A Powerful Weapon of Financial Warfare--The US Treasury's Kiss of Death

By Nick Giambruno

It’s an amazingly powerful weapon that only the US government can wield—kicking anyone it doesn’t like out of the world’s US dollar based financial system.

It’s a weapon foreign banks fear. A sound institution can be rendered insolvent at the flip of a switch that the US government controls. It would be akin to an economic kiss of death. When applied to entire countries—such as the case with Iran—it’s like a nuclear attack on the country’s financial system.

That is because, thanks to the petrodollar regime, the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, and that indirectly gives the US a chokehold on international trade.

For example, if a company in Italy wants to buy products made in India, the Indian seller probably will want to be paid in US dollars. So the company in Italy first needs to purchase those dollars on the foreign exchange market. But it can’t do so without involving a bank that is permitted to operate in the US. And no such bank will cooperate if it finds that the Italian company is on any of Washington’s bad-boy lists.

The US dollar may be just a facilitator for an international transaction unrelated to any product or service tied to the US, but it’s a facilitator most buyers and sellers in world markets want to use. Thus Uncle Sam’s ability to say “no dollars for you” gives it tremendous leverage to pressure other countries.

The BRICS countries have been trying to move toward a more multipolar international financial system, but it’s an arduous process. Any weakening of the US government’s ability to use the dollar as a stick to compel compliance is likely years away.

When the time comes, no country will care about losing access to the US financial system any more than it would worry today about being shut out of the peso-based Mexican financial system. But for a while yet, losing Uncle Sam’s blessing still can be an economic kiss of death, as the recent experience of Banca Privada d’Andorra shows.

Andorra, a Peculiar Country Without a Central Bank

The Principality of Andorra is a tiny jurisdiction sandwiched between Spain and France in the eastern Pyrenees mountains. It hasn’t joined the EU and thus is not burdened by every edict passed down in Brussels. However, as a matter of practice, the euro is in general use. Interestingly, the country does not have a central bank.

Andorra is a renowned offshore banking jurisdiction. Banking is the country’s second-biggest source of income, after tourism. Its five banks had made names for themselves by being particularly well capitalized, welcoming to nonresidents (even Americans), and willing to work with offshore companies and international trusts.

One Andorran bank that had been recommended prominently by others (but not by International Man) is Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA).

Recently BPA received the financial kiss of death from FinCEN, the US Treasury Department’s financial crimes bureau. FinCEN accused BPA of laundering money for individuals in Russia, China, and Venezuela—interestingly, all geopolitical rivals of the US.

Never mind that unlike murder, robbery and rape, money laundering is a victimless, make-believe crime invented by US politicians.

But let’s set that argument aside and assume that money laundering is indeed a real crime. While FinCEN seems to enjoy pointing the money laundering finger here and there, it never mentions that New York and London are among of the busiest money laundering centers in the world, which underscores the political, not criminal, nature of their accusations.

And that’s all it takes, a mere accusation from FinCEN to shatter the reputation of a foreign bank and the confidence of its depositors.

The foreign bank has little recourse. There is no adjudication to determine whether the accusation has any merit nor is there any opportunity for the bank to make a defense to stop the damage to its reputation.
And not even the most solvent foreign banks—such as BPA—are immune.

Shortly after FinCEN made its accusation public, BPA’s global correspondent accounts—which allow it to conduct international transactions—were closed. No other bank wants to risk Washington’s ire by doing business with a blacklisted institution. BPA was effectively banned from the international financial system.

This predictably led to an evaporation of confidence by BPA’s depositors. To prevent a run on the bank, the Andorran government took BPA under its administration and imposed a €2,500 per week withdrawal limit on depositors.

However, it’s not just BPA that is feeling the results of Washington’s displeasure. FinCEN’s accusation against BPA is sending a shockwave that is shaking Andorra to its core.

The ordeal has led S&P to downgrade Andorra’s credit rating, noting that “The risk profile of Andorra’s financial sector, which is large relative to the size of the domestic economy, has increased beyond our expectations.”

For comparison, BPA’s assets amount to €3 billion, and the Andorran government’s annual budget is only €400 million. There is no way the government could bail out BPA even if it wanted to.

