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- Romania faces uphill battle if sued over gold mine - Minister
- Gold hits 1-month lows pre-Fed meeting next week
- Gold & Silver Price Back To 50 Day Moving Average
- Indian government officials covet temple gods’ gold
- Midnight Raid for Gold, Silver – Again
- Gold demand to fall before prices resume drop in 2014 - GFMS
- India's anti-gold policies: symptom, not cure
- Jumping Chinese gold imports on pace to 1,000 tonnes
- Gold pushed below $1,350 supports, sets up for big move
- Gold hits 1-month low pre-Fed, Asian stockpiles cut bar demand outlook in half
- Sprott comments on central bank gold dishoarding, sudden interventions
- And It Begins
- ETF Investors Bet On 'Taper Lite'
- Stronger rupee pushes gold lower
- Taseko Mines: Target Price Of $2 Without New Prosperity And $7 With New Prosperity
- Gold Sheds August Sparkle On Taper Fear, Syria And U.S. Debt Limit Hang Heavy
- How Big Banks Can Steal Your Home From You Even If Your Mortgage Is Totally Paid Off
- How exactly will tapering affect gold bullion investment?
- [KR496] Keiser Report: America’s Curse
- Did JP Morgan Just Tip off PAAS That Gold & Silver Are About to Explode Higher?
- India's anti-gold policies: Symptom, not cure
- GLD ETF investors unable to get physical gold
- Vicious Gold & Silver Smash Triggers Trading Halt- Trading Resumes With Metals Plunging!
- BAR & COIN INVESTMENT: The Big Squeeze on Global Gold Production
- A Nation Held Hostage – With No Chance of Ransom
- Smart Money magazine publishes edition on gold price suppression
- TF Metals Report: Big banks (JPM) remain astonishingly long in gold futures
- World Bank Whistleblower: Permanent Gold Backwardation Will Result in a Massive World Depression!
- A Tale of Two DLITG’s
- Vicious Gold & Silver Smash Triggers Trading Halt- Trading Resumes With Metals Plunging!
- AND IT BEGINS
- GLD ETF Investors Unable To Get Physical Gold
- Gold bears gain upper hand on easing Syria tensions, Fed tapering
- Summarizing The Latest BPR
- Gold price breaks below 100DMA and heads towards its 55DMA
- GLD ETF Investors Unable To Get Physical Gold
- Trading Comments, 12 September 2013 (posted 12h30 CET):
- Bernard von NotHaus: The ‘Domestic Terrorist’ You Can Call a Hero
- Banks Seen at Risk Five Years After Lehman Collapse
- Japan's Nuclear Migraine: A Never-Ending Disaster at Fukushima
- Three King World News Blogs
- Indian government officials covet temple gods’ gold
- Bernard von NotHaus: The 'Domestic Terrorist' You Can Call a Hero
- Claims Per Ounce of Deliverable Gold at the COMEX Rise to New High of 57.6
- Gold and silver prices absurdly low says top author Mike Maloney
- Sept 12, 1919 : Ritual dating from 1919 sets price of gold
- September is usually a great month for gold and silver prices
- Bill Black: SEC Flacks Paint Lehman’s Looters as the Victims of a “Political” SEC
- Dr. Thomas Woods on Sound Dollar
- UK Gold Exports Feed Swiss Refineries and Asian Demand
| Romania faces uphill battle if sued over gold mine - Minister Posted: 12 Sep 2013 05:10 PM PDT Romania's Foreign Investment Minister Dan Sova casts doubt on government's ability to win court battle if Gabriel sues following possible rejection of Rosia Montana gold mine. | ||||||||
| Gold hits 1-month lows pre-Fed meeting next week Posted: 12 Sep 2013 03:56 PM PDT With the US Federal Reserve widely expected to start tapering its QE program next week, analysts expect the market to remain volatile till then. | ||||||||
| Gold & Silver Price Back To 50 Day Moving Average Posted: 12 Sep 2013 01:19 PM PDT After two months of strength, the gold and silver price have shown today a significant correction. At the London AM Fix, gold was trading at 1340.25 US dollar per ounce and 1008.54 euro per ounce. The afternoon trading was much weaker as the PM Fix closed at 1328.00 dollar per ounce and 1000.07 euro per ounce. Yesterday’s close in London was at 1363.75 dollar per ounce and 1025.83 euro per ounce. At the moment of writing (close to 16h NYT, 21h GMT), COMEX gold is trading at 1324.40 dollar, which is a 2.89% loss on the day. Silver closed in London at 22.67 US dollar per ounce and 17.05 euro per ounce. COMEX silver is trading at 21.93 dollar, which is a 5.38% loss on the day. From a chart point of view, both gold and silver are back at their 50 day moving average, a key technical price point. In August, the precious metals had moved to their 200 day moving average but were not strong enough to hold that level.
The odd thing about this price action is that the dollar is showing weakness as well in the last week. It is trading at 81.5, coming off its peak of 82.8 a week ago. On the other hand, oil is holding up very well near a multi-year high. Oil has been trading between 107 and 111 dollar per barrel in the last two weeks. This divergence is hard to explain apart from technical selling in gold and silver. This is somehow confirmed Dan Norcini’s latest commentary: “I keep coming back to the same thing I have been focusing on for the last couple of weeks now – namely – the recent gains in gold have come mainly from hedge fund short covering as their short positions had become rather large from an historical perspective. Now that they have covered a large number of those shorts ( bought them back) there is simply no additional source of buying on a large enough scale to take the market through important overhead chart resistance levels. Large speculators do not have any technical reasons to chase the price of the metal higher and thus they are NOT ENTERING this market in large numbers. Without thrust to counteract the pull of gravity, markets will tend to follow the path of least resistance and that is lower. It will take some sort of economic data news release to trigger any strong, concerted, and more importantly, SUSTAINED NEW BUYING.” The mining shares have been lagging lately as well. GDX is trading at 25.26 while it briefly touched 30 only two weeks ago. Full focus will be on the Fed meeting next week Wednesday and Thursday. The Chairman, Bernanke, will do a press conference after the meeting. Some expect that tapering will be announced, as it is the last press conference during Bernanke’s term in which he could announce such a decision. Expect more price volatility going forward. | ||||||||
| Indian government officials covet temple gods’ gold Posted: 12 Sep 2013 12:41 PM PDT With an estimated 30,000 tonnes of gold, Indian temples are the next stop for a worried Indian government looking to convert available gold. | ||||||||
| Midnight Raid for Gold, Silver – Again Posted: 12 Sep 2013 12:39 PM PDT Well, okay, it was more like a 2:45 am ET raid than a midnight raid, but we thought we would share with readers the action in five-minute increments as, once again, someone decided to run the stops in the thin Asian markets, just ahead of the London open. Importantly the sell raid took out key implied linear support near $1351, so it was successful in sending London traders to the sidelines, adding to the selling pressure. Gold is currently challenging its 50-day moving average near $1330 so the focus shifts to whether it will hold that popular moving average on a weekly closing basis. Should the 50-day give way, it sets up the possibility of a 50% to 61.8% Fibonacci retrace of the June28/August 28 rally from $1180 to $1434. Call the expected retrace zone somewhere between $1275 and $1305 then, and watch for where support attempts to form. By the way, the volume spike showing is not really all that large compared to past sell raids. So perhaps this sell-stop running gambit took advantage of a market that already primed and ready to be manhandled lower. It just needed a little shove, in the thin Asian markets on a Thursday… Consider the market amply "shoved" then. Below is the COMEX silver market (Globex, Dec SI) for the same time period for comparison. As usual, silver was along for the gold ride. | ||||||||
| Gold demand to fall before prices resume drop in 2014 - GFMS Posted: 12 Sep 2013 12:18 PM PDT Thomson Reuters GFMS says gold demand will fall in the second half, while prices may climb toward $1,500/oz by early next year before declining. | ||||||||
| India's anti-gold policies: symptom, not cure Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:58 AM PDT BullionVault's Miguel Perez-Santalla takes the Indian government to task on its economic policies, arguing strangling gold won't help its cause. | ||||||||
| Jumping Chinese gold imports on pace to 1,000 tonnes Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:44 AM PDT China continues to pile into gold, with record breaking imports record of 129 tonnes in July, as compared to 76 tonnes in July 2012. | ||||||||
| Gold pushed below $1,350 supports, sets up for big move Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:13 AM PDT As I was afraid would happen, gold suffered an overnight hit that drove it back below the $1,350 support zone. The drop occurred in the span of one minute, so it's pretty obvious this was a planned attack with the intent of taking out that support zone. | ||||||||
| Gold hits 1-month low pre-Fed, Asian stockpiles cut bar demand outlook in half Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:04 AM PDT London prices for wholesale gold slipped to one-month lows at $1,334 per ounce Thursday lunchtime, extending an early $20 slump in what one dealer called "anaemic trade." | ||||||||
| Sprott comments on central bank gold dishoarding, sudden interventions Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:02 AM PDT GATA | ||||||||
| Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:01 AM PDT Gold Scents | ||||||||
| ETF Investors Bet On 'Taper Lite' Posted: 12 Sep 2013 11:01 AM PDT U.S. Treasury bonds via iShares 7- to 10-Year Treasury (IEF) have gotten off the mat and moved higher over the course of five days. The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) has resumed its downtrend by falling below a 50-day trendline. WisdomTree Dreyfus Emerging Currency (CEW) has rallied strongly in September. Meanwhile, most of the beneficiaries of a Federal Reserve commitment to the suppression of lending rates -- homebuilders, timber producers, real estate investment trusts -- head the leader board over the last week. In essence, virtually every asset class is performing in a manner that is consistent with the Fed doing little more than "saving face." Specifically, investors believe that committee members will need to follow through on some reduction of bond-buying activity, but the reduction will be minimal and the statement will acknowledge increasing weaknesses in the domestic economy.
