$5,000 gold, page-74

"Gold is up 0% for the last year, the S&P500 is up 17%, I guess it's getting hard locating 'greater fools'."

Earth to Skol. There is no recovery. The primary driver of stock prices over the last three years has been the anticipation of more monetary stimulus from Central Banks.

The New York Fed itself has openly admitted that were it to remove the market moves that occurred around Fed FOMC meetings (the times when the Fed announced new programs or hinted at doing so), the S&P 500 would be at 600 today:

Oddly enough, stocks are actually down since QE 3 was announced in September. Looks like the Fed is out of ammo.

* Europe is facing a recession, banking collapse, sovereign crisis, and a potential break-up.
* The US is in a stagflationary recession.
* Japan is in a sovereign debt crisis

Over 50% of the global GDP (China, the EU, and the US) in recession, combined with Europe's banking and sovereign crisis...and all of this when the last QE announcement appears to be having no effect.

The European Central Bank's (ECB) balance sheet is now nearly $4 trillion in size (larger than Germany's economy and roughly 1/3 the size of the ENTIRE EU's GDP). Aside from the inflationary and systemic risks this poses (the ECB is now leveraged at over 36 to 1).

So we're talking about a banking system that is nearly four times that of the US ($46 trillion vs. $12 trillion) with at least twice the amount of leverage (26 to 1 for the EU vs. 13 to 1 for the US), and a Central Bank that has stuffed its balance sheet with loads of garbage debts, giving it a leverage level of 36 to 1.

To be clear, the Fed, indeed, Global Central Banks in general, have never had to deal with a problem the size of the coming EU's Banking Crisis. This is a global economy. It isn't just Europe's problem. It affects everybody including your "recovering" USA.

But that's all ok, because the planes are full right?