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Oil Should Spike Higher Following Saudi Riots and Nigerian Elections in April
The following special report on oil (LA Blog Only, leverageacademy.com/blog) discusses the oil market, providing reasons to be bullish on the commodity given unrest in the Middle East, Nigerian elections in April, and rising domestic consumption in oil producing countries, including Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iran. According to the article, the rise of oil prices could easily cause the next recession. In 2010, soft commodities outperformed energy, but that will certainly change given the political headwinds abroad and continued monetary easing in the developed world. Therefore, the Bernanke “Put,” combined with political unrest will be to blame for continued sharp price increases in the energy commodity sector.
Emerging market demand, especially in China, which now consumes nearly 10mm barrels of oil per day, will also be driving the demand side of the equation. Money supply in China was also up 19.7% in 2010, because of the rapid Read more…
US Treasurys Dumped, Pimco Sees Value In Emerging-Market Bonds
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The valuations on U.S. Treasurys are not attractive in a historical context and Pacific Investment Management Co. is moving money toward emerging-market debt, said the fund’s founder Bill Gross in an interview on Thursday with CNBC.
Reports came out on Thursday that the bond-fund giant had dumped all of its holdings of U.S. government bonds. Gross said better valuations can be found elsewhere, where yields are not artificially boost by Federal Reserve purchasing.
“The overvaluation [in Treasurys] has been dependent on the purchasing power of the Fed,” said Gross, who does not believe there will be a third round of “quantitative easing.”
Pimco did not participate in Thursday’s 30-year auction nor Wednesday’s 10-year auction, Gross said, though both were considered well-received.
The fund still owns about Read more…
Debit cards: $50 spending limit coming?
By Blake Ellis, staff reporterMarch 10, 2011: 10:09 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Declined! Your debit card may soon be denied for purchases greater than $100 — or even as little as $50.
JPMorgan Chase, one of the nation’s largest banks, is considering capping debit card transactions at either $50 or $100, according to a source with knowledge of the proposal.
Why? Because of a tricky thing called interchange fees.
Right now, every time you swipe your debit card, your bank charges the retailer an average fee of 44 cents, which it shares with its partners. Those little fees, however, add up to about $16 billion per year, according to 2009 data from the Federal Reserve.
But as part of the Wall Street reform legislation that was passed last year, these fees are being slashed. The Fed is currently proposing rules that would go into effect in July and would cap interchange fees at 12 cents.
That’s a big enough cut to cost Read more…
New Tdap vaccine requirement for seventh graders begins this fall
A new immunization requirement will be in effect this fall to help fight the spread of whooping cough in Oklahoma schools and communities.
All students entering seventh grade will be required to have one dose of Tdap — tetanus, diphtheria and acelluar pertussis vaccine — before the start of the 2011-2012 school year.
According to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, the new requirement will help Oklahoma avoid outbreaks of the disease that other parts of the country are experiencing. Thousands of cases of whooping cough have been noted in California and Texas.
“While Oklahoma has been fortunate thus far in avoiding an outbreak of whooping cough, we did see an increase in the number of cases reported in the state last year,” said State Health Commissioner Dr. Terry Cline. “One hundred seventy cases were reported in Read more…
Soros: Communist Chinese Model Of Order May Become “The Envy Of The World”
Billionaire investor George Soros has once again cited China’s dictatorship as the model for the rest of the world in a speech at an elite gathering in Europe.
Soros told the exclusive Travellers Club, that “China’s model of state capitalism, in which the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the government, poses a danger if its example becomes“the envy of the world.”
“Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations.” Read more…
Scientists deliberately create 127 hybrid viruses from H1N1, then warn they are dangerous
(NaturalNews) Chinese researchers recently warned the world in a study that the H1N1 virus is capable of combining with various other viruses to create “novel pandemic strains.” Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the paper states that with the proper mixing host in place, viruses can swap genes and mutate into new strains — and researchers discovered this by deliberately creating 127 of them in a laboratory.
