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FreeWeek is absolutely free to anyone with a Club EWI user ID and password. There’s no obligation to buy, and no credit card information is required.

Lee Cooperman, the billionaire chief executive officer of Omega Advisors Inc., spoke to Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker this morning about his hedge fund’s investments. Cooperman said investing in U.S. Treasuries “makes no sense,” he considers stocks the best investment today and that he likes gold, the S&P and Apple.

“Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.”          ~ Lao Tzu ~
The peculiar vocabulary and concepts inhabiting an options trader’s thoughts are often the source of confusion to visitors to my world. I have often pondered that learning to understand options is a lot like learning a foreign language. When you arrive in the country whose language you seek to learn, you need a functional vocabulary immediately.

Based on my intermediate work, Oracle (ORCL) ended a major bear phase at its Dec 21 low of 24.91 off of its 33.81 high from last October 27. The upmove from 24.91 to the Feb 2 high at 29.25 completed the first upmove in a major recovery rally period.
The minor pullback to the Feb 15 low at 27.90 ended the correction of the prior upmove, which if accurate means that since the Feb 15 low at 27.90 ORCL should be in the early stages of a second major recovery advance that will hurdle key Feb resistance at 29.07-29.25 on the way to 30.80-31.20 thereafter.

Listen to the empty words of the last bailout for Greece. Credibility with the Jackass was lost back on the third bailout, well over a year ago, out of the six bailouts in total. Perhaps it is seven comprehensive final bailouts. The pattern is clear. The politicians, without popular support, forge agreements on debt coverage with the Greek officials. The deals fall through, hit the ground, and expose the lack of support even from the European bankers, led by the Germans. The pattern has been vividly clear for over a year, enough for my dismissal of new accords right away on the basis that the German bankers will not conform and agree to the deals struck. The political leaders in France (Sarkozy) and Germany (Merkel) are due to lose their offices, yet they continue to march around at useless summits attempting to cut last ditch agreements that mean nothing. The people are not willing in Germany to hand over any more than the $3 trillion to date, from the start of the common Euro currency experiment. The bankers, like at the Bundesbank, should attend the summits, but that would be too obvious on where the majority of power is held. What is unfolding is a comprehensive Greek Govt debt default from the inability to contain the situation, the impracticality of the austerity budgets put in place, the wreckage that has come to the Greek Economy, and the intractable solution.

U.S. DOLLAR gold prices held steady just off $1760 an ounce during Wednesday morning trading in London, after a rally in Tuesday’s US session saw gold climb 1.3%.
Silver prices softened slightly but held above $34 per ounce – having through that level on Tuesday following the Greek bailout announcement. Stocks and commodities edged lower this morning, while government bond prices gained.

David Zeiler writes: Never mind the $15 trillion national debt; the government blew $592,000 on a study last year to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop. That’s just one example of government waste described in a recent book by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK. His “Wastebook 2011″ features 100 examples of needless or ill-advised government spending. It adds up to $6.9 billion that America can’t afford. And while such waste is just a fraction of the federal government’s $3.8 trillion budget, a country that needs to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spends should not be throwing money away on non-essential research. Like why chimps throw poop. Here are 17 other things the government wasted tax dollars on last year:

Shah Gilani writes:
It happened almost a year ago, and it’s happening again.
The meteoric rise in Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) stock price is distorting the major benchmark indexes, including the Nasdaq-100, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500.

With Greece in the rearview mirror, investors turned their attention to the risk on trades. The CRB index painted a clear breakout from its consolidation over the past few weeks. This breakout has been confirmed in silver, gold, oil and copper.

Japanese stocks have long tempted value-oriented investors who hope to capitalize on the sclerotic Japanese market’s eventual turnaround. Unfortunately, those gains have proved largely elusive due to the global economy as well as reasons endemic to Japan.

Last year, Japan suffered a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March that led to power shortages that further impaired economic activity. At the same time, the yen’s appreciation and the EU’s sovereign-debt crisis weakened demand for Japanese exports, while flooding in Thailand disrupted the supply chain for global technology companies, including those in Japan.

This week we have a shorter Outside the Box, from my friend David Galland at Casey Research, with an interesting insight into why gold can be considered as a poor investment by some rather influential investors (like Warren Buffett) while others may see it as the core of a diversified portfolio. As usual when I use someone’s material for an OTB, I include a link at the end, if you want to look deeper. The rather large team at Casey Research specializes in gold, natural resources, and energy-related investments, for those with such an investing bent.

