Gold World News Flash

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• IRS slams Bitcoin millionaires with new tax rules… Is gold next?
• Guest Post: Is College A Waste Of Time And Money?
• ANOTHER DEAD JPM BANKSTER: JP Morgan’s Top Commercial Bankruptcy Lawyer Killed in a Minivan HIT & RUN
• China's Liquidity Crunch Slams Importers Who Are Defaulting, Reneging On Deals
• Economic Collapse 2014 -- The Economic Recovery Illusion Is Losing Steam And The Collapse Is Quickly Approaching
• Gold market manipulation update, March 2014
• Gold manipulation is now so obvious it should embarrass the manipulators, Rickards says
• JPY Confounded As Abe Cornered By Inflation/Spending Dilemma
• BOMBSHELL NEW INFO: 9/11 Tragedy Insider Trading
• IMF bailout of Ukraine is actually rescue of Western investment houses and Russian banks
• Max Keiser -- The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Thursday March 27 2014
• The Changing Prices of Gold
• Silver Prices Heading Lower As Bears Tighten Their Grip
• The Gold Price Should Rally From Here
• The Gold Price Should Rally From Here
• Silver Prices Heading Lower As the Bears Tighten Their Grip
• Richard Russell - I Am Buying Physical Silver Right Now
• Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Roll Over Beethoven
• Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Roll Over Beethoven
• Is sound money an unsound idea?
• Hostage Markets: Are The Banksters The Real Hostages?
• Japanese Debt Debacle Now Imminent
• Spot Gold "Fails to Spark" China Buying, "Needs to Extend" $100 Drop from 6-Month High as Shanghai Discount Widens
• Gold - 7 Astonishing Charts Exposing The Big Picture For Gold
• Gold and Silver Go From Bearish to More Bearish
• WEBBOT 2014 -- Clif High Wujo, Gold & Silver Prices Taking Off, No War in Crimea, No March ALTA Report 26-Mar-2014
• Winding Down Fannie and Freddie the Economic Scam of the Century
• Global Risks Creating Opportunities in This Precious Metal
• Two More Reasons to Be Bullish on Gold Price
• Gold and Silver Prices Testing Critical Technical Support Levels
• London to become Chinese currency trading center
• Two Sons Murder Father in Cold Blood, High Five Afterward

IRS slams Bitcoin millionaires with new tax rules… Is gold next? Posted: 27 Mar 2014 11:00 PM PDT from Sovereign Man: Bitcoin tax rules finally came to the Land of the Free yesterday. And I have to imagine there are some not-too-happy campers this morning, if they even know about it. Bitcoin taxes were inevitable. I've written about this numerous times, and have even gone so far as to predict that the government will probably mandate special Bitcoin reporting on foreign disclosure forms. A number of other countries, from Germany to Singapore, have already issued their own tax rules on Bitcoin and related virtual currency transactions. And yesterday the IRS finally issued their own. Read More @ SovereignMan.com

Guest Post: Is College A Waste Of Time And Money? Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:47 PM PDT Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog, Are you thinking of going to college?  If so, please consider that decision very carefully.  You probably have lots of people telling you that an "education" is the key to your future and that you will never be able to get a "good job" unless you go to college.  And it is true that those that go to college do earn more on average than those that do not.  However, there is also a downside.  At most U.S. colleges, the quality of the education that you will receive is a joke, the goal of most colleges is to extract as much money from you and your parents as they possibly can, and there is a very good chance that there will not be a "good job" waiting for you once you graduate.  And unless you have someone that is willing to pay your tuition bills, you will probably be facing a lifetime of crippling student loan debt payments once you get out into the real world.  So is college a waste of time and money?  In the end, it really pays to listen to both sides of the debate. Personally, I spent eight years at U.S. public universities, and I really enjoyed those times. But would I trade my degrees today for the time and money that I spent to get them? Absolutely. Right now, Americans owe more than a trillion dollars on their student loans, and more than 124 billion dollars of that total is more than 90 days delinquent. It is a student loan debt bubble unlike anything that we have ever seen before, and now even those that make their living from this system are urging reform.  For example, consider what a law professor at the University of Tennessee recently wrote for the Wall Street Journal... In the field of higher education, reality is outrunning parody. A recent feature on the satire website the Onion proclaimed, "30-Year-Old Has Earned $11 More Than He Would Have Without College Education." Allowing for tuition, interest on student loans, and four years of foregone income while in school, the fictional student "Patrick Moorhouse" wasn't much better off. His years of stress and study, the article japed, "have been more or less a financial wash."   "Patrick" shouldn't feel too bad. Many college graduates would be happy to be $11 ahead instead of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, behind. The credit-driven higher education bubble of the past several decades has left legions of students deep in debt without improving their job prospects. To make college a good value again, today's parents and students need to be skeptical, frugal and demanding. When a lot of young Americans graduate from college and can't find a decent job, they are told that if they really want to "be successful" that what they really need is a graduate degree. That means more years of education, and in most cases, even more debt. But by the time many of these young achievers get through college and graduate school, the debt loads can be absolutely overwhelming... The typical debt load of borrowers leaving school with a master's, medical, law or doctoral degree jumped an inflation-adjusted 43% between 2004 and 2012, according to a new report by the New America Foundation, a left-leaning Washington think tank. That translated into a median debt load—the point at which half of borrowers owed more and half owed less—of $57,600 in 2012.   The increases were sharper for those pursuing advanced degrees in the social sciences and humanities, versus professional degrees such as M.B.A.s or medical degrees that tend to yield greater long-term returns. The typical debt load of those earning a master's in education showed some of the largest increases, rising 66% to $50,879. It climbed 54% to $58,539 for those earning a master of arts. In particular, many are questioning the value of a law school education these days.  Law schools are aggressively recruiting students even though they know that there are way, way too many lawyers already.  There is no way that the legal field can produce enough jobs for the huge flood of new law school graduates that are hitting the streets each year. The criticism has become so harsh that even mainstream news outlets are writing about this.  For instance, the following comes from a recent CNN article... For the past three years, the media has picked up the attacks with relish. The New York Times, in an article on a graduate with $250,000 in loans, put it this way: "Is Law School a Losing Game?" Referring to the graduate, the Times wrote, "His secret, if that's the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash," writes the author.  Or consider this blunt headline from a recent Business Insider article: "'I Consider Law School A Waste Of My Life And An Extraordinary Waste Of Money.'" Even though the graduate profiled in the piece had a degree from a Top 20 law school, he's now bitterly mired in debt. "Because I went to law school, I don't see myself having a family, earning a comfortable wage, or having an enjoyable lifestyle," he writes. "I wouldn't wish my law school experience on my enemy." In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loan debt, and the average debt level has been steadily rising.  In fact, one study found that "70 percent of the class of 2013 is graduating with college-related debt – averaging $35,200 – including federal, state and private loans, as well as debt owed to family and accumulated through credit cards." That would be bad enough if most of these students were getting decent jobs that enabled them to service that debt. But unfortunately, that is often not the case.  It has been estimated that about half of all recent college graduates are working jobs that do not even require a college degree. Could you imagine that? Could you imagine investing four or five years and tens of thousands of dollars in a college degree and then working a job that does not even require a degree? And the really sick thing is that the quality of the education that most college students are receiving is quite pathetic. Recently, a film crew went down to American University and asked students some really basic questions about our country.  The results were absolutely stunning... When asked if they could name a SINGLE U.S. senator, the students blanked. Also, very few knew that each state has two senators. The guesses were all over the map, with some crediting each state with twelve, thirteen, and five senators. I have posted the YouTube video below.  How in the world is it possible that college students in America cannot name a single U.S. senator?...   These are the leaders of tomorrow? That is a frightening thought. If parents only knew what their children were being taught at college, in most instances they would be absolutely horrified. The following is a list of actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years... -"What If Harry Potter Is Real?" -"Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame" -"Philosophy And Star Trek" -"Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond" -"Learning From YouTube" -"How To Watch Television" -"Sport For The Spectator" -"Oh, Look, a Chicken!" That last one is my favorite. The truth is that many of these colleges don't really care if  your sons and daughters learn much at all.  They just want the money to keep rolling in. And our college students are discovering that when they do graduate that they are woefully unprepared for life on the outside.  In fact, one survey found that 70% of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the "real world" while they were still in college. In America today, there are more than 300,000 waitresses that have college degrees, and close to three out of every ten adults in the United States under the age of 35 are still living at home with Mom and Dad. Our system of higher education is not working, and it is crippling an entire generation of Americans. So what do you think? Do you believe that college is a waste of time and money?

