Polymer Group, Inc. reports completion of its transaction to purchase a 40 percent minority stake in Dominion Nonwovens Sudamericana, S.A. (PGI Argentina) from its partner, Guillermo E. Kraves with terms of the transaction undisclosed.

PGI Argentina has been operating as a joint venture since 1997. The company is located near Buenos Aires, Argentina and began operations with multi-beam spunmelt lines which serve the hygiene and industrial markets of the Mercosur region. PGI then purchased a majority share of the business in 1999 with a focus on growing business in the Mercosur region as part of its overall hygiene leadership strategy in Latin America. In 2003, PGI added an extrusion line and most recently installed new wide-width, multi-beam line which features the latest spunbond technology and has a capacity of over 15,000 metric tonnes per year.

PGI’s chief executive officer, Veronica (Ronee) Hagen, commented on the purchase saying, “This investment is

Let’s get this straight.

Household credit is shrinking… Profits are shrinking… Employment is shrinking… Housing values are shrinking… The wage base is shrinking…

But the recession is over!

Whoa… how is that possible?

This weekend’s news brought no surprises. For example, the housing picture is still depressing – unless you’re a buyer.

There’s “no bottom in sight” to Florida condo prices, says Barron’s. And Reuters warns that option ARM mortgages “are about to explode.” At least, that’s what the attorney general of the sovereign state of Iowa says. The option gives the homeowner the right to pay only the interest (or in some cases less than the interest) for the first few years. They’re sometimes called I.O. mortgages (interest only). And now these mortgages, written at the height of the bubble, are beginning to reset to more normal terms. According to Reuters 128,000 people in Arizona alone will face reset I.O. mortgages next year.

How

In the spirit of not suffering from confirmation bias, in today’s Notes we will try to make the bearish case against gold. So before you storm Notes HQ in Buenos Aires craving blood, hear us out. Many of our staff here love gold and have long term holdings.

This issue is entirely in the contrarian spirit of playing devil’s advocate. So put your pitchforks down. Take a deep breath. There is plenty of space to poke holes in (or rant) about our thesis by writing to info@contrarianprofits.com

So here it goes. The four reasons you shouldn’t buy gold today…

Reason 1: Did you know that the seventh largest holder of gold in the world is not a country, but an exchange traded fund? Yes, gold ETF SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) has amassed the seventh largest gold reserve in the world. This fund holds more gold than China, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom or the

 Goldman Sachs Would Have Collapsed If Not For Henry Paulson.

The Dow slipped a bit yesterday – only 39 points. Everyone is watching. They want to see how far this rally carries on. Many think it is more than a bear market bounce; they think it is for real.

The prevailing opinion is that quick action by the feds avoided a more serious meltdown. Ben Bernanke says he was working to prevent a “second great depression.”

And now that the crisis is past, the economy is slowly climbing out of its hole. The second quarter showed GDP falling at 1% per year in the US… rather than the 6.4% rate recorded earlier in the year. Housing sales have perked up. Oil is trading above $71 – a sign of renewed economic activity. And gold seems to be getting ready for another assault on the $1,000 mark – a sign of growing inflation pressures.

At

Another underground investor mowing down the green shoots is Doug Casey of Casey Research. We know Doug well. He owns land in Argentina’s Salta province. And he’s a frequent visitor of Notes HQ. 

Last time he was down, we went out for a big steak dinner in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires, where our offices are. After dinner, Doug regaled us with stories of his near death experiences in Third World countries. Doug has made fortunes in countries that most people couldn’t pronounce!

Doug is very contrarian, and he “lets the bastards have it” like no one else we know. It used to be that even in front of an audience full of anarcho-capitalists Doug would clear out a few seats.

But times they are a changin’. At this year’s Agora Financial Symposium in Vancouver hardly anyone left their seats during Doug’s speech. Like James Dale Davidson, he believes that

Bankruptcies, Depressions and Mark Stanford with his Argentine beauty.

Everything is working out just like we thought it would. The stock market is performing as expected. The economy is on track. Even the politicians are doing what they thought they would.

Let’s begin with the stimulus/bailout/boondoggle/BS plan. As anticipated, it has failed. That is, the economy is getting worse, not better. It has failed the test set for it by its own creators. Back when the Obama Team was arguing for a big bailout bill, it warned that without a bailout unemployment would rise above 8% in 2009. ‘Pass this bill today,’ said Ben Bernanke, or words to that effect, ‘or there may not be a tomorrow for the US economy.’

Congress dutifully bent its back to the task of adding boondoggles to the bill and then okayed the measure. And here we are in the middle of 2009 and the unemployment rate

This post provides links to some interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Doug French (Ludwig von Mises Institute): Dead banks walking, 11 June, 2009. It’s widely acknowledged that hundreds if not thousands of banks are on the ropes and just waiting for regulators to wrap them in yellow tape some Friday evening. However, fewer than forty US banks have been seized this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) list of problem banks grew to 305 in the first quarter, the highest number since 1994, but of course the names of those banks are not released so that depositors can be forewarned.

• The Economist: Seeing red, June 10. America’s debt is Barack Obama’s biggest weakness

• Arthur Laffer (Wall Street Journal): Get ready for inflation and higher

In the gold business, there are two kinds of companies, says mining guru Doug Casey. First, there are the companies that dig gold out of the ground after it has been discovered. These are the “producers.” These companies have done well during the current gold bull market – up as much as 200% during that period.

But what most investors don’t realize is that it’s the second type of company, the small gold “explorers,” that always produce the biggest gains in gold bull markets.

These are the companies that send geologists around the world, scouring for the next gold discovery. They find a promising deposit and get samples of the rock beneath the surface using drill rigs. If the samples indicate there may be enough gold to profitably mine, they either sell the rights or do the work themselves.

What’s interesting about gold bull markets is that these exploration companies

The anti-wealth rhetoric isn’t confined to Argentina’s dysfunctional democracy. Will’s father, Bill, who recently visited us down here in Buenos Aires, says the “war against capitalism” is a worldwide phenomenon.

Bill pays taxes in Britain, where part of his publishing business is based. But now those taxes are going up. Governments, of course, have to pay for their boneheaded bailouts and ‘stimulus’ packages somehow. And so like the Peronists down in Argentina, they target “the rich.”

The feds – both in Britain and back at home in America – have chosen an easy target… the rich!

In the public mind, ‘rich’ and ‘banker’ are inseparable. Like ‘corrupt’ and ‘politician.’ What’s more, the rich were at the scene of the crime when the financial crisis began. The rich were caught red-handed. It doesn’t matter if the ‘rich’ man earned his money from doing heart operations or selling vegetables. Every rich person is presumed guilty

Finally…we’re back in London. We left at the beginning of April…went to San Diego and Los Angeles…then to Buenos Aires and Salta…then to Paris for a few days.. and now we’re back. London is cold and rainy…just like we left it. Not exactly home…but it will do. But what’s this? The City seems to be winding down. All those hot shots in the financial sector aren’t so hot any more.

In the space of just ten years, the percentage of GDP generated by the financial sector almost doubled – from 5.5% in 1996 to 10.8% a decade later. But now the whole sector is shrinking…along with bonuses…payrolls…and expense accounts.

And since Britain counted so heavily on the financial high fliers and their money…the whole country seems to have gone into a funk.

Tax revenues are collapsing. Deficits are soaring. The U.K.’s national budget deficit is already at 12%…about even with the United