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To All CIGAs,
I really do CARE. Take delivery of all your gold. Be your own safe deposit.
I was feeling a little nosey, so I thought I would look in on you and see if you’re sitting at your computer and if you’re OK.
Yup, there you are and you look great!
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Something is extremely rotten in Denmark.
Rationing means a shortage of supply. Higher prices have always relieved tight supply dilemmas.
The Return of Gold and Silver Eagle Rationing
Posted by: Michael | Posted in: US Mint
Monday, December 14, 2009
In a return to the situation experienced during most of 2008 and the first half of 2009, the limited number of gold and silver bullion coins available from the US Mint are subject to rationing.
US Mint bullion coins are not sold directly to the public. These coins are distributed through a network of authorized purchasers, who resell the coins to other bullion dealers and the public. During times when demand for the bullion coins has exceeded the amount the US Mint was able to supply, the Mint has rationed coins at the authorized purchaser level through an "allocation program."
On November 25, 2009, the US Mint had announced the suspension of sales for one ounce American Gold Eagle and American Silver Eagle bullion coins. Sales of the Silver Eagles resumed on December 7, 2009, but sales were subject to rationing. Sales of the one ounce Gold Eagles will resume tomorrow December 15, also subject to allocation.
Separately, the US Mint offered fractional weight 2009 Gold Eagle bullion coins on December 3, 2009. On the first day of sales, the entire inventory of one-tenth ounce coins was depleted and the inventory of one-quarter and one-half ounce coins was reduced limited status. The remaining inventory of one-quarter and one-half ounce coins was rationed. Today, the US Mint will sell another batch of fractional Gold Eagles to its authorized purchasers. All available coins will be subject to the rationing process.
The US Mint used the allocation program for the first time during 2008. The one ounce Silver Eagle bullion coins had been subject to rationing from April 21, 2008 to June 15, 2009. The one ounce Gold Eagle bullion coins had been rationed from August 15, 2008 to June 15, 2009. Fractional weight gold bullion coins completely unavailable for most of this time. The long standing allocation programs had negative impacts for both precious metals investors and coin collectors.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Hey don’t be angry with me. This came from the Wall Street Journal.
So did Bear Stearns who also locked and loaded AIG.
Goldman Fueled AIG Gambles
Wall Street Titan’s Role Shown in Journal Analysis; Firm Says Problems Hidden
By SERENA NG and CARRICK MOLLENKAMP
DECEMBER 12, 2009
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. played a bigger role than has been publicly disclosed in fueling the mortgage bets that nearly felled American International Group Inc.
Goldman was one of 16 banks paid off when the U.S. government last year spent billions closing out soured trades that AIG made with the financial firms.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of AIG’s trades, which were on pools of mortgage debt, shows that Goldman was a key player in many of them, even the ones involving other banks.
Goldman originated or bought protection from AIG on about $33 billion of the $80 billion of U.S. mortgage assets that AIG insured during the housing boom. That is roughly twice as much as Société Générale and Merrill Lynch, the banks with the biggest exposure to AIG after Goldman, according an analysis of ratings-firm reports and an internal AIG document that details several financial firms’ roles in the transactions.
In Goldman’s biggest deal, it acted as a middleman between AIG and banks, taking on the risk of as much as $14 billion of mortgage-related investments. Then Goldman insured that risk with one trading partner—AIG, according to the Journal’s analysis and people familiar with the trades.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Please give serious though to taking delivery of your gold and storing it in a personal safe deposit.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Please look at this video as it outlines the status of the US economic recovery.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Actually I like trading from the long side on coffee, sugar and milk. I also like drinking it as well.
Fastest Food Inflation Since Riots Means Milk Up 39%
By Alan Bjerga, Madelene Pearson and Yi Tian
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) — Falling production in commodities from rice to milk is bad news for just about everyone except investors.
Rice may surge 63 percent to $1,038 a metric ton from $638 on Philippine imports and a shortage in India, a Bloomberg survey of importers, exporters and analysts showed. The U.S. government says nonfat dry milk may jump 39 percent next year, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasts a 25 percent gain for sugar. Global food costs jumped 7 percent in November, the most since February 2008, four months before reaching a record, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Farm prices this year lagged behind copper futures that doubled and oil’s 57 percent increase. A recovery from the worst recession since World War II would spur food demand and boost costs for buyers of commodities including milk processor Dean Foods Co. while increasing the number of hungry people that the UN says now exceeds 1 billion.
“Agricultural commodities will be a great investment in the next three to five years,” said Oliver Kratz, who manages $10 billion as head of Global Thematic Strategy investments at Deutsche Bank AG’s DB Advisors in New York, including $3 billion in agriculture. For those who can’t afford to pay more for food, there’s the “painful” risk of hunger, he said.
Expanding populations and higher incomes are boosting consumption in China and India. China’s milk demand is recovering after domestic supplies were tainted with melamine, a chemical used in making plastics that killed at least six babies and sickened almost 300,000 children. Droughts in India and Argentina and typhoons in the Philippines have reduced output.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
When the Taliban sees you coming they do not stand there and become targets.
