The Office for National Statistics recently revealed that the UK savings ratio has hit a six-year high. The figures show that the average UK household is now putting away 5.6 per cent of its monthly income for savings, compared with a mere 1.7 per cent at this time last year.

Where will it all go? Unless people like setting fire to their earned money (I make that distinction) there will be a search for yield, and I expect this to be supportive of equity and commodity prices in the near term. People will also demand higher base rates from their governments & central banks, but who knows if that’s going to be even possible looking at the substantial debt burden.

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Insurrection is an option! Which is what I’m hoping for over here in the UK. So far we’ve dodged the bullet, although the Pound has taken a few in the chest “in the line of fire” (Cable is currently trading at 1.51). Our deficit at 12.8% of GDP exceeds that of Greece, but at least we have currency debasement as an alternative method of impoverishing the middle class. The Greeks have Van Rompuy for that task (socialist impoverishment), and I for one would like to welcome our new overlord:

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squeal like a pig, boy ..

Interesting fact I learned this week:  Spain now has a youth unemployment rate (16-25yrs) of 40 percent!.  That’s worse than my local estate. The EU certainly has a tough choice to make in the coming weeks with the Euro being shorted to hell and the PIIG dominoes ready to fall.

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on the upside ..

The week ended on a high note for gold. With stronger than expected economic figures coming out of Asia and also rumours abound that China could be snapping up the remaining IMF stocks, Gold rose back above $1100, also bringing Silver back above the $16 mark. Precious metals also appeared to be changing their dynamic, rising with the dollar, as investors moved away from the worst of the worst currencies into the few remaining places of sanctuary. It all bodes well for a continued +$1000 bullion price and the resumption of the bull trend.

It took just days for the emergency services to be crippled by the legions of desperate workers sucking every last drop out from underneath the forecourts. Within a week it was Petrograd; the law-abiding, dutiful and respectful UK citizens having panic bought all the bread in Tescos. I would have given it another fortnight before the riots started. I remember this time well. As I watched on the telly it occurred to me that ‘one more shock of the system’ and those fuckers would start cutting each other’s throats for food. Maybe eat the entrails. Normal people. One week.

The system right now is on a knife edge, an edge that’s being tightrope walked by the financial cirque du soleil. This is no show, the clowns are not funny, and be under no illusion – as before, the slightest ripple in the status quo will really whip the masses into hysteria in a very short space of time. Let us also not forget that we live in the most self-preserving, self-indulgent, morally bankrupt and frankly idiotic society in history; with a dependent underclass,  a brainwashed middle class, and a disenfranchised working class; all stirred up in the debt-fuelled, recessionary pressure cooker.

Molotov cocktail anyone? Damn, no petrol.

It’s been one hell of a month for Gold, breaking out through $1000 and going north of $1100 on the back of India’s purchase of 200 tonnes from the IMF. The old IMF chestnut has been wheeled out many times over the last few years whenever things heated up. It was the bogeyman in the closet waiting to jump out and frighten the hell out of the market. Well he finally jumped out and nobody flinched. Everybody knows what he looks like now, and he ain’t that scary, in fact the kids love him and want to play with him. Like China.

Everybody expected China to take that bullion, and India has surprised everyone by jumping in first. And in doing so they’ve really altered the market psychology, and perhaps set a new floor at $1000. Sri Lanka has already joined the party, and I betcha all other central banks are looking askance. It just looks so cheap: $6.7 billion dollars for a stack of gold larger than Saudi Arabia’s entire reserve. This happened in the same week that the UK-Mugabe regime poured an additional $43 billion down the Royal Bank of Scotland shithole.

Countries sat on trillions of foreign reserves will gladly swallow anything else the IMF has left. How long will it be before Russia and China follow India’s lead? What about the other growing commodity countries such as Australia, Canada and Brazil? When will the various sovereign wealth funds want to secure their piece. How about the Middle Eastern oil billionaires? And with the printing presses on overdrive the world over, how long will it be before some bright spark in any government office realizes the ease at which his country can secure a significant portion of the world’s wealth by writing numbers into a computer terminal and then making a real asset purchase?

