Back in July 2008, just before all hell broke loose and the S&P was trading in the upper 1,200s, everyone's favorite permabull, JPM strategist Tom Lee famously reiterated his S&P 500 price target for the end of 2008: 1450. 
 Two months later Lehman filed for bankruptcy, and 4 months later the S&P closed 2008 some 40% lower than said price target. Another two months later and anyone who had listened to Tom Lee lost 50% of their investment. Today, as the Fed's balance sheet crosses $3 trillion, and the global central banks have pumped a total of some $15 trillion into the markets, Tom Lee ws back on CNBC with what is his most permabullish prediction ever: he now expects the S&P to generate some 150 in earnings to which he applies a 17x multiple. His conclusion "If you put a 17 multiple on $150, the S&P really sort of peaks around 2,400 or 2,500." In Dow terms, this means a Dow Jones Industrial Average of, drumroll, 20000. He does, caveat it, however: "that's obviously 4 years away." 
And if Tom Lee was off by 40% in 4 months, we can't help but wonder what the hit rate on his 4 year prediction will be, and if, by using the same ruler extrapolation mechanism he applies to corporate earnings nand multiples one extrapolates the Fed's balance sheet at some $7 trillion in 4 years, what a loaf of bread will cost just as the DJIA crosses 20,000.

xageur -3.02 xagchf -2.78 eurcad 2.55%

xagchf: 6.97 xaggbp: 6.29 xagjpy: 5.62%

Long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved. Specifically, it is about to be partially moved out of the New York Fed, where the majority, or 45% of it is currently stored, as well as the entirety of the 11% of German gold held with the Banque de France, and repatriated back home to Buba in Frankfurt, where just 31% of it is held as of this moment. And while it is one thing for a  Hugo Chavez to pull his gold out of the Bank of England, it is something different, and far less dismissible, when the bank with the second most official gold reserves in the world proceeds to formally pull some of its gold from the bank with the most.

eurjpy 3.28 chfjpy 2.44 xagjpy 2.10%

NZDJPY 4.16 AUDJPY 3.75 CADJPY 3.65%

1-12 2013

Quotation, n.: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
The real source of inner strength and self-confidence is warm-heartedness.
Dalai Lama
If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
It is only great souls that know how much glory there is in being good.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.
Homer (900 BC-800 BC)
 Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Congratulation, n.: The civility of envy.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
I never thrust my nose into other men's porridge. It is no bread and butter of mine; every man for himself, and God for us all.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
 Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.
Sophocles (496 BC-406 BC)
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the others willing to let them.
Poet Robert Frost
I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin  

It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

 "There's an old saying: If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. But given today's out-of-control change "inflation,' if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get less than you have now."
Winning in the Game of Life. Tom Gegax
 Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"—which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket!"
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble ... Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
There are not more than five cardinal tastes (sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
Sun Tzu (544 BC-496 BC)
Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared ... You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues—faith and hope.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.
Gilbert Chesterton (1874-1936)
Virtue never has been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers ... marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)