The last time there was a banking crisis in a European country with an oversized financial sector, many depositors were blindsided with a bail-in and lost most, or in some cases, all of their money over €100,000.
While the damage to BPA’s customers appears to be contained for the moment, it remains to be seen whether Andorra turns into the next Cyprus.

BPA is hardly the only example of a US government attack on a foreign bank. In a similar fashion in 2013, the US effectively shut down Bank Wegelin, Switzerland’s oldest bank, which, like BPA, operated without branches in the US.

To appreciate the brazen overreach that has become routine for FinCEN, it helps to examine matters from an alternative perspective.

Imagine that China was the world’s dominant financial power instead of the US and it had the power to enforce its will and trample over the sovereignty of other countries. Imagine bureaucrats in Beijing having the power to effectively shut down any bank in the world. Imagine those same bureaucrats accusing BNY Mellon (Bank of New York is the oldest bank in the US) of breaking some Chinese financial law and cutting it off from the international financial system, causing a crisis of confidence and effectively shuttering it.

In a world of fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking, that is a power—a financial weapon—that the steward of the international financial system wields.

Currently, that steward is the US. It remains to be seen whether or not the BRICS will learn to be just as overbearing once their parallel international financial system is up and running.

In any case, the new system will give the world an alternative, and that will be a good thing.

But regardless of what the international financial system is going to look like, you should take action now to protect yourself from getting caught in the crossfire when financial weapons are going off.

One way to make sure your savings don’t go poof the next time some bureaucrat at FinCEN decides a bank did something that they didn’t like is to offshore your money into safe jurisdictions. And we've put together an in-depth video presentation to help you do just that. It's called, "Internationalizing Your Assets."

Our all-star panel of experts, with Doug Casey and Peter Schiff, provide low cost options for international diversification that anyone can implement - including how to safely set up foreign storage for your gold and silver bullion and how to move your savings abroad without triggering invasive reporting requirements.

This is a must watch video for any investor and it's completely free. Click here to watch Internationalizing Your Assets right now. 

The article was originally published at internationalman.com.

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

The Third and Final Transformation of Monetary Policy

By John Mauldin

The law of unintended consequences is becoming ever more prominent in the economic sphere, as the world becomes exponentially more complex with every passing year. Just as a network grows in complexity and value as the number of connections in that network grows, the global economy becomes more complex, interesting, and hard to manage as the number of individuals, businesses, governmental bodies, and other institutions swells, all of them interconnected by contracts and security instruments, as well as by financial and information flows.

It is hubris to presume, as current economic thinking does, that the entire economic world can be managed by manipulating one (albeit major) subset of that network without incurring unintended consequences for the other parts of the network. To be sure, unintended consequences can be positive or neutral or negative. This letter you are reading, which I’ve been writing for over 15 years and which reaches far more people than I would have ever dreamed possible, is partially the result of a serendipitous unintended consequence.

Energy sector earnings season is coming to a close, how did our traders bank their biggest profits ever?...Watch Free Video Here

But as every programmer knows, messing with a tiny bit of the code in a very complex program can have significant ramifications, perhaps to the point of crashing the program. I have a new Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet that I’m trying to get used to, but somehow my heretofore reliable Mozilla Firefox browser isn’t playing nice with this computer. I’m sure it’s a simple bug or incompatibility somewhere, but my team and I have not been able to isolate it.

However, that’s a relatively minor problem compared to the unintended consequences that spill from quantitative easing, ZIRP, and other central bank shenanigans. We have discussed the problem of how the Federal Reserve has pushed dollars on the rest of the world and is playing havoc with dollar inflows and outflows from emerging markets. More than one EM central banker is complaining aggressively.
My good friend Dr. Woody Brock makes the case that an unintended consequence of QE is that the Federal Reserve’s normal transmission of monetary policy through periodic changes in the fed funds rate has been vitiated. He contends that soon we will no longer care about the fed funds rate and will be focused on other sets of rates.

This is an important issue and one that is not well understood. Woody has given me permission to reproduce his quarterly profile. For Woody, this is actually a fairly short piece; but as usual with Woody’s work, you will probably want to read it twice.

Woody is one of the most brilliant economists I know, and I make a point of spending time with him as our schedules permit. We are making plans to get together at his Massachusetts retreat in August. He is restructuring his business in order to spend more time writing and less time traveling, and he intends to lower the price of his subscription. It will still be pricey for the average reader, but for funds and institutions it should be a staple. You can find his website at www.SEDinc.com or email him at SED@SEDinc.com.

