Elaine Supkis

Currency ETF Charts

1. Europe is furious that the euro is rising.
2. The Bank of Japan is using every tool they have to weaken the yen.
3. All currencies of commodity-based nations are going down across the planet.
4. England is in the same boat as the US with one gigantic difference: no one is going through hell to raise the value of the pound. They are, with the dollar, because they want to restart the US with buying imported goods from them. England is in the same boat with Iceland and Ireland and will see significant import goods inflate.

Now, currency traders have a different view from nations. They think 'going up' is good and 'going down' is bad. But this is not true in all cases. Major exporters of MANUFACTURED goods desperately want weaker currencies vis a vis the US dollar. And periodically, the US goes through bouts of trying to depress the dollar for the same reason only this always causes a global financial collapse since the dollar is the world's fiat trade currency basis.

Thank you, emsnews.wordpress.com

Switzerland's Dollar Denominated Debt and the Fed's Shrinking Balance Sheets

So, the Swiss are now 'printing dollars'? Gott im Himmel! What a business. The US lost control of its own currency in 1914 and now, UBS can yank our financial strings. So much for 'sovereignty'. Note that the US lost its sovereignty a long time ago.

The Cult of Peter Schiff - Is It Deserved?

Understanding and predicting downturns is a complicated business. First, you have to understand international central banking policies which are all tied in ribbons of red to TRADE policies. Then, you figure out how much lending these central banks will allow while playing international trade games and from that, you can figure out where markets will go, up or down.

For everything hinges on interest rates. The queer ZIRP system set up in Japan has unbalanced everything in strange and horrible ways. This created the Japanese carry trade. The unwinding of this 'carry trade' is now monumental. It began in July, 2007. Each year, as one central bank after another falls into the Japanese ZIRP system, the unwinding gets worse and worse.

Making money off of this unwinding is very difficult since it is DESTROYING WEALTH. ZIRP won't retrieve wealth. Why is this?

The Derivatives Beast: this insurance/hedging system unwittingly hooked itself into the central bank interest rate manipulation system [derivatives are openly based on this system] and since the central banks openly manipulate interest rates, this means, all the people who are 'inside' the system have utterly warped it. That is, Citigroup's people, the guys running JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, etc.

Their insider knowledge coupled with their wild attempts to always make profits even when wealth is being destroyed has so unbalanced the systems, it is all now crashing down like a house built on a solid foundation and then the residents dig out the foundation and put it on the roof! Picture that!

There is no way to stop this crash. Only after all the illicit wealth built up by previous speculation vanishes, will this crash end. Then, we must build a BALANCED TRADE system, not the grossly unbalanced one with the US sucking up nearly a trillion in trade overruns. Right now, we are far, far from fixing the fundamental problems of free trade.

This is Elaine Supkis of emsnews. Thank you.

Evidence That Big Inflation Is Coming

Oil is going to go up. By the way, who is the person who rates these comments? Not very good choices, I might suggest.

But this isn't my own site! To go back to 'deflation/inflation' we can have both at the same time! Isn't that amazing?

For an obvious example: housing was inflating rapidly from 2003 to 2007. Then, it rapidly deflated. Oil was deflating from 1994-1999. Then it began to inflate. Consumer goods dropped in price and deflated from 1994-2004. But then it began to inflate. For example, plywood from Canada was $3.50 a 4x8 sheet quarter inch and shot up to over $9 a sheet and now has fallen to $7 a sheet.

All of these things, incidentally, are part of our TRADE DEFICIT. This mostly grows and grows and grows. We take on more and more debt to service this trade deficit. Now, we can't take on more debt, the trade is falling but is STILL in a deficit.

As I keep saying, the true thing at work here isn't 'how much money is being printed' but 'what is going on in trade?' I may be the only person saying this, but this see saw of prices is very much balanced on the fulcrum of trade.

Evidence That Big Inflation Is Coming

EMS News here!

Look, inflation happens only when the working class has extra paper money to spend on whatever they spend it on. There are several different levels of 'inflation': buying things on credit, buying things one needs to survive and savings levels.

Easy credit at the BEGINNING of a bubble leads to manic bidding up the prices of various things such as fancy cars, properties, etc. The wealthy use this easy money to bid at art auctions, buy mansions, pay for ritzy prostitutes. The lower classes buy season tickets to sporting games, go to Vegas to gamble or go on vacations or get divorced [heh].

When debt builds up to the point that no one can afford to pay even Zero Interest Rates [ZIRP] we get a depression. The government, very early on tried to elevate spending artificially by giving all Americans $600. This led directly to a sudden and very destructive series of commodity bubbles that rose very rapidly from February, when the first money was mailed, to August, when the last checks were spent.

