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The Secret World Of Gold
In a wide-ranging look at the history and present of the barbarous relic, CBC's Brian McKenna and Ann-Marie MacDonald have gathered many perspectives (pro and con) on gold. The following documentary moves from historical shipwrecks to Nazi 'death gold' and England's war chest to recent years where widespread economic uncertainty has given the yellow metal a "new lustre in the world of high finance." Valued for its permanence, beauty and scarcity, people will lie, cheat, steal and kill in the name of gold; and the clip provides color on many of the market manipulations of the last few years. As MacDonald says, whether it’s a few gold coins or gold bars stored in one of the many vaults around the world, many investors are taking a shine to gold. But there’s not a lot of it. It is said that, even melted down, there would not be enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool. Some claim that much of the gold held by the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and Fort Knox is gone - that for every 100 ounces of gold traded, there exists only one ounce of real, physical gold. So, where is the gold - and who really owns it?
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Huh. Coinkidink - my buddy started asking me about BitCoins... and I e-mailed back giving some details and about mt. Gox exchange. Turns out it just got DDOSed and you can`t access it right now.
Oops!
ha ha ha...it was a trick...MSM asks the question "where is the gold" and can't answer it! about as deep as a puddle..pointing afew fingers at a few banks...no coverage of even the most trivial of things...not Fort Knox..but an ETF guaranteeing physical allocation against a paper ETF
45 minutes of my life I won't get back (waiting for a punch line that never came).
trivial and pathetic!
The question 'where is the gold' has already been answered, Hooligan. ABN Ambro doesn't have their clients gold, the Fed Reserve doesn't have Germany's gold, and I'm quite sure Ft. Knox doesn't have yours. Go back to sleep, Hooligan.
Gold price chart (25 years) - Barchart.com:
http://is.gd/Am9I89
Silver price chart (25 years) - Barchart.com:
http://is.gd/WkOXIB
Platinum price chart (25 years) - Barchart.com:
http://is.gd/UwW0hH
There is a Chinese proverb that I love, and it applies to PMs as well.
It goes: "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
Chart of gold (useless shiny metal) vs oil (energy) over 70 years.
http://www.macrotrends.org/1380/gold-to-oil-ratio-historical-chart
Look... No exponential bubble... The bubbles are in US dollars and with commodities you are seeing quite clearly the effect of the real devaluation of the currency rather than the bullshit RPI & CPI figures. The exponential trend in the charts you show is simply the percentage year on year devaluation of USD.
This should demonstrate for you how gold holds it's purchasing power over very long time frames. Sure it fluctuates, but all commodities do depending on supply/demand. It doesn't change by orders of magnitude the way bank credit and paper money do. In 70 years, gold will still buy you approximately what it'd buy you today.
BTW, If gold:oil does drop below 10, load up the truck. Above 20 sell and wait for a pull back.
James Willie has been reporting for a long time that the LBMA refuses to deliver on PM contracts. Instead they offer huge premiums of fiat over spot in place of delivery.
Uhuh, and none of players big enough to use that for arbitrage do that because they are all in on the conspiracy?
Watched that last week over at Jesse's Cafe.
I watched this excellent program 2 nights ago. A few notes: Jeff Christian, one of those interviewed, is a tool for the bullion banks. It was Christian who inadvertently testified (blurted out) for the CFTC in March, 2010 that bullion is leveraged 100 paper ounces to 1 physical ounce. That's the bullion bank's mouthpiece talking. This was the same CFTC hearing where Maguire did his real-time predictions of real-time market manipulation, which the CFTC ignored. 2nd note: CBC has not been a fan of the gold manipulation story, and has been in fact hostile to GATA and others over the years. Recall brainiac Brigette Brown's famous piece circa 2009 saying "there is nothing backing gold, but the dollar is backed by the US government." (Later scrubbed from YouTube). This program marks a stark turnaround in Canadian state-run lapdog media coverage of the illegal naked short selling. Hats (tin-foil and others) off to CBC for stepping up, if only for one program.
no amount of scrubbing can remove that famous quote:
http://youtu.be/BiXIs3bbETA
"the dumbest journalist ever"
I thought she said 3 Olympic swimming pools full of gold ? There's the old stand-by of a cube 60 meters on a side .... but, if your talking molten gold .... I guess a swimming pool full is the right measure ?