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| Stronger rupee pushes gold lower Posted: 12 Sep 2013 10:55 AM PDT Since Aug. 28 the rupee has gained more than 6%. What impact did this have on the gold's chart? Where are the nearest support zones and resistance levels | ||||||||
| Taseko Mines: Target Price Of $2 Without New Prosperity And $7 With New Prosperity Posted: 12 Sep 2013 10:53 AM PDT Taseko Mines (TGB) is currently a mid-tier copper producer that receives 94% of its revenue from copper with molybdenum and silver by-products making up the remainder of the revenue. It recently completed a mine expansion project that increases production capacity by 57% and will see production level and production cost improvements throughout the rest of this year. Taseko is also currently waiting for a Canadian government decision on whether it can proceed with its New Prosperity copper and gold mining project. If approved, this megaproject would potentially increase Taseko's revenues by nearly 200% over 2014 levels. However, the federal government rejected the project in 2010 over environmental concerns after it had received provincial approval. Taseko redesigned the mine plan to avoid draining Fish Lake, increasing the project cost from $800 million to $1.1 billion. Valuing Taseko After Completion of GDP3 | ||||||||
| Gold Sheds August Sparkle On Taper Fear, Syria And U.S. Debt Limit Hang Heavy Posted: 12 Sep 2013 10:51 AM PDT Gold prices gave up almost all the sparkle gained in August and fell to a four-week low on speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will commit to reducing stimulus next week. Silver and platinum prices also declined. Gold had reached a three-month high last month as tension in the Middle East escalated and crude oil rallied. U.S. stocks were little changed, after seven days of gains for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, as investors weighed the prospects for Federal Reserve stimulus cuts and watched developments on Syria. Deteriorating near-term chart postures for both gold and silver markets are leading to fresh technical selling pressure. More risk appetite and the renewed strength in U.S. equity markets weighed on gold and silver as a bearish factor for safe havens. A much better showing for the latest U.S. weekly jobless claims data added to the selling pressure in gold and silver. December | ||||||||
| How Big Banks Can Steal Your Home From You Even If Your Mortgage Is Totally Paid Off Posted: 12 Sep 2013 10:30 AM PDT Did you know that the big banks have a way to legally steal your house from you even if you don’t owe a single penny on your mortgage? From The Economic Collapse Blog: Big banks and hedge funds are buying billions of dollars worth of tax liens from local governments all over the nation, [...] The post How Big Banks Can Steal Your Home From You Even If Your Mortgage Is Totally Paid Off appeared first on Silver Doctors. | ||||||||
| How exactly will tapering affect gold bullion investment? Posted: 12 Sep 2013 10:08 AM PDT The belief that gold investing will cool-off once the Fed cuts back asset purchases has its roots in the theory that says investors only buy gold as a reaction to the FOMC's decisions. But our data shows that this is a misunderstanding. | ||||||||
| [KR496] Keiser Report: America’s Curse Posted: 12 Sep 2013 09:24 AM PDT We discuss America’s curse: dollar printing or JP Morgan? They also examine the truth about the fact that despite a mere $4 extra to manufacture a smartphone in America rather than in China, production will remain overseas. In the second half, Max travels upriver to interview Turd Ferguson of TFMetalsReport.com outside JP Morgan’s Park Avenue headquarters. Turd reports that JPMorgan has ‘cornered’ the Comex gold market and also comments on the bank’s silver short and their ‘rogue’ commodities desk, reportedly being investigated by the FBI for obstruction of justice. | ||||||||
| Did JP Morgan Just Tip off PAAS That Gold & Silver Are About to Explode Higher? Posted: 12 Sep 2013 09:00 AM PDT Pan American Silver (PAAS) announced out of the blue yesterday that just THREE weeks after it announced that it had implemented hedges for a significant amount of its gold and silver production, it had decided to remove them. This was a stunning and rapid reversal of a big financial decision. One of the primary Wall [...] The post Did JP Morgan Just Tip off PAAS That Gold & Silver Are About to Explode Higher? appeared first on Silver Doctors. | ||||||||
| India's anti-gold policies: Symptom, not cure Posted: 12 Sep 2013 08:29 AM PDT What's going on in India is nothing new. We've seen it over and over again throughout struggling economies. Gold has always been and will always be the safe haven of choice when people lack confidence in their government. | ||||||||
| GLD ETF investors unable to get physical gold Posted: 12 Sep 2013 08:15 AM PDT Grant Williams, one of the most highly respected fund managers in Singapore and a perceptive analyst of the gold market said that custodians of the GLD ETF have refused to give people physical gold in exchange for the shares as investors are entitled too. | ||||||||
| Vicious Gold & Silver Smash Triggers Trading Halt- Trading Resumes With Metals Plunging! Posted: 12 Sep 2013 08:11 AM PDT A vicious COMEX open paper smash has seen nearly $1 shaved off of silver, and $30 off of gold from yesterday’s levels. The paper attack began overnight on the LBMA open, with gold triggering a 20 second full trading halt due to the severity of the smash! The raid resumed on the COMEX open, with [...] The post Vicious Gold & Silver Smash Triggers Trading Halt- Trading Resumes With Metals Plunging! appeared first on Silver Doctors. | ||||||||
| BAR & COIN INVESTMENT: The Big Squeeze on Global Gold Production Posted: 12 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT As the Fed and Central Banks play around with silly words like "Taper", the global financial system continues to disintegrate and is in much worse shape today than it was in 2008. Somehow, the monetary authorities have deluded the public into believing that they are in control of the situation and things are going to [...] The post BAR & COIN INVESTMENT: The Big Squeeze on Global Gold Production appeared first on Silver Doctors. | ||||||||
| A Nation Held Hostage – With No Chance of Ransom Posted: 12 Sep 2013 07:45 AM PDT Long-time readers know I love to incorporate movie clips into articles; and thanks to the internet, I usually find what I'm looking for. However, I cannot find the TV studio scene in Ransom – when Mel Gibson states his intention to use a $2 million ransom demand as a bounty on his son's kidnapper's head. Fortunately, I've located the dialogue; providing a powerful introduction to today's topic…
The reason I bring this up is because ransoms are typically associated with kidnappings; and care of poetic license, the parents in movies like Ransom usually get their children back – without paying. Unfortunately, this is not typical in the REAL world; where children are rarely returned – or ransoms, in the rare occasions they are actually paid. I have spent years highlighting the stark difference between REALITY and the MIRAGE the MSM presents for public consumption; and when it comes to the ongoing, terminal phase of the global economic meltdown, no amount of whitewashing can prevent the same collapse that has befallen all 599 previous attempts to decree "money" via government fiat. If you look back at the tomes I have written over the years – particularly since joining Miles Franklin two years ago – you'll see I have NEVER forecast an equity market collapse. Certainly in real terms, but not nominally; as quite frankly, there's no telling how much money the government will PRINT to support equities – or what might occur if HYPERINFLATION occurs. However, I've all but guaranteed an historic bond market collapse, as simple math demonstrates its inevitability. And not just U.S. Treasuries – but ALL the world's Ponzi-supported corporate, municipal, and sovereign bonds. Worse yet, due to the "IRREVERSIBLE, GLOBAL DEBT ADDICTION" caused by four decades of un backed money, the world not only must exponentially increase debt to simply survive, but must do so in an environment of RECORD LOW interest rates. Unfortunately, such an "economic paradox" has NEVER been achieved; and certainly won't this time around, given the fundamentals, if anything, demand RECORD HIGH rates! In September 2011, the Fed announced "Operation Twist"; ironically, just weeks after its "Triple-AAA" credit rating was stripped and the "debt ceiling" raised from $14.2 trillion to $16.3 trillion (today, the national debt is roughly $17.0 trillion). Via "Treasury-speak," the MSM tried to convince the sheeple that such a program was "sterilized" – i.e., not actually printing money; as by their manipulated logic, new purchases of long-term Treasuries were offset by sales of short-term bills and notes. Of course, the Fed's "ZIRP" policy of maintaining Fed Funds between 0.00% and 0.25% ad infinitum engenders the daily purchase of said short-term bills and notes; and thus, "Operation Twist" was in fact, nothing more than a disguised form of "Quantitative Easing" – i.e. MONEY PRINTING. At the time, QE1 and QE2 had already served to push Treasury yields to all-time low levels – which in the case of the all-important 10-year bond, was 2.1%. However, despite what TPTB deemed a "recovering" economy, Operation Twist was not considered enough to create a "stable, sustainable" growth path. Moreover, financial markets were in turmoil; and NOTHING destroys confidence more than falling stocks; except – of course – expanding, structural unemployment and inflation. And thus, in June 2012 – with the 10-year yield down to 1.7% – Operation Twist was expanded through year-end; followed by the launches of QE3 in September 2012 and QE4 in December 2012 – in both cases, with the 10-year yield near its ALL-TIME LOW of 1.4%. Aided by further Wall Street deregulation – or more properly termed, "turning a blind eye" on practices dangerously mirroring those of the mid-2000s real estate bubble, segments of the moribund real estate market were temporarily revived. Not to mention, the fact that Federal Reserve Treasury monetization was aided by the moronic purchases of China and Japan – which cumulatively, increased their Treasury holdings from $1.