Shirley and I visualized a documentary about Chinese transient workers in China. There are 130 millions of them.

Titled The last train, the film tells the story of one family dependent on a manufacture job to make a convenient living. These workers will take a few days leave each year to return home for the Chinese New Year where they are confronted with unsolved family problems concerning the elders and the children left behind.

You must watch what 130 million travelers crowd in to grab train tickets and travel two or three days in overcrowded trains without hardly stranding room left, everybody overloaded with bagages, to include food and water.

The money crisis of 2008 hit them hard.

I am worried for the immediate future of so called “global economy”, overdependent on international capitals and not enough on local cooperatives.

Greetings

There has been a lot of writing about gold over the last few months, most of it based on inaccurate or plainly wrong data — or where the data is simply not known to the public (there has been no audit of Ft Knox in many decades, and never an audit of the Fed, and its dominant owners are Goldman-Sachs, Citibank, and JP Morgan-Chase whose cannibalistic ethics and domination of the US Treasury are blatantly obvious). All governments lie and keep what they hold very secret. The US gold reserve is a good example. The amount widely reported and discussed has been the same for decades, but there is no certainty about it, and it has to have changed in various ways over the years. It could not possibly have remained static. Nor, for that matter, is it believable. It qualifies as an urban myth.

Furthermore: 1 Kg = 32,151 oz = $36,973 so assuming the US reserves to be at 8,133 tons, which I seriously challenge, its value at current prices is about $300 billion, NOT $3.1 trillion as the earlier squib reports.

Lastly, the notion of the US repaying its debt in gold is ludicrous unless (1) the result of a war that the US would have to lose in a devastating way (think Germany or Japan 1945…). Or (2) excluding such a war the total collapse of the US financial system including the Fed. Or (3), most likely, there is a vast hoard of black gold at its disposal that can be dipped into when needed. Meanwhile, if they can manage it, countries will always roll-over their debt in depreciating paper… The key question is, therefore, whether the US Government controls that vast hoard of black gold, mostly war loot, or it has been siphoned off over the decades by the oligarchs who control the banks, cartels, industrial empires, and politicians. This is the most probable.

I have not heard either of these rumors from a good source. Such rumors are ubiquitous — and almost always wrong — among the fringes of the gold bug – doomster elements of the financial markets.

Central banks exist to maintain orderly status of global financial machine, not disrupt it. China is the most rapidly growing nation (among the major nations), and the most dependent upon global trade. Hence they have the most to lose if the global financial machinery goes “boink.”

The US benefits little from trade. And much of our trade — imports and exports — are commodities (unlike China), necessities who will move under any circumstances short of war. Also, we’re a debtor — again unlike China. For these reasons (among others), we have the least to lose from disruption of the global system (among the major nations) — which is why we are widely considered the weakest link.

China is a likely candidate to buy the remaining half of the IMF gold sale. That’s how the central banks play, moving the pieces around in a minimally disruptive manner.

India bought the first half on Nov 3.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_ci2mt_znHU

The USA now (11/26/09) owns 8,133.5 tons of gold. At $1,200/oz that is worth $3.123 trillion, which is about a half of whatwe owe China. From a gold account standpoint, the USA will have to give up its high gold reserves (some of which we took in WWII), which means that our currency will have to depreciate by a very large amount. If we pass half of our gold assets to China, our gold reserves will be much less than EU holdings.