I don't know why they always use that example of an Olympic swimming pool filled with gold ... I mean, what good is a swimming pool? Everyone knows you can't eat it.
If they can find where large quantitites of gold are they will just send in 1,000 agents chasing a 19year old. House to house. BANKSTER MAFIA serving and protecting. Then they can cover the Saudi contracts.
"Some claim that bank of canadas gold is gone".....
It is.....
The only gold canada would have is in the finance ministers hands in his secret little fund called the EFA (Exchange Fund Account).
This account is in the foriegn exchange reserves and is like the USA's little secret fund that Lew is in charge of now called the ESF (Exchange Stabilization Fund) and dirty deals in gold.
Check it on out.!
For all of its allure, gold's human and environmental toll has never been so steep.
At one end of the spectrum are the armies of poor migrant workers converging on small-scale mines like La Rinconada. According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), there are between 10 million and 15 million so-called artisanal miners around the world, from Mongolia to Brazil. Employing crude methods that have hardly changed in centuries, they produce about 25 percent of the world's gold and support a total of 100 million people. It's a vital activity for these people—and deadly too.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the past decade, local armed groups fighting for control of gold mines and trading routes have routinely terrorized and tortured miners and used profits from gold to buy weapons and fund their activities. In the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan, the military, along with security forces of an Anglo-Australian gold company, forcibly evicted small-scale miners and burned their villages to make way for a large-scale mine. Thousands of protestors against expansion of a mine in Cajamarca, Peru, faced tear gas and police violence.
The deadly effects of mercury are equally hazardous to small-scale miners. Most use mercury to separate gold from rock, spreading poison in both gas and liquid forms. UNIDO estimates that one-third of all mercury released by humans into the environment comes from artisanal gold mining. This turns places like La Rinconada into a sort of Shangri-la in reverse: The pursuit of a metal linked to immortality only serves to hasten the miners' own mortality.
Gold mining, however, generates more waste per ounce than any other metal, and the mines' mind-bending disparities of scale show why: These gashes in the Earth are so massive they can be seen from space, yet the particles being mined in them are so microscopic that, in many cases, more than 200 could fit on the head of a pin. Even at showcase mines, such as Newmont Mining Corporation's Batu Hijau operation in eastern Indonesia, where $600 million has been spent to mitigate the environmental impact, there is no avoiding the brutal calculus of gold mining. Extracting a single ounce of gold there—the amount in a typical wedding ring—requires the removal of more than 250 tons of rock and ore.
But the gods surely can't be happy with how poisoned La Rinconada's environment has become. The raw sewage and garbage on the overcrowded streets are minor nuisances compared with the tons of mercury released during the process of separating gold from rock. In small-scale gold mining, UNIDO estimates, two to five grams of mercury are released into the environment for every gram of gold recovered—a staggering statistic, given that mercury poisoning can cause severe damage to the nervous system and all major organs. According to Peru vian environmentalists, the mercury released at La Rinconada and the nearby mining town of Ananea is contaminating rivers and lakes down to the coast of Lake Titicaca, more than a hundred miles away.
source national geographic
Interesting to see a different perspective on gold.
A welcome change from groupthink and boating accidents.
thank you.
Fuck you ! Go help the Chinese coal miners .... you lefties never want to dwell on Socialism's failures ! I'd like the see the water buffalo bride who sports a 1 troy ounce wedding band ! LOL
Or the asswipe should go lecture the Chinese, Indians etc... about buying gold of course the leftard wont do that.
I can't for the life of me remember if a "pud" is a cunt or a dick..... CB
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
Let us presume that Western central banks leased out their gold to bullion banks in the early 2000s. The physical gold was sold by bullion banks during the last 5 years at a huge profit, together with massive profits from paper manipulation.
At some point the bullion banks will be obliged to return the gold (or roll over the lease contract). How could this be done at lowest cost?
Two methods are immediately obvious:
1) Reduce demand for physical gold. Electronically crash the paper price and load up on physical gold from panic sellers.
2) Take control of the means of production. Sell short gold miners and push down the paper price. Accumulate cheap shares and purchase privately owned miners that are now unprofitable. Produce gold at cost for transfer to CBs.
The time frame is crucial as one would expect a gold lease to be for a 10 to 25 year duration. Cyclical price changes would maximise profit and physical accumulation before end of lease. Countries repatriating their stored gold would be an unwelcome catalyst.
