EurAnalysis

you can also look at the hopium calendar:


date..........event

?...............Spain bailout
?...............Greece's budget gap way lower than initially estimated
?...............ESM leverage up to 2 TRLN
?...............PT going long the euro

No tux for me. But some things never change

Me as a kid
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...16598452_n.jpg

Me as an adult
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0rfzcsJ9uY..._threesome.jpg

You have allowed me to understand why the FED has been allowed to get away with their fraud. You first of all need to know that I have great respect for your intelligence and knowledge.

Before I start this post of mine is not about trying to convince you to change your mind or agree about the role of Gold. It is about my nature and how I have never learned to go along to get along and I never will.

Let me continue by pasting the following words of yours, "you would immediately see, how crap the gold really is. Gold is nothing, it doesn't offer any fundamental value. You can't eat it, nor build anything with it."

That is very far from the facts or the reality of Gold.

Let me try to explain this for you and anyone else that wants to see the truth. Ron Paul is very correct as is James Turk or Jim Sinclair or Jim Willie.

I am not in their league and do not need to. I have a brain and can read and understand and observe.

40 Years of observing gives me excellent insight into this subject.

Throughout History Gold has survived. Gold is no party's debt. Gold cannot be printed. Gold holds its value even if it has been manipulated by the Central Banks as it is.

I had the same conversation yesterday with a friend of above.

Let me repeat your words once more to make my point clear to you as it relates to these comments of yours.

"you would immediately see, how crap the gold really is. Gold is nothing, it doesn't offer any fundamental value. You can't eat it, nor build anything with it."

Since 1999 Gold has risen from around $250 US to where it is today. Just look at a chart. Gold is not in a bubble and HAS TO keep going up.

Why is this ?

As the US Dollar is depreciated by the chasing of too many goods by too much money the value of Gold goes up to reflect the MONETARY INFLATION caused by the Federal Reserve printing money by the click of a computer.

In the Roman Empire that was done by mixing metal with Gold. In the German Empire they just made money worthless by unlimited printing.

As my time is short this morning I will just deal with your EATING comment as that really is the issue.

I live in Canada and I own 50 Ounces of Gold at a value of $1750 US Dollars. I go to my bank or say Kitco and sell the Gold now and I have $87,500 Canadian Dollars to use to buy things.

I can sell the Gold anywhere and in any currency. I decide NOT to sell my 50 ounces today and I use my Gold IN MY POSSESION as an insurance policy until Gold reaches $3000 US and it surely will.

I then have a further profit and my INSURANCE Policy has now increased in value to $150,000 US PLUS the extra value that I get by taking the MONEY in Canadian Dollars so say PLUS 2% now. That is another $3000 Dollars so since now I have $153,000 Canadian Dollars and I own land and grow my own food I will use the money to buy my Lamborgini because I am tired of holding money. I do not need much now since I have shelter and food and a Brand New Lamborgini which is my new store of Wealth.

Plus I can meet more women this way and that for sure seems like a good idea.

I have used some of my sense of humor to make my understanding of Gold clearer to anyone with an open mind that wants to learn.

The best place to go to really understand is probably GATA which has an incredible library of information.

I hope I have helped clear things up and opened your eyes to the truth about Gold.

Thanks for your post as it gave me a chance to make my knowledge however limited known. My CREDITIONALS may be in question to some however I defer to those way more astute and knowledgeable than myself. I will be in Toronto on Thursday for the start of the 2 day Cambridge House show where Gold is one of the main topics and some of the most knowledeable and clearly knowing analysts and Gold companies and others appear.

Have a good day and I hope this post was helpful.

read the first post of this thread...here's a copy:

"Yes I know it sounds like urinalysis but in a way the purpose of this thread is to do more or less the same thing. The only difference is that instead of urine, we are analyzing the Euro against its most major counterpart; the US Dollar."


