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- Portfolio Strategies For A Currency Crisis
- Europe Will Bring U.S. Stocks And Precious Metals Down
- LISTEN: Default, Gold and A Reduction Strategy
- WATCH: “Forces At Work To Move Metals Down”
- WATCH: CFTC Final Rule Making
- options expiration?
- US manipulating the gold price up
- Great Panther Silver Extends Strike Length of Silver-Gold Veins at San Ignacio Property, Guanajuato
- Endeavour Silver Options Lomas Bayas Silver-Gold Property in Chile; Third Quarter Earnings Report to be Released on Wednesday November 2rd; Teleconference on Thursday November 3th
- This is the Gold Bull Market
- Gold and economic decline
- Living "off the grid" requires a surprisingly small amount of land
- Gold Supported at 144 DMA and by Negative Real Interest Rates in US - Charts of Day
- Paper Raids on Metals Just Drive Them East Faster: John Embry
- Eurozone crisis could cause collapse of global banking system, warns Citigroup's Willem Buiter
- Paper raids on metals just drive them east faster, Embry tells King World News
- Threat to close giant Grasberg copper/gold mine as force majeure looms
- ‘Comprehensive plan’ for eurozone lifts sentiment
- David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet
- Gold & Silver Market Morning, October 19, 2011
- Gold, Silver and Miners About To Reverse Higher
- ECB: gold and gold receivables remain unchanged
- A Fairytale Gone Boom
- Making Sense of Revolution
- Learn To Kiss Gold
- Reserve Classification Systems: Similarities and Differences
- Gold in Ireland
- Three Reasons Why Some Analysts Are Predicting Lower Prices Ahead For Gold And Silver
- swiss gold 20 frnas coins from 1980
| Portfolio Strategies For A Currency Crisis Posted: 19 Oct 2011 04:53 AM PDT By Ryan Glover: Is the global monetary system as we know it sustainable? Unfortunately, warning signals of a problem are flashing all around us, and to ignore them could be detrimental to one's investment portfolio. Greece and the fate of the euro are two of the most apparent warning signals. Short-term Greek Treasuries are yielding over 100%, meaning the bond market is assuming a significant default is imminent. Default is nothing new in Greece, as it has done so 5 times since 1826. However, defaulting as a member of the euro would be new, and the ensuing chain reaction has little precedent. So why is the imminent sovereign default so meaningful? The main problem is European banks own a substantial amount of Greek debt on their balance sheets. If this debt is now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of under 25 cents on the dollar, then there is a big hole to plug Complete Story » |
| Europe Will Bring U.S. Stocks And Precious Metals Down Posted: 19 Oct 2011 04:37 AM PDT By Ananthan Thangavel: The past week saw a massive rally in risk asset prices. Since the bottom on October 4th, the S&P 500 is up 14%, the Nasdaq 100 up 16%, Brent and WTI crude up 16%, and copper up 15%. To be sure, risk asset prices experienced their strongest rally since the rally off of the March 2009 lows. However, in the same time period, the CRB RIND rallied only 1.1%. The following charts show the CRB RIND and the GSCI Index. Chart courtesy of The 10/14 Commodity Analyst Newsletter - Chart courtesy of The 10/14 Commodity Analyst Newsletter - As can be seen, the GSCI Index has experienced the same massive rally as all risk assets, whereas the CRB RIND has barely responded. This is of particular interest to us, as this would seem to suggest that speculators are getting ahead of actual commodity demand. To illustrate this, the following charts Complete Story » |
| LISTEN: Default, Gold and A Reduction Strategy Posted: 19 Oct 2011 04:28 AM PDT From Mcalvany Weekly Commentary:
The Headless Horseman Occupies Wall Street: Where is Bastiat When You Need Him?
Much more @ McalvanyWeeklyCommentary |
| WATCH: “Forces At Work To Move Metals Down” Posted: 19 Oct 2011 04:26 AM PDT Eric Sprott: "Forces are at Work that can Move the Prices Down." ~TVR |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2011 03:53 AM PDT Gold and Silver's Christian Garcia with your the Wednesdays 10.19.11 Gold and Silver news regarding the CFTC final rule making. ~TVR |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2011 03:51 AM PDT looking at a calendar - it looks like options are expiring tomorrow. can anyone verify that? if so, today/tomorrow is likely a good time to buy |
| US manipulating the gold price up Posted: 19 Oct 2011 03:33 AM PDT |
| Great Panther Silver Extends Strike Length of Silver-Gold Veins at San Ignacio Property, Guanajuato Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:49 AM PDT GREAT PANTHER SILVER LIMITED (TSX: GPR.TO)(AMEX: GPL) (the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on a further 14 holes from the diamond drilling program at the Company's wholly-owned San Ignacio property in Guanajuato, Mexico. |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:45 AM PDT Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSX: EDR.TO)(NYSE: EXK)(Frankfurt: EJD.F) announces that it has acquired an option to purchase the Lomas Bayas silver-gold property in the Copiapo region of northern Chile. |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:32 AM PDT |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2011 02:00 AM PDT Reminiscent of the media's coverage of oil in the 2000-2008 period, gold has produced a multi-year stream of thoughtless op-eds and repetitive storytelling. If readers can recall how many times the ... |
| Living "off the grid" requires a surprisingly small amount of land Posted: 19 Oct 2011 01:34 AM PDT From The Daily Crux: More and more people are turning away from grocery stores and utility companies in favor of their own back yard. The reasons range from wanting more control over food sources and a healthier lifestyle to fears of societal collapse and a breakdown in the food supply and power infrastructure. Whatever the rationale… this short article explains how it's possible to feed a family of four on meat, eggs, milk, and vegetables with less than two acres of land. Read full article... More Cruxallaneous: Doc Eifrig: Stop taking this supplement immediately Three ways the government will try to confiscate your gold The man who brought down Madoff has identified another HUGE fraud |