Virtually every penny of the 'free' bonus was soaked up by the sudden inflationary surge. Now, the deflation spiral is back and much nastier. The US is trying to do what Japan did when it had a huge credit bubble: keeping the zombie banks alive while trying to use government debt to float the entire economy.

Japan is now very deep in debt due to this. Debt owed nearly totally, 87%, to the Japanese. We are mired deep in debt to the Japanese and Chinese, not to ourselves. So all our government spending is turned into future tax obligations to our most dangerous trade rivals.

The simple question of 'deflation or inflation' has to be viewed from a global trade perspective to see where our real dangers lie. The US can't 'create money out of thin air' without getting totally entangled with our largest trade partners and creditors. All the fiddling we are seeing are being watched by these two dragons who will leap on us the minute we choose the 'inflate the currency' option and the dollar nosedives against the yen and yuan.

It is already diving against the yen and it 88 yen to the dollar! The Japanese prefer to have it at 120 to the dollar. Which is where it was at in July, 2007, back when the Japanese carry trade went suddenly into reverse.

Gold is neary $900 per ounce. But has barely budged in the last two months if you compare this to how many yen buys the same amount of gold! We are seeing the differential in the dollar, falling, rather than gold rising.

OPEC, being a consortium, a loose one, at that, always lags behind when it comes to cutting off the spigots when there is an economic downturn. But they will catch up with it, pretty soon. And then the one thing that can trigger global inflation will take off. For oil is the fundamental basis of all commodity and manufacturing pricing inflation. It doesn't affect property or equity values, right away. But it certainly has a very powerful effect on everything else.

High oil prices is the nightmare of world trade. It eats profits in industry and prevents customers from being able to take on more debt as they struggle to pay for food and energy.

Enlightening the Gold Bugs

This is what happens when writers write with no reference to history! Gold was not considered valueless in the Great Depression: quite the opposite! The gold reserves in the US were being drawn rapidly down when FDR, after assuring everyone before hand, slammed the door shut. One entity hoarding gold via US dollars was FRANCE.

You see, France finished this huge, underground vault in Paris. They thought the Germans would never get this gold. Ahem. Herr Hitler did, incidentally.

Anyway, the manipulations of the gold markets by FDR were to protect what remained of our gold at Ft. Knox. And more importantly, at the secret Federal Reserve vaults in NYC.

Gold was so important, FDR, like Hitler and the British Crown and nearly everyone, made gold hoarding ILLEGAL. If you tried to use gold to do business, it was confiscated! And you were jailed. The $35 gold price was to flush out all the gold held by individuals and above all, businesses. They were then FORCED to use paper no matter what.

Some people protested this by using spare change to buy and sell. A thousand silver half-dollars, for example. The government squelched this, too. The harsh truth isn't 'is gold worth something' but 'how will governments grab it no matter what?'

And this is where gold bugs go off the cliff: they imagine the government will come, hat in hand, to beg for the gold and pay top price. This will not happen.

When money evolves to zero worth, governments always shift to open confiscations. I wonder why so many people never mention this? HAHAHA. Never.

Isn't Deflation a Good Thing?

During the 1970's, inflation came in waves. In between these waves, all of which were led by oil, we had 'deflation' which is why those years were called the 'stagflation' years.

It is the same today. As soon as OPEC tightens oil, the tensions caused by low oil prices in the Gulf will lead to insurrections and wars and the price of oil will shoot up again, triggering more inflation.

The US is far, far, deeper in debt this cycle. We were barely in debt during the seventies and we were hammered by high oil prices/high inflation waves that led to interest rates rising to over 12%.

Flying Bankers and the Economic Crisis: How Do We Make Banks Lend?

Culture of Life News here!

Banks were lending money that came back from Asia as Japan and China were buying our Treasuries, our Fannie Maes, etc. In return, we let Asia overwhelm our domestic markets with their value-added exports. We then ship raw materials to Asia.

This is the way a third world commodities nation operates, not an industrial power. The lack of lending is due to our nation being BANKRUPT. We are too deep in debt. Period.

Fixing this is not impossible: we need tariffs and barriers to manufactured goods as well as higher interest rates to encourage savings, not buying of say, gold, and hoarding it.

The US banking system has not attracted savings for several years, our national savings rate has been negative ever since Greenspan dropped interest rates to 1%. Now, Bernanke is dropping it to nearly 0%. This means, savings will collapse even worse.

So there can be no lending since there is no capital flowing into banks that can support any sort of lending. The money the Fed is giving the banks is NOT savings. The US has virtually no FOREX reserves unlike any of the Asian nations.