...and since we all know PT's fundamental bias towards the euro then we can safely conclude that, for the time being:

EUR = Urine


hope i made it clearer

If you look at the picture he posted as a kid tells us what his priority is so Eur or Urine does not matter at all.

of course it doesn't matter, it was YOU who started to correct me, when it was only be meant as a joke. And I can't think of any better day to do it than on the 1st birthday of this thread. It's a great day to look back at the year that has passed. I happened to look back into the very first post

It would be a nice present for him if today E/U = 1.180.

or 1.40

We share the same opinion regarding gold. Physical Gold has no counterparty risk and I write it on top of my personal balance sheet, but it is not and will not be a medium to facilitate trade.

Gold is meant to be a true indicator of value. It has held that role for 2000 years. As the value of Fiat currencies goes down Gold reflects that as it goes up in value.

Gold is a store of wealth as is Silver. You should own the Gold and or Silver and keep it in a safe place. When you leave the USA and come live in Canada you bring your Gold and or Silver with you and buy Canadian Dollars.

Have a great day and HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!!

P.S. There are plenty of this here as well.

__________________
In it for the Honey.

Why not? All you have to do is to bite off a chunk of gold to pay for a duck in China town.

http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon14.gif Please Cast Your Votes - THANK YOU
I have gotten one vote via PM and that will make the total votes cast as follows with the PM vote to be added to the totals of 4 votes.

Here is the summary to date with the PM added.

http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon14.gif Most Valuable Poster Award
MVPA ...


Between now and Tuesday, September 25, 2012 EVERYONE except PipTrapper and myself gets one vote. You can only vote if you are already a poster here or have a mimimum of 25 posts. That will eliminate new posters that join just to vote. However I strongly encourage those that cannot or do not post to post here so we increase our active community.

The WINNER can send me a PM as to where I should send VIA Western Union the $50.00 US PRIZE MONEY.

My only request to the WINNER is once you receive the $50 US after you win the most HELPFUL PERSON AWARD of $50 US that you notify everyone here that you have got your deserved reward for your contributions to the thread that PipTrapper started for the best of reasons on September 25, 2011.

THE CONTEST IS NOW OPEN SO POST YOUR VOTES and perhaps a brief comment on why you voted for that person.

I will post each morning at 8:00 AM the standings with the FIRST one on Monday at 8:00 AM EST and the SECOND one on Tuesday, September 25 at 8:00 AM EST and then the FINAL STANDINGS and the Announced WINNER at 1:00 PM on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 at 1:00 PM EST.

VOTING CLOSES on NOON EST on Tuesday, September 25, 2012.

Good Fortune and may the Best Man or Best Woman WIN...

(1) Ken A - Cesar Milan (Not Accepted as does not have 25 posts) - Please select another choice.

(2) Cgb - catwoman

(3) rekon67 - foto

2 entries to date - PRIZE FIFTY REAL US DOLLARS !!! Post Your Choice - Thank You...

(4) neuron - FXSwissTrader

(5) Thijs - Lumesh

We have a tie with 4 people with One Vote each...

Please cast your vote. Voting ends at Noon tomorrow. Eastern Standard Time. Thank You...

PM - FXSwissTrader

Standings as of this moment ...

FXSwissTrader - 2 Votes
catwoman - 1 Vote
foto - 1 Vote
Lumesh - 1 Vote

Total Votes - 5 Votes

Please Vote so someone will WIN $50 US in cash...

Thank You... Off to bed for a few hours now...

Another PM ...

MY vote goes to reckon with good sense of humour

6 Votes Cast - Please Vote - Good Night or Good Morning
Last edited Sep 25, 2012 1:27am (5 hr ago).

FXSwissTrader - 2 Votes
catwoman - 1 Vote
foto - 1 Vote
Lumesh - 1 Vote
rekon - 1 Vote

Standings as of now 6:33 AM Good Voting ... PARTICIPATE THANKS

CM,

My vote after long consideration has to go to Rekon - concise and precise analysis and comment - just ahead of Swissie, who is sorely missed.