Some investors may feel that the Eurozone debt crisis has been resolved by the bailout from the other E.U. members. Whether it has or has not, is irrelevant to the price of gold, or is it?
There are still hurdles in the way, such as the acceptance by private Greek Bondholders of the 53% haircut and low interest rates they will get until 2015. But let’s assume the best and believe they’ll accept the terms. The first market reactions were to move up and hold new levels without any effervescence in any market. The moves had largely been discounted already. Yes, we’re seeing a shift of money from the U.S. Treasury market to the euro but not in large amounts yet. In this piece we look at the overall prospects for the precious metals.

If you study the difference between real or inflation adjusted treasury yields as measured by TIPS and nominal or non inflation adjusted yields you come up with inflation expectations. The Fed has specifically referenced this analysis leading up to QE2. In fact the deflationary trend as measured by TIPS in the summer of 2010 was the basis for expanding their balance sheet.

History has shown us time and again that out of control money supply expansion creates inflation. In light of the trillions of synthetic dollars that have been injected into the economy by the Federal Reserve over the past five years, most observers (this one included) had expected prices to spiral upward. But in making these determinations, many of us forgot to factor in the supply side of the supply/demand equation. Inflation remains low now because of game changing events that have reduced the demand for money.

The recent offering of Facebook stock was the biggest news since a man landed on the Moon. The story was everywhere. Someone said the company is worth $100 billion and that was repeated one-hundred billion times. It is the saturation of noise, more than the supposed price, that should warn investors. This too, shall pass.

U.S. DOLLAR gold bullion prices spiked to $1747 an ounce Tuesday lunchtime in London – a 1.3% gain on last week’s close – as US Markets re-opened to the news that European finance leaders have agreed to bail out Greece.
Silver bullion also spiked, hitting $33.97 per ounce – 1.9% up on the start of the week.

Lately, Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Mountain View, CA-based headquarters have looked more like the clandestine lair of a Bond villain than a business center.
The company has poured more than $120 million dollars into construction projects that are fit to house testing labs and top-secret initiatives with names like "Project X."

Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
Shares of Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) are taking a breather, leaving many investors wondering if they’ve made an iBoo-Boo.
The hottest stock on the Nasdaq has fallen more than 4.6% as I write this since hitting a new intraday high of $526.29 on February 15, 2012.

Looking for another reason for an artificially low unemployment rate?
Consider disability fraud, people claiming disabilities they do not have such as mental illness. Prior to the great recession 33% of applicants claimed mental illness. The number is 43% now.

Was the People’s Bank of China really buying gold at the rate of 1 ounce in every 8 sold worldwide last quarter…?
SO THOSE MILITANT crazies known to the mainstream media as "gold bugs" – and to the FBI as subversives – got the headline they’ve been longing for, apparently, last week.

In this article about the silver price, Will Bancroft takes a look at what the last year has delivered for silver investors, and what the future of silver investment might hold. Read on for more on what Professor Roy Jastram called “the restless metal”.

Benjamin Franklin originally recommended the turkey as the national bird for the U.S. Today, we imagine that after considering the situation being created by the current regime in Washington he might recommend the ostrich as a more appropriate national symbol. With its head buried in the sand to avoid facing critical issues, the U.S. may be ignoring the vulnerabilities in today’s world. For those that are not familiar with the old story of the ostrich with its head in the sand, we submit the following picture of the proposed new U.S. national bird.

WHOLESALE MARKET gold bullion prices held above $1730 an ounce in Monday morning’s London trading – roughly in line with where gold has been for much of February – while European stocks and commodities edged higher amid hopes that policymakers might finally approve Greece’s second bailout. US markets are closed for a holiday.
Silver bullion prices were also fairly flat this morning around $33.50 per ounce.

Less than a year after its introduction, flexible drawdown is available on around three quarters of SIPP plans, research by Investment Life & Pensions Moneyfacts has revealed.

When the April 2011 start date for the facility was confirmed, providers wanting to offer the option at the earliest opportunity had just four months in which to prepare, leading to predictions that only the more fleet of foot specialist SIPP providers might be able to prepare in time.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,729.50, EUR 1,307.36, and GBP 1,090.82 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,732, EUR 1,316.51, and GBP 1,093.09 per ounce.

