03-Dec (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve on Tuesday said it would begin publishing forecasts on the path of interest rates later this month, a significant milestone in Ben Bernanke’s push for greater policymaking transparency.

The move is meant to better align bets in financial markets with the views of policymakers at the central bank, and it could show that rates will be on hold for longer than previously expected.

[source]

PG View: …because signalling 0% interest rates until mid-2013 was a failure, now it will ZIRP from here to eternity.

03-Jan (MarketWatch) — Gold futures were back at $1,600 an ounce on Tuesday, rallying alongside oil and stocks and helped by a weaker dollar to start the new year on a high note after a 10% yearly gain in 2011.

Gold for February delivery rose $33.10, or 2.1%, to trade at $1,600 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded as high as $1,602 an ounce earlier.

[source]

03-Jan (USAGOLD) — Gold begins the first US trading day of the new year on a positive note, underpinned by renewed risk appetite after some better than expected manufacturing data overseas. The yellow metal was up more than $25 at one point, but momentum has waned ahead of $1600, which has been an important pivot point in recent weeks.

China’s official PMI for Dec came in at 50.3, above market expectations and up from 49.0 in Nov. This was also better than last week’s HSBC/Markit PMI print for Dec. Swiss and UK PMI’s also showed solid gains, besting market expectations. The euro firmed on short covering, putting the dollar under pressure, which in turn added to the bid in gold.

• US calendar has Dec ISM manufacturing and Nov construction spending at 15:00GMT.
• Switzerland SVME manufacturing PMI rises to 50.7 in Dec, above market expectations, vs 44.8 in Nov.
• Germany unemployment change (sa) -22k in Dec, a much bigger drop than expected, vs -20k in Nov; unemployment rate (sa) 6.8%.
• UK CIPS manufacturing PMI rises to 49.6 in Dec, above market expectations, vs 47.6 in Nov.
• China Official PMI rose to 50.3 in Dec, above market expectations, vs 49.0 in Nov.

03-Jan (BBC) — Greece may have to leave the eurozone if it fails to secure its latest bailout from the EU, IMF and banks, a government spokesperson has warned.

“The bailout agreement needs to be signed otherwise we will be out of the markets, out of the euro,” spokesman Pantelis Kapsis told Skai TV.

The government is struggling with public opposition to new austerity measures, demanded by lenders.

Analysts suggest the warning is designed to win support for the moves.

[source]

PG View: Greece is a train-wreck to be sure, and not exactly in a position to be making demands. A more Oliver Twist type tone — “Please sir, I want some more” — might fall on more sympathetic ears. However, Greece is only a train-wreck because the EU turned a blind-eye and allowed them to become one.

03-Jan (Bloomberg) — Governments of the world’s leading economies have more than $7.6 trillion of debt maturing this year, with most facing a rise in borrowing costs.

Led by Japan’s $3 trillion and the U.S.’s $2.8 trillion, the amount coming due for the Group of Seven nations and Brazil, Russia, India and China is up from $7.4 trillion at this time last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ten-year bond yields will be higher by year-end for at least seven of the countries, forecasts show.

…Borrowing costs for G-7 nations will rise as much as 39 percent in 2011, based on forecasts of 10-year government bond yields by economists and strategists surveyed by Bloomberg in separate surveys.

[source]

PG View: This quantifies the central theme in my year-end report. The mass of debt maturing this year will need to be rolled and all that supply will put upward pressure on yields. The higher costs associated with refinancing will result in additional budgetary pressure on governments. This may lead to further — or ongoing — bailouts and almost assuredly the huge supply will result in central banks creating more artificial demand via quantitative measures.

02-Jan (Telegraph) — Markit’s eurozone manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose slightly in December to 46.9 from November’s 46.4, but marked its fifth month below the 50 mark that divides growth from contraction.

The level of manufacturing activity contracted in Germany, France, Italy and Spain as well as Greece, separate polls for Markit showed today.

Markit said levels of production and new orders fell in all of the eurozone countries covered by the survey for the second month running.

[source]

02-Jan (Washington Post) — Spain’s new government warned Friday that the country’s budget deficit will be much higher than anticipated this year, as it unveiled a first batch of austerity measures that include surprise income and property tax hikes.

