Tag: finance

A record-setting 115,831 Chinese people lined up for Hubei province's civil services exam on Friday… all knowing that the 6,500 open positions meant the chances of acceptance were lower than that of getting into Princeton or Yale…

Up from 106,000 last year, China People's Daily reports this year's applicants the most numerous ever…

Applicants across 25 cities sat for China's national exam for access to the civil service, comprising tests of professional ability and language.

Each year, authorities are extremely careful to avoid irregularities, but this year, the human resources department of east China's Jiangxi Province said on Saturday evening that it has started investigating the alledged leak of the provincial civil service exam.

The annual exams kicked off on Saturday in several provinces across China including Jiangxi. However, some people posted on their social network accounts suggesting the exam information might have been leaked because the questions were the same as on their practice materials.

 

In addition, a few people were spotted distributing the answers for the tests outside the exam sites after the first test in the morning concluded.

 

 

As the exam is conducted jointly, several provinces are involved.

 

So far, only Jiangxi Province has responded to the situation.

 

China's revised criminal laws shows zero-tolerance to exam-related misconduct and has defined cheating on major national exams as a criminal crime.

 

 

People found guilty of cheating face up to seven years in jail.

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Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

While President Obama took credit this weekend for saving the world economy from a global depression and stock markets are hovering around all-time highs, not everyone is convinced that central bank policy and government involvement in financial markets has stabilized the system. Doug Casey, one of the most well respected institutional investors in the world and someone who thrives in environments plagued with volatility and risk, joins Future Money Trends to explain exactly why the world has not avoided a Greater Depression and how things are about to get “very, very bad.”

And by very bad he means that centrally manufactured super-bubbles and bubbles are set to wipe out trillions.

You’ve got to remember that all of these governments and central banks all around the world have driven interest rates not just to zero, but to negative levels in some case… and they are simultaneously printing up trillions of currency units. And even while they are desperately doing that the economy is falling apart in lots of different ways.

 

…They’ve created a super-bubble in bonds, a bubble in stocks, and meanwhile commodities have collapsed and are below production costs in many cases.

 

…The economy is going to be very, very bad… It’s the next stage of what I call the Greater Depression. 

Full interview via Future Money Trends: 

(Watch At Youtube)

But as centrally manufactured bubbles burst in one sector of the economy, says Casey, capital will flow en masse to other sectors as investors panic. First to safe haven assets like gold, and then to to broader commodities which have been left for dead since the start of the decade:

Commodities, despite the fact that the economy is going to be bad, I think are headed up at this point because they’re the only cheap thing in the world and that’s where a lot of this excess money is going to flow.

And the excess money is going to flow rapidly. As Casey notes, while there may be panic selling in some parts of the economy, there will be panic buying elsewhere:

I’m extremely bullish on gold because it bears emphasis… gold is the only financial asset that is not simultaneously somebody else’s liability and all of these paper currencies all over the world are going to go to their intrinsic value, which is essentially zero.

 

What these central banks and governments are doing is incredibly irresponsible and stupid, printing these currency units up by the trillions… so there’s going to be a panic into gold.

 

As part of that you’re going to find China, maybe Russia, are going to go to a gold-backed Yuan and gold backed Ruble because they want to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the world’s premier currency… Well, the U.S. government is going to do it because of its incredibly foolish policies.

As you might expect, Casey’s focus is on the assets no one else has been interested in during the run up in broader stock markets. And like the Chinese government he’s been acquiring major stakes in commodity producers, including one particular gold mining company:

Yes, it is possible at this point [to invest in companies that will rise 20 to 30 times their current prices]. Because there’s going to be a panic into gold and it’s going to take gold much, much higher. The next commodity bull market is going to be led by gold and it’s going to take these stocks with them.

 

…I think this is the best part of the market to be in.

On America’s political future, Casey, a self avowed anarchist and anti-establishment proponent, says he supports Trump because he’s the only one in the field who is not a professional politician and perhaps the only one who can change the system as it exists today for the better:

Yes, he says a lot of stupid things… but all of these people say incredibly stupid things… Regardless of the persona he’s projecting at the moment to get attention, I think he’s much more intelligent and much more responsible than any of the people running. I think he’s definitely going to be the Republican candidate unless he’s actively defrauded… and I think he’s going to win regardless of whether Hillary is the democratic candidate or not… Hopefully she’ll be indicted for one or more of her numerous crimes before that happens.

 

I’m putting my money on Trump for winning the election. Not my ideal choice, but by far the best choice that we have.

