Dollar Finally Breaking Down
July 20th, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
After several weeks of sideways slop, the USDX is finally falling over. While it still needs to clear a couple of lows to the downside to really build some momentum, I thought I’d provide a big picture look at the challenges ahead for dollar shorts and gold longs.
In summary: If the dollar takes this leg down, don’t get too happy just yet. While there’s some decent money to be made between here and the low 70s, I’d get really flat around 71 on the USDX. The nightmare scenario is that gold closes in on $1032, but doesn’t clear it, and then USDX somehow bounces around 71. Strong pivots off these levels would be an “oh shit” moment for gold longs (double top) and dollar bears (double bottom).
I’m not saying that gold is going to double top and that the dollar is going to double bottom, but that’s a very possible scenario for gold longs and dollar shorts. The Them must keep gold under $1032 and the USDX above 70.792. Those are probably “THE” technical support and resistance levels of a generation. Those silly numbers mark out the lines between condition yellow and condition red in the international economic system. The people who run the show will do anything to keep those numbers intact. Nothing—and I mean nothing—will of off the table if USDX gets down around 71 again.
As usual, I won’t be selling even one gram of gold. However, I might consider buying some puts on GLD as a hedge if we approach the event horizon of $1032/70.792.
I’ll start monitoring the data very closely if we get near “THE” numbers. I can tell you now, the thing to look for will be divergence patterns on indicators such as slow stochastic, RSI and MACD in the daily and longer intraday periods. Perhaps, either gold or the dollar will lead the way through the corresponding critical level, giving us a hint as to what the other is going to.
The next few months are going to be extremely interesting.
Cryptogon Reader Sends Contribution
July 20th, 2009MW sent $20. Thank you.
Cliff Stearns vs. Henry Paulson
July 20th, 2009In a sane world, Paulson would be sitting in a cage and wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs as he gave this testimony before congress.
School Kids May Have to Get up to 4 Flu Shots in the Fall
July 20th, 2009Via: Palm Beach Post:
School children who have never had a flu shot may need to get vaccinated four times in the fall – twice for seasonal flu, twice for pandemic swine flu – officials at the CDC told health professionals on Wednesday.
Most everyone else should expect three shots.
Five manufacturers are now making vaccines against the pandemic H1N1 swine flu virus, said Dr. Tom T. Shimabukuro at the CDC’s Immunization Services Division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
They are well on their way to having between 40 million and 160 million doses of egg-based vaccine available in the United States by October, added Dr. Pascale Wortley the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pandemic vaccine coordinator.
On the high end, that would be enough vaccine for everyone in the United States who wanted it by January. But on the low end, it would require prioritizing distribution to health care workers and those at higher risk for complications – including children, pregnant women, and people with chronic diseases and asthma, Wortley said.
“This vaccine campaign will unfold quite differently than seasonal flu,” said Wortley, in a conference call with health care professionals nationwide on Wednesday. “This is a huge endeavor we’re gearing up for.”
U.N. Will Not to Name Culprits in Bhutto Assassination
July 20th, 2009Via: Reuters:
The U.N. team conducting an inquiry into the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will not seek to name culprits, the commission’s head said Friday, lowering expectations from the outset.
The three-member team arrived in Pakistan Thursday for its first visit as part of a probe into the circumstances surrounding the attack that killed Bhutto after an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi city on December 27, 2007.
Conspiracy theories abound over who was behind the assassination, but the head of the commission, Chile’s U.N. ambassador Heraldo Munoz, sought to play down expectations about what it would ultimately publish in its findings at the end of December.
“If you think that there will be smoking guns in terms of names, our report is not that,” Munoz told reporters in the Pakistani capital.
“We will try to establish the truth….anything else is beyond our realm,” he said.
Kiwi Rapper Gets it Right: NZTrillion, Say No to the Vaccine
July 20th, 2009Nice one.
Youtube: youtube.com/user/NZtrillion
Home: trillion.co.nz
BA and Virgin to Stop Suspected Swine Flu Victims from Flying
July 19th, 2009Via: Guardian:
Passengers with swine flu will be stopped from boarding flights, two major airlines confirmed today, as the Department of Health warned tourists who contract the illness abroad not to travel home until their symptoms have gone.
Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said they had provided check-in staff and cabin crew with guidance on how to act if they believe a passenger is unwell. Medical advice would be taken to assess the condition of passengers exhibiting symptoms, including having a headache, sore throat, runny nose, and aching muscles.
Virgin Atlantic said those suffering from the condition would be prevented from flying until they could provide a fit-to-fly certificate from their doctor or a hospital.
