Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle 84 comments
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Word on the street is that previously silent victims of precious metal manipulation are now, for the first time, grouping together to do battle in the courts of the United States of America. Class action lawsuits are being planned against the suspected manipulators of the gold and silver markets. What is the basis of the lawsuits?
About two weeks ago, on August 18, 2008, I published an article titled “The Disconnect Between Supply and Demand in Gold & Silver Markets”. In the article, I explained how relatively small amounts of money can be strategically used to collapse the price of multi-billion dollar commodities markets, such as gold and silver. In short, unscrupulous manipulators can use either fictional silver/gold, or gold “swapped” to them by Central Banks, to create an artificial supply. This fake “supply” can then be strategically used to attack the price, on the futures markets, which, in turn, will profoundly affect the spot price. Collapsing the spot price can, in turn, destroy investor confidence, market stability, and the willingness of more conservative investors to take large permanent positions in precious metals. After collapsing a market, using the techniques described, unscrupulous manipulators can buy back their short contracts, from shell-shocked long position holders, at a profit.
Soon after my article was published, hard evidence of a vast change in short positioning began to emerge. The first discovery was made by tireless silver market researcher, Ted Butler. The data he found led to yet more work, and, soon, similar activities were revealed in the gold market. All this begs the question. Why would a handful of banks suddenly have the infinite wisdom to take incredibly large short positions, immediately before the unexpected rise in the value of the U.S. dollar, and the collapse of precious metals prices? Remember, these are probably the same players who got us, and themselves, into the credit crisis.
We don’t yet know all the details, but the information uncovered so far, is already of great importance to holders of physical gold, shares in streetTracks Gold (GLD), iShares Silver Trust (SLV), and/or the various gold and silver mining companies, such as Newmont Mining (NEM), Goldcorp (GG), etc. According to Rob Kirby, a precious metals market analyst, the most recent CFTC positions report shows that:
…as of July 1, 2008, two U.S. banks were short 6,199 contracts of COMEX silver (30,995,000 ounces). As of August 5, 2008, two U.S. banks were short 33,805 contracts of COMEX silver (169,025,000 ounces), an increase of more than five-fold. This is the largest such position by U.S. banks I can find in the data, ever. Between July 14 and August 15th, the price of COMEX silver declined from a peak high of $19.55 (basis September) to a low of $12.22 for a decline of 38%.3 U.S. banks held a short position of 7,787 contracts (778,700 ounces) in July, and 3 U.S. banks held a short position of 86,398 contracts (8,639,800 ounces) in August, an eleven-fold increase and coinciding with a gold price decline of more than $150 per ounce. As was the case with silver, this is the largest short position ever by US banks in the data listed on the CFTC’s site.
[See “Wake-Up Call”]
The 3 banks in question are only the tip of the iceberg. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] does not group secondary controlled entities, like hedge funds and private equity groups, in the “bank” category, even though the funds may be wholly controlled by the banks. Beyond that, the visible portion of the futures market, though it has the most effect on the spot price, is not the biggest portion. A vastly greater unregulated inter-institutional market exists, and this market takes place inside so-called “dark pools”. The total short position taken by the alleged perpetrators, and the losses sustained by their potential victims, who include other institutions, is probably vastly greater than the researchers now realize.
Before we continue, it is important to understand what it means to take a “short” position in the futures market. The general concept is vaguely related to “shorting” stocks because, in both cases, you are betting that the price will go down. However, when you short stock, you borrow someone else’s shares, and, later, you buy them back, and replace the shares you sold. Issuing a futures short position, however, does not involve borrowing a long position, although it may involve borrowing the underlying commodity. Typically, a bank or futures dealer will sell a short position in, for example, silver or gold that it says is sitting in a vault somewhere. This alleged stockpile may have “leased” from either a bigger bank, or, in the case of gold, even one of the central banks, like the Federal Reserve or the ECB. As I mentioned, back on August 18th, it doesn’t really matter if the metal really exists, because less than 1% of all futures contracts will ever see delivery, and the CFTC never does any vault audits.
In other words, being “short” in the futures market means that you hold the opposite end of somebody’s long position. The “short” promises to deliver by a certain date, but knows that he won’t have to, because, as previously stated, less than 1% of all futures contracts are ever delivered. European futures markets overtly and honestly tell you that the “contracts” are settled on paper, only. However, COMEX keeps up the fakery, and its prestige, size and ability to influence the spot price arises out of this fiction. A rule, requiring futures contract writers to maintain a stockpile consisting of 90% of whatever commodity they are writing on, was established years ago, in an effort to keep the market honest. It is not enforced in any meaningful way.
