Chinese herb remedy extract linked to cancer: study

 

A plant extract used in Chinese herbal remedies for arthritis, gout and inflammation has been directly linked to cancer and causes a surprising number of genetic mutations, scientists said Wednesday.

The gene signature of aristolochic acid -- derived from a vine known as birthwort -- was found in tumors from 19 upper urinary tract cancer patients from Taiwan.
Scientists have long known that the acid was a carcinogen, but the new study shows for the first time that it causes far more genetic mutations than smoking-related lung cancer or ultraviolet radiation-associated with skin cancer.
Tumors in people exposed to the herb had about 150 mutations per megabase, compared to eight in smoking-related lung cancers and 111 in UV-related melanomas, said the study in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.
Knowing more about the acid's signature will help researchers screen for the herb's involvement in cancers of other organs, experts said.
"Genome-wide sequencing has allowed us to tie aristolochic acid exposure directly to an individual getting cancer," said Kenneth Kinzler, professor of oncology in the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center's Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics.
"The technology gives us the recognizable mutational signature to say with certainty that a specific toxin is responsible for causing a specific cancer."
The herb's cancer links led to a ban on aristolochic acid-containing products in Europe and North America in 2001 and in Asia in 2003, the researchers said.

What Would Jesus Do If He Was Told To Comply With Obamacare, Gun Control and Other Unjust Laws?

Why should no one comply with Obamacare? We do not need the Constitution justify it. We do not need to principle of using civil disobedience. There is a much bigger reason why we should not comply with Obamacare that makes more sense than using a perverted legal argument of man’s law. It is just plain common sense and is moral that is the highest law that is far above any corrupt dictator’s unjust edicts.
When congress passed the Affordable Healthcare Act. This law was passed with a public outcry in overwhelming majorities saying “no”. This law was passed against the consent of the governed. People seen what the law will do to the economy and our God given liberties. The people seen this law destroying our bill of Rights and our livelihoods. To comply with this law voluntarily to its mandate. The people will be subjected to a life of futilism and poverty to meet the demands of the bureaucracies created under this law.
So you ask what is the core moral reason. Lets look at this founding document being the Declaration of Independence says about our personal liberties:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
The burden complying with Obamacare goes against our pursuit of happiness making us slaves to a system that is neither grateful and just demands more. It is morally repugnant even under protest to go along to get along at the expense of our substance we are not obligated by principle pay any tribute to the dictator.
This law gives the government unjust powers not consented by the people. The people are withdrawing their consent from the US Government. If the government cannot prove the elections are fair and transparent. If the elected servants violate the contract called the Constitution. Then the people have no moral obligation to support the government if they are acting with illegitimate authority not delegated to them.

So what law and moral principle we have to say no complying with Obamacare besides never consenting to this law? Ever heard to the right to self preservation and the law of necessity? When Jesus walked the earth. When Jesus and his disciples ate crops in the field on the sabbath. Despite being told they are breaking the sabbath picking from the field eating. The law of necessity and the right to self preservation  takes precedent over the decree because if a law is going to destroy life and cause harm in its application. Then the law is to be ignored.
Whether you look at gun control, cap and trade and agenda 21. If we comply with these draconian laws. They will destroy humanity. It will ruin lives and cause poverty. Same thing with Obamacare. The law will destroy life and livelihoods. It will come between a man’s moral obligation to provide for his family. A man’s priority is to his family, not to the state. If its the law to send our children to pedophiles daily to go swimming knowing they will be molested. Would you break the law to protect your offspring knowing these sickos will destroy your children’s innocence causing long term psychological harm? Same with Obamacare. The law will destroy more than just jobs and small business, it will destroy human dignity.
If we fallow the unjust law of Obamacare. It will destroy people, lives and livelihoods. When it murders people with death panels and violates the basic dignity of human beings. No one is obligated morally to go along with Obamacare. It has nothing to do with the law or the Constitution. It is obeying ones conscience digging in their heels.
If you see Obamacare as something that will destroy your life and cause your kids to starve. Under the law of necessity and the right to self preservation. We have to right and the duty to say “no”.  All laws are supposed to preserve life. Not destroy life. Do you agree?

-From The Lone Star Watchdog blog - http://www.thelonestarwatchdog.com

During The Best Period Of Economic Growth In U.S. History There Was No Income Tax And No Federal Reserve

By Michael Snyder

How would America ever survive without the central planners in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve?  What in the world would we do if there was no income tax and no IRS?  Could the U.S. economy possibly keep from collapsing under such circumstances?  The mainstream media would have us believe that unless we have someone “to pull the levers” our economy would descend into utter chaos, but the truth is that the best period of economic growth in U.S. history occurred during a time when there was no income tax and no Federal Reserve.  Between the Civil War and 1913, the U.S. economy experienced absolutely explosive growth.  The free market system thrived and the rest of the world looked at us with envy.  The federal government was very limited in size, there was no income tax for most of that time and there was no central bank.  To many Americans, it would be absolutely unthinkable to have such a society today, but it actually worked very, very well.  Without the inventions and innovations that came out of that period, the world would be a far different place today.
It is amazing what can happen when the government just gets out of the way.  Check out all of the wonderful things that Wikipedia says happened for the U.S. economy during those years…

The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy. By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.
An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the “Second Industrial Revolution.” Railroads greatly expanded the mileage and built stronger tracks and bridges that handled heavier cars and locomotives, carrying far more goods and people at lower rates. Refrigeration railroad cars came into use. The telephone, phonograph, typewriter and electric light were invented. By the dawn of the 20th century, cars had begun to replace horse-drawn carriages.
Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation’s industrial infrastructure. Coal was found in abundance in the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania south to Kentucky. Oil was discovered in western Pennsylvania; it was mainly used for lubricants and for kerosene for lamps. Large iron ore mines opened in the Lake Superior region of the upper Midwest. Steel mills thrived in places where these coal and iron ore could be brought together to produce steel. Large copper and silver mines opened, followed by lead mines and cement factories.
In 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, a step in the process that became known as mass-production.