Brad C writes: My experience with a tax audit, real estate crash, rental house woes, foreclosures, layoff and bankruptcy:
In a nutshell, we went from a 4,000 square foot home, worth more than $1 million, a vacation home, new RV, Mercedes convertible, Jeep, $50,000 SUV, 20 rental properties, a property management company and a great full time job… To living in a modest rental house in the middle of nowhere.

Laurence M. Vance writes: Because I don’t like to pay taxes, I was intrigued by the title of the article by Stephen Foster that I was directed to titled: "102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes." The article is a liberal defense of the legitimacy of the government (usually federal, but sometimes state or local) confiscating a portion of Americans’ incomes and redistributing and reallocating the incomes because the government provides certain services. Implied throughout the article is the myth that none of the 102 things listed "NOT to do" would exist without the government. The above Holmes quote appears at the end of the article.

The metals have recently been consolidating their moves from the December lows and silver along with its mining shares are at a point which deserves watching. Both silver and its shares made bullish divergences at the end of last year and staged a stunning rally in the first month of 2012. Recently, prices have been consolidating those gains.

Dr. Chad Bennis writes: The rally in the US dollar beginning in November of last year saw a series of higher highs and higher lows in the price of the index. While the price action moved higher the stochastic indicator showed a bearish divergence as each successive higher high in the price action was reflected by a lower high in the stochastic indicator. This is known as bearish divergence and means that the current uptrend in price is getting weaker with each higher high in the price of the index.

Capitalism in the neoliberal version has exhausted itself. Financial sharks do not want to lose profits, and shift the main burden of debt to the retirees and the poor. A ghost of the “European Spring” is haunting the Old World and the opponents of capitalism explain people how their lives are being destroyed. This is the topic of the article of a Portuguese economist Guilherme Alves Coelho.

While developed countries continue to print their money as fast as they can to overcome the debt crisis, investors turn their heads to the East. The West introduced sanctions against Iran, but it appears that the Islamic Republic is capable of throwing the world economy into deep crisis.
The European consumers of Iranian oil shudder at the thought that Iran may block the Hormuz Strait in response to the economic sanctions from the West. If it happens, all the efforts aimed at overcoming the financial crisis, will be wasted in an instant.

Oil prices are rocketing. Iranian warships are moving into the Mediterranean to shadow the US warships already there.  Propaganda news is growing with rumors of Al Qaeda links with Iran, and, then, less speculative news about real links between the terror groups and the armed opposition in Syria.
As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi puts it, the smell of war is in the air and on the air, “You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms.”

“That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Josephus B. Stuart, 1817
The fear in the money masters is palpable. Silence, darkness, and the fog of confusion are their most reliable allies.

Were you cursing at your computer screen when silver nearly tripled during the short 9 months from September 2010 to May 2011? Silver at $20 seemed like an insurmountable threshold for quite some time. This caused many silver investors to give up just prior to the ascent, completely missing the ride towards $50. I believe silver is about to offer a similar ride. While it is unlikely to match the 180% advance mentioned above, look for silver to make new highs in the coming months, with the potential to double to $65 by year end.

RBA stood pat early this morning as it kept rates at 4.25% and AUD/USD reacted sharply up to 1.08 levels but was capped at the barrier at 1.08. We expect this level to be challenged.
China early on Friday decided to drain 26 bn yuan from the money market. These are all limiting factors in the risk rally of 2012 and unless you are looking carefully, you may miss these important triggers and on the downside, they will accelerate the falls. Markets unwind differently than when they go up.

Apple (Ticker: AAPL) is doing great these days. In January, the company reported that profits for the holiday quarter more than doubled.
The stock price shot up 8% on the news, and rallied all the way to over $526 per share in the days that followed.

Tired of running out of time and money? Scrimping and saving just to make ends meet?
Try moving to Harlingen, Texas. The cost of living there is only about 40% of the cost of living in Manhattan.

Taking economic data at face value “trusting” the seasonal adjustment is comparable to looking at an income statement and ignoring cash flow. In other words if the income statement says a company generated a profit well the cash flow will be there.
In the case of US economic data the closest thing we have is monthly tax receipts. I will be digging more into this data in the coming weeks and months to get a better sense just how well the economy is doing. For now I wanted to share an analysis based purely on tax receipts.

