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From Newsmax Finance:
Financial Times: Wall Street plays dangerous derivatives games – again
TRENDING: To DEI for
The same kinds of complex, confusing derivatives that almost brought down the global financial system in 2008 are back in spades, according to the Financial Times. As one trader put it: "We've reformed nothing."
The U.K. newspaper suggested investors may be fooled by a false sense of security, and are therefore "chasing levered returns via certain types of U.S. credit derivatives that Wall Street is willingly providing in the current climate of low interest rates and moribund volatility."
The developments suggest that the financial industry learned little from the 2008 meltdown and that reforms put in place since then are ineffective.
"While standardized derivatives such as interest rate swaps are now transacted in exchange-type venues and centrally cleared, the flourishing area of opaque products are not, and moreover there are few records of activity that regulators can monitor," the Times said.
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From LarsSchall.com:
Spanish professor details faults of fiat money system
The fiat money system has many faults, economics Professor Philipp Bagus of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid tells financial writer Lars Schall in an interview sponsored by Matterhorn Asset Management and posted at its Gold Switzerland Internet site.
The fiat system, Bagus tells Schall, encourages early indebtedness, penalizes savings through inflation, favors the privileged who have the quickest access to money creation, and makes people too materialistic.
Bagus adds that the nature of money is seldom examined because doing so would inconvenience governments and central banks, which control most study of economics – which makes this interview so important, as it covers an essentially prohibited topic.
Bagus favors replacing the fiat money system with a system of competitive currencies, which sounds like what former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul proposed in his last years in Congress – a system that would greatly constrain government power.
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Rickards: 'I'm expecting the next crisis sooner rather than later'
The American lawyer, economist, investment banker and bestselling author of "The Death of Money" predicts the global economy is heading for a disaster which will be even worse than the financial crisis of 2008. At the center of this horrifying scenario is the end of the dollar as the leading world reserve currency, he says.
He is putting the blame on the massive money printing of the Federal Reserve and on over-reliance on flawed models to manage risk. Rickards is no stranger to financial crises himself: In the fall of 1998, he was the principal negotiator of the rescue of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM).
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From UPI:
Construction on Russian gas line to China slated for September
Construction on a natural gas pipeline meant to feed the Chinese market is set for the beginning of September, a Russia official said.
A pipeline contract between Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. is for 30 years and calls for 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year. Russian energy company Gazprom said it started working on the infrastructure necessary for the pipeline almost immediately after signing a contract for gas to China in May.
A Russian source told state news agency RIA Novosti construction on the pipeline should begin [this] month.
"Sept. 1 is a tentative date, and it will all depend on the schedules of the country's leaders," the source said.
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From ArabianMoney.net:
Gold and silver prices may not really shine until 2015-16
Arguably London's most accurate gold forecaster for the past 15 years, Sharps Pixley CEO Ross Norman, is warning of single digit gains only for the yellow metal this year, though he has not lost his sights on "very much higher prices" in 2015-16.
His gold forecast last year suggested that 2014 would be a "Goldilocks" year – not too hot and not too cold – with rally fade to both the upside and downside as the market reverted to the mean – so far that view appears to have held true.
Speaking from his office in Berkeley Street he told ArabianMoney that gold and silver prices will only really shine again when there is again a perceived serious inflation threat and he just can't see one on the immediate horizon.
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From the New York Sun:
New York Sun: 'Krugman's kryptonite'
The journalistic establishment's refusal to engage in an honest and candid discussion of gold's place in the international financial system is ridiculed brilliantly by The New York Sun, which targets New York Times columnist Paul Krugman particularly.
"Put a piece of specie next to Mr. Krugman and he shrivels up … like Superman on a slab from Krypton," the Sun writes, "It wouldn't surprise us were Mr. Krugman to keep his Nobel 'gold medal' in a lead-lined case, lest he get woozy when he walks past it. He calls for analysis? Analyze this: During Bretton Woods, under which the dollar was fixed at a 35th of an ounce of gold, unemployment averaged 4.7 percent. Since then it has averaged above 6 percent. Is that related to the fiat nature of money?"
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From King World News:
Former presidential aide Malmgren says government has interest in suppressing gold
Former presidential adviser and Plunge Protection Team member Philippa Malmgren tells King World News that governments have an interest in suppressing the price of gold and silver and in otherwise blocking the exits from currency devaluation as official inflation figures begin to be exposed as lies. An excerpt from her interview is posted at the KWN blog here.
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