When hard working, industrious people are given freedom to pursue their dreams, great things tend to happen.  The truth is that we were all designed to create, to invent, to build, and to trade with one another.  We all have something that we can contribute to society, and when families are strong and the invisible hand of the free market is allowed to work, societies tend to prosper.
It is not a coincidence that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913.  The following information comes from Wikipedia…

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.  The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.

Wouldn’t you like U.S. GDP to double over the course of a decade now?
So why don’t we go back to a system like that?
In 1913, the Federal Reserve and a permanent national income tax were introduced.  Today, the unelected central planners at the Federal Reserve totally run our financial system and the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long.  The value of our currency has declined by more than 96 percent since 1913, and the size of our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.
Meanwhile, control freak bureaucrats seemingly run everything.  Almost every business decision is heavily influenced either by taxes or by the millions of laws, rules and regulations that are sucking the life out of our economic system.
My favorite example of how suffocating red tape in America has become is the magician out in Missouri that was forced by the Obama administration to submit a 32 page “disaster plan” for the rabbit that he uses during his magic shows for kids.
It is no wonder why we don’t have any economic growth.  The central planners in the federal government are killing our economy.
And the central planners over at the Federal Reserve are killing our financial system.  In school we are taught that the Fed was created to bring stability to our financial system, but the truth is that they have been responsible for financial bubble after financial bubble, and now Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the world.  When that thing bursts, and it will, we are going to see financial carnage on an unprecedented scale.
Unfortunately, the truth is that the Federal Reserve never has been looking out for the interests of the American people.  It was created by the big banks and it has always worked very hard to benefit the big banks.  During the Fed era, the big banks have become the most powerful economic entities on the entire planet.  Our entire economy is now based on debt, and the big banks are at the very center of this debt spiral.  The following is an excerpt from a recent article by Paul B. Farrell…

Today’s world includes four Wall Street banks each with assets over $1 trillion, each more than Goldman. Plus eight other big global banks each have over $2 trillion total assets, including, among the 100 largest, Barclays, HSBC, Deutsche, ICB-China and Japan’s Mitsubishi.

Yes, this new world is changing fast. Back in 2008 the world’s financial banks were in ruins. Wall Street sunk into virtually bankruptcy. Goldman and its Wall Street too-big-to-fail co-conspirators had trashed the global economy, triggered a virtual depression, and Wall Street’s casinos lost over $10 trillion of Main Street retirement funds.

And as we saw back in 2008, the Federal Reserve is going to do whatever is necessary to prop up Wall Street.  Most Americans never even heard about this, but during the last financial crisis the Fed secretly loaned 16 trillion dollars to the big banks.  Those loans were nearly interest-free and those banks knew that they could get basically as much nearly interest-free money as they wanted from the Fed.
So how much nearly interest-free money did the Fed loan to normal Americans?
Not a single penny.
That would be bad enough, but it is also important to remember that since 2008 the Fed has actually been paying banks NOT to lend money to the rest of us.
What is it going to take for the American people to start demanding that the Fed be abolished?  They are absolutely destroying our financial system.
Meanwhile, the central planners in the Obama administration have been doing their part as well.  During the second quarter of this year, the number of Americans working between 30 and 34 hours per week fell by146,500.  During that same time period, the number of Americans working between 25 and 29 hours rose by 119,000.
Why is this happening?
Well, the Obamacare employer mandate will apply to workers that work at least 30 hours each week, so employers are starting to cut back on the hours their employees are getting in order to comply with the law.
But this is just one example out of thousands, and most Americans already know that the U.S. economy has been crumbling for many years.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that even 53 percent of all Democrats believe that the American Dream is dead even though Barack Obama is residing in the White House.
But this is just the beginning.  Things are going to get much, much worse.  We are going down the same path that Greece has gone, and the unemployment rate in Greece has just hit a new all-time record high of27.6 percent.
That is where the U.S. is headed eventually.  Decades of very foolish decisions are catching up with us.
The primary reason why all of this is happening is debt.  As a society, we simply have way, way, way too much debt.
The biggest offender, of course, is the federal government.  Since 1970, federal spending has grown nearly 12 times as rapidly as median household income has, and since the year 2000 the size of the U.S. national debt has grown by more than 11 trillion dollars.
When government debt gets too large, it has a profoundly negative effect on an economy.  The following is an excerpt from an outstanding articleby Lacy H. Hunt, a Ph.D. economist…
*****
Here are the studies, starting with the one with the broadest implications:

1. “Government Size and Growth: A Survey and Interpretation of the Evidence,” from Journal of Economic Surveys. Published in April 2011, Swedish economists Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson (both of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics at Lund University) found a “significant negative correlation” between size of government and economic growth. Specifically, “an increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5% to 1% lower annual growth rate.”
2. “The Impact of High and Growing Government Debt on Economic Growth: An Empirical Investigation for the Euro Area,” inEuropean Central Bank working paper, Number 1237, August 2010. Cristina Checherita and Philipp Rother found that a government-debt-to-GDP ratio above the threshold of 90-100% has a “deleterious” impact on long-term growth. Additionally, the impact of debt on growth is nonlinear – as the government debt rises to higher and higher levels, the adverse growth consequences accelerate.
3. The Real Effects of Debt, published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland in August 2011. Stephen G. Cecchetti, M. S.Mohanty, and Fabrizio Zampolli determined that “beyond a certain level, debt is bad for growth. For government debt, the number is about 85% of GDP.”
4. “Public Debt Overhangs: Advanced-Economy Episodes Since 1800,”by Carmen M. Reinhart, Vincent R. Reinhart, Kenneth S. Rogoff, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 2012, pages 69-86. The authors identified 26 cases of “debt overhangs,” which they define as public-debt-to-GDP levels exceeding 90% for at least five years. In spite of the many idiosyncratic differences in these situations, economic growth fell in all but three of the 26 cases. All of the instances, which lasted an average of 23 years, are included in the paper. They found that average annual growth is 1.2% lower for countries with a debt overhang than for countries without. The long duration of such episodes means that cumulative shortfall from the debt excess—i.e., several years in a row of subpar economic growth—is potentially massive.

