JPMorgan Chase

"If banknotes are outlawed you will be forced to hold money that is a liability of a commercial bank (deposits) and refused access to money that is the liability of the central bank (bank notes)... In such a world, zero-yielding gold would be a high-yielding instrument. If the authorities ever sought to restrict access to banknotes, then gold would suddenly find itself enfranchised as money for the first time in many decades. So, given the scale of these competing forces, it is just too early to say what might happen to the gold price, but the allure of gold will grow the more it becomes clear that central bank fiat has failed and the age of government fiat is dawning."

In the coming months, however many hours Clinton spends introducing herself to voters in small-town America, she will spend hundreds more raising money in four-star hotels and multimillion-dollar homes around the nation. The question is: "Can Clinton claim to stand for 'everyday Americans,' while hauling in huge sums of cash from the very wealthiest of us?" This much cannot be disputed: Clinton's connections to the financiers and bankers of this country - and this country's campaigns - run deep. As Nomi Prins questions, who counts more to such a candidate, the person you met over that chicken burrito bowl or the Citigroup partner you met over crudités and caviar?

Threatened with deflation, the authorities will want to turn the tide in the worst possible way. What’s the worst way to stop deflation? With hyperinflation. Yes, we may suffer a year or two more of sluggish growth... or even deflation. Stocks will crash and people will be desperate for paper dollars. But sooner or later, the feds will find their feet and lose their heads. Most likely, the credit-drenched world of 2015 will end... not in a whimper of deflation, but in a bang. Hyperinflation will bring the long depression to a dramatic close long before a quarter of a century has passed.

• Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage resign as Tories sweep to victory (Telegraph)
• Bonds and stocks rebound, sterling soars after UK election (Reuters)
• Cameron Set to Return With U.K. Majority as SNP Sweeps Scotland (BBG)
• Tory win brings marked EU exit risk (Reuters)
• Why did Labour lose this election? It never tried to win it (Telegraph)
• Stock Buybacks Hit New Records (WSJ)
• Hard Money Comes Easy as Wall Street Funds Home Flippers (BBG)
• Justice Department to Investigate Baltimore Police (WSJ)
• Saudi Arabia mulling land operations on Yemen border (Reuters)

JP Morgan’s massive silver buying brings to mind the Hunt Brothers' attempt to corner the silver market in the late 1970s. The Texas oil-tycoons tried to corner the silver market by accumulating a massive silver futures position.  Ted Butler has estimated that JP Morgan may currently hold far more than their official figure of 55 million ounces.

Take note, Gold is officially money for the most powerful entities in the world. They are not only accepting Gold as collateral but are openly trying to insure that they have their own Gold in safe custody.

Warfare today (and in the future) is (and will be) fought differently.  In the 1950’s with the creation of more destructive bombs and weaponry, the idea was ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD).   The movie War Games helped us learn that there are no winners.  The warfare ideology today is ‘Multilateral Unconstrained Disruption’ (MUD).  This unrestrictive warfare is meant to disrupt societal functioning; to ‘poison’ information to elevate distrust of all computer information. Cyber-activity is the new ‘cold war’.

• The Fed Still Wants Easy Money (BBG) - you don't say
• ECB Is Studying Curbs on Greek Bank Support (BBG)
• Banks Paid to Borrow as Three-Month Euribor Drops Below Zero (BBG)
• Baoding Tianwei is first state-owned Chinese enterprise to default (Reuters)
• Major Chinese Developer Says It Can’t Pay Dollar Debts (BBG)
• Wall Street Has No Idea How Much Money Venezuela Has (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Find Different Paths to Profits (WSJ)
• Does the Collapse of a Chinese Developer Signal the Start of More Defaults? (BBG)
• Retail Traders Wield Social Media for Investing Fame (WSJ)

It is almost too coincidental to be a coincidence: on the day Ben Bernanke, who until a year ago was the biggest fixed income portfolio manager in the world courtesy of the Fed's $4.5 trillion in assets, joins Citadel as an advisor, the massively levered "market-neutral" hedge fund which as we showed earlier has $176 billion in regulatory assets, "loses" its global head of fixed income, senior managing director Derek Kaufman. Well not exactly loses. The reason for his "voluntary" departure: according to Bloomberg Kaufman is leaving Citadel not because he is about to be replaced by the former Fed chairman but because last year he lost $1 billion "in a variety of trades."

“The biggest worry of the buy side around the world is that there has been a dramatic decline in liquidity from the sell side for many fixed income products,” Prudential's David Hunt tells Bloomberg, echoing Jamie Dimon and confirming what we've been shouting about for years.

"The fair value of hedges held by 57 U.S. companies in the Bloomberg Intelligence North America Independent Explorers and Producers index rose to $26 billion as of Dec. 31, a fivefold increase from the end of September," Bloomberg writes, noting that the very same Wall Street banks on the hook for the hedges also financed the shale boom.

• Greece pleads cash running out, told to hasten reforms (Reuters)
• ECB Cash Said Likely to Fall Short of Greek Request This Week (BBG)
• Chinese Stock Buying Frenzy Sweeps Into Hong  (WSJ)
• Shell’s $70 Billion BG Deal Meets Shareholder Skepticism (BBG)
• Yemen's Houthis seize provincial capital despite Saudi-led raids (Reuters)
• Iran Nuclear Deal Gives Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Reason to Worry (WSJ)
• Slow apps, low battery life limit appeal of Apple Watch (Reuters)
• Gilead’s $1,000 Pill Is Hard for States to Swallow (WSJ)
• The Oil Industry's $26 Billion Life Raft (BBG)

Barron’s should have published its gushing cover story on Jamie Dimon’s stewardship of JPMorgan today – as an April Fool’s joke.

Having already proven that their institutions are above the law in the aftermath of the financial crisis, executives at the “Too Big to Fail and Jail” banks have decided it’s time to teach Senate Democrats a lesson. Not being content with trillions in taxpayer backed bailouts to protect and further consolidate virtually all wealth within their oligarch fiefdoms, these bankers are irate at the notion that a commoner would dare criticize their unassailable crony privilege. What Wall Street wants is one hundred Chucky Schumers in the Senate.