Gold World News Flash |
- Crowdfunding For FOIA Request Fort Knox Audit Documents Completes Within 24 Hours.
- What Did J.P. Morgan Mean?
- The Power Of The Gold Community: Crowdfunding For FOIA Request Fort Knox Audit Documents Completes Within 24 Hours.
- Could Trump Pull Off A Post-Party Coalition?
- The New Gold Rush: Insurance Against the Collapse
- Methods To Transport Emergency Water From Source To Home
- In The Next Emergency These "Key Items Will Be Completely Gone" From Shelves
- North Korea threatens to wipe out US Pacific bases
- Why A Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Turned Down A $8.25 Million Reward: In His Own Words
- Jansen's appeal raises money needed for Fort Knox audit documents
- Why The Casino Will Crash… And The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money
- If only the Wall Street Journal showed such interest in gold futures
- Gold Stocks Cognitive Dissonance & Denial
- Gold – “Mother of All Bull Markets Has Only Just Begun†– Grandich
- The 45th Anniversary of The Most Destructive Event In Modern Monetary History
- Breaking News And Best Of The Web
- USDU - An Important Perspective on the US Dollar
| Crowdfunding For FOIA Request Fort Knox Audit Documents Completes Within 24 Hours. Posted: 19 Aug 2016 01:38 AM PDT Since 2014 I’ve been investigating the alleged audits of the US official gold reserves. Of course my goal is to figure out if these audits are credible, or if they’re invented by the US government to silence the people that think gold has any value and forms the very material basis for a well-functioning monetary system. My first post on this subject, A First Glance At US Official Gold Reserves Audits, published on March 27, 2014, was purely based on publicly available reports. Not surprisingly, all those reports together compounded to a logical story. The US government wouldn’t present anything that’s implausible at the surface. That first post was more or less a summary of the official narrative. After that post I decided to dig a little deeper. According to the Department of the Treasury's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which is responsible for the audits, the vast majority of the US monetary stock stored at the US Mint had been audited by 1986, 241,247,820.61 fine troy ounces to be precise, as was said by Inspector General Eric M. Thorson during his Statement to the House Financial Services Committee on June 23, 2011:
If this is true I would like to see those audit reports, I thought one day. My first Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted in 2015 at the US government asked for delivery of all audit reports drafted by the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned Gold from 1975 until 1986. Stunningly, the OIG couldn’t find all the documents - nor did the National Archives, the Government Accountability Office or the Treasury. The OIG only had three of the audit reports in question archived. Something was awfully wrong here. The essence of auditing the US gold stock is to reassure the global economy that in any extreme scenario all dollars in circulation are supported by gold providing essential confidence and credibility. Once it's proven the gold is there, why throw away the evidence? I wrote about this in my post US Government Lost 7 Fort Knox Gold Audit Reports published on June 2, 2015. In my post from June 2015 I announced I would submit new FOIAs at several US government departments to get to the bottom of this. And I did, I’ve submitted countless of FOIAs at the US Treasury, US Mint and the OIG, next to asking for information through conventional channels like email and phone calls. Sometimes the FOIAs were not honored, sometimes I received very intriguing bits of information. What I found out, inter alia, was that in between 1993 and 2008, 84,671,927 ounces were re-audited. Meaning, several compartments that were sealed in between 1975 and 1986 had been re-opened to access the bars inside. And strangely, the OIG cannot give me a proper explanation for these re-audits. Believe me, I’ve tried to ask numerous times. Why was this gold re-audited? Why were sealed vault compartments re-opened and re-audited? These are just examples of questions my research is focussed on. My interest in the subject did not pass unnoticed at the US government. In recent months I could clearly sense a strong defense by all departments in concert. Emails are not being answered, phone calls are not being returned, questions in my FOIAs are dodged, and in my most recent FOIA an unreasonable amount of money was asked for reports the Mint Director’s Representative writes every year for “notifying the CFO of the completion of the verification” of the Deep Storage gold audits. Through a FOIA submitted at the OIG late 2015 I obtained the Management Letter for the Fiscal Year 2004 Audit of the United States Mint’s Schedule of Custodial Gold and Silver Reserves March 10, 2005. I the management letter we can read:
After reading this paragraph I thought maybe these reports by the Mint Director’s Representative would disclose valuable information. As the US government was barely talking to me anymore, I submitted a new FOIA request at the Mint in 2016 that stated:
The Mint replied this request would costs $3,144.96 dollars, because it would take forty hours to search the documents - as the requested documents are located at another facility - eight hours to review the documents and additional costs would be added to duplicate 1,200 pages of documentation. I think this is nonsense; it shouldn’t take forty hours to search these documents and I would be surprised if they actually count 1,200 pages. This is just another way of trying to shake me off.
As some of you know, my real name is Jan Nieuwenhuijs. However, thanks to Henry Young's advice on Twitter I decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to collect the money! If we all donate a few bucks, who knows what comes out!
After I tweeted about the campaign it quickly went viral. The news was spread on websites such as TFMetals, GoldMoney, GATA and GoldChartsRus - among others - and within a few hours the funding was completed, which shows to me the power of our gold community! I was truly overwhelmed by everybody’s generous donations and support. As of this moment there is even more money collected than I asked for at GoFundMe (please stop donating!). The residual will be saved for when the costs appear to be higher or if they charge me for any other FOIA I’ve submitted. Naturally, I will publicly keep a record of expenditures in the comment section of my GoFundMe page. Next for me is to transfer the money to the US Treasury and wait what they’ll sent back. If I’m offline for a weeks in September, that’s because I’m digesting 1,200 pages of dense jargon. I will disclose a list with all the names (mostly Turdites) who have donated in the finished post on the audits of the US official gold reserves. For now, thanks everybody who donated and I'll keep you posted!! |
| Posted: 19 Aug 2016 01:17 AM PDT By James Turk of Goldmoney.com
The following exchange occurred on December 18, 1912 when J.P. Morgan – the most influential American financier and banker of his time – was called to testify before Congress.
