Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Is silver a play or WHAT!?
1. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has virtually no silver available to fulfill contract obligations. At the March 25, 2010, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) hearings, both Jeffrey Christian and Adrian Douglas testified that gold and silver markets in London, which are theoretically 100 percent backed by metal, only had enough gold and silver in the vaults to cover 1-3 percent of the contracts.
2. The London gold and silver markets are both in backwardation. In normal commodity markets, futures prices are higher than the current month, or “spot,” price. The higher future prices normally reflect the prevailing interest rate less a small amount for storage costs. This normal condition is called contango. When a market is in backwardation, this is an indication of a severe supply squeeze. In other words, that means that there is insufficient physical commodity to fulfill maturing contracts (let alone future contracts).
For more than a year, the London gold market one and three months contracts have been in backwardation - meaning that the spot month price was higher than the prices of these future contracts. Since Nov. 5, the six-month contract has also been in backwardation, which has never occurred in the London market during the available database that goes back to 1989. In silver, the supply shortage is more extreme, where the six-month contract has been in backwardation for much of the past year, and continuously since June 2.
The only way to cure a market in backwardation is for prices to rise high enough to reduce demand and to encourage greater supply.
3. Testimony at the CFTC hearing in March pointed a direct finger at JPMorgan Chase’s London office for suppressing prices in the silver market. The whistleblower, Andrew Maguire, also released copies of his e-mails with CFTC enforcement personnel to show how he tried to provide this information to the CFTC in the months before this hearing, but had not received a satisfactory response.
4. On Oct. 26, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton issued a statement saying he is convinced there have been violations of the Commodity Exchange Act with respect to the silver market that resulted in the suppression and manipulation of prices. He urged prosecution of the guilty parties.
5. Starting on Oct. 27, a series of lawsuits (now about 25 or so) were filed against JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, the two banks suspected of having the largest silver short positions on the New York COMEX. Two of the suits were filed by law firms who hold the records for collecting the largest settlements under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Commodity Exchange Act, and Investment Company Act. These are firms who are able to cherry-pick the cases they expect to win easily, so they need to be taken seriously.
6. After failing to report - and even denying - that big banks such as JPMorgan Chase had been holding a large short position in the COMEX silver market, the mainstream financial media started reporting a few weeks ago that JPMorgan Chase had reduced its short position since the beginning of 2010.
In a Dec. 13 letter to CFTC Commissioner Chilton, analyst Adrian Douglas drew attention to the fact that U.S. banks have been reducing their COMEX gold and silver market short positions over the course of 2010. However, foreign banks that are exempt from CFTC regulations have been increasing their short sales. In the silver market, the new short positions from foreign banks over the past five months have more than offset the decline in U.S. bank short positions. As a result, total short positions continue to rise. You can review a copy of Douglas’s letter to Chilton at https://marketforceanalysis.com/article/latest_article_112010.html.
At the Dec. 16 CFTC hearings, Chilton shared much of the information from Douglas’s letter, implying that U.S. banks may be trying to hide their short positions by moving them behind foreign fronts.
7. There are a growing number of reports that owners of COMEX gold and silver contracts, who elect to take delivery upon contract maturity, are being settled for cash instead of with physical metal. In examining the daily movements of silver in and out of COMEX warehouses, the total inventories have declined more than 10 percent since midJune. The analysis also shows that when a large deposit of physical silver comes into the COMEX, it is invariably withdrawn within two trading days. To me that is a sign that there is more demand for metal than the COMEX can supply.
8. Since early October, the 10-year US Treasury debt interest rate has jumped 35 percent. This is a significant sign that the value of the U.S. dollar will fall in the next few months.
9. One of my most accurate sources of inside information, a London metals trader, stated in a recent interview that gold and silver buyers in the Far East were having such great difficulty locating physical metal to purchase that they were now buying paper contracts in order to dump billions of U.S. dollars. It is the purported plan of these buyers to later purchase physical metals as they are able to locate any quantities, with little regard to how much above the spot price they may have to pay, and close out the corresponding amount of paper contracts as they do. In the video posted at zerohedge.com, the last tidbit of information is that JPMorgan Chase may be shorting silver to the Chinese government as part of this activity.
10. Much of the gold sold by the International Monetary Fund was channeled through the Bank for International Settlements. The largest chunk of this gold was purchased by India’s central bank. India’s purchases have supposedly been deposited into unallocated storage - where they may be subject to multiple ownership claims. Because of the risk of losing ownership of gold placed in unallocated storage, a growing number of Far East and Middle East buyers of gold and silver are removing their purchases from London vaults to other locations where this risk is absent. If the London contracts really were backed 100 percent by the underlying metal, this would not matter. But, as you can see from the foregoing information, the decline of physical gold and silver stored in London’s vaults is starting to matter very much.
2. The London gold and silver markets are both in backwardation. In normal commodity markets, futures prices are higher than the current month, or “spot,” price. The higher future prices normally reflect the prevailing interest rate less a small amount for storage costs. This normal condition is called contango. When a market is in backwardation, this is an indication of a severe supply squeeze. In other words, that means that there is insufficient physical commodity to fulfill maturing contracts (let alone future contracts).
For more than a year, the London gold market one and three months contracts have been in backwardation - meaning that the spot month price was higher than the prices of these future contracts. Since Nov. 5, the six-month contract has also been in backwardation, which has never occurred in the London market during the available database that goes back to 1989. In silver, the supply shortage is more extreme, where the six-month contract has been in backwardation for much of the past year, and continuously since June 2.
The only way to cure a market in backwardation is for prices to rise high enough to reduce demand and to encourage greater supply.
3. Testimony at the CFTC hearing in March pointed a direct finger at JPMorgan Chase’s London office for suppressing prices in the silver market. The whistleblower, Andrew Maguire, also released copies of his e-mails with CFTC enforcement personnel to show how he tried to provide this information to the CFTC in the months before this hearing, but had not received a satisfactory response.
4. On Oct. 26, CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton issued a statement saying he is convinced there have been violations of the Commodity Exchange Act with respect to the silver market that resulted in the suppression and manipulation of prices. He urged prosecution of the guilty parties.
5. Starting on Oct. 27, a series of lawsuits (now about 25 or so) were filed against JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, the two banks suspected of having the largest silver short positions on the New York COMEX. Two of the suits were filed by law firms who hold the records for collecting the largest settlements under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Commodity Exchange Act, and Investment Company Act. These are firms who are able to cherry-pick the cases they expect to win easily, so they need to be taken seriously.
6. After failing to report - and even denying - that big banks such as JPMorgan Chase had been holding a large short position in the COMEX silver market, the mainstream financial media started reporting a few weeks ago that JPMorgan Chase had reduced its short position since the beginning of 2010.
