Jim Rogers : BBC radio interview on the state of world economy

BBC Radio interview with Jim Rogers on the 26th of December 2011 here is the full transcript below Full transcript below


Jim Rogers: Martin, it's very serious. America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world and it's getting bigger and bigger by leaps and bounds at the rate of over $1 trillion a year. And in Europe you have several bankrupt countries and no one is dealing with the problem. If you look at the projections for all the European countries, none of them have reduced debt a year or two or three from now. So, this situation is serious and getting worse.
Martin Webber: Thinking back to the mid-1990s, capitalism seemed ascendant, western capitalism had triumphed over communism, economies were growing, stock markets were growing. Who do you blame for the fact that we have ended up in this mess?
Jim Rogers: Well, essentially it's governments and central banks; especially in the US they just kept spending money and the central bank just kept printing money. But there are several culprits.
Martin Webber: Who else apart from these authorities?
Jim Rogers: The government of United Kingdom, the central bank in the United Kingdom, the governments in places like Greece which used phoney bookkeeping, but also even Italy and France and Germany. They all started using phoney bookkeeping. They knew that the other countries were using phoney bookkeeping and they all said, oh it's okay, everything will be okay in the end.
So, the central banks and the governments were going hand-in-hand and spending money they did not have. Now, that's wonderful. It's great. It can cause huge growth. As you just pointed out, for 15 years you had great growth. But eventually, somebody has to come up with and pay for it, or eventually you just run out of other people's money.
Martin Webber: What seems to be going on at the moment is that central banks are creating money, lending it to banks, who are then lending it to governments in terms of buying their bonds because the private investors are no longer doing that. So you have got government owned institutions effectively buying government bonds. People don't seem to really understand what on earth can be going on?
Jim Rogers: It is a recipe for disaster. I am glad you pointed it out because there is nothing more authoritative than the BBC. It's a Ponzi scheme, it's a fraud, it's a sham and we are all going to have to - we are already starting to pay for it, Martin. It's going to be much, much worse in the end.
Eventually one of two things has to happen. We have to get together now and ring-fence the problem and figure out how we are going to survive and start over. Or, in a year or two or three, the market is going to say, no more money, we won't put up any more money. And then the whole system collapses, then you have gigantic chaos, social unrest, governments failing, civil war - huge mess.
Martin Webber: Let's try the more optimistic scenario. You say it is possible still to get a grip on this problem, what are the measures that need to be taken right now then to avoid the other scenario of civil war?
Jim Rogers: Well, at the moment some governments have credibility, Germany for instance still has credibility. And if they all got into a room together and Mrs. Merkel said, okay, you guys are going to fail, you have failed, and now you are going to fail. We are going to hold these banks, these companies up. We are going to make sure they survive. We are going to make sure bank deposits are okay. We are going to make sure checks continue to clear and the system will survive. Some of you are going to take huge losses and huge pain, but then we start over.
It would be a terrible two- or three-year period, Martin, but then the system could survive and we could rebuild after the people who have made mistakes take the losses. That's what capitalism is supposed to be all about. If you fail, you fail.
Martin Webber: And what are the mistakes then? Is it that the people who bought government bonds of France, Italy and all the other countries are going to have to take losses?
Jim Rogers: Absolutely. The banks who made these loans, and the bondholders who bought these loans, and the stockholders who own stock in these banks. They were making mistakes. They are all going to have to take huge losses. Now you are going to say, that's very painful, that's bad.
Well, I will remind you Martin that in the early '90s, Scandinavia had the same problem. They did exactly this. They ring-fenced everybody, many people failed, there was horrible pain, but after three or four years Scandinavia has been one of the great growth areas of the past 15 years or so. That's the way the system is supposed to work.
In Japan in the early '90s, they said nobody will fail. Well you know they have lost two decades in Japan. You know about zombie banks. You know about zombie companies. The Japanese way doesn't work. It is not going to work in America or Europe.
Martin Webber: So we got a situation there where people invested in banks lose money, presumably people with pensions who have investments in these banks lose money, and government bonds lose money too. But the politicians have a much nicer sounding solution it seems, which they have just come up with, which is that the European Central Bank creates money, lends it to the IMF and the IMF then lends it back to them. Sounds much nicer, doesn't it?