Mr Untermyer: I want to ask you a few questions bearing on the subject that you have touched upon this morning, as to the control of money. The control of credit involves a control of money, does it not?
Mr Morgan: A control of credit? No.
Mr Untermyer: But the basis of banking is credit, is it not?
Mr Morgan: Not always. That [credit] is an evidence of banking, but it [credit] is not the money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else.
Samuel Untermeyer was chief counsel of the Pujo Sub-Committee of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, which was formed to investigate the influence of Wall Street bankers and financiers over the nation's money and credit. He was attempting to determine whether a "money trust" that controlled American business and finance existed and if Mr Morgan was part of it. The above exchange is just a small part of more than three hours of testimony by Mr Morgan, but it is the most revealing part of their discussion about money. It hits upon a point not often understood today that, as Mr Morgan put it so precisely and succinctly: "Money is gold, and nothing else". It is noteworthy that he is often misquoted to have said 'gold is money, and nothing else', which is also true but misses the important point. It is clear that Mr Morgan was defining money in a way that is unfamiliar and therefore baffling to the modern mind, so the quote is frequently altered, whether wittingly or not, to make it understandable today. No doubt further confusing and perhaps somewhat shocking to the modern mind, Mr Morgan – who a century later remains a pre-eminent historical figure in American finance – did not say that 'money is the dollar'; it is only gold and nothing else. Nor was Mr Morgan defining gold. His statement simply highlighted how gold is used, not what it is, which can be defined as a natural element ranking number 79 on the periodic table. Yet there is much more to Mr Morgan's words, and indeed, both replies to Mr Untermyer's questions. A deeper analysis will reveal what Mr Morgan and everyone else listening to his testimony obviously understood about money and credit. If they didn't have this clear understanding, Mr Morgan would have been asked to explain his definition of money. No such questions were asked. So what did Mr Untermyer and others in that Congressional hearing know then that many do not understand now? What did Mr Morgan mean? And what was it that they intuitively recognised about money and credit that is not widely realised today? Mr Morgan was defining more than just money. He was revealing the essential nature of the process by which people are paid for their labour, which in turn is the backbone of our capitalist society. Money comes from the market process, not government. Money comes into existence like every other good and service. They all are a result of labour diligently applied to a task completed over time to produce a useful outcome. A farmer produces food, a builder a house, a manufacturer a car, and so forth. All of these items are useful products. Similarly, useful services are provided by a barber cutting hair, a waiter serving food, etc. And to address Mr Morgan's point, a gold miner expends labour and time to produce a useful good we call money. Bankers in stark contrast spawn money-substitutes called dollars, euros, francs, pounds, etc., but just like artificial sweeteners are not sugar, money-substitutes are not money. These currencies are forced into circulation by legal tender laws, which perforce have largely displaced the circulation of gold as currency. The unfortunate result is that gold's inherent features and attributes have become unfamiliar to many who then fail to recognise gold's true nature and usefulness. National currencies like the dollar, euro, franc, pound and all the rest are based on credit, and not expended labour. Consequently, they can be best described as 'debt-currency', a befitting term purposefully chosen to express their true nature by revealing their complete and total reliance upon credit. A talented, hard-working and honest individual will have more ability to borrow on credit than one without these qualities, and credit can be useful. With credit one can obtain goods and services today based on the trust that payment for them will be made in the future by the labour of the individual using credit. Similarly, banks grant loans on the expectation – and hope – that labour will be expended in the future to repay the loan. So one can borrow a debt-currency from a bank on the trust that it will be repaid. But sometimes that trust is broken. Not all promises are kept, so credit involves the uncertainty of repayment and clearly establishes a fundamental difference in risk between money and debt-currency. All debt-currencies have counterparty risk, but gold does not. The reason is simple. Debt-currencies are a financial asset. They are not tangible, nor is their value derived from expended labour. More precisely, they are liabilities of banks, and as any accountant knows, it is a bank's assets – and not its liabilities – that have value. Debt-currency is backed by credit, specifically the loans on bank balance sheets. If these loans are not repaid, the bank's ability to honour its liabilities – the bank's debt-currency – is impeded, adversely impacting that bank's debt-currency. If the loan defaults are sufficiently large, it can lead to bank runs and ultimately, bank failures. As Mr Morgan explained to Mr Untermyer, credit is not money. Therefore, dollars are not money, and just circulate as debt-currency in place of money. This reality – that national currencies are liabilities of banks – explains why they have counterparty risk, and more to the point, makes it clear why money is gold. When you pay for some good or service with a gold coin, a tangible asset that is the product of expended labour – gold – is being exchanged for something else of substance and value that is also the product of expended labour, namely, the good or service being purchased. With gold, the exchange is extinguished the moment the good and gold change hands, but contrast this result with the dollar or any other debt-currency. When dollars are used to purchase some good or service, the exchange is not extinguished. An item of substance – the good or service – is being exchanged for credit in the form of a money-substitute circulating as debt-currency. The good has not been paid for because the seller receiving the dollars now has counterparty risk. The exchange won't be extinguished until the seller off-loads those dollars on to someone else in some other exchange to purchase a good or service, which is the hidden meaning of Mr Morgan's testimony that was widely understood in 1912, but less so today. Only money can pay for the purchase of a good or service; only a tangible asset extinguishes an exchange. Gold has been money for 5,000 years, though other tangible assets have been used from time to time, generally as a matter of expediency in extraordinary or emergency circumstances, or in the case of silver, to provide coin in small denominations for low-value exchanges. So what would have been the result if the earth had been formed without any gold? It seems logical to conclude that money would never have emerged from pre-history, meaning the market economy would never have emerged from pre-history either. So gold is special. It has been central to the development of civilisation. And gold is unique. Other tangible assets deteriorate, tarnish, rot, get used up, depleted or worn out and sooner or later disappear, while gold gets accumulated and does not disappear. Except for the inconsequential amount of gold lost from abrasion of coins or from shipwrecks and buried hoards yet to be located and recovered, all the gold mined throughout history still exists, whether fabricated into bars, coins or other forms. Throughout history gold has been mined because it is used as money. Even though gold today does not circulate as currency as widely as it did in 1912, it still is money. Mr Morgan's testimony occurred just several years after the Panic of 1907 and the collapse of Knickerbocker Trust Company, one of the larger banks in New York City at the time. We've seen bank runs in recent decades, but these have happened within a debt-currency world. Historically, bank runs were driven by the need for safety, or in other words, to preserve one's wealth by avoiding counter-party risk. Safety was achieved by converting the fleeting and impermanent promises of debt-currency into gold, the ultimate safe-haven. A bank owes you your debt currency, whereas gold is money you own. The last real bank run into gold occurred during the Great Depression, which is out of nearly everyone's living memory. That explains why so few people are paying attention to the risk of using debt-currency; they have not had the opportunity to learn from experience. There is an ancient saying that wisdom begins by calling things by their right name. Mr Morgan chose his words in that Congressional hearing accurately and wisely. "Money is gold, and nothing else." |
