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picked up a couple million more myself today. reverse mergers are always good for the brokerage accounts. this should fly on the news.
........al
9:10am gold 1042.50 silver 16.50 eom
I do kind of think EI is better off doing the niche thing in the manufacturing and distribution rather than the end item. Make your product, get the word out, distribute to retailers and wholesalers and let the retailers deal with the public end of it. Now we are all hoping to see some increasing numbers on the Ks and Qs. If not, well, it just wasn't meant to be. Good night all.
...........al
Yep, I'm holding 2.5 million. Lottery play here.
......al
Hi LC, there are many things against the law. On funeral services, I was thinking out loud looking for some dialogue. Laws vary from state to state and I don't know if federal laws even come in to play. So, even if they have to accept outside caskets, fees to accept and handle them would not be illegal. Also, who's to know what extra fees may be involved in a viewing and funeral that are normally absorbed by the funeral home that would be added if forced to handle an outside casket. There are many ways to circumvent laws and regulators. Geez, the big banks are far more blatant than that and they get away with trillions. Anyway, just was thinking out loud.
.......al
momo- momentum play, many individual investors piling on because buying pressure is sending the price up, almost like a feeding frenzy. Momentum stops, everyone loses interest and price usually returns to normal levels. It goes on every day with several different stocks.
.......al
I remember Bre X too, LOL. eom
Walmart + EI urns and caskets? I have reservations about that partnership. The funeral industry is stodgy and very conservative. I don't think Walmart is even a close match to this industry's image of itself. A key word is respect. Funeral homes and directors go to great lengths for the families out of respect for the deceased and the surviving members. The only thing Walmart respects is sales and their bottom line. They couldn't come close to providing for grieving family members.
Then, too, there are very few independant funeral homes. Most are owned by a couple of very large corporations. They make money selling caskets and urns. Would they shun someone who comes along with their deceased loved one and "oh, by the way, would you pick up the casket I bought at Walmart please." I'd be willing to bet there would be a hefty service fee to pick up the casket and/or extra fees added to the viewing expenses that's if they even allow an outside purchased casket in their place of business.
Now the pet urns may be a whole different ballgame(go Phillies, LOL). Walmart just could be a viable outlet for pet urns and memorials. Bet they could sell more than our own Lurker, LOL. Just kidding. Perhaps it is something the company could persue now that Walmart has entered the funeral industry.
.........al
It looks as tho all the trading was done at .0006 until eod where 2 large sells went in at .0005. Call your broker and ask why your order wasn't filled if it has been in for a long time. Looks like someone had a lot of shares to sell and didn't want to disrupt the market during regular trading hours. Company itself or 504 holder possibly, or some shares becoming unrestricted. I don't know. Looks like a momo might be taking place. bought 1 mill more myself.
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=trades&cb=1256854680&symbol=IFHR&java_vm=sun&java_vm_ver=1.6.0_07
......al
JUST TO BE SURE... OWN BOTH GOLD AND STOCKS
A question on investors' minds right now: "If the dollar is going to lose more of its value over the coming years, which is a better refuge? Gold, like half of the experts say? Or stocks, like the other half say?
Answer: As you can see from today's chart, the market likes gold better... but not by much.
Today's chart shows the performance of gold (blue line) compared with the performance of stocks (black line). The percentages on the right-hand side show the gains since May. This is when the U.S. dollar decline kicked into high gear.
Gold is a dollar refuge now for the same reason it has been for thousands of years. It represents real money that can't be printed at a whim to buy votes. Stocks are a dollar refuge because they represent claims on the profits and assets of operating businesses... which tend to grow over time.
Gold is up about 21% since the dollar started plunging. Stocks, which exhibit very similar price action, are up about 17.5% in the same period. This is the market's way of saying, "Both groups are right... but the gold group is right by a little bit more. Own some of both, just to cover your bases."