| Gold Supported at 144 DMA and by Negative Real Interest Rates in US - Charts of Day Posted: 19 Oct 2011 01:19 AM PDT |
| Paper Raids on Metals Just Drive Them East Faster: John Embry Posted: 19 Oct 2011 12:56 AM PDT ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverThe gold price spent the first eight hours of trading in the Far East on Tuesday doing precisely nothing. Then, shortly after 2:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, a seller of some sort showed up...and the price headed gently lower. This smallish decline came to an end at the London a.m. gold fix around 10:30 a.m. local time...5:30 a.m. Eastern. From that point gold drifted very gently higher. This state of affairs lasted until just past half-past lunchtime in London, before a not-for-profit seller showed up and carved twenty bucks off the price in less than thirty minutes. Gold began to recover from there, but [for the third time in a week] right at the opening of he New York equity markets at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time...the gold price got sold off for another twenty bucks going into the London p.m. gold fix a half-hour later, which was 10:00 a.m. in New York. The gold price began to rally the moment that the 'fix was in'...and by 4:00 p.m. Eastern had gained back forty of the forty-five dollars it had lost since the close of trading on Monday. Then gold got sold off another ten dollars going into the close of the New York Access Market. Gold closed at $1,655.10 spot...down $15.60 from Monday. As can be imagined, volume was pretty chunky...around 184,000 contracts net.
The silver price action was pretty much the same as gold's...with the only really big difference of note was the fact that silver's low came shortly after 8:00 a.m. in New York...and not at the London p.m. gold fix. Silver actually closed up 24 cents to $32.04 spot. Net volume was pretty heavy at 52,000 contracts.
Here's the dollar chart from yesterday. From its midnight low to its absolute high at the London p.m. gold fix at 3:00 p.m. local time...10:00 a.m. Eastern time...the dollar gained about 50 basis points before giving it all back [plus more] by 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. The price declines in gold and silver were out of all proportion to the dollar moves associated with them. As I've said before, there are times when the bullion banks use the dollar as a fig leaf to hide their shenanigans...and yesterday's price action would be a case in point.
It should come as no surprise that the gold shares gapped down at the open...and the low for the gold stocks came at the London p.m. fix at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. From that point...and in fits and starts...the share prices continued to rise...and the HUI actually finished in the black, up 0.55% on the day.
The silver shares turned in a rather mixed performance, but Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index still managed to finish up 1.11% on the day.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that 28 gold, along with 22 silver contracts, were posted for delivery on Thursday. The link to that action is here. The GLD ETF did not report any changes yesterday, but over at SLV they showed a withdrawal of 1,946,552 troy ounces. Over at Switzerland's Zürcher Kantonalbank for the week just past, they reported adding 74,748 ounces to their gold ETF...and 554,983 ounces of silver to their silver ETF. During the last six weeks, there have been some seriously large additions to both of these ETFs...especially silver. It seems obvious that the Europeans are exiting the euro and heading for hard assets with a vengeance at the moment. As always, I thank reader Carl Loeb for sharing these numbers with us. The U.S. Mint had a smallish sales report. They sold another 75,000 silver eagles, bringing their monthly sales in this silver bullion coin to 2,507,000. The Comex-approved depositories reported receiving 580,111 ounces of silver on Monday...and shipped 186,236 troy ounces out the door. Here's the link to that action. I decided to steal another paragraph from silver analyst Ted Butler's weekly commentary on Saturday. "Most disturbing of all of this deliberate day to day manhandling of the silver price, is that it is occurring under the constant watch of the regulators, both the criminal enterprise also known as the CME Group and the federal watchdog, the CFTC. Only they seem to be oblivious to what many can see with their own eyes. The regulators' failure to perform their most basic mission should not, however, dissuade investors from owning silver. There has been a consistent effort by the commercials for more than a decade or two to discourage outside investors from buying silver. Despite this discouragement, owning silver has been among the very best of investments to own. Instead of fretting about the rotten daily price action, focus on why anyone would go to such lengths to make any investment look bad. The only plausible answer is because the commercials don't want you to buy silver so that they can buy it in your place. That has been the long-term message from COT data. I wish we could snap our fingers and cause JPMorgan and the CME to cease and desist from their manipulative activities, but the most effective remedy is to do the opposite of what they intend you to do. Look to the real facts surrounding silver and not to the false-flag agenda of the crooked COMEX commercials." Here's a chart that Washington state reader S.A. sent me yesterday. Those 'Deficit-as-a-share-of-GDP' numbers for 2009, 2010 and 2011 pretty much means that the U.S. is done for as well. It's just a matter of how fast it happens.
