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HOW LOW WILL GOLD GO? |
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Written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013 |
The curse of hedging
that blighted gold in the 1990s is making a comeback, and threatens to loom
over the market like Banquo's ghost.
London-listed gold producer Petropavlovsk has said it will
pre-sell 55pc of its future output planned for the second quarter of 2014, at
an average price of $1,408 an ounce. This is the first time that a big producer
has hedged more than half its future sales.
"We have a huge investment program and thought a little
price protection in the short-term will let us sleep better at night," said
chairman Peter Hambro.
Tyler Broda from Nomura said this may signal the return of
"structural hedging" across the industry, with other companies scrambling to
lock in forward contracts. "This could increase the pressure on the spot gold
price over the coming years," he said. The risk is a vicious circle as hedging
leads to lower prices, leading to more hedging.
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OBAMA LEFT THEM BEHIND |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013 |
It
was drummed into us in boot camp that "Marines go back for their wounded. Marines go back for their dead. We leave no one behind."
I
found the same ethos in the Army Special Forces when I joined them later. During the Vietnam war, the Air Force went to
extraordinary lengths to rescue downed pilots.
But
on 9/11/2012, Americans at our consulate in Benghazi were left behind.
It
may well be true, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed, that military help
couldn't be sent because it was unavailable.
But if that is true, somebody screwed the pooch, big time. Was it the POTUS?
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THE IRS: END IT BECAUSE YOU CANNOT MEND IT |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013 |
Every few years, at least from the time of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is a scandal involving abuse of power at the
Internal Revenue Service. We are again in the midst of one of these periodic
abuse scandals, with many solemn promises that the problems will be corrected
and will not happen again.
As always, the rhetoric is far from the reality for two
basic reasons. The first is the nature of the income tax, which, by definition,
is subjective in its interpretation of the definition of "income" and
thus subject to abuse. The second is the type of person that the IRS attracts
as an employee.
In the former, the agency is corrupt in the Orwellian sense.
When the federal government's General Services Administration or the IRS takes
a number of its employees to Las Vegas for a conference, is this a taxable
benefit (income) or not? The answer is this case is "no" because this
is the type of benefit the political class enjoys.
In the latter, because the IRS is feared, loathed and resented, it attracts all too many workers who are insensitive to the needs
and problems of others, and some even enjoy
being bullies.
These flaws of the IRS cannot be mended -- thus the only real solution is to put an end to the IRS itself.
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THE ARAB COLLAPSE |
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Written by Ralph Peters
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013 |
The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody
still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist
cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes
behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.
And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled
into harmony.
We're witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a
long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that
violent upheaval became inevitable. That's what we're seeing in Syria and Iraq
- two names, one struggle - and will find elsewhere tomorrow.
We can't stop it, we can't fix it, and we don't understand
it. But we can stay out of it. Here's how we can and why we should.
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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/17/13 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 17 May 2013 |
Agent
Sadusky (Harvey
Keitel): "And what about you?"
Ben
Gates (Nicolas Cage): "I'd really love not to go to prison. I can't
even describe how much I would love
not to go to prison."
Agent
Sadusky: "Someone's got to go to prison, son."
---National Treasure (2004)
"My question
isn't about who's going to resign -- my question is who is going to jail over
this scandal?"
---House
Speaker John Boehner, May 15, 2013
"A few more days like this, and Obama's going to claim he was born in Kenya."
--- comedian
Dennis Miller
Now, I know
you all think that this week, the HFR glass is as overflowing as much as the
glass in Ronald
Reagan's favorite Irish joke. However, after we've yelled Bunga! Bunga! a few dozen times watching
the news and mooned Zero every time we see his disgusting face on the screen,
let's see if we can't discuss what's happening with a smidgeon of
sobriety. I admit it won't be easy.
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A HAT TRICK OF SCANDALS |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 16 May 2013 |
Though
arguably the least significant of three burgeoning scandals that have made this
the worst fortnight ever for the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the
Justice Department's covert seizure of the telephone records of Associated
Press reporters may cause him the most grief.
