Bob Chapman: Economic Armageddon – Gold Standard is a MUST! Oslo False Flag? Gold & Silver To Double by February?

Alex Jones: The Debt Crisis – Banksters, Thugs and Crooks!

Alex Jones: Council of 13 To Rule America!

ZeroHedge: Imminent $2.5 Trillion Debt Ceiling Hike Will Unleash A Gold Price Surge To $1,950 And Higher!

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• My own forecast calls for gold to hit US$2,000/oz by year end. I expect to see US$65-75/oz silver. I expect QE3 to be announced this month. They may mask it by calling it another name. But everyone with half a brain will know!
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  The Imminent $2.5 Trillion Debt Ceiling Hike Will Unleash A Gold Price Surge To $1,950 And Higher
  by Tyler Durden, http://www.zerohedge.com/
  Two weeks ago we presented a chart that shows the uncanny correlation between the debt ceiling and the price of gold. Now that we know the final amount of the next debt ceiling hike, somewhere in the $2.5 trillion ballpark, it allows us to extrapolate where gold will end up as a result of the debt ceiling hike which will likely be voted into law at 7pm PDT.
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  A simple correlation rule of thumb allows us to predict that gold will be at $1,950 by the end of the year if it simply retains it close correlation to the debt ceiling. Should Bernanke announce that he will additionally need to monetize some or all of this incremental debt amount, we anticipate that gold will be well over $2,000 by the end of the year, courtesy of yet another round of accelerated dollar debasement, which also means that real gains in US stocks will be negated courtesy of the devaluation of the currency in which they are priced. The same, however, does not apply for gold, which with every passing day is priced in nothing but itself.

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Putin Says U.S. is “Parasite” on Global Economy!

• Putin is correct. Unfortunately, the rest of the world are enabling this parasite. The Asian exporting economies in particular are guilty of financing this prodigal son. When America does a stealth default, inflating away its debts via QE to infinity, countries all over the world will bear the consequences. China in particular with its US$1.5T of USD denominated assets will be hit hard!
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  Putin says U.S. is “parasite” on global economy
  By Maria Tsvetkova
  LAKE SELIGER, Russia (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means “like a parasite” on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.
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  “They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy,” Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow. “They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar,” Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.
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  US President Barack Obama earlier announced a last-ditch deal to cut about $2.4 trillion from the U.S. deficit over a decade, avoid a crushing debt default and stave off the risk that the nation’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded. The deal initially soothed anxieties and led Russian stocks to jump to three-month highs, but jitters remained over the possibility of a credit downgrade.
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  “Thank god,” Putin said, “that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision.” But Putin, who has often criticized the United States’ foreign exchange policy, noted that Russia holds a large amount of U.S. bonds and treasuries.
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  “If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone,” Putin told the young Russians. “Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities … There should be other reserve currencies.”

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The Writing is on The Wall For The US And The Dollar!

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• It is impossible for me to tell you which of the last 5 straws will break the camel’s back. Does it even matter? The camel’s back will break. The world is heading towards a global economic, financial and monetary crisis. I am of the opinion that it will be a ‘big bang’ and not a quiet fading away of the current hegemony.
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  The writing is on the wall for the US and the dollar
  By Roger Bootle, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
  By the time you read this, you may know the answer. Supposedly, the financial world is about to be hit by a disaster, namely an imminent US default, or the politicians will avert it with a last-minute deal. Both these views are misplaced.
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  Even if Congress does not come up with a deal by Tuesday, America will not immediately default on its debt. And if it does come up with a deal, this will not solve the fundamental problem, which continues to look worse and worse. One way or another, the US is heading for a reckoning.
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  .. if the government did actually fail to make its scheduled non-interest payments for any length of time, the consequences could be major. People would go short of pension or benefit payments, or whatever. Moreover, there would be widespread uncertainty and anxiety. Spending would inevitably suffer. It would be a form of forced fiscal tightening. You do not have to be Ed Balls to recognise that this would depress the economy.
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  If the US defaulted on its debt payments, however, the consequences could be much worse. Borrowing costs would surge, the interbank markets would freeze up, banks’ capital would be eroded, and the dollar would probably fall. We could have another major financial crisis on our hands.
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  If this prospect seems far-fetched, the prospect of a downgrade to America’s credit rating should not. It could happen this week – whether or not the debt ceiling is raised. After all, America’s underlying fiscal position is poor.
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  Some fear a credit downgrade would itself bring on armageddon. I think this is seriously overblown. A downgrade to AA would still imply that the US had, in the words of Standard & Poor’s, “an extremely strong capacity” to repay its debt. And there are plenty of countries in the AA category – such as Japan, New Zealand and China – that are clearly not “basket cases”.
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  In practice, if US debt were rated “only” AA, very few institutions would be prevented from holding it. And the desire to hold it is about much more than credit risk – especially when benefiting from the world’s most liquid asset market. Moreover, as the Australian and Canadian examples attest, once an AAA credit rating is gone, it’s not necessarily lost for good.
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  For several decades, the US has been the global hegemon and its currency the foundation of the world’s financial system. The writing is on the wall for both. Like the British Empire, the American imperium will not end in a flash but rather fade away. Coming hard on the heels of the financial crisis of 2008, a US default, even if it was merely technical, would be a clear signal to the world.
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  The loss of America’s AAA credit rating would be much less momentous. Even so, future historians might well conclude it was an important marker during the process that saw power and prestige leaching, ineluctably, from West to East.

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America is Merely Wounded, Europe Risks Death!

