Gold is up!

[EE_]

To me, this is a tell that all is not well. The 4th largest economy in the US is shut down. When the Jews run for gold, you should worry. Will this be a hit on the economy, will this disaster pop the housing and stock market bubbles?

[old steel]

When Stevie boy announced last week that all the gold in Ft. Knox was still there my alarm bells went off.

An audit of that place would take months to set up and months more to complete.

They would have had to appoint a special committee just to oversee the audit, you know how gov't works.

After decades of suppression the real McCoy is just about to break to the upside and keep on going.

Bitcoin? Hahahah, you ain't seen nothing yet!

[TroyOz]

Black Swan event - Houston is more than the 4th largest city (6 million people in the metro area), it is the global hub of the petro-chemical industry and a major port.

[vacuum]

Gas is up and oil is down:
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx

[EE_]

Black Swan event - Houston is more than the 4th largest city (6 million people in the metro area), it is the global hub of the petro-chemical industry and a major port.

Here's what I see. Rising fuel prices, collapsing dollar, 1 million+ homes unsellable for the foreseeable future and here's the biggie...DEFAULTS! Less then 1 of 5 had flood insurance. Who want's to buy a home in the Houston area now?
People who have lost will be defaulting on home/car/lease loans in record numbers.
This is going to be a hit on our economy!

[TroyOz]

Here's what I see. Rising fuel prices, collapsing dollar, 1 million+ homes unsellable for the foreseeable future and here's the biggie...DEFAULTS! Less then 1 of 5 had flood insurance. Who want's to buy a home in the Houston area now?
People who have lost will be defaulting on home/car/lease loans in record numbers.
This is going to be a hit on our economy!


Yep, I agree it is going to be a huge default event. How are the insurance companies going to pay all these claims? 10 years of zero interest rates have taken a toll on the entire industry.

We have friends with a million dollar beach house in Port Aransas - their house seems to have survived by the aerial pics, but what is it worth now? They are RE people, so a million dollar house is not for living, but an investment.

[madfranks]

Bitcoin? Hahahah, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I hope so, I've been slowly trading my BTC into gold, and I'd love to see gold skyrocket.

[old steel]

All that money on the sidelines and or pulled out of the markets is going into commodities, people are looking to protect what they have.

Heard a story last week about someone sitting on $50 million in fiat trying to get it into physical gold and not being able to find it.

Silver fans we have just about arrived...those who stuck long.

I salute you....

Oh, and then there is this.


"The dollar is on course to lose its reserve currency status. This is not something that will happen overnight, it will be a process, but at some point there is likely to be a “sea change” in perception, as the world grasps that this is what is happening, which will trigger a cascade of selling leading to its collapse, whereupon gold and silver will rocket higher.


A big reason for the dollar finding support in recent years and doing relatively well versus its peers has been the perception that the US is the last and best “safehaven” in a world beset with instability and terrorism etc , but that perception is changing as US society starts to polarize in a dangerous manner.

In addition, the continued provocations and threats by the US towards China and Russia has driven them into making preparations to ditch using the dollar, and these preparations are well advanced, and have included buying huge quantities of gold.

Thus the dollar is looking increasingly vulnerable."

Cont,


http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-dollar-update-as-loss-of-reserve-currency-status-looms--.aspx?article=11398850312H11690&redirect=false&contributor=Clive+Maund&mk=1

[EE_]

I think this is a big market event that's not priced into the stock market yet.

How many people in the Houston area and where Harvey struck do you think will not be making payments on homes, businesses and car loans for the foreseeable future?

I think it is more important then ever that Trump gets a tax/infrastructure package passed right now, to fight these recessionary forces.

[jcismylord]

Heard a story last week about someone sitting on $50 million in fiat trying to get it into physical gold and not being able to find it.


to that someone, I would suggest starting with cleaning up APMEX's gold eagle inventory, which currently stands at almost all time high and stable 2000 units.
I would like to see those eagles gone, please, and then I will believe stories about shortages.

[madfranks]

to that someone, I would suggest starting with cleaning up APMEX's gold eagle inventory, which currently stands at almost all time high and stable 2000 units.
I would like to see those eagles gone, please, and then I will believe stories about shortages.APMEX also sells large gold bars kilo size and up. I agree with jc above, until the big physical outfits like APMEX run out of gold to sell, I don't believe it either.

[crimethink]

Heard a story last week about someone sitting on $50 million in fiat trying to get it into physical gold and not being able to find it.

That's bullshit. Either they asked their bankster/(((financial advisor))) where to find it, or they are just too lazy to handle Real Gold (that is, coins and bars).

[TroyOz]

That's bullshit. Either they asked their bankster/(((financial advisor))) where to find it, or they are just too lazy to handle Real Gold (that is, coins and bars).

Pretty much that ^^

Asking a paper pusher about gold is a waste of time.

[old steel]

Uncanny how with London closed the Gold & Silver price runs.

