All Currencies will Continue to fall vs. Gold


by Bob Chapman
The International Forecaster
December 31, 2009


The rally in the dollar and the problems for other currencies prove what we have been saying and that is all currencies will continue to fall vs. gold. The impetus for the dollar rally originates as usual with the government and is added to by the disarray in the economies worldwide, particularly in Europe. One of the things central banks have never learned is that financial engineering only works for a short duration, after that the problem worsens. Even the world’s strongest currencies, the Swiss, Canadian, Aussie and Norwegian, are only holding their own versus gold. The reason why is almost all central banks have done the same thing and that is create money and credit recklessly at the behest of the US government. The US and British financial systems are insolvent. The euro is under severe pressure, because of problems in Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy, and every other central bank is jockeying for position via competitive devaluation. The public may not notice it but the situation is really chaotic. As you can see, the US is never allowed a level playing field, but that is part of what comes with being the international reserve currency. Banks in Britain, Europe and the US continue to take losses, sometimes-severe losses. There is no intermediation going on with the dollar. Its rally is founded on manipulation. We suspect in the future we will have an interesting phenomenon and that is a fall in the dollar, pound and the euro, as gold moves higher as the only viable alternative. The world is going to be shocked when the euro collapses. It won’t happen overnight. It will take a year or two, but it has a good chance of happening. The US dollar cannot and will not for some time to come be a safe haven for wealth. That is because the dollar and the US economy have been deliberately destroyed.

The flight into gold that we have seen has not been sparked by anticipation of inflation, but by a flight caused by a lack of confidence and trust in central banks. If other major governments have monetary problems they cannot be buyers of US Treasuries. They will have to be sellers of dollars. That will drive the dollar lower, further reduce the demand for US funding, force the Fed to further monetize and create more inflation. That in turn drive the dollar lower, but more importantly it will give gold a life of its own. We have found that this is something the public ad professionals refuse to accept. There is going to be a devaluation of the dollar no matter what people think, or want to think in their world of denial and fantasy. Other letter writers who disagree have recently attacked us. They can disagree and that is fine, but we might remind them that we are the ones who have been correct in our predictions 98% of the time, not them.

We believe the current dollar rally is unsustainable. If you remember we recommended a short on the dollar at 89.5 on the USDX. It fell to 74. We have just seen a two-week rally from 74 to 78 on very low volume. We had said the rally when it began at 74 could go to 78 to 80. Several more days of trading over the holidays could take it deep within that zone. This is just another rally conjured up by our government led by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which will be doomed to failure. The rally is aided by unsettled conditions in Dubai, Greece, Spain, etc., and the continued viability of the eurozone. In addition, the same groups of criminals have viciously attacked gold and silver in an attempt to take gold below $1,033 and silver below $17.00. That completes the circle of attack. The SEC and the CFTC simply look the other way aiding and abetting the criminals that run our government and markets from behind the scenes.

It is not surprising that 320 members of the House passed legislation to audit the Fed to find out where trillions of dollars have gone and what the Fed and the Treasury have done to manipulate markets. Just how much monetization is really going on? Has the Fed been buying more than half the Treasuries issued via stealth activity and how long will this continue? Will the Treasury default and officially devalue? Of course they will, it is only a question of time. What will the Fed do with bonds issued by agencies and toxic waste CDOs, and what did they pay for all this garbage? Have they been paying the banks, Wall Street and insurance companies 80% instead of 20% on the dollar, so that taxpayers can pay the bill and these entities, which are insolvent, can be kept functioning? Why is it we could forecast all these events and very few others could? It is because if they did they would be ostracized and they would lose their jobs. That is how systems like this always work. You cannot lay a normal yardstick to what we have seen and what will be an unprecedented future. When the dollar officially devalues in a year to a year and a half, the shock will shake America and the world to its very foundations.

An audit and investigation of the Fed is on the way and the American public is not going to like what they find. All the failures and criminal activity of the past 96 years will become reality. This coming year will see the Fed forced to monetize massive amounts of government paper, all of which will lead to massive inflation. Inflation will move up very quickly. The groundwork began last May and over the past two months we saw official inflation rise to 1.2% and then 2.4% as real inflation moved up over 8% again. Will we see something similar to what happened in Argentina, Zimbabwe or in the Weimer Republic We do not know. What we do know is it is not going to be good. All the telltale signs are being ignored and for such duplicity a high price will be paid. That is why we predict official devaluation and default. History is explicit; monetization cannot go on forever. Over the last two years the Fed has purchased trillions in what is essentially worthless paper from banks, Wall Street and insurance companies.

The rally in the dollar is transitory, because at the moment Europe’s problems seem greater than ours.

Americans are truly furious that Democrats are ramroding through legislation that is conjured up in secret, and that those who voted for it have never read. Health care legislation is far reaching, committing us to a socialized medical system and will prove to be massively expensive. Congress has a 22% approval rating because everyone knows they are on the take. What sanctimonious thieves. The Treasury and the Fed have injected $12.7 trillion into our financial system that we know about, and the taxpayer is on the hook for potential losses of $23.7 trillion. As you can see from Treasury yields, foreigners are starting to vote with their feet and are not buying our debt. As unemployment continues to rise with inflation, America will be ready for revolution. A default and devaluation would lay further groundwork. Taxes will increase along with debt exacerbating the situation. America is on an uncontrollable train headed for a wreck. Is it any wonder the US dollar is being abandoned and gold is being purchased worldwide in a flight to quality.