RIP: Rest In Pieces

• The sovereign debt crisis is coming closer and closer. The Illuminists snakes want a collapse starting in the PIIGS which will cascade to UK, Japan and finally America. This will destroy all the major fiat currencies of the world. China and the rest of Asia (and the rest of the world) will not escape this coming global economic, financial and monetary collapse! Got gold yet? (emphasis mine)
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  America is merely wounded, Europe risks death
  By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
  … Needless to say, these are not normal times. The US and EU debt crises are feeding on each other in a dangerous synergy, with fears of a fiscal “sudden stop” in Washington causing global risk aversion and aggravating tremors in the Spanish and Italian bond markets. It is a pre-taste of the “catastrophe” predicted by the Fed’s Ben Bernanke if politicians fail to control their passions.
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  My recurring nightmare ever since the Western debt edifice began to crumble four years ago is that the denouement would track the events of mid-1931, when leaders failed to reform a destructive fixed exchange system (Gold Standard) and the fuse finally detonated on Europe’s banking system. It was when political blunders turned recession into the Great Depression, and ideology intruded with a vengeance.
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  The narrative of 1931 is already well-known to readers. France sabotaged a rescue of Vienna’s Credit Anstalt because of strategic disputes with Germany. This set off a financial chain reaction. Frightened markets tested the weak links of the Gold Standard. They withdrew funds from Britain after naval ratings “mutinied” over pay cuts. Contagion spread back to New York. By October 1931 the international system had collapsed, though the full horror did not become evident until the next year. A string of countries retreated into variants of autarky, or fascism, or both. Communists and Nazis together won more than half the seats in the Reichstag election of July 1932.
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  It is far from clear that the international order is more secure today than it was in the seemingly calm days of May 1931, so one cannot lightly forgive the reckless brinkmanship on Capitol Hill over recent days. I write before knowing the outcome of weekend talks but we can rule out any form of US default. President Barack Obama can invoke the 14th Amendment in extremis, or issue a Bush-style “Catastrophic Emergency” directive.
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  Yet if disaster is an outside risk in America, it is an odds-on likelihood in Europe. It is already clear that the latest EU summit deal is too little to stop a spiralling crisis in confidence, let alone acknowledge that North and South have diverged too far to share a currency union. Spanish and Italian yields are back to pre-summit danger levels, and might fly out of control at any moment unless a lender-of-last resort steps in to guarantee the market.
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  The European Central Bank still refuses to do so, and the EFSF bail-out fund cannot legally do so until all national parliaments ratify the summit deal to widen its remit. Yet these chambers have shut down for the summer. Europe’s leaders have gone on holiday. The €440bn EFSF is in any case too small. The bond vigilantes broadly agree that the EFSF needs €2 trillion in pre-emptive firepower to forestall a twin crisis in Italy and Spain, though quite how France might pay for this without being drawn into the maelstrom itself is an open question.
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  As the details dribble out from the summit deal, we can now see that Greece will enjoy no debt relief despite having been pushed into default. Citigroup said the net effect will increase Greece’s debt by a further 4pc of GDP to more than 160pc next year. Since this is obviously untenable, Greece will need a third rescue.
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  The EU has brought about the first sovereign default in Western Europe since the Second World War and set a fateful precedent without actually resolving the Greek problem. This is the worst of all worlds.
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  Moody’s cited the summit terms as a key reason why it put Spain on negative watch last week. “Pressures are likely to increase still further following the official package for Greece, which has signaled a clear shift in risk for bondholders of countries with high debt burdens or large budget   deficits,” it said.
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  EU ineptitude – or rather, German, Dutch and Finnish unwillingness to face up to the implications of EMU – have raised the risk of a traumatic August crisis in Italy and Spain. EU leaders are bringing about exactly what they pledged to avoid.
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  The US cannot insulate itself against the consequences of Europe’s elemental EMU blunder, but it can mitigate the effects by restoring order in its own political house. The Fed has already bought a degree of insurance by gunning the money supply in advance. The executive institutions of the US government are viable and still functioning. We can only pray that at least one half of the Atlantic system holds relatively firm. If both go down together, buy a shotgun and prepare for 1932.

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Ron Paul: When a Cut is Not a Cut !

• The political charade for the past few weeks is meaningless. Nothing has changed. More debts are being pile upon existing debts. It will create an even bigger sovereign debt collapse eventually. All the talks of deficit reduction are false. Congressman Ron Paul explains (emphasis mine):
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  When a Cut is Not a Cut
  by Ron Paul, http://paul.house.gov/ 
  One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.
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  No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it.  Instead, the “cuts” being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.
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  The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues.  If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer?  That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.
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  In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all.  If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of “cuts” that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to “cut”.  It would only take us 5 years to “cut” $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending.  That is hardly austere or catastrophic.
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  A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.
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  We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities.  The same could be said for the rest of the government.  Why has our budget doubled in 10 years?  This country doesn’t have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount. 
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  In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger “cut” than any plan being discussed.  If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.

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US Debt Jeopardizes The World Economy!

‘Default Debacle a Charade, US To Pay Price If Debt Balloon Bursts’!

Eurozone Credit Reality Check! Italy and Spain Interest Rates Rising To Record Highs!

House Passes Debt Bill !

• Over the top political theatre. How does rasing the debt ceiling solve the debt problem? It doesn’t. It is meaningless. The question is who is going to buy the debt? The Federal Reserve will create money out of thin air to buy this debt! QE3 is coming in a few weeks time!

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S&P’s View on US’ AAA Rating