ANOTHER DEAD JPM BANKSTER: JP Morgan’s Top Commercial Bankruptcy Lawyer Killed in a Minivan HIT & RUN Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:45 PM PDT from Silver Doctors: The banker suicide saga has just reached a new level as a top level JPMorgan attorney has been exterminated in a hit & run incident involving a minivan. JPM attorney Joseph Giampapa was killed over the weekend when he was struck by a minivan in a hit and run incident. Giampapa was reportedly hit and thrown 150 ft and was pronounced dead at the scene. No charges have been filed. It gets better: Giampapa was JPMorgan's top commercial bankruptcy lawyer (SVP). Somehow we suspect the incident was not inflicted by a soccer mom. Read More @ SilverDoctors.com

China's Liquidity Crunch Slams Importers Who Are Defaulting, Reneging On Deals Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:35 PM PDT Over the past month, we have explained in detail not only how the Chinese credit collapse and massive carry unwind will look like in theory, but shown various instances how, in practice, the world's greatest debt bubble is starting to burst, resulting not only in the first ever corporate default but also in the bursting of the associated biggest ever housing bubble. One thing we have not commented on was how actual trade pathways - far more critical to offshore counterparts than merely credit tremors within the mainland - would be impacted once the nascent liquidity crisis spread. Today, we find the answer courtesy of the WSJ which reports that for the first time in the current Chinese liquidity crunch, Chinese importers, for now just those of soybeans and rubber but soon most other products, "are backing out of deals, adding to a wide range of evidence showing rising financial stress in the world's second-biggest economy." While apologists of China's collapse have been quick to point out that China's credit collapse would be largely a domestic issue, with little foreign creditor exposure at either the public debt, or private - corporate - debt levels, one thing nobody can deny is that if and when Chinese trade routes grind to a halt, the downstream impacts would be devastating, and spread like wildfire as the offshore supply chain is Ice 9'ed. More from the WSJ: Most purchases are private, with little data on the volumes affected, but traders at Asian trading firms say they are seeing a sharp rise in canceled contracts this year while other buyers are demanding heavy discounts.   The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that China has canceled orders for 517,000 metric tons of soybeans, used to make cooking oil, and compares to imports of 63.4 million tons last year. South American soybean contracts have also been canceled because of weak demand, says trade journal Oil World.   The cancellations are a big worry for the commodity markets as exporters around the world had relied for years on China's insatiable appetite for a wide range of raw ingredients. But now as jitters rise over the health of the economy, the fallout is rippling through into agricultural commodities, just weeks after the price of copper and iron ore tumbled on worries they had been used in risky Chinese financing deals. For now the impacted importers are those dealing purely with commodity products, such as rubber. The problem is that once one importer defaults on a contract, suddenly counterparty risk regarding all of China (and certainly those using commodities on Letters of Credit, recall China Commodity Funding Deals) soars, forcing other offshore exporters to collapse liquidity terms when dealing with Chinese buyers, and demand payment on truncated timeframes, resulting in a closed loop of liquidity evaporation from trade networks, which in turn forces local banks to step in and provide liquidity at precisely the time when banks are suddenly far more selective who they issue loans to. Natural rubber, mostly grown in Southeast Asia and used to make products ranging from tires to latex gloves, is also getting hit as some buyers from China refuse to honor existing agreements, or look for ways to negotiate discounts. Two large Asian rubber producers, who asked not to be named, said Chinese buyers had defaulted on them.   Traders say buyers are trying to ask for discounts, citing reasons such as cargo arriving a few days late and claims about poor quality or contamination, said Bundit Kerdvongbundit, vice president of Von Bundit Co., Thailand's second-largest natural rubber producer. The contracts are already signed, but Chinese importers "refuse to take cargo or pay unless they get discounts." Surely someone hedged though - it is not as if everyone was naive enough to sign major trade deal assuming the status quo would continue indefinitely despite China's well-documented recent liquidity concerns. Well, maybe... One comfort is that most companies trading with China have taken some sort of safeguards after widespread defaults in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, like asking for deposits, said Benson Lim, chief operating officer and head of global rubber trading at R1 International. .. But, not really: However, "the business is so competitive that not all sellers are taking deposits, so they are hard-hit when buyers default," he added. The result: collapsing commodity prices as the biggest marginal buyer suddenly goes bidless, if not an outright seller. Rubber prices have dropped more than 20% since the beginning of the year, due to worries over China's slowing economy and a global surplus of the commodity. Many sellers who bought at high prices are unwilling to sell at a loss, pushing up stocks at the port of Qingdao to near-record levels recently. Stockpiles in some other commodities like soybeans and iron ore are also high as buyers hang on. Which means that after having stuck their head in the sand for years, and ignoring just the possibility of precisely this outcome, suddenly everyone is scrambling and asking how this could have possibly happened: Commodities are particularly sensitive to the health of the economy given the their wide-ranging use. But with China this month recording its first ever corporate bond default, and fears over a property developer, investors are growing jittery as Beijing tries to clamp down on years of reckless lending.   "The number one problem is weak demand from the credit tightening last year and real estate which has a direct or pass through effect on all of this activity," said Shanghai-based Citi Research commodities strategist Ivan Szpakowski. There is one other tangent: what is the common link between rubber and soybeans? We explained precisely this ten days ago in "What Is The Common Theme: Iron Ore, Soybeans, Palm Oil, Rubber, Zinc, Aluminum, Gold, Copper, And Nickel?" Yup - as briefly noted above, these are all the commodities that serve as conduits in China's numerous Commodity Funding Deals. Only no more. Which means that far form merely crushing exporters who suddenly are dealing with Chinese importers who have torn apart contracts, obviously with no recourse, suddenly China's entire "hot money" laundering infrastructure (which as explained over the weekend, has gold performing an even greater role than copper) is about to collapse. And when the counterparties of China's hundreds of billions in CCFDs decide to also get out of Dodge and unwind these deals (amounting to hundreds of billions in notional), only to find the underlying commodity has not only been re-re-rehypotecated countless times and has been sold, then there is truly no way of saying what happens next.

