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Archive for April, 2011

Why Investors Are Buying Silver As If There Is No Tomorrow

April 27, 2011 2 comments

endoftheamericandream

The price of silver has been absolutely exploding lately.  It has reached heights not seen since the Hunt Brothers attempted to corner the silver market over three decades ago.  But this time there are no Hunt Brothers to blame for the stunning rise in the price of silver.  So exactly why are investors buying silver as if there is no tomorrow right now?  Well, the truth is that there are a lot of reasons.  Investors have been flocking to precious metals such as gold and silver as the value of paper currencies has declined.  The euro is incredibly weak right now and the U.S. dollar appears to be on the verge of a major collapse.  In fact, the entire financial system is highly unstable right now.  In such an environment, investors seek some place safe to park their money, and right now gold and silver are seen as safe harbors.  But gold and silver have not been going up in price at the same pace.  So why is silver outperforming gold so significantly?

The price of silver has increased by more than 150% over the past 12 months.  But the price of gold has only gone up about 30%.

If you invested $100 in the S&P 500 ten years ago it would be worth about Read more…

Categories: Precious Metals, Silver Tags: , , , , , , ,

China unveils rival to International Space Station

April 27, 2011 Comments off


Less than a decade ago, it fired its first human being into orbit. Now, Beijing is working on a multi-capsule outpost in space. But what is the political message of the Tiangong ‘heavenly palace’?

Visitors to the Airshow China exhibition look at a model of the Tiangong-1 space station. Photograph: Ranwen/Imaginechina

China laid out plans for its future in space yesterday, unveiling details of an ambitious new space station to be built in orbit within a decade.

The project, which one NASA adviser describes as a “potent political symbol”, is the latest phase in China’s rapidly developing space programme. It is less than a decade since China put a human into orbit for the first time, and three years since its first spacewalk.

The space station will weigh around 60 tonnes and consist of a core module with two laboratory units for experiments, according to the state news agency, Xinhua.

Officials have asked the public to suggest names and symbols for the unit and for a cargo spacecraft that will serve it.

Professor Jiang Guohua, from the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre, said the facility would be designed to Read more…

Categories: China, Technology Tags: , , , ,

QE2 Is Damaging The Economy And Reducing GDP Growth

April 27, 2011 1 comment

businessinsider

QE2 is going to go down as one of the worst monetary policy initiatives in the history of the modern Federal Reserve era. On almost any metric applied, QE2 ends up not only falling well short of its proposed goals, but actually turns certain metrics like GDP growth negative compared with the prior quarter, and heading in the wrong direction.

Costs Eat into Corporate Profits = No Hiring

Analysts all over Wall Street are starting to revise their 2nd quarter GDP forecasts down, and some like Goldman Sachs have made several downward revisions as higher input costs due to a weak dollar are creating an additional burden on businesses and consumers and thus slowing economic growth.

A weak dollar (Fig. 1) to a point can help exports, but an extremely weak dollar which in combination with QE2 liquidity juicing up commodities even further, turns out to be a net negative on the economy, and risks sending the Read more…

Categories: Economy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bat disease could allow insects to destroy crops

April 27, 2011 Comments off

dispatch

A deadly disease to bats could become a major financial headache for agriculture, costing Ohio farmers as much as $1.7 billion a year.

A new study is the first to tie a dollar value to the millions of crop-damaging insects that bats routinely devour each year. Now, the night-flying hunters face the threat of a fungal disease that kills most of the bats it infects.

White-nose syndrome, named for the fungus that spreads over bats while they hibernate, has killed at least 1 million bats in 15 states and Canada since it was discovered in New York in 2006.

On March 30, Ohio officials announced that they found the disease among bats hibernating in an abandoned limestone mine in the Wayne National Forest. They fear it will march through Ohio as it has Read more…

Categories: disease and pestilence Tags: , , , , , ,

Chinese Know Real Value

April 27, 2011 Comments off

wealthcycle

The International Monetary Fund reported without fanfare recently its projection that the candidate who wins the 2012 U.S. presidential election will be the last U.S. President to lead the world’s richest super power.

The IMF prediction is based on its calculation that within the next five years China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.

The IMF forecast differs from that of most traditional forecasts, which put the date China’s economy outstrips the U.S. at least a decade or two into the future. However, those traditional forecasters are looking at value as calculated in currency—and as we at WealthCycles.com have reiterated many times, currency lies.

