After French media accuses government of hypocrisy, French Energy Minister Segolene Royal is discussing with French parliament a potential ban on the import of U.S. shale gas.
The issue arose out of concerns expressed by some members of French parliament that American LNG exports to Europe have contained natural gas that is 40 percent shale gas—which environmentalists and some lawmakers argue contradicts France’s own ban on shale gas exploitation using hydraulic fracturing.
Two French companies, Electricite de France (EDF) and gas utility Engie, have previously signed contracts to buy U.S. LNG from, while the French state has a large interest in both, and a 75-percent ownership stake in EDF.
France’s Socialist government has been under pressure from environmentalists not only to ensure that fracking never takes place on French territory, but also to ensure that no fracked gas enters its territory.
“It’s total hypocrisy,” Paul Reynard, Stop Shale Gas spokesperson, told reporters. “Hydraulic fracturing is forbidden in France to avoid pollution but we’ll buy shale gas from elsewhere that will penalize local populations."
“We don’t care about others. We won’t pollute our own garden but we’ll pollute someone else’s.”
The U.S. is the world’s biggest exporter of shale gas with cargo ships already having been sent off to Brazil, Argentina, Portugal and Belgium.
Fracking was banned in France back in 2011 for environmental reasons. Last year, French media leaked a government-commissioned report that looked into a safer alternative to fracking for shale gas.
In Europe, only a handful of countries—including Denmark, Poland and the U.K.- are actively pursuing shale gas resources.
During the months of March and April of 2016 we released a series of proprietary research reports indicating signficant weakneses that we found in the European banking system and released it for sale through the blockchain (reference The First Bank Likely to Fall in the Great European Banking Crisis). This was performed by the same macro forensic and fundamental analysis team that first warned about the pan-European sovereign debt crisis in 2009 and 2010 (reference Pan-European sovereign debt crisis) as well as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers (Is this the Breaking of the Bear? January 2008).
Bank booked writedowns ahead of merger with Popolare Milano
Italian banking shares dogged by concerns over bad loans (Recasts with details)
MILAN, May 11 Shares in Banco Popolare plunged 14 percent on Wednesday after a surprise first-quarter loss driven by loan writedowns — the main focus of investor concerns over Italian banks.
Banco Popolare booked loan writedowns requested by the European Central Bank as a condition for approving a planned merger with Banca Popolare di Milano that will create Italy’s third-biggest banking group.
To improve its loan loss provisions Banco Popolare must raise 1 billion euros in a share issue slated for early June.
Investors are expected to be more supportive of the move than was the case when Banca Popolare di Vicenza IPO-BPVS.MI tried to raise cash last month and had to be supported by a new bank rescue fund.
Shares in Banco Popolare lost 14 percent by 1040 GMT, hitting a record low of 4.14 euros.
Popolare Milano lost 10 percent to 0.50 euros, against a 3 percent drop in Italy’s banking index.
Italian banks have lost nearly 40 percent of their market value so far this year, weighed down by concerns they could need additional capital to shoulder losses from sales of bad loans that rose to 360 billion euros ($410 billion) during a long recession.
A share rebound triggered by the hasty creation last month of the fund intended to inject capital into weaker lenders and buy their bad loans proved short-lived.
Banco Popolare said late on Tuesday that it had written down loans for 684 million euros in the first quarter, nearly four times more than in the same period of 2015, posting a net loss of 314 million euros for the first three months.
CEO Pierfrancesco Saviotti told an analyst call that the loan writedowns were the first step towards selling chunks of bad loans and that it would book further provisions this year.”
Let’s take a look at what the Macrotechnology, fintech and blockchain research experts at Veritaseum had to say about Banco Popular. Keep in mind that although we are now a technology firm, we specialize in Fintech and Macrotech, hence keeping our finger on the pulse of the global banking system is paramount. We mush be aware of what it is that we are disintermediating! On that note, we will happily create a distributed blockchain solution using our realistic approach to isolate these risks in a zero trust confine, essentially bullet proofing parts of this bank or any other from catastrophic loss. Ping me for more.