Before we go to Woody’s letter, if you’re going to be at my conference this coming week, you’ve already made arrangements. I know a lot of people wanted to go but just couldn’t work it into their schedules. I won’t say it’s the next best thing to being there, but you can follow me on Twitter, where my team and I will be sending out real time tweets about the important ideas and concepts we are hearing, not just from the speeches but from all the conversations that spring up during the day and late into the evening. If you’re curious as to who will be there, here’s a page with the speakers. If you’re at the conference, look me up.

The Fed Funds Rate: R.I.P.
‒ The Third and Final Transformation of Monetary Policy
By Woody Brock, Ph.D.

Strategic Economic Decisions, Inc.
The policy announcements of the US Federal Reserve Board are dissected and analyzed more closely than any other global financial variable. Indeed, during the past thirty years, Fed‐Watching became a veritable industry, with all eyes on the funds rate. Within a few years, this term will rarely appear in print. For the Fed will now be targeting two new variables in place of the funds rate. One result is that forecasting Fed policy will be more demanding.

To make sense of this observation, a bit of history is in order. During the last nine years, US monetary policy has been transformed in three ways. To date, only the first two have been widely discussed and are now well understood. The third development is only now underway, and is not well understood at all. To review:

First, the Fed lowered its overnight Fed funds rate to essentially zero, not only during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009, but throughout nearly six years of economic recovery thereafter. The average level of the funds rate at the current stage of recovery was about 4% during the past dozen business cycles. It was never 0% as it is in this cycle. In past essays, we have argued that this overutilization of “ultra‐easy monetary policy” reflected the failure of the government to utilize fiscal policy correctly (profitable infrastructure spending with a high jobs multiplier), and to introduce long‐overdue incentive structure reforms. It was thus left to monetary policy to pick up the pieces after the global crisis of 2008. This development was true in most other G-7 nations, not just in the US.

Second, the Fed inaugurated its policy of Quantitative Easing whereby it increased the size of its balance sheet five‐fold from $900 billion to $4,500 billion. Such an expansion would have been inconceivable to Fed watchers during the decades prior to the Global Financial Crisis. In the US, QE is now dormant, and the only remaining question (answered below) is how and when the Fed will shrink its bloated balance sheet back to more normal levels.

Third, the way in which the Fed conducts standard monetary policy (periodic changes in the funds rate) is currently undergoing a complete makeover. In particular, the traditional tool of changing the funds rate via Open Market operations carried out by the desk of the New York Fed no longer works. For as will be seen, the vast expansion of the size of its balance sheet (bank reserves in particular) has rendered traditional policy unworkable. From now on, therefore, the Fed will conduct monetary policy via two new tools that were not even on the drawing board of the Fed prior to 2008.

Summary: In this PROFILE, we explain in Part A why traditional (non‐QE) monetary policy has been vitiated by QE. In Parts B and C respectively, we discuss the two new tools that will be used in the future to conduct standard (non‐QE) monetary policy: what exactly are these tools, and how do they work? In Part D, we discuss why these new tools will not be required by the European Central Bank, which has a different institutional structure than the US Fed. Finally, in Part E, we turn to QE and discuss when and how the Fed will shrink its balance sheet back to a more traditional size in the years ahead.

In this write‐up, we largely rely on the remarks set forth in a recent paper by Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, formerly chief economist of the IMF, Governor of the Central Bank of Israel, and professor of economics at MIT. We also benefitted from clarifications by Professor Benjamin Friedman at Harvard University.

Part A: So Long to Setting the Funds Rate via Open Market Operations

Prior to the financial crisis, bank reserve balances with the Fed averaged about $25 billion. With such a low level of reserves, a level controlled solely by the Fed, minor variations in the amount of reserves via Fed open market sales/purchases of securities sufficed to move the Fed funds rate up or down as desired. Analytically, the market for bank reserves (Fed funds) consisted of a demand curve for bank reserves reflecting the nation’s demand for loans, and a supply curve reflecting the supply of reserves by the Fed.

