From Debkafile one of the better sources for actual news anywhere.

As opposed to opinion dressed as news most everywhere.

Yes of course, the picture ... click on it.

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil.

Oil and gold markets stunned.

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively.  Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

You should be listening to your Uncle Roany here ..... buy gold!!!!!

This "info graphic" was sent to us in response to this morning's post from the same info address that sent us the Beatles vid.

Whoever you are, keep up the good work.

The following is from Numbersleuth which is a new site to us.

The thing is a little busy maybe but jam packed with just the kind of useless information we love to whip out at parties in an effort to make people thinnk we're a whole lot smarter than we really are.

Click anywhere below for a much larger/easier to read version.

From: Number Sleuth

The following calculations were compiled or figured by R.E. Mcmaster.

I haven't checked them, but probably will to the extent I'm able to this evening.

It mostly feels about right.

There are $30 trillion in currencies worldwide.

All the gold ever mined would fit in a 62.3 ft. cube.

All the gold ever collected, panned and mined since the time of Jesus is worth approximately $7 trillion at today's price.

There are 158,000 tonnes of gold above ground, 86% of which is held by central banks, investors, and jewelry owners.

This means there are 4.8 billion ounces of gold above ground globally, of which 2.1 billion ounces, 43% is in jewelry, religious and art items, official reserves of 1 billion ounces, industrial use of 530 million ounces, and 1.1 billion ounces in private hands.

The market cap of all gold that is above ground, including central bank reserves (30,717 tonnes as to 10/11), is equal to only 1.4% of global financial assets. Combined central bank gold reserves rose in 2009 by 425.4 metric tons to 30,116.9 tons, an increase of $13.3 billion (2009 average prices), the first increase since 1988.

Central banks hold 18% of all the world’s gold ever mined.

From today's installment of Richard Russell's Dow Theory Letter.

Below are the last day of the year quotes for gold.

2000 -- $273.60
2001 -- $279.00
2002 -- $348.20
2003 -- $416.10
2004 -- $438.40
2005 -- $518.90
2006 -- $638.00
2007 -- $838.00
2008 -- $889.00 
2009 -- $1096.50
2010 -- $1421.40
2011 -- $1566.80

This year's close for gold marks the 11th year for higher year end gold closing.

To my knowledge this is the longest bull market of any kind in history in which each year's close was above the previous year.

This fabulous bull market will not end with a whisper and a fizzle. I continue to believe that the upside gold crescendo of this bull market lies ahead.

We are watching market history.

This chart was published at McMaster Online but it was constucted at Stockcharts.com.

If you like charts, and sometimes a chart is all you need, Stockcharts is the place for easy to construct financial charting.

And finally, that thing I've been sayin' now for quite some time,

BUY GOLD!!!!!!!!!

I'll say it again, Jesse's Cafe Americain while not always the easiest site to digest, continues to be among the most informative and usefull sites anywhere on the net.

After a week of nonsense within the halls of Congress, The Whitehouse and especially on your TV, here's Jesse with one timely chart that explains it all.

Buy Gold!!!!!

We've posted several different charts demonstrating this same idea over the past couple of years.

This one happens to come from Bullion Management Group using data supplied by The Sauder School of Business via R.E. McMaster.

When people start talking about Governments defaulting on their obligations via inflation, this is exactly what they're talking about.

You might want to think that the price of Gold or stocks or gasoline or cornflakes is going up.

When what is really happening is that the purchasing power of your Dollar or Euro or Pound is going down.

And they're all doing it.

We've been bombed with this one over the past two days.

It's everywhere someone is bemoaning inflation/promoting gold or silver/hating the FED and/or the government in general.

Lew Rockwell's blog provides the best commentary here, or click on the photo.

If you give it just a little thought, it's revealing in the extreme.

Unfortunately, it ain't those greedy oil companies after all.

Gas would still be the same 20 cents a gallon it was in the 60's were it not for your government having destroyed the value of your money.

What a sordid adventure this has been.

A month or so ago I asked myself a question,

"Who owns the Fed?"

Foolishly thinking that having asked that question, at about 8:30 am on a Saturday morning, I'd have a post done by noon at the latest.

Just another example of just how wrong one can be, when one is wrong.

If you ask the above question of your search engine, it goes nuts.

I read a lot of it.

I'm a little mad at myself here because if you follow some of this stuff far enough, you get to part about the escaped, homosexual, occultist Nazis hiding underground (literally) somewhere in Argentina ....... with grey space aliens.

I am not making this up.

Hell, I couldn't make it up.

Anyway, what I'm mad about is that I lost that link.

You can believe me when I tell you I'm lookin' for it.

But I digress.

Evidently lots and lots of people have asked this question, long before I did and have posted/published their answers.

Then a whole other group read the first group's post/publication/book and felt a need to dispute those answers.

Now, wouldn't you think that it should be easy to determine the ownership of something as important as the entity the controls the money supply of the world's largest economy?

This is the information age after all, don't you think that a simple list might be easily obtainable?

It ain't.

Factcheck.org provides the best start here  .

I'll wait.

Click it and read it dagnabit, it'll only take a minute and I'm trying to make a point here.

Thank you.

Now, if you click on their sources, from the Fed itself, you get this , and then this .

DO IT!!!  You don't even have to read anything this time.

See what I mean?

Hmmmmm, is all I have to say about this.

Then there are the vids.

The vids now, are a whole new ballgame.

And while a lot of the vids are very good and entertaining, none of it is as helpful as I would have liked in answering the original question, "Who owns the Fed?" because one needs to have a much better than none at all understanding of the nature of money, before any of the above makes even one lick of sense.

So, here's where I start.

The following comes from a definite Libertarian point of view, and while some may prefer a different viewpoint, it is very clear and easy to grab hold of.

It'll take about 40 minutes but you will most likely be entertained and a hell of a lot smarter about the world around you than you are now.

Go get a beer, a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, maybe a sandwich.

Got all that?

I'll be back on issues having to do with that non existant list in a bit.

 Want an education in Economics?

Click on the quote above.

Since we updated our Housing over Gold post yesterday, might as well update the Dow Jones Industrial Average over Gold today.

Both charts are from Fred's Intelligent Bear, click either chart to access Fred's excellent if slow moving site.

Then just because we watch this thing without fail, every single time we cruise through Fred's site, here's the legendary John West Red Salmon commercial.

We've posted this chart two or three times over the past couple of years.

It's getting no better unless you're invested in Gold rather or in addition to a house.

Click on the chart to go to Chart of the Day's page.

They're going to tell you that it presently takes 120oz of gold to buy the median single family house, in 2001 in took 600oz.

We think we're going to get the double bottom ..... or top, depending on your point of view, and are invested that way. 

From the Telegraph U.K.

Tunisian former president's wife "fled country with £38 million in gold"

That's 62 million in dollars.

By Adrian Blomfield, Tunis 9:30PM GMT 17 Jan 2011

Click on the photo for the entire story. 

Tunisian protesters were goaded to new pinnacles of indignation on Monday as it emerged that the former president's wife, Leila Trabelsi, spirited 1.5 tonnes of the central bank's gold onto the aircraft that flew her and her family to Dubai.