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion in the four years following the 2008-09 financial crisis. However, only the bankers benefitted from this short-term move; while Joe Six-Pack simply saw higher rental rates and lower housing affordability. But so long as record low rates were maintained, the "eye of the economic hurricane" continued to pass over America and its financial markets. Unfortunately, housing wasn't the only area where rank speculation was encouraged; as equity margin lending surged to all-time highs; subprime auto lending again became the rage; and of course, student loan underwriting exploded to unprecedented levels. Subsequently, the government utilized phony accounting to pretend its account deficit was shrinking; and maniacally, started to utilize said record low rates in long-term budget forecasting. And thus, spending was again ratcheted up, yielding increased financial leverage – atop already record levels. As for Joe Six-Pack, the "lower unemployment rate" didn't match his experience of surging under-employment and plunging real wages; hence, the ongoing explosions of entitlement demand. In the big picture, the Fed's plan worked "too well"; as combined with the successful efforts of a maniacal PPT that simply does NOT allow the Dow Jones Propaganda Average to decline, MSM discussion of the "expanding recovery" became louder than ever. And thus, with a Fed Chairman at the end of his career – desperate to avoid a legacy of NON-STOP MONEY PRINTING, discussions of the potential to "taper" QE seeped into the media…
Unfortunately, the masses – and Fed governors alike – didn't realize the obvious; i.e., the "recovery" was nothing more than the masking of reality by record doses of MONEY PRINTING, MARKET MANIPULATION, and PROPAGANDA. Perhaps if they looked at the numbers, they'd realize QE was but a Ponzi scheme in its final, terminal phase. To wit, maintaining the temporary appearance of recovery required the Fed to purchase 70% of the Treasury's 2012 bond issuance; and an incredible 120% in the first seven months of 2013. Yes, they have purchased significantly more than the Treasury has issued; as oh yeah, China and Japan have become NET SELLERS of the aforementioned $1.2 trillion stash they accumulated – in most cases, at the highs. We are supposed to have "recovered" from 2008's Global Meltdown I; but here we are, "FIVE YEARS LATER," and all I see is higher global inflation, surging unemployment, lower GDP growth, and collapsing fiat currencies. Moreover, the most important market on the planet – U.S. Treasury bonds – is now supported solely by the Federal Reserve; and with it, the ENTIRE, DEBT-ADDICTED GLOBAL ECONOMY. Frankly, the concept of "tapering" is beyond laughable; and if Bennie is stupid enough to announce even a "token" $10 billion/month reduction of the $85 billion/month QE4 program, I'd anticipate an all-out stampede from the already collapsing Treasury market. As for the impact of rates having more than doubled from the September 2012 lows – as exemplified by the 10-year yield rising from 1.4% to 3.0% – "you ain't seen nothing yet." Remember, it was 1.6% as recently as May 2013; planting the foolish idea in Bennie's pea-brain that self-sustaining Treasury demand might substitute for reduced QE buying. And thus, the aforementioned, bastardized U.S. "economic activity" – particularly the housing "echo-bubble" – peaked this Spring. Even the BEA admitted half of 1H13 GDP was attributed to housing; which since May, has literally cliff-dived. How the government has the nerve to try and fool the public with expanding "diffusion indices" this summer is beyond me; as the very sector it describes as the nation's 'growth engine' has literally gone dark. Today's mortgage applications data reads more like a horror movie than an economic report; but don't worry, the Dow is higher – LOL. To wit, the Mortgage Banker Association's "Composite Index" plunged by a whopping 13.5% last week alone; and its "Refinance Index" by an ungodly 20.0%. Consequently, the latter is down an incredible 70% since May, to levels last seen in mid-2009. In other words, four years of "QE-fostered" real estate growth has already been erased; and the "party's just starting"…
No matter how hard the Fed attempts to cap the 10-year yield – which serves as the basis for the majority of mortgage rates – it will shortly breach the 3.0% level to the upside; very likely, in violent fashion. It has now been stopped at EXACTLY 3.0% on four separate occasions this week; and comically, CNBC's interest rate feed magically "wasn't working" when the 10-year traded at 3.0% yesterday morning. This is what I call "turboQEing"; or as those that watch the PAPER PM market as I do, "DLITG" – or Don't Let it Turn Green – algorithms (on the 10-year yield). Unfortunately for these monsters, attempts to goose Treasuries higher MISERABLY FAILED on both Monday and Tuesday; and as I write mid-day Wednesday, are on the verge of failing again. And thus, we come to next week's FOMC meeting; more specifically, on September 18th. The Fed has aggressively talked down "tapering" since that fateful day in June when they initially hinted it might be engaged if economic data indicated sufficient upward momentum. The REAL economy is, if anything, worse off than in June; however, the recent, moronic publications of expanding "diffusion indices" have all but painted the Fed into a corner. That is, if they DON'T taper QE, it will indicate the government was lying about the "SO-CALLED RECOVERY"; and if they do, god help us – as a global panic to dispose of soon-to-be-worthless toilet paper may well commence. And by toilet paper, I'm not just referring to Treasuries – but ALL dollar-denominated debt. And thus, we have "A NATION HELD HOSTAGE – WITH NO CHANCE OF RANSOM." The Chinese and Japanese cumulatively hold $2.4 TRILLION of rapidly depreciating Treasuries; and in June, sold more than during any month in their respective histories. Not to mention, the other $12+ trillion owned by entities other than the Fed; who no doubt, sense an impending game of "Treasury musical chairs" in which no one wants to be the "last man standing." Perhaps someone will even bring up the fact that the Fed itself has lost more than $300 billion on its Treasury positions this summer alone; with prospects of perhaps a trillion of additional losses once the "QE game" breaks down. By the way, that "flight capital" will flow somewhere; and since bonds and real estate are officially in bear markets, that leaves only stocks and Precious Metals for those looking to PROTECT their net worth. Unfortunately, stocks are trading at RECORD HIGH valuations based on a host of historic metrics; and oh yeah, they have had a nearly 100% positive correlation with bonds. But lo and behold, gold and silver are trading at RECORD LOW valuations relative to the cost of production, the level of global MONEY PRINTING, and the outlooks for both. Only you can decide how to PROTECT YOURSELF; as the best I can do is present you with facts. I have had 100% of my liquid net worth in Precious Metals for the past eleven years – much of its stored at Miles Franklin's Brink's vault in Montreal – which is why I sleep the "SLEEP OF THE JUST." As for you, time is running out to make your decision; so make it a good one. And remember; only the TRUTH can set you free!Similar Posts: | ||||||||
| Smart Money magazine publishes edition on gold price suppression Posted: 12 Sep 2013 07:02 AM PDT GATA | ||||||||
| TF Metals Report: Big banks (JPM) remain astonishingly long in gold futures Posted: 12 Sep 2013 07:02 AM PDT GATA | ||||||||
| World Bank Whistleblower: Permanent Gold Backwardation Will Result in a Massive World Depression! Posted: 12 Sep 2013 07:00 AM PDT Smart Knowledge U’s JS Kim has released an interview with World Bank whistle-blower Karen Hudes discussing the criminality of the global banking cabal, the coming financial crisis, and gold backwardation. Hudes states to JS Kim: "We have fired these Central Bankers. And there is going to be more and more accountability…A lot of these [bankers] [...] The post World Bank Whistleblower: Permanent Gold Backwardation Will Result in a Massive World Depression! appeared first on Silver Doctors. | ||||||||
| Posted: 12 Sep 2013 06:45 AM PDT It's still Wednesday evening, and there's too much going on for me to wait until the morning. If something crazy occurs overnight; so be it, I'll report on it tomorrow; but as it is, I'm going a half-page over my daily limit. To start with, the 10-year yield was again at nearly 3.0% when "miraculously" the latest Treasury auction saw – according to Zero Hedge – "blistering demand." I mean, GIVE ME A BREAK; this is Fed "turbo QEing" at its finest – i.e., utilizing the same DLITG, or "Don't Let it Turn Green" algos on the 10-year yield as are used daily on PAPER PM prices. In fact, all you need to see is these two charts – which I have poetically titled "a tale of two DLITG's" – to realize what today's "trading" was all about…