In a Dec. 13 letter to CFTC Commissioner Chilton, analyst Adrian Douglas drew attention to the fact that U.S. banks have been reducing their COMEX gold and silver market short positions over the course of 2010. However, foreign banks that are exempt from CFTC regulations have been increasing their short sales. In the silver market, the new short positions from foreign banks over the past five months have more than offset the decline in U.S. bank short positions. As a result, total short positions continue to rise. You can review a copy of Douglas’s letter to Chilton at https://marketforceanalysis.com/article/latest_article_112010.html.
At the Dec. 16 CFTC hearings, Chilton shared much of the information from Douglas’s letter, implying that U.S. banks may be trying to hide their short positions by moving them behind foreign fronts.
7. There are a growing number of reports that owners of COMEX gold and silver contracts, who elect to take delivery upon contract maturity, are being settled for cash instead of with physical metal. In examining the daily movements of silver in and out of COMEX warehouses, the total inventories have declined more than 10 percent since midJune. The analysis also shows that when a large deposit of physical silver comes into the COMEX, it is invariably withdrawn within two trading days. To me that is a sign that there is more demand for metal than the COMEX can supply.
8. Since early October, the 10-year US Treasury debt interest rate has jumped 35 percent. This is a significant sign that the value of the U.S. dollar will fall in the next few months.
9. One of my most accurate sources of inside information, a London metals trader, stated in a recent interview that gold and silver buyers in the Far East were having such great difficulty locating physical metal to purchase that they were now buying paper contracts in order to dump billions of U.S. dollars. It is the purported plan of these buyers to later purchase physical metals as they are able to locate any quantities, with little regard to how much above the spot price they may have to pay, and close out the corresponding amount of paper contracts as they do. In the video posted at zerohedge.com, the last tidbit of information is that JPMorgan Chase may be shorting silver to the Chinese government as part of this activity.
10. Much of the gold sold by the International Monetary Fund was channeled through the Bank for International Settlements. The largest chunk of this gold was purchased by India’s central bank. India’s purchases have supposedly been deposited into unallocated storage - where they may be subject to multiple ownership claims. Because of the risk of losing ownership of gold placed in unallocated storage, a growing number of Far East and Middle East buyers of gold and silver are removing their purchases from London vaults to other locations where this risk is absent. If the London contracts really were backed 100 percent by the underlying metal, this would not matter. But, as you can see from the foregoing information, the decline of physical gold and silver stored in London’s vaults is starting to matter very much.
Gold nowhere near a bubble
Very interesting argument: One reason we know that gold is nowhere NEAR a top is the "need" by politicians to "protect" the public from gold buy scams.
You need money, and see a TV televangelist turned gold huckster. You send them in an ounce of scrap jewelry. You get a check for 300 dollars. He just made 1100 dollars off your ignorance that gold sells for 1400 an oz. This is so common that legislators are making noises about passing some law or other to "protect" the public.
THIS KIND OF PUBLIC IGNORANCE DOES NOT HAPPEN IN A BUBBLE. In a bubble "everyone" is in on the game. Like shoeshine boys giving Bernard Baruch stock tips or cocktail waitresses in Miami leaving business cards to flip condos, tops occur when everyone is aware and everyone is trying to play. Gold and silver are nowhere near that.
Of course, politicians and extremely powerful people do not have a vested interest in whacking back the prices of Miami Condos, so I expect periodic STEEP corrections in the prices of metals, which is why I want it "in my hand" rather than in some leveraged account.
You need money, and see a TV televangelist turned gold huckster. You send them in an ounce of scrap jewelry. You get a check for 300 dollars. He just made 1100 dollars off your ignorance that gold sells for 1400 an oz. This is so common that legislators are making noises about passing some law or other to "protect" the public.
THIS KIND OF PUBLIC IGNORANCE DOES NOT HAPPEN IN A BUBBLE. In a bubble "everyone" is in on the game. Like shoeshine boys giving Bernard Baruch stock tips or cocktail waitresses in Miami leaving business cards to flip condos, tops occur when everyone is aware and everyone is trying to play. Gold and silver are nowhere near that.
Of course, politicians and extremely powerful people do not have a vested interest in whacking back the prices of Miami Condos, so I expect periodic STEEP corrections in the prices of metals, which is why I want it "in my hand" rather than in some leveraged account.
Keynesianism just Statism applied to economics
If you are one of the few souls who actually pay attention to more than FOX or CNN headlines, you will, or have, heard much criticism of "Keynesianism" lately. Boiled down, Keynes taught that there would be Federal deficits in recession years and surpluses in boom years. The role of the Federal reserve is to push money out there in bad times and goose a struggling economy. There would be far more boom years than recession years, so little need for deficit spending. Thus, the Federal debt would not grow. It would shrink. No one believes that crap anymore. There are no surpluses. Never have been. Even under Clinton, the so called "surplus" was smoke and mirrors. How do we know that? Simple. The federal debt continued to grow. When you have "deficits" your debt grows (It seems stupid to have to say that, but in today's realm of educated fools, one has to). And one thing is absolutely, unequivocably true about Keynesian economists. They produce deficits. Huge, economy destroying deficits. This is unarguable. There are only deficits. And, no matter how large the deficit is, the answer is "spend more." When you strip away the surface prattle, this is simply statism, the belief that a central ruling body does things better than the ignorant masses.
The alternative to this mess is called "Austrian Economics" which is essentially libertarianism, or individual freedom, applied to economics. It says people SHOULD BE LEFT ALONE. We don't need "experts" to direct, guide, shepherd, manage, or control things. Millions of choices of free people, directing their own lives produce collectively an economy and monetary policy and society that is better in every way.
The purpose of this note is not to ARGUE for freedom when applied to econ. Lew Rockwell does this far better than I. Go there and educate yourself.
The purpose of this note is to get it out there in front. The choice is between freedom and slavery to an elite, between individual sovereignty or a ruling class, and between production of your own wealth and determination of your money supply or licking the boots of your masters as they decide when you have "enough."
I fear we are too far down the second road for this current realm to recover. The only question is, when we begin, over then next 10 years or so, to pick up the pieces, will we have enough people who believe in liberty and freedom to insist they be the governing principles of our society?
It is the big question of 2011...................
The alternative to this mess is called "Austrian Economics" which is essentially libertarianism, or individual freedom, applied to economics. It says people SHOULD BE LEFT ALONE. We don't need "experts" to direct, guide, shepherd, manage, or control things. Millions of choices of free people, directing their own lives produce collectively an economy and monetary policy and society that is better in every way.
The purpose of this note is not to ARGUE for freedom when applied to econ. Lew Rockwell does this far better than I. Go there and educate yourself.
The purpose of this note is to get it out there in front. The choice is between freedom and slavery to an elite, between individual sovereignty or a ruling class, and between production of your own wealth and determination of your money supply or licking the boots of your masters as they decide when you have "enough."
I fear we are too far down the second road for this current realm to recover. The only question is, when we begin, over then next 10 years or so, to pick up the pieces, will we have enough people who believe in liberty and freedom to insist they be the governing principles of our society?
It is the big question of 2011...................