What the "Man Who Made Too Much" Says About Gold
By Chris Mayer, editor, Capital & Crisis
The U.S. dollar is a sort of monetary brand.
And like any other brand, it can fall out of favor. Even iconic brands can rapidly lose their "must-have" cachet. Sometimes, a brand can disappear entirely, as did Pan American Airways or "Members Only" jackets. But there is always something else waiting to take its place. So it is with the U.S. dollar, a brand making lows in the financial markets.
The dollar has been the "Coca-Cola of monetary brands," says James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer. But even the best of brands can be lousy investments. Grant uses the analogy of the New York Times. It was the greatest name in newspapers. In 2002, the stock sold for $53 per share – an all-time high, as it turned out. Today, the "Gray Lady" fetches only $8 per share.
"What happened?" Grant asked. The World Wide Web happened, he says. "The Times has hundreds of reporters, but this is a story they seem to have missed." As if the lowly stock price was not evidence enough of its decline, the NY Times got another reminder when it borrowed $225 million against its headquarters building.
The cost of such borrowing, Grant reports, was 14%. The august Times today borrows at rates no better than a working-class stiff at a pawnshop. The U.S. Treasury should take note. The government seems as intent on creating dollars as prolifically as bunnies create other bunnies.
Here we get to John Paulson, a presenter at the Grant's Fall Investment Conference and undoubtedly the richest man in the room. Portfolio magazine dubbed him "The Man Who Made Too Much" after he made $3.7 billion by betting against mortgage-backed securities (MBS). He is one of the greatest hedge-fund managers ever.
Gold is his favorite today. As to why, Paulson presented a simple, but compelling case. First, the monetary base has exploded in a way we've never seen before. The monetary base is essentially the Federal Reserve Bank's currency and reserves. The Fed, by buying up securities in this crisis, has pumped a lot of money into the economy.
You've probably seen this chart, or some variation of it. Still, there haven't been noticeable signs of inflation as a result of that big spike – not yet.
As Paulson explained, that's because this base money has not yet been lent out and multiplied throughout the economy. Yet the monetary base and money supply are highly correlated, "almost 1-to-1 between the two," Paulson said.
That means that as the monetary base expands, the money supply surely follows, though there is a lag. (Money supply is a broader measure of money than just the monetary base, as it includes personal deposits and more. The monetary base is like a kind of monetary yeast. It makes money supply rise.)
If money supply grows faster than the economy, that will create inflation, says Paulson. As it is impossible for the economy to grow anywhere near that vertical spike in the monetary base, Paulson contends inflation is coming.
The U.S. is not alone in its money-printing exercise. The supply of most currencies is expanding rapidly – even the normally tame Swiss franc. In the race of paper currencies, they are all dogs. Hence Paulson's interest in gold, which no government can make on a whim.
Therefore, in the content of the exploding monetary base, gold seems relatively cheap. In other words, as the money supply rises, so does the price of gold, eventually. As a result, says Paulson, "gold has been a perfect hedge against inflation."
There is some slippage over time. The gold price can change faster or slower than the money supply. But when the market gets worried about inflation, the gold price usually changes much faster – as happened in the 1970s. In 1973 – to pick a typical year – inflation was 9% and gold rose 67%. That was a pattern common in the 1970s.
The potential for inflation this time around is greater than it was in the 1970s, given that the growth in the monetary base is so much greater than it was in the 1970s. Gold could do much better this time around, reaching "$3,000 or $4,000, or $5,000 per ounce" as Paulson said.
Future historians will look back at the present day and see clearly how this unfolded. They will see the litany of news items that pointed to the dollar losing its top perch: China and Brazil are settling are up trade in their own currencies. The Russians and others are openly calling for a new monetary standard. Even mainstream outlets are discussing alternatives to a dollar-based standard, a province once solely occupied by cranks and gold bugs. Not a week goes by without these kinds of stories.
