If your lumped with billions of USD but are blocked from investing in the US where would you turn, especially if you knew th USD is toast. I would be spending big on energy and commodities before the USD lost its value
A snippet from today's MIDAS
You have often remarked in Midas how silver and copper are displaying similar strength, relentlessly pushing upward when they "should be" overbought, per the technicians. Copper's price rise has been attributed to Chinese industrial demand. No less sharp an observer than Frank Veneroso claimed that copper prices are being pushed higher by manipulation. Months ago Veneroso claimed that copper was being stockpiled in great warehouses in China. And yet, despite talk of a slowdown or hard landing in China, copper rises undeterred.
I think that China is stockpiling base metals as an energy play. Let me explain:
As awareness of peak oil has propagated, governments have begun contending to insure their future energy supplies. China has amassed a great war chest of dollars, but as we saw with Unocal, they will not be allowed to buy the choice energy assets they really need. Jeff Dahl from Samex observed astutely in a recent Midas that China's Central Bank has begun noting copper on its monetary reserves
Ted Butler thinks the Chinese are the most likely sellers behind the gargantuan silver short position. Now along comes David R and Jennifer to suggest that China is hoarding base and precious metals. It would certainly be an interesting gambit for a country to be massively short paper contracts and currencies, in order to keep the cash price down while it buys up the global supply of physical metals at a suppressed price. When the shorts finally blow up, the metal has already been shipped off to another continent. The short contracts can then eventually be settled for a bunch of confetti money that has no intrinsic value, anyway. Meantime, if that's what is happening, the Chinese will be sitting on the world's largest physical commodity hoard.
It's a brilliant, scary strategy that could provide a platform to insure world manufacturing supremacy for decades, and it may already be too far advanced to avert. Checkmate!
*The base metals prices have gone bonkers, as we all know. Even today copper went up the limit at one point, 20 cents higher, before trading resumed … soaring to a staggering $3.30 per pound.
*There are some smart people out there who are bearish on the base metals, claiming the price run-up is nothing more than hedge funds cornering the markets … that this is a bubble which will burst as eventually they will have no one to sell too. These base metals bears have been making this claim for over ONE YEAR. They have been annihilated.
*Jeff Dahl, who is in Chile often for Samex, has told me for some time the Chinese are all over Chile securing copper supplies any way they can.
*Recently a Canadian mining firm, who has a nickel project in Canada, was seeing its stock price shrink as they needed funds to move forward. Nickel mining giant Falconbridge accepted to pick up the project on the cheap. Enter the Chinese, who moved in. Falconbridge was both stunned and left out in the cold.
*"I think that China is stockpiling base metals as an energy play," David R. On top of that it also is a way for the Chinese to unload dollars in a manner that would not upset the US, if done on the sly. Think of the money the Chinese have made in gold alone. If the they have moved into the base metals in a major league way (I think this is JUST what has happened), they have made fortunes here too, unloaded dollars, and tied up needed supply for the future.
*If this is the way it is, the base metal bears are toast … the same way the gold and silver bears are, and will continue to be, toast. They won't get their expected base metals collapse.
*The mainstream gold world and Planet Wall Street may pooh-pooh GATA, but the Russians, Chinese, Arebs and some of the most substantial BIG MONEY in the world know we are right and are acting on it (like Bykov and the Russians did.) See below for GATA’s growing credence, even if our name is not mentioned in some of the pieces.
*Now, back to silver. Whether it was Soros or a Marc Rich, the insiders got wind the deal was done … that Barclays got their supply. As we all know the market was bombed. Yet, perhaps IT WAS the Chinese who made the deal with Barclays. They are loaded to the gills with gold, silver and base metals (assuming the above is right-on). What better way to throw the investment world off the track of what you are really doing than SELL silver. Meanwhile, they continue to buy everything else in sight AND can buy back at least part of their silver at lower prices, as I touched on yesterday, if it was a Soros type.