I was hoping that the number of stories worthy of posting would decline today, but that was not to be. I've thinned them out as much as I'm going to...and, once again, leaving the final edit up to you. It was amazing to watch the bear raid that the bullion banks pulled off in the precious metals yesterday...just ahead of the CFTC hearing on position limits. Own Gold, The Fed & ECB Have Gone Rogue: Michael Pento. Thieves, Seeking Quick $$, Steal X-Ray Film From Area Hospitals. Newmont Halts Work in Peru. ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribeGoldman Sachs posts surprise $393m loss in third quarter, as pay and bonus pool hits $10bnGoldman Sachs has slumped to only its second loss since floating in 1999, leaving its bankers facing the prospect of much smaller bonuses this year. Our results were significantly impacted by the environment and we were disappointed to record a loss in the quarter," said Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive, in a statement. Goldman, which is already cutting 1,000 jobs, has allocated $10bn - 44pc of net revenue of $22.8bn - in the first nine months of the year to compensate staff, including bonuses that are paid at the end of the year. That compares with $13.1bn in the first nine months of last year. Matt Taibbi's "great vampire squid" is on the ropes. I feel for them...but I just can't quite reach them. This story was in yesterday's edition of The Telegraph...and is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. The link is here.  BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank UnitBank of America, hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn't believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position. "The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution," said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. "We should have fairly tight restrictions on that." Bank of America's holding company -- the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit -- held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June, according to data compiled by the OCC. About $53 trillion, or 71 percent, were within Bank of America NA, according to the data, which represent the notional values of the trades. I don't know what the netted out value of these derivatives is, or exactly how much of this $71 trillion is now covered by FDIC insurance, but it's really big money. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending me this Bloomberg story, which is worth your time, and the link is here.  Divided CFTC adopts position limits; court challenge likelyThe United States pushed through its toughest measures yet to curtail speculation in commodity markets in a tight vote on Tuesday, likely shifting the focus of a fierce four-year debate from the regulators to the courts. In a measure decried by Wall Street and trading companies as a misguided political attempt to cap soaring oil and grain prices, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission voted 3-2 to approve "position limits" that will cap the number of futures and swaps contracts that any single speculator can hold. I had no chance to talk to Ted Butler about these rulings. He spent all of his time yesterday glued to his TV set watching the proceedings, so he's in a better position than I [or anyone else for that matter] to comment. I'm sure he'll have many things to say about it in his mid-week column later today...and I'll steal what I can. This Reuters story appeared in a GATA release yesterday...and it's well worth your time. The link is here.  Chilton sees new position limits reducing market concentration"You want speculation or you don't have any markets," said Commissioner Bart Chilton in an interview today on Bloomberg TV. "There's nothing wrong with speculators. It's when it begins to get excessive. We've seen where you can have 30, 35, 40 percent plus in some markets with just one trader holding onto that concentration. That can impact markets." The commission estimates that the limits will affect 85 energy traders, 12 metals traders, and 84 traders of certain agricultural contracts. The caps will go into effect 60 days after the agency defines the term "swap." The agency declined to estimate when that will be. Limits outside the spot month are likely to go into effect in late 2012. The limits will apply to 28 physical commodity futures and their financially equivalent swaps including contracts for corn, wheat, soybeans, oats, cotton, oil, heating oil, gasoline, cocoa, milk, sugar, silver, palladium, and platinum. I ripped this Bloomberg story...and the imbedded video...from another GATA release yesterday. This is also well worth reading...and the link is here.  Jeff Berwick interviews Doug CaseyThis is mostly a friendly philosophical discussion on anarchy and libertarianism and shows a slightly different Doug than most other videos he has done. The interview is by Jeff Berwick...and runs a hair over 29 minutes. It's posted over at youtube.com...and the link is here.  Chinese Holdings of Treasuries Fall in AugustChina, the largest-foreign lender to the U.S., reduced its holdings of Treasuries in August by the most in at least a decade as the stripping of America's AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor's sent yields to record lows. The world' |
| Eurozone crisis could cause collapse of global banking system, warns Citigroup's Willem Buiter Posted: 19 Oct 2011 12:56 AM PDT  "If things get out of hand in the euro area, no bank in the financial integrated world will stand," he told a parliamentary committee. Mr. Buiter, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, said the recapitalisation of banks and other systemically important institutions should be a priority in the region. "If they don't, we are setting ourselves up for a financial crisis following the sovereign crisis," he said, giving evidence at a session of the House of Lords EU Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee on the eurozone crisis. |
| Paper raids on metals just drive them east faster, Embry tells King World News Posted: 19 Oct 2011 12:56 AM PDT  Sprott Asset Management's John Embry told King World News yesterday that the price-suppressing raids on the gold futures markets in the West are accomplishing only the transfer of Western gold to the East. Embry adds that it won't work forever and that he thinks the precious metals are close to taking off again. I 'borrowed' the introduction from a GATA release yesterday...and the link to the blog is here. |
| Threat to close giant Grasberg copper/gold mine as force majeure looms Posted: 19 Oct 2011 12:56 AM PDT  Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold is considering shutting down its strike-hit Grasberg mine as one of several contingency plans if security does not improve, as it struggles with one of the worst labour disruptions in Indonesia's mining industry. This comes as the world's second-largest copper mine resumed producing at a reduced rate on Tuesday, after halting output on Monday. The owner of the mine, which is facing strike action over pay and work conditions, road blockades and possible pipeline sabotage, said in a statement that it "will temporarily suspend and/or curtail concentrate production as conditions warrant". |