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The Only Sure Thing We Know About Gold and the U.S. Dollar
As for a replacement waiting in the wings, Grant offers up gold. Indeed, a kind of "de facto gold standard" seems to be taking shape. The SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold-backed security in the world, is now the sixth largest holder of the metal in the world. Anybody with a brokerage account can easily buy gold today through the trust, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker GLD.
It's still early. Most people still own no or very little gold. As it becomes clearer what's happening, they will buy more gold, especially as it is now easy to do so.
The gold supply, too, is limited against the vast pool of dollars. As Paulson points out, global money supply is 72 times the value of gold. I'm betting that gap will narrow. It only has to narrow a smidgen and the gold price flies.
As Grant eloquently put it: "Gold is a speculation. But it is a speculation on a certainty: the debasement of the currency." Gold stocks, too, are a speculation. But they are a speculation on an inevitably higher gold price.
Regards,
Chris Mayer
GDP up this quarter? what a joke, here's an educated opinion:
from Karl Denninger:
Oh what a tangled web we weave....
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP decreased 0.7 percent.
Looks good, right?
Hmmmm.... or is it?
Motor vehicle output added 1.66 percentage points to the third-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.19 percentage point to the second-quarter change.
....
Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment increased 7.9 percent in the third quarter, compared with an increase of 11.4 percent in the second.
Ok, from this we can compute a few things.
3.5 - 1.66 - (7.9 * 30%) = -0.53%
Now let's adjust for inventories:
The change in real private inventories added 0.94 percentage point to the third-quarter change in real GDP after subtracting 1.42 percentage points from the second-quarter change.
-0.53% - 0.94% = -1.47%.
Ok, that's bad but not catastrophic and is an actual improvement compared to the second quarter. But....
Current-dollar personal income decreased $15.5 billion (0.5 percent) in the third quarter, in contrast to an increase of $19.1 billion (0.6 percent) in the second.
Personal current taxes increased $4.8 billion in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of $119.1 billion in the second.
Eeeeehhh... those are both going the wrong way. Taxes up, income down. And...
Disposable personal income decreased $20.4 billion (0.7 percent) in the third quarter, in contrast to an increase of $138.2 billion (5.2 percent) in the second. Real disposable personal income decreased 3.4 percent, in contrast to an increase of 3.8 percent.
That's worse. A lot worse. Disposable personal income decreased in nominal terms q/o/q by 5.9% while in real terms (inflation adjusted) it decreased q/o/q by 7.4%! That is an enormous swing in purchasing power and not in the right direction!
Personal outlays increased $148.2 billion (5.8 percent) in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $8.2 billion (0.3 percent) in the second. Personal saving -- disposable personal income less personal outlays -- was $364.6 billion in the third quarter, compared with $533.1 billion in the second.
The personal saving rate -- saving as a percentage of disposable personal income -- was 3.3 percent in the third quarter, compared with 4.9 percent in the second.
So into decreasing personal income and disposable personal income people tried to spend anyway. Best guess: most of this was "cash for clunkers", which is the worst sort of "spending" - it is the taking on of more debt by replacing a paid-off car with one that now comes with a shiny (and nasty) payment book. The Trade: Go long auto repo outfits (aside: as far as I know there are no publicly-traded repo companies.)
Nothing in here I like; to the contrary, this report sucks and on a drill-down appears to be full of outright lies.
Looking inside the data, the "big change" in private domestic investment is all residential fixed - up 23.4%. I don't believe it. I've been scouring the homebuilder earnings releases and data, and I don't see the numbers that support this. An improvement over the ditch-diving of the last many quarters, yes - but a 23.4% increase, a swing of fifty percent from Q2-Q3? Oh hell no. Where is it? It's not in Home Depot's or Lowe's quarterly results, it's not in the homebuilders, and I can't find it in the suppliers (lumber companies, etc) either. This sort of move would result in monstrous top-line revenue increases reported by firms in this sector and that simply has not happened.