Economic Collapse 2014 -- The Economic Recovery Illusion Is Losing Steam And The Collapse Is Quickly Approaching Posted: 27 Mar 2014 06:57 PM PDT While the French President uses the propaganda to convince the world they are in a recovery unemployment surges to new record highs. Retail in America is imploding as Toys R Us lays off more people. The housing marketing is set to collapse as big cash buyers leave the market. Ukraine parliament... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.GoldSilverNewsBlog.com or http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Gold market manipulation update, March 2014 Posted: 27 Mar 2014 06:09 PM PDT Remarks by Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. Mines and Money Hong Kong Conference Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Wednesday, March 26, 2014 For 15 years the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has been documenting and publicizing the largely surreptitious manipulation of the gold market by Western central banks, a longstanding policy of gold price suppression aimed at controlling the currency markets and interest rates. While GATA is a research, educational, and civil rights organization, those who object to examination of our topic call us a "conspiracy theory" organization. There is much conspiracy here, but it is easily ascertainable as fact rather than mere theory, conspiracy occurring whenever people gather in secret to plan or implement some undertaking or policy. Meeting in secret to plan or implement policy is, of course, the very definition of modern central banking. After all, when is the last time you were invited to a meeting of the G-10 Committee on Gold and Foreign Exchange or were even told that such a committee exists and meets secretly? When is the last time you were allowed to learn the results of the committee's work without having to bring a lawsuit against the participants, as GATA did a few years ago? ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Safe and Private Allocated Bullion Storage In Singapore Given the increasing risks in financial markets, it is more important than ever to own physical bullion coins and bars and to store them in the safest vaults in the world in the safest jurisdictions in the world. Gold advocates Jim Sinclair and Marc Faber have recommended Singapore. Now, with GoldCore, you can own coins and bars in fully insured, segregated, and allocated accounts in Singapore with the ability to take delivery. Learn more by downloading GoldCore's Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Singapore: http://info.goldcore.com/essential-guide-to-storing-gold-in-singapore And for more information call Daniel or Sharon at +44 203 0869200 in the United Kingdom or at +1-302-635-1160 in the United States. Or email them at info@goldcore.com. Minutes of one meeting of that committee, held in April 1997, wrested by GATA three years ago, at federal court order, from the secret archive of the U.S. Federal Reserve, are posted at GATA's Internet site. They show Western central bankers and treasury officials conspiring to unify their policies toward gold: http://www.gata.org/node/9623 The Federal Reserve insists implausibly that it has no other records of the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee. The Fed apparently would have the world believe that the committee met only once: http://www.gata.org/node/9657 It is far more likely that the committee has met many other times and that the records of its meetings would be even more incriminating. Reams of such documentation -- including minutes of other secret government meetings; admissions by many former central bankers, including four former chairmen of the Federal Reserve; diplomatic cables; and even legislation that remains in force -- are compiled in GATA's documentation archive: http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21 A summary of the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme and the major documents confirming it is posted here: http://www.gata.org/node/13644 With the exception of one document -- perhaps the most powerful one -- I mean to review today only the most important documents that GATA has brought to light since this conference was held here a year ago. That powerful older document is the secret report written by the staff of the International Monetary Fund in March 1999. The report explains that Western central banks conceal their gold swaps and leases because disclosure would impair their secret interventions in the gold and currency markets: http://www.gata.org/node/12016 Anyone who maintains that gold price suppression is merely "conspiracy theory" and who has not read that secret IMF report either doesn't know what he's talking about or is committing disinformation. Without exception those who dismiss GATA's work have not examined the documentation at all and never agree to discuss it. So what has GATA uncovered in the last 12 months? For starters, there have been more incriminating records from the archives of the U.S. State Department, like the transcript of a meeting in April 1974 called by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to consider the danger that the price of gold might get beyond the U.S. government's control. The minutes of that meeting, published by GATA last November, confirm the U.S. government's long understanding of the "golden rule" -- that is, whoever has the gold makes the rules. The minutes explain explicitly the need for the United States to control the gold price: Assistant Undersecretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Thomas O. Enders: It's against our interest to have gold in the system because for it to remain there it would result in it being evaluated periodically. Although we still have some substantial gold holdings -- about $11 billion -- a larger part of the official gold in the world is concentrated in Western Europe. This gives THEM the dominant position in world reserves and the dominant means of creating reserves. We've been trying to get away from that into a system in which we can control. ... Secretary Kissinger: But that's a balance-of-payments problem. Assistant Undersecretary Enders: Yes, but it's a question of who has the most leverage internationally. If THEY have the reserve-creating instrument, by having the largest amount of gold and the ability to change its price periodically, they have a position relative to ours of considerable power. For a long time WE had a position relative to theirs of considerable power because WE could change gold almost at will. This is no longer possible -- no longer acceptable. Therefore, we have gone to Special Drawing Rights, which is also equitable and could take account of some of the less-developed-country interests and which spreads the power away from Europe. And it's more rational in. ... Secretary Kissinger: "More rational" being defined as being more in our interests or what? Mr. Enders: More rational in the sense of more responsive to worldwide needs -- but also more in our interest. ... The transcript of this meeting is posted at GATA's Internet site here: http://www.gata.org/node/13310 On January 8 the market data company Nanex in Winnetka, Illinois, published research showing that the smashing of the gold price in the U.S. futures market two days earlier was not what some had been calling it, a mistaken "fat finger" trade, but the product of a sophisticated high-frequency algorithm trading program carefully designed to take the market down: http://www.gata.org/node/13478 In the last 12 months commentary in government and other official circles in China has continued to cite the Western government policy of gold price suppression. Gold price suppression is a frequent topic in the news media in China, even as it is a forbidden topic in the Western news media. For example, in January GATA published the remarks of the president of China's gold mining association, Sun Zhaoxue, to a financial conference in Shanghai, in which he said gold price suppression is U.S. government policy to maintain the dominance of the U.S. dollar in the ongoing international currency war: http://www.gata.org/node/13446 And in December GATA distributed commentary by Zhang Jie, deputy editor of the Chinese publication Global Finance and a consultant to the China Gold Association, who said the U.S. Federal Reserve manipulates the gold market to protect the U.S. dollar's standing as the world reserve currency. Zhang said: "Through continuous gold leasing the gold in the market can be circulated and produce derivatives, creating more and more paper gold. This is very significant for the United States. Gold leasing is a major tool for the Federal Reserve and other central banks in the West to secretly control and regulate the gold market, creating gold credit derivatives and global credit conflict." http://www.gata.org/node/13314 Last September at the London Bullion Market Association's conference in Rome the director of market operations for the central bank of France, Alexandre Gautier, reported that the bank trades gold for its own account "nearly on a daily basis" and is "active in the gold market for central banks and official institutions": http://www.gata.org/node/13373 Last July GoldMoney's research director, Alasdair Macleod, discovered a 1,200-tonne reduction in the records of the Bank of England's custodial gold inventory between February and July 2013, the period encompassing the gold price smash down of April 2013. The Bank of England refused GATA's request for an explanation of whose gold came out of the bank's vaults and why and whether this reduction had something to do with the plunge in the gold price: http://www.gata.org/node/12859 Last June the annual report of the Bank for International Settlements confirmed that the BIS trades secretly in the gold market for its clients, central banks. The BIS report said: "The bank transacts foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers, thereby providing access to a large liquidity base in the context of, for example, regular rebalancing of reserve portfolios or major changes in reserve currency allocations. The foreign exchange services of the bank encompass spot transactions in major currencies and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as well as swaps, outright forwards, options, and dual currency deposits (DCDs). In addition, the bank provides gold services such as buying and selling, sight accounts, fixed-term deposits, earmarked accounts, upgrading and refining, and location exchanges." The BIS report continued: "The bank operates a banking business in currency and gold on behalf of its customers. In this business the bank takes limited gold price, interest rate, and foreign currency risk." The BIS annual report is here: http://www.gata.org/node/12717 Exactly why are the BIS and its client central banks and the Bank of France secretly trading gold and gold derivatives every day? The explanation was provided by a presentation the BIS made to prospective members in June 2008, a presentation advertising, among the BIS' services to its members, secret interventions in the gold and currency markets: http://www.gata.org/node/11012 It is so easy to figure all this out. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is put a specific, critical question to a central bank or the BIS about its activity in the gold market and the purposes of that activity. You won't get an answer. Since January I have been pressing another such question with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A few months ago I obtained a copy of a speech given in May 2004 by H. David Willey, a former vice president of the New York Fed, to the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Willey said the New York Fed provides gold accounts to bullion banks -- banks that trade gold. Willey's speech begins on Page 53 of the copy cited here and his reference to gold accounts provided to banks by the New York Fed appears on Page 62: http://www.gata.org/files/WilleySpeechAIERMay2004.pdf This was more of an admission of the New York Fed's involvement with the gold market than had ever been made officially, so in January I asked the New York Fed's public information office about it: Does the New York Fed provide gold accounts to bullion banks, or did the New York Fed ever do so, as its former vice president said in that speech in 2004? The New York Fed's public information office acknowledged my question but quickly brushed me off. So I put the question by certified mail to the president of the New York Fed, William Dudley. Of course I have not enjoyed the courtesy of a response and so have drafted my congressmen into trying to get an answer to this very simple and potentially very telling question. But I suspect that getting an answer from the New York Fed will require another lawsuit. The gold mining industry is generally oblivious to the issue of gold price suppression. The industry has little idea of the monetary nature of its product and less idea of how its product is priced -- priced by secret market rigging by central banks. Yes, there has been a little progress on this issue with the gold mining industry lately. Two weeks ago Rob McEwen, founder of mining giant Goldcorp and now CEO of his own company, McEwen Mining, who spoke at this conference a couple of years ago, conceded during his company's fourth-quarter conference call that central banks are probably rigging the gold market. He even complimented GATA by name: http://www.gata.org/node/13769 But McEwen added that he didn't think there was much point in complaining about it. GATA disagrees. We think publicity is the decisive element here, because market rigging works only by deception. But in any case the gold mining industry has not yet done anything to defend itself. Its trade organization, the World Gold Council, ignores the price suppression issue and even frequently distributes disinformation itself. For the most part gold mining company executives are too scared even to look at the issue, and it's easy to understand why. Mining is the business most vulnerable to government -- for mining rights and royalties, enforcement of environmental regulations, and so forth -- and, as the most capital-intensive business, gold mining is also the business most vulnerable to the big investment houses that are need to finance most mines and that are the very aggressive agents of central banks. While Western financial news organizations lately have publicized complaints about manipulation of the daily London gold fixes operated by bullion banks, those news organizations refuse to get near anything involving surreptitious intervention in the gold market by central banks, even when the documentation is laid in their laps, as GATA has been laying it there for many years. Gold price suppression is simply a prohibited topic in mainstream financial journalism in the West. Indeed, in the West the first rule of mainstream financial journalism and particularly financial journalism about gold is never to put a specific critical question about the monetary metal to any of the primary participants in the gold market, central banks. That is, nearly all gold market reporting in the West is, by design, irrelevant distraction at best, disinformation at worst. This is because the location, disposition, and use of national gold reserves are secrets far more sensitive than the location and disposition of nuclear weapons. For control of the gold price, as Secretary Kissinger's deputy explained to him in 1974, confers control of the currency and bond markets and control of interest rates generally, which in turn confers control of the value of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world -- the control of everything that has a price. Control of the currency markets is more powerful than any military force. Indeed, it is the primary mechanism of imperialism. It's actually an old story from history. The Nazi German looting of occupied Europe during World War II was done primarily not through force of arms but rather by the rigging of currency exchange rates. Nazi rigging of currency exchange rates turned every resident of an occupied country into an agent of the occupation facilitating the flow of production out of his own country and into Nazi Germany. This was documented in detail by the November 1943 issue of the U.S. War Department's intelligence letter, Tactical and Technical Trends -- http://www.gata.org/node/10457 -- and by the history of Nazi Germany written in 2005 by Gotz Aly, a book titled "Hitler's Beneficiaries": http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-Welfare/dp/08... If you can grasp this much history you may see that my organization isn't about worshipping gold; we are not idolaters. GATA really doesn't care what anyone uses as currency. No, GATA's work is about restoring the prerequisites of human progress -- free markets and transparency and accountability in government, limited government. Without free markets and transparency and accountability in limited government, no one at this conference has any idea of the real value of his company's product, nor, for planning purposes, what that value might be. To the contrary, most things perceived today as market indicators are mere holograms, illusions, and all economic planning is actually a waste of time. I'm ready to assist anyone who would like to study the documentation and I'll be glad to receive inquiries by e-mail at CPowell@GATA.org. Thanks for your kind attention today. * * * Join GATA here: Porter Stansberry Natural Resources Conference AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House 2403 Flora St., Dallas, Texas Saturday, May 31, 2014 http://stansberrydallas.com/ Canadian Investor Conference 2014 Vancouver Convention Centre West 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday and Monday, June 1 and 2, 2014 http://cambridgehouse.com/event/25/canadian-investor-conference-2014-inc... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