| ‘Comprehensive plan’ for eurozone lifts sentiment Posted: 18 Oct 2011 09:45 PM PDT Even more than has usually been the case in the markets recently, volatility was the name of the game in trading yesterday. After suffering sharp drops in early trading in New York, gold and silver ... |
| David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet Posted: 18 Oct 2011 09:30 PM PDT Yves here. I have to note that David DeGraw of Amped Status is widely credited as the originator of "We are the 99%." By David Graeber, who is currently a Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths University London. Prior to that he was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of 'Debt: The First 5,000 Years' which is available from Amazon. Just a few months ago, I wrote a piece for Adbusters that started with a conversation I'd had with an Egyptian activist friend named Dina:
As the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads across America, and even the world, I am suddenly beginning to understand a little of how she felt. On August 2, I showed up at a 7 PM meeting at Bowling Green, that a Greek anarchist friend, who I'd met at a recent activist get together at 16 Beaver Street, had told me was meant to plan some kind of action on Wall Street in mid-September. At the time I was only vaguely aware of the background: that a month before, the Canadian magazine Adbusters had put out the call to "Occupy Wall Street", but had really just floated the idea on the internet, along with some very compelling graphics, to see if it would take hold; that a local anti-budget cut coalition top-heavy with NGOs, unions, and socialist groups had tried to take possession of the process and called for a "General Assembly" at Bowling Green. The title proved extremely misleading. When I arrived, I found the event had been effectively taken over by a veteran protest group called the Worker's World Party, most famous for having patched together ANSWER one of the two great anti-war coalitions, back in 2003. They had already set up their banners, megaphones, and were making speeches—after which, someone explained, they were planning on leading the 80-odd assembled people in a march past the Stock Exchange itself. The usual reaction to this sort of thing is a kind of cynical, bitter resignation. "I wish they at least wouldn't advertise a 'General Assembly' if they're not actually going to hold one." Actually, I think I actually said that, or something slightly less polite, to one of the organizers, a disturbingly large man, who immediately remarked, "well, fine. Why don't you leave?" But as I paced about the Green, I noticed something. To adopt activist parlance: this wasn't really a crowds of verticals—that is, the sort of people whose idea of political action is to march around with signs under the control of one or another top-down protest movement. They were mostly pretty obviously horizontals: people more sympathetic with anarchist principles of organization, non-hierarchical forms of direct democracy, and direct action. I quickly spotted at least one Wobbly, a young Korean activist I remembered from some Food Not Bomb event, some college students wearing Zapatista paraphernalia, a Spanish couple who'd been involved with the indignados in Madrid… I found my Greek friends, an American I knew from street battles in Quebec during the Summit of the Americas in 2001, now turned labor organizer in Manhattan, a Japanese activist intellectual I'd known for years… My Greek friend looked at me and I looked at her and we both instantly realized the other was thinking the same thing: "Why are we so complacent? Why is it that every time we see something like this happening, we just mutter things and go home?" – though I think the way we put it was more like, "You know something? Fuck this shit. They advertised a general assembly. Let's hold one." So we gathered up a few obvious horizontals and formed a circle, and tried to get everyone else to join us. Almost immediately people appeared from the main rally to disrupt it, calling us back with promises that a real democratic forum would soon break out on the podium. We complied. It didn't happen. My Greek friend made an impassioned speech and was effectively shooed off the stage. There were insults and vituperations. After about an hour of drama, we formed the circle again, and this time, almost everyone abandoned the rally and come over to our side. We created a decision-making process (we would operate by modified consensus) broke out into working groups (outreach, action, facilitation) and then reassembled to allow each group to report its collective decisions, and set up times for new meetings of both the smaller and larger groups. It was difficult to figure out what to do since we only had six weeks, not nearly enough time to plan a major action, let alone bus in the thousands of people that would be required to actually shut down Wall Street—and anyway we couldn't shut down Wall Street on the appointed day, since September 17, the day Adbusters had been advertising, was a Saturday. We also had no money of any kind. Two days later, at the Outreach meeting we were brainstorming what to put on our first flyer. Adbusters' idea had been that we focus on "one key demand." This was a brilliant idea from a marketing perspective, but from an organizing perspective, it made no sense at all. We put that one aside almost immediately. There were much more fundamental questions to be hashed out. Like: who were we? Who did want to appeal to? Who did we represent? Someone—this time I remember quite clearly it was me, but I wouldn't be surprised if a half dozen others had equally strong memories of being the first to come up with it—suggested, "well, why not call ourselves 'the 99%'? If 1% of the population have ended up with all the benefits of the last 10 years of economic growth, control the wealth, own the politicians… why not just say we're everybody else?" The Spanish couple quickly began to lay out a "We Are the 99%" pamphlet, and we started brainstorming ways to print and distribute it for free. Over the next few weeks a plan began to take shape. The core of the emerging group, which began to meet regularly in Tompkins Square park, were very young people who had cut their activist teeth on the Bloombergville encampment outside City Hall earlier in the summer; aside from that there was a smattering of activists who had been connected to the Global Justice movement with skills to share (one or two of whom I had to drag out of effective retirement), and, as mentioned a number of New Yorkers originally from Greece, Spain, even Tunisia, with knowledge and connections with those who were, or had been, involved in occupations there. We quickly decided that what we really wanted to do was something like had already been accomplished in Athens, Barcelona, or Madrid: occupy a public space to create a New York General Assembly, a body that could act as a model of genuine, direct democracy to contrapose to the corrupt charade presented to us as "democracy" by the US government. The Wall Street action would be a stepping-stone. Still, it was almost impossible to predict what would really happen on the 17th. There were supposed to be 90,000 people following us on the internet. Adbusters had called for 20,000 to fill the streets. That obviously wasn't going to happen. But how many would really show up? What's more, we