Normally, when supply exceeds demand, prices must fall. Investors, however, unlike jewelry fabricators, electronics manufacturers, etc., do not physically use, and, in many cases involving the precious metals, don’t ever physically even see the gold and silver metal that they ostensibly buy. Their agents just store it for the future. This unusual set of circumstances allows for the use of fictional gold and silver to create fake supplies of the metal, which can be used to divert investment demand. The futures contract writer may not even know the gold or silver underlying his contracts really doesn’t exist. Only the vault owner really knows. CFTC would know if they bothered to do unannounced vault inspections, but they don’t do any. It has never once bothered to check a vault.
As a result, there is nothing to prevent paper-fake claims to fictional silver or gold. Indeed, there is every reason to create fake claims, because the lessor of fictional precious metals can give a very lower lease rate and still make lots of money. If, on the other hand, you really have to go to the expense of buying real gold and silver, and putting it into a real vault, you must charge more.
On almost every day, with the exception of a few, since January 1, 2008 (227 days days to be exact), lessees of silver have been paid a fee for borrowing silver, because the lease rates are lower than LIBOR. This is known as “negative leasing rates.”
The alleged vaults essentially pay you to lease their silver, because you can “sell” the metal, take the paper money, deposit it, and make a profit on the difference. These payments are happening in the midst of a real market so short on precious metal that the U.S. Mint has run out of both gold and silver, and the Royal Canadian Mint is going around, hat in hand, asking for gold, as described in my other articles. This need to subsidize leases implies that there is a major shortage of silver metal. For the moment, refiners, like Johnson Matthey, in Salt Lake City, have transferred all available resources into meeting the needs of physical users like the electronics industry and jewelry manufacturers. They and, probably, others have stopped production of all retail sized blanks and bars. The U.S. Mint, for example, has run out of both silver and gold. However, as the shortage deepens, the wholesale market will also eventually go into shortage. At that point, the price will take off, as the open market becomes aware of the situation.
At least one lawyer, and a horde of market commentators, have taken note of the fact that the sum total of COMEX silver futures contracts is many times larger than the world’s known supply. It is very close to impossible for all the claims to be real. As noted in my prior article, in 2007, Morgan Stanley paid millions of dollars to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged it had never bought silver and other precious metals for its clients. Instead, the complaint alleged that the bank, one of the most prestigious in the world, simply listed client silver holdings on monthly statements, charged big fees for storing it. According to the complaint, the Morgan Stanley silver was fictional, and its customers were paying for storing nothing but air. There wasn’t any real precious metal in the vaults. Fake claims upon precious metals, allegedly stored in vaults, therefore, are not merely the figment of conspiracy theorist imagination.
A dramatic and unexpected rise in the dollar was the initial, but not the only cause, for the sudden fall in precious metals prices. That the U.K. and Europe are joining the USA in a recession does not explain the dollar surge. The depth of European contraction does not compare, and will never compare, to the devastation being wrought inside the U.S. economy. Furthermore, common sense tells us that, though the world economy may be falling apart, the particular paper currency that is the basis of that economy would not be particularly attractive to investors.
If we look behind the double-speak market chatter, however, the true reason behind the recent dollar surge is clear. In March, a group of central banks planned a huge and coordinated currency intervention to buy dollars, in the world currency markets, to support the U.S. dollar. No doubt, these same players have finally acted on their plans. Beyond that, in August, China got the blessing of the US Administration to impose new currency controls, "forcing its commercial banks to build up large dollar reserves, using them as arms-length proxies in a renewed campaign of exchange rate intervention.”
Although, in times past, this obvious bid to lower the value of the yuan would have caused outrage in the Bush Administration, now, there is no criticism at all. In addition, recently, there has been a very large overall increase, in the buying of American treasury bills by foreign central banks, generally. The increase exceeds that needed to simply offset the trade deficit. The buying happened right before the value of the U.S. dollar started surging. (See here (pdf warning).)