It's a bit confusing here !, because all the above guys are really great , but I guess my vote goes to MR. FOTO with many thanks for his valuable contributions which I have really learned a lot of them

My reasons are:
1- 98 % of his posts are straight to the point and trading related
2- some ppl post charts without explanations , he's always explaining and even without charts most of the time ,
3- well behaved and respectable language with humble

Thanks a lot and good luck to you all

Balanced2012

Whilst continuing to play the ~20 pip range ( Sell ~2925 exit & reverse ~2895 ) now into its 12th swing this was a good read.....

Reuters) - On a warm summer day on the eve of the Olympic Games, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi stood up at a business conference in London and dropped a bombshell.
"Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro," Draghi told the audience in Lancaster House, a grand building in central London, then paused for effect. "And believe me, it will be enough."
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Global markets, full of talk of a euro zone break-up, rallied sharply on Draghi's unexpected message. Just as shocked were the ECB boss's aides and his colleagues on the bank's policymaking Governing Council, none of whom knew Draghi would make such a sweeping promise.
"Nobody knew this was going to happen. Nobody," one senior ECB official said of the speech.
The truth was, the speech was just the beginning. Draghi was in no position to guarantee "whatever it takes." His words were a gamble that set off weeks of frenzied backroom diplomacy and public sparring that would severely test the relationships of the main protagonists in the euro zone crisis.
Through conversations with senior ECB officials and leading political actors in the euro drama, most of them on condition of anonymity, Reuters has pieced together a detailed picture of the negotiations that led from Draghi's late-July speech to his September 6 announcement that the ECB stood ready to buy "unlimited" amounts of bonds issued by the most stricken euro members.
Key to Draghi's gambit was peeling off enough members of the ECB's Governing Council. One of them, Jens Weidmann, head of the powerful Bundesbank, has become a vocal critic of Draghi's plan. He and his hawkish German colleagues believe it will compromise the ECB's sacred independence and stoke inflation, a taboo in Germany since hyper-inflation in the 1920s gave rise to the Nazis.
Yet getting Germany on board was essential. Europe's biggest economy, it has served as the bloc's paymaster during the crisis. If Draghi's policies ran up against a German wall, they would surely fail.
In the end, Draghi won over everyone on the council but Weidmann, and crucially secured the backing of Europe's dominant leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"Mario is someone who, when he is convinced he's right, is not worried about going ahead and saying he's right," said Francesco Giavazzi, an Italian economics professor who has often worked with Draghi since they studied together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1970s.
This is the story of how Draghi got his way.
PRUSSIAN HELMET
Within hours of the London speech, the ECB president's surprised colleagues had recognised its significance and leapt into action.
Joerg Asmussen, a 45-year-old former deputy finance minister who had joined the ECB in January, alerted Merkel.
Asmussen would emerge as a key player in the hectic weeks to come. A pragmatic German with strong European leanings, he had close ties to all the main players - Draghi, Merkel and Weidmann - giving him leverage and putting him in a unique position to help forge consensus.
While Asmussen informed his Berlin contacts, his French colleague on the ECB board Benoit Coeure sent word to Paris. Within 24 hours of Draghi's speech, Merkel and French President Francois Hollande had spoken by phone and issued a statement echoing Draghi's promise.
It was a first sign that the Italian's risky, and still murky, plan might fly.
But the manoeuvring had only just begun. On the other side of Frankfurt, in the 70s-era cement colossus that houses the Bundesbank, officials were seething at Draghi's London speech and demanding he come clean about his intentions.
Early last year, the head of the German central bank Axel Weber had resigned abruptly in protest at the crisis-fighting policies of Draghi's predecessor, Jean-Claude Trichet. The Frenchman had embarked on the ECB'S first-ever round of sovereign bond buying to drive down the borrowing costs of heavily indebted countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Weber, who had been in line to replace Trichet at the top of the ECB, denounced this as dangerous money printing to finance profligate states.
When Weber bolted, it opened the door to both Draghi and Weidmann, a former student of Weber's who had served as Merkel's top economic adviser in Berlin.
The youngest Bundesbank president ever, Weidmann was now in the same difficult position as his mentor had been. The ECB was on the verge of what looked like a new and ambitious bond-purchase programme.
Draghi needed to ensure Weidmann did not flee as Weber had. If he did, it might set off a backlash in Germany that would kill his plan even before it got off the ground.
The two met for coffee in Draghi's office on the 35th floor of the Eurotower on July 30, four days after the speech.