Following the new conservative government’s second Cabinet meeting, the budget deficit for this year was revised up to 8 percent of national income from the previous government’s forecast of 6 percent.

Alongside the upward revision, which comes amid predictions that the Spanish economy will soon be back in recession, the government headed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced further measures to get a handle on its debts, including €8.9 billion ($11.5 billion) in spending cuts.

[source]

02-Jan (Der Spiegel) — The year 2011 was a bad one for Europe. But 2012, Angela Merkel believes, could even be worse — for her country at least. Both the German chancellor and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble believe the euro crisis will finally make itself felt in Germany. The outlook isn’t any rosier elsewhere on the Continent.

It seemed like hardly a week went by in the latter half of 2011 without a counterintuitive story about how well the German economy was doing despite the euro crisis raging around it. Growth continued, private consumption was up and exports were strong.

2012 has started with another eyebrow raiser. On average in 2011, 41.04 million people in Germany were employed, the most ever since the country’s reunification in 1990. It was an increase of 1.3 percent over 2010.

That, though, might be the end of the good news for a while. It would appear that most in the country, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, believe that 2012 will be the year when Germany finally begins to feel the effects of the euro-zone crisis which chewed its way through much of the 17-member currency union in 2011.

[source]

01-Jan (New York Times) — Europe’s leaders braced their nations for a turbulent year, with their beleaguered economies facing a threat on two fronts: widening deficits that force more borrowing but increasing austerity measures that put growth further out of reach.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet on Jan. 9 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss a new fiscal treaty intended to impose stringent budget requirements on European Union nations.

Saying that Europe was facing its “harshest test in decades,” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned on New Year’s Eve that “next year will no doubt be more difficult than 2011” — a marked change in tone from a year ago, when she praised Germans for “mastering the crisis as no other nation.”

Her blunt message was echoed in Italy, France and Greece, the epicenter of the debt crisis, where Prime Minister Lucas Papademos asked for resolve in seeing reforms through, “so that the sacrifices we have made up to now won’t be in vain.”

[source]

The Financial Times, which would never be mistaken for a gold advocacy group, has published an optimistic year-end outlook for the yellow metal. Gold closed in the London market yesterday at $1531 per ounce. Having started the year at $1388.50, that puts the metal at a 10.3% gain on the year, even after the sell-off over the last quarter. The remainder of the FT forecast linked below is well-worth your time. FT sees the coming year as a mixed bag and one likely to produce its share of surprises.

Here’s what it had to say about gold:

Has gold peaked?
No. It will take some time for gold to regain its reputation with investors after a violent fall in the final months of 2011. But ultimately that will be restored, if only because they have few alternatives while the crisis continues. Investors need no reminding of the risks elsewhere while US and European politicians dither over economic growth measures and their ballooning sovereign debts.

Most importantly, Asian and Middle Eastern investors – from central banks to sovereign wealth funds – will continue buying lots of gold. Though there may be drops along the way, the gold price in 2012 will surpass 2011’s peak of $1,920 an ounce, rising above $2,000 for the first time in history.

– Jack Farchy

Link
_________

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours the very best for 2012. 2011 was a very good year for gold owners, and 2012 — an election year — promises at the very least to be an interesting one. Gold, for all the years of double digit returns, still boasts asset preservation as its principal contribution. Ours is not to make a fortune on our gold, but to preserve the fortunes — small or large — we have already made. By seeing gold as wealth insurance, as opposed to an investment for gain, and by owning it in unassailable form, i.e., gold coins, we secure the advantage. Unfortunately, price volatility is likely to continue for the foreseeable future both up and down, but we should never lose sight of the real reasons why we own gold. In this age of uncertainty the old questions remain the most important: Should I own it? Do I own enough?

Last, I would like to thank our clientele for making 2011 a very good year for the firm as well. You provide the mettle for keeping this website front and center — one of the top gold sites on the internet. Please remember it is your purchase of gold and/or silver from USAGOLD-Centennial Precious Metals that nourishes these pages.