Income from operations declined every year from 2011 due to lower interest margin and higher operating expense. The declining trend was stopped in 2015 as the bank recorded a rise of 13% in income from operations. The pop was due to sale of equity investments held in ICBPI (13.88%) and Arca SGR (19.9%) amounting to Euro172.6 and Euro68.7 million, respectively, and higher other operating income including fees and commission earned. However, the notable aspect is the core income from operations has been on constant decline (even in 2015) over the last few years
The quality of loans has been deteriorating with percentage of non-performing and bad loans showing signs of increase due to adverse macro-economic environment. Of the total loan portfolio, the bank’s performing loans decreased to 82.1% in 2015 from 83.7% in 2013. Furthermore, BP stopped reporting restructured loans for at least two years. That looks quite suspicious given that loan credit quality has been tumbling. The numbers offered add up, but they shouldn’t unless the restructured loans have been somehow reclassified as performing loans (quite possibly). If so, that’s quite misleading and should be duly noted.
A significant percentage of the loan portfolio comprises mortgage loans and loans on current accounts. Distressed residential real estate sector and subdued business environment are likely to take toll on % of performing loans in these categories. As can be seen below, Italy as a nation, has high NPLs and it is not materially improving, YoY.
Since the hyperlinks are not active in these report jpg snapshots, I’ll past the text here so you can access the live links, reference Reggie Middleton vs Rating Agencies.
Parallels to Bear Stearns Before it Popped
In January of 2008, we warned (in exquisite detail) of the collapse of Bear Stearns. It was 2 months before Bear Stearns actually fell, while it was trading in the $100s and still had buy ratings and investment grade AA or better from the ratings agencies. See for yourself: Is this the Breaking of the Bear? As part of the analysis, we did a counterparty risk profile, see below:
Counterparty Risk
In $million
OTC Derivative credit exposure ($ million)
TThe table summarizes the counterparty credit quality of the company’s exposure with respect to OTC derivatives
Rating(2)
Exposure
Collateral (3)
Exposure, Net of Collateral (4)
Percentage of Exposure, Net of Collateral
Total exposure a % of Total assets
Net exposure as a % of Total assets
Net exposure as a % of equity
AAA
3,369
56
3,333
42%
0.8%
0.8%
25.6%
AA
6,981
4,939
2,153
27%
1.8%
0.5%
16.6%
A
3,869
2,230
1,784
23%
1.0%
0.4%
13.7%
BBB
354
239
203
3%
0.1%
0.1%
1.6%
BB and lower
1,571
3,162
322
4%
0.4%
0.1%
2.5%
Non-rated
152
223
94
1%
0.0%
0.0%
0.7%
16,296
10,849
7,889
100%
4.1%
2.0%
60.7%
(1) Excluded are covered transactions structured to ensure that the market values of collateral will at all times equal or exceed the
related exposures. The net exposure for these transactions will, under all circumstances, be zero. How this is accomplished is beyond our ken, and likely not at true in the event of a liquidity crisis.
(2) Internal counterparty credit ratings, as assigned by the Company’s Credit Department, converted to rating agency equivalents. (3) Includes foreign exchange and forward-settling mortgage transactions) as of August 31, 2007
Banco Popuar is slated to merge with Banco Popular Milano. We have performed a deep dive analysis on this bank as a standalone entity and assessed the synergistic benefits of a newly formed combined entity. Anyone wishing access to that report can purchase it from us by contacting me, reggie AT Veritaseum dot com.
We are anxious to provide macro analysis, deep dive fundamental analysis, and blockchain consulting for banks, buyside institutions and particularly investors (the clients of the money center banks). We were the first entitiy to apply for patent protection for the capital markets application of blockchain tech. We were the first entity to launch and clear blochchain based securities, and we were the guys that called the banking, real estate, European sovereign debt, and mobile tech moves of the last ten years. We know what we’re doing, and we know how to apply this blochchain tech correctly – the first time around.
The aforementioned report also states the likelihood of a currency war of competitive devaluations if more central banks use negative rates to pace up their economy. We have declared a currency war among macro-economically warring nations over a year ago. Reference:
Stab, er… I Mean… Beggar Thy Neighbor – It’s ALL OUT (Currency) WAR! Pt 2 – Here Comes The Boom! By now, everybody who cares knows about the Swiss National Bank’s removal of its EUR floor, and the havoc that it caused to FX brokerages around the world (Currency Brokers Fightin … Created on 26 January 2015
Starting the 3rd quarter of 2016, Veritaseum will embed links throughout all of its research to allow users to easily (with the click of a link) trade on the research with over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes and major and exotic currency pairs – on a peer-to-peer basis with:
Following yet another victory for Bernie Sanders last night in West Virginia, Hillary Clinton's race to The White House suffered another, perhaps more critical blow. As The Hill reports, nearly half of the voters in the West Virginia Democratic primary who backed Bernie Sanders say they would vote for Republican Donald Trump in the fall presidential election, according to exit polls reported by CBS News.