| Posted: 19 Aug 2016 12:57 AM PDT Bullion Star |
| Could Trump Pull Off A Post-Party Coalition? Posted: 18 Aug 2016 11:00 PM PDT Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted Op-Ed at SputnikNews.com, Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Queen of War, Golden Goldman Girl, for all practical purposes is by now the official bipartisan candidate of US neocons and neoliberalcons alike. Certified add-ons include Wall Street; selected hedge funds; TPP cheerleaders; CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) interventionists; media barons; multinational corporate hustlers; in fact virtually the whole exceptionalist US establishment, duly underwritten by the bipartisan, mega-wealthy 0.0001%. That does leave Donald J. Trump in the astonishing position of egomaniac billionaire outsider who somehow dreams he can game the whole system on his own, moved by his inexhaustible chutzpah. It’s under this dynamic that Trump has been demonized with medieval fervor by US corporate media. His non-stop motormouth – and motortweet – certainly does not help, conveying the impression he’s in the business of antagonizing multitudes non-stop. For the establishment, his billions mean nothing; he’s treated like a bum. He may be impervious to empathy; on the other hand that kind of treatment keeps earning him widespread sympathy among the angry, semi-destitute, non-college educated white masses. A US industrial renaissance?Underneath all this sound and fury, something else is (quietly) going on. Powerful business interests discreetly supporting Trump – and away from the media circus — are convinced he’s got the road map to victory. The question is whether he may be able to tame his erratic behavior to seal the deal.
And that comes with an all-important military angle as a surefire selling point. As Trump’s backers outline it, “the Pacific Ocean cannot be used for transporting the vital and essential components of our military industrial complex, for in the event of war with Russia or China their advanced silent submarines equipped with advanced anti-ship weapons will block all of our ocean transport, collapsing our military industrial production in any war with catastrophic consequences. These component factories for Intel and others must be repatriated at once through currency adjustments or tariffs.” So Trump should hammer the message that all new bank credit must be tied to rebuilding destroyed US industries, “either by ending currency rigging or applying tariffs.” Bank credit, Trump backers argue, “should not be used for currency manipulation, or for cash settlement market rigging. There should be no bank credit for speculation and absolutely none for hedge funds. Let’s wipe these speculative vehicles out by huge taxes on short-term trading profits, ending tax concessions on borrowing, and ending all bank credit for speculation. Let these people go to do real work.” That, in a nutshell, explains Wall Street’s visceral aversion to Trump – from the Bloombergs to the Lloyd Blankfeins. Anyone familiar with Wall Street knows every market, commodity and indexes are rigged by cash settlement manipulations. As a New York-based Trump backer puts it, “This alone is sufficient reason to support Donald J. Trump. We should make the Carl Icahans and George Soroses do real work by taxing away their speculative profits. We need Henry Fords in this nation who create and build industries, and not Wall Street looters, where they rig everything as in 2008 then used their political power over bought politicians for bailouts, after throwing tens of millions of American out of their homes.” According to this road map, which is already on Trump’s desk – but no one knows whether he read it in full, or will implement it – fighting illegal immigration and rigged currencies side by side would create nothing less than an industrial renaissance in the US to rebuild the devastated Detroits. Essentially, the road map calls for replacing millions of illegal immigrants with millions of unemployed US citizens; Trump’s backers consider the real unemployment rate to be a whopping 23% today, based on the 1955 Bureau of Labor Statistical Methodology, “and not the rigged statistics of today.” The bottom line is this road map calls for Trump, if elected, to create a cross-party, or trans-party coalition – as once happened in the House and Senate when Jesse Helms on one side and John Conyers and Chuck Schumer on the other side actually did real business. This all implies Trump should become well versed in the national economy ideas of Friedrich List – whose tariff-protected Zollverein League was essentially the founding method of Prussia to build the German nation. Some of the above has already filtered out in Trump’s announced economic agenda. Now comes the hard part for a man with an exceedingly short attention span who gets into the groove by tweets and sound bites; to coherently sell the plan without picking up unnecessary fights along the way. But Vlad has already won it anywayPolls at the moment seem to be pointing to a Hillary landslide. Trump’s backers though “would not rely on the polls. Everything is rigged.” And then there’s the all-enveloping “Russian aggression” hysteria. Hillary went as far as equating President Putin to Hitler. Trump insists he’s ready to do business with Moscow – starting with a joint operation to end ISIS/ISIL/Daesh for good. Why bother? The Stupidity-o-Meter as applied to US mainstream media has gone on interstellar overdrive anyway – as the presidential election winner has already been christened: it’s – who else? – the omniscient Vladimir Putin. A business source familiar with the designs of the real Masters of the Universe cuts seriously to the chase: “As far as Russia is concerned, the issue is decided from above, and that is where the battle has been. The decision is above Hillary and Donald, and Hillary will be ordered to create a rapprochement if she is elected, if that is what is decided. If Trump wins, it is easy; and if he doesn’t, then the fact he brought it up will be used as a catalyst for policy changes toward Russia. The fight is behind the scenes now.” As much as currency rigging “will be ended, as we already saw Jack Lew give out the orders to Germany and Japan”, a new geoeconomic map – possibly under Trump — would swing towards the end of the oil price war as well. As a Trump backer puts it, “this is a national objective of the United States, as a higher price will make the United States energy independent. This is part of the significance of the Trump revolution.” According to a source close to the House of Saud, Saudis and Russians are already involved in tortuous pre-negotiations on the possibility of engineering an oil price around $100.00 a barrel; “There should be enough mutuality of interest between the Saudis betrayed by the US under the neocons, and to be destroyed by the neocons eventually, and the Russians who can prevent that.”
