This week’s police reports are a rather odd collection, mostly bereft of alcohol related incidents for some unknown reason. For months now, it’s been unusually warm around here and the locals have been acting (and drinking) like it was summer time, but, last week saw fee late-night antics finding their way onto the police blotter, though there seems to have been a marked increase in crazy people dialing 911 such as the first highlighted item below.

• Diesel fumes were getting into a resident of 5th Avenue’s home and making them sick because their neighbor lets their vehicle run for 30 minutes when they start their car.
• Text messages a man thought were being sent to a girl were actually going to a girl’s boyfriend. The boyfriend threatened the man, leading him to call dispatch.
• Around 8 p.m., a woman caller was ranting about illegal technologies, saying she was “going for the death penalty.”
• A hand grenade was found by a man cleaning out his mother-in-law’s belongings.
• A woman driving a gray truck sped through a school zone on South Eighth Avenue while cussing and flipping off a woman that told her to slow down.
• About 20 to 25 ducks were holding up traffic on West College Street near South 23rd Avenue around 3:30 p.m.
• A dispatcher heard a man saying, “If I have to tell you again you are getting smacked on your butt,” over the sound of phone buttons being pushed. The man told the dispatcher he was changing a diaper, and he has 2-year-old and 8-week-old children and was “sleep-deprived.”
• Someone brought a child in for a discussion about hitting teachers.
• A drunken man called dispatch to complain about Bozeman Deaconess Hospital hanging up on him.
• Dispatch fielded a call from a father worried about his daughter possibly eating too many Flintstone vitamins.
• A concerned county resident called about several cats, a rabbit and birds being kept in a Churchill Road residence along with young children.
• At 1 p.m. a member of Girl Scouts wanted to know if she could get a tour of the police station.
• A man in his late 30s was taking pictures of all the houses in a Durango Lane neighborhood. When confronted, he claimed to work with the tax department.
• Despite their downstairs neighbor pounding on the ceiling with a stick, residents of an apartment on Main Street would not turn the volume of their television down at 11:45 p.m.
• Deputies checked on a pedestrian that was walking along the interstate at 2 a.m.
• Deputies took a report of a stolen vehicle. It was determined that the man who reported the theft had been driving the vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. The man had wrecked the vehicle and fled the scene of the accident. He was arrested for driving under the influence and reckless driving.
• A caller reported a spray-painted message on the window of a West Lamme Street apartment building that read: “My boyfriend is beating me up.” Police responded to the apartment and completed a search at 4:10 p.m. that yielded no arrests.
• Someone took a bag of garbage from a Flathead Avenue home.

New boss, same as the old boss … and the ones before that.

Maybe we’ll get a good third party candidate this year…

Utah became the first state to introduce its own alternative currency when Governor Gary Herbert signed a bill into law last March that recognized gold and silver coins issued by the U.S. Mint as an acceptable form of payment. Under the law, the coins — which include American Gold and Silver Eagles — are treated the same as U.S. dollars for tax purposes, eliminating capital gains taxes.

Since the face value of some U.S.-minted gold and silver coins — like the one-ounce, $50 American Gold Eagle coin — is so much less than the metal value (one ounce of gold is now worth more than $1,700), the new law allows the coins to be exchanged at their market value, based on weight and fineness.

“A Utah citizen, for example, could contract with another to sell his car for 10 one-ounce gold coins (approximately $17,000), or an independent contractor could arrange to be compensated in gold coins,” said Rich Danker, a project director at the American Principles Project, a conservative public policy group in Washington, D.C.
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However, most people aren’t going to walk around with such valuable coins in their pockets, said Vieira. Plus, calculating the value of the coins — especially if they come from different parts of the globe and are of different sizes and shapes — will get tricky. It’s more likely that the states will create electronic depositories and accounts for the coins to make transactions easier, when and if the initial bills are passed, he said.

Utah Gold & Silver Depository is already developing a system where customers could use debit cards linked to their gold holdings. When customers swipe their debit cards to make transactions, physical gold and silver coins would be transferred between accounts in privately-owned depositories (or vaults) based on the market value of the metals.

Of course, the dismal set thinks this idea is nuts, Vanderbilt economics professor David Parsley noting that it’s a “terrible” idea and that proponents of sound money may actually want to “destroy the country”. Yes, economists remain largely out-of-touch with reality…

There is a widening gulf in thinking about money these days and that theme is also clear in Floyd Norris’ New York Times offering In a Focus on Gold, History Repeats Itself.

This data release included benchmark revisions for prior data, the net result being an upward revision of more than 250,000 to nonfarm payrolls in recent years. Payrolls for 2011 alone were revised upward by 180,000, from a gain of 1.64 million to 1.82 million.

The unemployment rate has now fallen 0.8 percentage points since August as the number of jobless fell from 13.1 million in December to 12.8 million in January and the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 63.7 percent.

The broader U-6 measure of underemployment, include those who have given up looking for a job or have settled for part time work, fell from 15.2 percent to 15.1 percent.

Job growth was seen in all major private sector categories except for information and financial activities. Professional and technical services added 30,300 positions and there were 20,100 new temporary jobs, accounting for the bulk on the 70,000 increase for professional and business services.

Manufacturing payrolls rose by 50,000, largely due to hiring in metal products and machinery, while an increase of 44,000 in the leisure and hospitality sector was driven by a net gain of 32,800 workers at food service and drinking establishments.

Health care added its usual 30,000+ new jobs and overall government payrolls declined by 14,000, due largely to net job reduction of 11,000 at the local government level.