 

… he actually has an understanding of business… and he has common sense… and he’s not part of the political machine… pray that Trump makes it because he’s also the least war-like of all these people… he’s the person that’s least likely to involve us in World War III or something that resembles it…

 

I believe politics is the problem and not the solution… I support Trump and hope he wins… Remember, we’re going into the Greater Depression… he’s certainly better than anybody else that’s out there at the moment.

But the legendary International Man isn’t just putting all his eggs in one basket in the hopes of a Trump victory or some sort of magical solution to the problems the United States faces. Casey says you need to diversify in these times of uncertainty, and not just with your financial portfolio:

It’s not just important to diversify investment-wise and heavily into gold at this point… It’s even more important to diversify internationally and politically and geographically… you don’t want all your eggs in North America. It’s a big world out there and most of the world is doing better than we are.

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Less than 24 hours after the Cruz/Kasich alliance was announced, it already appears to be on the verge of failure. Upon hearing of the deal between Cruz and Kasich, GOP voters and strategists alike were left scratching their heads, wondering how this was all supposed to work. To recap, the two men had their campaigns release statements late last night telling voters of a plan they’d put together that would prevent Donald Trump from winning the necessary delegates required to have an outright victory prior to the convention. Cruz was to focus on Indiana, while Kasich was responsible for Oregon and New Mexico.

Immediately GOP strategists were left wondering how this plan was going to sit with voters, dreading that this would be the latest anti-Trump plan to violently backfire. “I think the Kasich people are now left choosing between two people who they see as unappealing. I have talked to a lot of friends today who are stunned and puzzled and kind of adrift: ‘what do we do now?'” said Mike Murphy, a GOP operative in the state of Indiana.

The Hill also quoted an anonymous Republican Strategist in Indiana who said people were torn between stopping Trump, and asking themselves what has happened to their party that made this circumstance even possible. “I think it’s a bit of an open question as to whether this deal will take. I’ve got people who say, ‘Yes, I will do anything to stop Trump.’ And others who say, ‘What in the world is the party coming to?’ They view Cruz as unsatisfactory as a nominee but Trump as unfathomable.”

And then there was outright frustration at the absurdity of it all. “This election is garbage. I voted early and then they cut a deal a week before election day.” Dave Ober, a Republican state representative in Indiana tweeted.

Not only were strategists left dumbfounded, but apparently so was Kasich. Before the ink was even dry, as it were, Kasich suggested during a campaign stop in Philadelphia that his voters should still vote for him in Indiana, which was one of the places the so-called plan was calling for him to fall back on so Cruz had a chance to win. At a campaign stop in Philadelphia, Kasich said “I’ve never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me.” which no matter how one looks at it is thoroughly confusing considering this is precisely what the so-called alliance urged against.

Not one to let anything slip by without comment, Trump had this to say about the half thought out and frankly laughable attempt at blocking his nomination:

“So they colluded, and, actually, I was happy because it shows how weak they are; it shows how pathetic they are,” the front-running candidate said at a rally in Rhode Island on Monday.

“If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it’s a rigged system, because it’s a corrupt enterprise, in politics you’re allowed to collude,” he added.

As the circus continues into the final states, we’re not sure how everything will ultimately play out. However, we are confident that from now until July, there will be more fodder for Trump to tweet about, and certainly more once unheard of tactics deployed by a desperate GOP establishment which will do anything, even if it results in a smoking crater just hours later, to stop Donald Trump while achieving precisely the opposite of what was intended, and boosting support for Trump to even greater highs.

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Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If nobody is working in one out of every five U.S. families, then how in the world can the unemployment rate be close to 5 percent as the Obama administration keeps insisting? The truth, of course, is that the U.S. economy is in far worse condition than we are being told. Last week, I discussed the fact that the Federal Reserve has found that 47 percent of all Americans would not be able to come up with $400 for an unexpected visit to the emergency room without borrowing it or selling something. But Barack Obama and his minions never bring up that number. Nor do they ever bring up the fact that 20 percent of all families in America are completely unemployed. The following comes directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics…

In 2015, the share of families with an employed member was 80.3 percent, up by 0.2 percentage point from 2014. The likelihood of having an employed family member rose in 2015 for Black families (from 76.4 percent to 77.7 percent) and for Hispanic families (from 85.9 percent to 86.4 percent). The likelihood for White and Asian families showed little or no change (80.1 percent and 88.6 percent, respectively).

For purposes of this study, families “are classified either as married-couple families or as families maintained by women or men without spouses present” and they include households without children as well as children under the age of 18.