Nor do the export and import numbers look right. Port of Long Beach and LA anyone? Those numbers also don't add up - swings of 20-25% in one quarter? Not reflected in container volumes and freight loadings. Yet it has to be - how do you get something in or out of here without it going through a port?
Government looks right, both federal and state/local. The "Obama will cut defense and war spending" folks have to be bashing themselves with a hammer - there's no evidence for that in the data, now three quarters into his administration. If you're anti-war and "bring the troops home", you may want to re-think whether voting for Barry was a wise decision - he sure as hell hasn't kept that promise. (Note that I didn't think he would either but that lie sure played well in San Francisco, didn't it?)
Forward the big problem is the deterioration in personal income. You can't spend what you don't have without credit creation, and that's fallen off a cliff. The Fed's credit reports continue to come in with huge contractions - this should not surprise, as demanding that banks lend to people who are seeing their income shrink is into the realm of pure idiocy.
The market likes the numbers although a lot of the move - perhaps all of it - is Bucky getting thrown under the bus once again.
You can't expect the cheerleaders on CNBC to read beyond the headline numbers, and they (once again) did not disappoint in this regard. The first 20 minutes of "analysis" brought not one mention of the decease in personal income or disposable personal income, yet on a forward basis this is in fact the most important piece of information in the report.
You cannot have an economic recovery when on a q/o/q basis real disposable income is contracting at a 7.4% annual rate and worse, the spread between nominal and real income is widening, indicating that mandatory purchases such a food, energy and health care - are increasing.
9:20am gold 1036.70 silver 16.41 eom
rudimentary analysis: What is happenning is a momentum play based on a rumor that this will be a merger play. This is based on documents filed in the state of Texas last month. I have seen and read those myself and came to the conclusion that this could very well be a merger play. The hype will die down as time goes by. Momentum plays are notoriously short lived as traders exit when news fails to come. So this will probably channel in a 30-40% trading range for now. Where the bottom is I couldn't know. IF and WHEN a merger deal is announced we could see this fly into pennies within hours of the announcement. Right now I still consider this a lotto play, albeit a better than average possibility. My small investment here is worth holding for now.
........al
9:10am gold 1034.30 silver 16.38 eom
Thank you Heppie. I am looking forward to your impressions of how our products were displayed and any buzz from vendors. Glad to see you on the job.
...........al
I caught that document a few weeks ago. Looked like something might be happenning. Bought a half mill as a lotto play. Now going to ride this wave. Good luck all.
...........al
9:50am gold 1037.90 silver 16.88 eom
Would like to hear from Heppie also. I can't speak for him, but I am pretty sure his position on the comapny hasn't changed. My own hasn't. I think they are in a rough patch right now and trying to work out of it. It ain't easy with credit markets the way they are now. If I thought there was any monkey business going on at the company I'd be the first one yelling for some good old frontier justice. I am a fairly large shareholder and if the company goes bust I'll be out more than a few bucks. But it is a pittance compared to what Clint and crew would lose. Don't forget they financed this operation out of their own pockets for startup and and quite some time after that. The shares they took in exchange for the debts would be worth as much as my own if they went belly up. I can't say for sure if this company will flop or florish. I hope they will do well as the concept is still sound and inroads into a stodgy old industry are being made. Could they fail due to undercapitalization or poor management skills? Possible. Is what is going on right now any kind of malfeasance? I doubt it very much.
.........al
Well, I was planning to make the trip to Boston myself this year for the convention. It's in my general area here in the NE. My youngest is getting married in 5 more days and ALL extraneous expenses have been cancelled, LOL. Admittedly if I was planning to go, when I found they would not be showing there themselves, I probably would have cancelled. I don't know if any other investors are still planning on going.
.........al
10am gold 1057.30 silver 17.70 eom
9:20am gold 1065.60 silver 17.89 eom
9:10am gold 1053.20 silver 17.42 eom
Jim, I'm with you all the way on this. I just think it would be very prudent to keep a close eye on the share structure from now on. Remember how Clayton promised pie in the sky and all the time was diluting the float. Apologies given here, but I am not a trusting type with pinky CEOs.
