Central Banks In 2012 Bought 536 Tonnes Of Gold, The Most In Half A Century

So reports Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

"[C]entral banks around the world bought more bullion last year in terms of tonnage than at any time in almost half a century.

"They added a net 536 tonnes in 2012 as they diversified fresh reserves away from the four fiat suspects: dollar, euro, sterling, and yen."

In dollar terms with gold at $1,600 the ounce, 536 tonnes is an allocation of roughly $30.26 billion to gold by central banks in 2012, conservatively speaking.

To put central bank demand in 2012 in its context, compare this from Reuters, here:


Jewellery buying, the largest demand segment, fell 4.4 percent to 1,885 tonnes [in 2012]. Global coin minting is forecast to have dropped to a four-year low of 199 tonnes, down 19 percent from the previous year. ... On the supply side of the market, mine supply is expected to tick up 1.5 percent to 1,389 tonnes in the first half [of 2013].

In other words, falling demand in jewellery and coin minting was offset to some extent by central bank buying in 2012, supporting the price of gold, which began the year near $1,600 and ended it near $1,650.

The bankers obviously saw 2012 as a buying opportunity in the wake of weak demand.

Separately, as I noted here, central bank purchases year over year in March 2012 had ramped up to 400 tons from 156 in the prior period.

Predictions last summer, when prices were at their 2012 nadir, that central bank purchases going forward would come in at roughly 375 tons max obviously underestimated the reality significantly, way over 40%.

Republican Chuck Hagel Would Gut Our Nuclear Arsenal

The guy would totally sell us out, which is why Obama wants him for Secretary of Defense. What better way to achieve the Democrat goal of unilateral disarmament than blaming it on a Republican?

Story here:

As senators and their staff prepare to examine Hagel’s nomination to the Pentagon, it is critical that they closely and carefully scrutinize Hagel about the implications of his public proposals to slash the U.S. nuclear arsenal for their states—and, most importantly, for America’s national security. Understanding these implications are all the more important, given that President Obama still has not fully lived up to his 2010 promise to Congress to modernize the U.S. nuclear deterrent, the ultimate guarantor of America’s national security.  What’s troubling is that Senate confirmation of Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense almost certainly assures that the president never will.

Sen. Baucus, Author Of One Size Fits All ObamaCare, Rejects One Size Gun Laws

As reported here:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) indicated he was hesitant about supporting new legislation.

“Enforcing the laws we already have on the books is good first step, and it's clear more needs to be done to address access to mental health care,” he said in a Wednesday statement. “Before passing new laws, we need a thoughtful debate that respects responsible, law-abiding gun owners in Montana instead of ... one-size-fits all directives from Washington."

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Ann Coulter's Hero, NJ Gov. Chris Christie, Will Never Be President

Gov. Christie shows his true colors in attacking the NRA ad which points out Obama's hypocrisy for denying your children armed protection in schools while making sure his kids have it, effectively forever.

Gov. Christie is obviously fighting to survive his reelection fight in NJ, but any Republican who suggests, as Ann Coulter has, that Christie is the preferred Republican candidate for president is smoking what Obama wants to legalize.

Story here.

Why isn't the conservative Ann Coulter married? Shouldn't she be having children by now? Or is the future of America of no interest to her?

Naked Capitalism Is All In For Oliver Stone's Favorite Commie, Henry Wallace

The number of dopes swallowing Oliver Stone's latest lies about Henry Wallace grows, but NC is too smart to be a mere victim. It's a true believer.

Here.

Conrad Black has a good counter at National Review, just out, here, featuring a lengthy quotation from expert Ron Radosh (italicized below):

With mounting incredulity and alarm — like, I am sure, many readers — I have watched the exhumation, by Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, and other members of a leftist claque of revisionist historians and pseudo-historians, of the putrefied historic corpse of Vice President Henry Agard Wallace. Wallace was the eccentric and impressionable son of the agriculture secretary who served under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, and Wallace himself held the same position under Franklin D. Roosevelt for eight years. When FDR broke a tradition as old as the republic by running for a third term in the war emergency of 1940, he astounded and scandalized his party by choosing Wallace as his running mate. ...

Wallace would have created [as president] an American foreign policy run by Soviet agents he had installed in the White House, including Lauchlin Currie, Harry Dexter White, his former assistant at Commerce, and the secret Communist and Soviet agent Harry Magdof, who wrote Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech in 1946 . . . all of whom would have given Joseph Stalin precisely what he sought: control of Eastern Europe and inroads into subversion of France, Italy, and Great Britain as well. The result would have been a deepening of Stalinist control of Europe, and a tough road that might well have made it impossible for the West actually to have won the Cold War and to have defeated Soviet expansionism. Moreover, as Gaddis suggests, new evidence has emerged that points to just how much Wallace was under the control of the Soviets, and how they were counting on him as the man in the United States best suited to serve their ends.