Digging into the numbers, we find that there were a total of 81,410,000 families in America during the 2015 calendar year.

Of that total, 16,060,000 families did not have a single member employed.

So that means that in 19.7 percent of all families in the United States, nobody has a job.

And of course there are lots more families that are “partially employed”. In other words, maybe the wife has a job but the husband does not.

So based on these numbers, it would appear to me that the true rate of unemployment in this country is vastly higher than 5 percent, and John Williams of shadowstats.com agrees with me. According to his calculations, the broadest measure of unemployment in the U.S. would actually be sitting at 22.9 percent if honest numbers were being used.

But let’s not just focus on where we are.

Let’s take a look at where we are going.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, job cut announcements by big companies in the United States were up 32 percent during the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015, and it appears that the job losses are going to continue to mount as we roll into the second quarter. For instance, late last week Intel announced that it is going to be laying off 12,000 workers…

As it navigates its path into the future, Intel, the 47-year-old corporation best known for making microprocessor chips that power personal computers, has announced significant changes to its business.

 

On Tuesday, Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich said in a letter to employees that the company over the next year will cut its 107,300-person global workforce by 12,000 people, or 11 percent.

Those are good middle class jobs, and they are exactly the kind of jobs that we cannot afford to be losing.

Meanwhile, the “retail apocalypse” appears to be accelerating once again.

Bloomberg is reporting that teen clothing chain Aeropostale is preparing to file for bankruptcy.  Aeropostale currently operates more than 800 stores across the nation, and it is unclear if any of them will be able to stay open as this process plays out. But of course it isn’t just Aeropostale that has gone bankrupt lately. Here are a few more examples of major retailers that have recently filed for bankruptcy…

April 16, 2016: Vestis Retail Group, the operator of sporting goods retailers Eastern Mountain Sports (camping, hiking, skiing, adventure sports), Bob’s Stores (family clothing and shoes), and Sport Chalet (general sporting goods), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It will close all 56 stores and stop online sales.

 

In the filing, it blamed the going-out-of-business sales at “certain Sports Authority locations,” plus the weather, which had been too warm, and trouble with switching to a new software platform. It’s owned by private equity firm Versa Capital Management LLC.

 

April 7, 2016: Pacific Sunwear of California, clothing retailer with nearly 600 stores and derailed ambitions of skate-and-surf cool, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. PE firm Golden Gate Capital, a lender to the company, agreed to convert over 65% of its loan into equity of the reorganized company and add another $20 million in financing. Wells Fargo agreed to provide $100 million of debtor-in-possession financing.

 

March 2, 2016: Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It said it would close 140 of its 450 stores, including all stores in Texas.

Just because the stock market has been doing well in recent weeks does not mean that the crisis has passed.

In fact, many experts believe that the crisis of 2016 is just getting started.  Albert Edwards of Societe Generale is one of them…

But what I do know is when in the last few weeks I have heard that Janet Yellen sees no bubble in the US, when Ben Bernanke hones and restates his helicopter money speech, and when Mario Draghi says that the ECB’s policy of printing money and negative interest rates was working, I feel utterly depressed (I could also quote similar nonsense from Japan, the UK and China). I have not one scintilla of doubt that these central bankers will destroy the enfeebled world economy with their clumsy interventions and that political chaos will be the ugly result.

 

The only people who will benefit are not investors, but anarchists who will embrace with delight the resulting chaos these policies will bring!

All over the world, the underlying economic fundamentals continue to deteriorate. Here in the U.S., retail sales have been extremely disappointing, total business sales have been steadily falling, corporate revenues and corporate profits continue to plunge, and corporate debt defaults have soared to their highest level since the last financial crisis.

All of these numbers are screaming that a major economic downturn is here, and with each passing week things look even more ominous for the second half of 2016.

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On the heels of State Department spokesman John Kirby's renewed proclamation that "US is committed to admitting more refugees," we thought this brief clip from France's picturesque Mantes La Jolie (in the western suburbs of Paris) – Europe's largest "ghetto" – would be useful…

Here's the postcard…

Le Val-Fourré, the largest housing project in the district, is extremely ghettoized, and is dominated by immigrants from the Maghreb, the majority of whom are Moroccan, and sub-Saharan immigrants.

The friendly local inhabitants – who seem to be integrating into European culture so well – appear to not take kindly to police driving through the middle of their road-blockage, drug-dealing, motorbike-racing, street party… and trouble ensues…

h/t LiveLeak

It is any wonder the police stayed away from Mollenbeek?