MARKETS/INVESTING
Oil hovers below $97 ahead of key US jobs report – AP
Gold holds near 11-week high ahead of U.S. data – Reuters
Dividend Stocks Lose Favor As Investors Seek More Risk – CNBC
Wary OPEC Highlights Dangers of Shale Revolution – WSJ
Peter Orszag Destroys The Peak Oil Myth – Decline of the Empire
Investors worry where to put cash as banks wobble – Reuters
Optimism rules among commodities traders – Globe & Mail
Global Gold Production: How Sustainable a Rebound? – Gregor
Gold capitalises on low interest rate environment – Mineweb
Gold’s rally will soon come to an end – MarketWatch

ECONOMY/WORLD/HOUSING/BANKING
Employment gains aren’t attracting believers yet – McClatchy
Winter seasonality, employment report preview – FT Alphaville
Why Most U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Are Gone Forever – Fiscal Times
What Europe might look like without the Eurozone and EU – voxeu
Europe’s “Great Deleveraging” Has Only Just Begun – Zero Hedge
Swiss housing market inching towards bubble – Reuters
Vegas default notices down substantially after new law – Housing Wire
Analyst: Obama housing plans will not help – O.C. Register
Own Vs. Rent Riles Government Housing Policy – CNBC
Will the great interest rate gamble pay off? – Telegraph
Bernanke to Savers: We don’t owe you a living – A Dash of Insight
Fed still divided as Fisher sees no need for QE3 – Reuters

It’s kind of amazing that, nearly four years after the financial crisis, Fed economists still think that interest rate policy during the housing bubble mania had little or nothing to do with its formation or subsequent bust.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t heard from Mr. Romney yet,” joked Grant when I called on him in his offices down on Wall Street. “I’m sitting by the phone, I’m ready.”

He may have to wait some time. Romney, a conventional Wall Street figure, is unlikely to tap him anytime soon.
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He is best known these days — to Gingrich and Paul, among others — for his long-standing support for the gold standard. The world has moved in his direction. In 12 years, gold has risen from a derided relic trading at $250 an ounce to a hot investment at $1,750. Everywhere paper currency systems are under challenge. In 2008, the world discovered that you can’t just manufacture endless wealth out of thin air, as the gold bugs had long argued, and it is still struggling with the realization.

Many people will think of the gold standard as a relic of a bygone era, something as old-fashioned as bow-ties and stuffed animals. (My caveat: To me, that’s not an insult.) Grant, when we met, argued the reverse. He says paper currencies and our current monetary system are the ones that are out of date.

“The anachronism is today’s system,” he says. We have a “command and control, top down” system where the Fed imposes an interest rate on society. The Fed, in other words, tells us what the price of money should be. It is, Grant says, at odds with the modern age. “We live in a world of collaborative social networks” of the Internet and Facebook, of Wikipedia instead of the old World Book, and so on. And yet when it comes to the price of money, we wait for a committee that sits in private to tell us what it should be”.

There’s lots more in this story on Grant’s views of the financial system as currently constructed and what he would do if he were to sit in Ben Bernanke’s chair at the Fed. If you ask me, his gold standard price of $2,500 an ounce for the metal seems a bit low.

On the one hand, you have to feel for homeowners who have continued to make their mortgage payments despite the declining value of their home, but can’t refinance at today’s freakishly low rates. But, on the other hand, you have to scratch your head about the government intervening to create new loans for more than theses homes are worth.

Those worrying about the latter shouldn’t be too concerned, however, as not much is likely to happen in Congress during this increasingly heated election year.

MARKETS/INVESTING
Oil hovers below $98 amid mixed U.S. demand signs – AP
Gold retreats from 8-week high as dollar strengthens – Reuters
Fracking Boom Could Finally Cap Myth of Peak Oil – Bloomberg
Why I believe the S&Ps will go to 1517 – Peter Brandt
Cheap natural gas jumbles energy markets – Washington Post
Global Strategists Abandoning Bearish Views After Missing Rally – Bloomberg
BofAML expects gold price to hit $2000/oz in Q4 – Commodity Online
China enhances position as world No. 1 gold producer – Mineweb
Silver off to perfect start with 20% gain in January – BullionStreet
Myth of the Gold ETF Mass Exodus – Resource Investor

ECONOMY/WORLD/HOUSING/BANKING
January Downshift Shouldn’t Be Surprise – WSJ
Another shoddy job on employment numbers – NY Post
Planned layoffs surge in January: Challenger – Reuters
Shilling: China Headed for ‘Hard Landing’ This Year – Bloomberg
Italy top gold scrap buyer sees booming business – Reuters
World from Berlin: Germany’s Power ‘Is Causing Fear’ in Europe – Spiegel
Greeks unsettled by demands of a frustrated Europe – Washington Post
Policies, developers’ cuts push housing prices down again – China Daily
Obama Vows to Cut Red Tape on Home Loans – Bloomberg
Plosser Didn’t Back Fed’s Late 2014 Rate Pledge – Businessweek
Fed Needs To Think About Restoring Monetary Normalcy – IBD
Treasury Ponders Negative Interest Rates – NY Times

The overall index, where readings above and below 50 indicate expansion and contraction, respectively, rose from 53.1 in December to 54.1 in January and, while this was slightly below consensus estimates, a jump in the new orders component from 54.8 to 57.6 compensated for that disappointment.

Not surprisingly (given the rise in new orders) backlog orders rose from 48.0 to 52.5, however, there were a few negatives as production fell from 58.9 to 55.7 and the employment index dipped from 54.8 to 54.3.