Journalists unmoved by evidence his Justice Department ran guns to
Mexican drug cartels and promoted vote fraud are very,
very upset.
Some
Democrats who faithfully parroted administration talking points on Benghazi
jumped ship after the Internal Revenue Service admitted targeting Tea Party
groups. The FBI has now launched a
criminal probe.
Fewer
have been willing to parrot the party line on Benghazi since the number two guy
in our embassy in Libya testified
that during the attack on 9/11/2012, he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
it was the work of terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. All told, this is a Hat Trick of Scandals.
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THE ROAD AHEAD FOR A BENGHAZI COMMITTEE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013 |
Thanks
to the testimony of whistleblowers last week, and subsequent reporting of how
"talking points" were systematically scrubbed of every reference to the truth,
we know for sure President Barack Hussein Obama and senior aides were lying
when they blamed a Youtube video for the attack on our consulate in Benghazi.
More
important is what is being covered up.
To get to the bottom of what may be more a looming national security
crisis than a scandal in the past, we must have answers to a large number of critical
questions.
The way to get them is for
the House of Representatives to form a Select Committee, armed with subpoena
power, to investigate what was going on before and during the attack on
9/11/2012, and what's been happening since.
Here's
how to form it, who should be on it, and what its members should focus on. Hint: not
impeachment. There are very good reasons
why - at least not before the mid-term elections in November 2014.
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THE HUMILIATION OF JOHN KERRY |
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Written by Michael Ledeen
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 |
The secretary of state was back in Washington a few days ago
(5/09), begging the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to take
it easy on the poor Iranians. Enough with the sanctions, he
said. Secretary Kerry has joined decades of his predecessors,
buying into the latest version of the 30-year old illusion that we can
make a deal with the Tehran regime if only we deal properly and humbly with
them.
He said there was a "window of opportunity" for a couple of
months. It doesn't much matter if he really believes this legend, or is
following instructions from President Obama, who is still pursuing this unholy
grail despite five years of swift kicks in his behind. The one he so
loves to lead with. Either way, it's an embarrassment.
But then, our new secretary of state has great flair for
embarrassing us. In Obama's community of narcissists, Kerry is a bit
different. He excels at self-humiliation, as he showed in his recent
sortie to Moscow, where Czar Putin kept him waiting for many hours before
sparing some time to "discuss" Syria and related topics, no doubt including
Iran.
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TOO LATE FOR SYRIA |
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Written by Ralph Peters
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 |
To borrow the climactic line from Easy Rider, "We blew it." Or,
to be fully accurate, President Obama blew an unprecedented chance to aid
Syria's then-moderate opposition back in 2011.
We could have helped end the monstrous Assad regime, gaining
good will and practical advantage in a hopeful new state.
Now it's too late. And Obama may be ready to act at last.
The result could be disastrous.
Strategy isn't only about doing the right thing, but about
doing the right thing at the right time. Doing what appears to be the "right
thing" too late often makes things worse.
How did the window for aiding the Syrian rebels close?
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IMMIGRATION AND PRODUCTIVITY |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Tuesday, 14 May 2013 |
[Note from JW: Dr. Rahn here presents an economic discussion
of immigration - after all, he is an economist.
It is not a discussion of the national security threat of immigration,
specifically that of illegal immigration from Mexico. A lively discussion of
Dr. Rahn's arguments is expected on the TTP Forum!]
How many new immigrants should the United States allow each
year? How many guest workers? These are not easy questions, which is why there
is as much fierce debate within the two parties as between them.
The two main reasons given for restricting current
immigration are the myths that immigrants take away American jobs and that
immigrants are more likely to go on welfare, thus putting an additional burden
on the taxpayers.
Rather than taking away American jobs, good economists
understand that immigrants who work create wealth in America, which in turn
creates more and higher paying jobs for everyone.
To explain the economics of this adequately would take more
space than this entire commentary, but the truth of the assertion can be seen
in the fact that high-wage countries with many immigrants such as Switzerland,
Australia and Canada tend to have much higher labor force participation rates
and lower unemployment rates than low-wage countries.