“In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, Read more…
Categories: China, GOLD Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Bacteria on the Radio: DNA Could Act as Antenna

April 27, 2011 Comments off

Wired

Theoretical physicists have proposed an explanation for how bacteria might transmit electromagnetic signals: Chromosomes could act like antennae, with electrons traveling gene circuits to produce species-specific wavelengths. It’s just a hypothesis, and the notion that bacteria can generate radio waves is controversial. But according to Northeastern University physicist Allan Widom, calculations based on the properties of DNA and electrons square with what’s been measured. “For a long time, there have been signals in water. Something is happening around a Read more…
Categories: Bacteria Tags: , , , ,

Enormous statue of powerful pharaoh unearthed

April 27, 2011 Comments off

yahoo

This undated photo released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, shows a 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III in Luxor, Egypt. Archeologists unearthed one of the largest statues to date of the powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, as well as one of the god Thoth with a baboon's head and and a six foot (1.85 meters) tall one of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, the country's antiquities authority announced Tuesday.

CAIRO – Archaeologists unearthed one of the largest statues found to date of a powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, the country’s antiquities authority announced Tuesday.

The 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III was one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a major excavation.

The statue consists of seven large quartzite blocks and still lacks a head and was actually first discovered in the 1928 and then rehidden, according to the press release from the country’s antiquities authority. Archaeologists expect to find its twin in the next digging season.

Excavation supervisor Abdel-Ghaffar Wagdi said two other statues were also unearthed, one of the god Thoth with a baboon’s head and a six foot (1.85 meter) tall one of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

Archaeologists working on the temple over the past few years have issued a flood of announcements about new discoveries of statues. The 3,400-year-old temple is one of the largest on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, where the powerful pharaohs of Egypt’s New Kingdom built their tombs.

Amenhotep III, who was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, ruled in the 14th century B.C. at the height of Egypt’s New Kingdom and presided over a vast empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north.

The pharaoh’s temple was largely destroyed, possibly by floods, and little remains of its walls. It was also devastated by an earthquake in 27 B.C. But archaeologists have been able to unearth a wealth of artifacts and statuary in the buried ruins, including two statues of Amenhotep made of black granite found at the site in March 2009.

Categories: Ancient History, Egypt Tags: , , ,

Should You Buy A Home In 2011? Check Out These 29 Absolutely Crazy Statistics About The Housing Crisis

April 27, 2011 Comments off

endoftheamericandream

Has the U.S. housing market reached a “bottom” yet?  Are home prices going to start recovering?  Is the housing crisis going to end at some point?  Today there are millions of American families that would like to buy homes but they are not sure what to do.  After all, nobody wants to end up like all the suckers that bought at the top of the market and now owe far more on their mortgages then their homes are worth.  A lot of people are really afraid to take out home loans right now.  So should you buy a home in 2011?  That is a very good question.  The reality is that there are a lot of reasons why home prices could continue to fall.  Unemployment is still rampant, and American families simply cannot afford to buy homes without good jobs.  Also, lending institutions have really, really tightened lending standards.  That is really restricting the number of buyers in the marketplace.  The number of foreclosures Read more…

Categories: Housing Tags: , , , , ,

Rain Colombia’s ‘worst’ natural disaster: Santos

April 26, 2011 Comments off

france24

A Colombian police officer helps evacuate a shop after a landslide in Sabaneta, near Medellin in Colombia. Some 160,000 police officers in the country and 52 aircraft are participating in emergency operations following deadly floods that killed 67 people and caused widespread damage, officials have said.

AFP – Colombia faces its worst natural disaster on record due to the effects of relentless heavy rain that has been pounding most of Colombia this year, President Juan Manuel Santos has said.

The heavy rain, triggered by the La Nina weather phenomenon, has killed at least 69 people in April alone, bringing the total death toll to at least 90, officials said.

“It’s as if our territory had been struck by a hurricane that arrived last year and does not want to leave,” Santos said in an address to the nation.

“This is without doubt the worst natural tragedy of our history,” he said, as he called for “national unity” to face the Read more…

Categories: Colombia, Flood, Weather Tags: , , ,

Mississippi River nears highest level since ’37

April 26, 2011 Comments off

chicagobreakingnews

VICKSURG, Miss. — The National Weather Service has forecast that the Mississippi River will crest at 52.5 feet in Vicksburg on May 13, the highest level since 1937.”We’ve got water coming down on top of heavy rain,” Marty Pope, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, told the Vicksburg Post.”It’s looking pretty bad right now. We have lots of rain to come, too.”

The Mississippi River at Cairo, Ill., at the confluence with the Ohio River, stood at 53.5 feet overnight Sunday, 13.5 feet above flood stage, and it was predicted to crest there May 3 at 60 feet.

The stage at Vicksburg stood at 39.2 feet Monday. It reached 43.3 feet on March 31.

In 1937, the Mississippi River topped out at 53.2 feet. In 2008, the river reached 50.9 feet, the highest since 1973 when it reached 51.6 feet.

The benchmark 1927 flood reached 56.2 feet on today’s gauges.

Pope said that 5 to 8 inches of rain were predicted over the next three days from Read more…

Categories: Flood, United States Tags: , , , , , ,