Economic Crisis News 2015-07-10
Silver Shortage
On Tuesday the US Mint suspended Silver Eagle sales with the intend to resume selling in August. Major bullion dealers APMEX, Provident Metals and DBS Coins are showing stock delays for many common silver products. As Andy Hoffman said this past December in a SilverSeek article titled “Major Silver Shortage Must and Will Occur,” there are “essentially ZERO inventories of material size readily available for sale…inevitable a silver shortage of epic proportions” is coming. Looks like we’re already seeing it. Premiums for generic rounds are up to a dollar 50 to two fifty that used to be less than a dollar.
Greece
Greek banks will be shut for at least two weeks as they have been closed since June 29th, and are to remain closed this week. Greeks have only been allowed to withdraw roughly 60 dollars worth per day from ATM’s and have been barred from buying gold coins.
Turmoil is sourced from the years long government debt issue that came to a head last month when multiple debt payments were missed equaling a technical default for Greece, though plans to patch it are still being debated; recently Greece voted no to an austerity plan proposed by Europe. The Greek’s Prime Minister ‘had a meeting with Western adversary Vladimir Putin of Russia to perhaps discuss a counter plan for Greeke solvency with Russia’s help. The new deadline for Greece to make a deal is this coming Monday. Reports now say Greek people are panic buying kitchen appliances to bypass withdrawl restrictions.
This crisis in Europe will inevitably hit the US even harder soon, and is likely a factor in recent US located problems including the stock market.
NYSE Hack?
The Dow, which is down over 1.5% for the year, went down 261 points Wednesday. On the same day the New York Stock Exchange shutdown for three and a half hours. Officials insisted that this was not the result of a cyber attack despite issues with United Airlines causing the FAA to ground their flights and major websites going down such as the Wall Street Journal and ZeroHedge all in the same day. Norsecorp reported Chinese DDOS attackers focusing on St. Louis Wednesday. Not to speculate too wildly, but could this be war games between China and the United States going on right now?
China Stock Market Crash
Before the NYSE was shutdown, Chinese stocks suffered huge declines; the biggest plunge for the Hang Seng Index since the 2008 financial crisis at 5.8%. The global economy is so dependent on China that if the country were to completely implode, a world-wide depression would likely result.
Crazy enough, China has banned in many ways the selling of stocks. On July 8, China’s securities regulator banned major company shareholders, corporate executives and directors from selling their shares for six months. SHTF Plan reports that retirement fund brokers also are not allowed to sell any shares; imagine if this happened in America?
The Shanghai Composite Index has fallen almost a third since peaking on June 12th. Trading was halted on 40% of the stocks. Again, this could be asymmetric warfare between the US and China as we’re both experiencing bizarre market problems simultaneously. Yesterday the 3-day BRICS Summit began in Russia.
More
As we predicted on May 15th, after OPEC did not cut oil production we saw a short-term plunge with oil prices dipping down to the 50 /55 dollar range. These lower prices can also be attributed to the most recent global economic headwinds. However, the good news for Americans is that they will enjoy the lower prices at the pump.
Bitcoin has reached a four month high back over 270 dollars. The GBTC stock and bitcoin price are continuing to converge. We will likely see an overtake of 300 dollars per bitcoin within the next few months, especially as the Euro crisis deepens. In budget news, the US 2016 budget is under appropriations voting and Puerto Rico could see a shutdown in the next few weeks if creditors fail to renegotiate their debt. See you next week.