were keenly aware that the NYPD numbered close to 40,000; Wall Street was, in fact, probably the single most heavily policed public space on the face of Planet Earth. To be perfectly honest, as one of the old-timers scrambling to organize medical and legal trainings, lessons on how to organize affinity groups and do non-violent civil disobedience, seminars on how to facilitate meetings and the like, for most of us, the greatest concern during those hectic weeks was how to ensure the initial event wouldn't turn out a total fiasco, with all the enthusiastic young people immediately beaten, arrested, and psychologically traumatized as the media, as usual, simply looked the other way. We'd certainly seen it happen before. This time it didn't. True, there were all the predictable conflicts. Most of New York's grumpier hard-core anarchists refused to join in, and mocked us from the sidelines as reformist; meanwhile, the more open, "small-a" anarchists, who had been largely responsible for organizing the facilitation and trainings, battled the verticals in the group to ensure that we did not institute anything that could become a formal leadership structure, such as police liaisons or marshals. There were also bitter battles over the web page, as well as minor crises over the participation of various fringe groups, ranging from followers of Lyndon LaRouche to one woman from a shadowy group that called itself US Day of Rage, and who we sometimes suspected might not have any other members, who systematically blocked any attempt to reach out to unions because she felt we should be able to attract dissident Tea Partiers. On September 17th itself, I was troubled at first by the fact that only a few hundred people seemed to have shown up. What's more the spot we'd chosen for our General Assembly, a plaza outside Citibank, had been shut down by the city and surrounded by high fences. The tactical committee however had scouted out other possible locations, and distributed maps: around 3 PM, word went around we were moving to location #5—Zuccotti Park—and by the time we got there, I realized we were surrounded by at least two thousand people. The real credit for what happened after that—within a matter of weeks, a movement that had spread to 800 different cities, with outpourings of support from radical opposition groups as far away as China—belongs mainly to the students and other young people who simply dug themselves and refused to leave, despite the endless (and in many cases, obviously illegal) acts of police repression designed to intimidate, and to make life so miserable in the park (refusing to allow activists to cover their computers with tarps during rainstorms, that sort of thing) that its inhabitants would simply become demoralized and abandon the project. And, as the weeks went on, against calculated acts of terrorism involving batons and pepper-spray. Still, dogged activists have held out heroically under such conditions before, and the world simply ignored them. Why didn't it happen this time? After so many years of vain attempts to revive the fervor of the Global Justice Movement, and constantly falling flat, I found myself, like Dina, asking "what did we actually do right?" My first take on the question came when The Guardian asked me to write an oped on Occupy Wall Street a few days later. At the time I was inspired mainly by what Marisa Holmes, another brilliant organizer of the original occupation, had discovered in her work as a video documentarian, doing one-on-one interviews of fellow campers during the first two nights at Zucotti Square. Over and over she heard the same story: "I did everything I was supposed to! I worked hard, studied hard, got into college. Now I'm unemployed, with no prospects, and $50 to $80,000.00 in debt." These were kids who played by the rules, and were rewarded by a future of constant harassment, of being told they were worthless deadbeats by agents of those very financial institutions who—after having spectacularly failed to play by the rules, and crashing the world economy as a result, were saved and coddled by the government in all the ways that ordinary Americans such as themselves, equally spectacularly, were not. "We are watching," I wrote, "the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt." Three weeks later, after watching more and more elements of mainstream America clamber on board, I think this is still true. In a way, the demographic base of OWS is about as far as one can get from that of the Tea Party—with which it is so often, and so confusingly, compared. The popular base of the Tea Party was always middle aged suburban white Republicans, most of middling economic means, anti-intellectual, terrified of social change—above all, for fear that what they saw as their one remaining buffer of privilege (basically, their whiteness) might finally be stripped away. OWS, by contrast, is at core forwards-looking youth movement, just a group of forward-looking people who have been stopped dead in their tracks; of mixed class backgrounds but with a significant element of working class origins; their one strongest common feature being a remarkably high level of education. It's no coincidence that the epicenter of the Wall Street Occupation, and so many others, is an impromptu library: a library being not only a model of an alternative economy, where lending is from a communal pool, at 0% interest, and the currency being leant is knowledge, and the means to understanding. In a way, this is nothing new. Revolutionary coalitions have always tended to consist of a kind of alliance between children of the professional classes who reject their parents' values, and talented children of the popular classes who managed to win themselves a bourgeois education, only to discover that acquiring a bourgeois education does not actually mean one gets to become a member of the bourgeoisie. You see the pattern repeated over and over, in country after country: Chou Enlai meets Mao Tse Tung, or Che Guevara meets Fidel Castro. Even US counter-insurgency experts have long known the surest harbingers of revolutionary ferment in any country is the growth of a population of unemployed and impoverished college graduates: that is, young people bursting with energy, with plenty of time on their hands, every reason to be angry, and access to the entire history of radical thought. In the US, the depredations of the student loan system simply ensures such budding revolutionaries cannot fail to identify banks as their primary enemy, or to understand the role of the Federal Government—which maintains the student loan program, and ensures that their loans will be held over their heads forever, even in the event of bankruptcy—in maintaining the banking system's ultimate control over every aspect of their future lives. Ordinarily, though, the plight of the indebted college graduate would not be the sort of issue that would speak directly to the hearts of, say, members of New York City's Transit Worker's Union—which, at time of writing, is not only supporting the occupation, but suing the New York Police Department for commandeering their buses to conduct a mass arrest of OWS activists blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. Why would a protest by educated youth strike such a chord across America—in a way that it probably wouldn't