Winding up the spring.

The financial world has been so skewed by central bankers that it is in danger of ...what? Consider the following reports:
1. In spite of large amounts of paper currency, gold prices are holding steady;
2. The evidence of manipulation of gold prices is now irrefutable;
3. Precious metal miners have been shorted into oblivion;
4. The amount of paper gold traded in London and the COMEX in ONE YEAR is 120 times the gold production of the last 50 years;
5. Gold is being sold short by people far in excess of the amount of gold available;
6. Some physical gold delivered in Asia turned out to be tungsten coated with gold;
7. The FED refuses to allow the gold at Fort Knox to be audited or tested.

So, what does this all add up to?
The price of commodities is being held back by the manipulation of the gold price, which creates an artificially low inflation. The cost of that is unknown, but is estimated in excess of a trillion dollars. The artificially low commodity prices are slowing the economy, because it counters the expected effect of injected money. This is being financed by the FED buying Treasuries. The FED already printed 3 Trillion dollars just to rescue European banks in 2008-9 and is on track to print another 3 Trillion this year. Europe has to roll over 3.4T worth of bonds this year and they do not have the money.

How long can the Central Banks wind the distortion in commodity and gold prices? That is the question. Some people prattle about gold being in a bubble, most feel that the FED is slowly losing control. And that's the Pundits. The Public knows little.

So, the tension of gold rising is like a spring being compressed. The more it is wound, the higher it will go when it unwinds.

Zimmerman prosecution is unethical, illegal.

So says Mr Dershowitz. Here is a photo of Zimmerman's head after the altercation. Kudos for abc having the courage to publish it. Clearly, Zimmerman was attacked and he had a right to fear for his life. The Special Prosecutor acted unethically because she did not include this photo. It borders on perjury on her part. Eye witness account is thus collaborated by the evidence and the case should be dismissed.

Marinated Mozzarella.

The uses of Mozzarella.
It is a very versatile cheese. Grated, it can be added to pizza or to lasagna. If you roll the cheese into little cigar shapes while it is warm (in the satiny state) it will turn into string cheese. It can be eaten by itself because it is a mild cheese.

My favorite, the marinated mozzarella.
My wife and I stopped at the Central Market in Ft Worth to get cheese for comparisons and found the marinated mozzarella. It was so good, we decided to make some ourselves. Here is the recipe.

1 lb cubed mozzarella, cubed about 3/4 in a side.
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp minced chives
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/3 cup olive oil

Put all in a plastic bag and seal. Turn ingredients to coat the cheese. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. For later use allow olive oil to liquefy in air.

This is spicy. You can cut down the pepper flakes and even add curry powder.

How to make Mozzarella.

One of the simplest cheeses to make is Mozzarella. Should you attempt to do this, you will find that the supplies required are minimal.

Supply Companies:
1. Grape and Granary,
2. Hoegger Supply Company,
3. New England Cheesemaking Supply Co. (run by a lapsed anarchist).

Supplies needed here: Citric acid and rennet. Vegetarian rennets come in pills and it takes one pill to take the place of a 1/4 tsp animal rennet. Do not buy citric acid from a drug store, it is very expensive. You also need a heavy rubber glove when you kneed the curd. Thermometer.

Process.
Use 1 gal 4% homogenized milk, the cheapest. WalMart has one for $3.

1. Bring 1 gal milk to 55F. Stir milk while heating.
2. Add 1.5 tsp citric acid while stirring. This destabilizes the milk globules so the rennet works faster.
3. Bring temperature to 90F, slowly with stirring.
4. Add 1/4 tsp rennet. Stir from bottom up for 1 min.
5. Let sit 5-10 min.
6. Cut curds 1/2 inches.
7. Heat to 110F with stirring.
8. Drain into cheese cloth in a colander.
9. Put curds into microwaveable bowl. Discard any why.
10. Put on rubber glove. Microwave curds for 1.5 min on high.
11. Discard whey. kneed the curds to distribute heat. Some curds may turn runny.
12. Microwave 1/2 min on high. Add 1/2 tbsp cheese salt (no iodine) and kneed.
13. Microwave 1/2 min. Kneed. Curds are now very hot. As you kneed, the curds turn satiny (shiny) and you can pull them like taffy. You are done. Cheese can be eaten warm.

Notes. If you do marinated Mozzarella, you can add 1 tbsp salt.
When the Mozzarella is done it will spread on wax paper. Put in frig for later use.