*****
But it isn’t just federal government debt that is the problem.  The rest of us have way too much debt as well.
If you can believe it, the ratio of private debt to GDP was 273.3% for the twelve months ending in the first quarter of 2013.
That is an astounding figure.
And as Hunt explained, having too much private debt is also very bad for an economy…

In Too Much Finance, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in March 2011, Jean Louis Arcand, Enrico Berkes, and Ugo Panizza found a negative effect on output growth when credit to the private sector reaches 104-110% of GDP. The strongest adverse effects are for credit over 160% of GDP.
The second is the 2011 BIS study authored by Cecchetti, Mohanty, and Zampolli. They found that private debt levels become “cancerous” (in BIS economic advisor Cecchetti’s own words) at 175% (90% for corporations and 85% for households)—just slightly more than the UNCTAD study.

When you add our private debt to GDP ratio of 273 percent to our federal debt to GDP ratio of 101 percent, you get a grand total of 384 percent.
This is how we have funded the false prosperity of the past couple of decades.  Essentially, we have been putting our good times on a credit card.
And as anyone that has ever tried to live on credit knows, the good times eventually run out.
But this is what the Federal Reserve was designed to do.  It was designed to get the U.S. government trapped in a debt spiral from which there would never be any escape.
It is not an accident that our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Fed was originally created.  This is what the bankers wanted the system to do.
They wanted a system that would extract wealth from all of us through taxes, transfer it to the government, and then transfer it to them through interest payments.
We never needed a central bank, we never needed the IRS and we never needed an income tax.  America would be doing just fine without any of them.
But instead, America chose to go down the path of collectivization and central planning, and now we are heading toward the biggest economic disaster in the history of mankind.

The Real Unemployment Numbers – Reported Jobless Rates Can Be Misleading – America Live

The Real Unemployment Numbers – Reported Jobless Rates Can Be Misleading – America Live

 

Workers 'set to lose £6,660 from their wage packets between 2010 and 2015'

Workers will be earning £1,520 a year less by 2015 than in 2010 - amounting to a loss of £6,660 in real terms over five years.
The total would be enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for a year and a half or buy a small car, according to the Labour party, which based the figures on analysis of Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts.
The figures also reveal a widening north-south income divide, with real wages now 8.1 per cent lower in Yorkshire and the Humber compared with a 5.5 per cent fall in the south east.

Wage watch: Workers will be earning £1,520 a year less by 2015 than in 2010, amounting to a total loss of £6,660 in real terms over five years

Workers have taken the biggest hits to their salaries in Yorkshire and the Humber, Wales, the north west and the south west of England, the analysis found.
Labour's report comes amid an escalating row over 'zero hours' employment contracts, under which staff are not guaranteed work and often receive short notice of whatever hours they get.

 

Britons on the controversial contracts could top one million - four times higher than official estimates - and the Government is investigating whether to curb them due to fears workers' rights are being eroded.
Real wages have fallen for 35 months running under the current Government, outstripping the record of former Labour leader James Callaghan who saw real wages fall for 17 months in a row in the 1970s, the figures show.
People's spending power has dropped in every month but one under Coalition rule as price rises outstrip wage increases, the report from shadow Treasury minister Chris Leslie found.
'It is a reduction in real wages over that period of £6,660 which for a lot of people will resonate. It is a significant, serious amount of money,' said Leslie.

Salary cut: Loss of £6,660 would be enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for a year and a half or buy a small car

He added: 'That's enough to pay for the average family weekly shop for almost a year-and-a-half, it's enough to get a new car, albeit quite a small one at a stretch, but it's quite a significant sum of money.'
Leslie said you couldn't separate out wider economic growth from how people were being affected in their daily lives, and cuts to income as well as upward pressure on prices had created a very serious situation.
He claimed Labour would help middle and low-income families with a lower 10p starting rate of tax, action to tackle soaring energy bills, and protecting tax credits for working families by reversing the cut in the top tax rate from 50 per cent to 45 per cent.
Government whip and Liberal Democrat Mark Hunter blamed Labour for 'crashing the economy' and said to criticise the Coalition for cleaning up the mess was 'utterly hypocritical'.
Conservative business minister Matthew Hancock said: 'Today's squeeze on living standards is a direct result of Labour's disastrous economic policy that got us into this mess.
'And if they were in government now, Labour would make hardworking people worse off. Their plan for more borrowing and more debt - exactly the same old Labour policy that got us into this mess in the first place - would mean soaring mortgage rates and higher bills.'
Hancock said the Government was taking 2.7million out of income tax altogether, cutting income tax for millions more and fixing the welfare system so that it rewarded hard work.

Shortages Are Going to Drive People Out of Their Minds: “That’s When the Riots Will Start”

When will the breakdown of the system begin?
If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ll likely agree with contrarian economist Jim Willie. The breakdown is happening right here and now – it’s already in progress.
Most Americans haven’t realized it just yet, but everything including our economic, financial, monetary and political systems are in full meltdown mode. It was so bad in 2008, in fact, that Congressional members were warned that if they failed to stabilize the financial system there would be tanks in the streets.
With nearly 50 million Americans on food stamps, more than half of all able-bodied adults out of work, prices for essential goods progressively inflating, consumer spending collapsing, and the government taking on unprecedented levels of debt, the fact of the matter is that nothing has been resolved. It’s only gotten worse.
Jim Willie warns that, while a collapse is already in the works, Americans have no clue how serious it really is.
They’ll know soon enough.