…not to mention, stocks soaring for no discernible reason; even as Apple plunged 5% following the "disappointing" release of the iPhone5. FYI, the Apple "glamour trade" is long OVER; as it is now just a simple retail stock, whose P/E multiple will eventually trade down to the mid-single digits. Heck, when I bought my Samsung Galaxy S3 just one year ago, I was forced to pay nearly $300 despite guaranteeing another two-year Verizon plan; but now, you can get one with "no money down" and payments over multiple years. Sorry, folks, the GLOBAL smart phone market is saturated; and thus, yet another "savior" business is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. I'm already out of room, so I can't write of the incredibly ominous graphs of "Consumer Credit, Student Loans"; or of the explosion of EBT (entitlement) cards; estimated "unfunded liabilities" of more than $200 trillion; the minimum "debt ceiling" increase requirement of $1.1 trillion; the record difference between upper and middle/lower class incomes; John Corzine claiming he's "innocent"; or, last but not least, the 2013 performance of bullion versus mining stocks. Instead, I'll simply note that apparently, the GLD ETF is now REFUSING holders of 100,000+ share baskets – per rules dictated by its prospectus – their right to take delivery of PHYSICAL bullion. This is an incredible game changer in the WAR between the PAPER Cartel and the PHYSICAL market, which I intend to expand upon tomorrow. I'm not sure what more I need to say to convince you the bullion market could go "no offer" at any time; and whether it's catalyzed by a "black swan" or otherwise, it WILL mark the END of the PAPER markets' ability to dictate prices – FOREVER!Similar Posts: | ||||||||
| Vicious Gold & Silver Smash Triggers Trading Halt- Trading Resumes With Metals Plunging! Posted: 12 Sep 2013 06:34 AM PDT
Click here for more on the cartel’s latest smash-the-open raid on gold & silver: | ||||||||
| Posted: 12 Sep 2013 06:11 AM PDT As I was afraid of gold suffered an overnight hit that drove it back below the $1350 support zone. The drop occurred in the span of one minute so it's pretty obvious this was a planned attack with the intent of taking out that support zone in the thin overnight market when there aren't any buyers to defend the against the attack.  This has also broken the intermediate trend line which should take out all the technical traders as few will want to buy a broken trend line. At this point I think we need to align our goals with those of the manipulators. This doesn't mean selling short, but it does mean delaying gratification until the manipulation has accomplished it's goal. That goal, I'm almost certain is to setup the trade of the century. By lowering the starting point before the bubble phase of the bull market begins this manipulation is creating more and more profit potential once it ends and the bubble phase begins.Yes this whole debacle has stolen a load of money from those depending on freely traded markets. But this is also going to setup the conditions to make back all of those losses and many multiples more during the bubble phase of the bull. Instead of fighting the manipulation we just need to accept that it is happening and why it's happening. Wait patiently until it's done, and then get positioned to profit from it right along with the forces that have orchestrated this charade. At this point I doubt we will get a cycle bottom until the FOMC meeting next Wednesday and maybe not until OEX next Friday. The bounce out of the daily cycle low I expect will fail to reclaim that $1350 resistance zone and gold will head back down to test $1179. At that point I think we can safely assume we will see another one of these overnight attacks to break that support also which will probably trigger a waterfall collapse back down to the prior C-wave top around $1030ish. That's the point were we will back up the truck as that is the logical level for shorts to cover and longs to enter in preparation for a final bottom and the beginning of the bubble phase. So at this point I'm ready to cheer for the criminals running this scam because I know they are not only setting up the trade of the century for themselves, but I'm planning on taking advantage of it myself. Now we just have to be patient and wait for setup to develop. I signaled an exit into strength last Tuesday and got subscribers out of the way of this attack. We are now sitting on the sidelines waiting for the manipulation to run its course and preparing to enter long once it has. The $10 one week trial subscription is still available for anyone who is interested in trying the nightly premium report. There are still plenty of opportunities in the mean time while we wait for this to run its course.       | ||||||||
| GLD ETF Investors Unable To Get Physical Gold Posted: 12 Sep 2013 06:02 AM PDT gold.ie | ||||||||
| Gold bears gain upper hand on easing Syria tensions, Fed tapering Posted: 12 Sep 2013 05:42 AM PDT While gold and platinum seemed to ignore the prospect of further government involvement in the Zimbabwe mining sector, it also seems as if the South African mining sector has remained calm in the wake of wage settlement news. | ||||||||
| Posted: 12 Sep 2013 05:07 AM PDT As you know, the CFTC-generated Bank Participation Report contains the evidence that the U.S. banks or, more likely a single U.S. bank, have "cornered" the Comex gold futures market. The latest BPR came out last Friday and it confirms that this condition still exists. | ||||||||
| Gold price breaks below 100DMA and heads towards its 55DMA Posted: 12 Sep 2013 04:32 AM PDT Yesterday we noted that Gold's 100 day moving average was holding "for now". However we did strike a note of caution: It's hardly surprising that gold would take a little breather at these levels,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] | ||||||||
| GLD ETF Investors Unable To Get Physical Gold Posted: 12 Sep 2013 04:13 AM PDT "There are a lot of people that aren't going to get their gold" said Williams. Since the creation of the gold ETFs GoldCore have continually warned in our market updates and in our gold guides about the unappreciated counterparty risk in these new financial instruments. Today's AM fix was USD 1,340.25, EUR 1,008.54 and GBP 847.46 per ounce. Gold fell $.20 or .02% yesterday, closing at $1,364.60/oz. Silver rose $0.18 or .78%, closing at $23.14. At 0.11 GMT, Platinum climbed $1.89 or .1% to $1,469.49/oz, while palladium fell $3.04 or .4% to $688.47/oz. Gold prices fell sharply again just prior to European markets opening, in aggressive selling which saw gold quickly fall from $1,355/oz to $1,343/oz at 0754 GMT. Support at $1,360/oz was breached overnight and gold should now test support at $1,320/oz.
Gold prices are now at the lowest in almost three weeks after Obama asked Congress to delay a vote on U.S. military action against Syria and hope grew that a U.S. strike on Syria could be avoided diminishing demand for safe haven gold in the short term. Obama said yesterday he would prefer a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict and that he saw "encouraging signs" of diplomacy ending the confrontation. In a New York Times opinion piece, Russia's Putin called on the U.S. to avoid the use of force and “return to the path of civilised diplomatic and political settlement.” Putin's claim that the Syrian rebels, and not the Assad government, were behind a recent alleged chemical attack is likely to further badly damage relations between the U.S. and Russia and heighten geopolitical tensions in the coming months which will support gold. Gold jumped 6.3% last month partly due to concerns that political tension in the Middle East could lead to surging oil prices, hurting fragile global economies and stoking inflation. Continued speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will commit to reducing stimulus next week is also leading to weakness. However, the possible slight reduction in the massive $85 billion a month bond buying programme will only be short term negative for gold. Ultra loose monetary policies with interest rates close to zero are set to continue for the foreseeable future. Respected investment managers, Grant Williams and John Hathaway, told King World News overnight that customers of the GLD ETF are being told that they cannot have their gold. The GLD ETF or 'SPDR Gold Shares' is the largest gold ETF in the world. Grant Williams, one of the most highly respected fund managers in Singapore and a perceptive analyst of the gold market said that custodians of the GLD ETF have refused to give people physical gold in exchange for the shares as investors are entitled too. Williams warned that the massive and escalating paper claims on physical gold at COMEX warehouses will create an explosion in the price of gold. Paper claims on gold are now at 55 to 1 meaning that there are contracts worth 55 ounces for every one ounce of actual physical gold in the COMEX warehouses. "We've seen the gold being drained out of the COMEX almost non-stop this year, certainly since the Bundesbank repatriation request. It hasn't had any noticeable effect just yet, but it really is a spring that is continually being coiled, and at some point it is going to snap back. And when it does, with all of these disparate claims on each ounce of gold, there is going to be some fireworks, no doubt about it," Williams said. "There are a lot of people that aren't going to get their gold" said Williams. Since the creation of the gold ETFs we have continually warned in our market updates and in our gold guides about the unappreciated counterparty risk in these new financial instruments. There has been significant skepticism regarding whether many gold and silver ETFs are backing their ETF holdings ounce for ounce. Much of that skepticism has abated, however there is a potentially equally important issue which should be considered. Gold ETFs are riskier than most forms of allocated gold ownership. This is due to the very high level of indemnifications in the prospectus and in the terms and conditions of many ETFs. There is also the important fact that you are an unsecured creditor of a large number of banks who are custodians and sub custodians of your bullion holdings.