The so‐called Fed funds rate is the point of intersection of these two curves (the interest rate). If the Fed targeted, say a 2% funds rate, it achieved and maintained this rate by shifting the supply curve left or right by adding to/subtracting from the quantity of reserves. As the Fed was a true monopolist in the creation/extinction of reserves, it could always target and sustain any funds rate it chose.

These operations constituted “monetary policy” for many decades. But this is no longer the case, as was first made clear in a FOMC policy pronouncement of September 2014. To quote Dr. Fischer in his 2015 speech, “With the nearly $3 trillion in free bank reserves (up from pre‐crisis reserves averaging $25 billion), the traditional mechanism of adjustments in the quantity of reserve balances to achieve the desired level of the Federal funds rate may not be feasible or sufficiently predictable.” What new mechanisms will replace it? There are two.

Part B: The Use of Interest Rates Paid by the Fed on Free Bank Reserves

“Instead of the funds rate, we will use the rate of interest paid on excess reserves as our primary tool to move the Fed funds rate.” The ability of the Fed to pay banks an interest rate on their free reserves dates back to legislation of October 2008. This rate has been set at 0.25% during the past few years. (“Excess” or “free” bank reserves are defined as the arithmetic difference between total reserves and required reserves. Currently, as of March 30, required reserves were $142 billion, and total reserves were $2.79 trillion.)

The Logic: Whatever the level of the reserve interest rate that the Fed chooses, banks will have little if any incentives to lend to any private counterparty at a rate lower than the rate they can earn on their free reserve balances maintained at the Fed. The higher the reserve remuneration rate is, the greater will be the upward pressure on a whole range of short‐term rates.

Part C: The Use of the Reverse Repo Rate

“Because not all institutions have access to the excess reserves interest rate set by the Fed, we will also utilize an overnight reverse repurchase purchase agreement facility, as needed. In a reverse repo operation, eligible counterparties may invest funds with the Fed overnight at a given interest rate. The reverse repo counterparties include 106 money market funds, 22 broker‐dealers, 24 depository institutions, and 12 government‐sponsored enterprises, including several Federal Home Loan Banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Farmer Mac.”

The Logic: Fischer continues: “This facility should encourage these institutions to be unwilling to lend to private counterparties in money markets at a rate below that offered on overnight reverse repos by the Fed. Indeed, testing to date suggests that reverse repo operations have generally been successful in establishing a soft floor for money market interest rates.”

Summary

Due to the explosion of the size of its balance sheet (bank reserves in particular), the Fed has been forced to abandon management of the Fed funds rate via traditional open market operations. This activity is now being replaced by two new policy tools, both of which are somewhat “softer” than the older tool. First, bank’s free reserves now earn an interest rate on excess bank reserves which is available to banks with access to the Fed’s reserve facility. Second, financial institutions such as money market funds lacking access to the reserve facility will be able to lodge funds overnight (not necessarily merely one night) at the Fed and receive the reverse repo rate offered by the Fed.

Part D: Irrelevance of these Developments to the European Central Bank

Interestingly, the European Central Bank does not need and will probably not implement the policy innovations now being implemented by the US Fed. The reason is that in Europe, lending is dominated by banks far more than here in the US. Moreover, most all European financial institutions can in effect deposit funds with the central bank. Finally, the ECB has long been able to vary the reserve remuneration (interest) rate that it pays for excess reserves. As a result, the ECB does not need to utilize the reverse repo rate tool that the Fed is introducing.

One final point should be made. Whereas Professor Fischer above asserts that the primary tool of the Fed will be variations in the reserve remuneration rate applicable to banks, other scholars believe it is the reverse repo rate that will be the primary tool of US monetary policy. This is partly because of the ongoing reduction of the role of banks in lending to private sector borrowers, a longstanding development that has accelerated with the new regulations imposed on banks since the Global Financial Crisis.

Part E: Will the Fed Shrink its Balance Sheet Back Down? If So, How?

Professor Fischer answers this point directly. Yes, the Fed will shrink its balance sheet, but not to the size of yesteryear. More specifically:

“With regard to balance sheet normalization, the FOMC has indicated that it does not anticipate outright sales of agency mortgage‐backed securities, and that it plans to normalize the size of the balance sheet primarily by ceasing reinvestment of principal payments on our existing securities holdings when the time comes... Cumulative repayments of principal on our existing securities holdings from now through the end of 2025 are projected to be $3.2 trillion. As a result, when the FOMC chooses to cease reinvestments of principal, the size of the balance sheet will naturally decline, with a corresponding reduction in reserve balances.”