Compared to the current, 24/7 mud-wrestling match, all this may seem straight from Alice in Wonderland. There’s no evidence such an ambitious – and contentious – agenda can be sold to movers and shakers from JP Morgan to the Koch brothers. Trump creating a cross-party, trans-party or even post-party movement will only succeed if substantial players in the Power Elite are behind it, and there are no signs of this happening. What proceeds relentlessly is a massive disinformation campaign – a ghastly remix of those good ol’ Cold War anti-USSR avalanches. The Clinton Media Machine is even vilifying Michael Flynn, former head of the DIA, who supports Trump. Trump was conceptually right when he said Obama and Hillary were the founder and co-founder of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. That’s exactly what Flynn admitted in that notorious interview when he stressed that the expansion of the phony Caliphate was a “willful decision” taken in Washington.
And of course there will be a surprise – October and otherwise. Nothing has been decided – yet. Disraeli’s Coningsby was never more appropriate; “So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
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| The New Gold Rush: Insurance Against the Collapse Posted: 18 Aug 2016 08:40 PM PDT from The Sovereign Investor:
I get this question all the time from people: Why should I bother owning physical gold or any other precious metal like silver or platinum? What's my answer? I tell them owning precious metals is an insurance policy, plain and simple. And with central banks doing what they do best — dropping interest rates down to zero and putting the money printing presses into overdrive — boy, do we need some insurance these days. Think about it. Let's use another kind of wealth protection — fire insurance — as an example. Records from the National Fire Protection Association tell us that, back in 1977, there were more than 723,000 house fires. A decade later, thanks to the increasing use of smoke alarms and flame-retardant building materials, the incidence of such blazes fell by 25% to 536,000 house fires. Nearly four decades afterward, and the number of home fires continues to decline by nearly 50%. Yet we continue buying fire insurance for our homes (and renter's insurance if we're leasing). Why? After all, the odds of having a fire are lower now than they've ever been. Our reason can be boiled down to three words: Just in case. Gold Is Wealth Insurance We don't know when a stove might be left unattended just long enough for a grease fire to start. We don't know when a bit of electrical wiring might short out, sparking a blaze inside of a wall. That's what insurance is for. Our homes are a valuable asset, and we want to protect them. But what about protecting the rest of our wealth-related assets? That's why precious metals like gold, silver and platinum command our attention in these uncertain times. Perhaps that's why a number of central banks around the world have sharply stepped up their purchases of gold bullion. |
| Methods To Transport Emergency Water From Source To Home Posted: 18 Aug 2016 08:20 PM PDT by Ken Jorgustin, Modern Survival Blog:
Since many of you are also preparing for a worst-case collapse scenario whereby the infrastructure may also collapse or be interrupted, one of your highest concerns should be a plan (and the methods) to move emergency water from an external source back to your home…
Think of a hypothetical scenario – regardless of cause – your existing water source 'dries up'. Gone. Add to that scenario the circumstance such that everyone else is in the same predicament. Lets say that the grocery stores have all sold out of their water bottles. Uh-oh, what will you do? Don't take the easy way out of this exercise and tell yourself that you'll simply drive out of the area until you find a store with some water. Lets say that all store supplies are gone. What will you do? Well let me offer a few suggestions: Find the nearest water sources BEFORE you need them Don't just look off the main roads. There may be a creek or stream or small pond much closer than you realize. One easy way to find water sources is to look via 'Google Earth'. You can zoom right down to your location and explore all around. You might be surprised how many backyard swimming pools that you discover too! (lots of water there) Another way to find water sources may be to look through a local Fishing Map Guide. You don't necessarily need to find a lake. Many very small creeks, streams, and brooks wind their way through regions and often go unnoticed. The means & methods to transport the water back home Note: Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon (it's heavy!) However lets say that you either don't have an operational vehicle or the water source is well into the woods. Think about how you would get in there and then out of there with all that water weight… Water Jugs Wagons & Carts Drinking Water Filters Related: Water & Water Filters CONCLUSION |
| In The Next Emergency These "Key Items Will Be Completely Gone" From Shelves Posted: 18 Aug 2016 07:20 PM PDT America has become crisis prone, SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo explains, the pressure points have been identified, and provoked.