What to expect from 2011....
We have spent ourselves into poverty and collapse. The elite ruling classes will resist the collapse of their power with every imaginable tactic. I expect to see coming:
1) Reinstitution of wage and price controls
2) Rationing of goods and services
3) Increasing militarization of everything in daily life for "security"
4) Replacement of Obamacare with a blending of Boehnercare, which will still be socialization of medicine, including some version of death panels
5) An insistence that our safety depends on government review of everything on the internet
6) Beginnings of talk of taxing WEALTH, not just income. Initially this will come from seizing IRAs by forcing them to "invest" in government bonds.
7) Talk of punishing speculators in gold and hard assets, and talk, if not yet implementation of federal seizure of gold.... again (did you know that under FDR, it was illegal for Americans to own gold?)
8) a great emphasis on the importance of "patriotism" and a visible effort to enlist religious mouthpieces to emphasize the importance of "God and country."
9) a spreading food crisis, with skyrocketing prices from a combination of high oil, overfertilized land and distribution breakdowns. This will lead to talk of food itself being a matter of "national security" with lots of boodle for Monsanto and other GMO producers. Rising food prices will lead to increased control over the commodities futures markets in the name of "punishing the speculators."
10) expansion of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, and maybe Yemen or some other Islamic country for good measure.
1) Reinstitution of wage and price controls
2) Rationing of goods and services
3) Increasing militarization of everything in daily life for "security"
4) Replacement of Obamacare with a blending of Boehnercare, which will still be socialization of medicine, including some version of death panels
5) An insistence that our safety depends on government review of everything on the internet
6) Beginnings of talk of taxing WEALTH, not just income. Initially this will come from seizing IRAs by forcing them to "invest" in government bonds.
7) Talk of punishing speculators in gold and hard assets, and talk, if not yet implementation of federal seizure of gold.... again (did you know that under FDR, it was illegal for Americans to own gold?)
8) a great emphasis on the importance of "patriotism" and a visible effort to enlist religious mouthpieces to emphasize the importance of "God and country."
9) a spreading food crisis, with skyrocketing prices from a combination of high oil, overfertilized land and distribution breakdowns. This will lead to talk of food itself being a matter of "national security" with lots of boodle for Monsanto and other GMO producers. Rising food prices will lead to increased control over the commodities futures markets in the name of "punishing the speculators."
10) expansion of the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, and maybe Yemen or some other Islamic country for good measure.
Monday, December 27, 2010
YouTube - Madison Co. to evict man from camper
From my old home county. Alexandria Indiana in Marion County.
"I just want to be left alone" Not in the land of the free, baby. They leave you alone, you might not buy their power or you might pee on the ground.
Lick the boots, slaves.
Madison Co. to evict man from camper
www.youtube.com
Madison County officials are forcing a man out of his home — a recreational trailer — because they say he's breaking several ordinances.
a few seconds ago · Like · Comment · ShareYouTube - Madison Co. to evict man from camper
"I just want to be left alone" Not in the land of the free, baby. They leave you alone, you might not buy their power or you might pee on the ground.
Lick the boots, slaves.
Madison Co. to evict man from camper
www.youtube.com
Madison County officials are forcing a man out of his home — a recreational trailer — because they say he's breaking several ordinances.
a few seconds ago · Like · Comment · ShareYouTube - Madison Co. to evict man from camper
They Won’t Leave You Alone
You think they will leave you alone???
HA HA HA!!!
This man OWNS the property, and OWNS the dwelling.
He is being expelled from his own land.
Land of the free!?
Right
They Won’t Leave You Alone
HA HA HA!!!
This man OWNS the property, and OWNS the dwelling.
He is being expelled from his own land.
Land of the free!?
Right
They Won’t Leave You Alone
My Way News - US missiles hit Pakistan borderlands, killing 18
Lets just add "Pakistan" to the list of countries with which we are at war, and be done with it. Crap, while we are at it, lets just do them all a favor and invade all the countries on the globe.
My Way News - US missiles hit Pakistan borderlands, killing 18
My Way News - US missiles hit Pakistan borderlands, killing 18
The truth about the U.S. budget deficit: It’s 13x worse than you think | Analysis & Opinion |
The reason they can say this is that the US does NOT keep its books in a manner that normal businesses do.
Read the article
The truth about the U.S. budget deficit: It’s 13x worse than you think | Analysis & Opinion |
Read the article
The truth about the U.S. budget deficit: It’s 13x worse than you think | Analysis & Opinion |
Mark Helprin: America's Dangerous Rush to Shrink Its Military Power - WSJ.com
For over 150 years we had no pretensions of "fighting a war on two fronts" especially foreign wars. We got along just fine.
Whatever happened to "minding our own business?"
Make no mistakes, there are statist collectivists on the "left" but those so called "conservatives" which advocate perpetual warfare and the federal spending it requires are just as much an enemy of liberty as the leftists.
Mark Helprin: America's Dangerous Rush to Shrink Its Military Power - WSJ.com
Whatever happened to "minding our own business?"
Make no mistakes, there are statist collectivists on the "left" but those so called "conservatives" which advocate perpetual warfare and the federal spending it requires are just as much an enemy of liberty as the leftists.
Mark Helprin: America's Dangerous Rush to Shrink Its Military Power - WSJ.com
Friday, December 24, 2010
Sacramento-area pilot punished for YouTube video | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News
Little by little. Tightening, circling, with predatory eyes.
Many are going to wake up and say "how did we get here." The answer is as plain as these kind of news stories.
Sacramento-area pilot punished for YouTube video | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News
Many are going to wake up and say "how did we get here." The answer is as plain as these kind of news stories.
Sacramento-area pilot punished for YouTube video | News10.net | Sacramento, California | News
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Is A Police State Worth Fighting For?
Do you have plans, even vague ones, to leave the USA?
You should.
Is A Police State Worth Fighting For?
You should.
Is A Police State Worth Fighting For?
Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values by Paul Craig Roberts
This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.
There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture....... A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples.
Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values by Paul Craig Roberts
There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture....... A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.
Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples.
Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values by Paul Craig Roberts
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
"You are the only person I know who is saying this stuff"
Everyone I know of who is not a bureaucratic mouthpiece for the government or the banking industry is saying we are going to have price explosion of commodities and a collapse of the dollar. All predictions are that this will lead AT BEST to a radical lowering of our standard of living, and at worst to societal breakdown, and a collapse of society akin to the Middle Ages.
What is amazing is that people close to me look at me with a straight face and say "you are the only person I know who is saying this stuff." Then I read the mainstream press....., even the financial press, which is a little more informative, and I understand why. Appalling abject stupidity and a complete ignorance of the underlying economic situation, coupled with a kind of Pollyana "oh, it will all work out... things have been hard before."
Makes me think "my GOODNESS, what unspeakable ignorance about our financial situation!"....., and then I feel compelled to make another shrieking wailing prediction of doom somewhere (lol).