Enjoy.

Cheese, the perfect food.

I have been a captive of the precious metals market and the financial turbulence as well, but today I will start writing about other things. Let's start with cheese.

Cheese is the perfect food. It is like milk, but concentrated. It contains some minerals and vitamins, protein and fat. The proteins and fats of cheese are easily digestible, after all, that is what the Creater intended as food for the little ones. Whether, the source of milk is cows, goats or sheep, it is all good for people, unless you have a rare metabolic disease.

The varity of cheeses is amazing. A lot has to do with the origin of the cheese. Different places have different bacteria and give slightly different taste to the cheese. The artesan cheesemaker tends to overwhelm this by adding bacterial cultures to ferment the lactose. Then there is the technique of washing the curd. After the curd (protein and fat) is precipitated by the added renet, a part of the liquid (the whey) can be replaced with water. This removes the lactose and lactic acid, resulting in a milder cheese. An example is Havarti. But, Edam and Gouda are also washed curd cheeses.

Some cheeses receive their character from the microorganisms added to it. Blue cheese has Penicillium rockforti, swiss cheese has Lactobacillus Shermani (produces the holes), Muenster is sprayed with a solution of B Linens and Camambert is treated with two kinds of moulds.

Much depends on the length of time a cheese is aged. Cheese aged a month may be even semi-soft (such as Havarti), but cheese aged longer (2-4 months) turns harder and sharper as more acid accumulates. Cheese aged for many months turns very hard and needs toi be grated, such as Parmesan and the Spanish Manchego.

The kind of preservation also adds to the final character of cheese. Some cheeses are mixed with salt before being pressed, others are brined and one (Manchego) is aged in olive oil.

Sample and enjoy.

The end of predictability

We used to be able to use technical charts to predict price movements. No more. Those were the days before central banks began to interfere into markets. Woe to those who think that those formulas still work.

So, why do I produce charts? The charts are still useful as descriptive tools, but not as predictive tools. Poor Larry Edlson. He has been predicting a big drop in gold following by the big rally. It hasn't happened. The FED intervenes every time gold looks to break out. The last intervention was this Friday at 1:15. Between 1:15 and 1:30, ten thousand sell contracts representing 1.5 tons of gold were sold (Look foir the article by Caesar Bryan on KWN). Gold dropped from 1,675 to 1,655.

How is the price controlled? The central bank sells SELL contracts and buys BUY options. The positions nearly cancel out, though BUY options cost more.

The 600 pound gorilla is the national debts of nations. The first graph shows the debt of the US as bigger than all of Europe's put together. Remember thehavoc created by Greece? Well, now Italy, Spain and Portugal are under the crosshairs of rising bond prices. It won't be long before the European Central Bank will have to print money to buy the bonds of these nations. And the FED is still buying Treasuries and is getting ready for QE3.

The second graph shows the price of gold. Note that gold prices are near the 200 DMA, a place where the FED prefers it. A report I read says that the FED will lose control when gold will reach 1,760. The third graph is the XAU, the gold miner index. Gold mining stocks have been decimated and shorted way down. They represent the best value in town.

Finally, we see the predictions of one analyst who predicts that gold is near entering the "hyperbolic" phase of price increases.

What about Larry Edelson? The poor guy was wrong on the big drop in gold prices. He was also wrong in his DOW mforecast of 9,500. Then he gave a buy signal for the DOW, just a day or two before the Stock Market began its current drop.

It has gotten hard to predict things.

Is this the end of the gold rush?

That is the title of one of the articles that shows up when you log in to BARCHART today. Then follows an article that is typical of the ignorance of journalists. The Author (Bernard Condon) attributes the rise in gold price to fear and a badly performing economy. Since, the economy has recovered (echoes Condon the Obama regime), the fear is dissipating and so gold prices have peaked. Aside from the assertion that the economy has recovered (another myth of the Obama regime, like the fallen unemployment), gold prices rose not in response to the recession, but to the QE to end it. Wednesday's drop of $50 in gold price was not set off by some mythical improvement i n the economy, by the announcement that plans for QE3 are shelved. However, QE is continuing in the form of Operation Twist and actual buying of Treasuries. And the US Dollar is going up as Spain is now in the spotlight. Falling gold prices would be an indication of slowing inflation and Bernake wants more rather than less inflation. I am sticking with my prediction that gold prices will hit a new high by the end of May.