So, Which Items Will Disappear First During A Major National Emergency? The Economic Collapse blog's Michael Snyder explains... One day in the not too distant future, a major emergency will strike this nation, and that will set off a round of hoarding unlike anything we have ever seen before. Just think about what happens when a big winter storm or a hurricane is about to hit one of our major cities – inevitably store shelves are stripped bare of bread, milk, snow shovels, etc. Even though winter storms and hurricanes are just temporary hurdles to overcome, they still cause many people to go into panic mode. So what is going to happen when we have a real crisis on our hands? We can get some clues about which items will disappear first during a major national emergency by taking a look at where such a scenario is already playing out. One recent survey found that over 80 percent of all basic foodstuffs are currently unavailable in Venezuela, and about half the country can no longer provide three meals a day for their families. Thankfully, some stores still have a few things that they are able to offer, but other key items are completely gone. The following comes from USA Today…
Do you have plenty of the items in bold above stored up? If not, you may want to stock up while you still can. Venezuela was once the wealthiest nation in all of South America, but now lines for food often begin as early as three in the morning. Some people have become so desperate that they are actually hunting cats, dogs and pigeons for food, and there are even a few very sick people that have been killing and eating zoo animals. Someday similar things will happen in the United States and Europe too. When that day arrives, will you be prepared? One of the things that got my attention from the article quote above was the lack of milk. My wife is always telling me that we should store up more dried milk, and I believe that she is right. Just imagine not having any milk and not being able to get any more. What would you do? Another thing that really stood out to me in the article was the fact that there is a severe shortage of personal hygiene items. Most people don’t really think of those as “prepper goods”, but the truth is that life will become very uncomfortable without them very rapidly. What would you do if there was no more toilet paper? And if you have a little one, how are you going to manage without any diapers? In general, it is wise to always have an extra supply of just about everything that you use on a daily basis stored away somewhere in your home. The generation that went through the Great Depression of the 1930s understood this concept very well, but most of us that are younger have had it so good for so long that we don’t even really grasp what a real crisis looks like. Another thing that we are seeing happen right now in Venezuela is the rise of a barter economy…
As you prepare for what is ahead, you may want to consider stocking up on some items that would specifically be used for bartering in a crisis situation. For example, you may not drink coffee, but there are millions upon millions of people that do. In a crisis situation, there will be many that will be extremely desperate to get their hands on some coffee, and so any coffee that you store away now may become a very valuable asset. We live in a world where one out of every eight people already goes to bed hungry each night, and where one out of every three children is underweight. As global weather patterns become more extreme, as natural disasters continue to become more frequent and more intense, and as terror and war continue to spread, it is inevitable that the stress on the global food system is going to continue to grow. Today you can waltz into Wal-Mart and buy giant cartloads of very inexpensive food, but it will not always be that way. Unfortunately, more than half the country is currently living paycheck to paycheck, and most Americans do not have any emergency food stored up at all. In addition to food and personal hygiene supplies, here are some other items that are likely to disappear very rapidly during a major national emergency… -Flashlights -Batteries -Generators -Propane -Can Openers -Water Filters -Water Containers -Anything Related To Self-Defense -Axes -Knives -Sleeping Bags -Tents -First Aid Kits -Matches -Candles -Firewood -Shovels -Bottled Water -Warm Clothing -Lanterns -Portable Radios So in addition to food and personal hygiene items, you may want to do an inventory of the items that I have listed above and see where you may have some holes in your preparation plans. I understand that there will be some people that will read this article and think that all of us “preppers” are being just a tad ridiculous. But when a major emergency strikes this nation and you haven’t done anything to prepare, you will dearly wish that you had bothered to take action while there was still time remaining to do so. |
| North Korea threatens to wipe out US Pacific bases Posted: 18 Aug 2016 06:43 PM PDT Kim Jong-un threatens to wipe out US Pacific bases North Korea warns it will destroy US military bases in the Asian region if American forces 'take an insane step' The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  |
| Why A Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Turned Down A $8.25 Million Reward: In His Own Words Posted: 18 Aug 2016 05:48 PM PDT At the height of the financial crisis, when risk assets were imploding and counterparties were in danger of overnight collapse, Deutsche Bank avoided failure and nationalization by fabricating the value of its $130 billion derivative portfolio of "leveraged super senior" trades. Some history: back in 2005, these trades were seen as "the next big thing" in the world of credit derivatives, something which DB at the time was building a massive position in. They were designed to behave like the most senior tranche of a typical collateralised debt obligation, where assets such as mortgages or credit default swaps are pooled to give investors varying degrees of risk exposure. Deutsche became the biggest operator in this market, which involved banks buying insurance against the possibility of default by some of the safest companies, the FT writes. There was just one problem: when it was building up its portfolio, Deutsche never accounted for the possibility of the financial world nearly collapsing. Which is why as the illiquid portfolio was careening, instead marking it to market - an act that would have resulted in the bank's insolvency - DB's risk managers misstated the value of the positions by anywhere from $1.5bn to $3.3bn. Several years later, in 2012, the SEC found out about this, and in 2015 slapped a $55 million fine on Deutsche Bank for this criminal fabrication (nobody went to jail). "At the height of the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank's financial statements did not reflect the significant risk in these large, complex illiquid positions," said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC's enforcement division. "Deutsche Bank failed to make reasonable judgments when valuing its positions and lacked robust internal controls over financial reporting." The reason why the SEC learned about DB's massive mismarked derivative exposure, is because two former employee whistleblowers, Matthew Simpson and Eric Ben-Artzi, told it: the duo alleged that if Deutsche had accounted properly for its positions, its capital would have fallen to dangerous levels during the financial crisis and it might have required a government bailout to survive. The highest estimate for the unaccounted loss was $12bn. Which explains why Deutsche Bank was desperate to manipulated the numbers. End result: DB got its wristslap with a token fine, the SEC came out looking like it knew what it was doing, and - as we learned today - the two whistleblowers got major awards for helping the SEC collected the $55MM fine, amounting to 15% each. Only, something unexpected happened: as the FT writes, one of the whistleblowers who helped expose the false accounting at Deutsche Bank turned down a multimillion-dollar award from the Securities and Exchange Commission in protest against the agency's failure to punish executives at the bank. Eric Ben-Artzi, the former Deutsche risk officer, told the SEC he is declining his share of a $16.5 million payout — the third largest in the whistleblower program's history — which represents 30% of the $55 million Deutsche Bank fine. But why turn down enough money that most people, even ex-Wall Streeters, could comfortably retire on? Ben-Artzi said the fine should be paid by individual executives, not shareholders, and suggested the "revolving door" of senior personnel between the SEC and Germany's largest bank had played a role in executives going unpunished (understandably he had no comment about the spike in Deutsche Bank suicides in 2013-2014, particularly those emanating from its legal department). "This goes beyond the typical revolving-door story," Mr Ben-Artzi wrote in an opinion article for the Financial Times. "In this case, top SEC lawyers had held senior posts at the bank, moving in and out of top positions at the SEC even as the investigations into malfeasance at Deutsche Bank were ongoing," Which, incidentally, reminds us of a post we wrote back in May 2010, explaining why former Deutsche Bank General Councel, and then-SEC Director of Enforcement, "Robert Khuzami Stands To Lose Up To $250,000 If He Pursues Action Against Deutsche Bank." We were right: neither Khuzami, nor the SEC, nor anyone else, pursued any charges against Deutsche Bank in the early years after the financial crisis. In retrospect, now that the German bank has been revealed to have manipulated literally everything, such oversight on behalf of the SEC was even more criminal than what DB did over the years. Six years later, the FT comments on this too:
Needless to say, there is zero risk to Khuzami's current job as partner in Kirkland's Government & Internal Investigations Practice Group, which he joined in 2013. But hopefully, one day there will be, and if so it will be partially thanks to op-eds such as the one - written by Eric Ben-Artzi, who is currently a vice-president of risk analytics at BondIT - published in today's FT and republished below.
