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Friday 01.20.2012

China's banks urge man on the street to invest in gold
With gold consumption in China expected to overtake that of India in the next few years, some of the country's leading banks are already reaping the benefits as customers flock to new gold products.
Author: By Rujun Shen - Mineweb.com
SINGAPORE (REUTERS) - For Chinese shipping executive Ping Bo buying gold is the best way to protect his family's wealth and give his 10-year-old son a headstart into adulthood.
"For my son, the idea is that he will get a nice stash of gold that he can cash out when he turns 21 or when he gets married," said Ping, one of over 2 million people that have opened accounts in the past two years to accumulate gold at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).

Physical gold purchases increase
LONDON (Commodity Online): Demand for physical Goldhas been strong across the board this week. Demand from India has been solid despite the recent increase in gold import duties, said UBS in a research note.
"Indeed, demand from India yesterday (Wednesday) was the strongest we’ve seen this year and again is very decent so far today (Thursday)," UBS added.
Part of it could be stock drawdowns as the old tax rate applies on current supplies, but gold priced in rupees fell 2% on Wednesday, they noted.

How gold to quickly triple in price?
interview with John Embry - CommodityOnline.com
With Gold holding on to gains above the $1,650 level, in this exclusive interview with John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management, he sees gold headed from here. Embry informed that gold was very close a major breakaway move to the upside. Here is what Embry had to say about the situation: "I’ve been of the mind for a considerable period of time that the gold price really wouldn’t accelerate to the upside until such time as the physical market finally overwhelmed the paper market. But I think we’re reaching the stage now where there is mounting buying of physical because people are starting to realize the paper price is fraudulent."

The Intrinsic Value of the Dollar and Gold
Michael Pento - 321Gold.com
If you ask most investors what is the main driver for the price of gold they are likely to tell you that it’s the direction of the U.S. dollar. Therefore, the only due diligence most investors perform is a perfunctory glance at the Dollar Index (DXY). While it is true that the purchasing power of the dollar is a key metric to judge the direction of gold prices, the DXY will only tell you what the dollar is doing against a basket of 6 other flawed fiat currencies.

How will Gold and Silver perform in 2012?
By Jordan Roy-Byrne - CommodityOnline.com
Lately we've been writing about the precious metals stocks. In particular we believe the equities have made a multi-year bottom and look ready for a solid 2012 and 2013. Part of the reason is the action in the metals (Gold & Silver) suggests an important bottom is in place and a rebound is underway.
Based on our work, we anticipate a slow but gradual rebound in both metals. The current bottom in Gold bears similarities to what we saw in 2006. First we show the bottom in 2006. Note the previous bull flag (blue), the double bottom pattern and the final low occurring at the 300-day moving average. Going forward, Gold rallied for five months and recovered over 75% of the losses.

Key Pillars of Gold Bull Market Intact
By: Adrian Ash - MarketOracle.co.uk
WHOLESALE PRICES to buy gold and silver with Dollars both eased back after touching new 5-week highs in London, rising 1.3% and 3.0% respectively for the week-so-far as the US currency fell further from this week's 17-month high to the Euro.
Global equities rose for the fourth day running, with shares in Bank of America adding 6.1% in pre-market US trade after it reported better-than-forecast quarterly earnings.

Eye on U.S. Dollar vs Commodity Index
By: Mike Paulenoff - MarketOracle.co.uk
One chart set-up that we need to watch closely in the coming hours and days is the comparison of the dollar and commodity indexes, as their directional price implications could have a major impact on a cross-section of markets.
Let's notice that the recent up-leg in the Dollar Index (DXY), which peaked at 81.78 on Jan 13, ended amidst a series of daily RSI momentum divergences that warn us that the U.S. Dollar could be in the early stages of a significant period of weakness. A sustained break of 79.50 will trigger initial signals that such a move is unfolding, which should have a positive impact on the commodity index.