.........al
good morning all. Quick question here from a long time holder and still holding. If this is or was an empty shell, where is the money coming from to obtain a $7.5 million asset? I could be wrong but it sounds like dilution coming down the pike somewhere. Does anyone think a new owner would be sticking cash out of his own pocket to make aquisitions? Just food for thought.
...........al
The 22 carat US gold bar is news to me also. But it makes a lot of sense if you think about the times. There must have been a big rush to melt and store to get it out of peoples' minds.
......al
Missed that part, really just scanned it. There have been rumors floating around for years that Ft Knox has no gold. And even if it does, that it is there but no longer "owned" by the USA. Hasn't been audited since the 1950s.
......al
Hi Mark- I just had a comical vision and thought I'd share.
The leaders of Al Quida, Taliban, Iran and Venezuela are all meeting to discuss how to bring down the USA. Various means of terror attacks were being contemplated along with what devices to utilize. Then they went on to discuss possible targets inside the US. What they all agreed on was that New York City and Washington DC were both off limits as targets. At this point I had to stop the vision and laugh. Even our most outspoken enemies have enough sense to keep Wall Street and Washington alive and well. They are doing a far better job destroying the country than anything a terrorist could contemplate.
Had to share, LOL.
......al
In an Asian depository they’ve found “Good Delivery” bricks that had been gutted and filled with tungsten.
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1255630435.php
Blight on Humanity Addendum
By: Rob Kirby
Earlier this week, I wrote about possible “incongruities” in the gold bar registry of GLD. Specifically, here is what has happened to the GLD bar list which is published each Friday at approximately 4:30 pm EST. An alert reader I communicate with [who shall remain anonymous] has been documenting the length of the published GLD bar list:
- on Friday, Sept. 25 – the list was 1,381 pages long
- on Friday, Oct. 2 – the list was 208 pages long
- on Friday, Oct. 9 – the list was 195 pages long
- then, on Wednesday, Oct. 14 – after questions were being raised about the strange machinations with the bar list in chat rooms on the internet – the list was back up to 855 pages long
Something TRULY stinks here. No explanation has been offered for the DRAMATIC swings in this list. Where gold is concerned nothing happens by accident.
How Precious is Settled in London:
Loco London clearing is the daily paper unallocated transfers between London clearers; the transfers of gold and silver only across accounts held between clearers for their own accounts and third parties; and, as mentioned earlier, the clearing out of Zürich for the platinum group metals. It avoids security risk and the cost of physical movement of bullion; has standard market practices…
[However] Both allocated and unallocated account agreements are available. There are allocations for credit purposes, bilateral credit agreements between clearers, and London good delivery….
Some short definitions: an unallocated account is an account where specific bars are not set aside, and the customer has a general entitlement to the metal. This is the most convenient, cheapest, and most commonly used method of holding metal. The allocated account, on the other hand, is an account opened when a customer requires metal to be physically segregated, and this needs a detailed list of weights and assays….
To Summarize:
- GLD gold bullion inventory is principally held in London
- I’ve already written about some large [allocated] physical transactions that were settled last week in London under VERY strange circumstances indicative of a shortage of physical gold bullion for good delivery.
- At the same time, significant irregularities appeared in the GLD bullion bar list
Conclusion:
- is the correlated timing of these unusual events a coincidence???? Could GLD inventory have been utilized to effect these physical settlements, which in turn, would have required the “sanitization” or doctoring of the GLD bar list to avoid MANY obvious, easily detectable, duplications of bar numbers?
I discussed these irregularities with a very informed source [the same one who informed me of specific [allocated] trades settled last week] and the reply I received was as follows:
“What can I tell you that you don't already know?
They are all scrambling big time since a number of large interests have demanded audits. Independent auditors are NOW descending onto the various vaults to verify, validate and certify.