Gold manipulation is now so obvious it should embarrass the manipulators, Rickards says Posted: 27 Mar 2014 05:28 PM PDT 8:30a HKT Friday, March 28, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Fund manager, lawyer, geopolitical strategist, and author, the ubiquitious James G. Rickards, tells Sprott Money News this week that a forthcoming statistical study of prices on the New York Commodities Exchange demonstrates overwhelmingly that the gold price is manipulated and suppressed. As described by Rickards, the study sounds similar to the one done by the late GATA board member Adrian Douglas in 2010: http://www.gata.org/node/8918 "If I were running the manipulation," Rickards says, "I would actually be embarrassed at this point because it's so blatant." Governments are involved in the manipulation, Rickards adds, and they work through the Bank for International Settlements, whose annual report, as GATA often has noted -- http://www.gata.org/node/12717 -- discloses that it intervenes in gold market constantly for its member central banks. Indeed, Rickards says, he concurs with GATA that all major markets now are being manipulated, insofar as the Federal Reserve's manipulation of interest rates has the effect of "manipulating every market in the world, and therefore all the market signals we're getting are not really good signals. They're all the result of manipulation." Rickards already had earned a tinfoil hat but for this one he gets a three-piece tinfoil suit and a whole collection of tinfoil ties. Audio of the interview is 28 minutes long but there's a full transcript as well at the Sprott Money News Internet site here: http://www.sprottmoney.com/news/ask-the-expert-james-rickards-march-2014 CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Porter Stansberry Natural Resources Conference AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House 2403 Flora St., Dallas, Texas Saturday, May 31, 2014 http://stansberrydallas.com/ Canadian Investor Conference 2014 Vancouver Convention Centre West 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday and Monday, June 1 and 2, 2014 http://cambridgehouse.com/event/25/canadian-investor-conference-2014-inc... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Silver mining stock report for 2014 comes with 1-ounce silver round Future Money Trends is offering a special 18-page silver mining stock report about how to profit with the monetary and industrial metal in 2014, and it comes with a free 1-ounce silver round. Proceeds from the report's sales are shared with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts to expose manipulation in the monetary metals markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://fmturl.com/gata/

JPY Confounded As Abe Cornered By Inflation/Spending Dilemma Posted: 27 Mar 2014 05:00 PM PDT When Abe, Kuroda, and their merry men unveiled their latest idea - Abenomics - the world's macro tourists piled in and spent every waking second convincing the rest of the world's suckers that this time was different for Japan. We, along with Kyle Bass and a short list of other realists, warned "be careful what you wish for." It seems tonight's data is the best example yet of the print-and-grow rock and inflate-and-die hard place that Abe finds himself between. Multi-year highs in inflation (pressing on to the BoJ's target) combined with a total collapse in household spending (lowest in 27 months). Abe is cornered; and JPY and the Nikkei are confounded for now.   Yay - "inflation is rising just as we hoped" Abe pats himself on the back... "must be all those small firms raising wages by the equivalent of 4 Big Macs per month... oh and all the currency devaluation that has spiked our energy import costs... but that's ok coz it's not deflation"   And this: NEWS: JAPAN FEB CPI ENERGY COSTS +5.8% Y/Y VS JAN +6.9% NEWS: JAPAN FEB CPI ELECTRONICS GOODS +6.3% Y/Y VS JAN +4.7% NEWS: JAPAN FEB CPI FOOD EX-PERISHABLES +0.9% Y/Y; JAN +1.0% NEWS: JAPAN FEB CPI TVS +5.8% Y/Y VS JAN +3.7% NEWS: JAPAN FY13 CENTRAL TOKYO CORE CPI +0.4%, 1ST RISE IN 5 YEARS   But... said a quiet voice from the back... "the household is getting monkeyhammered by the higher prices and de minimus wage rises"... "how will we ever raise the consumption tax in this environment - which we need to do to show the world we have some fiscal responsibility - without crushing the economy entirely/" NEWS: JAPAN FEB HOUSEHOLD SPENDING -2.5% Y/Y; MNI MEDIAN +0.1%     Yes we know it snowed in Tokyo for a few days but come on... Abe is totally cornered... If Kuroda eases anymore to satsfy weak economic data, he risks runaway inflation which would leave BoJ in a vicious circle to soak up the JGB selling...   If Abe raises the consumption tax without easing monetary policy even more then the economy is just not able to handle it... Of course, it didn't take long for the sell-side to pull every trick in the book... From Citi - Print more... Expect additional BOJ easing in June or July, will drive yen to 108-110 per dollar CITIGROUP SEES ADDITIONAL BOJ EASING TO DRIVE DOWN YEN And re-allocate more... "We are somewhat bemused by growing expectations in the market that reform of Government Pension and Investment Fund will result in yen selling" Conservative estimate of GPIF reallocation to 50% weighting JPY bonds would see 1 tln yen/yr of JPY sales, maybe less   Just ignore the spike in import costs and crushing pressure on the household's pocketbook that has just been proved. In summary: So Japan now has overheating inflation, record trade deficit, plunging personal spending and a crashing current account. Good job Abe. — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 27, 2014

BOMBSHELL NEW INFO: 9/11 Tragedy Insider Trading Posted: 27 Mar 2014 04:57 PM PDT American broadcaster and film maker Max Keiser joins today's show to discuss not only the coming collapse of the monetary system but also how the CIA was aware of insider trading prior to 9/11. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.GoldSilverNewsBlog.com or http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

IMF bailout of Ukraine is actually rescue of Western investment houses and Russian banks Posted: 27 Mar 2014 04:52 PM PDT 7:50a HKT Friday, March 28, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: A summary of some important news will have to suffice for this travel day. The London Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes that the International Monetary Fund's bailout for Ukraine is actually a rescue of Western investment houses and Russian banks: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10728149/Windfall-for... Reuters reports that an attempt to revive the silver market-rigging lawsuit against JPMorganChase has been rejected by a federal appeals court: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/27/jpmorgan-silver-lawsuit-idUSL1... Agence France-Presse reports that Russia is contemplating starting its own credit-card charge clearing system to reduce the effects of Western sanctions: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-create-own-national-payment-system-ptuin-sa... And according to the Financial Times, there's a bit of a gold rush in Japan as buyers hasten to beat a sales tax increase: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/59aad556-b58f-11e3-81cb-00144feabdc0.html... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Silver mining stock report for 2014 comes with 1-ounce silver round Future Money Trends is offering a special 18-page silver mining stock report about how to profit with the monetary and industrial metal in 2014, and it comes with a free 1-ounce silver round. Proceeds from the report's sales are shared with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts to expose manipulation in the monetary metals markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://fmturl.com/gata/ Join GATA here: Porter Stansberry Natural Resources Conference AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House 2403 Flora St., Dallas, Texas Saturday, May 31, 2014 http://stansberrydallas.com/ Canadian Investor Conference 2014 Vancouver Convention Centre West 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday and Monday, June 1 and 2, 2014 http://cambridgehouse.com/event/25/canadian-investor-conference-2014-inc... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata

Max Keiser -- The Alex Jones Show(VIDEO Commercial Free) Thursday March 27 2014 Posted: 27 Mar 2014 04:11 PM PDT On this powerful Thursday, March 27 edition of the Alex Jones Show, Alex gives an in-depth analysis on the continued collapse of the mainstream media and the American economy. A new Pew Research study reveals that MSNBC has lost another quarter of its viewers. The cable news channel has been an... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.GoldSilverNewsBlog.com or http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The Changing Prices of Gold Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:43 PM PDT This article is submitted by Emma Thomson. Following the invasion of Crimea and the subsequent heightening of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, there was an increase in the price of gold as investors took a cautious approach to the markets. For much of March gold prices were seen trading higher than previous months. As reported by Reuters, there was a dip for a few days in March when Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen suggested the US central bank may increase its interest rates in the next six months, meaning there would be an incentive for consumers to invest their money in banks and building societies. Prior to that dip the metal had increased in value for six consecutive weeks giving a huge boost to the gold industry. The outlook for precious metal is bright with Gold futures for June delivery gaining 0.22 per cent to $1.314.40 an ounce. The price of investment-grade gold bullion has risen by 0.53pc since February 25, according to JPMorgan, reflecting its traditional status as a “safe haven” in troubled times. Julian Jessop of Capital Economics, the consultancy, said: “One of the few beneficiaries of the crisis in Ukraine is the price of gold." However, he warned that this sort of "safe haven buying" was traditionally short-lived. The trend towards the markets buying gold came under the spotlight following the real possibility that major world players may have become involved in the war in Syria last year. At the time, many analysts believed the gold price will climb as investors turn to it as a safe-haven in times of geopolitical crisis. This may be the case but whether this will matter once foreign military action begins, or even if it never begins, is an important question. Last autumn, as discussions surrounding Syria heated up the gold price climbed by as much as nine percent . However once the threat of involvement of the US and UK in military action began to subside then this increase dropped to six percent. Gold reached its highest ever price when it went above $1.900 per oz during July and August 2011. The value soared by $300 very quickly and soon went back to that price meaning that there is always a chance that you will not always make money on gold. History of war's effect on the market There have been many studies into why war or the threat of it has such an effect on the global economy. One of the enduring beliefs of the 20th Century and beyond is that war and its associated military spending has created positive economic outcomes for the U.S. economy – the world's largest. This theory has been backed up by polling in America which shows a significant number of people believe that war and military spending has improved the economy. In one of the most comprehensive studies ever carried out on the effects of war on economics, the Institute of Peace and Economics found that the trend for a conflict boosting the U.S's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) started with the Korean War (1950-53). However, this theory is challenged by some including the 1946 book Economics In One Lesson by 5 Henry Hazlitt who introduced the Broken Window Fallacy to the world. He said that people would argue that if a vandal smashed a shop window that would aid the local economy as the shopkeeper would be forced to buy his new window locally. This money would then circulate around that economy. However, Hazlitt argued that the same shopkeeper would have spent his money elsewhere in the local economy, meaning the theory was flawed. Where else to invest? The fact is gold is most definitely seen as a smart investment by most but are there other places to put your money? The past five years of near global economic uncertainty has seen a surge in interest from people trying to find the best financial and investment advice. Investment trusts are a superb way to put your money into multiple shares so that you can spread your investment however you see fit, all the while keeping it safe if one investment falls. There is also free, non commercial, consumer advice out there for people worried about how to look after the case with the Citizens Advice Bureau renowned for offering guidance. Many local councils now offer financial advice with some authorities even launching their own credit unions in a bid to stop people using loan sharks. The Government's political rivals have made much of the economic turn around being centered on a house price bubble in London and the South East but following years of doom and gloom, prices are finally started to rise last year. According to the Office for National Statistics, values rose by 3.1 per cent in the year to June 2013, compared to 2.9 per cent in the year to May 2013. Confirmation comes from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which says that prices are rising at their fastest rate since the pre-crash days of 2006. There are plenty of companies out there urging would-be investors to use some of their spare capital and buy property. If you are feeling brave you could invest in stock and shares but before taking on the London Stock Exchange there are a few golden rules to adhere to for average investors. Investors need to ensure they are not paying too much money for brokers to purchase their investment, if you get a good dividend reinvest using a proper reinvestment plan and try to invest in the market at regular intervals. For investors of any experience it is important to get these rules right. New investors often get confused by complicated rules right from the start. The online market is a crowded one so investors are urged to do their research and ideally do business with an organisation that they have heard of. References “The Gold Industry Explained,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “How the Syrian uprising caused gold values to soar,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “Institute of Economics and Peace and a study into the Economy of War,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “The broken window fallacy explained,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “The best way to invest your money,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “Free impartial financial advice,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “Your guide how to make the best property investment,” Accessed March 26, 2014 “How to make the best investment on the markets,” Accessed March 26, 2014