The World Continues Preparations
for the End of the Global Dollar-Based Ecosystem
BY DAN COLLINS - FinancialSense.com
As the Western world enjoyed their Christmas holidays, news broke in Asia of something that was reported in the media but received very little attention.
History may treat this event as something all together of much larger importance than is currently understood. Future Americans will ask why the U.S government could not see the writing on the wall? That is, tools are being put in place that will end the global dollar-based ecosystem.

How Deflationary Forces Will Be Turned into Inflation
Mises Daily: by Thorsten Polleit
The ongoing financial and economic crisis has not only stoked fears that it will end in inflation — as central banks will print up ever-greater amounts of money — but it has also given rise to a diametrically opposed concern: namely, that of deflation.
For instance, in December 2011 Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned that the world might risk sliding into a 1930s-style slump, such as the Great Depression.

The IMF is no longer serving its purpose
To save the eurozone, the International Monetary Fund needs to dispense tough love, not endless bail-outs.
By Jeremy Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
If the International Monetary Fund did not exist, it would surely have to be invented. Its medicine is often harsh and frequently criticised, but as lender of last resort to countries that temporarily find themselves shut out of financial markets, its purpose is noble and necessary.
In no other field has international co-operation worked as successfully in addressing global problems as it has through the offices of the IMF. The world would undoubtedly be a more chaotic place without it. Just lately, however, its credibility has been endangered as rarely before. Something has gone very badly wrong, and the international consensus on which the organisation is based is fracturing.

Greek debt talks remain elusive
By Ben Rooney @CNNMoneyMarkets
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A deal on restructuring Greek debt remained elusive on Thursday, as the second day of talks with the nation's private sector creditors without an agreement.
Negotiations with Institute of International Finance, which represents the private sector investors who own Greek government bonds, will resume Friday.
The talks in Athens hinge on a plan that that cuts the value of Greek government bonds in half.

IMF slashes global forecast on eurozone crisis,
with drastic falls in Italy and Spain
The International Monetary Fund has slashed its global growth forecast for this year and exhorted the European Central Bank to boost liquidity to stave off a deeper eurozone crisis.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Louise Armitstead - Telegraph.co.uk
"The global recovery is threatened by the growing tensions in the euro area," the Fund said, according to a leaked draft of its World Economic Outlook which is due to be published next week.
Global GDP growth is to be cut from 4pc to 3.3pc, with drastic revisions for an arc of countries in Southern Europe.
Italy's economy will contract by 2.2pc and Spain's by 1.7pc as fiscal austerity measures bite harder and banks curtail lending, playing havoc with debt dynamics.

ECB Says Banks’ Overnight Deposits Plunged From Record High
By Gabi Thesing - Bloomberg.com
The European Central Bank said overnight deposits from financial institutions dropped from a record high at the start of a new reserve maintenance period.
Euro-area banks parked 395.3 billion euros ($508.4 billion) with the Frankfurt-based ECB yesterday, down from 528.2 billion euros a day earlier, which was the most since the euro was introduced in 1999.

Marc Faber - Fox Business News - 17 January 2012

Future EU bail-outs only for treaty signatories,
new draft says
BY VALENTINA POP - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - The latest version of the treaty on EU fiscal discipline says countries cannot get bail-outs unless they sign and apply the pact. It also makes concessions to non-euro countries who want to take part in eurozone summits.
Giving in to a German demand on the issue, the text - seen by EUobserver - says: "Granting of assistance in the framework of new programmes under the European Stability Mechanism [ESM] will be conditional, as of 1 March 2013, on the ratification of this treaty by the contracting party concerned and as soon as the transposition period ... has expired, on compliance with the requirements of this article."

Portugal to need "debt haircut"
as economy tips into Grecian downward spiral
Portugal's borrowing costs have jumped to record highs and are tracking the moves seen in the culminating phase of Greece's debt crisis, dashing hopes that the country will be able to stave off contagion by embracing drastic austerity.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Yields on Portugal's 10-year bonds climbed to 14.39pc on Thursday. Credit default swaps measuring bond risk have reached 1270 points, pricing a two-thirds chance of default over the next five years.
While some of the latest damage reflects forced selling of Portuguese debt after Standard & Poor's cut the country's credit rating to junk status last Friday, there are deeper worries that sharp fiscal cuts by the free-market government of Pedro Passos Coelho may prove self-defeating.