The management of physical demand poses a complex problem for the bullion banks. How does one prevent supply and demand determining price in a free market. Controlling the London gold fixing would be essential along with taking hedged future production from the miners.
One could envisage a two tier physical gold market with high prices to discourage external overseas buying and a discount for instituational insiders based on mining cost price.
I expect the gold price and mining shares being pushed down further, perhaps below cost price. Stealth institutional accumulation of physical gold and miners at low cost. After physical obligations to the CBs have been met, the gold price and mining shares will be pumped up and later dumped for huge profit.
"Do as the bullion banks do" would be the perfect strategy, however timing and price ranges for the cycles is unknown but to a few.
What are your thoughts on this hypothesis?
.
..
Except there is more to it than just what you've stated.
IMO...there is a possiblity that this is done on purpose to allow sovergins to obtain more metal prior to a global currency conversion.
And...the take down happened just as Cyprus was being told they 'have' to sell their gold to match funds from the E.U. This is possibly another 'template' in which the small countries of the E.U. that may leave are gutted of their gold so when a 'global currency coversion' as mentioned above occurrs, they have no way to leave the E.U. afterwards.
As with many global 'actions' there always seems to be more than one purpose served.
Why not reveal the real secrets of gold?
More toxins are created with mine dumping. On site tailing dams are not always secure and when they fail, the result can be devastating on surrounding water and land.
More mining facts
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
The title of the post is the real secrets of gold...is anything I wrote false?
no.
Therefore I am keeping with the spirit of the post and not a troll
It's just not what you people want to hear. Makes you think. Challenges your thesis. Spoils your money making party. Points out how unethical you are.
Kill the messenger eh?
Fuck you and your anti-gold driven agenda.
You're a real bright one aren't you? Remember this when you go and critique bankers and gov for not caring...just like you don't care about the consequences of gold mining. What's good for the goose...
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
You don't appear very bright yourself
The way the the world works has nothing to do with "caring"
When governments put down the shovels and stop developing new resources, they will pick up the guns and start shooting over the diminishing supply of existing resources
You could throw every man, woman and child in RSA into a leach pit just for kicks and it wouldn't come close to the human suffering that would be endured in a regional or global resource access war
Then there's the minor fact no one in power on the winning side of resource conflict is going to be interested in providing resources to any useless eaters left alive. Although I suppose the next little Adolph will have his own little mini-me Goebbels who will whip up some "caring" propaganda to further the high-minded aims of "resource conservation" or "footprint minimization" to help the chosen masses to help liquidate the undesireables...
If you want to do good, then do so within the confines of the world in which we all actually live, not the confines of some imaginary idealized mental construct.
Plus 5 for your edit war with yourself. You were right from the start, thanks for refining your thoughts.
It is only in part what your 'message' says (although somewhat tunnel visioned) but it is also the timing.
The 'rent a bashers' are out in force.
A lot of new posters (like you) that are spending an inordinate amount of time plying anything negative.
If you have 'handlers' you may want to tell them it does not seem to be working.
And who the hell it was that came up with the latest beatdown in gold price really seems to have forgotten half the planet (Asia) which ignores the fiat propaganda of the last few decades and just keeps buying.
W5 already covered that.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5-searching-for-gold-at-the-end-of-the-guatemalan...
Most industries have polluters and also clean efficient operators. You focus on the gold industry because it is your personal opinion that gold is worthless. Try taking a more balanced approach to looking at the world. Some people value things that you don't and you should respect that.
You can presume, assume, pontificate, and blah blah blah blah blah. But nothing changes the fact that your 'store of wealth', 'value investment', 'never goes down', commodity is able to be aquired right now, for $500 less per OZ than at the peak around 365 days ago give or take. What will 2maro bring? I dont know. Obviously it could continue to slide and you could find your commodity being worth $1000 less than it was a year ago, or, maybe, it will reverse and it will once again be worth what it was a year ago. Either way, seems like a pretty bad investment to anyone with any common sense whatsoever.
Over the last 12 months I have seen people talk about buying houses for OZ's of gold, as of right now, your tulip mania schizophrenia is not looking likely to happen. Too bad. Soo sad.
a store of value is measured over years and decades, not "the last 12 months"
The cost of cleanup operations for some gold and silver mining operations is relatively cheap compared to the bill of getting rid of and cleaning up after all of America's nuclear plants and facilities.Now that's a bill that will bankrupt. America.100% guaranteed on that.I don't think that Germany fully understands the bill that awaits them but it could provide a template for the States.Problem for the number of plants that will eventually be decommisioned is where do you put the waste?Already,there's no place for it except to store it out on the Nevada desert near the old A-bomb sites.
