XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 10/23/12

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Woman eating bar of soap rams into cars outside naval base... -

A Virginia woman is in custody after police say she rammed her car into a vehicle outside the entrance of Bethesda Naval medical.

Police say an officer at the hospital shot at the woman's car after the collision Tuesday morning but did not strike her. The officer was injured, apparently when he used a baton to strike the woman's car.

Montgomery County Police spokesman Paul Starks identifies the woman as Angela Akosua Cobbold from Manassas. Starks says she is being treated and charges are pending.

Starks says earlier Tuesday, Cobbold's car had been spotted going more than 90 mph on Interstate 66 in Virginia. He says officers also received a report that the woman was seen eating a bar of soap.

The woman never got on the base.

Read more -
http://www.wtop.com//46/3089992/Woman-rams-vehicle-outside-Bethesda-Naval-medical

Fake gold bars discovered at Australia’s Perth Mint, Chinese forgery factory uncovered -

Less than a month ago news broke that 10 PAMP gold bars filled with tungsten had been discovered in Manhattan. An SD reader then discovered a Chinese firm openly promoting the sale and production of tungsten filled gold bars and coins.
The tungsten filled gold scandal has just gotten exponentially larger, as an Australian Seven News investigation discovered 300 fake Perth Mint gold bars and uncovered a Chinese gold ‘forgery factory’.
The investigators were able to purchase 300 Chinese sourced 1oz gold bars for a total of $300- and to no one’s surprise, when the investigators melted down the bars, all 300 were discovered to contain roughly the same gold content as Fort Knox.
Seven News reports:

An Australian mint has called in the Federal Police after being shown evidence by Seven News that its gold bars are being counterfeited.
The investigation uncovered Chinese ‘forgery factories’ that will churn out fake bullion and even Australian coins, for a fraction of their face value.
Just one of the bars (seen below) should be worth more than $1,700.

The fake bars discovered are reportedly Perth Mint Kangaroos:

“There are some poor people out there who have gone and bought these products thinking they’ve got a bargain and have actually been ripped off,” Ron Currie from the Perth Mint said.
At Wenzhou, in China’s south east, a suspicious discovery is made after taking a tour of one factory that makes medals and badges – there are thousands of samples.
On the front is stamped “Perth Mint Australia”, on the back are kangaroos – a close copy of the actual design used by the mint.
The tour guide doesn’t hold back when quizzed about the procedure.
“First we did the silver plating, then the gold plating,” he said.
What should be valued at $510,000, is actually counterfeited gold bars that Seven News paid $300 for (300 pieces at $1 each).
Mr Currie says while the number reaching Australia is relatively small, the damage can be significant – but there are tell-tale signs.
“If it looks like a deal that’s too good to refuse – you should refuse it. Secondly the quality – the quality is nowhere near as good as the real product,” he said.
“We’ll of course follow it through and take it up with the Australian Federal Police.
“The Australian Federal police are very helpful and are very interested in stopping counterfeits or copies coming into Australia.”
China has long forged Western products, but this is altogether different because it has the potential to do so much harm.
We again stress to our readers the importance of purchasing your bullion from a reputable dealer that purchases its product DIRECTLY from major wholesalers and refiners.
In other news, the Chinese forgery factory reported Monday a record 150 ton order from long time client the NY Fed. Chinese forgery factory reported Monday a record 150 ton order from long time client the NY Fed.

Read more -
http://www.silverdoctors.com/300-fake-perth-mint-gold-bars-discovered-in-australia-as-chinese-gold-forgery-factory-uncovered/

Message in a bottle from Canada arrives in Ireland after 8 years at sea -

Oisin Millea can hardly believe his luck — and instant fame he’s gained — from sorting through “rubbish” along the shoreline near his home in Ireland.

The nine-year-old schoolboy, along with his photographer mother Aoife Millea, 31, was looking at the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shores of the tiny village of Passage East, County Waterford, last week by a particularly high tide when he discovered a two-litre green plastic pop bottle with something inside it.

It turned out to be a note, written in French, from two 12-year-old Montreal girls, Charlaine and Claudia, tossed into the Gulf of St, Lawrence in 2004 while they were vacationing in the Gaspe.

Eight years and 5,100 kilometres later, it arrived.

“I only thought it was a piece of rubbish . . . I really didn’t think anything until I opened it,” Oisin told the Toronto Star from his home on the east coast of Ireland, southeast of Waterford town.

The two scrambled back home to run the note through Google translate. The date was all they could make out.

Oisin’s surprising find has now made him “famous” among his classmates and launched a search for the two girls (no last names), now women, who said in their note they got idea from a TV show about young people putting messages in bottles. The mystery bottle has captured the attention of media on both sides of the Atlantic.

“If you find our bottle, tell us when and how you found our bottle. Also tell us your name, age, place of residence. Example: Paris, Miami, etc . . . To contact us write to us at: cheval-rouge95@hotmail.com,” the message read. Unfortunately the email address not longer works.