Michael J. Kosares
Founder: USAGOLD-Centennial Precious Metals
Author: The ABCs of Gold Investing – How to Protect and Build Your Wealth with Gold

Dec 29 (Bloomberg) — The European Central Bank’s balance sheet soared to a record 2.73 trillion euros ($3.55 trillion) after it lent financial institutions more money last week to keep credit flowing to the economy during the debt crisis.

The ECB last week awarded 523 banks three-year loans totaling a record 489 billion euros to encourage lending to companies and households and prevent a credit shortage. Barclays Capital estimates the loans injected 193 billion euros of new money into the system, with 296 billion euros accounted for by maturing loans. So far, banks are parking the money back at the ECB. Overnight deposits at the central bank increased to an all- time high of 452 billion euros yesterday.

[Source]

JK Comment: Debt, Debt and more Debt. Sounds reminiscent of what occurred in the US a few years ago. Central bank provides huge bailout to local banks to loan money to businesses and households in effort to jump-start economy. Only the banks don’t lend the money, they just place it back on deposit with the central bank, defeating the “intended purpose” of the bailout…if that is really the “intended purpose”.

Dec 29 (Commodity Online) — What followed was not a plunge that erased the whole bull market. It was not a prolonged consolidation either. The fact is that similar “breakdowns” have been (in all cases seen on the chart) followed by the final bottom of the consolidation (not to far below the line that is has broken), which was in turn was followed by a strong rally.

In these cases, lower prices were never seen thereafter!

In the past, when price levels did not pursue the level of the previous high, declines generally stopped close to the level of the original bottom and then rallied. This would coincide with our $1,550 target level from the bottom seen earlier this year, so there is a good chance that gold will rally if the decline takes it down this far.

This is precisely what we might be seeing now.

Based on the points made above, gold remains in a bull market from both fundamental and technical perspectives, and what we’re seeing right now may be the best buying opportunity that we’ll see in the coming years.

[Source]

JK Comment: Gold sold down below $1530 temporarily this morning, and has now rallied back just shy of $1550 level. The physical buying we’re seeing here today suggests a large number of our clients agree with the analysis presented here.

Dec 28 (IBT) — Nichols discussed his latest outlook on the yellow metal at the China Gold & Precious Metals Summit in Shanghai earlier this month. Despite gold’s recent weakness, he asserted that “Gold will move up sharply in the years ahead, reaching heights that might lead some to label me a ‘gold bug.’ I believe that the price of gold will, over the course of this decade, reach a multiple of recently prevailing prices.”

“Prices of $3000, $4000, and even $5000 an ounce are very likely during the course of this long-lasting bull market,” he added, “a bull market that still has years of life left to it…I’d be very surprised to see gold dip into ‘three-digit’ territory – that is below $1000 an ounce – ever again.”

Nichols went on to discuss 12 “building blocks,” or catalysts, that formed the basis of his bullish gold price outlook. Several noteworthy factors included:

- low or negative real rates of interest and unprecedented central bank monetary creation

- the affect rising wealth is having on emerging-economy central banks…prompting some countries that are over-weighted in U.S. dollars and underweighted in gold to diversify their official reserves through the prudent acquisition of the yellow metal

- the legitimization of gold as an investment class and rising investor participation

- world gold-mine production, although growing, will not keep pace with the expected growth in global gold demand

With respect to rising demand for gold from central banks – which Nichols highlighted as one of the most critical building blocks – he noted that “Importantly, much of the gold bought by central banks has been bought for the long term – and will likely be held not just for a few days or months or even a few years…but for decades or longer, even at much higher prices.”

“As a result, central banks are now creating an upside bias to the market and are reducing the ‘free-float’ available to meet future demand, even at much higher prices,” he continued. ”As a consequence, we can expect less downside volatility – and a more sustainable bull market with much higher prices in the years to come.”

[source]

Dec 27 (CNN) — The Obama administration will formally ask Congress later this week to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, a Treasury Department official tells CNN.

The latest request is the third of three requests authorized by the contentious debt ceiling agreement reached last August and is expected to come on December 30 – the day the debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current $15.194 trillion ceiling. The new request asks the ceiling be raised to $16.39 trillion.

