Central banks pounce on falling gold

Gold prices have been falling over the past few days and central banks are jumping on this opportunity to buy more gold. Central banks are one of the most important drivers for gold prices so this may signal higher gold prices sometime in the near future.

March 16, 2012 6:51 pm By Jack Farchy Financial Times

A sharp fall in gold prices has triggered large purchases of bullion by central banks in recent weeks, according to several traders with knowledge of the transactions.

The buying activity highlights the trend among central banks in emerging economies to buy gold, even as some western investors are losing patience with the metal. Gold prices have dropped 13.8 per cent from a nominal record high of $1,920 a troy ounce reached in September, and on Friday were trading at $1,655.60.

The Bank for International Settlements, which acts on behalf of central banks, has been buying significant quantities of gold on the international market amid falling prices, traders said.

According to several estimates, the BIS bought 4-6 tonnes of gold, worth roughly $250m-$300m at current prices, in the over-the-counter physical market last week, with purchases particularly strong at the end of the week. The total purchases over the past three or four weeks were likely to be as much as double that, the traders added.

In a note to clients this week, Credit Suisse referred to “aggressive central bank buying seen last Friday”.

The BIS declined to comment.

Central banks are one of the most important drivers of the gold market, holding one-sixth of all the gold ever mined in their reserves, but they disclose few details about their activities.

As a group, they made their largest purchases of gold in more than four decades last year, led by emerging economies such as Mexico, Russia and South Korea intent on diversifying their dollar-heavy foreign exchange reserves. The World Gold Council has also pointed to the possibility of significant unreported purchases by China at the end of last year.

At the same time, European central banks have all but halted a run of large sales.

“Central banks have definitely been looking at gold as an asset class much more closely ever since European central banks stopped selling,” a senior gold banker said. “There has been a huge interest.”

While some countries, such as Russia, China or the Philippines, have traditionally accumulated gold produced by their domestic mining industry, others use the BIS as an agent to carry out purchases and sales on their behalf, preserving anonymity.

The central bank buying comes as gold prices have slid in the past three weeks as strong economic data from the US has lowered investors’ expectations of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve and made other investments, such as equities, appear more attractive.

Gold prices this week fell to their lowest since mid-January after the Fed struck an optimistic tone on the US economic recovery. “It’s clear that the market trend right now is an unwinding of safe-haven exposures, like gold, and a preference for growth assets,” said Edel Tully, precious metals strategist at UBS.

Buying from large physical consumers of gold such as China and India remains sparse, despite the fall in prices. India on Friday announced it would double import tariffs for gold, a move analysts said could damp demand.

“Asian physical demand remains lacklustre,” Credit Suisse said, arguing that gold prices could fall below $1,600. “Gold has now slipped back towards the middle of its long-term trend and has room to drop further.”

source: Swiss America

Monsanto’s GMO Corn Causing Weight Gain, Disrupting Organs

Are genetically modified foods making you sick and fat? Monsanto’s genetically modified creations have been pegged for causing a plethora of environmental and human harm, but are they also contributing to one of the country’s fastest growing health problems? A study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences shows that GM food is indeed contributing to the obesity epidemic.

While being one of the first to report on a comparative analysis of blood and organ system data of rats fed GM corn, the study effectively ends the debate as to whether GMO foods are safe regarding health. The study found that GM corn fed to mice led to an increase in overall body weight of about 3.7 percent, while also increasing the weight of the liver by up to 11 percent.

“Crude and relative liver weights are also affected at the end of the maximal (33%) GM maize feeding level as well as that of the heart which for corresponding parameters to a comparable extent, showed up to an 11% weight increase…Additional statistically significant differences include … higher … overall body (3.7%) weight.”

But this 2009 study sheds much more light on GMO dangers than mere weight increase.

“There is a world-wide debate concerning the safety and regulatory approval process of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods. In order to scientifically address this issue, it is necessary to have access to toxicological tests, preferably on mammals, performed over the longest time-scales involving detailed blood and organ system analyses.”the introduction states. “For the first time in the world, we’ve proven that GMO are neither sufficiently healthy nor proper to be commercialized…Each time, for all three GMOs, the kidneys and liver, which are the main organs that react to a chemical food poisoning, had problems,” indicated Gilles-Eric Séralini, an expert member of the Commission for Biotechnology Reevaluation.

Needless to say, Monsanto’s GMO crops are causing numerous other problems in our world. While contributing to weight gain, the company’s GM corn has been shown to be creating resistant rootworms — causing farmers to use even more threatening pesticides on GMO crops. Of course the use of Monsanto’s Bt biopesticides has also been shown to to be aiding in decline of our health, recently being found to wreak havoc on human kidney cells. This is an indirect, but very real way GMO crops are causing damage.

GMO crops are known to cause short term damage to nature and your biology, but it is perhaps the long-term consequences that are most concerning. We currently have information and research regarding the detrimental effects of GMO foods in the short term, but they continue to be used while long-term effects are still a mystery even to supporters of GMOs. It is for these reasons, among many others, that GMO crops are continually being banned around the world. Hungary, France, Peru, and others have taken all action against GMO crops and GM foods altogether due to safety hazards these products pose on human health, the ecosystem, and the environment. This article was published at the Natural Society.