The new measures come at the height of the summer tourist season, with thousands of families either already on holiday or about to go.
So far, though, BA said there had only been a “very small number of cases” where passengers displaying symptoms of H1N1 had been advised not to travel, and all had complied. The airline said it has a “wide range of contingency plans in place which we can use depending on how the situation may evolve”.
Passengers who catch swine flu abroad, are also being advised not to travel home until they have recovered.
Billboards Tell America to Cheer Up
July 19th, 2009Via: New Zealand Herald / AP:
Some Americans put out of work by the latest recession are driving past billboards with messages like: “Interesting fact about recessions … they end.”
Another reads: “Self worth is greater than net worth.” A third says: “This will end long before those who caused it are paroled.”
Drivers across America are seeing those and similar messages as part of a billboard campaign dubbed “Recession 101” funded by an anonymous East Coast donor who was depressed about how the country was reacting to the economy’s tailspin.
The campaign began last month and is now appearing on more than 1000 billboards, including a spot in New York’s Times Square.
Designer Charles Robb said his client wanted people to realise America had suffered recessions before and made it through.
“One of the lines is, ‘Stop obsessing about economy, you’re scaring the children.’ That’s the overriding concept of the thing,” said Robb, founder of Charchin Creative in Florida.
Specialized Interrogation Unit: Now With More Change We Can Believe In
July 19th, 2009Via: Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration is considering overhauling the way terror suspects are interrogated by creating a small team of professionals drawn from across the government, according to people familiar with a proposal that will be submitted to the White House.
The new unit, comprising members of spy services and law-enforcement agencies, would be used for so-called high-value detainees, they said. In a switch from Bush-era efforts, it wouldn’t be run by the Central Intelligence Agency, though who might be in charge isn’t specified.
One of the team’s tasks would likely be to devise a new set of interrogation methods, according to one person familiar with the proposal. Those techniques could be drawn from sources ranging from scientific studies to the psychology behind television ads.
The new interrogation team, if adopted, would represent the Obama administration’s effort to sweep away a contentious counterterrorism issue that has dogged the CIA and Justice Department since a U.S. network of secret prisons was revealed in 2005. The team would reduce the CIA’s controversial role in interrogations, but the agency remains at odds with Congress. On Friday, the House intelligence committee launched a probe into whether the agency broke the law by withholding information from the panel about a secret plan examining al Qaeda hit teams as well as other matters.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency will “work closely with the committee on this review.”
There could, however, be some similarities with the approach taken by the Bush administration. The team’s efforts, for example, would focus more on gathering intelligence than on assembling evidence suitable for use in a criminal trial.
Britain: Children Traumatized by ‘War of Worlds’ Abduction of Teacher
July 19th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
Pupils as young as seven were left traumatised after a school staged a ‘War of the Worlds’ style production during which a teacher was abducted by aliens.
The 370 children at Southway Junior School, in Burgess Hill, west Sussex, saw a ‘spaceship’ crash near their school and then aliens grabbed a member of staff as part of the performance.
The ‘alien invasion’ show, which was supported by Sussex Police, took place without parents being informed, leaving some furious that they had to comfort their terrified children.
The event was designed to “develop youngsters writing skills” and fire their imagination – but some children were left traumatised by the show.
Southway School admitted that a number of parents complained after their children returned home in a “state of shock”.
Youngsters had to be reassured that the abducted member of staff was safe and well after he was carted off by the aliens.
Police contributed to the invasion by providing sirens and flashing blue lights to signify the landing of the craft just before morning classes on July 10.
Diana Goss, the headteacher, informed pupils that an alien craft had crashed near the school and pupils were encouraged to “follow a trail of debris” before stumbling across the UFO.
A member of staff was then abducted by aliens before the children were sent back to class.
One parent, who did not want to be named, said he daughter had come home in tears.
She said: “God only knows what the school was playing at.
“I mean to shock children into thinking that the aliens have landed and have abducted a teacher is just a little too much for seven-year-olds.
“My daughter was deeply upset by it all and came home looking shell shocked.
“She wasn’t sure what had happened and really wanted to know that everything was going to be alright.”
Another parent said: “By all accounts it sounds like something out of that film Mars Attacks or War of the Worlds. I don’t know what the school was thinking.”
In 1938 thousands of Americans were left terrified after a broadcast by Orson Welles describing an alien invasion.
The War of the Worlds radio announcement on October 30 lasted 60 minutes and was presented as a series of breaking news bulletins – suggesting that aliens really had landed in America.