Displayed on a shelf behind Draghi's conference table was a black-and-gold spiked Prussian helmet from 1871, a gift from Germany's Bild newspaper to symbolise its confidence that the Italian ECB boss would adhere to German-style discipline.
The conversation was civil and professional, sources familiar with the meeting told Reuters. But Weidmann made clear he would oppose any revival of bond-buying.
The two most powerful central bankers in Europe were at odds. Within days, Draghi was due to chair the first meeting of the ECB's policy-setting council since his speech. Markets were expecting him to unveil concrete steps. But he had yet to flesh out his plan, and was still unsure how many of his colleagues shared Weidmann's doubts.
A dinner in the Eurotower on the eve of the council meeting went well for Draghi. Sitting around a large table in a conference room down the hall from his office, four members of the ECB's board - Asmussen was on vacation in France - and national central bank governors from the 17 euro member states exchanged ideas over baked goat's cheese, roast beef and caramel mousse.
Draghi and Coeure presented the outlines of a bond-buying proposal put together by the board. Some, including Dutch central banker Klaas Knot and Finn Erkki Liikanen, had reservations. Only Weidmann was dead-set against it. The council agreed that ECB experts would be given several weeks to hone the plan.
On August 2, as the council put the finishing touches on the statement Draghi would deliver at an afternoon news conference, Weidmann made a special request. He wanted the ECB president to make clear to reporters that support for bond-buying had not been unanimous. Draghi agreed.
A few hours later, Draghi told reporters in Frankfurt and investors watching screens around the globe that the ECB could soon begin buying bonds to reduce borrowing costs in countries like Spain and Italy. But his lack of specifics disappointed markets. And he made one crucial mistake. Instead of sticking to past practice and remaining vague about who had dissented, he named Weidmann as the lone rebel, infuriating officials at the Bundesbank and on the ECB council who sympathised with the German, according to several sources.
"It wasn't right for him to single out Weidmann," the senior ECB official said.
In the following weeks, a stung Bundesbank would work overtime to undermine Draghi and his plans through a combination of public statements and aggressive leaks. Calling Draghi "soft," Bild threatened to reclaim its Prussian helmet.
The debate reverberated in Berlin, unsettling Europe's most powerful leader.
TIGHTROPE
Angela Merkel has been walking a tightrope since the euro crisis erupted in late 2009, using tough rhetoric to appease an electorate deeply sceptical about supporting crisis-hit euro members like Greece, while nudging bailout deals through parliament to keep the single currency intact.
Draghi's plan presented the cautious 58-year-old chancellor with a dilemma. Her former adviser Weidmann and many in the conservative German establishment opposed it.
Yet for Merkel it was a godsend. With European leaders at odds over plans to integrate their fiscal policies and banking systems, the ECB was the only body capable of calming markets and keeping the euro zone stable.
Merkel, facing a re-election battle in 2013, was loath to see the euro zone explode on her watch. "Super Mario" had offered her a lifeline.
In private, sources say, the German leader complained to aides that Draghi was being unfairly attacked in Germany because he was Italian. In public she kept studiously quiet for weeks.
Then, in mid-August on a trip to Canada, Merkel backed the ECB chief unequivocally for the first time, describing his policies as "completely in line" with hers and other European leaders.
Back home in Germany, though, a backlash was building.
On August 26, influential weekly Der Spiegel published an interview with Weidmann in which he likened Draghi's bond plan to a dangerously addictive drug. Days later, Alexander Dobrindt, a top politician from Merkel's Bavarian sister party, slammed Draghi as a "Falschmuenzer," or forger.
Even Draghi's allies seemed to be abandoning him. Asmussen had pulled overnighters with Weidmann in Berlin during the height of the global financial crisis and had studied with him at Bonn University.
The two were very different. Weidmann, reserved and serious, had refused to move his family from staid Frankfurt when he came to the German capital to advise Merkel. Asmussen, his partner and two daughters, couldn't imagine uprooting from trendy Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin when he joined the ECB.
Born a year and a half apart, they are not close friends but call each other on birthdays and sometimes give each other a heads-up on the content of their newspaper interviews. Both were outraged when Bild, without talking to either of them, ran a story on August 27 saying they had turned against each other.
Asmussen was bothered by Weidmann's isolation and began pushing back against Draghi, giving interviews and speeches in which he attached tough conditions - such as IMF involvement - to his boss's bond-buying programme. The Italian's wiggle-room was shrinking by the day.
Then on August 30, Bild reported that Weidmann had considered resigning, just as Weber had. It wasn't true - the youthful Bundesbank chief never seriously thought about stepping down, according to sources at the German central bank.