EU treaty draft:
Bailouts only offered to countries that ratify budget pact
Bailouts will only be offered to European governments that ratify a new budget pact aimed at avoiding a repeat of the eurozone debt crisis, according to a new draft of the treaty.
By Telegraph staff and agencies
"The granting of assistance in the framework of new programmes under the European Stability Mechanism [ESM] will be conditional, as of March 1, 2013, on the ratification of this treaty," according to the draft, seen 11 days before an EU summit due to approve the document.
Negotiators working on a pact to be signed by 26 of the 27 European Union states - with Britain remaining odd man out - toughened up the treaty in many respects ahead of planned talks between finance ministers from all 27 states, including Britain, late on Monday in Brussels.

Iranian oil, gold and banks on EU hitlist
BY ANDREW RETTMAN - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - An oil embargo from 1 July, a partial ban on the central bank and a prohibition on trade in gold and gems are among the latest EU ideas on how to stop Iran building nuclear bombs.
Talks in Brussels on details are expected to go on until Friday (20 January) before EU foreign ministers unveil the sanctions on Monday.

In MF Global, JPMorgan again at center of a financial failure
By Carrick Mollenkamp, Lauren Tara LaCapra and Matthew Goldstein
(Reuters) - In late October, as MF Global Holdings Ltd teetered toward bankruptcy, Jon Corzine phoned his close-knit circle of Wall Street friends for help.
His firm, facing demands from customers and other firms for cash, needed to sell billions of dollars in securities to raise the money. As the week progressed, MF Global executives came to believe that JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of MF Global's primary bankers and a middleman moving that cash, was dragging its feet in forwarding the funds.

Repairing the Global Plumbing
Mohamed A. El-Erian - Project-Syndicate.org
NEWPORT BEACH – More than three years after the global financial crisis, the world still has a nasty plumbing problem. Credit pipes remain clogged, and only central banks are working to clear them. But their ability to do so is waning, posing yet another set of risks for Western economies blocked by too little growth, too much unemployment, deepening inequality, and debt in all the wrong places. Fortunately, it is not too late to build broader pipes that compliment and replace the damaged infrastructure.

Deutsche Analyst Sounded Alarm
When Asked to Alter Numbers
by Carrick Mollenkamp - ProPublica.org
At a time when mortgage-backed securities were imploding and customers were fleeing the market, a junior analyst at Deutsche Bank AG protested when he was asked to alter the numbers in a spreadsheet to make a Deutsche security look less risky to ratings agencies, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The analyst, this person said, was asked by a mid-level Deutsche executive in late 2007 to make it appear that the investment would produce more cash than the bank actually expected at certain time points.

Keiser Report: Scam On Epic Scale (E238)
We discuss 419 scams and Tim Geithner’s gimp. In the second half of the show, Max talks tofinancial blogger and semi-retired Wall Street executive Warren E. Pollock about MF Global, wealth confiscation and bank holidays.

MF Global Commodity Customers
Must Be Paid First, CFTC Says
By Linda Sandler
Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- MF Global Inc. commodity customers must be paid before all other claimants, including the bankrupt parent company, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Court papers by the trustee for MF Global Holdings Ltd., Louis Freeh, contain "errors and misstatements of law" in arguing that commodity laws, which require that customers be "made whole" first, don't apply to brokerage liquidations, the regulator said in a court filing today. Freeh, representing the parent company creditors, has said money due to them shouldn’t be "diverted" to customers.

Is trading dead?
By Maureen Farrell @CNNMoneyMarkets
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's been eerily quiet on stock trading desks around Wall Street and across the United States. In fact, it's been the slowest and lowest volume start to the year since 2007.
During the first 10 trading days of 2012, roughly 6.8 billion shares a day changed hands in the United States, down from 8 billion in 2011 and 8.3 billion in 2010, according to the New York Stock Exchange. In 2007, trading volumes dropped as low as 5.8 billion.