Forty-four percent of Sanders supporters surveyed said they would rather back the presumptive GOP nominee in November, with only 23 percent saying they'd support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. And 31 percent said would support neither candidate in the likely general election match-up.
Welcome to a currency war in which victory depends on your perspective.
History has shifted, and we're leaving the era of central bank convergence and entering the era of central bank divergence, i.e. open conflict. In the good old days circa 2009-2014, central banks acted in concert to flood the global banking system with easy low-cost credit and push the U.S. dollar down, effectively boosting China (whose currency the RMB/yuan is pegged to the USD), commodities, emerging markets and global risk appetite.
That convergence trade blew up in mid-2014, and the global central banks have been unable to reverse history. In a mere seven months, the U.S. dollar soared from 80 to 100 on the USD Index (DXY), a gain of 25%–an enormous move in foreign exchange markets in which gains and losses are typically registered in 100ths of a percent.
This reversal blew up all the positive trades engineered by central banks: suddenly the yuan soared along with the dollar, crushing China's competitiveness and capital flows; commodities tanked destroying the exports, currencies and economies of commodity-dependent nations; carry trades in which financiers borrowed cheap USD to invest in high-yielding emerging markets blew up as currency losses negated the higher returns, and global risk appetite vanished like mist in the Sahara.
The net result of this reversal is global markets have struggled since mid-2015, when the headwinds of the stronger dollar finally hit the global economy with full force.
In one last gasp of unified policy convergence, G20 nations agreed to crush the USD again in early March 2016, to save China from the consequences of a stronger yuan and the commodity markets (and lenders who over-extended loans to commodity producers).
That Shanghai Accord lasted all of two months. The engineered collapse has already reversed, and the USD is gaining ground, reversing the gains in risk assets, commodities and China's export-dependent, debt-based stability.
The problem is there is no win-win solution to this foreign exchange battle. Japan and the Eurozone benefit from a stronger USD as the euro and yen weaken, but China loses as the USD soars.
Commodities lose when the USD gains, but the domestic U.S. consumer's purchasing power increases as the USD strengthens.
It's Triffin's Paradox writ large: As the primary global reserve currency, The USD plays both a domestic and an international role, and each set of users has a different set of priorities.
No matter what policy the Federal Reserve pursues, there will be powerful winners and losers.
This sets up a war between central banks everywhere in which winning may be as disastrous as losing. The conventional central bank policy is to lower interest rates to weaken their currency, as a means of boosting exports.
But the unintended consequence of lowering rates is capital flight, as capital flees devaluation and negative returns and seeks higher returns elsewhere. This is a self-reinforcing process, as capital flight causes the currency to lose value, reducing the purchasing power and wealth of all who hold the currency. This motivates everyone who anticipates this devaluation to get their money out of the depreciating currency, which further weakens the currency which then triggers even more capital flight, and so on.
The only way to avoid the devaluation is to pull your cash out of that currency and put it into a currency that's strengthening. For many, that currency will be the USD, due to its ubiquity and the liquidity of its capital markets.
Nations such as China are boxed into a lose-lose choice. If they lower rates to weaken their currency (to maintain a competitive export sector), they trigger capital flight, which weakens the domestic economy and creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
If they do nothing and their currency rises as other nations aggressively devalue their currencies, their export sectors whither as competing exporters take market share.
Any central bank that dares to raise rates will make their nation a magnet for capital seeking a higher return–both in yield and in currency appreciation.
The Fed is boxed in, too: if the Fed can't raise rates after seven years of "growth," then its credibility suffers. If it raises rates, that accelerates the capital flow into USD and the U.S., pushing the dollar higher, which then triggers mayhem in China, emerging markets, commodity markets and U.S. corporate profits earned overseas.