None of these factors can stand alone, of course, but, together, they constitute a coordinated and highly effective effort to prop up the dollar. The U.S. dollar’s upward surge is obviously NOT based upon fundamentals. It is based on coordinated currency intervention. The rally is being used, by our Orwellian double-speak Federal Reserve, and its coordinating foreign central bankers, to “break the back” of anti-dollar, pro-gold market sentiment.
What they fail to realize is that the dollar is not merely the victim of negative market psychology. It is the victim of many years of corruption, within the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, including repeated FMOC action that has sacrificed the good of the nation, in favor of a small group of favored Wall Street bankers. When the coordinated efforts relax, the U.S. dollar, being an incredibly flawed currency, will fall deeply. We must remember that there is an unsustainable $750 billion dollar per year current account deficits, enormous federal budget deficits, and a failing economy that continues to fall, deeper and deeper, into a broad downturn.
The hollowed out economy of the United States of America is no longer efficient enough to sell manufactured goods into the world marketplace, unless its currency is allowed to deeply depreciate. Therefore, this currency intervention cannot continue permanently. Manufacturing for export has been, up until the intervention, the only bright spot in the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve and its friends are now busy destroying that bright spot, in the interest of helping a few favored banking institutions. Part of the reason for the timing of the current dollar intervention may be a desire to help Lehman Brothers executives sell their company to the Koreans for a nice price. This attitude, however, and the Fed’s consistent actions in favoring some financial institutions over others, permeates Fed thinking, and has led to the current crisis. In the long run, the same thinking will lead to the long term downfall of the U.S. dollar as an international medium of exchange. The abuse of public funds to favor one institution over another is an important reason to shut down the Federal Reserve, permanently.
When the currency intervention ends, a new round of U.S. dollar depreciation will begin. The currency will fall much lower than before. In their turn, gold and silver will rise much higher than anyone is now imagining. Now is an excellent time for dollar holders to unload dollar denominated assets. Those assets will start heavily depreciating when currency intervention ends, and gold and silver will go up. If you buy precious metals now, the world’s central bankers will be paying part of your bill. If you wait, you will have to pay the entire bill yourself, which, simply put, means you will pay a higher price.
We are currently in a “sweet spot” for buying precious metals, because, as the world’s economy progressively gets into worse condition, and as central banks, all over the world, progressively loosen monetary policy in response, more and more paper money will be chasing the same amount of real goods.
But, let’s get back to the discussion of the 3 perpetrator banks, who wrote all those shorts, right before the dollar began taking off. They probably had inside information about the currency intervention. By taking advantage of it, they achieved several purposes.
First, by collapsing precious metal pricing, they shell-shocked most “long” futures participants. This allowed the perpetrators to unwind tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars (when we add the invisible, but much larger, derivative trading world of inter-institutional “dark pools”) worth of short positions that they had written at much higher prices. The unwound positions are much larger than anyone now realizes because they include, not only direct bank assets directly, but, also, off-balance sheet entities – short positions owned indirectly, through controlled entities that are not be formally listed as “banks” inside CFTC’s position papers.
Second, they were able to carry out their own wishes and that of the politician-economists at the Federal Reserve. There is an ongoing need to suppress gold and silver prices so as to support dollar hegemony. The Fed’s primary dealer system runs a closed show, in which the U.S. dollar must be the dominant world currency. If it loses that status, they lose their ability to profoundly affect and manipulate markets worldwide, including, most importantly, on the American stock market. The Federal Reserve and its client banks do not enjoy unfettered access to unlimited amounts of gold, and the U.S. Treasury no longer holds any silver at all. So, they must settle for inducing heavy crashes, now and again. While this technique cannot stop the rise in value of the monetary metals, nor their inevitable return to the basis of international exchange, it can and does slow that rise. High levels of volatility discourage highly conservative investors from taking large permanent positions in gold and silver, as all financial institutions and people always did, prior to the time that the price became volatile, during less manipulated times.
Third, and finally, they did what most people do with illegal inside information that can be converted to cash. They made a lot of money by taking very large short positions immediately before a known price crash. Direct profit to their bottom line, not including the unwinding of other short positions, amounted to several billion dollars, at minimum.
Market manipulation is, of course, a felony level offense. We don’t yet know who the perpetrators are, but it is reasonable to assume, from the fact that they were privy to the most sensitive information, that they are very well connected. That is the only way they would have known of the upcoming central bank currency intervention. In all likelihood, therefore, no help will come from the U.S. Justice Department or the CFTC. Some official help, however, might come from some of the more honest and aggressive of the state district attorneys, and/or attorney generals. State based criminal charges could be brought, based upon violation of state blue sky laws, regardless of the refusal of federal authorities to act. For the most part, however, victims will need to lead the charge, possibly with a RICO based civil class action that could include hefty awards of punitive or triple damages.