In the event of one of these banks engaging in dodgy accounting, malpractice or becoming insolvent, one would be an unsecured creditor of one or all of the many custodians and sub custodians who are primarily banks. In the event of a Lehman Brothers style systemic crisis, there is the risk that your bullion would be subject to a "bail-in" or could be nationalised by an insolvent sovereign nation. | ||||||||
| Trading Comments, 12 September 2013 (posted 12h30 CET): Posted: 12 Sep 2013 03:30 AM PDT The base in the precious metals is building nicely. Growing with it are the odds that gold and silver completed in June a major reaction low in their multi-year bull market. We are now seeing the | ||||||||
| Bernard von NotHaus: The ‘Domestic Terrorist’ You Can Call a Hero Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT "I'll stick to what I can prove...and what makes real-world sense." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & SilverExcept for a little price excitement between 9 a.m. and noon in Hong Kong yesterday, it was pretty much a nothing sort of day for gold. The low of the day came just after 12 o'clock noon in London, and the tiny rally going into the Comex open wasn't allowed to get far. The gold price closed at $1,365.80 spot, up $2.50 from Tuesday's close. Net volume was extremely light, about 104,000 contracts. You can be forgiven if you mistake the silver chart for the gold chart, or vice versa; as they look identical. And, like gold, the tiny rally that began at the noon silver fix in London, didn't get too far once trading began in New York. Silver finished the Wednesday session at $23.215 spot, up 24.5 cents from Tuesday. Net volume was a very quiet 34,500 contracts. Both platinum and palladium made rally attempts in Far East trading on their Wednesday morning, and neither got far. Platinum then got sold down the moment that Zurich opened, and that continued until late in the Comex trading session in New York. Palladium ran into a price ceiling at the $700 spot price mark, before getting sold down when trading began on the Comex. Here are the charts. The dollar index closed on Tuesday afternoon in New York at 81.83. When it opened in Far East trading on their Wednesday morning, it rallied up to 81.93 by 2 p.m. local time in Hong Kong, then it was all down hill until the 81.46 low at 1:30 p.m. in New York. After that, the index didn't do much, closing the Wednesday session at 81.53, which was down 30 basis points from Tuesday's close. The gold stocks more or less followed the gold price. They opened up about one percent, but immediately got sold down two percent, with every rally attempt after that also meeting with an eager seller. However, the upward bias remained intact into the close, and the HUI finished up 0.67%. The silver stocks followed a virtually identical chart pattern as gold, and Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed up 0.71%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 13 gold and 7 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Friday within the Comex-approved depositories. The link to that activity is here. There were no reported changes in GLD, and as of 9:22 p.m. EDT there were no updates posted for SLV. The good folks over at the shortsqueeze.com Internet site updated the short positions for both GLD and SLV as of 31 August. SLV showed an increase in its short position of 18.94 percent, which translates into an additional 2.53 million shares which were sold short because there was no metal available to deposit when the original transaction[s] was/were done, so the authorized participant was forced to short the shares in lieu of the real deal. I would bet a fair chunk of change that the deposit into SLV that was reported on Tuesday, 964,058 troy ounces, was made by an authorized participant [read JPMorgan Chase] to cover part of that short position. The 15,880,700 troy ounces/shares currently sold short [in total] in SLV as of this report, represents 4.5 percent of the outstanding shares of SLV, or around 500 metric tonnes. Using past as prologue, this is not an outrageous amount. But the fact of the matter is that there should be zero short position in any hard metal ETF. Can you imagine the hue and cry if CEF or PSLV did an offering, got the cash, and then didn't buy/deposit all the metal they said they would? Shareholders would burn Eric Sprott and Stephan Spicer at the stake; after they got out of jail for fraud, that is. But nobody bats an eyelash when this happens in SLV or GLD. [Now you know why I wouldn't touch either of these ETFs with the proverbial 10-foot cattle prod.] There was only a tiny increase in the short position over at GLD. This new report showed 2.68 percent. But the total number of GLD shares sold short is about 10 percent of all the outstanding shares issued in GLD, over 3 million troy ounces of gold in total, almost 100 metric tonnes. This is an outrageous amount. Why the GLD fund managers allow this situation to exist is beyond me. Before laying this issues aside, dear reader, let me ask this question. What would the silver and gold prices be by the end of the trading day today if the authorized participants had to go out and purchase real metal in the open market to cover their portion of the outstanding short positions in both these ETFs, especially silver? And you wonder why Ted Butler is screaming about the permanent short positions in both GLD and SLV. It's out and out fraud. There were no reported sales from the U.S. Mint yesterday. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Tuesday, they reported almost no activity in gold. None was reported received, and only 482 troy ounces were shipped out. Here's the link to that data. It was pretty quiet in silver as well on Tuesday. Only 116,244 troy ounces were received, and 40,237 troy ounces were shipped out the door for parts unknown. Here's the link to that activity. I have even fewer stories today than I had yesterday, and the final edit of the ones I do have, is up to you. ¤ Critical Reads Last-Chance Saloon for World's Bond Issuers as Fed LoomsCompanies and countries around the world are rushing to tap global bond markets before borrowing costs hurtle even higher, with many paying big yield premiums to replenish their coffers. With the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield - the risk-free rate against which all assets are bench-marked - a whisker under 3 percent, money is still cheap by historical standards. But the U.S. Federal Reserve's preparations to roll back its $85 billion (53 billion pounds)-a-month stimulus mean yields are likely to climb steadily from current levels. This Reuters piece showed up on The New York Times website late yesterday morning...and I thank Phil Barlett for today's first story.  Druckenmiller Says Fed Exit Would Be Big Deal for MarketsStanley Druckenmiller, who boasts one of the hedge-fund industry’s best long-term track records of the past three decades, said it would be a “big deal” for financial markets if the Federal Reserve were to completely end its asset purchases as outlined over the next 12 months. “How in the world does anyone think when the actual exit happens that prices are not going to respond?” Druckenmiller said today on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers” with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle, given the selloff in bonds and emerging markets in the past few months on the mere hint that the Fed might taper its purchases. The Fed is poised this month to start reducing unprecedented bond purchases that have fueled a four-year market rally, economists said. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has said the central bank may end its bond-buying program in mid-2014 if the economy finally achieves sustainable growth. Jeffrey Gundlach, manager of the $36 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund, said yesterday the Fed is making a “big mistake” by moving ahead with its exit plan without pegging it more closely to market conditions. This Bloomberg news item, complete with an 8-minute embedded video interview, was posted on their website just before lunch Denver time yesterday...and I thank reader Ken Hurt for sending it.  Jeff Gundlach Singles Out the Emerging Market Country Most Vulnerable to a CrisisJeff Gundlach of DoubleLine Funds just wrapped up his latest public webcast. He reiterated his calls for interest rates and inflation to remain low. He also reiterated his worry about the longer risks of high Federal debts and deficits. Gundlach spent quite a bit of time on the turmoil in the emerging markets, particularly India. "I would not own the Indian stock market," he said. "It looks very scary." Nothing we haven't heard already, dear reader. Jeff's 53-slide presentation on his public webcast was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site late Tuesday afternoon...and I thank Ken Hurt for his second contribution in a row to today's column. Banks Seen at Risk Five Years After Lehman CollapseMorgan Stanley almost vanished when hedge funds, spooked by difficulties getting money out of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, pulled more than $128 billion in two weeks from Morgan Stanley. To stay afloat it sold a 20 percent stake, became a bank holding company and borrowed $107.3 billion from the Federal Reserve on a single day. Five years after Lehman sank on Sept. 15, 2008, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Morgan Stanley is safe enough to survive a shock that devastating, Porat said. Morgan Stanley's Ruth Porat and Chief Executive Officer James Gorman, with prodding from regulators, led a drive to cut risk and boost capital to soften the next blow. While the amount of capital at the six largest U.S. lenders has almost doubled since 2008, policy makers and some Wall Street veterans say that’s not enough. They see a system still too leveraged, complicated and interconnected to withstand a panic, and regulators ill-equipped to head one off -- the same conditions that led to the last crisis. “We’re safer, but we’re not safe enough,” said Stefan Walter, who led global efforts to revise capital rules as general secretary of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The big U.S. banks are larger now than they ever were before the banking crisis...and they are now so interconnected...that if one goes, they all go. This longish Bloomberg news item, which is worth reading, was posted on their website Tuesday morning MDT...and is something I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report.  