It has been bad before. Problem is, every time it has been like this before, the price to fix it has been excruciating, painful, and for many, fatal.
I guess that is just what it is.
www.sprott.com/Docs/InvestorsDigest/2010/MPLID_112610_pg401Emb.pdf
What is amazing is that people close to me look at me with a straight face and say "you are the only person I know who is saying this stuff." Then I read the mainstream press....., even the financial press, which is a little more informative, and I understand why. Appalling abject stupidity and a complete ignorance of the underlying economic situation, coupled with a kind of Pollyana "oh, it will all work out... things have been hard before."
Makes me think "my GOODNESS, what unspeakable ignorance about our financial situation!"....., and then I feel compelled to make another shrieking wailing prediction of doom somewhere (lol).
It has been bad before. Problem is, every time it has been like this before, the price to fix it has been excruciating, painful, and for many, fatal.
I guess that is just what it is.
www.sprott.com/Docs/InvestorsDigest/2010/MPLID_112610_pg401Emb.pdf
$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities | Business | The Guardian
"We spent too much on everything. We spent money we didn't have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card's maxed out, and it's over. We now have to get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We've been digging it for a decade or more. We've got to climb now, and a climb is harder." NJ Governor Chris Christie
$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities | Business | The Guardian
$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities | Business | The Guardian
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
"Like Argentina in its worst moments"
You gotta admit, it does have a ring to it!
Oh well, here's to the first go round in the toilet bowl swirl. USA about to lose its AAA credit rating. WHOOPIE!!!!!!!
Dollar's Sovereign Credit Standing: U.S. Plays a Dangerous Game - Seeking Alpha
Oh well, here's to the first go round in the toilet bowl swirl. USA about to lose its AAA credit rating. WHOOPIE!!!!!!!
Dollar's Sovereign Credit Standing: U.S. Plays a Dangerous Game - Seeking Alpha
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Bank of America cuts off WikiLeaks | Privacy Inc. - CNET News
Bank of America has added its name to a list of several financial institutions that have refused to process payments for WikiLeaks as the site reportedly readies a document release that targets the banking giant
HA HA! BLEEEEEEED BOA!!!
Bank of America cuts off WikiLeaks | Privacy Inc. - CNET News
HA HA! BLEEEEEEED BOA!!!
Bank of America cuts off WikiLeaks | Privacy Inc. - CNET News
A Dangerous Gap in Our Defenses? - Henry F. Cooper & Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. - National Review Online
A Dangerous Gap in Our Defenses? - Henry F. Cooper & Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. - National Review Online
Everyone really needs to read "One Second After" by William Forstchen. an amazing read and very eye opening.
Everyone really needs to read "One Second After" by William Forstchen. an amazing read and very eye opening.
"CAPITALISM?" What is that?
Many people today, especially the under 30 crowd, look at the mess we are in and think "that is the result of your so called 'free markets.' Who wants THAT?" I don't blame them. They look at the theft, the corporations cozying up to politicians and getting preferable treatment, and the wasting of mountains of resources... yes, even the LOOTING of the entire USA, and they say, with justification, "Save us from 'capitalism.' "
And I agree... if what we have now is capitalism......, but it ain't. What we have is essentially what Adam Smith was arguing AGAINST, which is mercantilism, or governments lining up with big businesses to protect them, coddle them, use the power of the state to keep them running, and ultimately fight wars to keep them in power.
One wag I read calls this "Banksterism." The big money centers fund business, protect it, and are in turn protected by the state. As a result the most effective corrective to the accumulation of power - entrepreneurship - is presented with a set of structural, legal and financial impairments that prohibit competitors from doing the job they should do in a free market. They should be giant killers, keeping ossified and ustabe-successful companies constantly evolving or dying. Instead, we have creaky monstrosities like the customer service phone center at Bank of America who don't care because they don't HAVE to care, no one can touch them.
In reality, all fortune 500 companies are infected with this "I am immune from the market because I am big" thinking. As a result, there is no spirit of entrepreneurship, and not even a fear of entrepreneurship. Sometimes, they even swirl down the drain, too stupid, bloated and lazy to realize they are dying, until the lawyers arrive to cut up the dead cadaver. Remember Eastern Airlines?
This is more pronounced in Europe, of course, where the state and business have always hopped in and out of each other's beds. There, the big banks have always called the tune. Their strategy has always been to PRIVATIZE PROFITS and SOCIALIZE LOSSES. They have been seeking this and doing this for hundreds of years. As an aside, this is why, although there are rich people in Europe, society is MUCH more stratified. The rich STAY rich, and the poor STAY poor, and there is much less ability to move from one class to another.
This stratified situation, with the wealthy bankers calling the political tunes is EXACTLY what was done to Argentina in 2001. The bankers, in the person of the IMF, piled up monstrous line item losses, squeezed every dime they could out of the nation, and fobbed off bone crushing losses on a state stupid (corrupt?) enough to agree to pay them. Of course they passed these losses back down on the backs of the populace. Argentina still has not recovered and may not ever. The same song is being played today, in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. The goal is TO KEEP THE PAYMENT OF INTEREST ON LOANS GOING AT ALL COSTS.
In a free society, when a small business folds, it folds. They cut up the producing assets, and the lending institution takes the loss, and someone comes up with a newer, more efficient, more profitable and spiffier product/system. Profits rise and people's standard of living goes up. Money is literally "made."
Destruction and bankruptcy are painful to individuals, including the lenders, but the overall process is good for everyone, as efficiency and productivity and wealth all come in higher on the second go-round.
With "banksterism," though, the process is aborted. Again, the goal of the banking thugs is to KEEP THE CASH FLOW ROLLING AND AVOID TAKING A LOSS. They do this initially by allowing the debtor to refinance the debt and borrow more money. When this becomes impossible to do, they encourage the state to step in and guarantee the debt, and when the state is in danger of default they encourage them to print the money to keep the cash running as long as possible. In the case of Argentina, even after they completely blew up the peso by inflating it out of existence, they insisted on the state paying back the IMF and found politicians they could buy off who would agree to it.
This model arrived full bore in the USA shepherded in by George W. Bush, whose entire summary of fitness to be president seemed to be that he could emote with people. He did what, if a Democrat had done, we would be calling "communist" and wound up getting tons of bible believing conservatives to swallow it without batting an eye.
The business model is no longer to find a product people want and need, produce it well at a competitive price, and let it sell itself. Rather, it is to get a government or legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption. These things are worth more than Eli Whitney's cotton gin or Ford's Model T or the Comstock lode. What is better, they require no genius, no new ideas, no sweat, no dedication to labor or strategy or any of the characteristics we used to associate with business. What it requires is that you know someone who is powerful who can rig the market for you.