Jim Rogers: It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? But it is not based on reality. It's based on "Never Never Land." It's based on the "tooth fairy." Somebody has got to come up with real money somewhere along the line and payoff real debts somewhere along the line.
Martin Webber: But isn't that possible, that if you are the government, you can create as much money as you want because it's your money?
Jim Rogers: You certainly can. You can debase currency, and history is replete with governments that have debased their own currency and ruined their own currency for hundreds of - well for thousands of years it has been going on. You can do that and everything is okay for a while, but eventually you have inflation, you have high interest rates, you have currency turmoil, you have people no longer trusting each other to invest with each other, and then you have the end of the system, and we have chaos, and it starts over again.
Martin Webber: Is that not the more likely scenario in that the politicians never like to tackle problems. They are always interested in the next day's headlines. Isn't it more likely they will find yet another ruse to put off the day of reckoning?
Jim Rogers: Absolutely. You are a very insightful observer of the passing scene. That's exactly what they are going to do. If a politician ran on the platform, oh my gosh, we have got to take a lot of pain. Even if he won, Martin, which is very unlikely, but even if that politician won, after six months or a year or two of serious pain, he will be either thrown out or assassinated or something would happen because people would say this is too much pain. We didn't know you meant it was going to be this bad. Let's get out of this.
Martin Webber: Now many people say it's the euro that's at the heart of this crisis. They are calling it the "euro crisis." Is that how you see it?
Jim Rogers: No, absolutely not. It's not the euro. The world needs the euro or something like it to compete with the US dollar. We need another sound currency. The eurozone as a whole is not a big debtor nation. The eurozone has some debtor problems, some debtor nations, debtor states, but it's not a big, big problem. The euro is good for the world. It needs to work.
Martin Webber: Do you think in the past that political leaders were stronger, perhaps were less influenced by short-term considerations, had a greater feeling for the common good, perhaps the people themselves had a greater community spirit and would actually be happier to take austerity to understand you have to live within your means. Do you think in a way it's not just the political class, this is something at issue in society as a whole?
Jim Rogers: That's good observation, yes. We did have more discipline and more understanding in the past few decades, but that's partly because of the history of those decades. We remembered the First and Second World War. We remembered the Great Depression. We remembered what happened when you got too leveraged and couldn't pay your bills. We knew what happened when you debased your currency.
But now of course, since the Second World War, we have had two or three generations grow up who don't remember all of that, haven't read their history, politicians who didn't know anything about history at all and don't know anything about economics at all. So everybody thinks there's a free lunch.
Martin Webber: Do you think the media is to blame?
Jim Rogers: Well, the media are the same ones, Martin. I mean, you and everybody else grew up went to the same schools, had the same teachings and had the same period of good times. Since the Second World War, things have been pretty good in most of the western world, the developed world anyway, and we all grew up thinking, well this is the way the world is and it has been that way. But that's not the way the world has been for the past few thousand years.
Martin Webber: We have had this "Occupy Wall Street" movement emerging. Do you have any sympathy with any of the things that they are saying?
Jim Rogers: Well, I do have sympathy with the fact that they are saying, we shouldn't have bailed out the banks. I would have let all those banks go bankrupt, as you've heard me say before. But beyond that I don't have too much sympathy with them. You know, we all want a free lunch. I would like somebody to pay my bills too. I would like somebody to take care of me the rest of my life too.
Listen it's outrageous that the government took the money and saved the banks. Absolutely, they are right about that. It's outrageous, totally outrageous that governments went and bailed out some banker so they could keep their Lamborghinis and their summerhouses. But beyond that, I don't have too much sympathy with them.
Martin, whenever there are hard times, people look for somebody to blame. And they always blame the financial people, they always blame foreigners, and they always blame reporters. They always say, well if the reporters didn't write about this problem, we wouldn't have a problem. So be careful. Financial types get blamed first, the foreigners get blamed second, you are next.
Martin Webber: Okay. I am prepared.

