Mahant!

If there is one greatest asset mankind has, it is his home planet. Earth is a very special place in our scheme of things. Until we are able to inhabit other planets and heavenly bodies, it is the only place where we can live. Only place to exist. Among the many gifts of earth is the gift of water. Countless billions have been spent looking for water in our solar system. But Earth is definitely the only place where the life giving water is so abundanlty available. Water is a scare resource. It is sufficient for many more millenia to come, but there are still many issues concerning water. Water when refered by us mainly means fresh water resource. And fresh water is even scarcer resource. It reminds me of a anecdote, when one of our professors wanted to teach us about infinity. He asked us, what would happen if we take a bucket of water from the ocean. The standard reply was nothing. What is a bucket of water when, ocean is so full. But the right answer was ocean would be shorter by a bu...

Money laundering, the metaphorical "cleaning of money" with regard to appearances in law, is the practice of engaging in specific financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source and/or destination of money and is a main operation of underground economy. Money laundering is often described as occurring in three stages: placement, layering, and integration. Money laundering involves three stages, placement, layering and integration. The placement stage refers to the way money launderers will put the “hot” money in banks or invest them in legitimate business transactions. Others will use the money to buy goods, services and properties, which they can later resell to other people. The next stage, is layering. Money launderers will try to disguise the origin of the funds by leaving a complicated paper trail. Often times, the money once deposited in a bank will be wired or transferred to different offshore accounts that will be very hard to trace. Some choose to dep...

Some excerpts from The rise and fall of Gold Basis an article by Antal Fekete The credibility of central bankers has in the meantime been reduced to a zero. They are the spinmasters of the “greatest fool” game. The greatest fool is the player who will hold the bag of worthless banknotes when the music stops. ******************** However, in God’s own dictionary a fine distinction is made between speculation and gambling. When man meets risks artificially created by other men (including the government), it is not speculation. It is gambling. It is akin to bets placed by the gambler on future events which may appear to be random but aren’t: they are rigged artificially by the casino owner for his own benefit. ********************** :) Falkor

If you are smart you dont need leverage. If you are dumb, you have no business using it. I do not hire people I would not want as friends or as neighbours. I work with people who make our life easier. You cant work with people who make your stomach grind. Doing charity work is the opposite of investing. We look for the most difficult problem to solve and the ones that have lowest possibility of success.

All said and done, investing in gold is a question of faith. You either have it or you dont have it. Investing in gold is believing that there is a perfect value system, a system that is above all kings, knights or barons. A system of justice, where no body will be able to con or short-change anybody at the paying to their due credit. Investing in gold is, believing in the circle of life. The fact that day turn into night, and night turns into day. The happiness is followed by sorrows and sorrows by happiness. Investing in gold is believing in the honest efforts of innumerable population will not be conned for few pieces of paper, that looses or gains its value on the whims and fancies of few people. Investing in gold believes that life is fair. That every effort that has been put in will be rewarded equally and in equal measure. Investing in gold is believing in "what you sow is what you reap". You can’t reap luxuries of lifetime by doing nothing, while someone toils hard fo...

Gold is not an option, it is a necessity There are lots of economists, analysts, investment bankers, advisors, thinkers, philosophers, astrologers, boot-legers etc etc who have one good reason of why not to buy gold - gold is not a reserve currency. There are umpteen questions and suggestion sraised to say the gold standard is the figment of historian's imagination and has no practical relevance in today "blink-a-second" financial arena. And not to mention thousands of articles by gold-doubters constantly harping that gold is not a reserve currency and therefore in the present system of financial assets has no value except as a commodity. For the sake of Christ, pray tell me, what are these assumptions of gold-doubting Thomases based on. Based on nothing but assumptions. And if in the future these assumptions are proved wrong all the followers of gold-standard-is-dead cult will hang naked in face of fierce financial storm. And what if the doubters are correct, investing...