But the report heaped new pressure on Draghi. As August drew to a close, the ECB president cancelled plans to attend a central bankers' conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He had a week to forge consensus on his bond-buying plan, yet virtually all the details still needed to be hammered out.
A PLAN COMES TOGETHER
Draghi scrambled over the weekend of September 1-2, and on his 65th birthday a day later, to stitch together his plan.
A reserved man, he had a breadth of experience most central bankers would envy. After earning an economics doctorate from MIT, he worked at the World Bank in Washington, headed the Italian Treasury, did a stint at Goldman Sachs, ran the Italian central bank and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a global regulation body.
In contrast to his micro-managing predecessor Trichet, Draghi likes to delegate so that he can focus on the big strategic issues. He has earned a reputation for taking his time and listening carefully before making decisions. Once he does commit, people close to him say, he doesn't look back.
Top secret papers had been circulating at the ECB since June exploring new alternatives for bond market intervention and the conditions that might be attached to it. Draghi needed to narrow down the options and clinch agreement - fast.
By insisting that any ECB bond buying be tied to an aid programme involving the notoriously tough IMF, Asmussen had staked out a position that could discourage countries from asking for help in the first place.
His hard bargaining aimed to ensure ECB action did not lead countries to soft-pedal reforms. This was a concern borne of experience. In 2011, the ECB had bought Italian bonds only for Italy's then-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to drop reform promises days later. The half-dozen or so members of the policy council who sympathised with Weidmann were particularly worried about being taken in again.
Riled by some of the public debate about the ECB's plans, Draghi argued that the risks facing the euro zone meant the ECB had to act. After a period of intense negotiations, he won out. At the September 6 policy meeting, all members of the Governing Council bar Weidmann backed the plan to buy sovereign bonds on secondary markets.
But Weidmann's stance and the manoeuvring of others sympathetic to his cause ensured any ECB intervention would come with a strong dose of "conditionality".
Countries who wanted the ECB to intervene must first sign up to a formal aid programme. IMF involvement would be sought and bond purchases restricted to maturities of up to 3 years. The ECB could choose to sell as well as buy bonds - a veiled warning to countries that it might pull the plug if they failed to deliver on their promises.
The new initiative just needed a name. Initially dubbed "Outright Open Market Operations" or (OOMO), the ECB board ditched that for "Monetary Outright Transactions" (MOT), before settling on the more grammatical "Outright Monetary Transactions" (OMT) shortly before the programme was unveiled.
Beginning his news conference with a wry smile, Draghi announced: "Under appropriate conditions, we will have a fully effective backstop to prevent potentially destructive scenarios."
He then made clear the volume of bond purchases would be unlimited. Euro zone blue chip stocks soared to levels not seen since March and the euro extended its upward march. A week later, Germany's Constitutional Court gave a green light for Europe's new bailout fund and Dutch voters handed pro-European parties a sweeping election victory.
After three years of seemingly constant crisis, Europe could breathe again.
PROOF IN THE PUDDING
It is far too early to hail Draghi's plan as a solution to the crisis.
The central bank has bought no bonds yet and its members are already sending conflicting signals over how the plan will be implemented.
Many questions remain. Will countries need to sign up to tough new reforms on top of those already being implemented before the ECB jumps to their aid? If they do, will it dissuade governments in Rome and Madrid from seeking aid at all?
And are Draghi and his colleagues really prepared to put their money where their mouth is and buy an unlimited amount of bonds? A hesitant approach, inhibited by German doubts, doomed Trichet's Securities Markets Programme (SMP) to failure.
"It will work if the expectation of unlimited support is not altered or compromised in some way," said Domenico Lombardi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former IMF executive board member, who knows Draghi.
"The key word is unlimited," he added. "It has been said in words, but the actions that follow will have to be consistent."
Perhaps a bigger question is the longer-term impact of Draghi's plan on sentiment in Germany. At the single currency's birth, the ECB was sold to sceptical Germans as a euro-wide carbon-copy of the Bundesbank. Combating inflation was to be its sole objective and its independence sacred.
Now many Germans feel betrayed, some convinced the ECB has been taken over by a cabal of dovish southerners. A poll released the day Draghi announced his plan showed nearly one in two Germans had little or no confidence in him.
Still, Draghi has bought Europe time, and given politicians more space to sort out the mess. The currency's fate hinges on whether those politicians grab the opportunity Draghi promised them on that warm summer day in London.
(Paul Carrel reported from Frankfurt, and Noah Barkin and Annika Breidthardt from Berlin; Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)