Silver Prices Heading Lower As Bears Tighten Their Grip Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:34 PM PDT Every picture tells a story and silver's story is not a pretty one as the above chart clearly depicts. I'm not convinced that the June low was the final low for this prolonged bear period that currently exists within this precious metals bull market. A final capitulation could be on the cards and arrive sometime this summer, maybe May/June time. The USD refuses to trade below the '79' level even though it has tested this level no less than six times over the last two years. We keep asking the question; Is this the 'real deal' or another head fake? The 2014 rally has all but fizzled out as silver has given back the gains it made from January to mid-February. I am a silver bull, but not a perma-silver bull, as I believe there is a time to be fully invested and a time to be on the side lines. In our very humble opinion now is not the time to be Cavalier especially as we enter the relatively inactive summer season for both silver and gold. The lion's share of our portfolio is in cash as we patiently wait for the real bottom to form and the opportunity to buy at bargain price levels. We are aware that this down trend has been in place for three years and as such has tested everyone's patience to the extreme. However, that's not a reason to aggressively hit the acquisition trail. Patience is the word of the day and also use this time to do your own due diligence in terms of which stocks are good quality and should be acquired when the time comes and which stocks to avoid.   Bob Kirtley  |  www.gold-prices.biz  |  bob@gold-prices.biz

The Gold Price Should Rally From Here Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:53 PM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1294.70 Change : -8.70 or -0.67% Silver Price Close Today : 19.690 Change : -0.069 or -0.35% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 65.754 Change : -0.211 or -0.32% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01521 Change : 0.000049 or 0.32% Platinum Price Close Today : 1397.20 Change : -9.30 or -0.66% Palladium Price Close Today : 761.00 Change : -20.15 or -2.58% S&P 500 : 1,849.04 Change : -3.52 or -0.19% Dow In GOLD$ : $259.68 Change : $ 1.66 or 0.64% Dow in GOLD oz : 12.562 Change : 0.080 or 0.64% Dow in SILVER oz : 826.01 Change : 2.64 or 0.32% Dow Industrial : 16,264.23 Change : -4.76 or -0.03% US Dollar Index : 80.110 Change : 0.030 or 0.04% The GOLD PRICE sank $8.70 to $1,294.70 and the SILVER PRICE lost 6.9 cents to 1969.0c. Disaster? Not quite. Today's range with a 1958c low touched the downtrend line form the April 2013 high, same line silver broke through skyward in April. This constitutes a kiss back to breakout, and should hold -- should. The GOLD PRICE low at $1,291.20 brought it nearly to that 50% correction at $1,287, which is the neckline of the upside down Head and Shoulders gold broke through in February. Gold has now tangled its feet in the 50 DMA ($1,303.8) and 200 DMA ($1,299.41). Today's trading pretty much hit my targets for this decline. Now we might from here get a rally, then one more touch back to these levels. Of course, I will be shown once again to be no more'n a nacheral born fool from Tennessee should silver and gold prices drop sharply. Fool or not, I don't see that on the chart. Y'all have mercy on me today. I have to attend a show-off home schooling event for some of my grandchildren, and my dear wife will flay me if I'm late. Here are the highlights. Stocks continued to deteriorate, although the closes didn't show the full view of it. Closes were near yesterdays, but the lows were a lot lower, so the range was much lower than yesterdays. Whoa! S&P500 broke DOWN out of that even-sided triangle we've been watching. Dow lost 4.76 (0.03%) to 16,264.23 while the S&P500 slid 3.52 (0.19%) to 1,849.04. Should follow through lower and lower. US dollar index finally stood up and gained a whole 16 basis points (0.2%) to 80.28. This leaves the chart hopeful, but nothing to brag about. Euro looks like it ate a pound of bad meat, dropped 0.32% today to $1.3741, not far from turning very negative by falling below its 50 DMA ($1.3715). Yen lost 0.14% to 97.87 c/Y100, still treading water. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2014, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

The Gold Price Should Rally From Here Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:53 PM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1294.70 Change : -8.70 or -0.67% Silver Price Close Today : 19.690 Change : -0.069 or -0.35% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 65.754 Change : -0.211 or -0.32% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01521 Change : 0.000049 or 0.32% Platinum Price Close Today : 1397.20 Change : -9.30 or -0.66% Palladium Price Close Today : 761.00 Change : -20.15 or -2.58% S&P 500 : 1,849.04 Change : -3.52 or -0.19% Dow In GOLD$ : $259.68 Change : $ 1.66 or 0.64% Dow in GOLD oz : 12.562 Change : 0.080 or 0.64% Dow in SILVER oz : 826.01 Change : 2.64 or 0.32% Dow Industrial : 16,264.23 Change : -4.76 or -0.03% US Dollar Index : 80.110 Change : 0.030 or 0.04% The GOLD PRICE sank $8.70 to $1,294.70 and the SILVER PRICE lost 6.9 cents to 1969.0c. Disaster? Not quite. Today's range with a 1958c low touched the downtrend line form the April 2013 high, same line silver broke through skyward in April. This constitutes a kiss back to breakout, and should hold -- should. The GOLD PRICE low at $1,291.20 brought it nearly to that 50% correction at $1,287, which is the neckline of the upside down Head and Shoulders gold broke through in February. Gold has now tangled its feet in the 50 DMA ($1,303.8) and 200 DMA ($1,299.41). Today's trading pretty much hit my targets for this decline. Now we might from here get a rally, then one more touch back to these levels. Of course, I will be shown once again to be no more'n a nacheral born fool from Tennessee should silver and gold prices drop sharply. Fool or not, I don't see that on the chart. Y'all have mercy on me today. I have to attend a show-off home schooling event for some of my grandchildren, and my dear wife will flay me if I'm late. Here are the highlights. Stocks continued to deteriorate, although the closes didn't show the full view of it. Closes were near yesterdays, but the lows were a lot lower, so the range was much lower than yesterdays. Whoa! S&P500 broke DOWN out of that even-sided triangle we've been watching. Dow lost 4.76 (0.03%) to 16,264.23 while the S&P500 slid 3.52 (0.19%) to 1,849.04. Should follow through lower and lower. US dollar index finally stood up and gained a whole 16 basis points (0.2%) to 80.28. This leaves the chart hopeful, but nothing to brag about. Euro looks like it ate a pound of bad meat, dropped 0.32% today to $1.3741, not far from turning very negative by falling below its 50 DMA ($1.3715). Yen lost 0.14% to 97.87 c/Y100, still treading water. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2014, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

Silver Prices Heading Lower As the Bears Tighten Their Grip Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:52 PM PDT Every picture tells a story and silver’s story is not a pretty one as the above chart clearly depicts. I’m not convinced that the June low was the final low for this prolonged bear period that currently exists within this precious metals bull market. A final capitulation could be on the cards and arrive sometime this summer, maybe May/June time.

