it is important to remember that consumer demand is still contracting, albeit at a slower rate. We have previously used the analogy that our data is far “upstream” in the economy. We are sampling the behavior of internet shopping consumers on a daily basis. Those consumer activities flow “downstream” to factories over the course of weeks or quarters. It’s not unlike being upstream on a great river and watching a water-level gauge predict that downstream communities will be flooding catastrophically in a few days or weeks. Although our flood-gage may have just peaked, the downstream damage remains inevitable — it simply hasn’t arrived yet.

Vedi l’altro articolo sull’Irlanda postato da DT oggi, alcuni pensieri…:

http://economicsfreenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/quick-thoughts-on-irish-sovereign-debt.html

Here are some quick thoughts on what’s happening in Ireland. The Irish situation is mostly about the collapse in the economy due to a huge run-up in private sector debts. This has been complicated by Iceland-style bailouts for an outsized banking sector. As a result of this socialization of banking sector losses, Ireland is facing a sovereign debt crisis since the euro zone framework has eliminated Irish currency sovereignty.

As background, read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s post Ireland faces double dip, mulls restructuring of junior bank debt and the links post from this morning.

When thinking about the Irish sovereign debt crisis, there are five countries that come to mine for comparison sake. Here’s a quick run-through of parallels and differences

Beh la recessione e’ ufficialmente terminata… e come diceva il quartetto cetra ora inizia la miseria…:

http://economicsfreenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/recession-is-officially-over.html

The National Bureau of Economic Research is the arbiter of official recession start and end dates. They have determined the end date for the most recent recession:

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met yesterday by conference call. At its meeting, the committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-75 and 1981-82, both of which lasted 16 months

L’illusione della prosperita’ alimentata dal debito:

http://financenewsoftheworldbis.blogspot.com/2010/09/illusion-of-prosperity-driven-by-debt.html

Michael Hirsh, author of Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street, recently appeared on Morning Joe to talk about Wall Street’s pre-crisis, decades-long encroach upon Washington that would eventually end in financial crisis.

In his estimation, the gradual takeover was about 30 years in the making. It got underway when the ideals of free market revolution were sweeping mainstream economics and all common sense of boom and bust cycles — how markets are prone to wild swings of manias and panics – was abandoned to instead funnel increasing power to financial services in hopes of ever-greater returns and economic growth.

The outcome he describes is a “hollowing out of the middle class,” where Wall Street and Washington both played key roles in creating the “illusion of prosperity” while actually force-feeding the public with debt and artificially inflating asset prices. Until finally, the duped middle class — expected to sustain the US economy and even serve as “consumer of last resort for the whole world” — ended up broke.

La seconda parte dell’articolo sull’oro a 3000$:

http://financenewsoftheworld.blogspot.com/2010/09/case-for-and-against-3000-gold-part-2.html

Yesterday, we took a deeper look into how gold investments were being made and also the main reasons why gold could continue its move towards the $3000. However, like any other subject, there are many doubters and some say that gold is vastly overvalued. It is a very difficult asset to predict but there are many reasons or forces that could lead gold way back down. Is it already a bubble? Difficult to say honestly but some arguments are difficult to argue with…

-Contrarian: Few financial principles have held true for decades as markets usually adapt but one that has is that if everyone is putting money in one asset, you are usually better off betting against the crowd. Finding examples is the easiest thing in the world. Think of real estate… Remember how crowds were leveraging everything to get into real estate because prices could not decrease? How well did that turn out? And when everyone was negative a year or so ago thinking that the market would collapse? If they got out, they missed the whole rally. You could easily find tens of examples. That is a very worrying thing about gold. It just seems like everyone from your financial adviser to your dentist or your cab driver

Concludo con quest’articolo di “Giordano Bruno” sul dollaro a dopo:

http://theworldonthebrink.blogspot.com/2010/09/us-dollar-ripe-for-catastrophic.html

By Giordano Bruno

Neithercorp Press – 08/09/2010

Normally when I cover subjects in the economy, I try to take a “macro” approach, giving an overall view of various financial elements around the world and how they are clearly connected to one another in a greater synchronous social force. That is to say, in Chinese domestic consumption, or European debt obligations, or Russian gold reserves, and in many other factors, is encoded the very future of our own American economy. Showing others how to decipher that code is my primary mission.

In this instance, however, I would like to focus chiefly on the U.S. Dollar, the private Federal Reserve currency which is now the basis for our entire financial system, not to mention a substantial basis for trade around the globe. For decades, the dollar (and by extension U.S. Treasury bonds) has been the standard by which foreign nations safeguard capital reserves, denominate debt, and in some cases have even pegged their own currency to maintain advantageous trade deficits. In the past, the Greenback has been treated as good as gold. Though many see this as a windfall for Americans, it is actually a very unfortunate circumstance.