The answer is to not generate the waste in the first place. Too simple huh?
Gold Mining is the crown jewel of the mining industry .... that doesn't mean environmentards .... aren't going after it .... anything to diminish freedom for people .... and they are all over it .... they love slavery !
What about the freedom of the peoples downstream einstein?
Easy problem to solve. All miners will be sold land to live off and work from which is downstream and they will not be permitted to mine if they live / work offsite.
+10
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
like your mother getting an abortion? PUD I swear your avatar looks like a baboon skullfucking a little bald white guy. which one are you?
Then you must kill yourself or live in the woods off the soil, trees and rocks there. Any bronze-age technology or later era is polluting as you say so you must never use it. You will live off furs, rocks, moss, hay, rabbit, squirrel, never fuel, no vehicles, no electricity and nothing made from stainless steel (except the ancient Japanese method) or aluminum. Ever.
Or, as I suggested at first, go kill yourself.
I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so stupid as to write what you just did.
To willfully and knowingly do something that hurts others when you don't have to is far different than surviving in the modern world using a minimum amount of resources
You truly exemplify the absolute ignorance of the majority of crowd followers here
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
I wilfully survive and I know that I need resources to do so. You made the same choice.
There is only one other: kill yourself. Your existence is the cause of this pollution.
I already take measures to minimize harm, avoiding all products from China, avoiding all waste materials in packaging, putting everything back to soil that can go to soil safely, avoiding even excessive medications that have metabolytes not removed by municipal water filtering systems. DO YOU take this care? I doubt it.
Jeez, I wish we had you around 70 years ago. The world would be a lot cleaner place after you got FDR and Truman straightened the fuck out!
Following up on Thai news video posted a few days ago describing lines at gold shops in Bangkok due to the recent drop in price for gold, and empty ATMs near gold shops, here is yesterday's news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN0j01Eer18
Summary translation: gold shops nationwide in Thailand are packed (see video) with people BUYING gold, and now there are lines of people forming at gold shops well before the 10:00 AM opening time.
I just returned from the coin dealer, there was a long line of retail bell ringers all wearing foil hats. bitcoins look good.
This is the last I'll say of it today. it takes a special kind of uncaring, inhumane, willfully ignorant person to lust for this most terrible commodity.
The Witwatersrand is not the only region in South Africa where acid mine drainage is a problem, but it is currently the area of greatest concern. In 2002, near the town of Krugersdorp, acid mine drainage from an abandoned mine welled up and began pouring out on the surface. Since then, about 15 million liters a day of acid mine drainage have been spilling out — some of it into a stream that flows north toward the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. In the last few years, acid mine drainage has been known to be encroaching on the heritage site and has already dissolved a 16,000-cubic-meter void in the calcium carbonate rocks outside the protected site. However, last year, it was finally found within the site, where it caused a fishkill, triggering public outcry and focusing the debate on the larger issue of acid mine drainage in the Witwatersrand and throughout South Africa.
Scientists estimate the volume of acid mine drainage from abandoned mines in the Witwatersrand goldfields alone could reach 350 million liters per day, threatening the Vaal River and Limpopo River watersheds that supply freshwater to hundreds of thousands of people. They also say the problem will likely persist for decades, if not centuries. Despite warnings from the scientific community as early as the 1950s, the South African government only recently established a committee to investigate acid mine drainage, after it reached the Cradle of Humankind.
http://www.trololololololololololo.com/
Aluminum smelting leading to red mud is far more dangerous than leakage of acids or cyanide from gold mining. We can contain the cyanide & acids - some are careless and do not. I recommend shorting / destroying those miners.
But aluminum? There's no other way. The end result is always this toxic red mud that never drives and is highly alkaline, burns the skin, kills all microbes and plant life where it spills.
If you use aluminum you share the guilt for its production.