A great early example in the USA is John D. Rockefeller, the first owner of "big oil." He did not make his fortune by drilling for oil and meeting people's needs. Rather, he stirred up a bunch of emotional estrogen laden busybody shrews and let them do the work for him. He donated the eye popping sum (in its day) of 4 MILLION dollars to the Woman's Temperance Society to lobby against "demon rum." With prohibition, the possibility of an ethanol based internal combustion engine was dead, and petroleum was not only the way to go, it was the ONLY way to go! He was a genius, a schemer, a strategist and an amazingly foresighted man, but he was decidedly NOT a "capitalist." He managed to let the U.S. government kill his competition. After that, making a fortune was easy.
We have this exact scenario in every business sector today, but expressed most perfectly in the area of big banks, and their government henchman, the Federal Reserve. There is a three way triumvirate between the Fed, the big Wall Street Banks, and the US Treasury. In fact, it is such an incestuous triangle that it is difficult to remember who is working with which branch, they move so fluidly in and out and between these three.
There have been three big "bubbles" recently caused by the insistence that we float new loans to troubled financial sectors and institutions. The first came with the Y2K fears, when the increase of the money supply by 20% caused an artificial boom in the tech markets. When this collapsed, the money rolled into the housing market, which pretty much began tanking in 2006, but spectacularly imploded in 2008.
The final, or "next to the final" bubble, has been the credit markets themselves or the treasury bond markets. The desperation to keep that inflated has been most panicked and intense, because the collapse of that bubble drags the whole system down with it, which only leaves the final bubble...... a nuclear one.
When empires suffer economic and financial collapses, they always wage wars.
War will always pull the failed state out of the doldrums, because it does the job of "creative destruction" that the market would have done if you had let it do its work. Only it is not so "creative" in its destruction.
Me? I am looking for a place to move. Our country is run by fools.
And I agree... if what we have now is capitalism......, but it ain't. What we have is essentially what Adam Smith was arguing AGAINST, which is mercantilism, or governments lining up with big businesses to protect them, coddle them, use the power of the state to keep them running, and ultimately fight wars to keep them in power.
One wag I read calls this "Banksterism." The big money centers fund business, protect it, and are in turn protected by the state. As a result the most effective corrective to the accumulation of power - entrepreneurship - is presented with a set of structural, legal and financial impairments that prohibit competitors from doing the job they should do in a free market. They should be giant killers, keeping ossified and ustabe-successful companies constantly evolving or dying. Instead, we have creaky monstrosities like the customer service phone center at Bank of America who don't care because they don't HAVE to care, no one can touch them.
In reality, all fortune 500 companies are infected with this "I am immune from the market because I am big" thinking. As a result, there is no spirit of entrepreneurship, and not even a fear of entrepreneurship. Sometimes, they even swirl down the drain, too stupid, bloated and lazy to realize they are dying, until the lawyers arrive to cut up the dead cadaver. Remember Eastern Airlines?
This is more pronounced in Europe, of course, where the state and business have always hopped in and out of each other's beds. There, the big banks have always called the tune. Their strategy has always been to PRIVATIZE PROFITS and SOCIALIZE LOSSES. They have been seeking this and doing this for hundreds of years. As an aside, this is why, although there are rich people in Europe, society is MUCH more stratified. The rich STAY rich, and the poor STAY poor, and there is much less ability to move from one class to another.
This stratified situation, with the wealthy bankers calling the political tunes is EXACTLY what was done to Argentina in 2001. The bankers, in the person of the IMF, piled up monstrous line item losses, squeezed every dime they could out of the nation, and fobbed off bone crushing losses on a state stupid (corrupt?) enough to agree to pay them. Of course they passed these losses back down on the backs of the populace. Argentina still has not recovered and may not ever. The same song is being played today, in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. The goal is TO KEEP THE PAYMENT OF INTEREST ON LOANS GOING AT ALL COSTS.
In a free society, when a small business folds, it folds. They cut up the producing assets, and the lending institution takes the loss, and someone comes up with a newer, more efficient, more profitable and spiffier product/system. Profits rise and people's standard of living goes up. Money is literally "made."
Destruction and bankruptcy are painful to individuals, including the lenders, but the overall process is good for everyone, as efficiency and productivity and wealth all come in higher on the second go-round.
With "banksterism," though, the process is aborted. Again, the goal of the banking thugs is to KEEP THE CASH FLOW ROLLING AND AVOID TAKING A LOSS. They do this initially by allowing the debtor to refinance the debt and borrow more money. When this becomes impossible to do, they encourage the state to step in and guarantee the debt, and when the state is in danger of default they encourage them to print the money to keep the cash running as long as possible. In the case of Argentina, even after they completely blew up the peso by inflating it out of existence, they insisted on the state paying back the IMF and found politicians they could buy off who would agree to it.
This model arrived full bore in the USA shepherded in by George W. Bush, whose entire summary of fitness to be president seemed to be that he could emote with people. He did what, if a Democrat had done, we would be calling "communist" and wound up getting tons of bible believing conservatives to swallow it without batting an eye.
The business model is no longer to find a product people want and need, produce it well at a competitive price, and let it sell itself. Rather, it is to get a government or legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption. These things are worth more than Eli Whitney's cotton gin or Ford's Model T or the Comstock lode. What is better, they require no genius, no new ideas, no sweat, no dedication to labor or strategy or any of the characteristics we used to associate with business. What it requires is that you know someone who is powerful who can rig the market for you.
A great early example in the USA is John D. Rockefeller, the first owner of "big oil." He did not make his fortune by drilling for oil and meeting people's needs. Rather, he stirred up a bunch of emotional estrogen laden busybody shrews and let them do the work for him. He donated the eye popping sum (in its day) of 4 MILLION dollars to the Woman's Temperance Society to lobby against "demon rum." With prohibition, the possibility of an ethanol based internal combustion engine was dead, and petroleum was not only the way to go, it was the ONLY way to go! He was a genius, a schemer, a strategist and an amazingly foresighted man, but he was decidedly NOT a "capitalist." He managed to let the U.S. government kill his competition. After that, making a fortune was easy.
We have this exact scenario in every business sector today, but expressed most perfectly in the area of big banks, and their government henchman, the Federal Reserve. There is a three way triumvirate between the Fed, the big Wall Street Banks, and the US Treasury. In fact, it is such an incestuous triangle that it is difficult to remember who is working with which branch, they move so fluidly in and out and between these three.
There have been three big "bubbles" recently caused by the insistence that we float new loans to troubled financial sectors and institutions. The first came with the Y2K fears, when the increase of the money supply by 20% caused an artificial boom in the tech markets. When this collapsed, the money rolled into the housing market, which pretty much began tanking in 2006, but spectacularly imploded in 2008.
The final, or "next to the final" bubble, has been the credit markets themselves or the treasury bond markets. The desperation to keep that inflated has been most panicked and intense, because the collapse of that bubble drags the whole system down with it, which only leaves the final bubble...... a nuclear one.
When empires suffer economic and financial collapses, they always wage wars.
War will always pull the failed state out of the doldrums, because it does the job of "creative destruction" that the market would have done if you had let it do its work. Only it is not so "creative" in its destruction.