CNBC's John Carney Defends The Debt Ceiling

John Carney is a rare voice of reason at CNBC.

Here's the conclusion to his defense of the authority of Congress over appropriations, taxes and borrowing:

The logic of the opponents of the debt ceiling is that Congress implicitly approves borrowing when it votes for spending and taxing laws. By this same logic the President should have the power to tax unilaterally based on spending authorizations and borrowing limits. Likewise, the President should have spending powers based on directions to federal agencies in the absence of legislative appropriations.

This isn't the logic of the Constitution's framers, who built a system in which Congressional mandates do not imply a power to spend, in which appropriations do not imply a power to tax, and in which neither mandates nor appropriations imply a power to borrow. Each requires distinct, specific Congressional authorization. 

The framers built this around a revolutionary idea: that these powers, which had so often been held by kings, should be held by legislatures. Authority that still rests in the hands of the executive branches of government across much of the world is, in the United States, in the hands of legislators. 

This cannot be undone with a bill. It would require a constitutional amendment. And, of course, a rejection of the framers's wisdom about who should have the power to borrow on the credit of the United States.

In a word, the president of the United States isn't a king. The current one just thinks he is.

CNBC Laughably Portrays Sen. Alan Simpson Of Wyoming As A Conservative

Sen. Lisa MirrorCowSki gets ready for a date!

Republican Alan Simpson has never been a conservative and hates conservatives. When CNBC portrays him as one, here in "More Conservatives Tell GOP: Don't Mess With Debt Ceiling", it's pure propaganda:

"It would be a grave mistake to use the debate on the debt ceiling to get President Obama to agree to spending cuts," Alan Simpson, co-founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt and former GOP senator from Wyoming told CNBC's "Closing Bell" Tuesday.

"I know they're (GOP lawmakers) going to try it and how far they'll go with that game of chicken I have no idea," said Simpson, who was co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles Commission that looked at reducing government debt.

The former Senator from Wyoming may carry some weight with liberal Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Mercowsky of Alaska, but not with conservatives. The last thing liberal Republicans want is for the gravy train to run empty.

Continuing resolutions have done nothing but continue to fund government at the new much higher baseline established by Democrats in 2009 with the addition of massive stimulus spending, after which they have passed no budgets. It was an ingenious strategy to ramp up government spending and keep it there. Republicans only participate in this charade by continuing to raise the debt ceiling which facilitates it.

Republicans should shut down the government until the lawful budget process is restored, which means Sen. Reid must pass a budget out of the Democrat-controlled Senate and send it to the House, which he has not done in violation of the law in place since 1974. If anyone should be impeached in this country, it is Sen. Reid.

What Do You Feel When You Shoot A Tyrant?

                                                                                                              Recoil.

"A 30 Round Magazine Might Be Too Small"

". . . from my cold dead hands!"

Erick Erickson summarizes well the historical background for the 2nd Amendment, here, the point of which is that not only should individual Americans possess the very latest weaponry, but that as long as there are standing armies and militarized police forces in America, we can never really be free from impending tyranny, despite the existence of the Oathkeepers:

Many historians have come to view the American Revolution as a conservative revolution. The revolutionaries believed they were protecting their English rights from the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They were, in effect, revolting to demand the rights they thought they already had as English citizens. It is why, for much of 1775, they petitioned the King, not Parliament, for help because they had, separated by distance and time, not kept up with the legal evolution of the British constitutional monarchy in relation to Parliament. The colonists believed themselves full English citizens and heirs of the Glorious Revolution.

One of the rights that came out of the Bill of Rights of 1689 in England following the Glorious Revolution was a right to bear arms for defense against the state. The English Bill of Rights accused King James II of disarming protestants in England. That Bill of Rights included the language “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.”

The Americans, however, saw the British government, via Parliament, begin curtailing the rights of the citizenry in the American colonies. When they formed the federal government with ratification of the Constitution, the colonists, now Americans, were deeply skeptical of a concentrated federal power, let alone standing armies to exercise power on behalf of a government. This is why, originally, the colonists chose to require unanimity for all federal action under the Articles of Confederation that the Constitution would replace. Likewise, it is why many early state constitutions gave both an explicit right to keep and bear arms, but also instructed that standing armies in times of peace should not be maintained.