For all those wondering why someone would turn down a $8.25 million whistleblower award, here is the explanation, straight from the source. * * *
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| Jansen's appeal raises money needed for Fort Knox audit documents Posted: 18 Aug 2016 04:55 PM PDT ADVERTISEMENT Sandspring Resources Commences 2016 Exploration Campaign Company Announcement Sandspring Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:SSP, US OTC: SSPXF) is pleased to announce commencement of the 2016 exploration campaign at its Toroparu Gold Project in Guyana, South America. In 2015 the company completed a 3,700-meter diamond drilling program on the promising Sona Hill Prospect, located 5 kilometers southeast of the main Toroparu deposit. Sona Hill is the easternmost gold anomaly in a cluster of 10 gold features located within a 20-by-7-kilometer hydrothermal alteration halo around Toroparu. Drilling at Sona Hill in 2012 and in 2015 intercepted high-grade mineralization in both saprolite and bedrock, and confirmed the continuity and grade potential of the Sona Hill mineralization. For the remainder of the announcement and highlights of the 2015 drill program: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sandspring-resources-commences-2016-explo... 7:56p ET Thursday, August 18, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Gold researcher Koos Jansen tonight describes his long struggle to obtain from the U.S. government some documents about the auditing of the government gold purportedly held at Fort Knox. He adds that his appeal this week raised the several thousand dollars the government is charging him. Jansen's report is headlined "The Power of the Gold Community: Crowdfunding for FOIA Request for Fort Knox Audit Documents Completes within 24 Hours" and it's posted at Bullion Star here: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/the-power-of-the-gold-comm... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference Support GATA by purchasing recordings of the proceedings of the 2014 New Orleans Investment Conference: https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/2014-av-powell Or by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: |
| Why The Casino Will Crash… And The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money Posted: 18 Aug 2016 01:42 PM PDT This post Why The Casino Will Crash… And The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money appeared first on Daily Reckoning. As the stock market reached its lunatic peak near 2,200 in August, the certainty that the Fed is out of dry powder and that the so-called economic recovery is out of runway gave rise to one more desperate pulse of hopium. Namely, that the central banks of the world were about to embark on outright 'helicopter money', thereby jolting back to life domestic economies that are sliding into deflation and recession virtually everywhere — from Japan to South Korea, China, Italy, France, England, Brazil, Canada and most places in-between. That latter area especially includes the United States. Despite Wall Street's hoary tale that the domestic economy has "decoupled" from the rest of the world, the evidence that the so-called recovery is grinding to a halt is overwhelming. After all, the real GDP growth rate during the year ending in June was a miniscule 1.2%. It reflected the weakest 4-quarter rate since the Great Recession. And even that was made possible only by an unsustainable build-up in business inventories and the shortchanging of inflation by the Washington statistical mills. Had even a semi-honest GDP deflator been used, the U.S. economy would have posted zero real GDP growth, at best. So the stock market's 19% melt-up from the February 11 interim low of 1,829 on the S&P 500 was positively surreal. There was not an iota of sustainability to it. In fact, "interim" was exactly the right word for a low that is going a lot lower, and soon. Indeed, the spring-summer rebound was the work of eyes-wide-shut day traders and robo-machines surfing on a thinner and thinner cushion of momentum. What must come next, in fact, is exactly what happens when you stop pedaling your bicycle. Momentum gets exhausted, gravity takes over and the illusion of stability is painfully shattered. But these revelers are going to need something stronger than the hope for "helicopter money" to avoid annihilation when the long-running central bank con job finally collapses. Indeed, that outcome lies directly ahead because helicopter money is a bridge too far. And valuations are literally perched in the nosebleed section of history. As to the latter point, the S&P 500 companies posted Q2 2016 earnings for the latest 12 month period at $86.66 per share. So at the August bubble high the market was being valued at a lunatic 25.1X. Even in a healthy, growing economy that valuation level is on the extreme end of sanity. But actual circumstances are currently more nearly the opposite. Earnings have now been falling for six straight quarters in line with GDP growth that has slumped to what amounts to stall speed. In fact, reported earnings for the S&P 500 peaked at $106 per share in the 12 months ended in September 2014. That means that earnings had fallen 19% since then, even as the stock market moved from 1,950 to nearly 2,200, 13% higher. This is called multiple expansion in the parlance of Wall Street, but it's hard to find a more bubblicious example. Two years ago the market was trading at just 18.4X, meaning that on the back of sharply falling earnings the PE multiple had risen 36%! Valuation multiples are supposed to go up only when the economic and profits outlook is improving, not when it's unmistakably deteriorating as at present. But during the spring-summer melt-up these faltering fundamentals were casually ignored on the hopes of a second half growth spurt and, failing that, that the Fed would again pull the market's chestnuts out of the fire. The growth spurt absolutely has not happened, and the recent sharp drop-off of inbound containers at the West Coast ports means that the U.S. retail sector is not provisioning for any rebound in sales during the coming fall and holiday seasons. And that is why the Wall Street gamblers are so desperately hoping for helicopter money. The fact is, the Fed is out of dry powder via the "extraordinary" measures it has employed since the financial crisis. If the economy visibly drifts into recession, it cannot go to sub-zero interest rates without triggering a Donald Trump-led domestic political conflagration. Nor can it abruptly shift to a huge new round of quantitative easing (QE) without confessing that $3.5 trillion of the same has been a failure. Yet "helicopter money" isn't some kind of new wrinkle in monetary policy, at all. It's an old as the hills rationalization for monetization of the public debt — that is, purchase of government bonds with central bank credit conjured from thin air. It's the ultimate in "something for nothing" economics. That's