Me? I am looking for a place to move. Our country is run by fools.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Gonzalo Lira: Want To Ruin Your Own Country? Assume Your Banks’ Liabilities
This guy is ALWAYS a good read.
He is from Chile.
Gonzalo Lira: Want To Ruin Your Own Country? Assume Your Banks’ Liabilities
He is from Chile.
Gonzalo Lira: Want To Ruin Your Own Country? Assume Your Banks’ Liabilities
Ben Bernanke, Man of Experience
I find it amazing that anyone pays any attention at all to what the man says. Except for a brief time waiting tables in school, he has zero experience in the real world. His whole life has been reading abstruse books written by people like himself, and doing complicated math formulas that are supposed to describe economic phenomena, but have absolutely nothing to do with the study of human action. He's a character who should appear in Alice in Wonderland, or Through the Looking Glass.
-- Doug Casey on Ben Bernanke
-- Doug Casey on Ben Bernanke
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Great Silver Squeeze
The press is finally catching on that JP Morgan is in deep trouble. gulfnews : Reality of the great silver squeeze
The most interesting point made in the article is this one:
The most interesting point made in the article is this one:
Earlier, the CFTC had plans to provide greater transparency on speculative limits by mid January; but for reasons unspecified they have declared such deadlines can't be met.
Did you catch that? The CFTC, (kind of like the SEC for commodities), was going to institute "position limits" for precious metals. This is a restriction on the amount of contracts a trader can hold, in an attempt to limit the ability of one big player to bully the market. This is usually to prevent one person or group of people to "squeeze" the market by buying up positions solely to force delivery requirements and run up prices. It is a form of market manipulation that has been around forever.
However, this deadline was before the CFTC admitted that one "trader" owns nearly 40 per cent of the market. Their words were "fraudulent efforts" to "deviously control". The cat is out of the bag that this "trader" is none other than JP Morgan. Since it has become obvious that this "one trader" has such a massive position, now they say the deadline for people like this to unwind their positions "can't be met." That means, boys and girls, that there is a huge commitment that THEY CANNOT UNWIND BY JANUARY. This is the classic definition of a short squeeze.
To make matters more complicated, the MUCH MUCH larger OTC market in London has no position limits at all. It is fairly common knowledge in the markets that massive purchases of silver have been made by cash flush Asian banks who have scared the living pooh out of the markets by demanding physical delivery of the silver they bought. This is the major reason silver has gone from 15 to 30 dollars an ounce in the past two months.
Given the fact that there has been a long tradition of fraud, lies, double-dealing (literally having metals "in trust" for people, but having the same kilo of gold or silver pledged to 2,3 or 10 people!!!... admitted in a lawsuit against Morgan Stanley) and all kinds of shenanigans, AND the fact that the world banking system HATES gold and silver because it threatens their financial monopoly........ I would not be surprised AT ALL to find that JP Morgan is actually just a bagman for the interests behind the Central Banks, used to illegally suppress any precious metals claims to be "money."
Buy silver. Get it in your hand, not in SLV or some fund you may or may not be able to trust.
PS. if you want a great online debate about whether this state is as bad as I claim, there is a good online discussion between "Kid Dynamite" and Jason Hommel on seeking alpha here Seeking Alpha NOTE: there is a lot of extraneous noise in here. One commentator is an obvious ass and makes reading the whole thing unpleasant, but if you just skip to the interchange between the original poster and Jason, you will get a great display of the differences between a person who has basic trust in the integrity of the markets and a person who does not.
gulfnews : Reality of the great silver squeeze
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Investors to Silver: 'Let’s Get Physical' by Frank Holmes
SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE!!!!
from the article:
Some skeptics may argue that there is no backwardation apparent from COMEX settlement prices. Aside from the fact that COMEX recently changed the method to determine settlement prices from a market-driven basis to instead allow a manual override, which now makes backwardation on the posted COMEX settlement prices virtually impossible, one has to first recognize that COMEX is first and foremost a market for paper-gold and paper-silver.
Interesting notation I did not know. If the stats show you are creating big problems.... just change the way you report the stats.... problem solved! ha ha. It eventually comes back to bite you.
Any way you look at it, the backwardation in gold and silver is a truly rare event and an exceptionally bullish one too. So be prepared for an upside explosion in the price of both precious metals as the scramble for physical metal intensifies even further, and investors increasingly choose to hold the metals themselves, instead of paper promises.
.... and maybe bankrupt JP Morgan in the process????? One can hope.
Investors to Silver: 'Let’s Get Physical' by Frank Holmes
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Count Our Holiday Blessings: At Least We’re Not Starving by C.J. Maloney
Why am I infuriated with Richard Burr and S.510. ( I SWEAR TO YOU I WILL VOTE DEMOCRATIC FOR HIS SEAT IF HE RUNS AGAIN!!!)
This is why.....
America's ability to feed itself has been mercifully free from meddlesome bureaucrats and government tinkerers.... for the most part. Therein lies the rich historical bounty of our food production.
Of course, all good things eventually end.
Count Our Holiday Blessings: At Least We’re Not Starving by C.J. Maloney
This is why.....
In America the agricultural sector has, despite constant political inroads, been for the most part free of the degree of government control found in countries prone to famine. That is our saving grace and our safety. But should this ever change and we find ourselves in the sad state of a North Korea you can still be thankful to God for His mercy upon us, His favored children, and count your holiday blessings.
America's ability to feed itself has been mercifully free from meddlesome bureaucrats and government tinkerers.... for the most part. Therein lies the rich historical bounty of our food production.
Of course, all good things eventually end.
Count Our Holiday Blessings: At Least We’re Not Starving by C.J. Maloney
The Penniless Billionaires - Coinflation.com
From the book:
In the autumn of 1923, Lott Hendlich, a German widow in her fifties, returned to her native Frankfurt after an absence of more than four years in Switzerland. In 1919 she had gone to spend a few pleasant weeks in a Swiss village where her relatives lived. But almost immediately, Frau Hendlich broke her hip in a fall. During her long convalescence her chronic cough became worse, and the doctor attending her advised her that she was suffering from advanced tuberculosis. The months and years of her illness dragged on interminably even though her relatives were genuinely solicitous (they insisted on defraying all her expenses, including the fees of her doctor). At last, in September 1923, she was "cured" and considered well enough to return home. Her much longed-for homecoming soon became a nightmare.
In the stack of accumulated mail she found three letters from her bank; they delineated her ruin. The first–written in mid-1920 by a minor bank officer who had befriended her–advised her "to invest most of the funds in your rather substantial bank account" (amounting to over 600,000 marks, or the equivalent of more than $70,000 at the exchange rate prevailing in 1919). "It is my judgment," the writer continued, "that the purchasing power of the mark will decline, and I suggest you try to guard against this through some suitable investment which we can discuss when you come into the bank."
