InformedTrades

Earlier this week, the Financial Stability Oversight Council took a step towards mandating stricter regulation on non-bank financial institutions, as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. The committee approved a proposal of guidelines on how to designate firms as "systematically important," which will then put them under Federal Reserve oversight, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The shortfall in September, the final month of the fiscal year, widened to $64.57 billion compared to the same month a year earlier, although it came in at a few billion dollars less than economists had projected. The annual deficit was $1.299 trillion, up from 1.294 trillion in fiscal 2010.

As the following infographic from HealthcareAdministration.com shows, student loan debt, now at $830 billion, has surpassed credit card debt-a statement not likely to have been heard 20 years ago. Student loans, unlike any other form of debt, cannot be forgiven via bankruptcy-these loans must be repaid. Is this the next bubble to burst? Look for clues in this comprehensive infographic.

The link between population growth and economic growth goes both way. Higher/lower population growth should (assuming it increases the labor force) increase/decrease economic growth all else being equal, but it is also the case that higher/lower economic growth increases/decreases population growth.

Federal Reserve policymakers left the door open to another round of asset purchases in the near future, according to minutes of their most recent meeting. At the two-day meeting that concluded Sept. 21, the Fed unveiled plans to sell short-term Treasuries and buy longer-term debt, a move popularly known as "Operation Twist," in an effort to drive down interest rates without pumping additional money into the economy.

Bangladesh has unveiled a domestically made laptop which officials claim is one of the cheapest in the world. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched the computer, named Doel, at a ceremony in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday. It is the first laptop made in the country. The state-owned telecoms company Telephone Shilpa Sangstha (TSS) is producing four models of the laptop.

If you're looking for a safe place to put your investments, Chad Venzke has a suggestion: Dig a hole in the ground four feet deep, pack gold and silver in a piece of plastic PVC pipe, seal it, and bury it. The 30-year-old central Wisconsin resident trusts no one but himself to store and protect his gold and silver-not banks, not investment funds, and certainly not the government. It's precisely because of this suspicion of institutions that he invests in those metals to begin with. In case of emergency, "you always want to have your precious metals within arms reach," he says.

It sounds far-fetched, but it's possible - if one of your garments is equipped with a tiny radio-frequency identification device (RFID), your location could be revealed without you knowing about it. RFIDs are chips that use radio waves to send data to a reader - which in turn can be connected to the web.

According to a  report from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the number of middle-class Africans has tripled over the last 30 years to 313m people, or more than 34 per cent of the continent's population. Another study published last year by the McKinsey Global Institute reckons that approximately 40 per cent of Africans live in urban areas now and predicts that by 2030, the continent's top 18 cities could have a combined spending power of $1,300bn.

At last. After nine months of weak-willed interest rate rises and even the odd misplaced reduction, Kenya's central bank has finally hiked base rates by a figure worth writing home about: 400 basis points. The move takes base rates to 11 per cent and is a belated effort to rescue the shilling, which has the dubious honour of world's worst performing currency this year, having falling about 30 per cent. Last week, it fell beyond 100 shillings to the dollar, a painful psychological threshold, to an all-time low of 104.15.

It means the spot market in gold could be headed for China- and away from London's Metals Exchange or the Comex in New York. I'd like to know who is going to oversee and regulate all this action.  For example, when the Comex raises margin requirements to dampen speculative fervor- will  China bew governed by that? I doubt it very much. In June you'll be able to buy spot gold or futures contracts in China. It also means that the Chinese currency- not dollars- will for the first time become the ruling currency used in one of the major speculative commodities of our age. All eyes will be on the influence of the gold trade in China  rather than New York, London, Switzerland or South Africa.

[ytauto]http://www.youtube.com/v/6UGDTtqklSo[/ytauto]

Employers announced plans to shed 115,730 workers from their payrolls in September, making it the worst job-cut month in over two years. Heavy reductions planned by the military accounted for a large portion of September job cuts, signaling what may lie ahead as the federal government seeks across-the-board cuts in spending.

"We are proposing a model of a powerful, supranational association capable of becoming one of the poles of the modern world …to play an effective bridge role between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region," Putin told the Russian daily Izvestiya in an interview titled "A new integration project for Eurasia - the future is being born today." At one level the idea of Eurasian Union will appeal to Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's president, who only reluctantly agreed to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and has long advocated greater cooperation between former Soviet states. But the 71-year old former communist party boss has also taken care to ensure Kazakhstan's independence by balancing the nation's interests between Russia, China and the west.

Russia and China have vetoed a European-backed UN security council resolution that threatened sanctions against the Syrian regime if it did not immediately halt its military crackdown against civilians. The resolution would have been the first such legally binding move adopted by the security council since President Bashar Assad's military began using tanks and soldiers against protesters in mid-March. The UN estimates there have been more than 2,700 deaths.

In his testimony, Bernanke said the Fed is prepared to support the economy. But he made clear that the Fed's efforts to force down long-term interest rates are no "panacea for the problems currently faced by the U.S. economy."

THE US Department of Homeland Security has warned financial companies to be vigilant about a cyber security threat from Anonymous. Wanted for shutting down websites as high profile as that of the CIA, a recently released Department of Homeland Security bulletin said the group "will continue to exploit vulnerable publicly available web servers, computer networks and other digital information mediums for the foreseeable future".

When asked if the coming mania in gold will eclipse what was seen at the end of the '70s gold bull market, Armstrong responded, "Probably, we tend to call it a phase transition and what people have to understand is when you begin to see that, that's the danger point when it's going to peak out and collapse.  By a phase transition what I mean is, in the 1980 mania for example, from 1976 it went from about $102, up to mid december of 1979, to finally reach $400.  The last six weeks it goes from $400 to $875.  So it's a doubling effect that you will see, but in a very, very short, compressed time period.  When you start seeing that, that is the sign of a major high, and we haven't even approached that yet."     

In the instant case, we will need to create a neutral RESERVE CURRENCY whereby all exchange in goods globally will need to be between two independent currencies converted through the  RESERVE CURRENCY. Therefore, all commodities instead of trading in dollars will be traded in this new NEUTRAL RESERVE CURRENCY. Each nation will have its own currency that will allow it to retain its national culture and sovereignty. Because the dollar is the RESERVE CURRENCY at this time, it enjoys a status that means the demand for dollars will be retained for central banks will require dollars in the forms of bonds and this is created by both the need for reserves as well as the fact that most commodities trade in dollars and thus a supply of dollars is necessary to facilitate trade.