have in 1967, or even 1990? Clearly, it has much to do with the financialization of capital. It may well be the case by now that most of Wall Street's profits are no longer to be being extracted indirectly, through the wage system, at all, but taken directly from the pockets of ordinary Americans. I say "may" because we don't really have the numbers. In a way this is telling in itself. For all the endless statistical data available on every aspect of our economic system, I have been unable to find any economist who can tell me how much of an average American's annual income, let alone life income, ends up being appropriated by the financial industries in the form of interest payments, fees, penalties, and service charges. Still, given the fact that interest payments alone takes up between 15-17% of household income,[1] a figure that does not include student loans, and that penalty fees on bank and credit card accounts can often double the amount one would otherwise pay, it would not be at all surprising if at least one dollar out of every five an American earns over the course of her lifetime is now likely to end up in Wall Street's coffers in one way or another. The percentage may well be approaching the amount the average American will pay in taxes. In fact, for the least affluent Americans, it has probably long since overtaken it. This has very real implications for how we even think about what sort of economic system we are in. Back when I was in college, I learned that the difference between capitalism and feudalism—or what was sometimes called the "tributary mode of production"—is that a feudal aristocracy appropriates its wealth through "direct juro-political extraction." They simply take other people's things through legal means. Capitalism was supposed to be a bit more subtle.[2] Yet as soon as it achieved total world dominance, capitalism seems to have almost immediately begun shifting back into something that could well be described as feudalism.[3] In doing so, too, it made the alliance of money and government impossible to ignore. In the years since 2008, we've seen examples ranging from the comical—as when loan collection agencies in Massachusetts sent their employees out en masse to canvas on behalf of a senate candidate (Scott Brown) who they assumed would be in favor of harsher laws against debtors, to the downright outrageous—as when "too big to fail" institutions like Bank of America, bailed out by the taxpayers, secure in the knowledge they would not be allowed to collapse no matter what their behavior, paying no taxes, but delivering vast sums of culled from their even vaster profits to legislators who then allow their lobbyists to actually write the legislation that is supposed to "regulate" them. At this point, it's not entirely clear why an institution like Bank of America should not, at this point, be considered part of the federal government, other than that it gets to keep its profits for itself. Still, this might explain the outrage at government's alliance with the financial sector—the fact that bribery has, effectively, been made legal in America, a country that nonetheless presumes to go around the world pretending it is some sort of beacon of democracy. It does not explain the comprehensive rejection of existing political institutions of any sort. This is where I must admit my own position is particularly confusing. On the one hand, this is exactly the kind of attitude I have been arguing for for years. I like to describe myself precisely as a "small-a anarchist." That is, I believe in anarchist principles—mutual aid, direct action, the idea building the new, free society in the shell of the old—but I've never felt a need to declare allegiance to any particular anarchist school (Syndicalists, Platformists, etc). Above all, I am happy to work with anyone, whatever they call themselves, willing to work on anarchist principles—which in America today, has largely come to mean, a refusal to work with or through the government or other institutions which ultimately rely on the threat of force, and a dedication to horizontal democracy, to treating each other as we believe free men and women in a genuinely free society would treat each other. Even the commitment to direct action, so often confused with breaking windows or the like, really refers to the refusal of any politics of protest, that merely appeals to the authorities to behave differently, and the determination instead to act for oneself, and to do what one thinks is right, regardless of law and authority. Gandhi's salt march, for example, is a classic example of direct action. So was squatting Zuccotti Park. It's a public space; we were the public; the public shouldn't have to ask permission to engage in peaceful political assembly in its own park; so we didn't. By doing so we not only acted in the way we felt was right, we aimed to set an example to others: to begin to reclaim communal resources that have been appropriated for purposes of private profit to once again serve for communal use—as in a truly free society, they would be—and to set an example of what genuine communal use might actually be like. For those who desire to create a society based on the principle of human freedom, direct action is simply the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free. Small-a anarchists such as myself were at the core of the anti-nuclear movement in the '70s and the global justice movement between 1998-2001, and over the years, we have put much of our creative energy into developing forms of egalitarian political process that actually work. I should emphasize that this is not just an anarchist project. Actually, the development of consensus process, which is probably the movement's greatest accomplishment, emerges just as much from the tradition of radical feminism, and draws on spiritual traditions from Native American to Quakerism. This is where the whole exotic language of the movement comes from: facilitation, "the people's microphone," spokescouncils, blocks; though in the case of Occupy Wall Street, augmented and transformed by the experience of General Assembly movements across the Mediterranean. Obviously, what happened is exactly what we hoped would happen. The politics of direct action is based, to a certain degree, on a faith that freedom is contagious. It is almost impossible to convince the average American that a truly democratic society would be possible. One can only show them. But the experience of actually watching a group of a thousand, or two thousand, people making collective decisions without a leadership structure, let alone that of thousands of people in the streets linking arms to holding their ground against a phalanx of armored riot cops, motivated only by principle and solidarity, can change one's most fundamental assumptions about what politics, or for that matter, human life, could actually be like. Back in the days of the Global Justice movement we thought we might expose enough people, around the world, to these new forms of direct democracy, these traditions of direct action, that a new, global, democratic culture would begin to emerge. Of course it didn't quite happen that way. Certainly, the movement did inspire thousands, and played a major role in transforming how activist groups in Europe and North America conducted meetings and thought