*  *  *

Coming to a 'picturesque city in America' any day now.

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Submitted by Andrew Zeitlin of Moneyball Economics

Semiconductors Tell the Real Story of Global GDP

The industrial slowdown predicted by semiconductors is coming true.

“We are operating in an environment of sluggish global economic growth, deflationary raw material trends, and heightened geopolitical tensions. The demand picture in China has not yet resolved itself, and growth in Europe and North America remains modest. We will continue our focus on commercial discipline, operational excellence and productivity to manage through the current environment.” -Mark Rohr, Celanese (NYSE: CE) CEO

In other words:

• The low growth macro continues.
• A China slowdown is underway. Demand is still unclear four+ months into the year?
• Corporate belt-tightening is underway.
• Big surprise: no layoffs announced.

This is a zero growth environment. Celanese is a leading manufacturer of acetyl based chemicals. Everyone uses its products: automotive, consumer electronics, construction, industrial, food, pharmacy, and agriculture. Things are worse than they appear: CE’s 1Q 2016 topline still shrank after initiating significant price hikes.

Volume demand is just falling, which means payrolls are under threat.

Celanese began small job cuts in 4Q 2015. No layoffs were announced in the earnings release, but what Celanese meant by “commercial discipline” and “operational excellence” is that, under these conditions, hiring is not going to happen.

We are seeing a “Stagflation-Lite” scenario. Government policies have created inflation in healthcare (Obamacare), rents, and wages (minimum wage mandated hikes). The problem is that these are fairly inelastic in the near-term. Also, Fed policy is mostly irrelevant: it won’t change mandated wage hikes, for example. Having signaled hawkishness about potential inflation, the Fed may actually tolerate this inflation.

• First, market pressure for a rate hike has disappeared. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) rates have fallen from 0.69 in January to 0.21 in April, the lowest in 16 months. With negative yields popping up everywhere else, Treasuries demand will remain strong.
• Second, global macroeconomic weakness may take priority. If the Fed wants stronger macro before raising rates, then semiconductors say that won’t happen in 2016.

Next for the US: The Semiconductor Signals

Inventories are dropping for the first time since the recession ended. No inventory re-stocking is underway. In 2H 2015, the drop was in both nominal and growth terms. Normally, inventories rebound after deep cuts, but not this time since producers are expecting sustained drops in end-user demand.

To gauge the degree and duration of the manufacturing slowdown, turn to semiconductors, which are the primary and early component in all things manufactured. That, plus other factors, make semiconductors an excellent leading indicator.

Here are the three stages of the semiconductor production cycle:

• Raw silicon production
• Semiconductor production
• Final semiconductor system (PC Boards)

Start with silicon wafers. Imagine a large ingot one meter in diameter that gets sliced into discs. That’s a silicon wafer. Semiconductors are built on top of these discs. From wafer production to end-user sale is a four to six month cycle, which is why silicon wafers correlate to inventories with a one to two quarter lead.

In fact, the latest data from Japan (the source of most silicon wafers) shows a slight uptick in production – very slight. It would indicate inventory contraction through 2Q but at a slower rate. A bottom of sorts may be forming, but 2H is still unclear.

PC Board demand echoes that slower production. Break open an iPhone or take out the voice box in that Barbie doll and what you’ll see is a green plastic sheet with lots of semi chips soldered in place. That’s a PC Board (PCB).

As the last step in the semi cycle, PCBs offer less forward visibility but even more accuracy about end-user demand. Every device using a semiconductor also uses a custom designed PCB. That custom, build-to-order nature of PCBs adds to their accuracy at predicting demand. Suppose we want to track popsicle sales. If silicon wafers are the lumber being sold to popsicle stick manufacturers, then PCBs are the popsicle sticks being dropped off at the ice cream factory.

The current PCB signal shows low/no US production growth.

Some Good News: EU Looking Up

Strictly on the basis of semiconductor billings, conditions are looking much better in Europe.

If the current trajectory continues, the EU may see some uptick in economic growth in the 2H, which makes sense in light of the massive public spending to absorb millions of migrants. The IMF recently estimated that the EU is spending 0.22% of the GDP to house, feed, and support migrants. Considering that EU GDP is 1.4%, that’s material.

Now the Bad News: Asia Getting Worse

As you can see, Asian demand for semiconductors continues to skid. That’s a bad sign for the 2Q and 3Q economies of Taiwan, Korea, and China, which depend on high-tech exports.