The fractional reserve banking is the worst confidence scheme played upon the mankind. It is possibly of the worst of its kind and totally lacks conscience. It is akin to paying a hard working worker- who logs in more than 10 hours a day, away from his family, sacrificing many pleasures of life, with a glossily printed tissue paper. This is totally evil. Following is an excerpt from my favorite Mogambo's newsletter: In May 1995, which was eleven long years ago, total deposits in the banks ("savings") were only around $110 billion, and total Loans and Leases on the books of the banks logged in at only $204 billion. And against that, the banks were saddled with $57 billion in Required Reserves. Now the Total Deposits at the banks are up to $5.2 trillion, which is 47 times bigger than it was in 1995. That's a growth rate of 42% a year, compounded! And total Loans and Leases is now $5.7 trillion, which is 27 times bigger than in 1995, which works out to an annual growth ...

The World Wealth Report World Wealth Report (Regional Facts) The State of the World's Wealth HNWI Asset Allocation The New-age Global Financial Services :) Falkor

Wake-up call for Central Banking The tale of two Asias

And if you believe that there are such things as "lessons of history", then as price inflation heats up and up, as the value of the dollar goes down and down, gold will go up and up, just like it has all the other times in history when somebody's stupid government caused too much money to be created. And especially those times when the "too much money" created is not just by literally printing up cash with paper and ink, but creating the money from debt! Hahaha! But now, this one time in history, you think gold is going to go down as a result? Hahahaha! **************************** You will, theoretically, seemingly make a lot of money on this ***** trade, but that is just an example of "money illusion"; you THINK that you made money because you bought low and sold high, but remember; it is still only a damned *****! And now the "money" you think you "made" only offsets the loss in buying power that your money has suffered. And to m...

Three types of JPY carry trades Let’s assume that there are three types of ‘JPY carry trades’: (1) Japanese borrowing in JPY and investing in higher-yielding foreign assets; (2) Japanese or foreign investors borrowing in short-term JPY funds and investing in longer-term JPY assets; and (3) foreign investors could have had massive borrowing in JPY from Japanese banks and held foreign securities as a carry trade. Type 1 carry trades : Capital outflows from Japan. Since the adoption of QE in early 2003, total Japanese portfolio outflows have been around US$170 billion a year. Compared to the US’ gross annual securities inflows of US$7 trillion a year, Japanese outflows should not be so important that they have supported US or global asset prices. However, with cumulative flows since the first introduction of ZIRP in early 1999 totalling close to US$1 trillion, there are reasons to be concerned about the JPY crosses and the prices of smaller markets, if Japanese repatriation were to become...

A must read article on Fiat and Credit by Nigel Maund. :) Falkor

The fact that we are talking about inexperienced investors in commodities and emerging markets who have moved into these markets in a big way since late last year and these markets are generally fairly illiquid. So I think there are still big adjustments in positions that need to take place. Jac Laubscher

Sometimes few words are enough to explain a whole lot of madness. Here is Mark Tinker's (The Independent) take on the markets This equity sell-off has had two legs to it so far, and any assessment of where it goes next needs to allow for the prospect of a third. The first leg, the sell-off in May, was largely a function of profit taking as a bout of price weakness triggered a rush to lock in the large gains of the first quarter. At the same time, a spike in the yen undermined the delicate financing structure behind many of the cross-border plays in emerging markets. The second leg, the sell-off in June, was forced selling by traders, many of whom had embraced the notion that the dollar was going down and in effect bought commodities and sold the greenback. A rally in the dollar blew a hole in that trade and led to a sharp sell-off in many commodities, particularly precious metals. This is another reason why the Fed may pause: high commodity prices were almost certainly at the centr...

Washington Post's appraisal of Alan Greenspan's tenure as Fed Chariman :) Falkor

The Great Depression Is contagion catching? The evil empire Money and idealism Buy and Hold : Myth or Truth Holy cow! Stuffing the envelope Invisible hand? :) Falkor

Money and Trade considered by McMaster University The Great German Inflation by Bruce Bartlet The discovery of gold by General John a Sutter What a dream! by Daan Joubert Extraordinary delusions and madness of crowds by Charles Mackay History of money by Glyn Davies Human Action by Ludwig von Mises Liberty and Property by Ludwig von Mises Of Manipulation of money and credit by Ludwig von Mises A Legacy of liberty by Murray Rothbard The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith What has government done/ money by Murray Rothbard Noble Prize internet archive (Economics) Crime of 1873 by FX Micheloud Costs of Gold Standard by Roger Garrison Blitzkrief appriaising for the new paradigm by Gale Bullock Sure-thing syndrome by Stephen Roach Macro seduction by Stephen Roach :) Falkor