News Excerpts

from Bullion Vault
Global economic activity up to 2007 was driven by rich world consumers buying things even they couldn't afford. In the US alone they have since lost about $12 trillion of private wealth - $120,000 per family. Judging by estimates published in The Economist this should induce a demand slump of about $500 billion per year, for 10 more years.

That means a typical family will be cutting back spending at the rate of $5,000 per year for a decade. So our economies will stay shrunk, threatening deflation.


from Roger Weigand
After Labor Day, this fall, we forecast a false stock market rise followed by most professional traders selling into strength with ferocity. September, 2009 30-year bond futures are trading this morning at 115.12. Next support is 112.50, 110.00, 108.00 and then 106.00. Our longer range forecast is 80.00 with larger potential for something much worse. We told our readers it gets scary when the 30’s sink under 120.00. Well folks we have arrived.

Our new forecast for later September, 2009 through early October would be a 62% crash from the early fall high. This means a selling event of at least 4-6,000 points lower on the Dow Jones.



The Gold Report
John Kaiser: The Race to Rare Earths
June 02, 2009
These days I'm not only concerned that the United States is losing its relative clout on the global stage, but also that countries like China are going to have to go it on their own. They're sitting on these enormous foreign reserves - $2 trillion - two-thirds of which are U.S. denominated instruments - and all of this was built up when they were very dependent on an export economy. They were making things, selling them to the United States, and then shipping the dollars back for IOUs in the future.

But this game is now over. They know it and they are developing infrastructure internally to develop their own domestic economy. They're looking around and saying, "Where are we going to get all the raw materials that will allow us to keep building our own infrastructure and economy, and what are we going to do with all these IOUs?" So they're taking these IOUs and solving this security-of-supply problem by acquiring deposits and assets around the world to ensure that they will have control of the key raw materials that are needed for their long-range plan.