Welcome to a currency war in which victory depends on your perspective. If the USD continues strengthening, the winners will be those holding USD, as their currency will increase its purchasing power as other currencies devalue.
As I always note: no nation ever devalued its way to hegemony or empire.
With The Olympics set to open in less than 3 months, Brazilian soccer great Rivaldo is telling tourists to stay away from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because of the danger of endemic violence. As AP reports, Rivaldo posted the warning on his Instagram account and alluded to the case of a 17-year-old woman killed on Saturday in a shootout.
"Things are getting uglier here every day," Rivaldo wrote. "I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio — to stay home. You'll be putting your life at risk here. This is without even speaking about the state of public hospitals and all the Brazilian political mess. Only God can change the situation in our Brazil."
In a recent statement, Amnesty International said at least 11 people were killed in police shootings in Rio's impoverished favelas in April. It said at least 307 people were killed by police last year, accounting for 20 percent of the homicides in the city.
Violence is one in a long line of problems facing South America's first Olympics. Although venues are largely ready, the Zika virus, water pollution, and lukewarm tickets sales are worrying organizers. In addition, Brazil is in its deepest recession in decades and President Dilma Rousseff is fighting impeachment.
In what was a veiled reminder that in a “worst case scenario” for Hillary Clinton, namely an affirmative outcome in the FBI’s criminal inquiry into Hillary’s email server which would surely terminate her presidential run, Obama may simply pivot to what many have speculated was always the democrats’ Plan B, earlier today Vice President Joe Biden told “Good Morning America” that he “would have been the best president” if he had run, but that he made the right decision to sit out the race following his son’s death last year.
“No one should ever seek the presidency unless they’re able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that,” Biden said Wednesday on ABC.
“And Beau was my soul. I just wasn’t ready to be able to do that. But, so, my one regret is Beau’s not here. I don’t have any other regrets.” Beau Biden died last summer after a battle with brain cancer.
Joe Biden has cited his son’s death as the primary reason for not entering the race.
What is more curious is that while Biden once again expressed confidence in Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, he hasn’t yet made an endorsement.
“I feel confident that Hillary will be the nominee, and I feel confident she’ll be the next president,” Biden said.
What he did not elaborate on is whether after the one year period of mourning is whether he would be willing to take over the democratic campaign in case something terminal happened to Hillary. The answer to that may ultimately depend on Obama, whose DOJ has so far been hindering the probe into Hillary, but all that could change with just one phone call from the oval office…
WATCH: “Beau was my soul… my only regret is my Beau is not here.” – @VP Joe Biden on regrets https://t.co/qr0B9600rj
Banco Popolare is dragging the rest of the Italian banking system drastically lower today after a "susprise" Q1 loss driven by soaring bad loan writedowns. Banco Popolare is down 14% on the day (25% in a week) to a record low, as Reuters reports the bank was forced to admit the reality of its bad loans by the European Central Bank as a condition for approving a planned merger with Banca Popolare di Milano that will create Italy's third-biggest banking group.
A week in the life of Italian banks… bloodbath…
As Reuters notes,Italian banks have lost nearly 40 percent of their market value so far this year, weighed down by concerns they could need additional capital to shoulder losses from sales of bad loans that rose to 360 billion euros ($410 billion) during a long recession.
A share rebound triggered by the hasty creation last month of the fund intended to inject capital into weaker lenders and buy their bad loans proved short-lived.
Banco Popolare said late on Tuesday that it had written down loans for 684 million euros in the first quarter, nearly four times more than in the same period of 2015, posting a net loss of 314 million euros for the first three months.
CEO Pierfrancesco Saviotti told an analyst call that the loan writedowns were the first step towards selling chunks of bad loans and that it would book further provisions this year.
He said the ECB wanted provisions to cover 62 percent of the most troubled loans up from a 60 percent coverage ratio the bank reached in the first quarter.
Bankers say other Italian banks are likely to follow in the steps of Banco Popolare and raise cash to make up for loan losses.
Loans to insolvent borrowers are valued on average at around 40 percent of their nominal value on Italian banks' balance sheets but market prices for these assets reach at most 30-35 cents on the dollar when the loan is backed by a good-quality property.