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NO FEAR OF FLU |
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Written by Matt Ridley
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Thursday, 16 May 2013 |
Here we go again. A new bird-flu virus in China, the H7N9
strain, is spreading alarm. It has infected about 130 people and killed more
than 30. Every time this happens, some journalists compete to foment fear, ably
assisted by cautious but worried scientists, and then tell the world to keep
calm.
We need a new way to talk about the risk of a flu pandemic,
because the overwhelming probability is that this virus will kill people, yes,
but not in vast numbers.
In recent years flu has always proved vastly less perilous
than feared. In 1976 more people may have
died from bad reactions to swine-flu vaccine than from swine flu. Since
2005, H5N1 bird flu has killed 374 people, not the two million to 7.4 million deemed possible by the World Health Organization. In 2009,
H1N1 Mexican swine flu proved to be a normal flu episode despite apocalyptic
forecasts.
No doubt some TTPers will remind me that, in the story of
the boy who cried "Wolf!", there eventually was a wolf. And that in
1918 maybe 50 million people died of influenza world-wide. So we should always
worry a bit. But perhaps it's not just luck that has made every flu pandemic
since then mild. It may be evolutionary
logic.
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NIXON WAS A PIKER |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 17 May 2013 |
AND THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO COME!
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HALF-FULL REPORT 05/10/13 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 10 May 2013 |
Good grief - let's see if I still remember how to do
this. I can't believe the last HFR I
wrote was February 22. I've been gone that long. Then again, there's an Agence France Presse story this week (5/09) about scientists
revealing that "Adventure
Shapes the Individual."
The more exploratory you are, the more new neurons grow in
your brain - even in adulthood, a process called adult neurogenesis - particularly in a structure of the brain
called the hippocampus, responsible for learning and memory.
AFP made a news story out of the research report appearing
in today's (5/10) issue of Science,
the world's premier journal of peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, I learned
about the connection between adventure and hippocampal neurogenesis a long time
ago from Skye.
So let's hope all the exploration I've been doing in the
South Atlantic worked, as I have to get up to speed fast. First, though, I want to thank Jack Kelly so
very much for his marvelous HFRs while I've been gone. I'm going to have a tough time now doing as
well.
Let's cut to the chase and explain the week's main event...
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CINCO DE REALIDAD |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Monday, 06 May 2013 |
By now, I hope you are recovered enough from too many cheap
tequila margaritas celebrating "Cinco de
Mayo" last night to handle a dose of la
realidad - reality.
Cinco de Mayo is a
phony tradition, a joke on los gringos,
then exploited as a marketing gimmick by Mexican restaurant chains. So at TTP, our tradition on or about May 5th
is to explain la verdad, the truth.
Which is, to begin with: Nobody in Mexico cares
about May 5th. Only we, us gringos, pretend to. For if you ask just about any reveler at the
nearest Pancho Villa's Cantina or some such Mexican-themed bar anywhere in the
US, just what is being celebrated on
May 5th, you'll get either a blank stare or "It's their July 4th
" ignorance.
So first the real history.
Then the reality - the horrific reality of how the fascists of the American
Left are using Mexico
to destroy their own country. Their
treasonous "Immigration Reform Bill" currently proposed by a Senate "Gang of
Eight" is the latest example.
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BENGHAZI AND WATERGATE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 09 May 2013 |
How different history might have been if
the news media then were as blasé about Watergate as they've been about
Benghazi, if Republicans then were as disinterested in truth as Democrats are
now.
If Watergate had not brought Richard
Nixon low, the "emerging Republican majority" Kevin
Phillips predicted in his 1969 book might well have.
Democrats wouldn't have won the lopsided
majorities in the 1974 congressional elections that led to the vast expansion
of domestic spending that now threatens to bankrupt the country. President
Nixon, if unweakened by scandal, wouldn't have abandoned South Vietnam when the
North Vietnamese invaded.
The Watergate burglars were caught while
removing a bug on the phone of a Democratic National Committee official they
believed supplied
prostitutes for visiting Democrat big shots.
President Nixon and his senior aides were
furious when they found out. They were undone by their attempt to cover up a
crime in which they were not involved. A crime in which no one died, like those in Benghazi.
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