Nojus'  Instablog

“Following its multiple quantitative easing operations, the Fed surpassed China as the largest holder of U.S. Treasurys at the end of the first quarter. By the time QEII ends this month, the Fed will hold 16% of U.S. paper vs. 12% for China. The third-largest holders are American households, who one economist believes may help pick up the slack when the Fed bows out. "We think that private households and foreign investors...will ramp up their Treasury purchases again. But they might ask for higher yields than the U.S. central bank did," the economist said.”

The funding gaps at some state pension plans widened in fiscal 2010, though strong investment returns prevented the situation from deteriorating even more, according to a new study by the PewCenter on the States.

On average, state pension plans had 75% of the assets needed to cover the long-term benefits owed to government workers, based on fiscal-2010 data from 16 states obtained by Pew. That was down from 77% in those states in fiscal 2009.

Kyle Bass catches the falling knife.

Buried at the bottom of Gregory Zuckerman's roundup of the last mad action in the silver market is a nugget that the Hayman Capital manager bought silver early on Friday morning.

He's probably doing pretty well. At around $37/oz. right now, it's already up about 12% from its recent lows.

Bass' move comes as many other hedge funds are getting out of gold and other precious metals.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com/

John Paulson told a UK news show on Tuesday that gold is going to $4,000, reports WSJ.

Despite some recent gyrations in the precious metals arena -- more so on the silver side of things -- the prominent investor remains super-bullish for the next 3-5 years.

On the other hand, according to reporters Gregory Zuckman and Caroline Cui, Soros has been a seller of gold and silver lately.

What what's interesting is why: Soros no longer sees a big threat of deflation. Huh? Yes, while the average person may still think of gold as a bet to counter inflation, the metal obviously surged during the deflation scare, and the attendant raft of central bank easing moves. Those are clearly coming to an end (for now), and thus that theme is coming to an end.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com/

Silver is now threatening to fall below $38/oz, which would mark a nearly 22% decline from its bubblicious highs last week.

It's obviously spectacularly volatile, and we don't know how this will end up, but we can think of several threats to silver bulls.

As the lady in the Lind Waldock (commodities broker) commercials always says, commodities are all a price play. There's no hard metric for anyone to know whether something has gotten cheap or not. There's no P/E level that makes silver a must buy.

Big, smart money is selling: Soros, Carlos Slim, etc.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com/

Everyone's dumping silver!

After a 20% decline -- during which there have been sales by Eric Sprott, George Soros and others -- news comes from CNBC that Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim is now "actively selling" silver futures.

Watch out for more carnage.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com/