Prior to the Civil War, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that first Congress dropped references to “as allowed by Law” that had been in the English Bill of Rights. The Founders intended that Congress was to make no law curtailing the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.

In other words, removing "as allowed by Law" means the right to keep and bear arms is not susceptible of further modification by legislative, or executive, action. Or for that matter by judicial action. The Second Amendment is a settled matter. Americans have simply forgotten this, and to the extent they have are already slaves.

Dr. Strangeobama Blames Republicans Yesterday For Net Zero Jobs In August 2011?

It's like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove, where the delusional General Ripper blames fluoridation of the water supply beginning in 1946 on the Commies.

Here's Obama yesterday, finally blaming Republicans, not Bush, which is a sort of progress, I guess, for losing the AAA credit rating, adding in the zinger that the debt-ceiling showdown in summer 2011 somehow was responsible also for net zero jobs created in August 2011, the first time that's happened since World War II. Boy, that report must have really rankled him to bring it up now, a lot more than losing the AAA credit rating. Who even remembers that?!

From the transcript of Obama's remarks yesterday, here:

So we’ve got to pay our bills. And Republicans in Congress have two choices here. They can act responsibly, and pay America’s bills, or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis. But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial wellbeing of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip. And they better choose quickly, because time is running short.

The last time republicans in Congress even flirted with this idea, our AAA credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history. Our businesses created the fewest jobs of any month in nearly the past three years, and ironically, the whole fiasco actually added to the deficit.

Got that? "The fewest jobs of any month in nearly the past three years." He's not referring to last month, December 2012. He's referring to August 2011, and trying to rewrite that history by blaming it on Republicans and couching it in the context of the last three years when the news reported August 2011 as a sensational first in the post-war period. That's how keenly Obama feels the sting of his lousy job creation record. He's the worst president for jobs in 65 years, and he knows it.

Obama's Gangster Government Of, By And For The Banks

Matt Taibbi provides a pretty thorough look at the recent history of the bailout alliance between the federal government and the big banks for Rolling Stone, here, from which this excerpt:

All of this – the willingness to call dying banks healthy, the sham stress tests, the failure to enforce bonus rules, the seeming indifference to public disclosure, not to mention the shocking­ lack of criminal investigations into fraud committed by bailout recipients before the crash – comprised the largest and most valuable bailout of all. Brick by brick, statement by reassuring statement, bailout officials have spent years building the government's great Implicit Guarantee to the biggest companies on Wall Street: We will be there for you, always, no matter how much you screw up. We will lie for you and let you get away with just about anything. We will make this ongoing bailout a pervasive and permanent part of the financial system. And most important of all, we will publicly commit to this policy, being so obvious about it that the markets will be able to put an exact price tag on the value of our preferential treatment.

But Taibbi goes pretty easy on Obama's role in all of this, who has profited handsomely from it with reelection, focusing instead mostly on underlings like Geithner and Summers. Taibbi seems to hate only the big bankers for their profiteering, not the administration responsible for the continuing massive bailouts. He never connects Obama's admiration for dictatorship in China with our gangster government's stick up of the American people, and even gives Obama credit for some success with HAMP. It's as if the imperial president is merely an accessory to the crime, which Taibbi calls right up front "one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people."

By the way, Taibbi endorsed Elizabeth Talking Bull for president.

The Second Amendment Is For Stopping Creatures Like These . . .

not these . . .

What The Country Needs Most Right Now Is . . .

. . . a new federal holiday!

Your proposals should include someone born in March, April, June or August, to fill in the months missing a federal holiday.

Now, what's the quickest way to add a new holiday to this list?

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was born in March 1751. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, was born in April 1743. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and defender of both the Constitution and the Declaration, was born in June 1808. Barack Obama, the current president of the United States and the opponent of both the Constitution and the Declaration, was born in August 1961, or so they say.

Seeing that Barack Obama isn't dead, yet, I think your choices are limited to Madison, Jefferson, or Davis. But maybe we should just get all three right now, because the country may not last long enough under Obama to add them all in, slow like.

Housing Prices Rise To Within 3% Of Pre-Bubble 20th Century Highs

Housing prices according to the Case-Shiller Housing Price Index for the 3rd quarter of 2012 here have clawed their way back to within 3% of the 20th century's historic high before the housing bubble.

The index has climbed in 2012 from 124.48 at the end of March to 132.97 at the end of June, and now sits at 134.97 as of the end of September 2012, a rise of 8.4% in just six months.