I AND YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO ADD TO HUMAN SUFFERING BY SUPPORTING THE WORST KIND OF MINING...GOLD
MY LIFE AND YOURS WOULD BE PERFECTLY FINE WITHOUT GOLD, NOT SO MUCH WITHOUT ALUMINUM
USING ONE OUT OF NEED IS FAR DIFFERENT THAN USING ANOTHER OUT OF PURE WANT
I USE OIL
THE EXXON VALDEZ SPILLED MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF OIL
THAT DOESN'T GIVE ME A RIGHT TO DUMP A GALLON OF OIL DOWN THE STORM DRAIN
THIS IS THE MOST IRRATIONAL, RABID, NON-SENSICAL, SELFISH CROWD I'VE YET ENCOUNTERED
YOU KNOW THAT I AM RIGHT
YOU SIMPLY CHOSE NOT TO CARE
JUST LIKE THE BANKERS YOU RAIL AGAINST
I see. So you uniquely get to decide for the world what is good and bad mining. That has been my big criticism of liberals. They think they have the right to be fascists in the name of humanity. Going on in S. American countries as we speak and certainly with the current US administration.
I am not political. I am a freethinking rationalist. Some things are just obviously bad. Normal decent people don't need others to point that out to them.
You need a fucking therapist. You've been beating the same idiotic point for over 24 hrs. I already showed how retarded you were last night when you were arguing hoarders increasing prices created child labor.
Increased prices create better labor conditions and less environmental impact. These are facts, and regardless of how you choose to obfuscate, gold will always have industrial uses that will force a market to exist for it.
You're not rational, or a freethinker. You're a narcissistic idiot who is hung up on some idea that gold is destroying the world, Rather than unchecked fiat fueled expansion.
You're a moralizing hypocrite that no one take seriously.
You sir are a fraud and a liar. Two things that i am not. i made no mention of the fiat money system...I stayed on topic per the title of this post....you proved nothing as there are more child laborers now with gold near record highs then when they were near the lows when it was not worth the effort to conscript children. i put up article after article supporting my case. you provided nothing but your worthless opinion and slander. good day
Near record highs? WTF are you talking about now? Child laborers, or is the sky falling because of gold mining Mr Chicken Little?
87% of the world's gold mines are child-labor free. The other 13% only use children as support staff, such as cooking or cleaning for the miners.
In other words, there is no evidence of minor miners anywhere in the world.
BTW, these statistics were made up. PUD assumes there are minor miners without evidence of such.
You are most certainly a fraud and a liar. You will not admit your guilt in the destruction nor will you admit what is the bigger destruction. Gold has no replacement for dentistry nor for money nor for radiation shielding.
ALUMINUM AND PLASTIC can in fact be replaced by many other things. They are choices with costs but they are not impossible. Gold's elemental properties can NOT be replaced and the ONE unique property of aluminum we are exploiting endlessly that others can't seem to replace is use as THERMITE.
You used your freedoms to indiscriminately copy and paste stuff from MSM articles, as if it was you who originally wrote it. Now you have to bear the responsibilities for the opinions expressed. Did you even read those?
it's not rational unless you are demanding we all return to an age of wood-working and horse-drawn carts.
In actuality I think we SHOULD try it. Even in today's moder world the Amish get by with very little that we use and they are surviving.
You are either insanely stupid, or simply insane. Or both.
Regardless, you need to kill yourself. Now.
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Oh come on now.....you PROMISED in your post that that was the LAST thing you were going to say today.
You PROMISED!!!!
Lied again. Surprised?
Money is just another thing people need. Gold is an excellent form of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEMWh6EjJoY
Gold mining is not nearly so dangerous as aluminum mining and smelting. Not even a little.
Just look at that devastation in the attached video. It's forever. Those homes are ruined. Soil ruined. Water ruined. Far more than from 10 gold mines. FAR more.
You bear responsibility for this.
And for the oil. YES, THE EXXON OIL IN ALASKA. You bear that guilt too.
You should be using wood not plastic and biodiesel not gasoline EVEN IF you have no car and rely on OTHERS you should boycott all shipping & public transportation that HELPS THE ABUSE because YOU bear the guilt for the damage. YOU.
Dickheads like you are the reason I left USSA. Please STFU.
They could stop mining it today and it wouldn't make much difference, either to the arguments and interests of the people who post here, or to the global environmental situation.
You lack perspective. How are you helping with sanitation and gastrointestinal illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa? Or female literacy? Or (gasp) global warming?
Metals make messes, controllable ones that can and should be properly managed. But the tyranny of debt and misappropriation of capital through bad financial incentives makes real big messes....visible from space (maybe, or maybe I exaggerated there).
I know where the gold was and who used to own it.