[source]

JK Comment: Didn’t we just go through this?

Dec 27 (China Daily) — “The Chinese government should not only be cautious of the imported risk caused by rising global inflation, but also further optimize its foreign-exchange portfolio and purchase gold assets when the gold price shows a favorable fluctuation,” said Zhang Jianhua, director of the research bureau affiliated with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

Zhang said bleak economic conditions, increasing international liquidity as countries turned to monetary easing and the resulting high inflation had dampened investors’ confidence. He said that gold had become the only “safe haven” for risk-averse investors. “No asset is safe now. The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency – gold.”

“The PBOC may have realized that its euro-denominated assets are in greater danger than it expected and started to eye gold,” said Li Jie, director of the foreign-reserves research center at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

Li added that there was no easy way for China to get as much gold as it wished because major economies such as the US hold the majority of gold and market supplies are very limited.

[source]

JK Comment: Pretty strong endorsement of the yellow metal. Two important takeaways: First, it appears China is willing, able, and willing to ‘buy the dips’ in gold. China is single-handedly ensuring that a “floor” will exist in the gold market. Second, even if China wanted to diversify dramatically into gold, it can’t. Even a small allocation of their vast currency reserves would cause such a dramatic upward move in gold, it would quickly become far too great an expense to justify the purchase (if the gold even existed in sufficient quantities to allow such an acquisition) – For now. Pretty easy to put two and two together: China wants gold. There isn’t enough gold out there to fill China’s demand. As the international monetary system continues to destabilize, the luxury of waiting on “favorable fluctuations” will be replaced by outright “urgency and necessity”. It is hard to make a more bullish long term case for gold than this: The holder of the largest currency reserves in the world thinks that “no asset is safe” and “the only choice” is GOLD.

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) — The euro traded at almost its lowest level since January against the dollar as concern lingered that Europe’s debt crisis will slow regional economic growth.

“The European peripheral bond markets are still looking quite fragile and we’ll be watching that,” said Alan Ruskin, global head of Group of 10 foreign-exchange strategy at Deutsche Bank AG in New York. “People are going to be quite cautious in terms of trading events. It’s going to be a quiet week.”

Ten-year bond yields in Italy advanced six basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 7.04 percent, above the 7 percent level that spurred Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts.

“The major theme going into 2012 is going to be the euro zone still,” said Mark McCormick, a currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “There’s going to be some large bond supplies coming from some of the periphery countries, Italy and Spain in particular, and that’s going to be the focus.”

[source]

12/27 (ETF Trends ) This is very healthy for further gains in 2012, especially if we hold above $1,500. We could see the market trade in a range through mid summer,” John Person, president of NationalFutures, said in the article. Person predicts gold to peak between $2,200-$2,400 by late October 2012.

Over the long-term, gold bulls point to the loose monetary policies of the Federal Resrve and European Central Bank that will eventually debase their currencies and contribute to the attractiveness of gold.

“$2,000 gold can be delayed in the short term, but the fundamentals will carry it there sooner or later,” Mladjenovic added. “2012 has very bullish conditions so higher gold prices are more plausible.”

[source]

Despite Correction, Gold Poised to Register Another Solid Performance in 2011

Bar1
23-Dec (USAGOLD) — Gold is consolidating below $1600 in the last week of the year. The last London gold fix of 2010 was $1405, so barring any dramatic price changes in the last week of the year, the yellow metal is on-track for yet another double-digit gain of about 14%.

That’s pretty impressive given the dramatic delveraging sell-off from the 1920.50 record high we saw in September, which prompted all manner of commentary proclaiming the end of gold’s decade-long rally. More recently — amid another bout of deleveraging associated with rising uncertainty about the fate of European Union — the yellow metal retested the September low at 1534.06 along with important channel support. While much was made of the technical damage done by the recent move below the 200-day moving average, gold continues to display good resilience, underpinned by solid fundamentals.

Monthly Gold Chart

Daily Gold Chart

Those supporting fundamentals are unlikely to change anytime soon as the world continues to seek solutions for an overwhelming level of debt and anemic growth prospects. Thus far, the focus remains on creating more of what is arguably to primary source of the problem. Debt.