How long will it be before more stimulus is required in South Korea and Taiwan?

Yesterday, the Bank of Korea lowered its view of the GDP but took no action on rates. That’s the 10th month in a row of no action. Meanwhile, economic conditions continue to worsen at an accelerating pace, and semiconductor billings are projecting further pain.

Conversely, Taiwan cut rates last month for the third month in a row.

The difference between Korea’s and Taiwan’s bank moves comes from exposure to high-tech. Both countries face a similar collapse in exports. But where South Korea’s industry continues to expand, Taiwan’s industrial production has contracted y/y for each of the last six months.

Korea may be more diversified, but it’s hard to see its economy resisting the sizeable IT drop much longer.

Now on to China’s hard landing. Official macroeconomic data reported a solid 6.7% GDP, but accusations are already flying that the data is falsified and inflated. The Wall Street Journal showed how the official statistics don’t add up. Or, put differently, GDP is actually a lot slower than officials admit.

China is the major destination for Korean and Taiwanese exports, which continue to collapse. Thus it’s safe to say that the Chinese GDP is falling faster than officially acknowledged.

Give the people what they want. Expect more monetary stimulus:

• More toxic debt assumption
• More cheap consumer credit
• More Yuan devaluation

Remember when the Chinese government announced credit tightening? Having looked into the abyss, it has backed away and resumed loosening.

Interest rates have been cut three times in the last few months and a number of policies have been loosened. For example, luxury home credit restrictions were removed. Lending surged in 1Q to $771B. That’s a 20% jump. Injecting further stimulus, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) continues to roll over bad corporate debt, which is helping to keep factories afloat.

A more controversial move is Yuan devaluation. The PBoC has denied vigorously that this is a goal, but in the last six months, the Yuan is ~20bps cheaper. Maybe after burning the shorts and burning up dollars to do so, the PBoC will relent again and devalue a bit more.

The Market is Set to Roll Over Again

The recent surge in the market is manufactured by central banks. The collapse in January reversed on the day that Janet Yellen called other Central Bankers in an emergency discussion.

But it’s gone too high, too fast, and it is completely disconnected from underlying earnings expectations. In fact, notice that so far in earnings season, results haven’t moved prices that much – a few percent, if that. Big money isn’t buying the Bullish run.

Some people say don’t fight the Fed, and they are mostly right. The Fed’s goal is to prop up the stock market. When the market collapsed, home buying dropped. It’s that 1:1. But when the Fed is the only buyer, that won’t last.

I continue to advise that you get defensive. Expect some slide in prices. Buy some short ETFs, especially transportation stocks. There was sector rotation into these stocks this week. Prices of railroads and trucking companies shot up, but these companies are facing major headwinds. It’s a bounce that will reverse.

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Regular readers know that we’ve covered Alberta’s decline at length (refresher here), so there is no need to give much of a backstory other than to say that the situation seems to get worse for the Canadian province as each day passes even as oil has rebounded in the past two months.

Toronto’s “Condo King” Brad Lamb tried to put things into context when he said the situation is “worse than 2008.” However, on Friday we received an even more gloomy (albeit realistic) description of the economic situation in Canada’s energy hub, Alberta. In a very blunt interview with BNN, Murray Mullen the CEO of trucking company Mullen Group, said that the situation has moved well past recession, and should be described as a depression.

“Well, if you’re involved in the oil patch directly, drilling activity or anything like that I think we’ve gone beyond recession and it’s more a depression. The facts are that this latest round of commodity price collapse that happened the first part of this year I think really put the nail in the coffin for the industry.”

 

“The damage has already been done basically for this year. Even though it seems like the oil price and even natural gas is starting to recover, there was no room for error because commodity prices had fallen so low in 2015, and then when it happened in 2016, and it’s not just crude oil, it’s natural gas also. We’re just kind of trapped in a difficult market dynamic that we haven’t seen in probably most of our lifetimes.“

 

“There’s no investment activity going on below $40, it just goes to zero.”

The fact that Mr. Mullen categorized the situation as a depression isn’t surprising to us: after all that’s how we characterized the economic reality in Alberta for the first time last December in “This Is Canada’s Depression“

And while we wait for yet another local shoe to drop (and after soaring crime, surging suicides, and overwhelmed food banks, one wonders just what could be next), we continue to be on the lookout for the number of future bankruptcies that emerge from this space (as he alluded to numerous times throughout his interview). Recall that as as we first reported, Canada’s banks have virtually zero reserves for a worst case scenario.