In my view we had a systemic breakdown in 2007.
Then we had a visible breakdown in 2008… Then we had a further breakdown in 2010 when Europe started to fracture. Then we got more breakdown in 2011 when QE was announced. Now we have further breakdown in 2013 with the gold market ambushes.
So, to say “When is the breakdown going to happen,” I usually have a sassy response to my clients: Where have you been? It’s in progress.
…
We’re leading up to a big event. 
We are having breakdowns in numerous structural elements of the financial system. 
They’re all breaking down.
We don’t know what the actual trigger is going to be. I’m pointing to Deutsche Bank. I think Deutsche Bank is possibly going to be the one big bank they cannot control and that’s where you’re going to get the big break down with contagion hitting numerous western banks and hitting numerous important markets like sovereign bonds.
So we’re leading to a climax. We’re getting a chain reaction of breakdown events. They’re in progress.
…
The ‘taper talk’ was a stress test to find out what in the world would break down, and the answer was everything!”
…
In the United States, we are going to have shortages across the board, and that includes gold and silver. 
Just think food and gasoline. 
That’s when the riots will start. 
You are going to see out of control chaos and the government stepping in to restore order. . . .
Shortages and price inflation are going to drive people out of their minds.
Via Steve Quayle

Watch as Greg Hunter of USA Watch Dog interviews The Golden Jackass: 

The American people, and the people of most western nations, have been living a life of relative peace and prosperity for the last several decades.

The majority have no idea how all of it has been made possible.

The almost unimaginable levels of debt and leverage that have been keeping the system afloat will, however, soon be revealed for the Ponzi scheme they really are.

And when it all comes crashing down millions of unsuspecting myrmidons will be totally blind sided.

They will have failed to prepare for a paradigm shift not seen since the early to mid 20th century, when economic instability and wars ravaged the entire globe, leaving tens of millions of people dead.

As Jim Willie and Greg Hunter note, the big event is coming.

Now is the time to stockpile those items that will be unavailable at almost any price when the severity of the collapse becomes apparent to everyone. Food to keep you alive for extended periods. Essential supplies that you can barter. Gold and silver as a mechanism of exchange. Weapons and ammo to defend what’s yours.

We may not be able to predict what will happen or how widespread it will be, but having a well developed preparedness plan will, at the very least, give you a fighting chance at survival.

This is what it looks like when Americans rush for cheap TV’s, phones and video game systems on Black Friday – can you imagine what the scene will be when they’re fighting for food and clothing?

Greek Youth Unemployment Soars To Record 65%

RIP Greekovery.
What little hope there may have been that bad and/or deteriorating Greek economic data had peaked in the early part of 2013 and the country was set for a long overdue “recovery” was promptly extinguished following today’s latest release of the Greek May labor force survey.
The headline news was ugly:

• The number of employed was 3,621,153, a decline of 14,889 from April, and down 171,356 from a year earlier
• The number fo unemployed was 3,318,671, an increase of 43,467 from April, and up 193,668 from a year earlier
• The unemployment rate was a record high 27.6%, up from 26.9% in April and 23.8% a year earlier

And that was the “good” news. The bad news? Greek youth (15-24 year old) unemployment halted its decline over the past few months only to explode higher from 57.5% in April to a whopping 64.9% in May! Needless to say this is a record high, and means that two thirds of all eligible for work youths can not find a job. That this is the most combustible combination for social upheaval if not war, is well known to anyone who has opened even one history book.

Questioning the Underlying Structures of Property and Power is “Off the Table”

In part two of Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay and Vijay Prashad discuss the limits imposed on questioning the roots of inequality and how those who own the majority of property set the terms for everyone else
Watch the full episode here http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?o…

Peter Schiff: The Government Makes it Very Lucrative Not to Wor

Lower Income Grocery Store Features Items with Even More GMOs

Are GMOs being deliberately pushed on the lower class?

Aaron Dykes
Activist Post

In large retail and grocery store shelves, end caps often give a great snapshot into the character of the store and the targeted audience.

The product I used as an example in this short video is, truly, widely available in many stores. But it was only when we visited a lower income grocery store that we noticed it on display and prominently featured with a promotional discount. Ironically, or appropriately, sold under the brand name “Klass,” this powered Horchata drink mix targets the budget conscious Latino/Hispanic family who might want to enjoy a traditional Mexican beverage – or at least the appearance of one.

Inside this product are dozens of hidden GMO ingredients, as well as disguised “natural” and “artificial” flavors with little resemblance to real food and plenty of potential health risks.

Here’s a link to a shopping guide to help you navigate hidden (and under-labeled) GMO ingredients.

While this example product seemingly touts the beneficial qualities of Vitamin C and Skimmed Milk Powder (bolded in stand out yellow text), its other ingredients read like a cocktail for ill health, if consumed too regularly. They are:

Dextrose, sugar, titanium dioxide, maltodextrin, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil [an unspecified blend of soy, canola or palm oil – very likely GMO ingredients], artificial flavor, guam gum, silicon dioxide, aspartame, powdered cinnamon, rice flour, acesulfame potassium, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) [likely derived GMO corn], and caramel color.

From this list, only powdered cinnamon, rice flour, milk and sugar seem to have a place here in terms of the what the drink is supposed to be. The rest are mostly chemical additives used for flavor enhancement (i.e. imitating the real thing) and preservatives, and many make health-conscious lists like this ABC News list, noting the Top 11 scary food additives, of which Klass Horchata contains the top 3, as well as number 4, glyphosate (which does not appear on the label but is used in production of corn, soy and other crops):

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/top-11-scary-food-additives/story?id=18479268

The CDC’s ‘Prevalence of Diabetes Among Hispanics’ is one example of the data collected to show that diabetes, obesity and unhealthy living disproportionately affect Hispanic populations (as opposed to the demographic category ‘non-Hispanic whites’) with effectively twice as many cases of diabetes, and affecting Hispanics at statistically a younger age.

http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/factsheets/hispanic.htm

One likely cause for this trend is the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy and artificial ingredients mass marketed to this demographic, and other low-income sectors of the population. In a related example, a New York columnist has taken up recommending that poor people eat McDonald’s as affordable calories rather than try to navigate & adopt “leftist foodie codes” including organic and non-GMO natural produce.