about politics; but the contagion was largely contained within pre-existing activist ghettos; most Americans never even knew that direct democracy was so much of what we were about. The anti-war movements after 2003 mobilized hundreds of thousands, but they fell back on the old fashioned vertical politics of top-down coalitions, charismatic leaders, and marching around with signs. Many of us diehard kept the faith. We kept looking for the moment of revival. After all, we had dedicated our lives to the principle that something like this would eventually happen. But, like my Egyptian friend, we had also, in a certain way, failed to notice that we'd stop really believing that we could actually win. And then it happened. The last time I went back to Zuccotti Square, and watched middle aged construction workers and Latino hip hop artists using all our old hand signals in mass meetings, one of my old anarchist comrades—a one-time tree-sitter and inveterate eco-activist who used to go by the name Warcry, and was now established in the park as video documentarians—admitted to me, "every few hours I do have to pinch myself to make sure it isn't all a dream." So the social scientist in me has to ask: Why? Why now? Why did it actually work? Again, I think the answer is generational. In politics, too, as in education, we are looking at a generation of young people who played by the rules, and have seen their efforts prove absolutely fruitless. We must remember that in 2008, the youth vote went overwhelmingly to Barrack Obama and the Democrats. We also have to remember that Obama was running, then, as a candidate of "Change", using a campaign language that drew liberally from that of radical social movements ("yes we can!", "be the change!"), and that as a former community organizer, he was one of the few candidates in recent memory who could be said to have emerged from a social movement background rather than from smok |
| Gold & Silver Market Morning, October 19, 2011 Posted: 18 Oct 2011 09:00 PM PDT |
| Gold, Silver and Miners About To Reverse Higher Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:35 PM PDT |
| ECB: gold and gold receivables remain unchanged Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:31 PM PDT |
| Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:29 PM PDT Get ready. The market is reaching "the business end of proceedings" according to Slipstream Trader Murray Dawes. Short term upside momentum is coming face-to-face with Murray's long term Sell zone. A lot rests on what happens at the EU summit on 23rd October. One the one hand you've got rumours of an increase in the EFSF to $2 trillion Euro. But those rumours need to overcome the possibility that the German constitutional court will not increase the EFSF without a referendum. Murray's free S&P analysis is out today. He explains why a reversal into a specific zone over the next week "could be one of the best selling opportunities of the year." Watch it now here. One big benefit to the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it's taken the conversation about money, banking, and social justice mainstream. Granted, most of the people we've watched on YouTube would like to get rid of money and profit and private property. But the conversation is a good start. The conversation will get even better on November 14th and 15th in Sydney. That's when the Gold Symposium is being held at Luna Park in Sydney. Money Morning editor Kris Sacye will be there on day two to chair the proceedings. And on day one, yours truly will show how fair money can lead to social justice everywhere, without the messy revolution and squatting on private property. There's also a cracking line-up of speakers and companies presenting. You can view the full program here. The conference is $199 for both days. We don't make any money from mentioning it. But it's our favourite show to go to in Australia each year. The quality of the presentations and the ideas are well worth it. You can sign up directly here Now, let's talk about China. You probably wouldn't call GDP growth of 9.1% slow. But by Chinese standards, that's the slowest annual pace since 2009. And remember, the official inflation for September was an annualised 6.1%. What you're looking at then, is a maximum of 3% GDP growth in China - assuming GDP isn't over-estimated and inflation under calculated. China consumes 40% of the world's copper. It wasn't a surprise, then, that copper traded as low as $3.25/lb in New York after the news of China's slower growth came out. If the universe can't expand forever, then China can't either. That truth is immutable. The question is, is China's expansion slowing down? Or is its economy due for a contraction? There's a lot at stake for Australia in the answer to that question. For example, if you took the view that China's emergence as an economic superpower since the mid-1970s is a direct result of the decline of the US dollar as a store of value (among other things), then China's amazing growth would be a kind of derivative of dollar devaluation. Suggesting that China is merely the largest, most spectacular evidence of a global credit bubble is probably deeply insulting to the Chinese. It also reflects a tendency by Americans (of which your editor cannot help being one) to make everything about America. It's not always about you, America. China (like India) has a 5,000-year-old culture and is emerging from nearly a century of forced stagnation. It's got its own story and its own future independent of the US dollar. But a dollar-free future may be a few years down the track for China. In the meantime, China will have to reckon with a credit bubble of immense proportions. Its bubble is a product of linking its currency, the Yuan, with the dollar. When America inflates, China must follow. And as the world deflates, how can China not follow? The International Monetary Fund, for its part, is pushing for a return to the status quo. Specifically, it wants people to spend money they don't have in order to boost demand for the sake of making GDP grow. When you realise the IMF is really the long arm of central banks and governments, then it's easier to understand why it wants more spending, even if it means greater government debt. It's disgraceful really. The IMF provided a briefing to G-20 finance ministers over the weekend and trotted out the corpse of John Maynard Keynes. The report warned of "severe risks" to the global economy if the entire world decides to get thrifty at the same time. This is Keynes' famous Paradox of Thrift, which suggests that if everyone saves, demand will collapse and the economy will enter a Depression. Newsflash IMF: we're already in a Depression. Nonetheless, the organisation intoned, "The overarching risk is of a global paradox of thrift as households, firms and governments around the world reduce demand...Downside risks have increased and are severe." Blah blah blah. This is nonsense. The core problem is that debt-financed growth is no longer real growth. The world's huge debt loads need to be extinguished. And then savings can become the basis of new credit, dealt out prudently by banks to enterprises that create real value and real returns for investors. That's after the revolution, though. First, the revolution...or the Depression...or the crash. Or all three. More reader mail...