[JohnQPublic]

to that someone, I would suggest starting with cleaning up APMEX's gold eagle inventory, which currently stands at almost all time high and stable 2000 units.
I would like to see those eagles gone, please, and then I will believe stories about shortages.

Feel free to start this up again! :)
http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?27317-GSUS-APMEX-Precious-Metals-Retail-Supply-Index&highlight=APMEX+inventory

I remember this day. It was wild: http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?27317-GSUS-APMEX-Precious-Metals-Retail-Supply-Index&p=626613&viewfull=1#post626613

[jcismylord]

my comp runs a script - an automatic chron job, which collects and logs data from different vendors on premiums, inventory, etc

the comp must be on at the trigger time, so i don't have data for every day

anyway, I just went back and looked at the logs

the minimum in inventory happened to be on July 11, when Apmex had just 117 random-year GAEs

now, if you go look at the charts, the bottom in spot happened on July 10

so, food for thoughts

told you it was time to back the truck {**}

[crimethink]

Harvey plunges Houston's thriving economy into years-long crisis

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-harvey-houston-economy-20170828-story.html


Harvey knocks out energy infrastructure, threatening higher gas prices

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/348307-harvey-knocks-more-texas-energy-operations-offline

[Santa]

Doesn't Cheka live somewhere around Houston? Hope he's ok...

[dRush34]

Time will tell the effect of the disaster at Texas.

[JohnQPublic]

Time will tell the effect of the disaster at Texas.

Lot of potential for boating accidents right now. Hope all our Texans are doing ok.

[EE_]

This is a mega disaster! Levies are overflowing and 2 feet more rain coming. They're evacuating huge neighborhoods below the levees.
The hit to economy is going to be substantial.

[EE_]

The health consequences to expect from Hurricane Harvey’s floods
By Ben Guarino
August 29 at 11:15 AM

The water kept rising on Houston freeways on Sunday as the city was besieged by Hurricane Harvey and the resulting floods. (Thomas B. Shea/AFP/Getty Images)

This article has been updated.

The flooding from Hurricane Harvey, which has wreaked havoc in Texas, is both catastrophic and historic. The reported death toll rose to at least nine Monday, and officials were projecting that as many as 30,000 people will ultimately be evacuated from flooded homes in Houston and other cities and towns in the state.

Though the storm will pass and waters eventually recede, the danger from floodwaters will linger. “I distill it down to short term, long term and big picture,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine.

Short term: floodwater injuries

The majority of people who die during floods drown: About 75 percent of the fatalities are drownings, per the World Health Organization. Two feet of rapid floodwater will sweep away an SUV. Just six inches of water, if it moves quickly enough, can knock over an adult, according to the National Weather Service.

“People don’t understand that rushing water is very dangerous,” Julia Becker, a social scientist who studies natural disasters, told Hakai Magazine in 2015. “They might know floods are kind of risky, but they don’t understand what the real consequences are.”

In 2015, Becker and her colleagues published a literature review of behavior during floods. They concluded that people repeatedly underestimated floods. “Flood tourists” traveled to submerged areas to sightsee. Others voluntarily entered the floodwaters to play. Between 1997 and 2008, 1 in every 4 flood deaths in Australia involved swimming, surfing, “acting on a wager” or some other form of recreation or risky behavior.

Even water that appears calm may be unsafe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against wading in floodwater, due to the sharp metal bits or glass shards that may lurk below.

Floodwaters can also draw out unwelcome wild animals. Images of stinging fire ants clumped together as large floating rafts set social media abuzz on Monday. Snakes, too, are a concern. “Storm activity definitely increases the potential for snakebite as the snakes get flooded out and seek higher ground,” said Bryan G. Fry, a venomous snake expert at the University of Queensland in Australia. (But there are no sharks in Houston. One widely shared image, of a great white swimming in a flooded road, is a doctored picture.)

Residents of Houston on Aug. 27 assessed the damage that tropical storm Harvey has caused to their city. (Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

Short term: infectious disease

A flood contains more than rain. Sewage systems spill their guts. And the water can dredge up things more disturbing, if less infectious, than human waste. In New Orleans in 2005, the flooding from Hurricane Katrina exhumed corpses, sending coffins afloat through neighborhoods.

It is not easy to predict the nasty microbes that will strike. “We don't have enough epidemiological studies,” Hotez said. But Hurricane Katrina, which hit land at the same time of the year as Harvey, could offer some lessons. Health officials are urging people to get tetanus booster shots to protect themselves against the disease, which enters the body through cuts. Skin infections could be caused by exposure to MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus bacterium, as well as pathogens popularly described as “flesh-eating.” (What about more exotic germs, such as the one that causes cholera? “Certainly the conditions here could promote cholera,” Hotez said, “but you’d have to have somebody infected with cholera coming into the area.")

Stress jeopardizes immune systems, and it is difficult to maintain food hygiene in disaster zones. Katrina unleashed gut diseases triggered by E. coli and a lack of safe food and potable water. Add crowded conditions — officials are preparing a “mega-shelter” in the Dallas Convention Center to house 5,000 people — and evacuees are at higher risk of getting sick, Hotez said. During Katrina, there were respiratory infections among people in shelters, including an apparent uptick in tuberculosis.