China Stocks trading at biggest discount in 5 years

Source: Bloomberg

China stocks, trading at their biggest discount to global equities in more than five years, may extend the world’s worst two-year loss into 2012 as economic growth slows and money supply tightens.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows the spread between the price-to- estimated earnings ratios of the Shanghai Composite Index and the MSCI AC World Index of developed and emerging nations since 2005. Companies in Shanghai traded at a record-low 10.41 times on Dec. 22, the biggest discount to the global gauge’s ratio since April 13, 2006, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bottom panel tracks China’s quarterly gross domestic product growth and monthly M2, a broad measure of money supply.

“The growth outlook is pretty bleak next year as the government won’t increase money supply aggressively or introduce a huge stimulus plan because inflation is still at a pretty high level,” said Zhang Qi, an analyst in Shanghai at Haitong Securities Co., China’s third-largest brokerage. “Without faster economic growth, the stock market will continue to fall.”

China’s gross domestic product growth will slow to 8.5 percent in 2012, the least in 11 years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The nation’s money supply expanded 12.7 percent in November, the smallest monthly change in a decade. Government officials are weighing benefits of stimulus against concerns over elevated house prices and local-government debt.

The Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP) has plunged 34 percent since 2009, the worst performer among the world’s biggest 15 markets, compared with 1.1 percent loss by MSCI’s global gauge. The value of stocks traded in Shanghai slumped to the weakest level in three years on Dec. 26.

When the Shanghai Composite last traded at such a discount to the MSCI World Index (MXWD)in April 2006, GDP growth of as much as 14 percent helped the stocks gauge more than quadruple in 18 months. A 72 percent rout in stocks spurred by the global financial crisis was reversed in late 2008 by 4 trillion yuan ($633 billion) of stimulus, which drove money supply (CNMS2YOY) up by a monthly average of 26 percent in 2009.

Worst performing banks of the year

Source : Business Insider 

The S&P is back in positive territory for the year.  But some sectors did better than others.

The financial sector in particular took a beating and rightfully so.  Banks face increased regulations, the loss of revenue driving fees, and compressed net interest margins thanks to a flattening yield curve, which was the aim of the Fed's Operation Twist. On top of this, many banks are exposed, directly or indirectly, to risky European sovereign debt.  And worst of all, they face a slowing global economy.

The hardest-hit big bank is Lloyd's Banking Group, which has seen shares decline more than 61% on depressed investment banking revenue amid a weak United Kingdom macro-picture. Bank of America trails only slightly, down 59.5% year-to-date. Reuters recently reported that the bank may have to sell additional assets to buffer itself.

Take a look at how some of the biggest financial institutions in the world stack up:

Here's a quick rundown of the declines through trading this afternoon:

• Bank of America: -59.45%
• Citi: -43.63%
• Goldman Sachs: -45.89%
• JPMorgan: -21.28%
• Morgan Stanley: -44.22%
• Barclays: -33.31%
• Lloyds: -61.22%
• UBS: -28.42%
• Deutsche Bank: -27.01%
• BNP Paribas: -36.29%
• Société Générale: -58.49%

Iran-Ban Threat Pushes Tanker Hiring to Record

Source : Bloomberg

Europe’s threat to ban cargoes from Iran over the nation’s nuclear ambitions is helping push Middle East oil-tanker hiring to a record on concern shipments from the region will be disrupted, consultant FACTS Global Energy said.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows how oil tankers booked to load 2 million-barrel cargoes of Gulf crude climbed to 140 in December, the most since at least January 2005, according to data from London-based shipbroker Galbraith’s Ltd. European Union foreign ministers will meet Jan. 30 to discuss possible sanctions to pressure Iran to abandon a suspected nuclear weapons program.

EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Dec. 6 the 27-nation bloc may have reached a consensus on imposing a ban. Greece blocked the measure at a summit on Dec. 1.

“Fear of potential Iranian sanctions has contributed greatly to the increased shipments from the Persian Gulf,” adding to seasonal gains in the last two months of the year, said FACTS analystRoy Jordan, previously an oil trader at Royal Dutch Shell Plc, where he worked for more than 30 years. “Some of the refiners around the world are undoubtedly beginning to get a little bit concerned about a reduction in exports.”

Oil traded in New York climbed the most in almost a month on Dec. 13 after a report said Iran would hold military drills in the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping lane handling a fifth of the world’s crude shipments. Cargoes from the Persian Gulf grew 13 percent this year as demand from Asian refineries accelerated.