Richard Russell - I Am Buying Physical Silver Right Now Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:46 PM PDT With continued chaos and uncertainty in global markets, today KWN is publishing another important piece that was written by a 60-year market veteran. The Godfather of newsletter writers, Richard Russell, says that he is buying physical silver right now. He gave the reasons why he is buying silver, and also discussed the Federal Reserve's disgraceful activities in the gold and silver markets. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Roll Over Beethoven Posted: 27 Mar 2014 01:31 PM PDT

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Roll Over Beethoven Posted: 27 Mar 2014 01:31 PM PDT

Is sound money an unsound idea? Posted: 27 Mar 2014 12:30 PM PDT Governments hate sound money.  Even worse, people hate sound money.  Governments hate it because it puts severe limits on what governments can do.  People hate it because it would mean taking responsibility for their own lives, relying on their resourcefulness instead of the government.  Sound money can't be printed, and governments that can't print can't buy as many votes.  They tend to let the chips stay where they fall. On a free market sound money is democracy in action. As Mises wrote, it is the most marketable commodity, as determined by market participants.  One of the reasons the market chose gold and silver as money was their limited supply, which is also the reason governments reject it.  People who allow their government to control the value of money, by controlling its supply, have surrendered their liberty. I doubt that most people even know what sound money is.  Besides, they might retort, if there is such a thing as sound money, why is it so important?  Gold and silver are sound money?  We were plagued with Panics when gold was enthroned (forgetting that gold took the hit for fractional reserve banking).  And when recessions came, the economy languished because there was no printer of last resort to jump-start its productive engine (not admitting that printing created the problem in the first place).  The better people are proactive — they don't like to sit and let matters take their course, as they did with 19th century crises.  Things are better today with a central bank ready to fend off catastrophe with liquidity injections.  Sometimes humongous injections.  Sound money is an unsound idea.  Gold is a barbarous relic, with the emphasis on barbarous. Whether or not people accept sound money depends on whether or not they value liberty, defined here as "freedom from arbitrary or despotic control." When it all began Archeological findings show us that people once lived much like wild animals, hunting and gathering their food.  When they discovered they could grow some of their food and domesticate certain plants and animals, they formed settlements.  Agriculture provided a surplus of food and allowed people to spend less time trying to feed themselves and more time working on other productive pursuits, thereby creating a diversification of labor.  With specialization came the opportunity to trade, beginning with barter and advancing to indirect exchange.   All other discoveries that have raised our standard of living are contingent on the simple process of trading one good for another good that is highly liquid.  (Liquidity refers to a good's marketability.)  With this eminently marketable good, it could be traded rather than consumed, and thus through successive trades individuals could acquire the goods they wanted that they couldn't get through direct exchange.  Goods that became universally accepted in trade became known as money.  Only with the emergence of money could a division of labor develop to any great extent, enabling people to specialize in lines of production most suited to their skills, circumstances, or temperament.  Money made possible the advancement of civilization. Looking back from our perch today we find something odd about this evolution from barter to money.  At no point was anyone able to exchange nothing for something — other than by cheating.  On the free market a person could not scoop up a handful of wet leaves, for example, call them federal reserve notes, and expect to trade them for a basket of eggs or admission to a stage play.  A trader had to bring something to market that people actually wanted, either consumption/capital goods or consumption goods that were also highly marketable.  People embraced the idea of money because it made them much wealthier: Unlike barter, they were no longer limited by a double coincidence of wants.  When gold and silver became universally adopted in the West, goods flowed across borders, hampered only by government policies. Along with the development of civilization came its antithesis, the emergence of nation-states.  Warriors became rulers, imposing themselves on productive settlements.  Why work for a living when you can force others to work for you?  With the appropriate dressing, coercion could be made to seem like a pillar of civilization.  The world is a very dangerous place.  Farmers and cobblers need protection from invading warriors.  The ruling elite promises to provide that protection.  Their specialty is killing people.  Because that is their specialty they get to rule the farmers and cobblers.  They came to refer to themselves as civil government. But there are problems.  Governments are supported by wealth extorted from the populace called taxes.  Taxation has always been unpopular.  When taxes get too high, the taxed try to evade them.  Sometimes they rebel.  Sometimes they are successful in their rebellion.   Rulers don't want a lot of trouble, so they began taxing indirectly, through the debasement of the coinage.  People saw that it was a cheat, but there was little they could do.  If they were caught hoarding less-debased coins, they often paid with their lives. Eventually paper money began circulating as a more convenient substitute for vaulted coin money.  And almost immediately, bogus paper money circulated that passed for legitimate paper substitutes.  From the perspective of the issuers of paper money, this was truly a godsend.  Unlike adulterated coins, unbacked paper is identical in appearance to backed paper.  People could be easily duped. The death of sound money Through wars and financial crises, government was able to remove the backing from the paper altogether, leaving us with pure fiat currencies, inflatable at will — the will of the sovereign or its appointed central bank.  States crack down on any attempt to use something other than state legal tender. In the West and especially in the United States we like to think of ourselves as mostly free, where the government serves the interests of the people somewhat.  We might expect a dictator to repress any attempt to use something other than the government's money.  But what about democratic governments?   Did some economist discover a truth that happens to legitimize the activities of repressive governments?  Are we now subject to a scientific argument that says effectively that the more money we have the more prosperous we will be?  Is that why sound money is outlawed? Close, but not quite.  No economist known by that title has stood for unlimited money creation, but almost all economists consider fiat money creation indispensable.  Hunter Lewis, in his How Much Money Does an Economy Need?, illustrates this point with a simple example taken from Milton Friedman: Assume that the government decides to construct a road.  Rather than levy taxes to meet the expense, public officials simply start up the printing presses and run off some currency.  Everyone seems to benefit.  Workers get jobs.  The community gets a road.  No one had to pay for it.  It seems like "magic." (pp. 31-32) But magic of this sort is just sleight of hand.  It confuses money with wealth.  What really happens when money is printed and spent?  Someone is cheated.  History is replete with examples large and small, but one of the better known cases is the German hyperinflation of 1923, in which "millions of the hard-working, thrifty German people found that their life's savings would not buy a postage stamp."  Lewis alludes to this problem with a simple illustration: If you have four apples and a dollar, the dollar may help you price and trade the apples. But adding another dollar will not increase wealth; it will simply raise the price of the apples. To increase wealth, one must add an apple or some other commodity, product, or service. It isn't clear in this simple example what an additional dollar would do.  But in a real economy this is known as the Cantillon Effect, named for the 18th-century economist Richard Cantillon, who "posited that the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients."   This is not rocket science or even close to it.  But because the benefits of inflation are usually immediate, such as the new road and the jobs it creates, the downside is often overlooked — which in an extreme case is the collapse of the currency. If we want to understand what government has done to our money,  there is no better place to start than by reading Murray Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money?  It is an intelligible read of only 100 pages.  The alternative to Rothbardian economics is to surrender control of money and banking to unelected experts who then must be trusted to keep the public's interest in mind as they manage the nation's stock of money.  Experts not subject to the pressures of the market or the electorate, who are politically appointed, don't work for the public.  It's not the public who signs their paychecks.   The flip side of a federal reserve note says In God We Trust.  The experts may or may not be trusting God, but the public is trusting the bureaucrats of the Federal Open Market Committee.  Under this committee's guidance, the spread between the haves and have-nots has widened to the point where the poorest 23.3 million Americans earned 36% less than the richest 2,915 Americans in 2012. . Sound money would reverse this trend.  Read Rothbard to find out how.

Hostage Markets: Are The Banksters The Real Hostages? Posted: 27 Mar 2014 11:58 AM PDT In our current paradigm of Hostage Markets in the precious metals sector, which has existed in this extreme form for three years now; appearances can be deceiving. By all appearances; it is the One Bank which is in complete-and-absolute control of our fraud-ridden markets, and precious metals investors who are the helpless hostages. But in effective terms, is that really the case? In fact; it is the One Bank itself that we see with less and less latitude for action, which is a qualitative basis for the definition of a "hostage". As we see prices "trapped" within an absurdly limited trading range, we begin to see that this paradigm of Hostage Markets is not a strategy of choice on the part of the One Bank – but rather a strategy of lack of choice. Ever since the One Bank's minions in our central banks squandered most of the West's bullion, flooding bullion markets with ridiculously excessive quantities of bullion year after year, simply because they could do so; the final chapter in this game of bullion-manipulation has already been written. The "story" ends with either an (official) bullion-default, or an (unofficial) decoupling – between the banksters's paper-fraud markets and the real/legitimate bullion market. This is because even in its least-destructive manifestation, this permanent price-suppression in bullion markets has (inevitably) created a permanent, structural deficit in supply. Regular readers are fully familiar with the dynamics here, summed-up nicely in the title of a previous commentary: "shorting consumes, investing conserves." The supply/demand mechanics are simple, and the "chocolate bar" market makes a good hypothetical example. If we were to (under) price chocolate bars at 10 cents apiece, we know what would happen – and in a relatively short amount of time. Store shelves around the world would quickly be stripped bare, as people over-consumed this radically under-priced good. Simultaneously, chocolate-bar manufacturers would stop making chocolate bars (and go bankrupt) because they couldn't manage to 'break even' selling their product at such an artificially low price. There would be a "default" in the global chocolate-bar market, as buyers tried to buy more chocolate bars, but there was no more supply. This hypothetical example applies to any/all markets for physical goods, because the cost-of-production is significantly greater than zero. It is long investment (in any such "physical" market) which pushes prices higher – in a healthy manner – until supply exceeds demand, at which point prices level off in equilibrium. But with the permanent price-perversion in our precious metals markets, such an equilibrium can never/will never be achieved; a permanent supply-deficit is the only, possible outcome. This has reduced the One Bank's overall strategy in bullion markets to a simple one: to delay losing the game as long as possible. Once we (correctly) identify the only, rational strategy here, it becomes equally easy to determine how successfully the One Bank is playing the game: the size of the supply-deficit. A small supply-deficit means the banksters are playing their game of price-manipulation well; a large supply-deficit means that these psychopaths are executing their strategy in a short-sighted, and ultimately suicidal manner. Ever since the One Bank launched its first scorched-earth assault on bullion markets (one aspect of the contrived, Crash of '08); there has been only one relatively short interval where the banksters have been playing their game of price-manipulation well, meaning that the supply-deficit was relatively small. This began in the latter half of 2010, after two, solid years of explosively higher prices.