I think the Gold train is just leaving the station and India blew the whistle.

Fair enough, education has been in decay for half a century as central government gradually tightened its stranglehold. Also it’s true, that technically speaking any trained monkey, speaking computer or civil servant could perfunctorily administer the next national curriculum, especially now human judgement has been successfully abolished.

Never the less, we’re about to see what happens when accomplished retards are allowed to teach potential retards. I’m referring to some of the people I know who are both immature in their personal affairs and who still require remedial education to cover the basic three Rs. They may be enthusiastic, they may be nice people, they may be down with the kids, but I wouldn’t want them teaching mine.

Ultimately, I’m a believer in self education and broad access to information, not traditional schooling. But you have to be concerned when previous academic failures become responsible for future academic successes.

Generations X,Y and Z are at the end of this alphabet, and any resurgence of a once great England may take a long time based on this current (dumbing-down)trend.

“I find it outrageous that the Federal Reserve is just throwing the dollar out of the window – I happen to be an American citizen and they’re signaling to the whole world that they have given up on the dollar,” said Rogers during an appearance on Bloomberg, adding that everyone should “get out of the dollar because the Fed has given up.”

[ read article ]

I’ve taken the liberty of adjusting the budget summary to reflect the recent changes and add some perspective.

In other news : “More than a dozen victims of collapsed company pension schemes have died waiting for compensation, …”

1. Government spending is out of control with little regard for bringing budget deficits into balance;
2. Trade deficits are mounting toward new records despite a more than 30% decline in the value of the dollar;
3. Inflation rates and employment statistics were actually much worse than the Government reported figures;
4. Real interest rates were to remain negative for an extended period of time, not only destroying the purchasing power of savings, but also encouraging the misallocation of capital to assets with artificial demand;
5. Government sales of gold and silver were to subside or diminish;
6. Production and Demand annual amounts are bullish for both gold and silver;
7. The trend of the Dow/Gold Ratio is bullish for gold;
8. There are huge short positions in gold and silver that could not be delivered;
9. Loose regulations on the CFTC to encourage dangerous short positions existed;
10. A major lawsuit was underway to uncover the manipulation of gold and silver prices from attaining true market prices, (allowing us the gift to purchase almost unlimited amounts of gold and silver now at what is surely below market prices);
11. The masses, particularly in the US, were so uneducated in the histories of fiat money systems and historical prices of gold and silver, allowing for the buying opportunity of the millennium;
12. The true meaning of the word inflation was widely mis-understood;
13. The size of the gold and silver markets compared with all of the existing asset bubbles would be insignificant;
14. Gold and silver stocks had a negative beta, making for the perfect fit in a diversified portfolio or fund-of-fund to increase risk-adjusted returns;
15. Foreign governments would get in the spirit and competitively devalue their currencies against the US dollar, where gobs of paper have recently been printed;
16. The idea of once again backing currencies with precious metals got underway;
17. Armed conflicts are underway with their never-ending budget busting calls for more inflationary spending to achieve their military objectives at any cost;
18. There existed incomprehensible leverage in the financial system, largely in the form of financial derivatives, (last estimated by the BIS at $234 Trillion notional);
19. The biggest savers in the world, Asians, believed in gold and silver;
20. Other commodity prices such as gas and oil are soaring.

[source~http://www.kwaves.com/if_only.htm]

“We’ll offer protection on the first £100,000″
“That’s a bit of a fucking liability isn’t it Alistair?”
“We’ve got no choice, they’re losing faith in the banks, it could go down like a house of cards mate”
“OK”
“Hey Gordon it worked, the angry crowds are disappearing”
“Retract!”
“Sorry everyone, I meant we’ll offer 100% protection on the remaining 10% of the previous 90% of £33,000 offer”