This won't end well… and yet everyone is ignoring the systemic concerns here… It's far from over at DB…
We were amused to report early on Monday that just as oil was trading within pennies of $46 and set to tumble, while US equity futures were about to commence their biggest two day gain in two months, none other than Dennis Gartman chimed in with yet another can’t miss “prediction” when he said that “it is time to buy crude oil and to sell equity futures, with the only problem now to decide how to weight the position.”
Sadly for the newsletter writer, “retirement fund investor” and CNBC Fast Money regular, there was another far bigger problem: the trade immediately blowing up in his face and as he writes today, “we have suffered one of our worst days of the year.”
For the dramatic admission that Gartman can actually lose “money” read on:
Share prices have risen nearly universally higher as nine of the ten markets comprising our Internaitonal Index have risen, and only the market in Hong Kong has fallen, and even then it has fallen by the barest of margins. As a result, we have suffered one of our worst days of the year in our retirement funds, losing a bit more than 1% as we came into the markets with a modestly bearish point of view and were therefore modestly net short of the equity market. For the record, as of this morning, stocks here in the US as measured by the S&P are up 1.9% for the year-to-date, while stocks in global terms as measured by our Index are still down 2.3%. Further, from their highs made very nearly one year ago… the actual high having been made May 26th of last year when our International Index was marked at 11,188… stocks are still down a very material 16.5%.
In our retirement account, we are up a mere 4.8% year-to-date, with our position in a Bermuda based crude oil tanker company hurt badly by a downgrade by our friends at Jeffries & Company [sic], taking that stock to an “underperform” rating. Further, our short position in “derivatives” obviously hurt badly too. We ended the day holding our position in the crude oil tanker in its entirety despite the downgrade. We have our position in aluminium intact and still have the out-of-the-money calls which we’d rolled down earlier this week. And we have the “punt” in a fracking related position.
All that in good humor. What makes us very nervous, however, is that following Druck, Singer and JPM, Gartman is the latest to go long gold “in dollar terms.”
We did, however, make two important changes: Firstly, given the recent sharp weakness in the Japanese Yen and the recent modest weakness in the EUR, taking both to levels we thought likely to find support, we moved to reduce our long positions in EUR/gold and Yen/gold modestly, replacing those positions with US dollar denominated gold instead, ending the day evenly split between the three “types” of gold but keeping our over-all gold position intact. Secondly, mid-day we reduced our short derivatives position by about one third also, discretion being the better part of trading valor.
Because if there is anything that can send gold plunging, and more than offset ongoing Goldman “bearishness” on the precious metal, it is Gartman starting to buy.
The retailer apocalypse continues this morning with Macy’s crashing almost 10% in the pre-market after missing top-line and slashing its outlook citing the “uncertain direction of consumer spending,” which seems odd given the confidence with which The Fed, Obama, and every talking head proclaims the US consumer’s health. Comp store sales plunged 6.1% (almost double expectations) and this comes at a time when clothing inventories are at an all-time record high relative to sales.
“We are seeing continued weakness in consumer spending levels for apparel and related categories. In particular, our sales trend relative to expectations meaningfully slowed beginning in mid-March, and first quarter results are below our original outlook. Headwinds also are coming from a second consecutive year of double-digit spending reductions by international visitors in major tourist markets where Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s are key destinations, as well as a slowdown in some center core categories – further intensifying the challenges associated with growing topline sales revenue,” said Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s, Inc. chairman and chief executive officer.
Sales in the first quarter of 2016 totaled $5.771 billion, a decrease of 7.4 percent, compared with sales of $6.232 billion in the same period last year. The year-over-year decline in total sales reflects, in part, the 41 stores closed in 2015. Comparable sales on an owned plus licensed basis were down by 5.6 percent in the first quarter. On an owned basis, first quarter comparable sales declined by 6.1 percent.
Noting that the uncertain direction of consumer spending makes predictions of future performance difficult, Macy’s, Inc. now expects full-year 2016 comparable sales on an owned plus licensed basis to decrease in the range of 3 percent to 4 percent, with comparable sales on an owned basis to be approximately 50 basis points lower. This compares with previous guidance for comparable sales on an owned plus licensed basis to decline by approximately 1 percent in fiscal 2016.
With top-line sales expected to remain below our initial expectations, the company has revised its guidance for earnings per diluted share (excluding settlement charges) in fiscal 2016 to a range of $3.15 to $3.40. This compares with previous guidance of $3.80 to $3.90 per diluted share in 2016.
