by Joe Tacopino
Daily News Writer
Monday, January 25th 2010, 1:42 PM
Oprah Winfrey may be the queen of television, but she has some surprising new company.
A new Harris Poll shows Ms. Winfrey on top as America’s favorite TV personality.
Debuting on the list in second place is Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.
The poll, conducted each year, had Oprah regaining her first-place position after trailing talk-show hosts Ellen DeGeneres and Jay Leno last year.
Beck, a nationally syndicated radio host, premiered his Fox News television show last year.
The highly charged political program has generated controversy and ratings during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The poll also found Conan O’Brien topping the list among 18- to 32-year-olds -- the so-called Echo Boomers.
Leno was the favorite among men, and Jon Stewart topped the list among liberals.
The poll was conducted Dec. 7-14, 2009, among 2,276 adults surveyed online.
Stratfor acknowledges Russia defeated US, not Georgian army in South Ossetia | ||||||||
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The USA acknowledged that Russia had virtually defeated the US, but not the Georgian army in South Ossetia. US instructors have spent four years training the Georgian army for an attack against Russian citizens. The US administration refused to help Saakashvili, because the true goal of the new game in the Caucasus is absolutely different.
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Experts of Stratfor, the so-called Shadow CIA, stated that the Russian army had not only preserved its battling capacity but also proved to the whole world that was it capable of defeating an armed enemy, trained by US instructors.
A report from Stratfor particularly mentions that the operation in South Ossetia has exercised three things. First off, Russia has proved to have the army capable of conducting successful operations, in which many Western observers doubted before. Secondly, the Russians have showed that they can defeat the forces trained by US advisors. Finally, Russia has shown that the USA and NATO do not find themselves in the situation when they can interfere into a conflict from the military point of view.
At the same time, the experts consider it to be a military demonstration of Russia to former republics of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, the entire Caucasus and Central Asia. In addition, they see a hidden warning to Poland and the Czech Republic against the background of a possible deployment of elements of the US missile defense system in those countries. However, the experts exclude an opportunity for Moscow to organize an intervention against some of the above-mentioned countries.
Stratfor’s statement means that the fight is over for Georgia and that the US administration is not going to cross the red line in its relations with Russia. Saakashvili’s hopes for NATO to become involved in a conflict with Russia went up in smoke.
The USA is pursuing absolutely different goals, and the creation of the Great Georgia is surely not on its list. The Republicans organized the provocation to portray Russia as a monster on the globe on the threshold of the November elections. This plays into the hands of John McCain, who openly says that “Russia’s imperial ambition” needs to be curbed.
This way or other, the USA has used the small country of Georgia as a toy.
Sergei Balmasov
Pravda.ru
EVER since the financial tsunami hit the United States and then the whole world, the price of gold had been close to reaching the $1,000 per ounce ceiling. In December 2009, it not only broke through that barrier but also reached a record of $1,216.75 an ounce -- a rise of more than 30% in one year. Now some analysts are predicting that this trend will continue in 2010 and that gold price may soon reach $2,000 an ounce.
Gold has always been considered a precious metal. Since the dawn of civilisation, it has attracted human attention. People in Mesopotamia and Egypt used gold for decorative and ornamental purposes as far back as the fifth millennium B.C. Although some gold coins from this period have been discovered, it is widely believed that the large-scale use of gold for monetary purposes did not start until the sixth century B.C. in Lydia, modern-day Turkey.
As far as we know, under King Croesus (560-546B.C.), coins made of pure gold with his royal emblem were used for the first time as the standard of exchange for worldwide trade and commerce. Although gold coins are no longer the standard of exchange for international trade, gold is probably the only material which continues, even today, to be universally accepted in exchange for goods and services because of its unique characteristics.
In 1821, the United Kingdom started using gold as the standard, or the single reference metal, to back its paper currency system. Under the gold standard, a single unit of currency was freely convertible at home or abroad into a fixed amount of gold. In the 1870s, this system was adopted by other trading nations like Germany, France and the United States. This system called for fixed exchange rates among the participating currencies. It was designed to bring automatic adjustment to balance of payment imbalances.
The gold standard had two main advantages. First, it gave a stable monetary framework for international trade and investment, and second, it minimised the risk of internal inflation. But the system also had great disadvantages. Besides the risk and cost involved in shipping gold from one country to another, the system required the participating countries to give absolute priority to external adjustments.
Domestic objectives focused on the resolution of problems like recession, unemployment and inflation, and were secondary. Because of the limited supply of freshly mined gold, the system was also not sufficiently flexible to supply enough money to meet the growing needs of the world economy.
The outbreak of World War I brought an end to the full gold standard. Severe restrictions on gold export were placed by most trading nations. After the end of the war, the system was replaced by a gold-exchange standard under which the participating countries could maintain their currencies convertible into gold at a stable rate of exchange, without having to keep as large a gold reserve as was required under the full gold standard. They could supplement their central bank gold reserves with reserve currencies, like the United States dollar, which were convertible into gold at a stable rate of exchange. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought this system to an end.