You have to ask yourself how does a stock market trade within 500 points for three months, when trading volume has fallen? There have been material withdrawals from mutual funds and 73% of trades are of the black box front running variety. The answer is the trading after hours, which has been dominated by your government’s plunge protection team. They cannot continue that indefinitely. There is lots of bad news coming in 2010.

The November medium home price rose 3.8% to $217,400, the highest level since May reflecting the $8,000 tax credit and growing inflation. Year-on-year prices fell 1.9%. The number of new homes on the market fell 235,000, the lowest since April 1971. There are now 7.9-months’ worth of homes for sale, up from 7.2% in October. What has to be added to that is discouraged sellers who have taken their homes off the market, and lenders that have been withholding inventory for sale - a bottoming market is years away.

Loan demand fell 5% last month. Mortgage applications fell 10.7%, the lowest level in two months. Refi loans fell 10.1% and mortgages fell 11.6%.

This as foreclosures topped one million. As a result home construction has fallen 83% from its peak. We projected 75% in June of 2005. The decline in building is probably bottoming, but with the inventory overhand it could be many years until we could see a recovery.

Durable goods orders rise of 0.2% were very disappointing. The experts expected a rise of 0.5%. Wrong as usual.

For the week ended 12/23 the commercial paper market rose $9.3 billion to $1.160 trillion, still a ghost of its former self.

Congress, the SEC and FINRA are investigating Goldman Sachs and others in the use of synthetic CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, that we have been hammering for since 2006. Not only were the laws of fair dealing violated, but they were shorting the deals they sold to clients, which they knew had to fall in value, because the ratings they arranged with the raters, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, were phony from the outset. Yet if you notice there hasn’t been a lawsuit, civil investigation, or criminal charges. The exposure of this activity allowed the banks to profit from the housing collapse, which they deliberately created. Again, another fine and no criminals go to jail. They simply own Washington.

The 10-year T-note yield just rose from 3.20% over the past 18 business days to 3.80%. Look at a chart and it is ominous. The yield is on long-term trend lines that go back to June 2007. It looks like that line could be broken to the downside. The chart is very jagged giving it all the earmarks of manipulation. Our guess is that something happened three weeks ago that we don’t yet understand, but whatever it was foreigners are running away from US sovereign debt, just as we forecast they would. This means the fed could be taking down more than 60% of the auctions of US debt, which means more monetization and more inflation. If the Fed does not continue buying, by creating money out of thin air, support will be broken and yields could quickly move up to 5%, which would further destroy the retail housing market. Such a move would send gold to $1,550 to $1,650. Incidentally, over the past 50 years we have observed that as interest rates rise so does gold and silver, up to a certain point. In this case bank discount rates could move from zero to 5% and gold would rise. After that gold becomes the only vehicle that preserves assets.

Our sources within the banking industry tell us banks are not lending to small businesses because Marxist Obama wants to crush the small business industry. If out of business they cannot create jobs. They create 75% to 90% of all jobs. That means everyone ends up on the government payroll just as they did in the Soviet Union. This is part of Barry’s new Orwellian world. The end game is everyone is dependent on government.

The health care bills are unconstitutional, but that is of no concern to Congress. Just start with mandatory insurance for all. The healthy subsidize those who live a profligate lifestyle. What we have is a cross between socialism, Marxism and fascism. This is being caused by bribery, which is nothing new for our Congress. Bills are passed by meeting the demands of the highest bidder. This is how Rome fell; whoever could buy the Army was dictator. We do not have a dictator yet, but the elitists are behind the scenes pulling the strings. So many are on the take it is almost impossible to reverse such legislation, short of throwing out all the incumbents. We would like to see that, but have enough Americans awakened? We hope so. We will know next November. Democrats have blown their biggest chance for permanency in decades by serving the brotherhood of darkness. As they have shown their constituents and their desires mean nothing to these crooks. The Christmas present was another increase in short-term government debt and gift-wrapped tax burdens in health care, as their voters resoundingly screamed they do not want them.

All conferencing was done in secret to prepare a 2,000-plus-page albatross that virtually no one in Congress read. They figure you won’t remember what they did nine months from now. We get socialized medicine and those who do not carry insurance because they are too poor or do not need it, will have to pay a fee to government. We will lose 25% of our physicians and as a result care will deteriorate and many will die as they wait in line for treatment. Then comes the increased prescription costs, which are already outrageous compared to Canada and Mexico, and then the chronically ill and the old will be allowed to die. If you do not stop these two bills you will eventually be one of its victims. The Illuminists want this bill so bad that they are willing to doom every Democrat that he or she will never return to office.

The forces of darkness purchased the votes to pass this bill in the Senate. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, received $300 million for her state and Ben Nelson received millions for Democrats in Nebraska as well. There were more payoffs, like $300 million for California and even AARP got $18 million. The legislation contains massive abortion funds for murder on demand. The cost of this duplicity starts at $2.5 trillion. Needless to say, this is all unconstitutional, but these politicians and their masters simply ignore our law of the land. Just check out Article 1, Section 9, Part 6, which clearly states, “No preference shall be given to any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over another,â€