Short term: power outages

Severe weather frequently knocks over electrical lines — give fallen power lines a wide berth, the CDC advises, and report them to electric companies. Homeowners who rely on portable generators for temporary power should be aware of the danger of inhaling carbon monoxide. A 2012 review identified 75 deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning during natural disasters between 1991 and 2009; back-up generators were responsible 83 percent of deaths. To avoid breathing the gas, operate the generators outdoors and 20 feet from doors or windows.

A lack of power means a lack of air conditioning or other ways to keep cool, further stressing people and putting those with health issues at greater risk given the season. National Center for Atmospheric Research behavioral scientist Mary Hayden, in a forthcoming paper about Houston's capacity to withstand extreme heat, noted that power outages often follow hurricanes. About 3 million people in eight states were left without power after Hurricane Ike in 2008, and the power grid took 16 days to restore. Houston's average high in September is the low 90s for much of the month.

Short and long term: mosquitoes

Based on experience following Hurricane Katrina, there will be several competing effects on the population of mosquitoes and the prevalence of arboviruses, such as Zika, dengue and West Nile, that they transmit.

Mosquitoes need stagnant water to lay eggs. Winds and floods will wash away containers that would have been breeding pools, said Hayden, who studies weather and vector-borne disease. In the immediate future, both Hayden and Hotez anticipate that local mosquito populations will decline.

But once the floodwaters recede, mosquitoes will recover. In 2006, a year after Katrina, Tulane University public-health experts reported that cases of West Nile infection increased more than twofold in communities that had been in that hurricane's path. The study authors suggested that increased exposure was the culprit. Fleeing partially submerged buildings, people spent days outside waiting for rescue.

Without air conditioning or dry spaces, Texans may find themselves outdoors, too. “There's going to be a need for insect repellent down there,” Hayden said.

Long term: mental health

Hurricanes can damage mental health in long-term ways, Nature reported in 2015. A year after Hurricane Katrina, residents reported an increase in suicidal thoughts, increasing from 2 percent to 6 percent among the 815 people studied. Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression also worsened.

Long term: mold

Mold is another hurricane holdover. Hayden, who assessed damage in Galveston after Hurricane Ike, said evacuees may not realize they could spend two or three weeks away from home. In a waterlogged, overheated home, mold can run rampant in that time.

The Washington Post reported that two months after Hurricane Katrina, CDC investigators found mold in the walls of half of 112 water-damaged homes. The worst symptoms from routine mold exposure — some amount of mold is in the air we breathe every day — are typically allergic reactions and are rarely fatal but can exacerbate other health problems. Post-Katrina mold, however, was implicated in the deaths of four Southern University at New Orleans professors — all of whom worked in the same storm-damaged building. All died within a few months of one another.

The economic impact of mold and water damage also can be severe. “That’s a whole consequence that people really don't consider,” Hayden said. “It’s devastating on all levels.”

Big picture: preparedness planning

What comes into focus from disasters such as Harvey is a lack of disaster preparedness compared with pandemics such as the flu, according to Hotez. “We don’t realize that the Gulf Coast is America’s vulnerable underbelly of infectious disease,” he said, referring to a paper he wrote in 2014. The hot and humid region combines high levels of poverty with major transportation hubs, with problems exacerbated by the effects of climate change.

“All of those forces,” he explained Monday, “combine to make the Gulf Coast especially susceptible to infectious and tropical disease.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/08/29/the-health-consequences-to-expect-from-hurricane-harveys-floods/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.2ab59f152925

[Jewboo]

This is a mega disaster! Levies are overflowing and 2 feet more rain coming. They're evacuating huge neighborhoods below the levies.
The hit to economy is going to be substantial.

http://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1504/02/1504023787967.jpg

Houses made of cardboard.

:rolleyes:

[old steel]

Texans are tough, even tougher since old uncle Lawrence moved down there.

They will recover.

[TroyOz]

If insurance companies didn't want houses built this way, they wouldn't insure them. Gone are the days of brick houses 3 courses thick or 2 foot quarried stone - that was the building material of gold and silver money. We now have Fiat houses.

[madfranks]

If insurance companies didn't want houses built this way, they wouldn't insure them. Gone are the days of brick houses 3 courses thick or 2 foot quarried stone - that was the building material of gold and silver money. We now have Fiat houses.That's a nice analysis, and you're right that most homes aren't stone and masonry anymore. You still can build your home that way (there's nothing in the building codes that prohibit it), but it's wayyy more expensive than modern conventional wood framing. Home builders wouldn't be able to build as many homes out of brick and stone, and they would be much more expensive.

[Norweger]

Maybe some insiders know that they will attack North-Korea soon?

[dRush34]

Well, maybe it is time to consider using better materials as tough as brick or concrete, especially on more prone areas.