because those government bonds originally funded the purchase of real labor hours, contract services or dams and aircraft carriers. As a technical matter, helicopter money is exactly the same thing as QE. Nor does the journalistic confusion that it involves "direct" central bank funding of public debt make a bit of difference. Suppose Washington issues treasury bonds to the 23 primary dealers on Wall Street in the regular manner. Further, assume that some or all of these dealers stick the bonds in inventory for 3 days, 3 months or even 3 years, and then sell them back to the Fed under QE (and most likely at a higher price). So what! The only thing different technically about "helicopter money" policy is the suggestion by Ben Bernanke and others that the treasury bonds could be issued directly to the Fed. That would just circumvent the dwell time in dealer (or "investor") inventories. But it would result in exactly the same end state. In that event, of course, Wall Street wouldn't get the skim. But that's not the real reason why helicopter money policy is so loathsome. The unstated essence of it is that our monetary politburo would overtly conspire with the White House and Capitol Hill to bury future generations in crushing public debts. They would do this by agreeing to generate incremental fiscal deficits — as if Uncle Sam's current $19 trillion isn't enough debt — which would be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the Fed's bond-buying or monetization rate. That amounts not only to teaching children how to play with matches; it's tantamount to setting fiscal forest fires across the land. There are a few additional meaningless bells and whistles to the theory, but its essential crime against democracy and economic rationality should be made very explicit. It would amount to a central bank power grab like no other because it moves our unelected central bankers into the very heart of the fiscal process. Needless to say, the framers delegated the powers of the purse — spending, taxing and borrowing — to the elected branch of government. They did so because the decision to spend, tax and borrow is the very essence of state power. There is no possibility of democracy — for better or worse — if these fundamental powers are removed from popular control. Yet that's exactly what helicopter money policy would do. At one level, of course, it is to be expected that the people's elected representatives would relish this "expert" cover for ever bigger deficits as an opportunity to dramatically increase pork barrel spending. Yet the deliberate, wanton addition of trillions to the public debt just so that the Fed can print an equivalent amount of new credit out of thin air might be too much even for them. Helicopter money turns the inherently dangerous idea of fiscal borrowing in a democracy into an outright monetary fraud. And that prospect is sure to kindle lingering fears of the public debt even among the politicians. For example, even New Dealer FDR worried about the rising public debt. And "Fair Dealer" Harry Truman positively loathed it. So when push comes to shove, even today's beltway politicians are likely to find the underlying theory of helicopter money to be beyond the pale. It comes as no shock that "Helicopter' Ben Bernanke is a big fan. He's a demented paint-by-the-numbers Keynesian with a worse grasp on the real world than the typical astrologer. That's why the crucial element in his helicopter money scheme, as he explained in a Washington Post op-ed, will leave them scratching their heads even in the always credulous Capitol Hill hearing rooms. According to Bernanke, the secret sauce of helicopter money is an explicit and loud announcement by the Fed that the incremental public debt will be permanent. It will never, ever be repaid — not even in the distant future. But the reason for it is downright lunatic. Unless current taxpayers are assured that future taxes will not rise due to Washington's helicopter money handouts and tax breaks, says the Bernank, they won't spend the government gifts they find strewn along the helicopter flight path. That's right. When a road building boom from helicopter money appropriations results in surging demand at the sand and gravel pits, the small-time businessman involved won't buy any additional trucks or hire any additional drivers until Washington assures him that he won't pay higher taxes 25 years later! Only in the Eccles Building puzzle palace does such drivel not elicit uncontainable laughter. So at the end of the day, "helicopter money" is just a desperate scam emanating from the world's tiny fraternity of central bankers who have walked the financial system to the brink, and are now trying to con the casino into believing they have one more magic rabbit to pull out of the hat. They don't. That's because helicopter money will not pass the laugh test even in the Imperial City, and, more importantly, because it takes two branches of the state to tango in the process of implementation. Unlike ZIRP and QE, helicopter money requires the people's elected representatives to play along. That is, the Congress and White House must generate large incremental expansions of the fiscal deficit so that the central bank can buy it directly from the U.S. Treasury. Then it would credit the government's Fed accounts with funds conjured from thin air. But this assumes there is still a functioning government in Washington and that most politicians have been 100% cured of their instinctual fears of the public debt. What is going to cause helicopter money to be a giant dud — at least in the U.S. — is that neither of these conditions exist. Regardless of whether the November winner is Hillary or the Donald, there is one thing certain. There will be no functioning government come 2017. Washington will be the site of a deafening and paralyzing political brawl like none in modern U.S. history, or ever. The reality of rapidly swelling deficits even before enactment of a massive helicopter money fiscal stimulus program will scare the wits out of conservative politicians. And much of the electorate, too. The prospect that the resulting huge issuance of treasury bonds will be purchased directly by the Fed will only compound the fright. What fools like Bernanke haven't reckoned with is that sheer common sense has not yet been driven from the land. In fact, outside of the groupthink of few dozen Keynesian academics and central bankers, the very idea of helicopter money strikes most sensible people as preposterous, offensive and scary. Even if Wall Street talks it up, there will be massive, heated, extended and paralyzing debate in Congress and the White House about it for months on end. There is little chance that anything which even remotely resembles the Bernanke version of helicopter money could be enacted into law and become effective before 2018. Will the boys and girls still in the casino after the current election gong show is over patiently wait for their next fix from a beltway governance process that is in stalemate? I think the odds are between slim and none. If Trump is elected the fiscal process will lapse into confrontation and paralysis for an indefinite spell. And it Hillary is elected, the Republican House will become a killing field for almost anything she proposes. That certainly includes the Keynesian doctrine of outright and massive debt monetization. Regards, David Stockman Ed. Note: Sign up for your FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning, and you'll start receiving regular offers for specific profit opportunities. By taking advantage now, your ensuring that you'll be financially secure later. Best to start right away. The post Why The Casino Will Crash… And The Impossibility Of Helicopter Money appeared first on Daily Reckoning. |