Hopefully these remarks have helped clarify past and future changes in Fed policy—changes that amount to a thoroughgoing transformation of US monetary policy that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
In the future, we suspect that the press will refer to the Fed’s targeting of the “reverse repo rate” in place of the Federal funds rate when analyzing prospective monetary policy.

San Diego, Raleigh, Atlanta, New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont

I am excited about going to the 2015 Strategic Investment Conference on Tuesday. If for some reason you get there early on Wednesday, I intend to be in the gym at the hotel about 2:30, so come by and let’s work out together. Again, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter while I’m at the conference.

In the middle of May I go to Raleigh to speak for the Investment Institute and then on to Atlanta, where I’m on the board of Galectin Therapeutics. I’m going to New York the first week of June, then up to New Hampshire, where I will be speaking with a number of friends at a private retreat. I will then somehow get to Stowe, Vermont, to meet with my partners at Mauldin Economics. The rest of the summer looks pretty easy, with a few trips here and there.

Next week I intend to share my speech at the conference, or at least the gist of it. I have been thinking about it and working on it for some time. I had dinner this week with Mari Kooi, former fund manager who has become deeply imbedded with the Santa Fe Institute, an intellectual hotspot famous for its maverick scientists and interdisciplinary work on the science of complexity. Some of their people are working on something called complexity economics, which is an attempt to move on from the neoclassical view of general equilibrium.

If you wonder why the theories and models don’t work, it is because traditional economists are still busy trying to describe a vastly complex system by assuming away all the change except for that they believe they can control with the knobs they twist and pull. Their model of the economy resembles some vast Rube Goldberg machine where, if you put X money in here at Y rate, it will produce Z outcome over there.

Except that they don’t really know how the actions of the market will play out, since the market is made up of hundreds of millions of independent agents, all of whom change their behavior on the fly based on what the other agents are doing. Not to mention the effects of herding behavior and incentive structures and a dozen things beyond the ken or control of economists. There is only equilibrium in theory.

And that’s why it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict the future. The agents of change are multiplying and changing faster than we can keep up. But next week I will throw caution to the wind (unless I give up in despair), and we’ll see what my very cloudy crystal ball suggests lies in our future.

I am really looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones at the conference. Have a great week.

Your trying to find simple in a complex world analyst,

John Mauldin

The article Thoughts from the Frontline: The Third and Final Transformation of Monetary Policy was originally published at mauldineconomics.com

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Prove You’re Not a Terrorist

By Jeff Thomas

Recently, France decided to crack down on those people who make cash payments and withdrawals and who hold small bank accounts. The reason given was, not surprisingly, to “fight terrorism,” the handy catchall justification for any new restriction governments wish to impose on their citizens. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin stated at the time, “terrorism feeds on fraud, money laundering, and petty trafficking.”

And so, in future, people in France will not be allowed to make cash payments exceeding €1,000 (down from €3,000). Additionally, cash deposits and withdrawals totaling more than €10,000 per month will be reported to Tracfin—an anti-fraud and money laundering agency. Currency exchange will also be further restricted. Anyone changing over €1,000 to another currency (down from €8,000) will be required to show an identity card.

Do you need to make a deposit on a car? That might be suspect. Did you just deposit a dividend you received? It might be a payment from a terrorist organisation. Planning a holiday and need some cash? You might need to be investigated for terrorism. And France is not alone. In the US, federal law requires banks to file a “suspicious activity report” (SAR) on their customers whenever a customer requests a suspicious transaction. (In 2013, 1.6 million SAR’s were submitted.)

As to what may be deemed “suspicious,” it may be any transaction of $5,000 or more, but it may also mean a series of transactions that, together, exceed $5,000. The reader may be saying to himself, “But that’s just normal, everyday banking business—that means anybody, any time, could be reported.” If so, he would be correct. Essentially, any banking activity the reader conducts could be regarded as suspect.

In Italy, in 2011, Prime Minister Mario Monti began working to end the right of landlords, tradesmen, and small businesses to perform large transactions in cash, which critics say help them evade taxation. In December of that year, his government reduced the maximum allowed cash payment from €2,500 euros to €1,000.

