WA Times: Volcker sees US Economic Disaster by March 2014

From the Washington Times dated October 25, 2012. All bolded emphasis is mine.

The central problem is that America is the bank of the world. What this means, simply, is that the dollar is the world’s currency (often termed the “reserve currency”). Throughout the world, nearly all traded goods, oil, major commodities, real estate, etc., are denominated in dollars. The world needs dollars, and the U.S. provides them and provides confidence that the dollar is the “safest” currency in the world. Countries get dollars by trading with us on attractive terms, which enables Americans to live very well. Countries support this system and cover their risk by investing in dollars through T-bill auctions and other mechanisms, which enables us to run budget deficits — up to a point.
The central issue is confidence in America, and the world is losing confidence quickly. At a certain point, soon, the United States will reach a level of deficit spending and debt at which the countries of the world will lose faith in America and begin to withdraw their investments. Many leading economists and bankers think another trillion dollars or so may do it. A run on the bank will start suddenly, build quickly and snowball.

The Dollar After the Fed's Decision Not To Taper

Egon von Greyerz via KWN (Bold emphasis is mine):

Eric King:  “Egon, astonishingly, you correctly predicted that there would be no Fed tapering this week.  That Fed decision certainly shocked the world and shocked the financial markets.  Where do we go from here?”

Greyerz:  “Yes, Eric.  It did not surprise me at all that the Fed did not taper because for a patient on life support that is not the time to turn off the machine because that machine is what keeps the patient alive artificially.  So how can the Fed possibly slow tapering? 

The US is a country with a total government debt of $220 trillion, unemployment at 23%, the job participation rate at the lowest level since the 1970s, median household incomes at multi-decade lows, and real-GDP declining since 2006.  We have also seen federal debt double since 2006, and consumer credit has been exploding.  So the picture is clear....    

Shanghai Slam Breaks Gold Market

I haven't posted for a while because I've been working on progress towards making the first Gold Bullion Debit Card a reality. If you're interested in learning more you can check out the beta website being developed at http://goldbulliondebitcard.cloudaccess.net/

Now to Shanghai. From ZeroHedge:

There was a time when, if selling a sizable amount of a security, one tried to get the best execution price and not alert the buyers comprising the bid stack that there is

(substantial) volume for sale. Of course, there was and always has been a time when one tried to manipulate prices by slamming the bid until it was fully taken out, usually just before close of trading, an illegal practice known as "banging the close." It appears that when it comes to gold, the former is long gone history, and the latter is perfectly legal. As the two charts below from Nanex demonstrate, overnight just before 3 am Eastern, a block of just 2000 GC gold futures contracts slammed the price of gold, on no news as usual, sending it lower by $10/oz. However, that is not new: such slamdowns happen every day in the gold market, and the CFTC constantly turns a blind eye. What was different about last night's slam however, is that this time whoever was doing the forced, manipulation selling, just happened to also break the market. Indeed: following the hit, the entire gold market was NASDARKed for 20 seconds after a circuit breaker halted trading!