The next letter, dated in September 1922, and signed by another officer said, "It is no longer profitable for us to service such a small account as yours. Will you kindly withdraw your funds at the earliest opportunity?"
The third letter, dated several weeks before her return from Switzerland, announced, "Not having heard from you since our last communication, we have closed out your account. Since we no longer have on hand any small-denomination bank notes, we herein enclose a note for one million marks."
With gathering panic Frau Hendlich looked at the envelope that had contained the letter and the million-mark note. She noticed that affixed to it there was a canceled postage stamp of one million marks. Her bank account–which four years before seemed large enough to provide her with a serene existence to the end of her days–had been utterly consumed by inflation and could no longer pay for an ordinary postage stamp.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Want JP Morgan to crash? Buy silver
Are you an anarchist at heart? Do you secretly or openly loathe big corrupt corporations? Do you feel helpless when you witness the power and crookedness and sluice of money that goes between these mammoth organizations and government........ and screws over the little guy?
Tell the truth, would you not REALLY deep down inside... just once... like to STICK IT TO THE MAN?
Well here is your chance. And I mean it. This could have bone rattling implications on the corrupt banking cartel that is RUINING the economy of the entire world (starting with America and the EU). It is a simple strategy. Buy a little bit of silver (or a lot, if you have the money), and take delivery of it. Put it in your hand.
Read the article below to see why this will crash one of the most corrupt, manipulative, deceptive financial institutions on the planet, and in the process pull down the gossamer web of lying derivatives hawkers. It is going to happen anyway. All financial systems are built on TRUST, and when people no longer trust them, they implode. They have definitely betrayed that trust, and you can be ahead of the rush to the exits.
Our system has become hopelessly corrupted and is unreformable, with derivatives "notional" value of over 10 times the value of the underlying markets in tangible goods and services. What that means is that "derivatives" like future, options, insurance, and swaps on a widget industry that produces 10 million dollars worth of widgets a year.... that industry has in the financial world over 100 million dollars worth of derivatives floating around. The derivatives themselves have swamped the underlying industries and have become completely unrelated to them....... except for the risk they pose.
Nowhere is this more crystal clear than in the element argentum, or silver. The casinos of Wall Street (aka "investment banks") have openly and blatantly manipulated the price of silver (and gold, but silver is a much smaller market) for years. They have "sold forward" derivative contracts of silver in huge, massive amounts, garnering small paper profits, but creating massive risks to themselves and the stability of the exchanges, and the entire worldwide financial system.
The problem is that the silver they sold does not exist. It is only on paper, as a promise. They have, over the years, built up a gogonzilla, a megaphon, a gastroodley amount of these fictitious silver bars they have sold but cannot deliver if the market actually demands them. I use made up words because the amounts are eye-popping. Just four of the IBs on Wall Street are pledged to deliver THE ENTIRE WORLD PRODUCTION OF SILVER FOR A YEAR. The problem is that of course they do not have this silver at all. What is worse is that one of these outfits (HSBC) is the "caretaker" or "trustee" of all the silver for the (very popular) ETF fund SLV, which is a stock that trades on the NY Stock Exchange. You see, the "underlying" silver you are supposed to be buying when you trade SLV is held in trust by an outfit who is has already sold FAR in excess the amount of silver they hold "in trust."
At its core, this is similar to a Ponzi scheme. You are selling promises that you cannot back up. A ponzi works until the promises get called in. The truly great thing about this is that silver is small enough (only 600 million oz produced yearly, worldwide, and almost all of this is used up by industry) and the big corporate thieves are in this deep enough, that making them eat what they have been shoveling the public is relatively easy. You just have to buy physical silver and take possession of it.
This is a pretty smart thing to do anyway, what with the looming collapse of the US dollar. Silver has gone up almost 300 per cent since the crash of Lehman two short years ago. It is not showing any "topping out" signs at all. It is a good investment for you to have as a part of your investments. If you are a "gloom and doom" person who is looking for severe societal problems in the next few years, then having some silver is especially wise, and could mean the difference between survival and starvation.
But even if things do not "unwind," it is good, and right, and moral to destroy what is like a ponzi, or a counterfeiting scheme. When you blatantly sell worthless paper that has nothing to back it up, you are like a counterfeiter, printing up dollar bills in your basement. It is wicked. It is stealing, and it should be stopped. The way to stop it is to "squeeze the shorts" or bring them the paper, and demand they deliver. In the famous words of the mega tycoon Daniel Drew "He who sells what isn't 'his'n', must buy it back, or go to prison." This refers to the sleazy person who has manipulated prices downward by "selling short" far in excess of what he can hope to actually deliver. When someone (Commodore Vanderbilt in the old days, the American Public today) buys up all these promises and says "bring em here, I want them," then the fun begins.
The "little guy" in America can do this, simply because the big banks are impossibly over-leveraged short, the silver market is so small, silver has a VERY VERY good chance of returning to a "monetary metal" (mail me about that if you need an explanation), and the paper currencies of the world are in a wild inflationary race right now. If just the citizenry of America (not counting China, or EU or others) bought ONE OUNCE (28 dollars and 50 cents as we speak) of silver and took it home (thus, off the market), the market would utterly panic. Three ounces, and industry could not get the silver they need to produce circuitry, solar panels, water filters, photo equipment, etc etc and would demand the banks cough up on the worthless promises they have made.
Just think. You could wreck the entire corrupt, vermin ridden, filthy financial establishment (and maybe the government too, if things got rolling just right) without a single bomb being detonated, a single death ......, well maybe some of the thieves in high positions in banks might jump, but whatever......, no FBI showing up at your door. You would not have to attend any rallies and wear shirts with those stupid marxist retread slogans or even wave one "don't tread on me" flag.
That is MY kind of anarchy, baby!
Want JP Morgan to crash? Buy silver | Max Keiser | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Tell the truth, would you not REALLY deep down inside... just once... like to STICK IT TO THE MAN?
Well here is your chance. And I mean it. This could have bone rattling implications on the corrupt banking cartel that is RUINING the economy of the entire world (starting with America and the EU). It is a simple strategy. Buy a little bit of silver (or a lot, if you have the money), and take delivery of it. Put it in your hand.
Read the article below to see why this will crash one of the most corrupt, manipulative, deceptive financial institutions on the planet, and in the process pull down the gossamer web of lying derivatives hawkers. It is going to happen anyway. All financial systems are built on TRUST, and when people no longer trust them, they implode. They have definitely betrayed that trust, and you can be ahead of the rush to the exits.
Our system has become hopelessly corrupted and is unreformable, with derivatives "notional" value of over 10 times the value of the underlying markets in tangible goods and services. What that means is that "derivatives" like future, options, insurance, and swaps on a widget industry that produces 10 million dollars worth of widgets a year.... that industry has in the financial world over 100 million dollars worth of derivatives floating around. The derivatives themselves have swamped the underlying industries and have become completely unrelated to them....... except for the risk they pose.