Charters reflect single voyage or spot tanker bookings, not shipments arranged on longer-term freight contracts.

2011 : Why the recovery was so awful in 2011

Source : Business Insider

EUR/USD 2011 trade history

Source : Business Insider

In retrospect, this is quite the turnaround.

In a note out today, Morgan Stanley FX analysts Ian Stannard and Evan Brown chart the round-trip value of the euro against the dollar all year.

From a dip below $1.30 last January, just after Estonia joined the currency union, to nearly $1.50 after Standard & Poor's placed the U.S. credit rating on negative outlook, and then all the way back down to $1.29 after the December EU summit, 2011 has been a wild ride for the currency—not to mention the eurozone as a whole.

The euro is currently trading flat on the day, at $1.3055.

Here is everything that happened this year, and how it affected the euro/dollar trade:

Gold : The 300-day moving average on Gold

Source : Business Insider 

Everyone is talking about this event, even people who don't normally think technical analysis is a big deal.

Well, forget the 200-day, according to Ron Griess of The Chart Store it's the 300-day moving average that's really proved to be a big support line for gold.

Here's the chart.

(And for what it's worth, the current 300-day moving average right now is somewhere around $1538/oz.)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-gold-vs-the-300-day-moving-average-2011-12#ixzz1gu1vtp5b

Facebook : The owners of Facebook

Source : Business Insider 

There's only one reason Facebook is going to IPO: To make its employees and investors rich. 

Otherwise, Mark Zuckerberg would (somewhat ironically) keep the company private forever.

Who's getting rich when the company does IPO? Using information leaked to Ryan Tate at Gawker, we have a breakdown here. Assuming Facebook can get that $100 billion valuation being floated in the press, here's who would be worth what.

Jim Rogers : Glenn Back Interviews Jim Rogers

Silver : Why it is expected to go up

Source : Silver Seek 

Silver is an amazing metal…which is why it’s likely to soar over the coming years…

You see, silver has more than 10,000 uses. It’s one of the world’s best conductors of heat and electricity. Inventors filed more patents on silver uses than any other precious metal in the world. And when silver is used for most industrial and technological purposes, it is used up forever… It simply costs too much to try to recycle the tiny bit of silver from every cell phone or casino chip.

I’m not saying industry is going to use up all the world’s silver. That simply can’t happen. But scarcity is a real issue.Our rapid consumption of silver leaves very little to meet any uptick in demand from investors. A spike in interest will send prices spiraling higher…

Here’s a breakdown of the silver market. The table below shows the percentage of the total amount of silver consumed by each category over the past four years…

As you can see from the table above, only 12% of the silver supplied to the market made it to bullion in 2010. That means only a little more than 100 million ounces of silver became bullion for the entire investing world.

That’s a tiny fraction to sop up all the investment interest in the world.

Of that silver, about 43 million ounces went to exchange-traded funds like the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV).That means you could buy all the extra silver bullion for about $2 billion. We could buy all the surplus silver bullion from the last four years for about $10 billion.

That’s the same as the market value of the iShares Silver Trust today. If you wanted to build another silver fund, you couldn’t. There just isn’t enough silver bullion out there to fill the order.

Even trying to amass that much physical silver would send the silver price soaring. It’s a simple market fact… When there is more demand than supply, it drives the price up.

And the economic problems confronting Europe and the United States have increased interest in precious metals… Silver gained a colossal 174% from August 2010 to April 2011.

In May 2011, however, the price collapsed 31% in just four weeks. The bull market simply ran up too far, too fast… and the decline wiped out many highly leveraged silver traders.

The big money is tiptoeing back into silver.

Last month, commodity trading advisors, pool operators, and hedge funds — the “big money” — weren’t interested in silver AT ALL…

But as they move back into the market, silver prices could soar. Let me show you what I’m talking about…

Jason Goepfert created SentimenTrader, a service that tracks investor sentiment toward various asset classes. According to Jason, silver just bounced off its most pessimistic reading in four years.

The so-called “commitment of non-commercial traders” hit 10,352. That’s incredibly low. The last time sentiment numbers were that low was in August 2007. Six months later, the price of silver was 59% higher. It rose from $12 per ounce to $19 per ounce.