The United States came out of World War II as the most powerful nation on earth and the United States dollar, in effect, became the principal reserve currency of the world. In 1958, most major European countries accepted free convertibility of their currencies into dollars or gold at fixed exchange rates. But the Vietnam War and the consequent runaway deficit in the US balance of payments forced the United States in 1971 to abandon this system of free convertibility of dollars into gold at fixed exchange rates. Thus gold's central role in the world currency system came to an end.
If gold has lost its central role in the international monetary system, why do financial analysts still keep monitoring the price of gold so closely? Because, in the current worldwide recession, the relative strength or weakness of the world's number one reserve currency, the trillions of dollars worth of stimulus packages pumped into fragile economies, the expanding deficits in the US and Europe, the low interest rates, the fear of runaway inflation and the price of gold have, in more than one way, become interconnected.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to assess exactly how these factors influence each other. But past experience has shown that in times of economic recession in the United States (by far the largest economy of the world), there is a tendency for gold prices to rise and as soon as the recession is over, gold prices tend to fall. In other words, in times of crisis, gold is used as a hedge against uncertainties.
In this context, the other factor to be considered is that though gold has lost its central role in the monetary system, central banks across the world still hold significant quantities of gold as part of their reserves. For example, it is estimated that the value of gold held by the United States Federal Reserve at current price equals approximately 15% of the US monetary base. In 2009, India, Russia, Sri Lanka purchased substantial quantities of gold, which, no doubt, had an impact on current gold prices.
So what is the conclusion? Will the gold price keep rising in the future or will it fall when the dollar becomes stable and the economic recession is over? Most probably, it will fall. After all, in January 1980, when political and economic uncertainties caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran forced the gold price to hit a record of $850 an ounce (equal to inflation-adjusted $2,200 of today), many people thought that it would never come down. Twenty years after that record price, the price of gold today, even after the recent rises, barely reaches the $1,100 mark.
Jan 11th
Alpro Soya advises that they will not only be dropping Glenn Beck, but pulling all their advertisements from the Fox News channel. Their ads had been appearing on Glenn Beck’s show airing in the United Kingdom.
This brings the total number of dropped sponsors to 98.
Alpro Soya’s statement:
Thank you for your email.
We have spoken to our media buying agency who place all of our advertising and they are aware of the situation. In fact they are in the process of pulling all advertising out of this TV channel and that includes the Alpro soya advert.
I hope this reassures you of our best intentions and hope that your confidence in Alpro soya is now fully restored. Thank you for taking the time to bring this issue to our attention.
Kindest Regards
Kimberley Scholes
Alpro Customer Care
Big thanks to the Stop Beck – UK Effort and everyone else participating in this cause. Great work all!
Jan 8th
We reached out to Virgin Atlantic after their advertisements began running during Glenn Beck’s show in the UK. This morning they confirmed that they will no longer advertise on the Glenn Beck program:
Our Media buying agency has assured Virgin Atlantic that no further advertising will appear around this show
This brings the total number of dropped sponsors to 97. Many thanks to Stop Beck – UK Effort and all those who tweeted and emailed Virgin Atlantic.
Jan 7th
Advertisements for ING DIRECT have been running during Glenn Beck’s show in the UK. On December 16, 2009, I contacted ING DIRECT regarding their sponsorship of Glenn Beck’s vitriol and race-baiting. Since then, we’ve been applying pressure on Twitter.
This morning, ING DIRECT advised that their ads will no longer appear “in or around” Glenn Beck’s show.
This brings the total number of dropped sponsors to 96. Many thanks all for your efforts!
Statements:
Martin Rutland, head of corporate communications for ING DIRECT, offered this statement:
“ING Direct UK has confirmed they do not sponsor or endorse the Glenn Beck show. Additionally, no ING Direct advertisements are being screened during or either side of this show and there are no plans to do so in the future.”
I replied:
It's official: Americans admire Glenn Beck more than they admire the pope.
This news, at once unsettling and unsurprising, came from the Gallup polling organization on Wednesday. Beck, the new Fox News host who has said President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people" and alternately likens administration officials to Nazis and Marxists, was also more admired by Americans than Billy Graham and Bill Gates, not to mention Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. In Americans' esteem, Beck only narrowly trailed South Africa's Nelson Mandela, the man who defeated apartheid.
The 45-year-old recovering alcoholic and Mormon convert has become the first true demagogue of the information age. His nightly diet of falsehoods and conspiracies on Fox, and his daily outrages on the radio, have propelled his popularity past even Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. His method is simple: He goes places where others are forbidden by conscience.
Death panels? Government health insurance for dogs? FEMA concentration camps? An Obama "civilian national security force" like Hitler's SS or Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard? An administration official advocating forced abortions and sterilization agents in drinking water? Beck trafficked in them all in 2009.
