by Sam Laakso, Voima Gold:
There have been recent rumors in the gold market about the availability of physical gold. Some social media personalities and news agencies have claimed that there is a shortage of physical gold on the market. However, it is not so much about a shortage of gold, but rather a sudden demand for gold in places where it cannot be quickly supplied in the desired form.
from Sputnik News:
The United States has become the country most affected by the pandemic, with over 104,000 cases along with at least 1,500 deaths.
US investors and bankers are facing “severe shortages” of gold bullion and coins due the increasing coronavirus pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“Dealers are sold out or closed for the duration. Credit Suisse Group AG, which has minted its own bars since 1856, told clients this week not to bother asking. In London, bankers are chartering private jets and trying to finagle military cargo planes to get their bullion to New York exchanges”, according to the newspaper.
from Birch Gold Group:
It might be time to call NASA because the Federal Reserve has recently increased its balance sheet so fast that the resulting line chart could be mistaken for a monetary “moon shot.”
In an unprecedented move, the Fed’s balance sheet has “gone vertical,” shooting up to an astounding $4.67 trillion.
This official chart shows the vertical spike:
by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse:
Two things about the coronavirus relief checks the government will soon start sending out: First, it looks like they’ll take a while to arrive:
Show Me The Relief Money – No Promises On When Coronavirus Checks Are Coming
About 90% of households — approximately 165 million — will benefit from direct payments, according to the Tax Policy Center.
by Brian Maher, Daily Reckoning:
3.28 million.
That is the total number of unemployment claims Americans filed last week — nearly five times the prior record of 695,000, from October 1982.
“We’ve known this number was coming for a week and a half,” laments Tom Gimbel, who captains a Chicago employment agency, adding:
It doesn’t surprise me at all. When you see a city like Las Vegas get shut down, I don’t know what other options there were than seeing a number like this.
A fellow must take his comforts where he can find them these days. And precious few are on offer.
by Nathan McDonald, Sprott Money:
Wall Street has finally found its footing, after the Federal Reserve gave the green light to investors, indicating that endless amounts of quantitative easing was about to be unleashed upon the markets, using whatever tools they have available to them to achieve their goal of “supporting the economy”.
Additionally, the G7, after facing extreme criticism for their lack of united effort thus far, released the following joint statement;
“We will do whatever is necessary to restore confidence and economic growth and to protect jobs, businesses, and the resilience of the financial system.”
by Chris Powell, Gold Seek:
What the heck are those mysterious “exchange for physicals,” the mechanisms by which contracts to buy gold on the New York Commodities Exchange are neither fulfilled by delivery on the Comex nor settled for cash there but transported for supposed delivery elsewhere?
The mechanism long has been incorporated by the Comex trading system but was described as an “emergency” procedure undertaken upon agreement by buyer and seller — except that the use of this “emergency” procedure has exploded in the last year, involving tens of thousands of contracts and, nominally, hundreds of tonnes of gold.
by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:
Just astounding. So many downgrades in just of a couple of days. And zero upgrades. Here’s who got hit.
I get “Moody’s Daily Alert” in my inbox, which lists Moody’s ratings actions for the day. The Alerts are usually a mix of a few upgrades and a few downgrades. Many times, there are no downgrades. Earlier this year, it became obvious without counting that the downgrades were starting to outnumber the upgrades by a large margin. But this week, the three Alerts were a torrent of 69 downgrades and zero upgrades. This is something I haven’t seen since I started subscribing to this service years ago. Some of the downgrades were by multiple notches in one fell swoop.
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:
The New York Fed supervises four of the most dangerous banks in America: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. That opinion is not just ours but is documented by data from federal agencies. All four of these banks own federally-insured commercial banks that are backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer while also gambling in the stock market through their own Dark Pools and in trillions of dollars of derivatives.
All four of these banks received tens of billions of dollars in bailout money during the 2007-2010 financial crash, which was brought on by their greed and corrupt activities in the derivatives and subprime market. Citigroup’s losses were of such magnitude that it became insolvent, turned into a 99 cent stock, and yet secretly received the largest bailout in global banking history from the same regulator who had allowed it to become a derivatives fireworks factory and blow up: the New York Fed.