The Dow Jones industrial average is ridiculousThe big (symbolic) news out of Wall Street today is this: Three of the 30 members of the Dow Jones industrial average are changing. Alcoa, Hewlett-Packard and Bank of America are out. Nike, Visa and Goldman Sachs are in. It is tempting to use this occasion as an opportunity to examine the symbolism of what this says about Corporate America, and the global economy. Aluminum (Alcoa) is out! Athletic wear is in! Down with plain old conventional banking! Up with fancy high-finance investment banks. But in reality, it really only shows the utter uselessness of the Dow Jones industrial average for measuring anything. It is an accident of history that the Dow is the most widely cited measure of how the overall stock market is doing, and a bad accident. Truer words were never spoken! This article appeared on The Washington Post website on Thursday morning...and is the second offering of the day that I borrowed from yesterday's edition of the King Report.  Richest 1 Percent Collected Biggest Share of Household Income Since 1928 The income gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America last year reached the widest point since the Roaring Twenties.  Recruited by Al-Qaeda: Foreign fighters in a Damascus jail tell their storiesRaouchan Gazakov brought his family to Syria, taught his 5-year-old son to make bombs and bade farewell to his relative, a suicide bomber. RT’s Maria Finoshina talked to him in a Damascus prison and asked him why he came to fight for Al-Qaeda. “A group called Murad approached me a year ago and convinced me that Muslims in Syria are being oppressed and killed, and that I should go and take up arms against Assad for world jihad,” Raouchan said in the spartan prison, where some 200 inmates are held – most of them jihadist fighters for Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups. The prisoners’ fate is unknown, although it looks grim. Raouchan says he sneaked into Syria last January through Turkey. In Istanbul, two men claiming to be from Al-Qaeda met Raouchan and accompanied him to Syria. There, he joined a large terrorist group run by an Egyptian jihadist. You couldn't make this stuff up. There are so many photos/videos that it makes this story seem longer than it really is. In actual fact, it's a short read...and worth it. It was posted on the Russia Today website mid-morning yesterday, which was around 2:30 a.m. EDT, and it's Roy Stephens first offering in today's column. A Plea for Caution From Russia: What Putin Has to Say to Americans About SyriaRecent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies. Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again. The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades. No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization. This op-ed piece by Vladimir Putin was posted on The New York Times website yesterday...and it's an absolute must read. I thank Casey Research's own Nick Giambruno for sharing this with us. U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebelsThe CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war. The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month. The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits. This 3-page story appeared on The Washington Post website yesterday...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens once again.  Meanwhile, This Is What Putin Is Doing...President Hassan Rouhani is set to meet Putin on the sidelines of a summit of the Sha | ||||||||
| Banks Seen at Risk Five Years After Lehman Collapse Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT Banks Seen at Risk Five Years After Lehman Collapse Morgan Stanley almost vanished when hedge funds, spooked by difficulties getting money out of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, pulled more than $128 billion in two weeks from Morgan Stanley. To stay afloat it sold a 20 percent stake, became a bank holding company and borrowed $107.3 billion from the Federal Reserve on a single day. Five years after Lehman sank on Sept. 15, 2008, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Morgan Stanley is safe enough to survive a shock that devastating, Porat said. Morgan Stanley's Ruth Porat and Chief Executive Officer James Gorman, with prodding from regulators, led a drive to cut risk and boost capital to soften the next blow. While the amount of capital at the six largest U.S. lenders has almost doubled since 2008, policy makers and some Wall Street veterans say that’s not enough. They see a system still too leveraged, complicated and interconnected to withstand a panic, and regulators ill-equipped to head one off -- the same conditions that led to the last crisis. “We’re safer, but we’re not safe enough,” said Stefan Walter, who led global efforts to revise capital rules as general secretary of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The big U.S. banks are larger now than they ever were before the banking crisis...and they are now so interconnected...that if one goes, they all go. This longish Bloomberg news item, which is worth reading, was posted on their website Tuesday morning MDT...and is something I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report. | ||||||||
| Japan's Nuclear Migraine: A Never-Ending Disaster at Fukushima Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT  Japan's Nuclear Migraine: A Never-Ending Disaster at Fukushima Japan is stumbling helplessly from one crisis to the next as it battles the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. US nuclear inspector Dale Klein is demanding the intervention of foreign experts, but a quick solution is unlikely. This week, the chief nuclear officers of around 100 American nuclear power plant reactors are taking a field trip. They are travelling to Japan and then taking a bus to Fukushima. There, dressed in protective suits, they will walk through the ruins left behind by the earthquake of the century, the tsunami of the century and the resulting triple nuclear reactor meltdown that occurred in March 2011. "I can assure you when they get back from this trip, all of these chief nuclear officers will double their safety precautions," says Dale Klein, who has made the same trip and describes it as "very sobering." Klein, who was head of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2009, now serves as chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, which advises Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that once ran the Fukushima power plant and is now responsible for cleaning up the site. In the eyes of industry experts and the Japanese public alike, the company has proved one thing unequivocally -- that it is in far over its head in trying to handle the aftermath of the disaster. This news item was posted on the spiegel.de Internet site on Tuesday afternoon Europe time. Every time I read an article on the situation at Fukushima, the situation seems to be heading from bad to worse...with no end in sight. I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. | ||||||||
| Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT  Three King World News Blogs The first interview is with Grant Williams...and it's headlined "Amazing - GLD ETF Tells Customers You Can't Have the Gold". The second commentary is with John Hathaway. It's entitled "People Can't Get Their Gold Out of GLD as Inventories Plunge". And lastly is this blog featuring Dr. Stephen Leeb. It bears the title "GLD, Gold's Coming Super-Surge and the Next Bretton Woods". | ||||||||
| Indian government officials covet temple gods’ gold Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT  Indian government officials covet temple gods' gold In yet another instance of how the Indian government is seeking to utilise “idle” gold and control gold imports, the government appears to be knocking on the doors of several temples, seeking information about their gold ornaments and artifacts. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has sent letters to several temples and their boards, seeking to collect data about gold contained within the temples. Estimates suggest that Indian temples have up to a combined total of 30,000 tonnes of gold. The issue has, however, taken on political overtones, evoking the ire of Hindu fundamental groups across the country. While some opposition political parties have questioned the move and its timing, some rightist groups have sent a letter to the temple boards asking them to ignore the RBI letter. This article, filed from Mumbai, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site in the wee hours of this morning EDT. | ||||||||
| Bernard von NotHaus: The 'Domestic Terrorist' You Can Call a Hero Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:33 AM PDT  Bernard von NotHaus: The 'Domestic Terrorist' You Can Call a Hero Bernard has been the called the Rosa Parks of the alternative money movement. More than 10 years ago, he had this idea that he would make his own money - not the fake stuff we are used to, but the real stuff made of actual silver. He called his currency the Liberty Dollar (and why not, since there is no trademark on the word dollar?). The feds raided him in in 2006. In 2007, the government outright stole 2 tons of coins from him, many of them featuring an image of Ron Paul, plus 500 silver coins and 50 gold coins. They threw him in jail and dragged his name through the mud many times. He was later convicted of making counterfeit coins - an ironic conviction given that he was making silver coins to compete with official coins made out of scrap metal. That conviction was in March 2011, fully 2½ years ago. The government labelled him a 'domestic terrorist'. Yet - and this is what amazed me - he still hasn't been sentenced. He walks around as free as you or me. This must read commentary was posted on the dailyreckoning.com.au Internet site yesterday...and my thanks go out to Elliot Simon for sharing it with us. | ||||||||
| Claims Per Ounce of Deliverable Gold at the COMEX Rise to New High of 57.6 Posted: 12 Sep 2013 02:00 AM PDT Le Café Américain | ||||||||
| Gold and silver prices absurdly low says top author Mike Maloney Posted: 12 Sep 2013 12:59 AM PDT Gold author and broadcaster Mike Maloney explains his latest work and why he thinks targets of $2,000 or $5,000 an ounce are way too low for gold. Mr. Malony is not phased by the stock market and housing recoveries which are accidents waiting to happen. He sees the recent sell-off in precious metals as similar to the mid-70s. What does he reckon is coming to drive gold and silver up to these very high prices? Follow his views on cycles… | ||||||||
| Sept 12, 1919 : Ritual dating from 1919 sets price of gold Posted: 11 Sep 2013 10:43 PM PDT Reuters | ||||||||
| September is usually a great month for gold and silver prices Posted: 11 Sep 2013 09:46 PM PDT The buying season is upon us for gold although August was a poor month for bullion sales at the major mints. The chart below from Bloomberg shows an average gain of 2.3 per cent in the gold price in September since 1969. It’s what Wall Street veteran and gold author Frank Holmes describes as the ‘love trade’ with the cultural and religious links many Asians have for gold coming to a seasonal peak.