Spain has outlawed cash transactions over €2,500. The justification? “To crack down on the black market and tax evaders.”

In Sweden, the country where the first banknote was created in 1661, the use of cash is being steadily eliminated. Increasingly, expenses are paid and purchases made by cellphone text message, and many banks have stopped handling cash altogether.

Denmark’s central bank, Nationalbanken, has another justification for ending its use of banknotes—producing paper money and coinage is not cost effective.

Israel also seeks to end the use of cash. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff has announced a three phase plan to “all but do away with cash transactions in Israel.”

Individuals and businesses would initially continue to be allowed to make small cash transactions, but eventually, all transactions would be converted to electronic forms of payment. The justification being used in Israel is that “cash is bad,” because it encourages an underground economy and enables tax evasion.

Across the Atlantic, banks and governments are on a similar campaign. A 2012 law in Mexico bans large cash transactions, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

In August 2014, Uruguay passed the Financial Inclusion Law, which limits cash transactions to US$5,000. In future, all transactions over that amount will be required to be performed electronically. The crying need for such a law? The stated reason was to improve the country’s credit ratings.

The Elimination of Paper Currency

In recent years, in commenting on the inevitability of currency collapse in those countries that are indebted beyond the possibility of repayment, I’ve made the prediction that governments and banks would jointly resort to the elimination of paper currency and replace it with an electronic one.

Some readers have understandably regarded the prediction as “alarmist.” After all, the idea is so farfetched—paper currency may be conceptually flawed, but it’s been around for a long time. But banks and governments seek total control of money, and this can only be achieved if they possess a monopoly on the flow of money.

If a worldwide system can be implemented in which currency transactions can only take place electronically through banking institutions, the banks will then have total power over the ability of a people to function economically. But why would any government allow the banks such dictatorial monetary control? The answer is that governments would then realise a long held, but heretofore impossible dream: to have access to a record of every monetary transaction that takes place for every single individual.

Governments have been both more proactive and bolder than I had anticipated and are simply imposing the restrictions worldwide under the justifications previously stated. As yet, there hasn’t been any backlash, and it may be that people worldwide may simply swallow the pill, not understanding what it means to their economic liberty.

If the public are not treating the new system as serious business, governments most assuredly are. Bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have forcibly become unpaid government spies. If they don’t comply, they can be fined and/or lose their banking charter. Directors can be imprisoned.

The US Justice Department already wants to take this overreach even further. Banks are now being asked to call the authorities whenever something “suspicious” occurs, presumably so that immediate action may be taken. What we are witnessing is the creation of totalitarian control of your finances. The implication that you may have some sort of terrorist involvement is a smokescreen.

As the above information attests, if for any reason you object to any of these measures, you have already been forewarned—you may be suspected of money laundering, tax evasion, or even terrorism. If you use cash for any reason—to pay your rent, to buy a used car, or (soon) to pay for your lunch—you may trigger an investigation. (The onus of proof that you are not guilty good will be on you.)

The take away from this discussion? Totalitarian control of currency is an inevitability, and it will take place sooner rather than later. The only question is whether the reader can retain some control of his wealth. Fortunately, wealth may still be held in land and precious metals, but these are only safe if they’re held outside a country that seeks totalitarian rule over its people. The ability to retain wealth still exists and, as always, internationalisation remains a key element to its continuation.

Editor’s Note: The ultimate way to diversify your savings internationally is to transfer it out of the immediate reach of your home government. And we've put together an in depth video presentation to help you do just that. It's called, "Internationalizing Your Assets."

Our all star panel of experts, with Doug Casey and Peter Schiff, provide low cost options for international diversification that anyone can implement - including how to safely set up foreign storage for your gold and silver bullion and how to move your savings abroad without triggering invasive reporting requirements. This is a must watch video for any investor and it's completely free.

Click here to watch Internationalizing Your Assets right now.

The article was originally published at internationalman.com

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Mike Seerys Weekly Natural Gas Futures Recap

Our trading partner Michael Seery is back with his weekly recap of the Futures market. He has been a senior analyst for close to 15 years and has extensive knowledge of all of the commodity and option markets.