He also proposed on his radio show that people should read Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to prepare for Obama's health-care plan -- and that's in addition to the 28 times the Fuhrer made an appearance on Beck's Fox show in 2009. The Anti-Defamation League identified the secret to Beck's success when it noted that he, unlike other prominent right-wing talkers, was willing "to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists."
His critics during his ascent over the year have compared the pudgy Fox News host to Father Coughlin, George Wallace and Joe McCarthy. Time magazine put Beck on its cover and asked: "Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?"
A better question might be: "Is Glenn Beck America?" All ages have their charlatans. The fact that Beck's stew of venom and fabrication has been such a triumph probably says less about Beck than about us. He has merely captured the moment.
The collapse of Indian gold demand since the global financial crisis broke in 2007 might seem good reason to question the fundamental strength of gold buying worldwide today.
After all, if the world's No.1 gold buyers can't keep up with record-high Gold Prices, who can?
But the plain fact, as BullionVault first forecast in spring 2009, is that China has overtaken India as the number one private gold buyer this year. The typical Chinese New Year gold rush has already begun (thanks in part to 3% discounts at major retailers), and robust demand looks likely to continue through 2010 if not beyond.
Full-year 2009 private demand in mainland China could outstrip India, the former No.1 buyer, by one quarter if not one third. Short of a (very unlikely) collapse in Q4 demand, full-year private gold buying – including jewelry and retail investment – is set to have grown 10% from 2008's record in volume terms, rising 26% by value to equal $13.5 billion or more.
On recent trends, that would equate to more than 2.0% of China's famously massive household savings (up from 1.0% ten years ago) and account for almost one ounce in every eight sold worldwide.
Basis the GFMS consultancy's data (published by the World Gold Council), physical gold purchases by mainland Chinese households in 2009 was already running 19% ahead of India's private demand for Q1-Q3.
Given China's continued economic growth (certain to hit Beijing's 8% target according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) – let alone the surge in money-supply and credit growth over and above GDP (put at 23 and 27 percentage points respectively by Deutsche Bank) – private gold consumption in Q4 most likely remained very robust. Whereas India's private gold off-take during Oct-Dec. continued to shrink in the face of record-high prices. Indian bank and wholesale dealers have reported below-market bids from their clients throughout the autumn. Comments from the Bombay Bullion Association put Q4 imports 54% lower from 2008's already disastrous finish.
Fourth-quarter Chinese consumption should be in the range of 116 tonnes (if it adds 37% to Q1-Q3 volume, as per the 5-year average) to 128 tonnes or more (if Q4 tops Q3 by volume, as it has each year since 2004). Running total to end-Sept. was 315 tonnes. Likely to finish full-year at 431-443 tonnes.
India's private demand, in contrast, ran 45% below 2008 levels during the first 9 months of the year, most notably depressed during Q1 (down 83% from Q1 08, with Indian investors becoming physical dis-hoarders on GFMS's data; overall, India was a net exporter of gold for the first time since the Depression according to market historian Timothy Green). Applying the 5-year average ratio of Q4 demand to Q1-Q3 figures (27% added to 264 tonnes), full-year private off-take would come in at 336 tonnes, the lowest total since at least 1991 on GFMS's data.
India's full-year imports (it has virtually no domestic mining output) are forecast at 370-380 tonnes says the Bombay Bullion Association. They have not been below 400 tonnes per year since at least 1997 according to the Indian Bullion Market Association.
It is impossible to predict the outlook for gold-buying in mainland China next year, but this decade's drivers for Western gold investment – credit excess and miserable returns to cash – also apply in China, with bells on.
The People's Bank cut its benchmark rate from 7.5% to 5.3% in Dec. 2008, and has left it there since. Inflation in the cost of living was officially reported at minus 1.1% across the first 3 quarters, but real rates were negative in H2 2004 and again in at the turn of 2007-8. Some analysts are forecasting 4.0% inflation for 2010, and either way, commercial rates have been so attractive this year that new credit growth was CNY295 billion in Nov., equal to $43 billion. That was down from 2009's monthly average of $130bn, but took full-year credit growth to the equivalent of $1.35 trillion, equal to 27% of GDP.
Pitched against this rampant credit excess, gold's quasi-religious and auspicious appeal in Chinese culture – as a solid, tangible, intrinsically valuable store of wealth – will only have grown. Most significantly, and in sharp contrast to Indian demand, private Chinese buying has grown as the price has risen (gold has than tripled against the Yuan since retail price controls were lifted in 2001).
That might suggest gold is just another bull-market asset for China's increasingly wealthy and capital-rich middle classes. But owning the metal is most often viewed more as an end-in-itself than as an investment vehicle; it's the aim of accumulation, not the means.
Given this last decade's average 15% annual gains for US-Dollar investors – plus the outlook for sub-zero real interest rates, struggling equity dividends, and the danger of sharply higher bond yields (i.e. falling bond prices) as the Treasury attempts to finance a new record deficit – might the Chinese approach to Gold Investment start to take hold in the West?
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