Of course someone needs to buy that debt, so we have also witnessed unprecedented — and in some instances “unlimited” — liquidity pumps to perpetuate the now institutionalized game of “hide the debt.” I don’t think that anyone really believes that more debt is really the answer to our global debt crisis, but in staving off a complete economic catastrophe several years ago with massive deficit spending and liquidity schemes, the United States effectively set the tone. Actually, the US was simply following the example set by Japan more than 20-years ago; drive interest rates to zero and hold them there by printing currency and buying bonds with it.

In fact, Japanese debt is fast approaching ¥1 quadrillion! That rather ominous benchmark is expected to be surpassed by the end of Japan’s fiscal year in March. The BoJ’s balance sheet is a startling ¥138 trillion. Meanwhile the Fed’s balance sheet has contracted in recent months, but is still in excess of $2.7 trillion. But perhaps most troubling is the expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet. Despite their persistent assurances that quantitative measures simply aren’t an option, the ECB’s balance sheet has grown by nearly a third, approaching €2.5 trillion. Hey Mr. Draghi, if you’re not engaged in QE, explain that exploding balance sheet.

There are policymakers in Europe, including ECB board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, that favor true — or at least un-obscured — quantitative easing by the ECB to prevent another recession in Europe. Imagine the implications for the central bank’s balance sheet if the objections are ultimately circumvented.

Late in December, the ECB unleashed a wall of money, €489 bln ($638 bln) in 3-year LTROs to 523 eurozone banks. The positive reaction to all this new liquidity was very short-lived. The euro remains under pressure and eurozone spreads have widened back out.

As the FT’s Gillian Tett pointed out in a recent column, the hope was that the banks would use this abundance of cheap ECB money to buy European sovereign debt, much in the same way that US banks plowed the proceeds from mortgage backed securities sales to the Fed into US Treasuries. Basically, the private sector ends up financing the government with funds provided by the government. Being in the middle of this financing cycle results in a potential profit bonanza for the banks.

ZIRP and liquidity. Liquidity and ZIRP. From here to eternity…

There are growing rumblings that the Fed is about to extend their ZIRP guidance from mid-2013 out to 2014 and potentially beyond. I’m sure when the BoJ launched their quantitative measures they were expected to last maybe a couple of years. Here it is 20 some years later and Japan still has 0% interest rates. Do you suppose this is our fate as well?

Some of the major financial firms are predicting lofty average gold prices for the coming year: Goldman Sachs $1810, Barclays $2000 and UBS $2050 to name just a few. We maintain that the long-term uptrend in gold is protected as long as we remain in a negative real interest rate environment. This in fact seems all-but assured for quite some time. On top of that, the ongoing expansions of debt, monetary bases and central bank balance sheets, along with broadly positive supply/demand dynamics — highlighted by robust investment and central bank demand — conspire to underpin gold as well in the new year.

On behalf of everyone here at USAGOLD – Centennial Precious Metals, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a most prosperous 2012.

22-Dec (Financial Times) — A few weeks ago, some senior officials at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi spotted a fascinating fact: for the first time the volume of Japanese government bonds sitting on the bank’s balance sheet swelled above corporate and consumer loans.

Yes, you read that right: at an entity such as Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, it is now the government – not the private sector – which is grabbing most credit, as the bank gobbles up JGBs, notwithstanding rock-bottom low rates.
More

Welcome to a key theme of 2012. During the past four decades, it was widely assumed in the western world that the main role of banks and asset managers was to provide funding to the private sector, rather than act as a piggy bank for the state. But now, that assumption – like so many of the other ideas that dominated before 2007 – is quietly crumbling. And not just in Japan.

…Whatever you want to call it, then, the state and private sector finance are becoming more entwined by the day. It is a profound irony of 21st century “market” capitalism. And in 2012, it will only deepen.

[source]

23-Dec (USAGOLD) — Gold is narrowly confined as trading thins ahead of the long Christmas weekend. This morning’s US data was largely an offset: While durable goods orders exceeded expectations of Nov, personal income and expenditures disappointed.