Its a good starting point; maybe the only starting point. Cross reference with some current ownership facts and ... well at least its better than speculation..
If only there was a trade ticket..
Kubrick’s 'The Shining' Hidden Gold Story Exposes The FED & FIAT Money Scam
The Shining: Kubrick’s Gold Story film analysis by Rob Ager
1/4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAQnfOXqiR0
2/4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7xVGy2rc_k
3/4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D8bXCR6Epk
4/4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKT-SLtq4c
More here: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=140183.msg1387349#msg1387349
I watched the Kubrick thing. This was a really excellent analysis. Thanks for sharing this. I appreciate it.
When PUD stops by i always getting the feeling like when you step in a pile of dog shit.
Disgusted.!
Very interesting comments on many threads. I would posit a "rule of interests". All entities work in their own interests, including governments. The last part is what the terminally stupid leftists never seem to grasp. When FDR stole money from citizens he was working in the government interest, not the people,s. when Chairman Bernanke keeps the interest rates at zero he is working for the Beast, the government. He does not care if my retired mother has to eat the principle in her retirement savings accounts because they are throwing off no interest. His first thoughts are the Fed and governments. He can effectively crash our whole government with about a two pint rise in interest rates.
People who trade paper gold work in their interest. Businesses that trade in physical gold work in their interest which roughly aligns with our interest. I think it is why paper and physical prices may disconnect. A takedown in paper is not the same as those of us who trust in physical. It is a market of traders versus owners in reality. That is not to say that one does not influence the other. However, physical purchases and deliveries have the supreme advantage of being grounded in reality. At the end of the day solid gold must be in someone's hand...and yes, you can check it for tungsten and purity which cannot be done, even with vaulted and supposedly allocated gold.
My ZH friends, we are living in an era of lies and supreme lies. Nothing built on lies (like collectivism) can last forever. Lies usually devolve to coercion and autocracy. Prepare.
Looks like pud could have origins from "pudendum", or external female genitalia. In other words pud used to mean a cunt, but in recent times is more toward a dick, as in "to pull one's pud". Well that clears that up.... CB
Phallic
Pudendic
here an obvious but often overlooked fact.
the best security for something precious is not
a secure location but an unknown location.
why would any large holder of metal let it be
known where the material is? only to deceive
a potential thief. no? as a.f. said
"gold is not like pork bellies after all."
or something like that.
where is the gold indeed?
@3481301
...and if you think your home in the U.S. is a secure location (in case the POTUS invokes NDAA), think again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Op3TMliqBmA#!
+1 Thanks for that. That's the Boston I remember.
Aluminum is an important element in hat making.
also tin
also cans -- oops now I'm officially a relic.
Lead pencil, anyone.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEBTN/
Federal Debt: Total Public Debt (GFDEBTN)
2012:Q4: 16,432,729 Millions of Dollars
http://www.scribd.com/doc/137226599/total-u-s-public-debt-u-s-department-of-the-treasury
www.usdebtclock.org
This is prettier.
Today on CNBC almost all articles are attempts to refute the facts. Except: Hedge Funds Show: We Aren't Afraid of No Gold
The end is near.
holy sht...this just summed up 4 yrs of discussion on zerohedge
After looking at the COT report for silver on Friday, I am surprised by the numbers. While I've been expecting this sell-off since I started writing about it in December, and truthfully over a year ago, it had less to do with a capitulation of the Large Specs like I thought and more to do with massive selling by the Commercials. The Large Specs actually covered their shorts into that weakness and ended more net long than before the sell-off. That's not good news for the bulls. The better scenario, and the one I thought would play out, would have been more short covering by the Commercials into a capitulation of the Large Spec longs, which would make the Large Specs net short. That would have provided the short covering fuel for a future rally, but that's not the case. So the only good news for the bulls is the small specs took it on the chin and are closer to being net short than they were, and they're the easiest to shake out. So there is definitely more room on the downside for the Commericals to push the Large and Small Spec longs to sell, and add to their shorts. Additionally, the Commercials have a decent long position they can sell if we get back near the $26 line, which is now massive resistance. You have to remember that since all these contracts roll forward, the vast majority of the current Large Spec longs are deep in the red, taking into account that a lot of it was offset by short position profits. What I was looking for was the large and small specs to slowly become net short, providing the fuel for the next leg up, as they are always the most overextended in the wrong direction when the Commercials turn the tide. But that is not the case at all, which means there should be some significant downside left. So while I'm currently flat (because I'm back to writing unless a really obvious setup happens like a spike lower stop-run that gets bought up, or a back test of $26), I still think an overall $18/$19-ish target is in the cards before we ever break significantly above $26 again.