Disclosure: Author owns physical gold, holds a long position in GLD & SLV.
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This article has 84 comments:
The bull lasted 8 years and we now are in disinflation with a strengthening dollar. WAKE UP
Phony gold is fraud regardless of the apparent strength of the counterparty minting it, and the Comex harms its brand by not policing the abuse; and
Commodity speculation of any kind is not a suitable activity for FDIC insured banks.
As far as the dollar bull comment. The dollar is strengthening because the ECB is PRINTING MONEY on their central bank computer keyboards and using it to buy US Dollars because Uncle Ben called Trichet and told him to do it or risk a global financial meltdown.
I just can't get over how people still believe in these silly charts, waves, graphs, TA's. They mean NOTHING. The entire market is rigged and has been rigged since the day Nathan Rothschild took over the LSE after he faked everyone into believing the English lost against Napoleon.
People are getting exactly what they deserve.....because they allow their gov'ts to permit this type of activity.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them,will deprive the people of all their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. - Thomas Jefferson"
Hey all you deflationist out there. I suggest you pull out those $100 bills you've been stuffing under your mattresses and take a close hard look at them. Notice anything different over the last twenty years.
I'll give you a clue, its in the serial numbers.
When the serial number on bars of gold start increasing at the same rate as the serial number on the $100USD, I'll call the gold bull over
Until then enjoy you're paper bonds, stocks and dollars. I guess at the end of the day you'll always have one advantage over us gold bugs. You can always burn your paper notes to keep warm in the winter.
If you think the gold market is NOT manipulated, you should still flee from it. As dot-com, real estate, China stock, and now commodities investors have recently learned, nothing goes up forever. To expect for anything to do so is naive. If you're lucky, gold might have another 8 - 10 year boom in a couple of decades. In the meantime, it just might appreciate about as much as a money market fund and cost you storage, insurance, etc. fees.
But it's soooo pretty.
The Fed and their client banks don't have unlimited resources. I, however, have unlimited time. I never buy on the foolish futures market, and I will hold my gold, and never sell. It will be inherited by my children. If they keep suppressing precious metals prices, I will buy more.
If they do keep suppressing the price, at the present rate, they will need real metal to do it, because they will soon run out of weak handed hedge funds to scare. If they are forced to use real metal, then the U.S. and European gold hoards will be reduced quickly, just as they wore out their silver hoards.
Just as they are forced to use fake-only claims for silver (because no metal is left at Fort Knox), they will also be forced to use fake-only claims for gold.
Besides, if you avoid a market because you are trading against the government, you couldn't invest in stocks, either. The manipulators not only manipulate gold and silver, but also the stock market. Anyone who thinks, for example, that stocks like Merrill Lynch would naturally surge on earnings report disasters, as they did, back in October, is very foolish indeed. What happened, then, was clearly the plunge protection team at work, trying to prop up ML and Citigroup and its other members share prices. The media reported it as "celebrating the fact that the losses weren't deeper." How stupid can you get. The stock market is obviously manipulated.
So far, this year, however, in spite of their best efforts to pump up the stock prices of their member firms, C, ML, GS, JPM and all the others have depreciated more than any commodity. PPT member, Bear Stearns, depreciated from $150 per share, almost down to zero, for example. Stockholders were lucky to get $10 per share. At one point, they were only going to get $2. One or two of these big banks will go bankrupt before this credit crisis is over. Even the former Chief Economist of the IMF says so.
In short, the manipulators are not all-powerful, and they can and do lose. After the lawsuits are launched, and are successful, eventually justice will prevail, a lot of wrongdoers will go to jail, others will pay billions in damages. It will become very difficult to create paper-fake gold and silver, once the rules are enforced.
So, as far as I can see, if you are looking long term, and don't get sore over the temporary attacks, the future of the precious metals is very bright. Besides, it is only a matter of time before the Fed and other Central Banks realize that gold and silver are not direct threats to paper money unless they cause it to happen with stupid policies of endless money printing. They can increase the value of paper money, honestly, simply by not printing as much. They don't need to attack gold and silver, even though, right now, they apparently think that they do.