I went all the way back to 2002 and found that silver sentiment bottomed near 10,000 six times… On average, the price of silver rose 33% in the next six months and 54% over the next year. This chart shows the last four times it bottomed…

Here’s how the silver price performed after each of the last four times silver sentiment bottomed out…

The best return came after Bottom No. 2, which coincided with the US banking/credit crisis. Silver soared an eye-popping 405%, including its parabolic rise in 2010.

As those numbers indicate, silver is one of the most volatile assets in the world. Over the last year, silver has seen massive price swings, including an 81% rally and two 30% drops. That forced many traders to liquidate their silver holdings in order to meet emergency short-term requirements. (Plus, the debacle at commodity broker MF Global has scared many folks out of the market.)

But the long-term drivers of gold and silver’s uptrends are still in place. Enormous and growing Asian economies like China and India are getting richer…and they have deep cultural affinities for precious metals. Plus, the Western world has lived way beyond its means for a long time…the debts and liabilities it has taken on can only be paid back with devalued, debased money. This is bullish for “real money” assets like gold and silver.

With sentiment so negative toward silver (and just beginning to turn back up), it’s a great time to take a position in this long-term bull market.

If gold and silver prices are nearly certain to rise over the next few years (and probably rise dramatically), the simplest way to play that trend is to buy bullion…real, hold-in-your-hand silver coins.

Property (Singapore) : Developers fear impact of targeted stamp duty

Extra 10% duty for foreigners set to help cool prices for S'poreans

By KALPANA RASHIWALA

(SINGAPORE) The government yesterday announced significant steps that could bring private home prices back within the reach of Singaporeans. Developers, however, have called these steps, which are expected to hit sales and prices, untimely.

Starting today, foreigners and corporate entities buying private homes in Singapore will have to pay an extra 10 per cent by way of an additional buyer's stamp duty. This duty will also apply to permanent residents (PRs) buying their second or subsequent homes and Singaporeans buying their third residential property or more - though only to the tune of 3 per cent. Overseas properties are excluded from the count of properties owned.
The move is aimed at reining in private property prices, which some felt were slipping beyond the reach of many Singaporeans. Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore (Redas) said, however, that the measures are untimely given that the local economy is expected to slow down next year. 'Redas is disappointed in the lack of consultation on the latest measures. They came as a surprise as the current market outlook is uncertain. The good take-up rate in the primary market is driven by the increased number of new launches and unique selling points of certain projects. It is not indicative of a return to a speculative market.'
The government also boosted the supply of land for executive condos in H1 2012 as part of its land sales programme.


Though the additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) kicks in today, remission will be given for options granted on or before Dec 7 and exercised within three weeks (that is, on or before Dec 28) or the option validity period, whichever is earlier.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said: 'We have always had open markets and must keep them that way. However, the reality is that investment flows into our property market are now larger than before, and unlikely to recede as long as interest rates remain low. The additional buyer's stamp duty should help cool investment demand, and avoid the prospect of a major, destabilising correction further down the road.'

A joint release from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Development yesterday evening said: 'A higher ABSD rate for foreign buyers in particular is necessary, in view of the large pool of external liquidity and strong buying interest from abroad, and the relatively small size of the Singapore market.'

It added: 'Excessive investment demand will . . . make the property cycle more volatile, and thus increase the risks to our economy and banking system.'
Foreign purchases accounted for 19 per cent of all private residential property purchases in H2 2011, up from 7 per cent in H1 2009, it noted.

Credo Real Estate's analysis showed that foreigners' presence is much stronger in the prime and mid-prime districts, where they accounted for nearly a quarter of caveats lodged in Q3 2011 - up from 16 per cent in 2010 and 13 per cent in 2009.

For the suburban mass- market segment (Outside Central Region), the proportion has also been rising, from 5 per cent in 2009 to 7 per cent in 2010 and nearly 15 per cent in Q3 2011.
'The suburban mass market is probably of greater concern as buyers of first private homes would feel threatened by increasing number of foreign purchasers,' said Credo executive director Ong Teck Hui.
DTZ's Southeast Asia chief operating officer Ong Choon Fah said the ABSD is not a blunt policy tool. 'They have made distinctions between foreigners and PRs and whether they are buying for owner occupation or investment. This is very carefully calibrated to strike a balance between the price that Singapore has to pay for being an open economy and ensuring property prices remain within the reach of Singaporeans.'

