Rotten Whole Foods, Chinese Grab Gold, Shanghai Woes

Rotten Whole Foods, Chinese Grab Gold, Shanghai Woes

Whole Foods CEOs Admit to Overcharging Customers

“Straight up, we made some mistakes and we want to own that,” Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb said in a two-minute video apology alongside John Mackey, the chain’s co-founder. Whole Foods came under fire last week after a New York City investigation revealed that several stores were mislabeling packaged foods and selling them for more than they were worth.

City inspectors claimed it was the “worst case of overcharging” that they had ever seen, according to the Daily News. In the apology video, Robb and Mackey said the overcharges were unintentional and that they mainly occur with packaged fresh foods like sandwiches and juices. “It’s understandable sometimes that mistakes are made,” Robb said. “They are inadvertent. They do happen because of its a hands-on approach to bringing you fresh food.”

The company is taking three steps to fix the problem, the executives said.

First, Whole Foods is going to retrain employees in New York stores and around the country. Full Story

Bogus apologies; the guys in command knew what was going on,  more importantly, they are the ones that instructed employees to embark on this path of deceit.  Whole paycheck  (a.k.a. whole foods) should be fined to the tune of billions. Half the stuff they sell is not organic, and a lot of the natural stuff they do sell has undesirable ingredients in them rendering them useless and more harmful than the non-organic products on sale.  Trader Joes and the small local organic store are far better places to go. Both these CEO’s should be fired and strung to dry by their toes, but instead, they will be given a slap on the wrist and allowed to continue their reign of plunder and deceit.


Shanghai Gold Exchange Withdrawals Point to Strong Chinese Demand

China is the number one gold consumer. That’s why it’s vital for gold investors to track the demand in China. In this part of the series, we’ll learn about how withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange are progressing. This indicator points toward the underlying gold demand in the country. Chinese (FXI), gold withdrawals from the SGE (Shanghai Gold Exchange), are the best indicator available of China’s demand for physical gold. All of the mined and imported gold in China can only sell through the SGE. By tracking the data, investors can get a good idea of the short-term direction of Chinese demand.

Withdrawals are strong

In the week ended June 19, a total of 54.2 tons of gold was withdrawn from the SGE. Year-to-date, withdrawals are a hefty 1,115.8 tons—up a whopping 21.3% from the same period last year. Now that the peak festive season is over, Chinese gold withdrawals can’t be compared to the levels reached in January or February. But for the time of year, they’re very strong. Although this shows continued strong demand for physical gold in China, investors need to consider that the gold withdrawals could come from any of three sources:

Historically, China’s and India’s physical-gold buying have boosted gold prices. Strong withdrawals from the SGE should support gold prices (GLD). This also helps gold stocks including Agnico-Eagle Mines (AEM), AngloGold Ashanti (AU), and Royal Gold (RGLD). It also affects the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX). Agnico Eagle Mines and AngloGold Ashanti form 9.8% of GDX’s holdings.Precious metals–backed ETFs are large holders of physical bullion. So it’s important to track their buying and selling behavior. In the next part of this series, we’ll discuss precious metals ETFs and their holdings. Full Story

Well, nothing to really add here is there; you should not be shocked by this development as we have been stating all along that the Gold bull is not dead. The bull is just taking a well-deserved rest. He is partying, drinking and have a good time, for he will have to run like hell in the not too distant future.  Our long-term targets remain unchanged. Minimum upside target is $2500, and the higher-end  target falls in the $5000 plus ranges.  

 

To save its stock markets, China is putting its whole financial system at risk

“We must deepen economic system reform by centering on the decisive role of the market in allocating resources….” — President Xi Jinping, “The Decision” of the Third Plenum, Nov. 2013

That was the plan, anyway. Not anymore. In recent days, the Chinese government unfurled a series of measures to stop its stock markets’ free-fall the scale of which has never before been seen. It is essentially giving investors a “Xi Jinping put,” as Joyce Poon of Gavekal Dragonomics calls it (referring to Mario Draghi’s European Central Bank put) in a note today—meaning, the government is assuring investors it will do what it has to to keep the market aloft. The measures stanched the bleeding a bit today (July 6); Shanghai Composite closed up 2.4%. However, much more is at stake than hitting numbers. Not only does the Xi Jinping put threaten to scuttle critical financial reforms; it also leaves China—and untold millions of its residents—in a bigger financial mess than ever. Full Story

Honestly, this patsy (reporter) fails to mention that the USA has done, and is still doing the same thing on a much larger scale.  Who do you think the Chinese learnt this trick from? 90% of reporters today should be referred to as media concubines as they have been bought and paid for in advance. The U.S. stoked the greatest bubble in history; the only difference with China is that instead of waiting for 5 years, their markets did the same thing in a matter of months………  The bubble in the US is going to get a lot bigger because the masses believe that money does indeed come from trees and not from sweat and labour. 

On a separate note, the massive plunge is nothing but the masters of misinformation spreading fear around so that they can pick up shares at even better price. They control the press and the news system, and when you control that you control everything for most people are nothing but machines waiting to be told what to do, how  to think and how to act. From a long-term perspective we don’t see anything to worry in terms of how strongly the Chinese markets are pulling back. We warned everyone that the greedy bulls would be skinned alive as they jumped in right at the top. Watch the greedy bears get burnt alive as they continue to open up new shorts towards the bottom instead of bailing out. History repeats itself; fools always lose; good Samaritans always end up in the grave before their time, and stupidity continues to trend upwards.  

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1 comment

George V
January 15, 2017

Biggest rip off I have ever seen!