For centuries the strategy has been to all fall down, bury your weapons and join the refugees. Later you all stand up, dig up your weapons and get back to business.
Over 40,000 flee looming operation in Pakistan’s tribal area
www.chinaview.cn 
2009-12-14 16:17:10
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) — The upcoming military operation in northwest Pakistan’s Orakzai tribal agency has triggered yet another wave of people fleeing the conflict, local media reported Monday.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said the operation in the Taliban base of South Waziristan was successful and the security forces will open new front against militants in neighboring Orakzai region, but he did not set any date for the new operation.
More than 40,000 civilians have shifted to nearby Hangu and Kohat districts even before the prime minister’s announcement that the government has a full-fledged military operation on its mind in Orakzai to eliminate the fugitive Taliban leaders.
An official report said that an additional 10,000 families would probably flee the looming military operation in the troubledagency. The authorities are yet to start formal registration of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the area. However, the registration may be commenced next week.
The majority of the dislocated people in Hangu and Kohat are living with host families. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas(FATA) Secretariat notified the establishment of IDP camp in Hangudistrict to accommodate the incoming uprooted families. Eighty tents had been pitched in Hangu at a high school near Hangu City. The IDPs are yet to come to the camp as only eight families have taken shelter in this facility.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
1. Israel makes a major miscalculation.
2. Pakistan goes Taliban.
3. Turkey is a victim.
It is getting close.
Secret document exposes Iran’s nuclear trigger
Catherine Philp in Washington
December 14, 2009
Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.
The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.
An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 — specifically, work on a neutron initiator.
The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan’s bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint.
“Although Iran might claim that this work is for civil purposes, there is no civil application,” said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, which has analysed hundreds of pages of documents related to the Iranian programme. “This is a very strong indicator of weapons work.”
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
It’s coming!
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Gold is the inverse of the dollar. The dollar is going to have a very difficult winter.
It does not end there as downward spirals continue until corrective actions occur at the economic source of the problem.
The problem is OTC derivatives and they are so far beyond corrective action with loopholes in the new financial legislation large enough to drive an 18 wheeler through sideways.
The dollar is history as the reserve currency of choice. Now it is the reserve currency of being stuck, and awaiting a diversification.
Gold rises as Dubai debt news weighs on dollar
Traders eye last Fed policy meeting of 2009
Jan Harvey
LONDON — Reuters Published on Monday, Dec. 14, 2009 7:13AM EST
Gold prices rose 0.8 per cent in Europe on Monday as news that Dubai had averted a debt default sharpened appetite for risk, pressuring the dollar and boosting higher-yielding currencies such as the euro.
Spot gold was bid at $1,122.55 (U.S.) an ounce at 1021 GMT, against $1,113.85 late in New York on Friday. U.S. gold futures for February delivery on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $3.70 to $1,123.60 an ounce.
News broke earlier on Monday that Abu Dhabi had given its debt-laden neighbour Dubai a $10-billion lifeline, heading off a bond default. The news lifted assets perceived as higher risk, such as stocks and higher-yielding currencies, and pressured the dollar.
“Stock markets have recovered and that indicates that at least a little more risk-taking is coming back into the market,” said Peter Fertig, a consultant at Germany’s Quantitative Commodity Research.
“That is usually positive for gold via the U.S. dollar, because more risk-taking means investors are shifting out of the safe-haven dollar into risky assets.”
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
The Banksters are saved by the Gangsters.
What a world we live in.
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.
Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.
"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Sure, with OPM (other people’s money).
Citi bids farewell to TARP.
Citigroup (C) said Monday it will sell $17B in shares and $3.5B in tangible equity units to repay the $20B in TARP funds it owes. The Treasury will sell up to $5B of its Citi shares concurrently, and will exit its entire 34% stake over the next 6-12 months. Citi will also terminate its $250B loss-sharing agreement with the government, and will no longer be considered a beneficiary of "exceptional financial assistance" under TARP beginning in 2010. Citi also said it will issue another $1.7B in shares to employees in lieu of cash they would have otherwise received. The move will lower Citi’s amortization expense by $0.5B/year, and its interest expenses by $0.1B/year. CEO Pandit: "We owe the American taxpayers a debt of gratitude and recognize our obligation to support the economic recovery through lending and assistance to homeowners and other borrowers in need." Shares -2.5% premarket.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Do you clearly understand the implications of this statement and the "MOPE – Pretend and Extend" nature of the economic recovery?
Jobs before deficit.
With one government official acknowledging that it would be "suicide" to put the deficit before jobs, top White House adviser Larry Summers said creating jobs would take priority over tackling the ballooning federal deficit and suggested that employment growth could kick in by spring, which was more optimistic than prior forecasts. The federal deficit stood at $1.4T for the year ended Sept. 30, and Congress will debate this month whether to raise the $12.1T ceiling on the federal debt to ensure the U.S. doesn’t default.