Mr. Holmes told The Daily Reckoning: ‘Indians will be getting ready for their wedding season that begins in October, followed by the five-day Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which is India’s biggest and most important holiday of the year. ‘In December, millions of people will be gathering with loved ones to exchange gifts as they observe Christmas. And finally, millions will celebrate Chinese New Year at the end of January 2014.’ India’s monsoon season has been good boosting farmers’ incomes and the likelihood they’ll buy gold even after government taxes have been raised to 10 per cent this year. In 2010, the last year that rains were this high demand was up 37 per cent in the fourth quarter after harvests, although then gold prices were also on a tear and not a correction. Still don’t forget, gold has just hit a record price in rupees due to devaluation and that is the farmers main reference point. Will they still buy or shun high prices? Well they still bought in 2010. Rupee gold price high Mr. Holmes is not worried by the high price of gold in Indian rupees that he sees as a ‘possible short-term threat… Keep in mind the East’s long-term sentiment toward the metal, as this area of the world has a different relationship related to both the love trade and the fear trade. And it’s not easily broken.’ Will this year break the seasonal uplift in gold prices usually due in September. Goldman Sachs has depressed the precious metal over the past couple of days with its gloomy view on prices. Then again they did not see 2008 coming and ended up being taken to the cleaners by Warren Buffett. Nobody gets it right all the time! Goldman has banked its future again on an ever expanding US economy. Silver is the leveraged play on gold and usually outperforms when prices go up. | ||||||||
| Bill Black: SEC Flacks Paint Lehman’s Looters as the Victims of a “Political” SEC Posted: 11 Sep 2013 09:09 PM PDT Yves here. With the fifth anniversary of the Lehman collapse nearly upon us, the financial media is awash in crisis-related retrospectives. That’s including more than a little revisionist history. Here, Bill Black corrects the record on some SEC propaganda that the New York Times saw fit to run. The idea that the SEC deemed Lehman’s Repo 105 transaction (which allowed it to hide $50 billion of liabilities, when its total balance sheet was $660 billion) to be not material is such a preposterous notion that, if anything, Black’s treatment is restrained. By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posed from New Economic Perspectives This is the second installment in a three-part series correcting the NYT propaganda that seeks to transmute the SEC's refusal to hold any of Lehman's looters accountable for their myriad frauds. For the purposes of this article I assume that the reporters have accurately represented the SEC officials' positions. I discuss the journalists' analytical flaws. In my next column I'll address critical facts excluded by the SEC and the reporters. Those facts demonstrate that Lehman was an "accounting control fraud." The NYT article ends with this morality play about the SEC's anti-enforcement "team":
It gets better, the reporters claim that Cannelos and his teams' "careers likely would have benefited from bringing such a prominent case." So, they are not only uniquely ethical, they are selfless. As I will explain in the next installment, Cannelos failed to investigate Lehman's largest frauds and concluded he would lose the case if he brought it. That would have harmed his career. But the article unintentionally allows us to see how the SEC leakers spun their heroic morality tale and how the reporters swallowed it whole. I am a former enforcement director and head of litigation for a federal financial regulatory agency that conducted real investigations. To understand this example of non-enforcers pretending to virtue requires a bit of context. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the SEC focused their "investigations" solely on Lehman's quarter-end "Repo 105" transactions that were entered into for the sole purpose of deceiving investors and the SEC about Lehman's liquidity, earnings, and leverage crises – crises that would soon cause it to collapse. A "repurchase obligation" (REPO) is a short-term borrowing that is nominally structured as a "sale" with a "repurchase obligation." Lehman improperly treated these short-term borrowings as if they were a true sale with no repurchase obligation, which caused Lehman to report lower debt levels. Note that the journalists report that the SEC's experts on whether such deceit was "material" to investors ("senior accountants and the head of the S.E.C. unit that oversaw corporate disclosures") concluded that it was material. The fact that Lehman was so desperate to deceive its investors about the crises that would soon cause it to collapse that it sought out a legal opinion in the City of London (which "won" the ethical race to the bottom) to bless the deceit and proceeded to recurrently make large transactions near the end of quarters for the sole purpose of deceiving its investors and the SEC demonstrates that Lehman knew its deceit was material to its investors. That is a central reason why publicly traded firms engage in accounting fraud. If you are wondering, no, it is not (remotely) normal for a U.S. investment bank to go to a UK firm to obtain a legal opinion on U.S. law. Nevertheless, the cynical act by Lehman's leaders of legal dumpster diving to obtain a legal opinion blessing an obvious fraud was not treated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as it should have been as an aggravating factor, but rather as a "get out of jail free card." Consider the implications of that DOJ policy briefly so that you can, unlike the NYT reporters, test the depth of the rot at DOJ and why they embraced "too big to jail" as their mantra. Under the DOJ position reported by the journalists, a large publicly traded company can search all over the world for the least ethical law firms and buy an opinion from them that will immunize the company and its officers from liability for any act of fraud because they "relied" on the legal opinion. Let's extend that doctrine to street gangs. I'm sure they could get legal opinions on justifiable homicide in advance of their next murders. Cannelos' reported basis for denying that investors would have considered Lehman's REPO 105 fraud scheme to be "material" is that "the firm's leverage ratio was trending downward regardless of Repo 105." It is difficult to respond to a claim that is a non sequitur because it has no logical relationship to the conclusion. As best one can guess, Cannelos is claiming that investors would have considered it irrelevant what Lehman's true leverage ratio (debt:equity) was and would have only been interested in the direction of the trend in that ratio. Because Cannelos (falsely, as I will explain in my next column) believes that Lehman's leverage ratio was falling as it approached collapse he asserts that investors would have considered the actual leverage ratio irrelevant. That assertion assumes that investors are incompetent. A rational investor would care about the actual ratio, not simply the direction of the trend in the ratio. Lehman collapsed due to the interaction of its severe credit losses and a liquidity crisis. As its credit losses surged its liquidity needs became far more acute because of collateral demands by its creditors and, eventually, the unwillingness of creditors to roll their loans to Lehman. Lehman's true leverage ratio, therefore, would have provided critical information to its investors, which is precisely why it used the REPO 105 scam to deceive its investors about its debt exposure. The reporters try to picture the scam as trivial, with this unsourced claim about the DOJ and the FBI's alleged findings about Lehman's Repo 105 scam.