CM, thank you very much for your reply. You know i always respect your posts and listen with great interest what you have to say. I'll keep my post short, i'll just use some of your statements that i would like to make a comment on.


I think You meant that few goods are chased by too much money ? True, i agree. This is a classical supply/demand principle. However, your basic parameters are not correct. One needs to understand that the FED is not doing hard core money printing. That "printed money" is NOT in the economy.

The KEY here is the VELOCITY of money stock. Simply put - if Bernanke were to give a million dollars to every person in the U.S. and everyone puts that million under their mattresses then it's absolutely no good in it, correct ? There's no real demand driven inflation, ONLY the market participant PEPCEPTION of future inflation due to that INFORMATION. And that is what drives the prices in the short run. Once the realization comes that the money just sits somewhere doing nothing, asset prices would trade back or below the level when the perception was first materialized.

I agree. The problem of today is that there's no disclipine. We print and "print" money for different reasons. Lose the printing and let the market unfold on its own and you will get the real value of gold (as well as the real value of the economy)...which is jewlery, which is well below 1000. I am sure, everyone would understand the effect on the economy in that event.


Of course, you're talking about it's market value as of today. You're talking about the liquitity in the gold market as of today. I am talking about gold's FUNDAMENTAL VALUE. Real, physical gold, and what's that good for. IF market participants were not to accept gold to exchange against other assets then it's OWN value is useless. It's no good for a human being.
[/quote]

Don't be mistaken, i am NOT saying gold is in bubble or will decline. As of today, the CB policies of the world are all gold supportive. But that's about it. I will never put my money into gold. There are other places where you can benefit from the CB policies and actually earn interest on your money.

My whole point was that since it doesn't have any fundamental value there's no reason to hold that asset in the case where monetary policies of the world will be reversed. Sure, i'm not seeing that happening, i just wanted to say, IF...

take care.

actually, i think once we lose the confidence of paper money, gold will be first in line to be the medium of exchange.

Hi lumesh, I do read your posts with great interest and try to understand at my best. Could you please explain on the bold phrase, are you saying Gold has no fundamental Value?