Elliott waves often correct in terms of Fibonacci ratios. The following article, adapted from the eBook How You Can Use Fibonacci to Improve Your Trading, explains what you can expect when a market begins a corrective phase. Learn how you can read the entire 14-page eBook below.

By Robert Ross, Casey Research This week, President Obama released his $3.8-trillion budget for fiscal year 2013. The plan calls for new taxes on the wealthy, a restructuring of the tax code, and short-term infrastructure spending aimed at boosting the economy (albeit artificially).
Also included in the budget are limitations on subsidies for oil and gas companies, an end to the Bush tax cuts, and a proposal to raise taxes on dividends, which could be as high as 39.6% for households making over $250,000 per year.

This has definitely been the most interesting day of the year so far. The market tried gapping up again today, but that gap up took all the major index charts into overbought territory once again on those daily charts. RSI’s near 80, once again, on the Nasdaq, with the S&P 500 also joining the party into overbought, with readings in the lower 70′s. You just can’t have the market staying overbought time-after-time after some small selling episodes.

Lesser resource companies have been slowly starving to death since the capital faucet was turned off in 2008. What’s left? Some exciting, early-stage companies with management teams industrious enough to make it through with promising projects on the horizon. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Tom MacNeill, CEO of 49 North Resources Inc., a Saskatchewan-focused resource investment company, discusses some names his firm is excited about, including some primed to debut on the public markets soon.

Despite a volatile year for gold prices in 2011, demand for the precious metal still remained strong. According to the latest World Gold Council’s annual report, gold demand totaled 4,067.1 tonnes, a slight increase from the prior year. Record low interest rates, inflation expectations and investment demand continued to drive the gold bull market.

GLD broke its Broadening Wedge trendline and appears ready to launch into an approximate 20% decline from the trendline.  While the next support is intermediate-term trend support at 162.68, there are no other supports between it and the daily cycle bottom (not shown) currently at 131.55. 

Today’s pop in natural gas impacted the ProShares Ultra DJ UBS Natural Gas ETF (BOIL) positively, with the latter’s price structure climbing above its February resistance line (green) and continuing towards a confrontation with more significant resistance at 14.50/55.
A close above 14.55 should trigger upside continuation and acceleration to 15.20/50. At this juncture, only a decline that breaks 13.50 will begin to compromise the timing of the upside breakout.

Over the past few years, the fortunes of Europe’s euro currency have appeared to significantly influence the US stock markets.  This rather-curious relationship has proved vexing at times to American traders, as it doesn’t seem logical on the surface.  But given the high correlation between the US stock markets and the euro, prudent traders can’t ignore its impact.  And the euro’s state today is very bullish for US stocks.

Vanguard Group founder John Bogle spoke with Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu yesterday at the Bloomberg Link Portfolio Manager Mash-Up conference in New York.
Bogle said that lower tax rates for certain types of gains earned by private equity firms are “ridiculous” and “I’m arguing for the capital gains rate taxable as ordinary income.”

We like Warren Buffett. We respect Warren Buffett. We’d love to sit and have lunch with him one day. As an investor, Warren Buffett is in a class all of his own. But the Oracle of Omaha just keeps bashing gold at every opportunity.
In an article published in Fortune Magazine, based on his upcoming annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, Buffett again dismissed the yellow metal. It is hard to argue with a man whose bank balance is a zillion times bigger than yours. Obviously he has been right plenty and has the bank balance to prove it.
But meantime, all the while that he has been bashing gold, it has bulldozed its way up and gold bugs have been laughing all the way to the bank.

“Financial currency inflated hell by global debt monetization is the condition from which there is no escape, except through burning down the old system and making a new one. This is the dead end sign at the end of the road for can kicking. It is the condition of financial perdition. It is not something coming in a distant future. It is here and now, clear and present, if you have the eyes to see.

In World War I severe material shortages played havoc with production schedules and caused lengthy delays in implementing programs. This led to development of the Harbord List – a list of 42 materials deemed critical to the military.
After World War II the United States created the National Defense Stockpile (NDS) to acquire and store critical strategic materials for national defense purposes. The Defense Logistics Agency Strategic Materials (DLA Strategic Materials) oversees operations of the NDS and their primary mission is to “protect the nation against a dangerous and costly dependence upon foreign sources of supply for critical materials in times of national emergency.”

