Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
I have been asked what this means.
The inviting conclusion is that Ron Paul is finally being recognized because of his foresight and willingness to express his vision. That is partially true, but there is a strong chance that Ron Paul’s opinion is being used as a tool of the MOPErs to establish the subject in the general media.
The many other articles on the same subject as Ron Paul, such as below, would not appear.
The only conclusion you can come to is the king makers of the present administration are at odds with the king makers who are responsible for the process that brought Bernanke into the Federal Reserve Chairmanship.
End the Fed? A not-so-crazy idea.
Congressman Ron Paul’s bill may never pass, but history suggests the US economy would be better off without the Federal Reserve.
By George Selgin
from the August 3, 2009 edition
ATHENS, GA. – Since it was introduced in February, Representative Ron Paul’s "Audit the Fed" bill (H.R. 1207) has gained 282 congressional cosponsors. If adopted, the bill would allow the Government Accountability Office to review, not only the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, but its recent monetary policy deliberations and transactions.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke opposes the plan, saying it would undermine the Fed’s hallowed independence.
But Mr. Paul, a noted libertarian who ran for president last year, also wants to keep the Fed out of Congress’s clutches – by scrapping it altogether. That’s the goal of his follow-up Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (H.R. 833). Although that measure has yet to gain a single cosponsor, it has plenty of grass-roots support, and Paul hopes that members of Congress will jump on the bandwagon once their eyes are opened by a no-holds-barred audit.
Wacky stuff? Well, if not having a ghost of a chance is enough to make a bill bonkers, Paul’s measure probably qualifies. But that doesn’t mean you’ve got to be crazy to believe that the US economy would be better off without the Fed.
The Fed’s apologists suggest otherwise, of course. They note that the US spent nearly half the years between 1854 to 1913 in recession, as opposed to just 21 percent of the time since the Fed’s establishment in 1913. Who would want to go back to those bad old days?
But consider: the US economy has actually grown less rapidly since 1914 than it did before. And inflation has been much worse, despite both the Civil War, which featured the nation’s worst inflation, and the Great Depression, which featured its severest deflation!
What’s more, the frequent downturns before 1914 were due, not to the lack of a central bank, but to foolish government regulations. Topping the list were bans on branch banking, initiated by state governments and then incorporated into federal banking law. The bans propped up thousands of undercapitalized and under-diversified banks – banks unfit to survive major local shocks, let alone macroeconomics ones. They also caused bank notes – competitively supplied counterparts of today’s Federal Reserve notes – to trade at discounts whenever they traveled far from the solitary offices of banks that issued them.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This is true.
.7285 is the magnet now pulling on the USDX. That is just one of the lower limits the USDX will visit.
The Greenback Is Broken
By MICHAEL KAHN
The U.S. dollar index is at 11-month lows and shows no signs of turning around.
THE U.S. DOLLAR INDEX, which tracks the dollar against other major currencies, fell below its important June low of 78.33 late last week. On Monday morning, it was trading at an 11-month low.
The bear trend from March continues with no meaningful support in sight.
Roughly two years ago, when the dollar was in its previous bear market run, the dollar index had moved under a multidecade support level at 80 (see Chart 1). At the time, the subprime-mortgage crisis was just unfolding.
Chart 1
After reaching a low near 71, the dollar spent several months moving sideways until July 2008. Although still several weeks before the stock market started its slow motion crash in September, fear had gripped the world’s financial markets. Stocks and corporate bonds were spiraling lower.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Just as "Cash for Clunkers" is an organizational disaster, so is every other government program, even if well meant.
Now think about nationalization of the auto and other industries and the mess that will certainly become. Upcoming is the pension industry, the securities insurance entity and eventually the majority of mortgage backed SIVs still floating around the planet.
Mortgage aid program helping fraction of borrowers
By ALAN ZIBEL (AP)
WASHINGTON — The government’s $50 billion program to ease the foreclosure crisis is helping only a tiny fraction of struggling homeowners.
As of July, only 9 percent of eligible borrowers had seen their mortgage payments reduced. And a progress report on the plan Tuesday showed that 10 lenders had not changed a single loan.
Both Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. — which have received billions in federal bailout money — were below average. BofA, which did not immediately comment, modified 4 percent of eligible loans, and Wells Fargo 6 percent. And Wachovia Corp., which was taken over by Wells Fargo last December, modified just 2 percent.
"We know we’ve fallen short of our customer service goals in some cases," Mike Heid, co-president of Wells Fargo’s mortgage unit, said in a statement. The company aims to sign up most borrowers for the Obama plan with one phone call and plans to send customers a trial offer within two days.