But the two girls have been identified as Charlaine Dalpé and Claudia Garneau, according to the Montreal Gazette.

The original message from 2004 stated:

“Hello, we are two girls who had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea. We are called Charlaine and Claudia. We are both 12 and we live in Montreal. We are on vacation in the Gaspésie, in the village of Grande Vallée. We had the idea to launch a bottle into the sea because we saw a TV show about young people putting messages in bottles. If you find our bottle, tell us when and how you found our bottle. Also tell us your name, age, place of residence. Example: Paris, Miami, etc ... To contact us write to us at: cheval-rouge95@hotmail.com”

To finish, if you don’t have Internet, go to a friend’s or go to an Internet café because we are very curious to know if our bottle was found.

Charlaine and Claudia”

Aoife Millea said even after all those years, the note, which was rolled up and held together by a hair tie, was bone dry and written on the back of map of the area in the Gaspe where the bottle was launched.

“It was a really, really high tide that came in around the houses into the streets. This was the good news from the high tides,” she said, explaining the village is located on the River Suir estuary.

Millea said Oisin is “over the moon because he is quite the treasure hunter. This could not have happened to anyone better.”

“He was wondering if he was too famous to go to school today,” she told the Star.

It wasn’t until Millea and her son translated the note they realized it was from Quebec and not France. “He was even more excited that it came from Canada,” she said.

Millea said her son is eager to meet the women, now 20, who wrote the note, which he now plans to frame.

At last notice, Oisin was hoping to speak to Charlaine and Claudia by Skype sometime Tuesday.

Read more -
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1275913--message-in-a-bottle-from-canada-arrives-in-ireland-after-8-years-at-sea

Bank Of Canada Fires Shot Across Bow, Says "Withdrawal Of Stimulus Will Likely Be Required" -

With the entire world engaged in global coordinated easing, slashing, burning, and overall lowering rates and printing money by the wheelbarrow, the Bank of Canada just fired a shot across the bow. Here is the kicker: "Reflecting all of these factors, the Bank has decided to maintain the target for the overnight rate at 1 per cent. Over time, some modest withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required." Surely they must be punished for this blasphemy in the holy church of Saint John Maynard and the apostles of collapsing fiat.

The Loonie is happy:

Goldman is not. From GS' Andrew Tilton.

Keeping and strengthening the tightening bias, a hawkish surprise

The Bank of Canada today kept the target for the overnight rate unchanged, as was widely expected. Instead, the main focus today was on the language of the statement following Governor Carney’s speech last week at which he omitted mention of the BoC’s tightening bias. In the event, the tightening bias was strengthened, while the growth forecast was kept essentially unchanged. Overall, relative to the speech by Governor Carney last week, this represents a big surprise and suggests that concern over imbalances in the household sector may have grown.

In contrast to Governor Carney’s speech last week, where the tightening bias was omitted, the language of the tightening bias has been strengthened in two ways. First, language that conditioned tightening on the pace of the recovery has been dropped. Second, tightening is now called “likely,” where as before it was termed “may become appropriate.” The tightening bias language now reads: “Over time, some modest withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required, consistent with achieving the 2 per cent inflation target.” The statement now explicitly also mentions the evolution of imbalances in the household sector, which suggests that concerns over household leverage have moved up the list of priorities for the Bank of Canada.

In this context, the Bank of Canada held its growth forecasts essentially unchanged. Growth for 2012 has been revised up to2.2% in 2012 (from 2.1%), was kept unchanged at 2.3% in 2013 and taken to 2.4% in 2014 (from 2.5%). Given Governor Carney’s emphasis on the deterioration in business sentiment and the investment outlook, this is also a hawkish surprise. The statement refers as it did previously to “very stimulative financial conditions” as sources of support for consumption and business investment. These seem to have trumped the concern over higher frequency indicators that were pointing to weakness. The output gap is now expected to close end-2013, slightly after the H2 2013 date given previously.

Overall, the statement stands in marked contrast to the Governor Carney speech last week and sounds more hawkish than we expected. However, we are sticking to our call of no rate hikes until Q4 2013
Full statement link here, and a side by side comparison with the last statement below.

Bank of Canada

Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-23/bank-canada-fires-shot-across-bow-says-withdrawal-stimulus-will-likely-be-required

Why A Balanced Budget Is Impossible In America -

If the US government cut all government services except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments, federal spending would still outpace revenues. As we noted here, these four mandatory items dominate costs. All the arguing over sequestration and the fiscal cliff are moot since as Professor Antony Davis notes in this brief clip, there are no specific cust that will enable government to balance the budget; in fact "nothing less than a complete redesign will solve the problem." That redesign begins with determing the proper role of government.

Read more -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-16/why-balanced-budget-impossible-america