If gold were a commodity, and not real money, would you be seeing world leaders,past and present worrying like in this video?
www.youtube.com/watch?...
Are there no longer any decent honest people
left in the USA or the world?
I hope the Lawyers go after these Firms, Companies,
People and Government Institutions/Banks etc.
Hopefully they will all spend along time in jail.
I believe it was in the 1980's when they found a
scam/manipulation on Silver that precautions
would be taken so his kind of thing would never
happen again. But, when people get greedy they
will do almost anything for the almighty dollar
whether it's legal or illegal and to hell with
anyone else if they get hurt in the long run.
"After claiming last week that our vault staff have been as busy as at any time over the past 20 years, we have had a few requests for data to substantiate this assertion. We cannot show the past 20 years data, but we have collected daily sales to India over the past 18 months. We put together this series to illustrate the recent strength of UBS's gold sales to India.
Note that we have turned this into an index to maintain confidentiality, but considering that we are one of the top players in selling physical gold to the Indian market, with a good geographical spread of consignment location and overall market share of between 10 and 20% we believe that this is a very representative display of just how strong recent sales have been. At the start of the series, in early 2007, demand was reasonable, but had been so since September 2006. A better description of our sales then was 'sold and steady' rather than 'spectacular': the near-absence of jewellery demand between August 07 and July 08 (apart from a few brief flurries in April and May this year) left the Indian market largely de-stocked, hence the tremendous pick up in demand over the past five weeks following the gold price correction.
This demand - running at 5-10 times the average of 2007 levels, was not confined to India: note the similarly strong demand reported in the story about demand from Abu Dhabi. We do not, unfortunately, have such good statistics to illustrate non Indian demand. The liquidation seen from the Comex and OTC market was largely absorbed by this physical demand (jewellery and physical investment pieces). Physical demand continues as of Monday with a near-record day of Indian demand prompted by the dollar and crude induced sell-off of the gold price. Yet long liquidation has stopped ceased after a near-record volume of Comex liquidation over the past six weeks as we reported in our Metals' Daily. This combination of heavy long liquidation and stellar physical demand remains the main reasoning behind our strong call in gold (although supported also by a technical view on the dollar from our Technical Strategy colleagues)."
And, from Reuters:
Reuters reports that gold sales in Abu Dhabi soared 300 percent in volume and almost 250 percent in value in August from a year earlier…"It was the best month the market has seen in almost 30 years and it compensated for any drops we have seen earlier this year," Abu Dhabi Gold and Jewellery Group Chairman Tushar Patni told Reuters.
And the demand in Turkey has also surged. Turkey's gold imports jumped by 70 percent in August to 47.2 tonnes, the highest monthly figure ever recorded, data from the Istanbul Gold Exchange (IAB) showed on Tuesday. Bullion imports to Turkey, one of the top three consumers of the metal, shot up compared to 10.7 tonnes in July."
You can read more detail here:
www.fxstreet.com/funda...
If you ever believe the government cares about you , forget it , They Don't!
Going to serious issues, bashers on gold are in massive attack just because they take note of the signs of their novicemasterbasher at kitco, providing them ammunitions via dowjones. At this juncture, when everyone thinks that mining sector is doomed, that's exactly the right time for contrarians to take note and act accordingly.
Philman - spend the dough to change Washington. When the CFTC is a personal pet to enrich House of Representative members, the SEC is lamed and tamed to do very little to nothing and Justice doesn't exist except for minorities, you have a broken country. The looting will continue until like other times in history the middle class has had enough and has a voter revolution or a physical one. Three times in history the reelection rate dipped below 90%. One of those years was 1933, when about 180 House Reps were voted out of office. It didn't fix the Great Depression, Emporer Hirohito did that, but it ended some of the core corruption baked into the system at the time.
In light of this info with the current debt situation with all the loans that have been paid out and how it effects the economy, I find it all a bit unnerving.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
While none of this activity will ever be proven , the dollar fundamentals have not at all improved .....and the support campaign will not be sustainable ...Gold and silver will rebound to new record highs ...not because they are especially dood ,,,,,but rather because the dollar is inherently so bad ....Only the painful reality of a sharp dollar devaluation can possibly restore order to trade balance
The USA enjoys an enormous credit line ,,,,but not unlimited !