The David Petraeus comment is quite perceptive as he has the political nous to carry it off. Revolutions are obviously incredibly disruptive. The people Tweeting and Facebooking for them will probably be heartbroken and bewildered when the government shuts down mobile phone networks and sends in the cops on horses to break up the occupation. But as soon as the occupation tips over into violence (by the malcontents at the margin) the public support for them will vanish and the craving for a strong authority will replace it.
Hi, Finally, a financial fable of sorts...
One thing has become apparent to me reading Dan Denning and Bill Bonner's excellent commentaries about "Kicking the can down the road" in terms of the European bailouts: Dan Denning
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2011 05:21 PM PDT Last week, the economy seemed to be looking up after all. No recession. No bear market. No muss. No fuss. But this week started out on the wrong foot. All of a sudden, there was muss and fuss again. Stocks sold off yesterday...with the Dow down 246 points. Oil slipped a little. Gold too. No surprise to us, is it dear reader? After all, we're in a Great Correction that could be tipping into a worldwide depression. Here's David Rosenberg with more explanation:
The reality is that the United States is still grappling with the excesses created by each of the last two bubbles of 1999-2000 and 2005-06. This is why employment is no higher today than it was at the height of the tech mania 12-years ago. Only 2.1 million jobs of the 8.75 million that were lost in the 2007-09 recession have been recouped. There are more than 20 million people in the total pool of available labor competing for three million job openings — a seven- to-one ratio, which is more than double the historical norm, and far above what would be considered normal even in a garden-variety recession and supposedly we are (were?) in some sort of expansion. And is it any wonder that the revolt of the popolo minuto continues? As we explained yesterday, the masses are getting restless. They know something is very wrong. Of course, they don't know what. Or what to do about it. But they know they don't like it. Bloomberg is on the story:
New Yorkers Back Occupy Wall Street Protesters, Poll Shows The nice thing about revolution is that you don't have to understand it. It doesn't have to "make sense." People don't need reasonable goals or realistic proposals. Revolutions are like tech stocks. They allow people to believe whatever they want. They can imagine that the revolution will make them all rich...and powerful, too. They imagine themselves retired in Florida...or as the ambassador to the Court of St. James in London. They can imagine that the revolution will make their hair grow and add inches to their most private part. They can believe whatever they want. But beneath the fantasies is a hard truth: the current system no longer works for them. "In France, before the revolution, everybody was trying to get some special privilege," explained our historian wife. "The rich and powerful always found some way to get ahead. I guess they always do. One had a monopoly on selling tobacco. Another had the right to collect taxes from some area in France. Still another got to sell fine fabrics or import china. Almost the entire aristocracy had been turned into zombies. "The government was broke. It desperately needed money. So it began to squeeze everyone it could. This just made the situation worse." Meanwhile, the underlying economy was changing fast. While the zombies still controlled most of the land and the government, a new class of merchants and entrepreneurs was creating real wealth. This new dynamic bourgeoisie needed to get the zombies off its back. And more thoughts... The French Revolution began sensibly, with petitions and peaceful movements. The Estates General was convened. Grievances were heard. Change was promised. A great reform was proposed. And for a while, it looked as though France was on its way to becoming a constitutional democracy, like England, with its monarch and aristocracy still with heads on their shoulders, but with reduced powers. It looked like it might work...a peaceful revolution...an evolution towards a better system, one better suited to the needs of the new capitalistic era, with fewer zombies. But it was not to be...the zombies dug in their heels. They resisted change...just like the elite always does. They could no more agree to give up their privileges than the elite in Washington today can agree to give up its revenues. But the show must go on. Entrenched elites do no readily evolve; but history cannot be stopped. The unstoppable force of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment ran right into the immoveable object of the monarchy and the privileged classes. The result? A huge, violent crash. The Committee of Public Safety...the Reign of Terror...and the Napoleonic Wars. *** What's ahead for the US and other developed countries? We don't know. But the tax-spend-and-borrow model no longer works. Because these economies aren't growing fast enough to keep up with the rising debt. Soon, they will be overwhelmed. What then? Will they be able to reform themselves? Will "change" be more than a campaign slogan? What Bastille will be stormed by the mobs? Whose head will roll? We will have to wait to find out. *** Finally, we include a special word of support for Baltimore radio host Ron Smith, who has been a long-suffering reader of these Daily Reckonings for many years. The other day, Ron announced on the air that he is suffering from pancreatic cancer. We wish him well in his fight; we hope to have him as a Dear Reader for many more years. Regards, Bill Bonner,
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2011 04:55 PM PDT |
| Reserve Classification Systems: Similarities and Differences Posted: 18 Oct 2011 04:45 PM PDT gold mining news |
| Posted: 18 Oct 2011 04:45 PM PDT Dnmnr |
| Three Reasons Why Some Analysts Are Predicting Lower Prices Ahead For Gold And Silver Posted: 18 Oct 2011 04:44 PM PDT Peter Degraaf |
| swiss gold 20 frnas coins from 1980 Posted: 18 Oct 2011 03:35 PM PDT I was shopping on ebay looking to buy a swiss 20 francs gold coin I love the way they look! Does anyone have a list or info on what years they where minted. Or specs My greatest fear is after saving lose change to buy my first gold coin that it turn out fake. I already bought a weight scale to check it. Any help for the new guy would be great! thank you for your time |
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