I also want to mention manipulation and a comex default. First, as someone who pays very close daily attention (when I'm not writing) to silver, I agree completely that the market is manipulated by a few small players who have massive purchasing power and can move the market because there are no position limits. However, that is true in every market that has no position limits. The only reason there's so much hub-bub in gold and silver is b/c it's the only commodity that the masses own through physical possession, so they complain when it moves down. And while it would be WAY easier to trade with position limits that prevented this degree of manipulation, which is amplified by HFT's, there will always be SOME manipulation in the markets because someone has to make the market. That's how they stay in business and allow the markets to exist. Meaning, someone has to take the other side of the short the Yen trade. WHY would anyone do that? To me, it makes more sense to learn how they manipulate the market and be on the right side of it as much as you can. And you don't even have to be correct about the underlying positioning. I was spot on about this move down in silver from December, but I was wrong on who would be the driving force of it. Once I saw the weakness and the breakdown of those wedges I knew that someone on the short side was going to make sure we pushed through the $26 level to prick the pain threshold of the longs and force them to sell. At some point we should get close to back testing that $26 level and the large spec longs who are deep in the red will have some pressure to sell there, especially with the looming possibility of Bernanke stepping down. There will also be a lot of new shorts coming in anywhere near there. So it should take an event of some kind to push through $26. Maybe the debt ceiling. I doubt it, but you never know. More likely would be an increase of QE or a supply shortage in the physical market that in turns drives the paper market. It would be better, though, if the Large and Small specs got net short and overextended to the downside first. Otherwise, they'll run out of buying power and the Commercials will cap it before we get very far. About that Comex default... Just my opinion, but I don't think crushing the price of gold and silver is any indication of behind-the-scenes trouble about a Comex or LBMA default. I would think that such an event would get a lot of behind-the-scenes attention and the way to delay it is not to crush the price; as we've seen that actually makes the situation worse. The signs of trouble on that front would be margin increases. If there's a serious threat of default, I think the best defense would be to reduce open interest by shaking people out through increasing the margins A LOT. Personally, I don't get upset by the Commercials and Market Makers manipulating the market as much as when they manipulate it through margin increases like 2011. I understand the need for the first, and you can get on the right side of it, but the second is downright cheating. And if the price ever gets away from them again, why would anyone think it would be different next time? If it got really serious they can just change the rules like in the days of the Hunt brothers. That's why the big wealth transfer that Mike Maloney talks about, which is the main reason to hold physical metals, is only going to happen when there is a flight away from bonds and the dollar and banks. But unless that is self-inflicted through debt ceiling nonsense, I think Europe and Japan need to implode first. And while some of that money might flee to physical metals, the bulk of it will run to US bonds and the dollar, as much out of tradition and habit than anything. So it could be a lot longer for the great "revaluing" of metals to happen than any of us wants to think. Not that it has to play out this way by any means. If Bernanke truly does step down and some Captain Hawk comes on board (not likely while a Dem is president), then maybe they'll attempt to wind down QE first and the US bond market implodes. That absolutely will cause a rush to physical metals but not necessarily right away. The US will take awhile to default once interest rates start to rise. The point is that the big money managers can't just wait around for that end game scenario to happen. They have to chase yield and post numbers quarterly and they are clearly biased toward income producing assets with only a few of them even allocating a small percentage to physical metal. When the tide turns, when asset managers start acquiring more physical b/c the threat of a US default becomes more real, when more countries start demanding possession of their physical, when a floor is put in the physical market by real supply shortages, then the shipped will have fully sailed. It may take awhile still, and I am always reassessing my biases in case I'm wrong, and there should still be some more downside after a potential bounce, and we could move sideways between $18 and $26 for quite awhile, but eventually, I believe, that silver and gold will keep reestablishing higher floors, and it will keep getting overextended and selling-off back to the higher next floor, overextended and selling-off...until eventually the great flight to metals occurs. I just wonder if the Commercials will force the large and small specs to get net short before the bottom is finally in.
Thanks for sharing your insights. Pretty discouraging from a miner's perspective though.
