European snap shot.

European economic output.

While, officially only 7 of 17 countries are experiencing recession, European economic output has dropped 0.4% during QIV of 2012. Germany has dropped 0.4% and France has dropped 0.2%. Draghi claims that QIV was the bottom and expects recovery this quarter, such as Germany putting in a growth of 0.1%. However, France is expected to drop further. Much of the expected recovery is based on expectations that the US will recover and exports to the US will increase. US recovery is spotty though and the two recent winter storms will slow US output.

Russia: working to rebuild gold reserve.

Economists believe that a strong economy needs a strong and stable currency. Vladimir Putin has put Russia on track toward that goal. First, Russia has become a petroleum product exporting country. Petroleum is a hard currency shunned only by idiots (such as American Liberals and environmentalist whackoes, but I repeat myself). Putin claims that America is abusing the privilege of having the world's reserve currency (he got Obama's number), so Russia under Putin has been buying gold. How much gold? Russia's gold reserves now amount to 10% of their total reserves: 958 tons, of which 570 tons were acquired during Putin's tenure. Add the fact that Russia has an income tax of 13% flat and you can see the making of Russian recovery from 70 years of Socialism.

While Russia and China are getting set to replace the US Dollar, the idiots of Europe have sold their gold: 977 tons by Schweiz, 589 tons by France and over 200 tons each by Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal. England sold a bunch when gold was selling for $450/0z. Italy hung on to theirs, but half of Germany's gold was loaned for price suppression and is gone.

Denmark.

Basel III specifies that countries can use government bonds and gold as collateral as Tier One assets. This creates problems for the Danish, because they use their mortgage bonds as well. The bursting of the housing bubble has put Denmark into recession and any further shocks may drive them out of the EU.

The lucrative field of metal thievery.

Because of the high price of metals, stealing and selling metals has become a problem, especially in Greece.