InvestorMind

From Silver Doctors . CNBC’s Guy Adami: This is a huge story in my opinion that is not a huge story now, but will be a huge story. Why is that? Because you have to ask yourself, why would Germany decide to do this? What do they see that the rest of us don’t see that requires them to physically move this gold out of lower Manhattan and obviously in Paris, as well, back to their borders? I think that’s really the question you have to ask, and the answer is, it can’t be anything good.

The eurozone crisis took a fresh turn for the worse Tuesday after ratings agency Moody's threatened to cut Germany's coveted top credit rating amid fears the bloc's difficulties could pull it apart. The shock decision to slash the outlook of Germany, Europe's top economy and paymaster, from "stable" to "negative" came as auditors arrived in debt-wracked Greece and Spain's top finance official headed to Berlin for talks. The news pushed Spain's borrowing costs above 7.5 percent -- well above the seven-percent mark that forced others into bailouts -- but European stocks rebounded slightly as positive Chinese data offset the Moody's bombshell. Moody's said its decision was based on "rising uncertainty regarding the outcome of the euro area debt crisis (and the) ... increased likelihood of Greece's exit from the euro area." Even if Greece manages to stay in the 17-member bloc, Moody's said there was "an inc...

As I’ve assessed in earlier pieces, neither the Fed, nor the IMF, nor the EFSF, nor the ECB has the firepower or the political backing to prop up Spain or the EU. This ultimately leaves the ESM, the permanent European Stability Mechanism… which technically doesn’t even exist yet (it’s supposed to be ratified by July 2012). That’s right… the bailout fund which is meant to SAVE Europe doesn’t even exist yet. And it’s not clear that it will anytime soon either… Indeed, in order for the ESM to be ratified it needs the individual EU member states that will contribute 90% of its capitalization to first ratify it on an individual basis. Here’s the list of countries that represent that 90% of capital as well as the status of their individual ratifications and the percentage of funding they are to provide. Read the full article at Zero Hedge

The situation in Europe has now reached the point that the major players have shown their hands. And they are: Germany will not put up more money unless Greece essentially passes up its fiscal sovereignty. The G20 will not give more money to Europe via the IMF unless Germany and other EU nations create a “firewall” by putting more capital into the ESM mega-fund.  The ECB has announced Greek bonds are not eligible collateral for its LTRO operations, so if banks need immediate liquidity, they need to go to national central banks ( read Germany). This is quite a turn of events. Prior to this, the ECB and Germany were seen to be working hand in hand (aside from the usual political spats) to save Europe. But between the ECB’s decision to swap out its Greek debt for new debt that won’t take a hit in the event of Greek default as well as its recent rejection of Greek debt as collateral for LTRO loans, it appears that the ECB is increasingly going to make Europe’s problems...

It was tried previously (several times) under "slightly different" circumstances, and failed. Yet when it comes to taking over a country without spilling even one drop of blood, and converting its citizens into debt slaves, Germany's Merkel may have just succeeded where so many of her predecessors failed. According to a Reuters exclusive, " Germany is pushing for Greece to relinquish control over its budget policy to European institutions [ZH: read ze Germans] as part of discussions over a second rescue package, a European source told Reuters on Friday." Reuters add: "There are internal discussions within the Euro group and proposals, one of which comes from Germany, on how to constructively treat country aid programs that are continuously off track, whether this can simply be ignored or whether we say that's enough, " the source said.' So while the great distraction that is the Charles Dallara "negotiation" with Hedge Fun...

A report from Reuters today says that the German 10-year bond auction was a disaster. The low returns offered by the bonds deterred investors. The returns offered was just 2 percent annually over 10 years. The returns were pushed to the 2 percent due to demand from investors running towards German Bonds as a shelter from the debt crisis that threatened Greece, Spain and Italy. The bond market is one of the best indicators of the state of a country's economy. With very little interest in German bonds, the market is now showing that it is starting to think twice about investing in Germany considering that Germany is now underwriting a lot of Eurozone debts. Full story from Reuters .

Rumor has it that Germany is re-introducing the Deutschemark and have already started printing the new currency.