Congratulations! You've just single-handedly driven up the value of well-constructed paragraphs to all-time highs.
Robert Johnson on the Oligarchs: “They’re All Standing on the Deck of the Titanic Looking in Each Other’s Eyes” http://po.st/VnhWsJ via @po_st
Did anyone else notice in the video that Bart Chilton was assembling the TPS reports without a cover sheet ?!?!
Why hasn't Lumbergh said anything to him?
A better question than documentary.
I watched this excellent program 2 nights ago. Two notes: Jeff Christian, one of those interviewed, is a tool for the bullion banks. It was Christian who inadvertently testified (blurted out) for the CFTC in March, 2010 that bullion is leveraged 100 paper ounces to 1 physical ounce. That's the bullion bank's own mouthpiece talking. This was the same CFTC hearing where Andy Maguire did his real-time predictions of real-time market manipulation, which the CFTC ignored. 2nd note: This program marks a stark turnaround in Canadian state-run lapdog media coverage of the illegal naked short selling. CBC has never been a fan of the gold manipulation story, and has been in fact hostile to GATA and others over the years. Recall CBC brainiac Brigette Brown's famous piece circa 2009 saying "gold is backed by nothing, but the dollar is backed by the US government." (Later scrubbed from YouTube). Hats off (tin-foil and fedoras) to CBC for stepping up, if only for one program.
I honestly did not see anything new, as this focused more on history than on muck raking. Our watchdog came across as incompetent, but what else is new? The thing that might anger Canadiens the most is that their gold vaults are empty! But the again, the same is probably true at Fort Knox.
So, it's TEOTWAWKI.....
Price of gold?? who knows.
Those who have it will do better than those that don't.
Not that hard, really.
Tyler, you're the conduit of information./ I respect you for that.
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Daallo-Airlines/Ilyushin-Il-18V/0592308/M/
Hard to say my friends. I think I might have finally convinced the Russian woman. She spent a few hours on this one and this is worth the read.
http://www.boatingaccidentnews.com/russia-and-chechnya-roots-of-the-conflict/
Who knew? Don't we all know?
Jesus, Zerohedge has become a 24-7 gold informercial.Want the latest on gold? go to zero hedge. Need to a new conspiracy to explain why gold is getting crushed, go to zero hedge. Want a reason to stay in gold, or buy gold? go to zero hedge.
When dicks on cnbc do this, it's called "talking your book" .
Zerocredge
Another disgruntled APPLfanboy heard from? Or just enjoy reading the flash crash/HFT stories more?
Where in MN? I might buy you lunch Jim in MN.
I dig the macro stories a lot. I am a believer in the world clusterfuck thesis. my 'zerocredge' thing was a dick thing to say. I don't really mean that. just so many gold posts. A WTF moment. I don't hate gold. I own it. it has it's place...but I don't think there isn't anything special about *anything* that trades in the futures market. Gold is permanently at the mercy of the futures' bubblenomics and I don't see how it is somehow different. It can't be...whatever shred of fundementals that once existed are permenently displaced because gold can be 20x leveraged by anyone. Debt bubbles, just like everything else. We can cry about it, but until it stops trading w/ mega hyper leverage, it's not that much different than shares of Apple or buying corn futures. Heck, les pauls or fucking beenie babies or whatever are probably a safer store of value because they aren't daytraded.
I guess what I really tell people who seem interested is, stay diversified but adjust all your return expectations down...to zero real over time. This due to corruption and Japanification. You only get to keep what you yourself put away...if you're lucky. Bill Gross pretty much says the same thing--zero real return across all major paper asset classes. Sadly for us all, that implies that consumption must drop to accomodate higher savings.
Like it or not, TANSTAAFL, even if not TEOTWAWKI. And yes I blame the evil global elites.
In other words the whole damn thing IS a Zero Hedge.
To me gold/PMs/real assets serve a dual role, both as diversification and yes, as a valuable way of effectively boycotting the system to that extent. Physical that is. I don't really care what the 'price' is. I just know in my gut that my family would be better off if there was some in the vicinity twenty years from now.
Gold ain't magic, but it is powerful. IMHO. Now, oil, that shit is magic.
Jim MN,
Oil. With consumption falling, what of oil?
Perhaps another thread, another day...but the price is remarkably strong and seems likely to stay that way. More of a China v. Saudi dynamic with the US as bystander.
The vid can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHTuP3AwPcU