No way to prevent brokers from stealing
No silver bullet to avert another MF Global: regulator
By Ann Saphir
(Reuters) - Increased surveillance cannot guarantee customers will never again lose money in a broker insolvency, though the collapse of MF Global Holdings may lead futures exchanges to conduct more spot checks, a top U.S. regulator said on Thursday.
The admission by National Futures Association chief Dan Roth, who is organizing an industry response to the broker's failure aimed at rebuilding confidence in futures trading, suggests scars from the implosion may be difficult to erase.

Congress’s Six-Figure Benefits
Add to $674 Billion Pension Gap
By Charles R. Babcock and Frank Bass - Bloomberg.com
Almost 15,000 federal retirees, including former leaders of Congress, a university president and a banker, are receiving six-figure pensions from a system that faces a $674.2 billion shortfall.
About one of every 125 retired federal civilian workers collects more than $100,000 in benefits annually. They include physicians, postal workers and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, according to data obtained by Bloomberg News under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The Substitution of Debt for Productivity
BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH - FinancialSense.com
You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long
The "big story" of the U.S. economy is that we have substituted expansion of debt for meaningful increases in productivity.
For the past 30 years, the U.S. economy has become increasingly dependent on explosive debt expansion for its "growth" rather than on meaningful rises in meaningful productivity. Growth is in quotes because growth based on secular increases in productivity--that is, the same investment of labor and capital produces goods and services of greater value--is qualitatively different from "growth" based on a pyramiding of debt. Real growth based on rising productivity is sustainable, "growth" based on ever-greater expansions of debt is not.

South Carolina retirees are changing the discussion
Republican presidential candidates are having to address the older population's economic concerns more than religious conservatives' issues.
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Mount Pleasant, S.C.— They amble in every morning to the back table, shake hands and sit beneath the sign saying "B.S. Community table," which, depending on whom you ask, either stands for Bible study or another kind of B.S.
This morning, the nine or so people at the diner are talking politics as they lean over cheese-covered grits, thick omelets and triangles of toast covered in butter.

Downward Mobility is Crushing the American Dream
BY DAVID ZEILER, Associate Editor, Money Morning
Forget about getting ahead. For many in the middle class these days it's more about not sliding backwards.
It's called downward mobility and it's crushing the American Dream.
According to a study conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts, nearly one out of three U.S. citizens born into middle class households in the 1960s have lost their economic status.
And because the study used data from 2004 to 2006 - before the Great Recession - the numbers today could be even worse.

The Middle Class Disappears, Rise of the Praetorian Class
By: Casey Research - MarketOracle.co.uk
Pete Kofod writes: Much attention has been paid to the "disappearing middle class" and the "vanishing American Dream." While the observations are largely accurate, they are also misleading. The traditional three-tier model of the upper, middle and lower class broadly categorizes people according to income and net worth. One significant problem with this model is that membership in any particular class is very much in the eye of the beholder. One man’s "scraping by" is another man’s "opulent living." This subjective and arbitrary grouping and boundary assessment inevitably gives rise to the simmering class warfare that is starting to rear its ugly head in many Western countries. Such categorization is therefore meaningless at best, if not outright deceptive as it conflates a variety of economic actors.

Lawler: Housing Forecast for 2012
From economist Tom Lawler - CalculatedRisk.com
At the beginning of 2011, the "consensus" forecast for total housing starts was in the 690,000 to 700,000 range, with most analysts looking for an increase in both Single Family (SF) and Multifamily (MF) starts. Early last year one well-respected analysts who regularly surveys SF builders said that on average builders planned to increase SF starts by 15-20% in 2011. As I noted at the time, however, such an increase seemed highly unlikely given new and existing inventories, distressed sales, and pricing relative to where builders were willing to sell homes. It turned out, of course, that new home sales in the early months of last year were "quite disappointing" in aggregate, and builders in aggregate quickly changed their "plans."