Indeed, Japan and China both have between them around $3 trillion in FOREX reserves! The US has less than $60 billion. This is absurd. And unsustainable for a nation which presumes to be the global monetary giant.

No analyst should avoid the issue of trade and FOREX reserves when talking about our economic decline and fall.

Dollar Soars

Inflation is eating us alive. Taxing imports will do two things: balance the Federal budget and slow down the tsunami of imports that are shredding our industrial base as well as undermining our entire economic system.

Cheap TVs are fun but not if they are killing our nation. NO nation in history lasts long as a sovereign power if they run vast trade deficits.

Dollar Soars

Culture of Life News here!

HAHAHA. The dollar is up because all our trade rivals are united in making the dollar stronger. This is why the Treasury had to ship out epic amounts of dollars to all the other global central banks this last 48 hours.

They all want to hold US dollars so they can stimulate even more lopsided trade with the US. The US has the world's biggest trade deficit, by far and away. And is thus, central to global trade.

We cannot allow this. A strong dollar is a disaster for us. The obvious and easiest cure is to have a tax on imports to the US. This will negate these naked attempts at weakening currencies that should be strong like the yen, for example.


But the Japanese won't allow this. Nor the Chinese. The EU, China and Japan all hold collectively more than $3.5 trillion in US dollars in their FOREX reserves. For crying out loud. We now have no reserves at all.

Dollar Falls as Stock Rally Tempts the Carry Trade

Culture of Life News here!

Japan's yen is NOT a victim of any sort! How silly is this talk?

Japan's Nikkei celebrates the weak yen! The Bank of Japan demands and creates a weak yen by keeping interest rates far below the real rate of inflation in Japan! Japan even said, last year, the ideal value of the yen would be 120 to the dollar. So far, all their efforts have been towards making the yen cheap!

This is why the yen, alone, didn't rise against the dollar. It fell. To the TREMENDOUS delight of the Japanese exporters!

Commentary like the one by Ms. Cheng is not very sophisticated. Where does Seeking Alpha find these people?

Dollar Party Pooper

Culture of Life News--Money Matters here!

This sort of 'analysis' is typical of chart watchers who don't understand the business of the floating currency system launched by the mighty USA empire back when Nixon killed the gold peg.

The USA had virtually no trade deficit back then but the dollar was artificially high against the DM and yen. Already, a flood of exports from these two rising industrial giants were flooding into the US. Other central banks like France were raiding Fort Knox and the gold reserves there were drawn down by 74%.

Since the floating currency began, all trade rivals have sought to create advantages vis a vis the dollar. Their tactics shift as the US whines and complains. From the Bretton Woods II Accords through the Plaza Accords and the Louver Agreements, the US has sought to weaken the dollar and demands 'free trade' where by Fortress Japan and Germany both buy more US goods.

After each of these artificial agreements, the status quo is re-started which is for all trade allies to flood the US with exports. Each cycle, the number of nations that figure out how to game this floating currency system increases. Now, the US is besieged by the entire planet. They figured out how to use their FOREX systems to weaken their currencies vis a vis the dollar artificially. They know how to bribe US trade and government officials so they undermine America and boost alien nations.

The US Presidents from Reagan to the Bush clan have been in the hands of Asian financiers, openly taking bribes, openly doing business with trade rivals who constitute most of our trade deficit. The Bush clan, and there are many of them, operate in China to an astonishing extent, for example.

The recent rise in dollar value was FAKE. It was engineered by a very frightened Europe which is seeing a big recession unfolding due to the euro being too strong. They can't drop interest rates to Japanese levels....YET....but they are now using the other tools to buy and hold dollars.

The Japanese are in a panic. Last summer, they boasted they would make the yen 120 to the dollar by October. But other rivals of Japan forced up the yen. Now, China's central bank and Japan's central bank have had a series of emergency meetings. These were focused on keeping and maintaining trade advantages vis a vis the US.

So now they are in concert! Both are weakening their currencies and their combined FOREX holdings are now around or over $3 trillion, an astonishing amount. So the dollar will strengthen against all other currencies as all trading partners conspire to rejigger values for trade advantage with the US and to underbid us when we try to sell stuff like Boeing jets. And to underbid us in the OPEC nations.

The Mighty Greenback Gets Some Breathing Room

The US 'shakey at best'? HAHAHA. How about collapsing? Our trade deficit will resume rising back to nearly a trillion a year thanks to the 'strong dollar' and our federal deficit is heading in the same direction at the same time. Operative word here is 'bankruptcy' not 'strong dollar'.