Aaron Dykes is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com, where this first appeared. As a writer, researcher and video producer who has worked on numerous documentaries and investigative reports, he uses history as a guide to decode current events, uncover obscure agendas and contrast them with the dignity afforded individuals as recognized in documents like the Bill of Rights.

Bitcoin Clampdown Continues As Federal Judge Says It’s A Currency

Wikipedia calls Bitcoin a cryptocurrency (a currency that relies on cryptography), but now it’s official. A federal judge in Texas has declared that Bitcoin is a currency and should therefore be regulated just like U.S. dollars or gold. The ruling represents yet another attempt to regulate Bitcoin transactions, threatening the original purpose of the currency.
While it looks like a recognition that Bitcoins are worth something, the decision threatens once again Bitcoin’s utopian concept. As a reminder, the Department of Homeland Security recently issued a seizure warrant on Bitcoin exchange service Mt. Gox because it didn’t comply to money transfer regulations.
Today’s decision goes in the same direction. BTCST, a Bitcoin-based hedge fund, claimed that “the BTCST investments are not securities because Bitcoin is not money, and is not part of anything regulated by the United States,” wrote Judge Amos Mazzant. She then stated the exact opposite of BTCST’s defense:

First, the Court must determine whether the BTCST investments constitute an investment of money. It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan. Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money.

Bitcoin was born on the idea that nobody could regulate it. Instead of having a central bank, Bitcoins are just a chain of characters defined by algorithmic rules. Anybody can try to find new Bitcoins and anybody can verify if it is indeed a real Bitcoin or not. All of this is handled by opensource Bitcoin applications and a few proprietary variants.
The Bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer payment network, and nobody can intefere with it. The only real value of a Bitcoin comes from its users. Because Bitcoin owners are treating it as a currency, it becomes one. That’s what makes it beautiful and scary at the same time. Yet, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto probably didn’t think that even the U.S. government would treat it as a currency and try to regulate it.

The Fed Will Bankrupt the US Trying to “Create” Jobs

by Phoenix Capital Research

The primary myth being perpetuated by the Central Banks of the world is the belief that loose monetary policy and money printing will lead to economic growth.
This is the reason why Central banks have cut interest rates more than 511 times since June 2007. It’s also why they’ve expanded their balance sheets by over $10 trillion (this doesn’t count unofficial lending windows and off balance sheet programs).
It’s a strange idea, especially when you consider that there is literally no evidence that printing money creates jobs. Look at Japan, they have and continue to maintain QE efforts equal to 40+% of their GDP and unemployment hasn’t budged in 20 years. The UK has engaged in QE equal to over 20% of GDP with no success.
If you need further proof that money printing and inflation don’t create jobs take a look at the below chart from Bill King’s The King Report.  The blue line is CPI. The pink line is non-seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll (jobs). In the last 50 years, inflation has dramatically outperformed job creation.

Since Bernanke took over at the Fed, the US hasn’t experienced a single year of 3% GDP growth. All the talk of jobs coming back courtesy of the Fed is ridiculous. The employment population ratio peaked in 2000. Since that time jobs have not kept up with population growth, let alone grown.
Indeed, all that’s grown is inflation, the one thing the Fed is great at creating.
According to Harvard Professor Ken Rogoff in the 138 years leading up to the Fed’s founding in 2013, inflation rose a mere 20%.
Yes, you read that correctly, inflation rose just 20% over a period of 138 years. However, in the 100 years since the Fed came into existence, inflation has risen by 3,000%. The US dollar has lost between 96-98% of its value since 1913.
And yet despite the preponderance of evidence that money printing doesn’t create jobs, Bernanke and his Central Banker colleagues continue to perpetuate the myth that the recovery is just around the corner, as long as we continue to print money.
It’s complete and utter insanity. And all it will accomplish is bankrupting the US, resulting in higher costs of living (again inflation has risen 3,000% since the Fed’s creation in 1913) and lower quality of life for all of us.
Folks, there is no other way to put this… the markets are in a massive bubble. And when it bursts, things will get ugly very FAST.

For more market insights and commentary, visit us at:
www.gainspainscapital.com
Best Regards
Graham Summers

Analyst: Wall St. layoffs ahead

If Wall Street thinks things are bad now, just wait — they’re about to get worse.
The US financial sector is facing an epic round of layoffs that could hit 100,000 workers as the big banks wrestle with a global contraction and a sluggish economic recovery in the US, according to prominent analyst Meredith Whitney.
“We are on the precipice of a seismic down-sizing on Wall Street, the likes of which have never occurred before,” Whitney wrote in a recent research note to clients.
Whitney estimates that financial firms may have to slash at least 15 percent of their work force over the next 18 months to replace shrinking revenue.

Despite multiple rounds of layoffs, financial jobs in the US are down only about 4.3 percent, or 37,000, from peak levels, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Indeed, from peak to trough, employment in the securities industry declined 8.8 percent, or 76,400 workers.
Whitney, who made several prescient calls leading up the financial crisis, contends that US banks have become addicted to the housing market and peddling mortgage securities.
“Leverage became America’s greatest export,” Whitney wrote in her note to clients.
In addition, banks and the stock market have been benefiting from the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies to stimulate the economy, Whitney said.
“Because central bankers have done everything to avoid an economic slowdown, they have created a dangerous and highly inter-dependent global [interest] rates’ markets and policy has separated from reality,” the analyst noted.
Whitney’s gloomy report follows a rebound in bank stocks over the past year, with JPMorgan up 54 percent and Goldman rising 61 percent.
“Wall Street as we know it isn’t coming back,” Whitney told The Post.