Despite the huge flood of ECB 3-year money this week, yields on Italian BTPs have climbed back above 7%, suggesting the turmoil in Europe is far from being resolved. Meanwhile there are growing expectations that the Fed is already contemplating revising their ZIRP guidance from “mid-2013″ to 2014 or beyond.

We firmly believe that as long as we remain in a negative real interest rate environment, the long-term uptrend in gold is not in jeopardy.

• US personal income +0.1% in Nov, below expectations of 0.3%; PCE tepid at +0.1% on expectations of +0.3%.
• US durable goods orders +3.8% in Nov, well above market expectations of 2.0%, vs unch Oct.
• Canada GDP flat in Oct, in-line with expectations, vs +0.2% in Sep.
• France Q3 GDP (final) revised down to +0.3% q/q, vs +0.4% previously; +1.5% y/y, vs +1.6 previously.
• France PPI +0.4% m/m in Nov, above expectations of unch, vs +0.5% in Oct; 5.6% y/y on expectations of 5.2%, vs 5.8% in Oct.
• Italy consumer confidence (sa) slides to 91.6 in Dec, vs downward revised 96.1 in Nov.

22-Dec (The Wall Street Journal) — The Federal Reserve could signal it is likely to keep short-term interest rates near zero into 2014 or beyond, to bolster the fragile economic recovery.

Fed officials have grown increasingly uncomfortable with their August statement that they are likely to hold short-term rates exceptionally low at least through mid-2013. Some believe low inflation and high unemployment could warrant low rates for longer.

[source]

PG View: I’m sure the BoJ played this game at first too: ZIRP for just a couple years…okay maybe 5-years…20-years later interest rates are still 0%…

21-Dec (The Economist) — THE European Central Bank has come under criticism for its failure to act as lender of last resort to embattled sovereigns. Yet when it comes to banks, the traditional recipients of central bank support, the ECB is lender of last resort on steroids. Today, it lent €489 billion to 523 banks at 1%, at its first three-year refinancing operation. It was its largest refinancing ever.

Banks used some of that to pay off shorter term loans from the ECB. Even so, net lending of €235 billion brought the ECB’s total loans to banks to almost €1 trillion. Mario Draghi, the ECB president has repeatedly insisted the ECB’s purchases of government bonds were neither “eternal nor infinite”, but that clearly doesn’t apply to its lending to banks. As banks’ private sector funding dries up, the ECB has supplied not just all the short-term funds they need, but all the dollar funds they need (via the revamped swap lines from the Federal Reserve) and now long-term funds as well.

[source]

21-Dec (Financial Times) — The explosion in central bank balance sheets continues. As explained in this earlier blog, the ECB, the Fed and others have become the holders of last resort for much of the private sector risk which no-one else is willing to touch. Today’s announcement of a record liquidity injection by the ECB, along with a further rise in the Fed’s balance sheet as part of the dollar swap programme, looks particularly dramatic, but it really just represents a continuation of a process which has been underway for many months now.

…we should call a spade a spade. This is quantitative easing on a significant scale, and the lines between this form of QE, and the direct monetisation of budget deficits, which is forbidden by the spirit of the eurozone treaties, are becoming increasingly blurred.

…the monetary base will expand rapidly as central bank funding for the banking sector replaces private funding, and this is likely to prevent the large drop in M3 which would otherwise have occurred.

Questions will be asked, especially in Germany, about whether this liquidity injection will be inflationary.

[source]

22-Dec (HousingWire) — The United States could lose its AAA sovereign debt rating by the end of 2013 if policymakers fail to make inroads in cutting the federal deficit in the next year and a half, Fitch Ratings said Thursday.

Fitch and Moody’s Investors Service still maintain AAA ratings for U.S. sovereign debt even though Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating for U.S. sovereign debt to AA+ from AAA back in August. In August, Moody’s affirmed the country’s gilt-edged rating, but assigned U.S. sovereign debt a negative outlook, saying a downgrade could occur if fiscal discipline weakens in the coming year.

Fitch says political gridlock and the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit only forestalls the debt reduction process, creating even more gridlock with 2012 being an election year.

[source]