Japanese Debt Debacle Now Imminent Posted: 27 Mar 2014 08:07 AM PDT I first warned about the impending bust of Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) when I wrote "Abe Pulls Pin on JGBs" back in January of 2013. In that commentary I laid out the math behind a collapse of the Japanese bond market and economy stemming from the nation's massive amount of government debt, combined with the Bank of Japan's (BOJ's) folly of pursuing an inflation target.

Spot Gold "Fails to Spark" China Buying, "Needs to Extend" $100 Drop from 6-Month High as Shanghai Discount Widens Posted: 27 Mar 2014 08:01 AM PDT SPOT GOLD fell 1% at the start of London trade Thursday morning, extending its drop from last week's 6-month high to $100 per ounce.   Rallying from $1292 but failing to reach $1300 – a level first seen on the way up in September 2010 – spot gold then eased back again as New York opened.   Overnight, spot gold prices in China – the world's heaviest end-user market – had earlier lost 1.1% in Yuan terms.   But with the Yuan currency falling back towards last week's 12-month lows, Shanghai gold blew out to a $6.80 discount beneath London prices per ounce – the widest gap since last week's multi-year records.   Most typically, prices on the Shanghai Gold Exchange have traded at a premium to London settlement, peaking $50 above during the global price crash of April-June 2013.   Mainland China's gold demand leapt on last year's price drop, growing 13% by value to equal $49 billion, according to data from market-development organization the World Gold Council.   "Gold's $90 descent in March has not unearthed a rush of buying from opportune players," says Swiss investment and bullion bank UBS.   "This suggests that gold needs to descend further before it finds its price floor."   "Demand from Asia remains lacklustre," agrees Standard Bank analyst Walter de Wet in London, "despite the sharp drop in price over the past two weeks."   Noting the sharply negative SGE premium, "The next major support level for [spot gold] is $1272," de Wet says.   "Fundamentally, rallies are likely to fade."   The Shanghai discount, says refining and finance group MKS's Asian note, "combined with the volatility seen in USDCNY, has kept Chinese physical buying sidelined for most of the dip over the last 2 weeks."   Citing conversations with clients and other dealers, "We would need prices somewhere in the $1225-1250 region before any meaningful activity will be seen" from buyers in China, MKS concludes.   Meantime in the stock market, Chinese equities fell for the second-day running, but held above last week's 2-month low.   US stock markets edged higher, but European equities held flat overall after new data showed private lending across the 18-nation currency zone shrinking for the 20th month running in February.   Eurozone government bond prices rose, pushing 10-year German Bund yields down to 1.54%, while Italian and Spanish yields fell to 2005 levels at 3.30% and 3.54% respectively.   The Euro dropped to 3-week lows on what Commerzbank calls "speculation" of monetary easing by the European Central Bank.   That curbed the drop in spot gold for Euro investors at €940 per ounce.   However, Sterling investors wanting gold bullion saw prices drop as low as £777 per ounce, as the Pound jumped after new data showed UK retail sales continuing to surge in February.

Gold - 7 Astonishing Charts Exposing The Big Picture For Gold Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:56 AM PDT As the world seems to hurtle from one crisis to another, today a man out of Europe who has been extremely accurate with his calls on the gold market sent King World News 7 astonishing charts that expose the big picture in the gold market. These charts will stun KWN readers around the world (chart I is a good example). Below is the KWN exclusive piece by Ronald-Peter Stoferle of Incrementum AG out of Liechtenstein. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Gold and Silver Go From Bearish to More Bearish Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:16 AM PDT Briefly: In our opinion short speculative positions in gold (half), silver (half) and mining stocks (full) are justified from the risk/reward perspective. The decline in the precious metals sector continues, as indicated in the previous alerts. Gold, silver and mining stocks have declined once again and appear to be headed lower also today. Did yesterday’s price action change anything? Let’s take a look (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com). Today we will start with silver and mining stocks.

WEBBOT 2014 -- Clif High Wujo, Gold & Silver Prices Taking Off, No War in Crimea, No March ALTA Report 26-Mar-2014 Posted: 27 Mar 2014 05:11 AM PDT Recording Date (start): Wednesday, 26-Mar-2014, 12:58 PM Pacific Coast of North America TimeYouTube Release Date: 26-Mar-2014Runtime: 00h 30m 17.0s (1817.0s)Topics Discussed:Chasing time (wasting time).No March ALTA Report.Data processing problems. Silver & Gold going ballistic.Clif is buying... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.GoldSilverNewsBlog.com or http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Winding Down Fannie and Freddie the Economic Scam of the Century Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:44 AM PDT The leaders of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), released a draft bill on Sunday that would provide explicit government guarantees on mortgage-backed securities (MBS) generated by privately-owned banks and financial institutions. The gigantic giveaway to Wall Street would put US taxpayers on the hook for 90 percent of the losses on toxic MBS the likes of which crashed the financial system in 2008 plunging the economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Proponents of the bill say that new rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) –which set standards for a “qualified mortgage” (QM)– assure that borrowers will be able to repay their loans thus reducing the chances of a similar meltdown in the future. However, those QE rules were largely shaped by lobbyists and attorneys from the banking industry who eviscerated strict underwriting requirements– like high FICO scores and 20 percent down payments– in order to lend freely to borrowers who may be less able to repay their loans. Additionally, a particularly lethal clause has been inserted into the bill that would provide blanket coverage for all MBS (whether they met the CFPB’s QE standard or not) in the event of another financial crisis. Here’s the paragraph:

Global Risks Creating Opportunities in This Precious Metal Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:26 AM PDT George Leong writes: While the stock market has been struggling this year, under the radar, gold has been moving higher. The tense stand-off in Crimea is clearly adding some support to gold, as an outbreak there could drive the precious metal much higher in the short term.

Two More Reasons to Be Bullish on Gold Price Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:21 AM PDT Mohammad Zulfiqar writes: Earlier in the year, gold bullion prices were going higher, and we heard the skeptics say, “They will decline. Don’t buy the precious metal; it’s useless.” They turned out to be very wrong. Now, gold bullion prices are seeing a minute pullback. With this, we are once again hearing the same thing: ditch gold and buy something else has become the mantra.

Gold and Silver Prices Testing Critical Technical Support Levels Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:14 AM PDT Gold and silver are testing key technical support levels this week. Some analysts have already flipped their outlook to bearish over the past few days, but I believe the uptrend remains intact as long as current support levels are not breached.

London to become Chinese currency trading center Posted: 27 Mar 2014 01:28 AM PDT By Harry Wilson The Telegraph, London Wednesday, March 26, 2014 London will become the first center outside Asia in which investors will be able to clear and settle Chinese renminbi trades. The major boost to the City came after the Treasury said Britain and China would next week sign an agreement opening the way to much greater volumes of renminbi-denominated trading in the UK. The Bank of England and the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, will on Monday finalize a memorandum of understanding that will pave the way to the appointment of a London-based clearing bank for renminbi trading. ... ... For the full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10725079... ADVERTISEMENT Safe and Private Allocated Bullion Storage In Singapore Given the increasing risks in financial markets, it is more important than ever to own physical bullion coins and bars and to store them in the safest vaults in the world in the safest jurisdictions in the world. Gold advocates Jim Sinclair and Marc Faber have recommended Singapore. Now, with GoldCore, you can own coins and bars in fully insured, segregated, and allocated accounts in Singapore with the ability to take delivery. Learn more by downloading GoldCore's Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Singapore: http://info.goldcore.com/essential-guide-to-storing-gold-in-singapore And for more information call Daniel or Sharon at +44 203 0869200 in the United Kingdom or at +1-302-635-1160 in the United States. Or email them at info@goldcore.com. Join GATA here: Porter Stansberry Natural Resources Conference AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House 2403 Flora St., Dallas, Texas Saturday, May 31, 2014 http://stansberrydallas.com/ Canadian Investor Conference 2014 Vancouver Convention Centre West 1055 Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday and Monday, June 1 and 2, 2014 http://cambridgehouse.com/event/25/canadian-investor-conference-2014-inc... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