She reckons developers will take a wait-and-see attitude, evaluate their options and watch how buyers react.'Prices should fall but activity has to drop significantly first before developers re-price their projects. The likelihood is that some may first take soft measures to mitigate the situation - such as absorbing the additional buyer's stamp duty or giving furnishing vouchers - before resorting to a price cut.'

Knight Frank chairman Tan Tiong Cheng too acknowledged that prices will soften. 'With so much supply coming into the market, developers will either have to revise their prices to move units, or absorb the additional buyer's stamp duty.' The latter will be tantamount to a price cut as far as a developer is concerned, note analysts.

'This set of measures will definitely help to cool prices. The concern has been that foreign buying is pushing up prices,' said Mr Tan. With the 10 per cent ABSD on foreign buyers, the long-awaited recovery in demand in the luxury sector will take even longer, he added.

Standard Chartered Bank said in a research note last night: 'We expect the policy to induce a 20 per cent decline in sales volume in Q1 2012. . . We continue to expect residential prices to fall 20-30 per cent next year.'

Jim Rogers : Speaks on the Chinese Economy, Hard Landing In Some Sectors

Jim Rogers : Market Outlook for 2012 (CNBC Video)

Nikkei Index Historical Trend : A Look At Japan's Post-Bubble Rallies

Source : Business Insider 

Update: The Nikkei 225 gained 1.71% today, the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day.

Forty-eight years after the attack, on December 29, 1989, the Nikkei hit its all-time high.

Today's rally takes the index further off its interim low of eight sessions ago; it is now only 77.6% below its 1989 high.

Meanwhile, another country that dominated the scene in Europe seventy years ago is again the dominant force in the Eurozone as we approach the Brussels Summit on Friday, where a war of brinksmanship is taking place.

Here is a look at the Nikkei 225 which gives an overview of the cyclical rallies and their duration during Japan's secular bear market, now in its 21st year.

US Unemployment Chart : Obama's Tool To Win Reelection

Source : Business Insider 

When President Obama makes his pitch to voters next year on why they should elect him to a second term, he'll likely point to some version of this chart.

What the following chart shows is that Obama inherited a bum economy but that, under his watch, things have begun to turn around. In the past year, the unemployment rate has dropped a full percentage point amid improving job growth. Assuming those trends continue, Obama will be able to say that, yes, the economy needs to be much stronger, but that it's currently heading in the right direction.

That exact pitch helped Reagan win his 1984 reelection bid when he destroyed Walter Mondale —Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and Washington D.C. — despite an unemployment rate of 7.4% on election day. One year earlier, unemployment stood at 8.8%, higher than it is today, but it then steadily ticked down over the following months.

The World's Richest Country In 2050

Goldman has a new report out on The BRICs countries after 10 years, and how global markets will continue to evolve.

Remember, the BRICs are Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- the four countries identified 10 years ago by Goldman's Jim O'Neill as being the global growth-drivers of the next generation.

This new report discusses various themes, including the emergence of non-BRIC emerging markets, as well as a general flattening of income equality over the next several years.

Goldman also makes its prediction for what the richest economies will be in the year 2050.

The good news for the U.S.: The U.S. will remain top dog on a per-capita-GDP basis (this list does exclude some tiny countries, like the Mideast petro-kingdoms, which might actually be higher).

According to the report, China will be far and away the world's biggest economy, but on a per-capita-GDP basis, it still won't even be as rich as Mexico.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-this-will-be-the-worlds-richest-country-in-2050-2011-12#ixzz1fwjplYKr

Facebook Plans $10 Billion IPO At $100 Billion Valuation Next Spring

Facebook will make its debut on public markets between April and July next year and plans to raise up to $10 billion at a $100 billion valuation, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

That means Facebook could file for its initial public offering as early as the end of this year, unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal. Facebook has already crafted an internal prospectus and is ready to file for its IPO at any time, according to the report.

Earlier this summer, CNBC reported the $100 billion amount and the filing timing, but said it might come early in 2012.