Natural gas futures in the June contract settled last Friday at 2.68 while currently trading at 2.56 down around 12 points for the trading week as I have been recommending a short position in the last several weeks as this trade has basically gone sideways to slightly lower and if you took the original recommendation place your stop loss above the 10 day high which currently stands at 2.73 risking around 17 points or $425 per mini contract plus slippage and commission and if you are trading the March contract the risk would be $1,700 plus slippage and commission as the chart structure is outstanding at the current time.

Here's more calls from Mike on Oats. gold, corn, wheat, soybeans and more!

Many of the commodity markets were lower this afternoon, however average temperatures in the Midwestern part of the United States are dragging natural gas prices lower with the next major resistance around 2.50 so continue to play this to the downside and take advantage of any rallies as the chart structure is outstanding allowing you to place a very tight stop therefore lowering monetary risk as prices are still trading below their 20 and 100 day moving average telling you that the trend is to the downside as prices closed at the weekly low.
Trend: Lower
Chart Structure: Excellent

Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

Here's Why Gold Will Be Priceless in Three to Five Years

Over the next few years as debt, currencies and countries start to fall apart and individuals will be looking to place their money where it will hold its value and buying power during times of extreme uncertainty.

If you eliminate fiat currencies which are created out of this air and are nothing more than a credit we are left with precious metals and stones. As much as we have evolved over time, we could be valuing things like gold, silver, platinum, and precious stones more so than our currency.

Let’s face it, currencies are swinging in value 20-50% regularly and while most people do not realize it their buying power often is not as strong as it was. Would you rather hold a large portion of your capital in say the EURO which is falling like a rock in value costing you thousands of dollars a month, or would gold and silver which rises in value as your currency falls be a smarter decision?

Click Here to Read Chris Vermeulen's entire article and charts





Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

This Weeks Free Webinar...Trading Options the Same Way as the Institutional Traders

Our trading partner Guy Cohen of OVI Flag Traders is finally free from his contract obligations with his large institutional clients and he is back with us for another free training webinar this Thursday April 23rd.

Guy's latest indicator and methods will give us all a unique and valuable insight to what the insiders are up to. The truth is, no one can predict 100% where the markets are going at any given time, but he has developed something that can give us a better clue, especially during certain market setups.

And frankly, that's all we need to become consistently great traders and investors. You can stick with just one inspired method like this and you'll not only be profitable but you will do it safely.

On This Webinar You Will Discover.....

  *  How one of Guy's students made huge profits in just three short months trading this one specific strategy

  *  Learn how to master Options regardless of which direction the market is moving

  *  Learn Guy's simple strategies to consistent income

  *  How to grow a small account with powerful and safe options strategies to use the right
      leverage at the right time

  *  How to recognize and capitalize on the best patterns right now in the market.

And so much more!

Watch this weeks free video to get even more details about what we will cover in this free webinar....
Just Click Here to Watch the Free Video

In an attempt to make sure everybody gets a seat Guy will be doing two complete live presentations on Thursday at 2 p.m. est and 8 p.m. est.

These two webinars will fill to capacity quickly as Click Here to get Your Reserved Seat asap

See you on Thursday!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader

P.S.  While you are waiting for this weeks webinar take a minute to download Guy's free eBook and start learning some of his methods traders have been using for years.....Get Free eBook Here

Mike Seery: What is the Difference Between Old Crop & New Crop in the Agricultural Commodities?

When analysts and traders talk about agricultural commodities such as soybeans & corn the one thing they generally mention is old crop versus new crop and that might confuse some beginners on what exactly is the difference. I will keep it simple because the only difference between old crop and new crop is that old crop in soybeans is any month other than November as an example is March or May and all months that were grown last year while the new crop is the November soybeans and will be harvested this October of 2015 and will be grown this summer.

That’s why sometimes there is a price difference between the old crop and the new crop because of the fact that this year’s harvest in soybeans could be as high as 4.2 billion bushels pushing prices lower in the November contract as old crop and new crop can also have different carryover levels or supply levels.

Have you downloaded Guy Cohens new free eBook "Options for Earnings and Income".....Just Click Here

Old crop corn is any month other than the December contract while the new crop is only the December contract which will be grown this summer and harvested in October and sometimes there’s a price difference between old crop and new crop as well because as we will be harvesting around 13.5 billion bushels in October which is the reason why the December corn can be lower than the May corn because that was old crop which was harvested last October also having different supply situations.