Endless amounts of points to consider thou,
1. With out a conspiracy how would you get people to take paper for real goods?
2. I read 2 articles and they both referred to gold eagles as a novelty?
3. If Gold/Eagles are a novelty why are there bullion Banks?
4. 1933 the US made gold illegal to own why? involves a lot of people= conspiracy
5. As I read you debunking Ted Butler saying there is no conspiracy if I would apply your same analogy you proving Ted wrong doesn’t prove you right on the no conspiracy theory either.
6. As for 15 Years is a short time in banking terms they loan paper for 30 years. And this paper game is about 700 years old. So you only need a chart with 2 things 1 Gold’s buying power 1oz = x amount of bread loafs, 2 How many times paper money has failed. If your money/paper is only backed by words I would bet there lies. involves a lot of people= conspiracy
7. Selling or Storing something you don’t have on a large scale taking cash for it and not winding up in jail would involve a lot of people= conspiracy.
8. Media LOL Next
9. Education LOL Next
10. Exchange Rates involves a lot of people= conspiracy
11. PPT involves a lot of people= conspiracy
I could go on and on as I am sure you know, my point is Ted Butler may not be totalty correct thou he is at least 50% right there is a conspiracy.
Remember its what you don’t know or understand that’s gets you “Warren Buffet”
“me” People all ask me how I am going to get my money out of my gold, I ask them how there going to get there gold out of paper?
Once things get fully underway, I think it will certainly be possible to put some of them in jail for a long time. Enron's crooks were also very powerful in their day. Here's how I think it will happen.
The private lawyers will go to court on the "complaint for discovery". It will be titled "In Re: The matter of Gold & Silver Manipulation" or something like that. They will get the judge to order CFTC to hand over names and numbers. In the process, they may need to agree to keep that information confidential for a set period of time. But, we will know the names in short order, because when the actual lawsuit is filed, the lawyers must name the defendants. because
Then, through a legal process called "discovery", subpeonas, depositions and other legal methods will ferret out the truth, just like in Enron case. Remember, 99.9% of the people who work at these banks are innocent of any wrongdoing. The bad apples are probably no more than 0.01% or less of bank employees. They just happen to have the power to do evil. But, the 99.9% are needed to carry out such frauds, even though they don't know what they are participating in. The 99.9% keep records of what they've done, so it will not be hard to unveil the whole dirty business, once things get underway.
I think they might even eventually unveil the Federal Reserve for what it really is -- a tool of these bad apples. In the end, when all the evidence has been ferreted out, and the headlines are blaring from every television set, radio, and newspaper, the Federal government will have no choice but to join in, and prosecute. Otherwise, they will be thrown out of office. Besides, most politicians in America are not overtly corrupt. They are usually just very very stupid, and manipulated by corrupt people who contribute to their campaigns. But, they usually don't even realize they are being manipulated.
Remember, we're talking about America. No matter how corrupt it has become, the founding fathers set up a wonderful system of checks and balances that can be self-renewing. That is our strength in the face of a terrible situation, where such corrupt people have taken control of our nation. But, I believe, now that I know that people are finally starting to take action, that the evildoers will get their comeuppance!
The government won't prosecute these offenders; just look at the sub-slime credit fraud thieves who are laughing all the way to the bank.
You might also include: www.resourceinvestor.c...
www.investmentrarities...
Actually this is what's going on: There's a need to recruit a new generation of loonies and make them so angry about government with manipulation fantasies that they will buy gold all the way down in a bear market as they did from 1980 to 1999. They hire gold newsletter writers and other hustlers to help them fleece the ignoranti. It always works. Just like politics eh.......:)
How should I do this, to get the BEST price.
Should I sell it at night NY time, where only ding & dong are ready at the trading desks, and dump it all at ONCE.....
IS that a GOOD iDEA,,,??
And then MR. burn anke in HELL, should I invest that paper money...
should I buy 2% treasury's with inflation runing at 4-12%
Or should I place it on re......black at Lost vegas...??
Damn....it landed on........0 . . .. . . . .(GREEN)
DON'T PLAY, A RIGGED GAME.
With all due respect to your analysis of coming events in a "supposedly fair" legal US legal system, the government controls the military, and the military will trump US courts. So who will win? The Federal Reserve is flooding the world with dollars in order to FORCE other governments to back them in thei suppression of real money, (gold and silver). How many Tianamen Squares must happen worldwide before this is apparent?To paraphrase from the movie :Cool Hand Luke"; "You got your mind right, Philman"?