The headlines are ugly…
*MACY’S 1Q NET SALES $5.77B, EST. $5.93B
*MACY’S 1Q OWNED BASIS COMP SALES DOWN 6.1%, EST. DOWN 3.1%
*MACY’S 1Q COMPS PLUS LICENSED DOWN 5.6%, EST DOWN 3.2%
*MACY’S NOW SEES YR ADJ. EPS $3.15-$3.40, SAW $3.80-$3.90
The result.. more pain
And it is not going toget better any time soon as inventories are at record highs relative to sales…
Inventories of clothing rose 0.2 percent in March as sales dropped 5.9 percent, pushing the inventory-to-sales ratio for apparel wholesalers to 2.32 months, the highest on record, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday.
It was just last week when legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller delivered his latest anti-Fed sermon and once again extolled gold as the asset class to own in these experimental times in which the “bull market in stocks is exhausted”, saying “what was the one asset you did not want to own when I started Duquesne in 1981? Hint…it has traded for 5000 years and for the first time has a positive carry in many parts of the globe as bankers are now experimenting with the absurd notion of negative interest rates. Some regard it as a metal, we regard it as a currency and it remains our largest currency allocation.”
Today, it is the turn of that other prominent anti-Fed crusading hedge fund billionaire, Elliott Management’s Paul Singer, who in his latest letter said that gold’s best quarter in 30 years is probably just the beginning of a rebound as global investors weigh the ramifications of unprecedented monetary easing on inflation.
As cited by Bloomberg, Singer said that “it makes a great deal of sense to own gold. Other investors may be finally starting to agree,” Singer wrote in an April 28 letter to clients. “Investors have increasingly started processing the fact that the world’s central bankers are completely focused on debasing their currencies.”
He said that “if investors’ confidence in central bankers’ judgment continues to weaken, the effect on gold could be very powerful. We believe the March quarter’s price action could represent something closer to the beginning of such a move than to the end.”
What makes Singer’s outlook especially notable is that it thankfully disagrees with the view from Goldman Sachs which as we reported last night, was stopped out of its short gold position with a 4.5% loss, and while forecasting a higher price in 3, 6 and 12 months, still expects weaker gold prices over the next 12 months. Which considering Goldman’s absolutely abysmal predictive track record is great news for gold bulls.
Bloomberg adds that in addition to expressing his gold view through options, Singer is backing a new venture focused on royalties, streaming, and other forms of investments in the mining industry that will be led by Shaun Usmar of Barrick Gold Corp.
And while Goldman cotninues to bash gold (which has once again jumped this morning right on schedule), some unexpected support to Singer’s view came from none other than JPMorgan’s Private Bank whose Solita Marcelli told CNBC that “we’re recommending our clients to position for a new and very long bull market for gold.” After seeing three back-to-back years of losses, the precious metal has rallied 20 percent in 2016. And that’s just the start of the next leg higher, according to Marcelli. “[We think] $1,400 is very much in the cards this year.”
As CNBC adds, the firm’s global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities reasoned that, with so many negative interest rate policies around the world, gold will continue to be bought as an alternative currency. And, with expectations that investors will seek to hedge against the resulting volatility, Marcelli believes that gold will remain attractive in a world where bonds and U.S. rates may cease to be the main risk-off asset.
“Central Banks may consider diversifying their reserves [as they anticipate] negative rates on existing holdings,” said Marcelli, when discussing the commodity as safe-haven trade. “Gold is a great portfolio hedge in an environment where the world government bonds are yielding at historically low levels.”
While Marcelli admits the move will come slowly, she remains convinced that the commodity will continue to grind higher — with that key $1,400 level being the first line in the sand.
“Gold is looking more and more attractive every single day,” concluded Marcelli. “As a nonyielding asset, it has a minimal storage cost, so when you compare it to negative-yielding assets, it actually has a positive carry.”
It is refreshing to see that in a world in which over $7 trillion in bonds have a negative yield, someone has done the math. It is less refreshing that gold is once again so prominently featured in the official narrative, because if cash has recently become a target in a global NIRP world, that means that gold, whose wealth preservation qualities are vastly greater, will surely undergo an Executive Order 6102 redux in the coming years as governments around the globe seek to eliminate access to hard assets.