Because when the already shaking Calgary domino finally falls, that’s when the Bank of Canada will have no choice but to make good on its threat from last year and unleash negative interest rates.

* * *

And just as we hinted, constantly from bad to worse. Moments ago, Bloomberg reported that Moody’s has downgraded Alberta’s credit rating. 

• Moody’s says province will need to increase direct borrowing in order to finance operating deficits for first time in over 20 years
• Moody’s expects Alberta’s net direct and indirect debt to increase to nearly 17% of GDP in 2018-19 from 7% in 2015-16
• Outlook negative

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As out friends from Fasanara Capital remind us, despite record liquidity injections by the PBOC in the past few days, Chinese repo rates have resumed continue breaking higher.

The move is odd, given ongoing record liquidity injections (RMB 680 bn last week, RMB 150 bn today).

As Fasanara’s Francesco Filia writes, “the mind inevitably goes to excess credit troubles in China and potential for CNH selling-off” and adds that the “move directly affects leveraged positions on bonds, funded by short-term repos.”

While so far, the currency and the SHCOMP remain stable, it is a notable trend to watch.

CNY IRS(7D REPO) 12MO

China Monthly Foreign Exchange Reserves: next release on the 7th of May

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Outside of an exogenous geopolitical event – which given the way the world is tilting is becoming an increasingly likely occurrence – BofAML believes a bear market case is strongly supported by the probability of an economic shock most likely be tied to credit where signs of stress are building the most.

There are four simple factors that suggest problems ahead…

1. Investors are starting to believe we’re “late cycle”

2. Growth expectations may now be back in positive territory for the next 12 months, but are still extremely low

3. There are signs of stress in the high yield market, with the distress ratio increasing recently

4. More companies in the S&P 500 are projected to lose money than those with negative EPS 12M ago.

Below we provide a snapshot of conditions today vs. prior S&P 500 peaks, to assess whether any economic or financial metrics suggest the end of the cycle is near.

Some signals are more worrisome than others: High Yield spreads are very elevated, and rail carloads are at levels typically seen  preceding or during recessions. IPO and M&A activity are both above prior peaks, though IPO levels through the first quarter of 2016 have not been the lowest since 2009.

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Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Astute observers of financial markets, especially in the precious metals sector, have long argued that small concentrations of major market players have been manipulating asset prices. Last week those suspicions were confirmed when Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s leading financial institutions, not only admitted to regulators that they have been involved in the racket, but that they were prepared to turn over records implicating many of their cohorts in a global scheme to suppress prices.

In his latest interview with SGT Report, straight-shooting Callinex Mines CEO Max Porterfield explains that now that the men behind the curtain are being revealed, asset prices in precious metals, base metals and other commodities will return to more natural pricing mechanisms based on core supply and demand fundamentals.

They are being revealed, most certainly… whether anybody actually takes a fall for it is a whole ‘nother discussion in its own right.. It’s good someone is being held accountable in some form or fashion and at least we understand what we’re dealing with.

 

… The real world pricing is being seen not only in the precious metals space, but it’s being played out in other base metals as well… Underlying all this manipulation is really the supply demand fundamentals for all these commodities…

Full Interview Via SGT Report:

With the genie now out of the bottle, many of the institutions involved in price manipulation and suppression appear to have backed off for fear of multi-billion dollar class action lawsuits from investors. The direct result, as we have seen just in the last couple of weeks, has been upward price movement in gold and silver.

If you start getting some of the manipulation to come out of the market for fear that people are going to get called out on it, then you can allow the fundamentals to play out.

And according to Porterfield, those fundamentals bode very well for gold, silver and base metals investors who have thus far been pillaged by paper market conspirators:

I think this has signified the start of a new bull market… what we’ve been through, these nice gains… I can tell you right now… I travel frequently to investor hubs in North America and Europe as well… the sentiment is improving quite significantly compared to where it was last November when I was in Zurich where people were very, very negative.

 

There’s more optimism in the space, particularly in the precious metals space… and in the not-too-distant future in the overall base metals space as well.

 

I think investors should be aware and be prepare for pullbacks in any bull market and I think that’s healthy for any kind of bull market you’re in… it is a bumpy road no matter what… but there’s definitely a lot more upside ahead of us.

We know that during the bear market in gold, silver and other commodities many companies either slowed their operations or completely shut their doors. This reduction in supply, a growing demand for precious metals amid global economic chaos and the official acknowledgment of paper price suppression by at least one major financial institution (and likely many more) suggests that gold and silver prices could rise significantly over coming months and years.

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