We mentioned Wednesday that we were interested in the charts of gold and gold mining stocks. Gold mining stocks responded today with sharp gains. Given that more money printing is on the way (much more), we added gold and gold mining stocks to our allocation today. Gold has been correcting for two weeks allowing for an improved risk/reward entry. Gold remains $195 below its peak made last year, and $37 below its recent early February peak.

SPOT MARKET prices for buying gold held just above $1730 an ounce during flat trading this morning in London, as speculation continued over whether a Greek bailout will be agreed next week.
Prices for buying silver were also very flat – hovering above $33.50 an ounce – as were those for commodities and stocks ahead of President’s Day in the US on Monday.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,732, EUR 1,316.51, and GBP 1,093.09 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,716, EUR 1,320.51, and GBP 1,094.74 per ounce.

This is somewhat of a things that make you go hmmmmmm exercise, but lets examine this 1356 number for a second here. The SP 500 hit 1356 today and put on the brakes and reversed down to 1341 in a possible terminal top move.
1356 actually has fibonacci relationships. If we take the last major rally which was from the Summer 2010 lows:

Since financial stocks make up 14% of the S&P 500 Index, it is difficult to sustain a rally without strength in banks and financial services firms. With the Fed and ECB opening up the liquidity fire hydrant in late December 2011, bank stocks experienced another in a series of monster bailout rallies. As outlined below, the Financials Select Sector ETF (XLF) may be poised to give back some gains over the coming sessions based on numerous factors including reduced odds of QE3.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,716.00, EUR 1,320.51, and GBP 1,094.74 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,725.50, EUR 1,309.88, and GBP 1,099.33 per ounce.
The World Gold Council released its comprehensive report today, “Gold Demand Trends Q4 and Full Year 2011” looking at demand in gold demand in full year 2011 and the 4th quarter of 2011.

Like it or not, we are still in an equity bear market rally. In its maturing phase it is ditinguished by six month old upward wedges in key indexes and stocks all quietly edging up into their apexes on declining volume. This is also a time when you would expect to see signs of bullish expectations remerging from the earlier seas of despair.  Last week it was an email from an excited technical analysis based equity market newsletter announcing to all, that there are and I quote . . . . “ ‘70 Stocks poised to make Big Moves’, Tuesday’s Q1 Stock Picking Session turned into a Stock Picking. Love Fest! Xxx xxxxxx discussed 70 stock trading candidates of all shapes and sizes, along with the reasons WHY they could make big moves”. The date of this email was February 9th 2012.  There was also the NAAIM Survey of Manager Sentiment illustrated below. 

Bill Van Auken writes: The “tide of war is receding” is a phrase President Barack Obama has employed ad nauseam—once in his State of the Union address, twice in the course of remarks last month at the unveiling of the Pentagon’s new military strategy document, once again during his speech at the United Nations, also in his announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a Veteran’s Day address.

The Moneyfacts Pick of the Week showcases the best of the latest products to hit the consumer finance market.
Brief product details together with independent Moneyfacts analysis can be used with confidence in your finance sections. You can select one or two products to sit beside a relevant story or use them all as a general feature.

David Zeiler writes:
For members of Congress, the only thing better than getting "pork" for the folks back home is getting a slice of that pork for themselves.
Pork, also known as earmarks, describes the long-standing Congressional practice of steering tax money back to home districts to pay for expensive, constituent-pleasing projects.

Don Miller writes:
Warren Buffett last week did more than warn investors on the dangers of low interest rates and inflation.
The Oracle of Omaha also had harsh words for traditional bonds.
In a Fortune article Buffett went so far as to say, "Right now bonds should come with a warning label."

Martin Hutchinson writes:
In today’s market, dividend investing is the best way to achieve a decent income stream without taking on too much risk.
On the other hand, this is also true: emerging markets give investors the benefit of the world’s fastest economic growth.
Investors would be wise then to combine these two strategies by buying emerging markets stocks that pay steady dividends.

Some people like to get outside on the weekends, maybe playing tennis or working in the yard. Some people like to visit their friends or cook a big meal or go out to see a movie. And some people who are passionate about their work — such as Elliott Wave International’s futures analyst Jeffrey Kennedy — like to stare at hundreds of price charts on their computer screen to find patterns that point to trade setups. We used to worry for his health but not anymore, because he’s been doing it for years and he comes up with some neat stuff. A case in point is his discovery of a two-bar pattern that he named the Popgun. Find out more in this excerpt from the Club EWI eBook, How to Use Bar Patterns to Spot Trade Setups.