First, an accounting scam does not have to "cause" a "failure" to be a crime or a violation of rules. Accounting frauds are frequently undertaken to cover up the failing firm's problems. That is why Lehman engaged in the REPO 105 scam. So the first sentence was fed to the NYT reporters for the purpose of deceiving the reader. REPO 105 is an obscure accounting rule – that does not mean that Lehman was allowed to use it to deceive investors. I've explained why the desperate search by Lehman's officers for an attorney willing to give them the opinion they were shopping to obtain. The attorney shopping actually confirms that Lehman's officers intent to deceive investors. Canellos, an SEC enforcement attorney, overruled the SEC's experts on interpreting "materiality" and insisted on employing his own idiosyncratic view that investors would not have considered it important to know the truth that Lehman's officers intended to hide through deceit. The journalists do not understand the implications of an enforcement attorney arrogating onto himself the ability to determine the agency's interpretation of the agency's rules. Instead, they mischaracterize Cannelos' actions as evidence of his brave devotion to justice in the face of improper pressures from the head of his agency. Under the version of the facts presented by the journalists, however, this interpretation is untenable. Cannelos is an attorney representing a client, the SEC. The SEC has experts in what "material" means. Cannelos' ethical duty is to represent his client's position unless that position cannot be argued in good faith. Cannelos is wrong – terribly wrong – about materiality for the reasons I have explained, but that does not begin to capture how wrong his refusal to act against Lehman's senior officers' recurrent frauds was. Cannelos' refusal to enforce the law as his clients interpret the law could only be justified if there was no good faith basis for arguing that Lehman's frauds were "material" to investors. The reality as I have said is that the SEC's experts were correct about materiality, but Cannelos could not have believed that the SEC's position that Lehman's frauds were material was an interpretation of the agency's rules that was so unreasonable that he could not ethically represent his client's views. Even then, his proper course of action was to step aside and let another enforcement attorney present the agency's position. Only if he believed that Lehman's senior officers were the victim of some deliberate form of abuse prompted by illegal considerations (e.g., discrimination or a politically-driven effort at retaliation) should he have sought to block the agency from bringing the action against Lehman's senior officers by blowing the whistle to the SEC's Inspector General. I have been a senior official in an agency in which the enforcement head followed Cannelos' practice of arrogating to the enforcement attorney the client's right to define its interpretation of its rules. Our enforcement head asserted that this action meant the enforcement attorney was uniquely virtuous for refusing to act against the senior officers leading the most notorious S&L control frauds. The enforcement head was particularly proud about refusing to bring an enforcement action that the supervisory client requested against Charles Keating's frauds. The results were disastrous and played a critical role in producing the worst losses of any S&L failure during the debacle. It was only after the enforcement head's monopoly on bringing enforcement actions was broken by delegating authority to the regions' enforcement counsel that the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) made enormous strides in bringing effective enforcement actions. It is disgraceful that the SEC enforcement team has been leaking to the NYT reporters the false claim (under their own account of the facts) that they bravely resisted "SEC Chair Mary Schapiro['s] 'political pressure [to] bring a case [where] the evidence was lacking.'" Cannelos and his teams were not brave martyrs for "justice" and Schapiro was not exerting "political pressure" to force them to bring an abusive suit motivated by the Obama administration's (non-existent) desire to punish Lehman's looters for their politics. Under the facts found by Cannelos, the SEC's experts on materiality and fraud concluded that Lehman's officers had engaged in a very large fraud that was material to investors. Schapiro and the SEC's experts on materiality believed that Cannelos was wrong about materiality and that it was improper for him to override the client's interpretation of "material." Schapiro's and the SEC's experts' positions were not "political." They were substantive, and they were correct. Cannelos was in the wrong and he compounded his failure by making false claims that those who disagreed with him were "political" and "unethical." Let me be clear that the ultimate responsibility for the SEC fiasco lies with Schapiro. She was appointed to head the SEC by Obama for his traditional reason – she was an abject failure as the leader of securities industry's self-regulatory body that took no effective action against the epidemics of accounting control fraud that devastated that industry and our Nation. Ultimately, Schapiro deferred to "Canellos's team, which was closest to the evidence" rather than appoint a competent team and team leader to investigate Lehman's looters. The issue as to "materiality," however was not "close[ness] to the evidence" but the analysis of whether only the direction of the (dishonestly) reported trend in the leverage ratio (v. the actual leverage ratio) was "material" to investors. The experts on that issue were the "senior accountants and the head of the S.E.C. unit that oversaw corporate disclosures" and they understood correctly that the actual leverage ratio was material to investors. Schapiro lacked the courage to replace an enforcement attorney who arrogated to himself the clients decision and who would have attacked Schapiro had he been replaced as unethical and political. The reporters claim: "Ms. Schapiro did not override [Cannelos'] judgment after S.E.C. officials cautioned her that it could be unethical for a political appointee like herself to do so." But the relevant question was not overriding Cannelos' judgment – it was Cannelos who was overriding the judgment of the client. That was contrary to the ethical obligations of an attorney, including an enforcement attorney unless the client was pressing a bad faith interpretation of "material." Allowing Cannelos to override his client's (eminently correct) interpretation of "material" was a dereliction of duty on the part of Schapiro and her head of enforcement. The SEC was so weak under Schapiro because she was such a weak leader. Cannelos was so out of control in his devotion to Lehman's looters' cause that he was insubordinate.
It was a perfectly reasonable and normal "suggest[ion]" by Cannelos' boss that Cannelos' team prepare a draft of potential charges against Lehman's officers. When your boss makes a "suggest[ion]" of this nature you prepare the document. There is no "ethical" issue in providing your superior with the strongest notice of charges you believe is supported by the evidence. Cannelos' real problem was that had he drafted such a notice of charges it would have been obvious that the evidence did support a finding of materiality under the agency's interpretation of materiality. The limited nature of his draft would also reveal how little about Lehman's far larger frauds Cannelos' team had actually investigated. Instead, Cannelos had already begun drafting the propaganda that has now become the NYT article. He wanted the SEC to publicly endorse his defense of Lehman's officers' fraudulent conduct as immaterial. Note that this would set a terrible precedent that was contrary to the agency's much broader interpretation of "materiality" – a precedent that would allow many frauds to escape sanction and impair deterrence. No enforcement lawyer whose concern was the agency, rather than his personal reputation, would make such a self-serving suggestion. Naturally, after Cannelos caused the SEC to allow Lehman's controlling officers to escape all accountability for growing obscenely wealthy by committing widespread fraud and arrogated to Cannelos the interpretation of an accounting provision where an attorney's duty is to represent the client's position rather than his own he was promoted for his failures and now co-leads the SEC's exceptionally weak enforcement effort. The SEC leakers and the NYT reporters almost have to be admired for their audacity. Admittedly, the SEC enforcement staff, as my first column explained in detail, has nothing to be brag about in their entire response to the fraud epidemics that drove the crisis and caused the worst epidemic of securities fraud in history. Not a single elite banker who led a control fraud has had his fraud proceeds removed by the SEC. Not a single elite banker who became immensely wealthy by leading a control fraud has even had to personally pay a non-trivial portion of his fraud proceeds to the SEC. In this long list of failures Lehman stands out as a glaring failure. Lehman was destroyed by widespread looting that made it senior officers exceptionally wealthy. Lehman's failure triggered the global financial crisis. The SEC allowed Lehman's securities frauds to continue for many years when it was not only reviewing Lehman's securities filings but also serving as Lehman's "consolidated supervision" authority. The SEC compounded its total failure as Lehman's supervisor through a total failure as an enforcer of the securities laws and its supervisory rules even after Lehman's control fraud caused its failure. The mortgage fraud crisis represents the worst enforcement failure by the SEC in its history. Cannelos and the SEC flacks now have the chutzpah to try to spin one of the SEC's worst enforcement failures into a morality play in which Cannelos is the hero precisely because he refused to hold Lehman's looters accountable for their violations and allowed them to walk away wealthy with the proceeds of numerous insider fraud schemes. The villain becomes Ms. Schapiro who is reimagined as a would-be unethical official who tried to sue the poor, innocent Lehman officers for "political" reasons but was blocked from doing so by Cannelos' selfless valor and dedication to "justice." It is an odd form of "justice" in which the most elite frauds became wealthy by scams that caused a $11 trillion loss to American households and cost over 10 million Americans their jobs and avoid all accountability for their frauds. But that is Cannelos' definition of "justice" and the NYT reporters are so credulous that they have become the propagandists for Cannelos and Lehman's looters. | ||||||||
| Dr. Thomas Woods on Sound Dollar Posted: 11 Sep 2013 08:26 PM PDT Description: "Banking doesn't need any monopoly institution like this, any central planning institution like this." Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, derided as a country bumpkin who didn't understand banking and the economy, nevertheless had the wisdom to oppose the United States' first national bank, Libertarian historian and political analyst Tom Woods says in this lively interview with (now cancelled) Fox News Freedom Watch's Judge Napolitano. "In fact, that first national bank that we got in 1791, what you don't read in your textbook that's praising and expressing hosannas for [Alexander] Hamilton is that we got the Panic of 1792, we got 72% inflation after the first five years of that national bank. All we hear is that opponents of national banking don't understand the economy. On the contrary, it is because they do understand the free market, that banking doesn't need any monopoly institution like this, any central planning institution like this." Eventually, U.S. political leaders were able to create a new, more powerful and more dangerous form of "national bank," Woods continues: the Federal Reserve. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||||
| UK Gold Exports Feed Swiss Refineries and Asian Demand Posted: 11 Sep 2013 08:13 PM PDT During the first half of 2013, gold exports from the United Kingdom increased nearly tenfold over the same period in 2012. The avalanche of gold headed straight for Switzerland, the heart of European gold refining, from which it helps feed Asian demand for physical gold. At first glance, this apparent "sell-off" of UK gold might appear to be a bad indicator for gold, a sign that holders of gold believe it to be a bad long-term bet. In fact, what the gold surge signals is that savvy investors are taking advantage of market conditions to cash in their "paper" gold for the real (physical) stuff. | ||||||||
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