One million homeowners may get mortgage writedowns: U.S
By Margaret Chadbourn and Aruna Viswanatha
(Reuters) - About one million American homeowners would get writedowns in the size of their mortgages under a proposed deal with banks over shady foreclosure practices, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said on Wednesday.
The deal, which could be struck within weeks, would mark the largest cut in the mortgage load since the start of the credit crisis.

Bank of America Says
Loan Repurchase Claims Rise to Record $14.3 Billion
By Andrew Frye and Hugh Son - Bloomberg.com
Bank of America Corp., the second- biggest U.S. lender by assets, said unresolved demands from investors who accuse the company of selling defective mortgages rose to a record.
Outstanding claims jumped 22 percent in three months to $14.3 billion as of Dec. 31, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said today in apresentation. The increase was fueled by disputes with Fannie Mae and private investors who are submitting demands for compensation on the grounds that they were misled about the quality of mortgage securities.

The Many Benefits of Creating a Single Food Safety Agency
According to the latest rumors, the Office of Management and Budget wants to merge some agencies, including the FDA and the USDA. -- By Marion Nestle - TheAtlantic.com
According to rumors passed along by Dan Flynn at Food Safety News via the Hagstrom Report (an agricultural subscription news service costing $999 a year), the Office of Management and Budget wants to merge federal agencies, among them the food safety components of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Rumors are that the Obama administration wants to do this to make "food safety independent of the USDA, which primarily exists to market and promote American farm products."

Overweight people can't fly, airlines say
Pravda.ru
As many as 78 million people suffer from excessive weight in the United States of America. In other words, it goes about a third of the US population. The majority of obese individuals in the country are women. Most of those people are aged 20 and older. The share of obese women is larger than that of men - 40.6 vs. 37.5 million respectively. As for children and teenagers, the proportion is different: 5.5 million obese girls and 7 million obese boys, Amitel reports.
Medical specialists say that in comparison with the recent decades of the past century, the growth of the number of obese individuals had dropped during the recent years. As for those aged 60 and older, they suffer from obesity more frequently than younger people, Baltinfo reports.

Kodak Files for Bankruptcy as Digital Era Spells End to Film
By Dawn McCarty and Beth Jinks - Bloomberg.com
Eastman Kodak Co. (EK), the photography pioneer that introduced the Brownie Camera more than a century ago, filed for bankruptcy after consumers embraced digital cameras, a technology Kodak invented and failed to commercialize.
The Rochester, New York-based company, which traces its roots to 1880, listed assets of $5.1 billion and debt of $6.8 billion in Chapter 11 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Megaupload.com Charged
in $175 Million U.S. Criminal Copyright Conspiracy
By Tom Schoenberg - Bloomberg.com
Megaupload.com, a file-sharing website, was shut down as part of an alleged $175 million copyright infringement conspiracy, triggering an online protest that disrupted websites of the U.S. Justice Departmentand movie and music trade groups.
Charges against seven individuals, Megaupload Ltd. and Vestor Ltd. were unsealed today in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, after four of the alleged conspirators were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand. Three suspects remain at large, according to the Justice Department.

Secretary Clinton won't testify on Keystone pipeline rejection
By Andrew Restuccia - TheHill.com
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not testify next week at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
Instead, Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environment and scientific affairs, will testify at the hearing, according to the committee.
Jones headed up the State Department’s review of the pipeline, which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

The 10 Fastest-Growing
(and Fastest-Declining) Cities in the World
A new survey from the Brookings Institution ranks the world's 200 largest metropolitan economies -- which account for half of global GDP -- from 1-200. And the winners are ...
By Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
Shanghai is the fastest-growing city in the world, according to MetroMonitor, a quarterly analysis from the Brookings Institution that compares the 200 most prosperous metros by income and job growth. The victims of the euro zone crisis dominate the end of the list. Athens, Lisbon, and Dublin, the capitals of the three most endangered nations in Europe's sovereign debt crisis, made up the bottom three.
Here are the ten fastest-growing cities (and the ten least dynamic cities) studied by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

The Nine American Cities Nearly Destroyed by the Recession
247WallSt.com
The nation continues to be mired in an anemic, jobless recovery. And according to a report commissioned by the United States Conference of Mayors, and prepared by IHS Global Insight, many regions in the country still continue to lose jobs. Of the 363 U.S. metropolitan regions reviewed by IHS, only 61 will fully recover all the jobs that were lost during the recession by the end of this year. The rest will recover far fewer — the average city will only recover roughly 40% of jobs lost from peak employment.