They can move this as many times in circles as they like to try to fool people.
In an Asian depository they’ve found “Good Delivery” bricks that had been gutted and filled with tungsten.
Soon, there will be xxxx hitting the fan all over place.”
These circumstances suggest that a VERY REAL physical short squeeze is in progress RIGHT NOW and a gang of fraudsters from “fiat-crack-houses” [Central Banks] are attempting to finesse their losing over-sold hand in an elaborate Three-card Monty. With reports of independent physical audits now being conducted and mysterious happenings with GLD’s bar list – GLD has NEVER looked more suspect.
Hope you’ve all got some physical gold already.
Yep, got some early, bid support now is huge, MSBT
..........al
Brick- your MSBT is going crazy, 95% buying going on. Nice call.
..........al
9:20am gold 1063.50 silver 17.75 eom
It is always refreshing to have a management that is responsive to shareholders. Especially here in pinkieland. Now we just have to keep an eye on that OS number for changes.
........al
9:40am gold 1052.20 silver 17.41 eom
Nothing wrong with making a few $$$. No such thing as a bad profit. Myself, I bought in on the momo a few days back planning to flip it for a few $$$ myself. After I bought in I researched the company and decided to hold what I bought and possibly add more. We are now getting weekly updates on the share structure. I'll be holding off until I see several weeks of stable numbers there. With miners I have no problem waiting. Depending on capital costs, infrastructure and host country regulations(and bribes) mines take from 4-10 years to come on line with the average being 7 years. Also many juniors with great finds end up being bought by a larger miner with the funds to actually develop the mines. So it's either daytrade, swingtrade, or stash the shares for the future. It's not just with VIPR, I do think this applies to all junior miners. JMHO of course. Good luck to all here.
............al
response from company to my request. Answers were acceptable to me, be your own judge. Updates on the share structure weekly is better than before. Reading into the response I get the impression they are concerned about shareholders. I hope I am reading it right.
............al
my message:
Message: Hello- I am a shareholder thinking seriously about adding to my position. But I do have some concerns. I have contacted the transfer agent to help address those and was told that the company has requested that the TA not give out share strycture information and that all inquiries are to be dircted to the company. My first question is why? It has been my past experience that companies that gag their TA have something to hide. Is this the case here? Second question now is what is the current share structure as of close of business yesterday, not weeks or months ago. Thanks for your time .......al
response:
Sir,
The gag order for the transfer agent was due to the fact every inquiry made to the transfer agent is something the company gets ultimately charged for. As well, most companies do not provide shareholders with a daily update. Having said that, we see their is a demand for it from shareholders. Starting tomorrow the company will provide weekly updates to our shares issued and outstanding which will be posted on our website. The update will be posted to our website this evening
VIPR Industries Inc.
9:12am gold 1049.10 silver 17.36 eom
1209- thanks for sharing, it explains a lot. Shares come from the company treasury. Whether the company issues them directly for sale or trades them for financing and the finance company sells them it still amounts to dilution of current shareholder value.
........al
verified from the TA. company has requested all share structure info only comes from the company. I know some here have passed on that info already, but it is part of my own DD. I have called the company in LV, and the person I need to talk to is not in. I will keep trying until I catch him. My questions, what is the current share structure as of COB yesterday and why has the company told the TA to not disseminate share structure info. I will get back when I have that info. I know it seems like I'm shoveling against the longs here but that is not my intention. From my experience I have found that a large majority of the time when a company deliberately uses a TA that by policy will not give out share info, or requests that the TA not give out info, they are trying to hide dilution. I have a small position and am looking to add, but looking at the trading trend I have my doubts. Is this just a momo play or can the company move forward? Serious precious metals juniors will be rewarding their shareholders big time in the future. Macro trends are very bullish gold and silver and very bearish US dollar. That's the reason I am looking at a lot of junior miners.
........al