After concocting these 127 hybrid viruses, researchers found that eight of them were more harmful than their parent viruses when tested in mice, according to a Reuters report. And researchers warn that these deadly mutant strains may one day be a serious threat to public health because they cause pneumonia, edema, and hemorrhaging.
“The main message is that the H1N1 can combine in certain ways with the H9N2 to create reassortants and some of the viruses had an increased Read more…
China Taps Antisatellite Weapon for Missile Defense: Cable
China in an early 2010 exercise attempted to intercept a mock enemy missile with the same weapon it had used to shoot down one of its orbiting satellites in a test three years earlier, suggesting the nation’s antisatellite technology was also designed to defend against strategic missiles, the Washington Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 14, 2010).
The apparent multipurpose nature of China’s SC-19 missile — described in a U.S. State Department communication obtained by the transparency organization WikiLeaks — represents a marked stride in China’s efforts to bolster its armed forces, defense officials said (see GSN, Feb. 7).
“The U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that on 11 January 2010, China launched an SC-19 missile from the Korla Missile Test Complex and successfully intercepted a near-simultaneously launched CSS-X-11 medium-range ballistic missile launched from the Shuangchengzi Space and Missile Center,” the State Department document says.
“An SC-19 was used previously as the payload booster for the January 11, 2007, direct-ascent antisatellite (DA-ASAT) intercept Read more…
The Coming Rout QE3
There’s a scenario that could play out between May and September in which commodities (including my beloved silver) and the stock and bond markets could all sell off between 20% and 40%. The trigger will be the cessation of QE II and a multi-month pause before QE III.
This is a reversal in my thinking from the outright inflationary ‘buy with both hands’ bent that I have held for the past two years. Even though it’s quite a speculative analysis at this early stage, it is a possibility that we must consider.
Important note: This is a short-term scenario that stems from my trading days, so if you are a long-term holder of a core position in gold and silver, as am I, nothing has changed in my extended outlook for these metals. The fiscal and monetary path we are on has a very high likelihood of failure over the coming decade, and I see nothing that shakes that view.
But over the next 3-6 months, I have a few specific concerns.
It’s time to build on the idea I planted in the Insider article entitled Blame the Victim (February 28, 2011) where I speculated on the idea that the Fed might be forced to end its Read more…
The Oil-Food Price Shock
When future historians attempt to trace the origins of the current turmoil in the Middle East, they will find that one of the earliest of the many explosions of rage occurred in Algeria and was triggered by the rising price of food. On January 5, young protesters in Algiers, Oran and other major cities blocked roads, attacked police stations and burned stores in demonstrations against soaring food prices. Other concerns—high unemployment, pervasive corruption, lack of housing—also aroused their ire, but food costs provided the original impulse. As the epicenter of youthful protest moved elsewhere, first to Tunisia and then to Egypt and other countries, the food price issue was subordinated to more explicitly political demands, but it never disappeared. Indeed, the rising cost of food has been a major theme of anti government demonstrations in Jordan, Sudan and Yemen. With the price of most staples still climbing—spurred in part by a parallel surge in oil costs—more such protests are bound to occur.
2,500-year-old solar observatory in Peru reveals advanced culture
The wonderful archaeological discovery of recent years at Chankillo, Peru, is described by physicist Dr. Brian Cox in the BBC video linked below. As he describes and waits for the sun rising over the top of the hill, to be seen through the niches in the 2,500-year-old monument, Cox has a big grin, like this is the greatest thing he’s ever seen.
We astrotheologians and archaeoastronomy afficionados agree! That’s why we work so hard to bring attention to the world’s great astrotheological traditions that go hand in hand with these fantastic monuments, proving that ancient man was far more advanced than is commonly perceived.
We also maintain that these astronomically aligned archaeological ruins found globally, along with the myths symbolizing the knowledge encased therein, represent very important artifacts that need to be preserved.
Prof Brian Cox visits Chankillo solar calendar in Peru
Professor Brian Cox has visited a giant desert solar calendar in Peru in his quest to understand the nature of time in creating and ending the universe.
The 2,500-year-old solar calendar in Chankillo was built by a civilization of which very little is known.
Regarding Chankillo, Wikipedia states: Read more…
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