The US-GCC fatal attraction
By Pepe Escobar - ATimes.com
There's no way to understand the larger-than-life United States-Iran psychodrama, the Western push for regime change in both Syria and Iran, and the trials and tribulations of the Arab Spring(s) - now mired in perpetual winter - without a close look at the fatal attraction between Washington and the GCC. [1]
GCC stands for Gulf Cooperation Council, the club of six wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - UAE), founded in 1981 and which in no time configured as the prime strategic US backyard for the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, for the long-drawn battle in the New Great Game in Eurasia, and also as the headquarters for "containing" Iran.

Money Insider: US Will See Violent Civil Unrest In 2012
Armed, irritated and vocal majority will react to worsening economic decline
By Paul Joseph Watson - Infowars.com
Money insider Charles Ortel has warned that a worsening economic picture across the globe will see civil unrest hit the streets of America, not on behalf of leftist OWS types, but by an armed, "irascible and vocal Majority".
Ortel, a managing partner with Newport Value Partners, LLC in New York City, predicts that a failure of the so-called financial recovery will precipitate "A painful re-calibration of economic strength and geo-political standing during 2012 in the midst of widespread civil insurrection and cross-border war."

Alex Jones:
Military Industrial Complex has declared war on the US
Next month the Federal Aviation Administration will be proposing new rules to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to have permission to use predator drones on American citizens.
In the past decade the Pentagon’s unmanned predator drones went from 50 to 7,000. Many fear the use of these drones on Americans are infringing on their civil liberties. Alex Jones, radio show host, joins us to look deeper into why predator drones are flying domestically.

NATO Drilling For Nuclear Attack On Iran and Syria?
By Tim Earl of Stirling, Contributing Writer - ActivistPost.com
Yesterday, I carried a story on a crash between a French Air Force Mirage and a Royal Saudi Air Force F-15. The story confirmed that the Saudi pilot and the two French pilots were safe. Little additional information was available. Today, I am able to report that the two-seat Mirage was in fact either a French Air Force Mirage 2000-D or a 2000-N. Both aircraft, in their later variants are virtually identical and are used for the long-range nuclear strike role by the French Air Force.

Russia: EU and US want war with Syria
BY ANDREW RETTMAN AND NIKOLAJ NIELSEN - EUObserver.com
BRUSSELS - Russia has accused Nato countries of trying to start a war with Syria and foment unrest in Iran - claims backed up by some Western security analysts.
Its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov at a press briefing in Moscow on Wednesday (18 January) said: "Our partners in the West are in fact discussing a no-fly zone ... There are other ideas being realised, including humanitarian convoys, in the hope they could provoke a response from [Syrian] government forces."

USS Stennis Supposedly Leaves Straits Of Hormuz,
Replaced By USS Lincoln With USS Vinson
Staying Put, But Not Just Yet
Submitted by Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge.com
For those following the latest naval developments in the general Arabian Sea area and the Straits of Hormuz in particular, the latest news is that the duo of Aircraft carriers on location, as was reported last week, the USS Stennis and USS Vinson, has became a trio, with the arrival of the USS Lincoln, however, if only briefly. According to the US Navy's website, CVN 74 Stennis has left the 5th Fleet, and is now back in the 7th fleet, on its way home. Yet this is somewhat contradictory with the following picture posted on the facebook profile of one CVN 72 Abraham Lincoln (yes, faceook), which quite vividly shows CVN 74 - the same Stennis - and CVN 72, Lincoln, side by side, at least as of this morning. As such, absent further photographic evidence to the contrary, it may be the case that while the Stennis is planned to be on its way back, but in reality is still in the vicinity. Which begs the question: why three aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, and for how long?

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