Source: Infowars

Inside the Ring: Beijing coup rumors

U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring China’s Internet say that from March 14 to Wednesday bloggers circulated alarming reports of tanks entering Beijing and shots being fired in the city as part of what is said to have been a high-level political battle among party leaders - and even a possible military coup.

The Internet discussions included photos posted online of tanks and other military vehicles moving around Beijing.

The reports followed the ouster last week of senior Politburo member and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, who was linked to corruption, but who is said to remain close to China’s increasingly nationalistic military.

Chinese microblogging sites Sina Weibo, QQ Weibo, and the bulletin board of the search engine Baidu all reported “abnormalities” in Beijing on the night of March 19.

The comments included rumors of the downfall of the Shanghai leadership faction and a possible “military coup,” along with reports of gunfire on Beijing’s Changan Street. The reports were quickly removed by Chinese censors shortly after postings and could no longer be accessed by Wednesday.

The unusual postings included reports that military vehicles were sent to control Changan Street, along with plainclothes police officers and metal barriers.

Read more: Washington Post

Products Containing Aspartame

Aspartame has established itself as an important component in many low-calorie, sugar-free foods and beverages and is primarily responsible for the growth over the last two decades in the sugar-free market. The safety of aspartame has been affirmed by the U.S. FDA 26 times in the past 23 years.

Currently, aspartame is consumed by over 200 million people around the world and is found in more than 6,000 products including carbonated soft drinks, powdered soft drinks, chewing gum, confections, gelatins, dessert mixes, puddings and fillings, frozen desserts, yogurt, tabletop sweeteners, and some pharmaceuticals such as vitamins and sugar-free cough drops. In the United States, all food ingredients, including aspartame, must be listed in the ingredient statement on the food label.

Several tabletop sweeteners containing aspartame as the sweetening ingredient can be used in a wide variety of recipes. However, in some recipes requiring lengthy heating or baking, a loss of sweetness may occur; this is not a safety issue - simply the product may not be as sweet as desired. Therefore, it is best to use tabletop sweeteners with aspartame in specially designed recipes available from the manufacturers of these tabletop sweeteners. Aspartame tabletop sweeteners may also be added to some recipes at the end of heating to maintain sweetness. The Following Reduced Calorie Products Have Aspartame-Sweetened Choices

• Breath Mints
• Carbonated Soft Drinks
• Cereals
• Chewing Gum
• Flavored Syrups for Coffee
• Flavored Water Products
• Frozen Ice
• Frozen Ice Cream Novelties
• Fruit Spreads
• Gelatin, Sugar Free
• Hard Candies
• Ice cream Toppings
• Ice Creams, No Sugar Added or Sugar Free
• Iced Tea, Powder
• Iced Tea, Ready to Drink
• Instant Cocoa Mix
• Jams & Jellies
• Juice Blends
• Juice Drinks
• Maple Syrups
• Meal Replacements
• Mousse
• No Sugar Added Pies
• Non-Carbonated Diet Soft drinks
• Nutritional Bars
• Powdered Soft Drinks
• Protein Nutritional Drinks
• Pudding
• Soft Candy Chews
• Sugar Free Chocolate Syrup
• Sugar Free Cookies
• Sugar Free Ketchup
• Table Top Sweeteners
• Vegetable Drinks
• Yogurt, Drinkable
• Yogurt, Fat Free
• Yogurt, Sugar Free

Source: Apsrtame Information Center

Job seekers getting asked for Facebook passwords

SEATTLE (AP) -- When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.

"It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it "an egregious privacy violation."

Questions have been raised about the legality of the practice, which is also the focus of proposed legislation in Illinois and Maryland that would forbid public agencies from asking for access to social networks.

Since the rise of social networking, it has become common for managers to review publically available Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts and other sites to learn more about job candidates. But many users, especially on Facebook, have their profiles set to private, making them available only to selected people or certain networks.

Read more: AP

Drones to host Pirate Bay servers flying over intl waters

Controversial file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has had more than its share of legal troubles over the past few years – investigations, raids, fines. Now the site has come up with a radical new plan: hosting its servers on unmanned flying drones.

­According to TPB’s most recent blog post, being down-to-earth is just not doing it for them anymore. So they are looking to take advantage of advanced technologies like the super-small Raspberry Pi computer, GPS-controlled drones and far-reaching cheap radio equipment.

The plan is to mount the cheap radio devices and computers on drones (“Low Orbit Server Stations”) and launch them high above neutral territory over the ocean.

"With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away. For the proxy system we’re building, that’s more than enough. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war,” the blog says.

For what it is worth, most of the comments on the blog post are very supportive of this outlandish idea. And it certainly would lend support to TPB’s slogan, “the galaxy’s most resilient system”. The question now is: will they actually be able to pull it off?

Source: RT

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

Read more: NY Times