Norcini has been stunningly accurate in his predictions of the movement in the gold and silver markets. Now the acclaimed trader discusses these incredibly important developments in key markets: “Yesterday was one of those days in which the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve made a point of saying everything he needed to say in order to cover all of the bases. No matter who was listening they were sure to hear what they wanted.

He had to let the market know that the Fed was mindful of not pulling the plug on the QE program too soon. He chose those words to start his talk. The effect was immediate – the precious metals markets roared to life and stock markets shot to yet another all-time high. Even crude oil did its upward levitation act by surging higher on those initial comments….

Continue reading the Dan Norcini interview here…

But most Americans are only focused on the short-term because the mainstream media is only focused on the short-term. Things are good this week and things were good last week, so there is nothing to worry about, right? Read more here…

Leeb: “In addition to being focused on the gyrations in the gold and silver market and whether we have now successfully tested a bottom, the bigger picture is that the world remains a mess. Yes, eventually all of the money that is floating out there is going to lead to inflation, but there are also a great many other problems that governments around the globe will have to contend with.

Clearly Europe is not out of trouble. Spain, as an example, is literally ruling with fear. Their government is staying in power by virtue of fear. The public is scared that if they drop out of the euro all hell will break loose. That’s what the government is telling them. I don’t think the government of Spain can keep the populace at bay using fear for much longer….

Continue reading the Stephen Leeb interview here…

So much for calm negotiations.

Auto maker Mercedes-Benz said a two-day wildcat stoppage at its East London plant had ended but the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) squashed any relief with an immediate demand for a 20 percent pay rise.

“If our demands are not met we will have no option but to go to the streets,” NUMSA national treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo told Reuters.

The currency extended its two-week slide after police confirmed that security guards had fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing wildcat strikers at a chrome mine near the platinum belt town of Rustenburg, 120 km (70 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

The mining firm, Germany’s Laxness, said the guards had fired rubber bullets in self-defence into the ground in front of protesters.

“Strike season” appears to have come early in South Africa this year:

Last week, the platinum firm Lonmin suffered a wildcat walkout at Marikana shortly after an unknown gunman shot dead a senior union official in a bar, and the National Union of Mineworkers said it would push for a pay rise of a staggering 60 percent for some categories of miner.

South Africa’s car makers saw minor labor disruptions in 2012 but investors fear a repeat of the wage-related strikes that crippled the sector in 2010 as the economy was struggling to emerge from recession.

Car industry bosses said they would not entertain NUMSA’s latest demands, setting the stage for a showdown when a three-year wage deal worth around 10 percent a year expires at the end of next month.

“It is common cause that the employers will not settle at 20 percent,” said Thapelo Molapo, chairman of the Automobile Manufacturing Employers’ Organisation.

Ironically, the local instability has translated into a plunge in the local currency which recently printed at 9.50 to the dollar, the weakest since early 2009, and with the slide accelerating another 6% in the past two weeks, inflation in South Africa is set to accelerate even more, pushing for even higher wage demands, which will be met with even more hostility and resistance out of local foreign companies.

“There is no way people are going to carry on putting their money in here when there are impending strikes in one of the biggest sectors in South Africa,” said Kyle Dutton, a broker at Mercato Financial Services in Johannesburg.

While for now it is the automotive sector that has seen the bulk of the wage “negotiations”, expect this to spill over to all other industries, and specifically the critical mining sector, where South Africa is a sizable producer for both platinum and gold. We can’t wait to see just how the spin machine justifies the halt of their production with more double digit drop in gold and/or silver, both of which are now trading with the forced credibility of pennystocks, and where 10% daily trade ranges are the real new normal.

(Reuters) – A draft European Union law voted on Monday would shield small depositors from losing their savings in bank rescues, but customers with over 100,000 euros in savings when a bank failed could suffer losses.

On Monday, a group of European lawmakers in the house’s economics committee voted that, from 2016, large depositors in the European Union might suffer losses if a bank gets into serious trouble, echoing a deal in Cyprus where wealthy depositors were hit hard at two banks to save the country from bankruptcy.

Under the EU proposal, a bank would only dip into large deposits of over 100,000 euros once it had exhausted other avenues such as shareholders and bondholders.

he draft law will need the approval of the EU’s 27 finance ministers and the over 750 lawmakers in the parliament before it can become law.

(Reporting By Claire Davenport. Editing by Andre Grenon)

We wish the mineworker union godspeed, and the best of luck, as in the current full retard gold supply/demand environment, only a complete halt in South African mining production will accelerate gold’s price plunging to sub-extraction costs, as miner after miner mothball operations, only to see even further paper liquidation taking the price to laughably low levels (and why not negative?) yet making purchases of physical product completely impossible as there simply will be none left in the supply channel. Read more here…

From Kingworldnews.com
Today whistleblower Andrew Maguire told King World News that massive global physical demand reveals that gold is in fact in a full-fledged bull market. Maguire, who recently appeared in the extraordinary CBC production titled, “The Secret World of Gold,” also spoke with KWN about what’s happening with GLD, bullion banks and the LBMA. Here is what Maguire had to say in part I of an extraordinary series of interviews to be released today.
Maguire: “Let’s take a minute now and take the blinkers off of this so-called ‘bear market’ in gold. You cannot have a bear market when even the officially reported demand is surging to its highest levels in 18 months.

On top of this official data we also know that wholesale demand is exponentially larger. We see this by monitoring the less transparent daily wholesale market, and those outflows are not even recorded in this data….

Continue reading the Andrew Maguire interview here…

From our friends at Kingworldnews.com
Today King World News is reporting on important developments taking place in key markets. Acclaimed commodity trader Dan Norcini told KWN, “This really is an incredible battle that is taking place right now between the physical market and the paper market in both gold and silver.” Norcini also discussed what to expect going forward in many of the key markets.

Norcini has been stunningly accurate in his predictions of the movement in the gold and silver markets. Now the acclaimed trader discusses these incredibly important developments in key markets: “You cannot create the kind of money the world is printing and not have any repercussions, no impact, no consequences whatsoever. It simply defies everything we have ever learned about economics.

The mindset in the West is that there is no inflation regardless of what the central banks are doing with the money creation. Today lumber futures made a 7 month low. That collapse in price is startling considering the US is supposed to be on the mend with regards to housing.

But as a result of slumping commodity prices such as lumber, demand for paper gold has been falling…Read more here…

Kaye: “The paper gold price has been driven well down. We’re nowhere close to when gold peaked above $1,900. We’re in the low $1,400s as I speak now, Eric.

So price has gone down, but what about volume (in gold)? Well, I can tell you that volumes in China year over year are up four to five times. I can tell you that volumes in Thailand, a similar amount (to China, up four to five times). Read more here…

Since that moment, many were curious if this may not be the start of the proverbial “run on the vault”, and whether JPM’s COMEX holdings could actually run out, and if so what happens then. And finally: is the dramatic plunge in gold related to any of this (and certainly to the Bundesbank’s repatriation of NY Fed gold for the next five years)? In the ensuing days, JPM’s Eligible gold fluctuated in a tight range, until today, when another 22,780 oz were withdrawn from Blythe Masters’ metals cellar, bringing JPM’s eligible gold to a fresh record low of only 137,377 troy ounces. Read more here…