| If only the Wall Street Journal showed such interest in gold futures Posted: 18 Aug 2016 08:30 AM PDT Maybe the cattle futures market doesn't really WANT any 'signals' from the physical market. But at least 'Trader Dan' Norcini may be getting a good taste of market rigging. * * * Welcome to the 'Meat Casino' -- The Cattle Futures Market Descends Into Chaos Trading of Physical Cattle Has Become So Scant that the Futures Market Can't Get the Signals it Needs to Set Prices By Kelsey Gee CHICAGO -- Wild swings in the cattle futures market have prompted some traders to call it "the meat casino." In response, the world's largest futures exchange has refused to list new contracts, leaving ranchers with fewer tools to hedge the $10.9 billion market. CME Group Inc. said that is because trading of physical cattle has become so scant that the futures market can't get the signals it needs to set prices. "It's madness. The market makes major moves for no reason," said Blake Albers, a cattle feeder in Wisner, Neb. The decision to delay new contract listings is the culmination of alarms raised by the exchange and industry groups this year that problems in the physical marketplace have affected futures -- a highly unusual meltdown in a market that has attracted more speculators. ... "Guys like me who have been around a long time aren't putting as many positions on," said Dan Norcini, an independent livestock-futures trader in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "It's just not worth the risk anymore, when there's no rhyme or reason to these price swings." ... ... For the remainder of the report: http://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-the-meat-casino-the-cattle-future... ADVERTISEMENT Direct Ownership and Storage of Precious Metals Goldbroker.com is a precious metals investment company that enables investors to own and store gold directly in their own name (no mutualized ownership) in Zurich and Singapore. Goldbroker's clients are not exposed to any counterparty risks. They own gold and silver in their own names (the ownership certificate cites the name of the investor and serial number of his bars) and they have storage accounts opened in their own name as well. So Goldbroker.com's storage partner knows the exact identity of each investor. Goldbroker.com doesn't store in the name of its clients; rather, Goldbroker's clients store personally. All investors have direct access to their gold and silver bars. Goldbroker.com was launched in 2011 so that investors would avoid any counterparty risk when investing in physical gold and silver. Goldbroker.com is listed among GATA's recommended monetary metals dealers: To invest or learn more, please visit: Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: |
| Gold Stocks Cognitive Dissonance & Denial Posted: 18 Aug 2016 06:24 AM PDT Obviously if your NOT in denial, you know this cannot end well, no matter how much the so-called "Monetary Authorities" keep queering up the money supply, digitally, or thru debt issuance or otherwise. The question popped up " Is there an edict that the Non-PM stock markets will keep ramping until the US Election?" To which I'd tell people to look around at all the new jobs and new cars. What, lots of new cars, on loans at any cost, but no new jobs ? How does that work ? |
| Gold – “Mother of All Bull Markets Has Only Just Begun†– Grandich Posted: 18 Aug 2016 03:35 AM PDT There are many reasons to believe that “the mother of all bull markets has only just begun” for gold. So believes Peter Grandich, the market analyst dubbed the “Wall Street Whiz Kid” whose track record speaks for itself. He called the Wall Street Crash in 1987 and subsequent sharp stock market recovery, the end of the bull market in stocks in 2000 and the global financial crisis in 2008. |
| The 45th Anniversary of The Most Destructive Event In Modern Monetary History Posted: 18 Aug 2016 03:17 AM PDT The US government, bankrupt yet again after another disastrous war of aggression, had its back pushed to the wall in 1971. Up until that point, foreign central banks could redeem US dollars directly with the US Treasury in exchange for gold. And, recognizing that the US was essentially bankrupt, foreign central banks, especially France, began to demand gold instead of the dollar. |
| Breaking News And Best Of The Web Posted: 17 Aug 2016 05:37 PM PDT More bad numbers from Japan. More scary predictions from Carl Icahn. Fed officials split on Sept rate hike. Corporations buy back fewer shares, insiders sell more. Money pours into emerging markets. Silver miners gain fans. Trump hires new people, keeps falling in polls. Best Of The Web World out of whack: coming this way… […] The post Breaking News And Best Of The Web appeared first on DollarCollapse.com. |
| USDU - An Important Perspective on the US Dollar Posted: 16 Aug 2016 10:29 PM PDT We started following this US dollar index about a year or so ago which has a more equal weighting of different currencies than the $USD. Even though I don’t post it much this Alternative US dollar index has some very interesting Chartology on it which may be giving us an important clue as to the intentions of the Dollar . If you recall the Standard US dollar index ($USD) was testing a major inflection point in May around the 92 area earlier this year. It did finally bottom but left some unfinished business behind. This is the daily chart I was following at the time for the USDU which shows the H&S top in place and the decline that took the price action down to the low at the 25.50 area. From that low the USDU began a decent rally but couldn’t trade above the neckline extension line at reversal point #2 before the bears took charge again. The bulls were able to stop the decline at reversal point #3 and a laborious rally took the USDU back up to the top of the trading range where the neckline extension line came into play again along with the 200 day moving average. |
Water. You all know that water is among the very highest of priorities for survival. The vast majority depend on flowing water from their local municipal water department while others depend on their wells.
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