Sorry, It’s Not A ‘Law Of Capitalism’ That You Pay Your Employees As Little As Possible

Business Insider – by HENRY BLODGET
One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is that big American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing in their people and future projects.
This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth — the vast American middle class — of purchasing power. (See charts below).  
If average Americans don’t get paid living wages, they can’t spend much money buying products and services. And when average Americans can’t buy products and services, the companies that sell products and services to average Americans can’t grow. So the profit obsession of America’s big companies is, ironically, hurting their ability to accelerate revenue growth.
One obvious solution to this problem is for big companies to pay their people more — to share more of the vast wealth that they create with the people who create it.
The companies have record profit margins, so they can certainly afford to do this.
But, unfortunately, over the past three decades, what began as a healthy and necessary effort to make our companies more efficient has evolved into a warped consensus that the only value that companies create is financial (cash) and that the only thing managers and owners should ever worry about is making more of it.
This view is an insult to anyone who has ever dreamed of having a job that is about more than money. And it is a short-sighted and destructive view of capitalism, an economic system that sustains not just this country but most countries in the world.
This view has become deeply entrenched, though.
These days, if you suggest that great companies should serve several constituencies (customers, employees, and shareholders) and that American companies should share more of their wealth with the people who generate it (employees), you get called a “socialist.” You get called a “liberal.” You get told that you “don’t understand economics.” You get accused of promoting “wealth confiscation.” You get told that, in America, people get paid what they deserve to get paid: Anyone who wants more money should go out and “start their own company” or “demand a raise” or “get a better job.”
In other words, you get told that anyone who suggests that great companies should share the value they create with all three constituencies instead of just lining the pockets of shareholders is an idiot.
After all, these folks say, one law of capitalism is that employers pay their employees as little as possible. Employees are just “costs.” You should try to minimize those “costs” whenever and wherever you can.
This view, unfortunately, is not just selfish and demeaning. It’s also economically stupid. Those “costs” you are minimizing (employees) are also current and prospective customers for your company and other companies. And the less money they have, the fewer products and services they are going to buy.
Obviously, the folks who own and run America’s big corporations want to do as well as they can for themselves. But the key point is this:
It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible.
It is a choice.
It is a choice made by senior managers and owners who want to keep the highest possible percentage of a company’s wealth for themselves.
It is, in other words, a selfish choice.
It is a choice that reveals that, regardless of what they say about how much they value their employees, regardless of what euphemism they use to describe their employees (“associate,” “partner,” “representative,” “team-member”), they, in fact, don’t give a damn about their employees.
These senior managers and owners, after all, are earning record profits while choosing to pay their employees so little in many cases that the employees have to live in poverty.
And the senior managers and owners add insult to injury by blaming the employees for this: “If they want to get paid more, they should start their own company. Or get a better job.”
It is no mystery why America’s senior managers and owners describe the decision to pay employees as little as possible as a “law of capitalism”: Because doing this masks the fact that they are making a choice.
But it is a choice.
Importantly, if big American companies were struggling to earn money, as they were in the early 1980s, we would not be having this conversation. Even if big American companies were only earning average profits, this wouldn’t be an issue. But the “efficiency” and “shareholder-value” drive that began in the 1980s has now gone too far the other way. Just look at these charts…
CHART ONE: Corporate profits and profit margins are at an all-time high. American companies are making more money and more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. Full stop. This means that the companies have oceans of cash to invest. But they’re not investing it. Because they’re too risk averse, profit-obsessed, and short-term greedy.

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed

CHART TWO: Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is another reason the economy is so weak. Those “wages” represent spending power for American consumers. American consumer spending is revenue for other companies. So the profit maximization obsession of American corporations is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed

CHART THREE: Fewer Americans are employed than at any time in the past three decades. Another reason corporations are so profitable is that they don’t employ as many Americans as they used to. This is in part because companies today regard employees as “costs” instead of human beings who are dedicating their lives to the organizations that, in turn, are supporting them and their families. (Symbiosis! Imagine that!) As a result of frantic firing in the name of “efficiency”  and “return on capital,” the U.S. employment-to-population ratio has collapsed. We’re back at 1970s-1980s levels now.

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed

CHART FOUR: The share of our national income that American corporations are sharing with the people who do the work  (“labor”) is at an all-time low.  The rest of our national income, naturally, is going to owners and senior managers (“capital”), who have it better today than they have ever had it before.

Business Insider, St. Louis Fed, Bureau of Labor Statistics

In short, the obsession with “maximizing short-term profits” that has developed in America over the past 30 years has created a business culture in which executives dance to the tune of short-term traders and quarterly earnings reports, instead of balancing the value created for employees, customers, and long-term owners.
That’s not what has made America a great country. It is not what has made some excellent American corporations the envy of the world. It’s also hurting the economy.

