Transparency

Barclays almost succeeded in its quest of becoming the top US dark pool at any cost, even criminal: in the week ending June 16 Barclays was second only to Credit Suisse' Crossfinder ATS with 312.1 million total shares traded on some 1.6 million in total trades. Unfortunately for Barclays it should put its ambitions on permanent halt, because as was revealed today by FINRA's new "ATS Transparency" database, Barclays total dark pool volume has plunged by a whopping 37% to under 200 million shares.

We believe that a more transparent and reliable fixing could lead to higher gold prices as we suspect that prices are artificially low at this time and do not reflect the delicate supply demand balance in the physical gold market ... Nor do they capture the degree of systemic and geopolitical risk in the world today."

Long-duration Treasuries continue to look attractive; a view that Scotiabank's Guy Haselmann has unwaveringly maintained for the past six months for a variety of diverse reasons. Of all of the various reasons, private pension demand is the most interesting and compelling (and the least understood). The bottom line is that PBGC rule changes will cause persistent and incremental demand over time that overwhelms net visible secondary market supply.  Concerns about funding status will trump the private defined benefit plan manager’s fiduciary desire to ‘maximize return per unit of risk’. There are other factors, but the point is that Treasuries as a relative asset class looks attractive.

History suggests that previously sound assumptions about financial security and recession-proof sectors may not apply in the next recession.

The man who assisted and "consulted" Gordon Brown (a man so clueless about finance he didn't and still doesn't have any idea what a carry trade is, let alone one in gold) the man who was Chief Manager of the Bank of England's reserves (all reserves) when Britain commenced its gold dumping campaign intended to, as usual, bail the big banks whose gold shorting trades had gone horribly wrong, the man - John Nugee - is the same man tasked with making the London gold fix fair, efficient, transparent and unrigged. One can't make this up.

The dollar's demise has been often foretold.  The euro, SDRs, the yuan, Bitcoins all were going to be viable alternatives.  The dollar persists. 

The jobs report has little value if we don't peer beneath the glossy veneer.

Today, we can finally end any debate on the topic of just where the world's illegal money comes to roost. The answer: ultra-luxury real estate, primarily in New York, courtesy of a report in New York magazine that catches up with what we first said in the summer of 2012, and which is titled, appropriately enough: "Stash Pad."

One hundred years ago today the world was shook loose of its moorings. Every school boy knows that the assassination of the archduke of Austria at Sarajevo was the trigger that incited the bloody, destructive conflagration of the world’s nations known as the Great War. But this senseless eruption of unprecedented industrial state violence did not end with the armistice four years later. In fact, 1914 is the fulcrum of modern history. It is the year the Fed opened-up for business just as the carnage in northern France closed-down the prior magnificent half-century era of liberal internationalism and honest gold-backed money. So it was the Great War’s terrible aftermath - a century of drift toward statism, militarism and fiat money - that was actually triggered by the events at Sarajevo.

Many believe the most significant battle of our era is between the forces of Decentralization vs. Centralization. Niall Furguson takes that battle and looks at it from a historical perspective, describing it as Networks vs. Hierarchies, and warns we "need networks, for no political hierarchy, no matter how powerful, can plan all the clever things that networks spontaneously generate. But if the hierarchy comes to control the networks so much as to compromise their benign self-organizing capacities, then innovation is bound to wane."

Now that any credibility Barclays, pardon Darklays, may have had in the capital markets has drowned at the bottom of its (soon to be shuttered) dark pool, it is time to start making fun of the bank. To do that we bring our readers the British bank's "Ongoing Commitment to Transparency", and specifiically the "Equities Electronic Order Handling." Curiously, nowhere in said book does it say that the bank will route the vast majority of its trades to the most lucrative predatory HFT algos lurking deep in the bowels of LX, which incidentally is co-located in the Savvis NJ2 Data Center in Weehawken, New Jersey, may it rest in piece now that nobody on the buyside will ever use it again. What it does report are the following creative lies, which we reveal to the general public because after all remember: the biggest defense the HFT lobby makes is that "whatever HFT does it never hurt retail investors." We will let retail investors decide for themselves.

"The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises."

• Obama Administration Widens Export Potential for U.S. Oil (BBG)
• WTI Pares Gains as U.S. Export Ruling Seen Limited (BBG)
• Senator Cochran defeats Tea Party rival in Mississippi Republican runoff (Reuters)
• Militants attack Iraq air base, U.S. assessment teams deploy (Reuters)
• Maliki rules out national emergency govt (AFP)
• Koch to Start EU Power Trading as It Plans LNG Expansion (BBG)
• Obama Said to Ready Sanctions on Russian Industries (BBG)
• Ghana Sends Plane With $3 Million to Calm World Cup Team (BBG)
• Ghana’s First Hedge Fund Planned by Ex-Exchange Regulator (BBG)
• SEC Is Gearing Up to Focus on Ratings Firms (WSJ)
• Abe Declares Deflation End as Growth Plan Confronts Skeptics (BBG)

We have not been shy about exposing the dark shadowy under-belly of lobbyists funding politicians (as most recently noted with Cantor's catastrophe) but now, as Engadget reports, finding out which representatives are in the pocket without a lot of tedious research just got a lot easier. A 16-year-old programmer has developed a browser plugin - Greenhouse - that, when you mouse-over the name of a US lawmaker, will serve up a list of which parties have donated to their campaign funds, and the quantities. Better than flappy-birds? The developer notes, "whether Democrat or Republican, we should all want a political system that is independent of the influence of big money and not dependent on endless cycles of fundraising from special interests."

Bloomberg reported yesterday that the German campaign to repatriate German gold from the U.S. has ended. The leader of the German gold repatriation movement, “Repatriate our Gold,” Peter Boehringer immediately refuted the article and posted in the comment section at the bottom of the article … The campaign to achieve a free market in gold and silver prices will continue.