Two Sons Murder Father in Cold Blood, High Five Afterward Posted: 27 Mar 2014 12:26 AM PDT I died. 37 times. In half an hour. Worse yet, this painful reincarnation cycle was foisted upon me by a pair of mere children… my own flesh and blood, no less. Having just finally relented and allowed my children to dip a toe into the murky waters of video games that don’t contain “Lego” in the title, I was struck by their intense killing instinct. This whooping at the hands of complete novices—ones who should still have some fine-motor-control disadvantages to dear old Dad—got me thinking. Not about whether there’s any real merit to the handful of studies that link videogame violence to real-life behavior, though I am sure I’ll get some email about that shortly after this publishes… but instead, about why a game like Halo, in which you just run around and shoot things, is such a raging success. Call of Duty, for instance—the reigning champ of videogame entertainment franchises, having stolen the crown from Halo before it—has sold more than $3 billion worldwide. With all of the many great “indie” games on the market, few achieved even close to this level of success. Instead, year after year, these war simulators top the charts. While they don’t get their numbers reported on Entertainment Tonight like Hollywood has finagled, many times they outsell the biggest blockbuster of the year hands-down. Just why is it this same formula keeps working over and over again, and all the new products that try to supplant it fail? Part of this mystery, I think, can be revealed by just how bad a beating I took at the hands of my children, all of three hours after their recruitment to the Space Marine Corps. Remember, I worked at Microsoft: Our break rooms came complete with Xboxes, and many a burnt-out afternoon ended with a team retreat to Halo and a beer. I put in my hours, even if I hadn’t played in four years.  A first-person shooter is at least somewhat akin to riding a bike. Yet my kids took to it like fish to water. They blitzed me, stalked me, sniped me. They even teamed up, sitting right in front of me without me even noticing, to have one flush me out of a cave while the other one waited with a grenade launcher at the exit. It was embarrassing. They eviscerated me—and any belief that I might still be able to beat them at anything with a controller. That’s because it’s natural. Young boys are instinctually programmed to hunt. Give them a fun, safe way to do so, and it’s pure gold. In other words, the game fills a need. It doesn’t just do something interesting. There’s plenty of fun out there to be had in all forms, electronic and not. But these games that have persistently topped the best-seller lists since the days of Duke Nukem on IBM-clone 486s because they provide more bang for the buck. Anyone who will listen to me knows that I regularly cite the work of Pip Coburn when explaining why one technology wins in the market while another does not. He calls it the “change function” in his book of the same name, and to loosely paraphrase him, it goes like this: The likelihood of adopting a technology equals the ratio of “perceived benefit” to the “perceived pain of adoption.” That is, if something is immensely valuable to a particular person or business, they will go through a lot to get it. But if it’s too much of a pain, they won’t bother. How much is too much of a pain? That’s all relative, of course, to the person buying the product. With the videogame example, the pain of adopting the first game in any console generation is high. I should know, as I recently forked over $1,200+ to set up two new Xbox Ones (one of the hidden costs of being bicoastal, not that I can complain one small bit). And the cost of learning the new format for a game is also high—a person can spend hours sometimes just figuring out how to jump and stomp reliably. But the benefit is big—really big. If you’re like me and your weekly gaming-time allotment is somewhere between two hours and “I don’t have time for that junk,” then look at it from the perspective of the primary audience: Low pain: It’s $60-ish for 20-30 hours per week of entertainment for two or three months. Show me a movie or television show I can buy for $0.16 per hour of entertainment, let alone one I can enjoy socially. Amortize the console over three years or so of life, and even at the steep launch prices, the rates are still in the neighborhood of $0.25 to $0.50/hour, depending on use. They already know the basic format, controls, etc. Sure, there are small twists to keep it interesting, like the infamous zombie mode, but all in all, one plays like the next, and that’s a good thing, for the most part. High value: They tap into the basic human need to hunt, and to do so in tribes. Reward of the kill spikes adrenaline, dopamine, etc. Admit it: it’s darn fun. Is it any wonder the category just won’t slow down? From Shooters to Shutters: The Social Angle To see the same lesson applied again in more relatable example, look at the meteoric rise of Facebook to the top of the social networking pack. Facebook’s first major advantage in the social networking category when it appeared wasn’t so much any benefit as it was reductions to the “pain of adoption” category. Everything Facebook could do, for the most part, was covered already by MySpace and Friendster well before it. But both those apps were hard to use. MySpace in particular was killed by its own ethos: that the site should look like something “Tom” had built in his garage. Facebook instead put a very clean look on the site. It didn’t allow users to embed music players, change the layout, background color, size, nor make things flash and/or scream. On MySpace, the experience for every user was glaringly different. That was manageable if you’re 13 years old and spend eight hours a night on it… it’s awful if you’re 45 or 75 and just want to see some photos of your friends or grandkids. Facebook took away much of the pain associated with social networking by making it incredibly clean and simple to use, and by constantly experimenting on ways to improve it. However, the real value in Facebook lay in the same territory as the first-person shooter. No, not wanting to kill your friends for fun—in satisfying two basic human desires: Entertainment. Like any social networking site, its bread and butter isn’t the exercise of networking, but of seeing and sharing within that network. We all like to show off pictures of our kids, or videos of our golf outing. It’s bred into us to like to tell stories and jokes and entertain, as it provides us social proof of our value. But Facebook lets us do it without being annoying—yes, my wife posted 258 wedding photos to the site, but we won’t make you sit and watch them in our living room while we drone on about the napkin rings. And we like to be entertained. No more needs to be said there, other than that Facebook provides a never-ending stream of changing entertainment—in tiny bites, but 24/7. All customized to the person viewing. The need to establish social status and identity. Facebook and its ilk provide us the opportunity to shape what people think of us by what we post. In fact, studies have shown that people are more likely to post things that reflect how they want to be perceived than the things they actually read. Think you’ll avoid showing your stripes to the world by not being “one of those people” on Facebook? You’re just engaging in the same behavior, identifying yourself as someone who prefers not to “get it.” Not every non-user, of course, but you know the ones I’m talking about: the ones who tell you every time you meet them for the 10th time that they don’t like Facebook because of [pick your cause this week: creepy stalkers, spying software, psycho ex-boyfriend, etc.]. Facebook is a product with extremely high value—not in a monetary sense of the term, but in a social one—with a very low cost in frustration, confusion, learning curve, et al. Measured like this, you can see why say Netflix is so successful and Hulu is not as much. Netflix has good entertainment, but it also works the same on every device I try it on. My phone, my TV, my Xbox, my Roku, whatever—it just works. I tried Hulu about three different times, and each time I found a show I could watch on my PC but couldn’t on my TV. Yeah, that’s really user friendly. Adoption pain fail. Were Hulu the only game in town, it might not matter. But it’s not. Luckily for Hulu, it still looks awfully good compared to how hard to use Comcast and the other cable providers always manage to make their own PPV systems. Furthermore, if it’s taken them this long to “get it,” then chances are they never will. Putting Theory into Practice I regularly consult with tech start-ups. My average week is insanely busy with other responsibilities at work and home, so I don’t get to do it as often as I like. But consulting is something I very much enjoy (and which is very profitable too, which might add to why I enjoy it), so I try to do it at least a few times a year. I recently ran across a company in the storage field I was jumping up and down about: a little three-man firm whose product shares these qualities: it’s stupid easy to adopt compared to its competitors and ludicrously cheaper; but more than that, it has huge improvements on the benefit side. It has the makings of every truly disruptive technology: It breaks the competitive model, making everyone chase it on one aspect while losing out on what was once their strength. This is, loosely, what Clayton Christensen called the “innovator’s dilemma” in his own book of the same title (I’m sensing a trend in these innovation books). These companies make products that at first blush may seem inferior: Facebook lacked all of the whizbang features of MySpace, and was even closed to most of the world. But to most users, those losses were really improvements. More importantly, it used smarts to turn the mass of highly structured sharing into a simplified stream of nonstop entertainment without a need to hunt around for it. That’s something MySpace couldn’t chase with its unorganized mess of freedom. Facebook turned a competitor’s strengths into its weak points, and more effectively tapped into the basic need that drove the market at the same time. It created more entertainment than MySpace and  made it easier for users at the same time… the former occurring because of the latter. MySpace would have needed to give up everything if it was to chase the new leader. Halo and Call of Duty pump more adrenaline and blood lust—which, despite what the song says, is what I am now convinced little boys are really made of—into the same package as the indie games, and do so with a format that doesn’t have to be learned anew and which brings together familiar friends. That storage startup? The same formula: It doesn’t do half the things most other million-dollar storage systems do. That’s because the operating systems already do most of it, and 95% of the users don’t need the rest. In the process, its systems cost a fraction of the amount. And because of the model, its systems are some 5-10x faster than the systems that cost orders of magnitude more. To chase them, the competition will have no choice but to scrap their models to match on price or speed, undercutting all the supposed value they were providing. The company is turning a competitor’s value into its weak point, and fulfilling the same need better because of that change. The formula works again and again and again in finding a good technology investment. It’s at the root of what we look for in every pick in Casey Extraordinary Technology. For instance, back in February we found a wound-care company that’s scrapping the antibiotic in its fight against infection. Using synthetic compounds instead of biological ones, it can prevent infection without triggering mutation, and it can fight the already resistant strains like MRSA. It has the potential to push antibiotics out of the wound market almost completely, by eschewing the very thing that made them work to begin with. That company has traded weakly in recent weeks, opening another buying opportunity at the same price as when we originally recommended it a few weeks ago. Of course, that’s but one potentially disruptive buy in the CET portfolio. And with that formula behind us, is it any surprise we managed an average 75% gain on closed positions over the last year? We hope not, because last year continued our undefeated streak of beating the index—not just beating it either: handing it a “kids playing Halo against their dad”-style whooping—every single year since we started this service. Take CET for a spin today, and catch up on the entire portfolio in most recent edition, which reviews every single stock—Buy, Sell, and Hold—in our extensive portfolio, and I’m sure you’ll see why we believe we can keep that streak alive.

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