…(More on the Theory and Reasoning of the Contracting Fibonacci Spiral)
My old history teacher in high school once said that “It is amazing that we live in a period of time where access to historical records have been thoroughly documented so that humankind can learn from mistakes of former civilizations. Instead we as a society tend to choose the easy way out, make the same mistakes and never learn from history”. Governments throughout history have attempted to manipulate the masses so that the upper elite can have access to greater control. This has been done through propaganda etc. with no consideration for the future or examination of historical consequences.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,725.50, EUR 1,309.88, and GBP 1,099.33 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,721.00, EUR 1,303.10, and GBP 1,091.80 per ounce.

Jack Barnes writes:
SandRidge Energy Inc. (NYSE: SD) is a company that I’m very familiar with – and yet it’s an enigma even to me.
I mean that quite literally.
You see, I recently paid a visit to the SandRidge building during a trip to Oklahoma City. After getting my security badge, I began to make my way to the 12th floor.

Michael Robinson writes:
I can explain the impact of President Obama’s new defense budget to investors in one word – mergers.
Indeed, the M&A field will remain a driving force in the defense sector for at least the next two years.
The good news for tech investors is that Obama’s focus fits with the Pentagon’s push for more high-tech breakthroughs.

David Stockman’s Viewpoint on the Obama Budget Disaster

Passing a Federal Budget is a rarity, especially under the administration of a committed Marxist. The Democratic Senate’s strangle hold on bringing up legislation, particularly a budget, goes without saying. What makes this new budget for 2013 any different? This time the day of reckoning hits hard the first of the next year. The recent interview with David Stockman on the Fox Business channel with Neil Cavuto is an extraordinary analysis why the economy will absorb a frightful tax increase all at one time. The fallout to commerce could become the real end of the world scenario. Take the time and watch the insightful observations from a courageous number cruncher who served this nation with distinction during the Reagan Presidency.

You may have seen them already but some of them were so, so bad (and some pretty good) that we just had to say something about them.
Yep, we’re talking about the Fed Valentine’s.

Central Banks and their rounds of quantitative easing is something which is garnering more and more attention at the moment. The Central Banks defend their actions by arguing it will boost the economy, but we ask what it will do for the savers? They now face negative real interest rates, plus counterparty risk when their savings are left in the banking system. Jan Skoyles outlines why gold investment may be a more sensible place to place your savings.

“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”- Henry Miller
With each passing week it seems this country spirals further into the depths of a frightening dystopian fantasy reminiscent of Huxley and Orwell’s dark world of isolation, fear and government brutality portrayed in their masterpieces Brave New World and 1984. I keep speculating whether it’s me that’s crazy and not the things I’m witnessing on a daily basis. The President signs the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by an overwhelming majority of Congress, which allows the government to imprison American citizens indefinitely without charge. And there is barely a squeak from the docile masses as they are soothed by Obama promising to never use that part of the law. I bet you $10,000 a President will invoke that portion of the NDAA in the very near future.

Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist, Casey Research writes: The Fukushima disaster reminded us all of the dangers inherent in uranium-fueled nuclear reactors. Fresh news yesterday about Tepco’s continued struggle to contain and cool the fuel rods highlights just how energetic uranium fission reactions are and how challenging to control. Of course, that level of energy is exactly why we use nuclear energy – it is incredibly efficient as a source of power, and it creates very few emissions and carries a laudable safety record to boot.

By forcing interest rates to record low levels, the Federal Reserve has effectively vaporized most interest income along with most of the ability to benefit from compound interest, with devastating results for many retirees, retirement investors and pension funds. 
However, in the process of creating artificially low interest rates for an entire economy, the Fed has also opened up unusually profitable opportunities for individual investors with certain types of investments.  Record-low interest rate levels are the most powerful of six different factors that are currently working together to increase owner cash flows from the purchase (or refinancing) of investment real estate in the United States. 

The bottom-building processing in natural gas and its related ETFs continues, these ETFs including the U.S. Natural Gas Fund ETF (UNG) and ProShares Ultra DJ UBS Natural Gas ETF (BOIL).
The BOIL pattern begins to round to the upside towards a confrontation with its Jan-Feb resistance line, now at 13.95, which if hurdled and sustained should trigger upside follow-through directly to test the prior rally peak at 14.55 (hit on Feb 7).

