European Bond Bloodbath, Goldman Sachs Keeps the Revolving Door Spinning 83 Times, and Iran-Israel War Coming In September?

Due to last week's European bank stress tests, bond yields for all the PIIGS keep sizzling:

Greece

Ireland

Italy

Spain

Apparently Italy's 10-year hit 6%.  This is going to cause a great deal of conflict come Thursday when European leaders will meet for another summit that will surely accomplish nothing.  How these morons keep up the dog and pony show is beyond me.  Still, as Europe continues to sink, gold has hit a brand new high of $1,600:

I guess it's this type of uncertainty that drives the price of gold Bernanke was referring to.  I have always wanted to know if Bernanke holds any gold stocks, he clearly has the power to make a fortune off them.  The New Yorker has an interesting interview with the owner of the world's largest hedge fun, Ray Dalio.  Dalio just reiterates with anyone with a brain already knows:

Dalio believes that some heavily indebted countries, including the United States, will eventually opt for printing money as a way to deal with their debts, which will lead to a collapse in their currency and in their bond markets. “There hasn’t been a case in history where they haven’t eventually printed money and devalued their currency,” he said. Other developed countries, particularly those tied to the euro and thus to the European Central Bank, don’t have the option of printing money and are destined to undergo “classic depressions,” Dalio said. The recent deal to avoid an immediate debt default by Greece didn’t alter his pessimistic view. “People concentrate on the particular thing of the moment, and they forget the larger underlying forces,” he said. “That’s what got us into the debt crisis. It’s just today, today.”

Dalio’s assessment sounded alarmingly plausible. But when one plays the global financial markets a thorough economic analysis is only the first stage of the game. At least as important is getting the timing right. I asked Dalio when all this would start to come together. “I think late 2012 or early 2013 is going to be another very difficult period,” he said.

And reports like these only add fuel to the banker-government incestual fire:

The Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group has made those logs--published by five separate federal agencies--available in one location in and easy-to-search format, updated to include the most current information on contacts between officials and private interests seeking to influence federal regulators. 

Agency officials reported 83 meetings with Goldman Sachs executives across numerous agencies. In June alone, government agencies reported 21 meetings with the firm--or almost one meeting for every workday that month. And on one day, June 14, Goldman Sachs representatives were present at four separate meetings with officials from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to discuss various aspects of swap trading rules and reporting.

Overall, government officials have reported more than 2,100 meetings with outside parties since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act last year. Other institutions showing up at the top of the most frequent visits list include JP Morgan Chase, with 73 meetings, Morgan Stanley, with 58 meetings, and Bank of America, with 55 meetings.

Yet those on the left still think all those angels they voted into Congress don't fall under the spell of easy money.  Like always, Ron Paul nails it:

We are headed for rough economic times either way, but the longer we put it off, the greater the pain will be when the system implodes.  We need to stop adding more programs and entitlements to the problem.  We need to stop expensive bombing campaigns against people on the other side of the globe and bring our troops home.  We need to stop allowing secretive banking cartels to endlessly enslave us through monetary policy trickery.  And we need to drastically rethink government's role in our lives so we can get it out of the way and get back to work.

Yesterday Zerohedge broke a very interesting article that seems to be causing a stir across the blogosphere.  Even Nourial Roubini tweeted about it.  The subject?  The possible brewing of WWIII

As the most recently updated naval map from Stratfor demonstrates, the CVN 77 G.H.W. Bush has just entered the Persian Gulf, the first time a US aircraft carrier has passed through the Straits of Hormuz in months. What is also notable is that the LHD 5 Bataan amphibious warfare ship has just weighed anchor right next to Libya: this is odd since the coast of Tripoli had been left unattended for many weeks by US attack ships. And topping it all off is that a third aircraft carrier, the CVN 73, is sailing west from the South China seas, potentially with a target next to CVN 76 Ronald Reagan which is the second carrier in the Straits of Hormuz area. Three carriers in proximity to Iran would be extremely troubling.

Yeah yeah, U.S. warships in the Middle East, what's new?  Al Jazeera has it:

A longtime CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East is predicting that Israel will bomb Iran in the fall, dragging the United States into another major war and endangering US military and civilian personnel (and other interests) throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Earlier this week, Robert Baer appeared on the provocative KPFK Los Angeles show Background Briefing, hosted by Ian Masters. It was there that he predicted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.

He obviously won't name many of his sources in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere, but the few he has named are all Israeli security figures who have publically warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.

There is almost "near certainty" that Netanyahu is "planning an attack [on Iran] ... and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he's also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict", Baer explained.

People make predictions like this all the time, but the fact that Nouriel Roubini tweeted about it gives it more weight.  Remember, Roubini predicted the financial crisis (an incredible feat for a Keynesian), Greece's inevitable default, and, most importantly, the setting up of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Manhattan.  The man has more ties to the government than the head of an organized crime syndicate.  Probably even more than Goldman Sachs.  If Netanyahu does actually attack Iran in September, it is a virtual guarantee that we will back him, no question.  The real question is how much longer Americans will put up with wars that have nothing to do with us.