Many of the agricultural commodities are affected by old crop & new crop including the grains, meats, coffee, and cotton so if you need help understanding which month you should be trading feel free to give me a call at any time & I will be more than happy to make sure that you are trading the correct month.

Get this weeks calls on commodities from Mike Seery....Just Click Here!

An Insight into What Institutions Get When They Pay Top Dollar

Our trading partner and one of the industry’s most respected traders, Guy Cohen of the OVI Flag Trader, has released a new eBook that you must download and read. Guy is truly the experts’ expert when it comes to options. Over the last 13 years Guy has licensed this proprietary research to institutional clients including the NYSE, the ISE and several brokers.

Fortunately for you his obligations are fulfilled, and he’s now available for the first time in many years to show you his completely unique approach to options.

To celebrate his availability, I asked him to share some of his pearls of wisdom with my valued subscribers. I was just in time because Guy is also contracted to one of his publishers for a new edition of one of his bestsellers. So for starters, he’s written a brand new eBook showing you his uniquely simple approach that you can start implementing immediately. And we have the pleasure of sharing it with you today!

Grab Your Copy Here

In this publication you will learn how to.....

 *  Trade volatility around news events such as earnings (I love this section)
 *  Match the right options strategy with the appropriate chart setup (crucial for all options traders)
 *  Understand the Greeks in seconds (I kid you not...Guy’s approach to this is utterly unique)
 *  Trade for income with full illustrated examples (and I know there’s more to come) and much more.


If you’re interested in trading options at the highest level, from the industry’s leading expert, you will want to grab your copy NOW!

Guy has an uncanny ability to demystify and simplify options, which is why he’s a four time best selling author, and this is exactly what this new eBook will do for you and more.

See you in the markets putting this to work!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader

Get Guy Cohen's latest FREE eBook....Just Click Here!

Our Next Call....Own this Sleeper Stock Before April 30th

We just got word from our trading partners at the International Speculator. Their message? "Own this sleeper stock that's running through April". The metals sector research team believes this will be the next high grade gold producer. If you want to make a fortune in the resource sector, all you need to know are the two times you should buy gold stocks.

The first: Invest in a gold mining company just before it makes a tremendous discovery.

Obviously, this is a daunting task. And without hands-on experience or a field research, you’d have better odds at winning roulette.

The second: Buy shares of a gold mining company just before it starts producing.

When a mining company announces its “First Gold Pour” is usually the only time it makes headlines, outside of a discovery. From that day forward, it’s a cash generating producer… and the value is no longer trapped in the rocks. That’s when the big money institutional investors take interest. Once they pile in, shares move very quickly.

Of course, there are very few new gold mines opening up in the world at any given time. So these opportunities are quite rare. But today, you have the chance to jump on one. We have found a deeply undervalued mining company with a high grade deposit 8x richer than the average mine.

Today, shares are cheap. But it’s scheduled to start pouring gold for the first time very soon—after that, shares could soar. In fact, Louis James, the chief metals and mining investment strategist at Case Research, believes this company could at least double in value.

But only investors who act before April 30 will have the chance to realize these gains.

Click here for all the details of this incredible opportunity

See you in the markets!
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"....Just Click Here!

This Weeks Free Webinar....How to Find High Probability Earnings Trades

Our trading partner John Carter of Simpler Options is back with another one of his wildly popular free webinars. This time around it's "How to Find High Probability Earnings Trades"......Register Now

This free webinar will be held this Tuesday April 14th at 8 p.m. eastern time.

In this webinar John will discuss......

  *  Why earnings announcements offer a quarterly opportunity you may want to take off from work for
  *  Why playing big price movement is not the only way to trade around earnings
  *  How to plan around earnings season each quarter so you’re not caught by surprise
  *  How to avoid the common mistake traders make around earnings
  *  The simple way to know which options to trade around earnings so you never pick the wrong one

And much more…..

Don’t worry, if you can’t attend live. We’ll send you a link to the recorded webinar within 24-48 hours. But you must pre-register for the event.

Just Click Here to Complete Registration

See you Tuesday,
Ray C. Parrish
aka the Crude Oil Trader


Get our latest FREE eBook "Understanding Options"while you can....Just Click Here!