Foreclosures, meanwhile, continue to rise. About 1.5 million households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in the first half of this year, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Most SIV based mortgages aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
About four years back the New York Federal Reserve Bank called a special meeting where the gruesome 8 major derivative granting banks were called in ostensibly to correct back office problems and procedures. In English that meant that the explosion in securities investment vehicles, especially at that time mortgage based had gone totally FUBAR. Now locating who is the proper lender with the proper paperwork is nearly impossible. If anyone being foreclosed on would fight back they would win. Show me the loan document is what you demand. Now consider the problems that mortgage backed SIVs have, making most of them worthless for more reasons than just their convoluted OTC derivative nature.
NEW JERSEY COURT DISMISSES FORECLOSURE FILED BY DEUTSCHE BANK FOR FAILURE TO PROVIDE DISCOVERY AS TO OWNER AND HOLDER OF NOTE, SECURUTIZED TRUST DOCUMENTS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS DEMANDED BY BORROWERS
JULY 14, 2009
In a stunning victory for borrowers, a New Jersey court has dismissed a foreclosure action filed against the borrowers by Deutsche Bank Trust Company America as alleged trustee for a securitized mortgage loan trust after Deutsche Bank willfully, and despite the entry of three (3) separate court orders, refused to produce documents demanded by the borrowers which included documents setting forth the identity of the true owner and holder of the Note and mortgage, the complete chain of title to ownership of the note and mortgage, payment application histories, and documents as to the securitized mortgage loan trust. The Court had given Deutsche Bank multiple opportunities and extensions of time to produce the documents, but Deutsche Bank continually refused to produce any of the documents requested, resulting in the dismissal of Deutsche Bank’s foreclosure action. The Court also ruled that Deutsche Bank is not permitted to re-file any foreclosure action until it is prepared to produce ALL of the subject discovery.
FDN attorney Jeff Barnes, Esq. represented the borrowers, assisted by local New Jersey counsel.
W. J. Barnes, P.A. has numerous other cases pending where similar discovery requests have been sent to Deutsche Bank, none of which have been complied with to date. As such, additional requests for sanctions, including dismissal, are expected to be filed in these cases.
Deutsche Bank was also the subject of a recent ruling in a case in New York where the Court denied Deutsche Bank’s Motion for Summary Judgment, finding that a purported assignment from MERS to Deutsche Bank was defective and that Deutsche Bank, with an invalid assignment of the mortgage and note from MERS, lacked standing to foreclose. Significant in the ruling was the court’s observation and question as to why, 142 days after the borrower was claimed to be in default, that MERS would assign a “toxic” loan to Deutsche Bank. The court also required a satisfactory explanation, by sworn Affidavit, from an officer of the securitized trust as to why, in the middle of “our national subprime mortgage financial crisis”, Deutsche Bank would purchase from MERS, as alleged “nominee”, a nonperforming loan. The court further inquired as to whether Deutsche Bank violated a corporate fiduciary duty to the note holders of the securitized mortgage loan trust with the purchase of a loan that had defaulted 142 days prior to its assignment from MERS to the trust.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
I have given you 18 reasons why.
Read Trader Dan below.
Gold gearing up (again) to break $1,000?
Commentary: After Friday’s rebound, gold bugs are watching for a breakthrough
By Peter Brimelow, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — For the umpteenth time, gold bugs think gold may be poised to break $1,000.
The last week of July definitely lacked summer somnolence in the gold market.
A brutal $14.40 sell-off on Tuesday caused chartists great distress. But gold held. And then on Friday it staged an even more powerful recovery, rising some $20, closing at $954.50 and repairing the week’s technical damage.
Dan Norcini at JSMineset commented: "I must say that today’s sharp climb higher is very impressive from a technical perspective, as it pushed gold back above all of the major moving averages on the WEEKLY chart. It is evident from the ferocity of today’s climb that a good many guys got caught flatfooted on the short side and were violently squeezed out." (See Web site.)
Friday turned the Australian service The Privateer’s celebrated $US 5×3 point and figure chart up. (Chart available free here.)
As with other types of gold chart, it now raises the enticing possibility of an immense inverse head-and-shoulders pattern — bullish implication: maybe $1,300.
MarketVane’s Bullish Consensus for gold stood at 80% on Friday night: high, but it had phases in the mid eighties twice this year, and often spends time in the mid nineties in a strong gold run.
The Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index is at 16.8%, about the mid-point of its range.
Two elements are encouraging the bugs to wonder if this could be the start of the Big One — the push above $1,000.