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson understood "The Monster". But to most Americans today, "Federal Reserve" is just a name on the dollar bill. They have no idea of what the central bank does to the economy, or to their own economic lives; of how and why it was founded and operates; or of the sound money and banking that could end the statism, inflation, and business cycles that the Fed generates.

Wall Street is extolling the virtues of our rising U.S. trade deficit as a sure sign the economy is well on the road to a full and viable recovery. It was reported last week that our level of trade imbalance jumped to a six-month high in December to $48.8 billion (up 3.7%), from $47.1 billion in the prior month. For all of 2011, the shortfall grew 12% to $558 billion, the most since 2008.

Sometime between 1500 and 1565 a large graphite deposit was discovered in Cumbria, England. Because the graphite was extremely pure and solid it could easily be sawed into sticks. The graphite was actually thought to be a form of lead and called plumbago – Latin for lead ore.
The Borrowable Mine was soon ordered to be put under armed guard by Queen Elizabeth because the “lead” could be used to line the moulds for making her armies cannonballs. But black marketers managed to smuggle out the graphite for continued use in pencils. Artists from all over the known world quickly learned to appreciate the qualities of Cumbria’s graphite but it wasn’t until 1795 that Nicholas Conte learned to mix graphite powder with clay and fire it in a furnace to actually make something with the equivalent quality of Borrowables plumbago.

THE WHOLESALE market gold price eased to $1713 per ounce Tuesday lunchtime – 1.1% down on the previous day’s high – while stock and commodity markets were broadly flat despite several European countries having their sovereign ratings or outlooks lowered last night.
The silver price dipped to $33.37 per ounce – a 0.8% fall on last week’s close.

David Zeiler writes:
U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposal will give Republicans and Democrats plenty to fight about.
The $3.8 trillion budget proposal, submitted to Congress, essentially follows the blueprint President Obama outlined in his State of the Union address.

Martin Hutchinson writes:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may think he has everything under control, but the truth is the monetary ground is literally shifting beneath our feet.
That’s why his loose monetary policy has some U.S. states looking to get into the gold coin business.

Quantitative easing has not worked as advertised so far. Why push ahead with more…?
"YOU’VE lost control – Bank of England takes over," says the Bank of England’s cute little game for school-kids if you let the hot-air balloon you control crash into the ground, rather than happily floating it around the 2.0% annual inflation target.

Advocates of government stimulus are running victory laps on recent developments that appear to vindicate their strategy. In particular, Paul Krugman compares the sluggish growth in Europe to the somewhat-less-sluggish growth in the US to prove that stimulus was more effective than austerity. Other economists are using government inflation measures to defend Fed Chairman Bernanke’s easy-money policy. The only problem is, they’re calling the race before the finish line is even in sight.

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis is a national bestseller that discusses the serious financial threats facing the U.S. dollar.  Readers will discover that currency wars have happened before and they always end badly.  The U.S. dollar is currently at the center of a new currency war, which threatens its very existence.

It wasn’t just the U.S. and Europe that took on massive debt loads to provide the extraordinary global stimulus efforts that prevented the 2008 financial meltdown from morphing into the next ‘Great Depression’. China also provided massive stimulus to its economy, and in the process is thought to have taken on much more debt than it has revealed.

My near- and intermediate-term work indicate that the iShares Barclays 20 Year Treasury ETF (TLT) established a significant corrective low at 114.62 on Feb 9 and that since then the price structure is doing the work to create a powerfully bullish technical set-up that should propel it towards 120 in a hurry.

Many religious conservatives understandably are upset with the latest Obamacare mandate, which will require religious employers (including Catholic employers) to provide birth control to workers receiving healthcare benefits. This mandate includes certain birth control devices that are considered abortifacients, like IUDs and the “morning after” pill.

SPOT MARKET gold prices touched $1733 per ounce Monday morning – 0.5% up on last week’s close – as stock markets, commodities and the Euro all rallied following Greece’s vote in favor of new austerity measures.
Silver prices meantime hovered around $33.90 per ounce – 0.8% up on the end of last week – while government bond prices dipped and the Dollar fell on the currency markets.

Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,727.00, EUR 1,302.22, and GBP 1,093.17 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,715.50, EUR 1,295.21, and GBP 1,084.25 per ounce.

Jack Barnes writes:
If you listen to the talking heads, there is no end in sight to the Euro crisis.
Even with the European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO), Greece is still making all the headlines.