Prices at this level are high by historical standards, if one ignores price action during the housing bubble. Excepting that period, the high water mark for housing prices in the 20th century was reached on Sep 30, 1989 at the level of 138.54 on the index, 8 years before the tax law was changed to make it possible to churn real estate capital every 2 years, which was the real fuel for the housing bubble.

From the 1950s right up to the end of 1997, prices on the index hewed closely to 120, rising above that level and below it in a cyclical manner in the absence of meddling with housing and tax law. But after 1997 prices became unhinged and rapidly increased, shooting above the upper range limit of 140 in September 2000 on their way to the bubble peak of 218.72 in December 2005. We all know the sorry aftermath of that.

Today prices for housing assets are very high by historical standards. The new fuel for them is Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy, which represents violent meddling with interest rate markets designed in part to help homeowners refinance existing mortgages and buyers buy at affordable rates. This is surely frustrating and destructive at the same time, as any person without a job needing to refinance and any person needing interest income can tell you.

While it is difficult to predict what the new normal should look like with respect to future housing price trends as the market adjusts to the exploded bubble and current housing policy and tax laws, prices supported by federal manipulation cannot be real.

The country desperately needs a free market in housing, but it doesn't have one.

Women Bore The Brunt Of Unemployment, But Voted For Obama Anyway

men's unemployment level falls below old ceiling

women's unemployment level remains above old ceiling

You can argue all you want about equality between the sexes, but it's more obvious than ever before that women have a double standard when it comes to equality.

Women by a significant majority still think someone else has an obligation to take care of them when things head south, whether it's daddy, hubby or The State. In 2012, despite bearing the brunt of four years of the worst unemployment since World War II, they didn't blame those four years of zero progress on Obama. Instead they voted for more of it, believing in the commitment of government to help them even though it isn't.

While the number of unemployed men has fallen below the previous peak reached during the recession of the early 1980s, the number of unemployed women has not and remains at record levels.

HuffPo reported on the phenomenon here two weeks after the election: 

This year Obama campaigned on giving a leg up to those needing education, health care or job training. Romney talked about shrinking government, except for the military, and said overgrown social programs were creating a culture of dependency. Their arguments fit the long-running fissure of the gender gap.

"Women stuck with Obama," said Karen Kaufmann, a University of Maryland associate professor who studies the gender gap. "We didn't see a lot of movement from women. The movement was really men going back to the Republican Party."

Women's support for Obama dropped just 1 percentage point from 2008; they voted for him by 55 percent to 44 percent this time. Men's support for Obama dropped 4 points, flipping them to Romney's side, by a 52-45 margin. Women were 10 percentage points more likely to vote for Obama than men were, according to the survey of voters at the polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks.

This is the political price the country has had to pay for eschewing marriage and for non-commitment in relationships generally. And whatever else may be said, the dependent sex is proving that it is still the weaker sex, and if men aren't paying the weaker sex directly with emotional commitment and financial support, the whole country is paying it in the form of higher taxes and larger deficits, and getting family breakdown and legions of socially dysfunctional offspring in the process.

The sexual revolution has been bad for America in every way, Obama aims to prolong it, and women by a significant majority, being weaker, see no alternative and won't until men provide one.

By Every Measure, The War On Women Has Been Waged By Obama

white women over 20

all women over 25

women who maintain families

black women over 20

hispanic women over 20

Unemployment levels for all women, regardless of race, have reached and stayed at all time highs under Obama. They should have asked for a divorce from the president, but instead they are standing by their man.

old women

Unemployment Levels For All Races Reach, Stay At, All Time Highs Under Obama

Hispanic Unemployment Reaches, Stays At, All Time Highs Under Obama

Black Unemployment Level Stays At All Time Highs Under Obama

The prior ceiling of 2.4 million in the black unemployment level, reached briefly when Ronald Reagan was president, has become the new floor under Barack Obama.

Black unemployment has stayed at these all time highs under Obama since early 2009.

Has the first black president been good for black employment? The answer is No.

$11,480 Was Your Fair Share Of The Taxes For 2011. How Come You Didn't Pay It?

For fiscal 2011, federal spending came to $3.6 trillion, and US population came to 313.85 million people.

If we taxed everyone equally as the US Constitution called for originally (you know, "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers", which is one reason why we must have a census every ten years to begin with), all that federal spending in 2011 divided by all those millions of people comes to . . . wait for it . . . $11,480 owed per person.

The actual paid in tax revenues, for everything? $2.3 trillion, divided by 313.85 million people is . . .

. . . just $7,328 per person.

So pay up you deadbeats.