Perth Mint Issues a One-Ton Bullion Gold Coin Worth $56 Million

Caution: It may prove difficult to get change when you go yacht shopping with this coin.
The Australian Perth Mint has produced the biggest 999.9 fine gold bullion coin in the world.
Featuring Queen Elizabeth II (Katie's silhouette would certainly have found more bidders) it weighs one metric ton. The coin is legal tender with a face value of one million Australian dollars.
Its current gold value is €39.6 million (39.55€ million).

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Moody's Turns Spotlight on "Austria Banks Derivatives"

Here comes the next market mover. Moody's Investors Service is apparently doing some due diligence work on Austria's banks. Austria and its banks have been overlooked in the daily market game of who gets downgraded next until now. Austria still carries a AAA sovereign rating from all Moody's, S&P and Fitch. Austrian banks have done surprisingly well during EU wide downgrading orgies by the big 3 rating agencies.
This may be about to change, given this indication from my webstats.

SCREENSHOT: Moody's Investors Service starts checks on Austria and its banks with a 'Go ogle' search on "Austrian banks derivatives". Click to enlarge.

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Are You Reft or Light?

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20.10.2011: Unofficial Death Date of the Euro

It was exactly one year ago that I announced the death of the Euro due to the fact that EU talks on the EFSF had stalled by 20.10.2010.
Now here we are one year later and the latest official statement by French president Nicolas Sarkozy after a late night meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday was only a terse "talks are stuck."
While this is not exactly news - that's been the situation since 2008 - Germany's first failed auction of 10 year Bunds is all the more and comes only a day after Spain could not sell the full allotment of €5 billion in short term treasury notes.
GET IT:  Europe is not able anymore to raise the money it needs!
Germany's Failed Bund Auction Implies There Is No More European Benchmark
On Wednesday Germany had attempted to top up its September 2021 Bund by another €5 billion. Alas, there were no buyers for this amount. The Bundesbank drew only 4.5 billion in bids and had to retain €925 million for 'secondary market operations' on its own books. This is the first time in the history of post WW2 Germany that investors balked away from a German government bond issue.

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Citibank Has Clients Arrested Who Want to Close Their Accounts

So much about a free market economy: Citibank in New York had several people arrested because they wanted to close their accounts and take their money with them.
And I had thought police only gets involved in bank robberies.



These actions are likely to entail legal battles as an alleged plain clothes officer dragged a woman into the bank and had her arrested there.
So much about capitalism: YOUR money is obviously not yours when banks need it themselves to survive.

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The Hungarian Private Debt Crisis Explained in 35 Seconds

If there is still anybody out there, wondering how Austrian banks got into such a mess in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) by handing out loans for houses and cars to more or less everybody with a pulse; this Raiffeisen TV commercial from 2007 should explain it all.



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