House Expands IRS Targeting Probe To FEC

‘We Won't Pay’: Greek activists reconnect power to poverty-stricken homes

http://rt.com/news/dont-pay-movement-austerity-212/

With a Eurozone record of 27 percent of Greeks unemployed, people are taking a pro-active approach to the crisis. Activists from the ‘We Won't Pay’ movement, which boasts 10,000 members, are illegally reconnecting power to hundreds of homes.
Tough austerity measures have left many people in Greece unable to pay their electricity bills. The ‘We Don't Pay’ movement which has over 10,000 members helps many of those by illegally reconnecting power to their homes, despite legal action against them.
The movement has been gaining new support, despite being targeted by over a hundred law suits. The government warns refusal to pay fees and taxes will only starve Greece of money it needs to get out of debt.
Members of the ‘We Don't Pay’ movement demand alternatives to the austerity measures that, as many argue, have deepened the recession and made unemployment unbearable.
“The vast majority of the public is sunk into poverty, and a few families across the world have 99 percent of the wealth. That's not something we want to bear, that's something we want to overthrow here in Greece and across the world,” Ilias Papadopoulos from the ‘We Don't Pay’ movement told RT in Athens.
Members the group, that began in a village of 3,000 people, reconnect electricity to homes and disconnect power from road tolls, making them free for motorists. Sometimes they also target the Athens metro system.
In 2011 the supporters refused to pay highway tolls and rode buses and the metro in Athens without tickets in protest against an “unfair” 40 per cent increase in fares.
Many in the country are unable to pay for Greece’s state-run electricity. With one in four Greeks currently unemployed, Christina is not the only person to have their electricity cut off two years ago.
“As the bills began piling up, I had to make my priorities - and this is where food comes first. I want to pay the bills and I want to be ok with the state, but the state hasn't been ok with us,” she told RT’s Egor Piskunov.
Greek incomes have been severely squeezed, cut by about 30 percent on average since the crisis started in 2009.  
Greece's unemployment rate has tripled since 2009, as hundreds of thousands lost their jobs or businesses. Up to a thousand Greeks have been laid off daily, according to the ELSTAT statistics service.
Unemployment rose to nearly 27 percent in April, the highest reading since ELSTAT began publishing jobless data in 2006. It’s more than twice the average rate in the euro zone, which hit 12.2 percent in May.
In July Greece unlocked 5.8 billion euros ($7.7 billion) of bailout funds in European aid by putting 25,000 public sector workers on reduced wages by the end of the year. The move sparked a new wave of anti-austerity protests in Athens.
Many say the ‘We Won't Pay’ movement is likely to go on, because it has a strong legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
“We must violate or not respect a law which says thousands of people will have no electricity to cook, no electricity to see water, to see TV, no electricity, to switch on AC,” an economist from Varna Free University of Cyprus, Leonidas Vatikiotis, told RT.
Bailout money for Greece, which has already received about 90 percent of the 240 billion euros earmarked to protect it from default and possible exit from the euro zone, will run out at the end of next year. According to experts, the country is likely to need further relief to make its debt sustainable.

The Price of ‘Made in China’

New York Times – by Peter Navarro

HERE is a symbol of China’s assault on the American economy: the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Staten Island. This landmark, which opened in 1964, is North America’s longest suspension bridge. It’s also in urgent need of renovation. Unfortunately, $34 million in steel production and fabrication work has been outsourced to China.

How did this happen? The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says a Chinese fabricator was picked because the two American companies approached for the project lacked the manufacturing space, special equipment and financial capacity to do the job. But the United Steelworkers claims it quickly found two other American bridge fabricators, within 100 miles of New York City, that could do the job.  

The real problem with this deal is that it doesn’t take into account all of the additional costs that buying “Made in China” brings to the American table. In fact, this failure to consider all costs is the same problem we as consumers face every time we choose a Chinese-made product on price alone — a price that is invariably cheaper.

Consider the safety issue: a scary one, indeed, because China has a very well-deserved reputation for producing inferior and often dangerous products. Such products are as diverse as lead-filled toys, sulfurous drywall, pet food spiked with melamine and heparin tainted with oversulfated chondroitin sulfate.

In the specific case of bridges, six have collapsed across China since July 2011. The official Xinhua news agency has acknowledged that shoddy construction and inferior building materials were contributing factors. There is also a cautionary tale much closer to home.

When California bought Chinese steel to renovate and expand the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, for a project that began in 2002, problems like faulty welds by a Chinese steel fabricator delayed the project for months and led to huge cost overruns. Those delays eroded much of the savings California was banking on when it opted for the “cheap” Chinese steel.

There is a second reason not to buy “Made in China” products: jobs. The abiding fact is that steel production is heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. These subsidies range from the massive benefits of a manipulated and undervalued currency to the underwriting of the costs of energy, land, loans and water.

Because of China’s subsidies — most of which are arguably illegal under international trade agreements — its producers are able to dump steel products into America at or below the actual cost of production. This problem is particularly acute now as China is saddled with massive overcapacity in its steel industry.

Of course, every job China gains by dumping steel into American markets is an American job lost. Each steelworker’s job in America generates additional jobs in the economy, along with increased tax revenues. With over 20 million Americans now unable to find decent work, we could certainly use those jobs as we repair the Verrazano Bridge.

The M.T.A. has ignored not only the social costs but also the broader impact on the environment and human rights. Chinese steel plants emit significantly more pollution and greenhouse gases per ton of steel produced than plants in the United States. This not only contributes to global warming but also has a direct negative impact on American soil, since an increasing amount of China’s pollution is crossing the Pacific Ocean on the jet stream.

Finally, when American companies and government agencies opt for Chinese over American steel, they are tacitly supporting an authoritarian regime that prohibits independent labor unions from organizing — one of many grim ironies in today’s People’s Republic. As a result, American workers are forced to compete against Chinese workers who regularly work 12-hour days, six or seven days a week, without adequate safety gear. Both Chinese and American steelworkers wind up as victims.

The bottom line here is this: Buying “Made in China” — whether steel for our bridges or dolls for our children — entails large costs that most consumers and, sadly, even our leaders don’t consider when making purchases. This is hurting our country — and killing our economy.

Peter Navarro, a professor of economics and public policy in the business school at the University of California, Irvine, directed the documentary film “Death by China.”

The Rise Of The Bear: 18 Signs That Russia Is Rapidly Catching Up To The United States

by Michael Snyder 

The Russian Bear is stronger and more powerful than it has ever been before.  Sadly, most Americans don’t understand this.  They still think of Russia as an “ex-superpower” that was rendered almost irrelevant when the Cold War ended.  And yes, when the Cold War ended Russia was in rough shape.  I got the chance to go over there in the early nineties, and at the time Russia was an economic disaster zone.  Russian currency was so worthless that I joked that I could go exchange a 20 dollar bill and buy the Kremlin.  But since that time Russia has roared back to life.  Once Vladimir Putin became president, the Russian economy started to grow very rapidly.  Today, Russia is an economic powerhouse that is blessed with an abundance of natural resources.  Their debt to GDP ratio is extremely small, they actually run a trade surplus every year, and they have the second most powerful military on the entire planet.  Anyone that underestimates Russia at this point is making a huge mistake.  The Russian Bear is back, and today it is a more formidable adversary than it ever was at any point during the Cold War.
Just check out the following statistics.  The following are 18 signs that Russia is rapidly catching up to the United States…
#1 Russia produces more oil than anyone else on the planet.  The United States is in third place.
#2 Russia is the number two oil exporter in the world.  The United States is forced to import more oil than anyone else in the world.
#3 Russia produces more natural gas than anyone else on the planet.  The United States is in second place.
#4 Today, Russia supplies 34 percent of Europe’s natural gas needs.
#5 The United States has a debt to GDP ratio of 101 percent.  Russia has a debt to GDP ratio of about 8 percent.
#6 The United States had a trade deficit of more than half a trillion dollars last year.  Russia consistently runs a large trade surplus.
#7 The United States has an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent.  Russia has an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent.
#8 Since Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia, the Russian economy has grown at a very rapid pace.  The following is fromWikipedia…

Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin Russia’s economy saw the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) double, climbing from 22nd to 11th largest in the world. The economy made real gains of an average 7% per year (1999: 6.5%, 2000: 10%, 2001: 5.7%, 2002: 4.9%, 2003: 7.3%, 2004: 7.2%, 2005: 6.4%, 2006: 8.2%, 2007: 8.5%, 2008: 5.2%), making it the 6th largest economy in the world in GDP(PPP). In 2007, Russia’s GDP exceeded that of 1990, meaning it has overcome the devastating consequences of the recession in the 1990s.
During Putin’s eight years in office, the industry grew by 75%, investments increased by 125%, and agricultural production and construction increased as well. Real incomes more than doubled and the average salary increased eightfold from $80 to $640. The volume of consumer credit between 2000–2006 increased 45 times, and during that same time period, the middle class grew from 8 million to 55 million, an increase of 7 times. The number of people living below the poverty line also decreased from 30% in 2000 to 14% in 2008.

#9 According to Bloomberg, Russia has added 570 metric tons of gold to their reserves over the past decade.  In the United States, nobody seems to be quite sure how much gold the Federal Reserve actually has left.
#10 Moscow is the second most expensive city in the world.  Meanwhile, the United States actually has the unfriendliest city in the world (Newark, New Jersey).
#11 More billionaires live in Moscow than in any other city on the globe.
#12 The Moscow metro system completely outclasses the subway systems in Washington D.C. and New York City.
#13 The United States has the most powerful military on the planet, but Russia is in second place.
#14 Russia has introduced a new “near silent” nuclear submarine which is far more quiet than anything the U.S. has…

The Borey Class submarine, dubbed Vladimir Monomakh, has a next generation nuclear reactor, can dive deeper than 1,200 feet, and carries up to 20 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
Each of these “Bulava” ICBM’s can carry ten detachable MIRV warheads, what they call “re-entry vehicles,” capable of delivering 150 kiloton yields per warhead

#15 While Barack Obama is neutering the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin is working hard to modernize Russian nuclear forces.
#16 Russian missile forces will hold more than 200 drills during the second half of 2013.
#17 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made headlines all over the world when he climbed into the cockpit of Russia’s new “fifth generation” fighter jet and announced that it was far superior to the F-22 Raptor.
#18 It is estimated that Russia has more spies inside the United States today than it did at any point during the Cold War.
Unfortunately, whenever I write an article about Russia I find that most people simply do not get it.  They will make statements such as “the Cold War is over” or “Russia is our friend” which show a complete and total lack of understanding of the current geopolitical situation.
Russia has been steadily building a stronger relationship with China, and collectively they represent the number one strategic threat to the United States.
Someday this will become abundantly clear to the American people.  Hopefully it will not be too late by the time they realize it.

While The West Ponders Fed QE Plans -The Chinese Accumulate Gold

by GoldCore
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,287.75, EUR 964.25 and GBP 830.11 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,275.50, EUR 960.61 and GBP 838.04 per ounce.
Gold rose $1.50 or 0.12% yesterday and closed at $1,285.10/oz. Silver fell $0.01 or 0.05% and closed at $19.51.
Gold is up from a three week low hit early yesterday.  The recent movements in the gold price have been driven by investors looking to short cover as they are selling long their U.S. dollars and buying other currencies and gold. The weakness in the U.S. dollar, which is at a seven week low, has been driven by the comments from the Fed which has given strong hints that it will begin tapering QE in September or soon thereafter.
While western investors focus on Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing tapering timelines, the bigger gold story is taking place in China. The negative sentiment currently attributable to the gold price masks the accumulation of gold by the Chinese who are set to overtake India this year as the world’s top gold consumer. This is a startling turnaround given the Chinese embargo on gold ownership was only lifted as recently as 2003.

Support & Resistance Chart, 5 Year – (GoldCore)
The Chinese yuan is at a 19-year high against the U.S. dollar which is providing support to local Chinese buyers through cheaper local bullion prices. What is unknown is the real volume of gold bullion purchases by the Chinese central bank as it looks to reduce its exposure to the U.S dollar, such is the volume of dollar reserves on account.
With some $3.2 trillion in official reserves, the Chinese have gone about their central bank gold bullion accumulation programme quietly and with little fanfare. When the dust settles on 2013 the big story will be ‘China, Less Dollars, More Gold.’ Whether or not the big game is played out and the Chinese back the yuan with gold, the long term prospect for the gold price is very positive.

GoldCore’s Stephen Flood was interviewed on CNBC Squawk Box yesterday and discussed the demand for gold from China, gold as a diversification element in portfolios and about the risks of a stock market fall. With central banks grappling with a stimulus dependent capital market and a fragile economic recovery, the risks of a downside move in the stock markets are significant. GoldCore 2013 market outlook and long term price expectation is for gold to reach its inflation-adjusted high of $2,400.
Louise Yamada, the respected technical analyst, views gold as still technically weak.  In an a interview with Bloomberg she said gold “will need a lot of repair to come out of this bear market, .. the recovery that we have seen is fragile, and monthly momentum is in steep decline.”
GoldCore’s trading  desk is seeing considerable physical interest at these levels, with many clients viewing the current price as an attractive entry point. Buyer to seller interest is seen at 2:1.