Nowhere is this more crystal clear than in the element argentum, or silver. The casinos of Wall Street (aka "investment banks") have openly and blatantly manipulated the price of silver (and gold, but silver is a much smaller market) for years. They have "sold forward" derivative contracts of silver in huge, massive amounts, garnering small paper profits, but creating massive risks to themselves and the stability of the exchanges, and the entire worldwide financial system.
The problem is that the silver they sold does not exist. It is only on paper, as a promise. They have, over the years, built up a gogonzilla, a megaphon, a gastroodley amount of these fictitious silver bars they have sold but cannot deliver if the market actually demands them. I use made up words because the amounts are eye-popping. Just four of the IBs on Wall Street are pledged to deliver THE ENTIRE WORLD PRODUCTION OF SILVER FOR A YEAR. The problem is that of course they do not have this silver at all. What is worse is that one of these outfits (HSBC) is the "caretaker" or "trustee" of all the silver for the (very popular) ETF fund SLV, which is a stock that trades on the NY Stock Exchange. You see, the "underlying" silver you are supposed to be buying when you trade SLV is held in trust by an outfit who is has already sold FAR in excess the amount of silver they hold "in trust."
At its core, this is similar to a Ponzi scheme. You are selling promises that you cannot back up. A ponzi works until the promises get called in. The truly great thing about this is that silver is small enough (only 600 million oz produced yearly, worldwide, and almost all of this is used up by industry) and the big corporate thieves are in this deep enough, that making them eat what they have been shoveling the public is relatively easy. You just have to buy physical silver and take possession of it.
This is a pretty smart thing to do anyway, what with the looming collapse of the US dollar. Silver has gone up almost 300 per cent since the crash of Lehman two short years ago. It is not showing any "topping out" signs at all. It is a good investment for you to have as a part of your investments. If you are a "gloom and doom" person who is looking for severe societal problems in the next few years, then having some silver is especially wise, and could mean the difference between survival and starvation.
But even if things do not "unwind," it is good, and right, and moral to destroy what is like a ponzi, or a counterfeiting scheme. When you blatantly sell worthless paper that has nothing to back it up, you are like a counterfeiter, printing up dollar bills in your basement. It is wicked. It is stealing, and it should be stopped. The way to stop it is to "squeeze the shorts" or bring them the paper, and demand they deliver. In the famous words of the mega tycoon Daniel Drew "He who sells what isn't 'his'n', must buy it back, or go to prison." This refers to the sleazy person who has manipulated prices downward by "selling short" far in excess of what he can hope to actually deliver. When someone (Commodore Vanderbilt in the old days, the American Public today) buys up all these promises and says "bring em here, I want them," then the fun begins.
The "little guy" in America can do this, simply because the big banks are impossibly over-leveraged short, the silver market is so small, silver has a VERY VERY good chance of returning to a "monetary metal" (mail me about that if you need an explanation), and the paper currencies of the world are in a wild inflationary race right now. If just the citizenry of America (not counting China, or EU or others) bought ONE OUNCE (28 dollars and 50 cents as we speak) of silver and took it home (thus, off the market), the market would utterly panic. Three ounces, and industry could not get the silver they need to produce circuitry, solar panels, water filters, photo equipment, etc etc and would demand the banks cough up on the worthless promises they have made.
Just think. You could wreck the entire corrupt, vermin ridden, filthy financial establishment (and maybe the government too, if things got rolling just right) without a single bomb being detonated, a single death ......, well maybe some of the thieves in high positions in banks might jump, but whatever......, no FBI showing up at your door. You would not have to attend any rallies and wear shirts with those stupid marxist retread slogans or even wave one "don't tread on me" flag.
That is MY kind of anarchy, baby!
Want JP Morgan to crash? Buy silver | Max Keiser | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
WikiLeaks website disconnected as US company withdraws support - Telegraph
THIS is extremely serious.
It is no secret that a cabal of governments have run a coordinated series of DOS attacks against WL. No matter what you think of them, the sexual antics of its founder, or the leaks themselves, this is an ILLEGAL activity against a purveyor of information. Rather than go through the legal gyrations of actually parceling evidence and prosecuting him for illegalities, they pull this heavy handed KGB/Gestapo/Stasi kind of trick.
Mark my words. This is a bad bad bad precedent. Don't like what some guy critical of your government says? Don't bother with the law, just burn the newspaper building down. Get some goons from the other embassies in your country to help.
WikiLeaks website disconnected as US company withdraws support - Telegraph
It is no secret that a cabal of governments have run a coordinated series of DOS attacks against WL. No matter what you think of them, the sexual antics of its founder, or the leaks themselves, this is an ILLEGAL activity against a purveyor of information. Rather than go through the legal gyrations of actually parceling evidence and prosecuting him for illegalities, they pull this heavy handed KGB/Gestapo/Stasi kind of trick.
Mark my words. This is a bad bad bad precedent. Don't like what some guy critical of your government says? Don't bother with the law, just burn the newspaper building down. Get some goons from the other embassies in your country to help.
WikiLeaks website disconnected as US company withdraws support - Telegraph
Thursday, December 02, 2010
YouTube - THE MADNESS OF A LOST SOCIETY
One of the best, most incisive and sobering vids I have seen in a while.
YouTube - THE MADNESS OF A LOST SOCIETY
YouTube - THE MADNESS OF A LOST SOCIETY
Stand by for more worse news
At the end of December, another two million workers will join the ranks of those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and a total of 4 million Americans will be without unemployment checks and face destitution.
The U.S. Economy: Stand by for more worse news | Opinion Maker
The U.S. Economy: Stand by for more worse news | Opinion Maker
At some point creditors will have to take their punishment.
I remember arguing with a Duke Faculty person outside a polling station during the 2008 election that the bailouts were counterproductive, would not "save" anything and would only put off the unpleasantness.... and exacerbate it. It is like a person refusing to excise a boil until the leg must be amputated.
From the article
Mounting calls for 'nuclear response' to save monetary union - Telegraph
From the article
Dr Buiter said the rescue packages for Greece and Ireland put off the day of reckoning. At some point creditors will have to take their punishment. While Europe is now the epicentre of the debt crisis, concerns may ultimately spread to Japan and the US. "There is no such thing as an absolutely safe sovereign," he said.
Mounting calls for 'nuclear response' to save monetary union - Telegraph
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Disappearing Bank Accounts
I used to keep in a safe place between 2 and 10 thousand dollars "in cash"
Since focusing on gold, silver, guns, ammo and food, that has disappeared. Maybe I should re-think.
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Disappearing Bank Accounts
Since focusing on gold, silver, guns, ammo and food, that has disappeared. Maybe I should re-think.
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Disappearing Bank Accounts
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Long Arm of the Law | 5280 | Denver's Magazine Since 1993
You thought it would stop with Airport inspections?
Idiot.
Long Arm of the Law | 5280 | Denver's Magazine Since 1993
Idiot.
Long Arm of the Law | 5280 | Denver's Magazine Since 1993
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