Most of our government officials, contrary to popular belief, are still not inherently corrupt. They are honest people, with big egos, who are, unfortunately, usually not particularly intelligent. Yes, they are influenced by lobbyists, but this is because they are stupid and think that a few favors doesn't mean they are doing something wrong. But, if it is clear that someone is being prosecuted for criminal activity, they are not going to defend him. I know a lot of public officials, and none of them are more corrupt than you or me. They are just stupid.
I also know a lot of officers in the U.S. military, and 99% would never obey an order to attack their own people. If it were so easy to order the military to fight on behalf of corrupt leadership, don't you think Richard Nixon would have done it. He couldn't then, and President Bush couldn't now. But, Bush is just another example, although extreme, of a stupid person who is misled by others. Actually, our ego maniacal politicians exist in both parties. Do you think that the extreme egotist, Bill Clinton, would have ever left office if he thought he could order the U.S. military to keep him in power?
This type of speculation, saying ridiculous things, like that the military will attack the people, feeds the claims that those of us who believe in hard money, like gold and silver, are a bunch of crazies.
Prosecution of guilty perps, who have benefited, just like Martha Stewart, except at a much bigger scale, from inside information, would be no different than prosecuting her, or the Enron's executives.
Of course, WE know what side our bread is buttered. So, I'll race you (Philman, Bowman711, bearfund, jt, and the rest of you KNOWLEDGEABLE souls) to the nearest resources to stock up on more gold and silver (remember, ALWAYS take physical possession, right?) and we'll let the "others" just waste their time heaping praise on the almighty dollar!
(Full Disclosure: I love this country (USA)! I served it honorably for 40 years, 3 months, 7 days! I would be ECSTATIC if the dollar were a force to be reckoned with on this planet, but it is just not to be because our government is run by egotistical, greedy bastards that care only about themselves, and do not care about this nation, or YOU!)
You folks who want to sue them - are you nuts? Let them continue and enjoy the ride. You lose money only when you sell during these engineered downturns. Need to sell a portion to pay for living expenses? Did you habve to sell at lower than normal prices? That's comes with the territory. If you sell your entire holding because of price drops, you haven't understood the fundamentals. Time to brush up. Do you think Indians are unhappy because of this price drop? Or the Vietnamese?
I remember Morgan Stanley's lawsuit. There's a PRIME example of an actual conspiracy that was uncovered. Morgan Stanley had been taking money from investors, claiming to have bought silver, and charging these investors for storage fees on silver they never bought.
And this went on for *DECADES*.
Nobody talked about it, it wasn't insiders that exposed it, it was an outsider that demanded to know what the serial numbers on his silver bars were who was prompted by Ted Butler to do so. When Morgan Stanley wasn't able to produce the serial numbers, this investor brought them to court.
There's a lot of conspiracy theories that are wrong, but they aren't all wrong.
When Butler wrote articles urging people to actually verify that 3rd parties were storing precious metals, he was called nuts, a conspiracy loony, everything in the book.
But he was right.
He might not be right about everything, but people who are dimissive about the possibility of dirty dealings are just 3rd party colluders. Dirty dealings happen all the time, and it's your duty to expose them.
There's a lot of people who believe Fort Knox doesn't have any gold left in the vaults - because there hasn't been an audit for 50 years. How do you know the government is telling the truth when they assure the public all the gold that was taken from citizens in the 1930's is still there?
Because you trust this government? This government that has lied us into war, that conducted operation Ajax and PBsuccess, that had the Tuskegee trials? That at one point was considering implementing Operation Northwoods, that lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
I have to ask you naysayers, are you entirely ingorant of history, or are you just stupid?
In the end, the current US order is just like the old Soviet Union, appearing strong, but underneath there is very little to back it up. Political discontent, corruption, social strife, economic manipulation, and irresponsible foreign and domestic policy is poised to break an already weakened establishment. I hope we have the wisdom to return to true capitalism and freedom, as we will soon have the technological capability to enter an age of unimaginable prosperity for all.
Second: deflation or not, most commodities get used up at an ever faster clip. recycling recovers some, but by no means all of those consumed metals. For people looking just a quarter or a year into the future, it will not matter - until it does. but for all others, the writing is there, clearly: unreplaceable, increasingly scarce and ofeten strategically important resources are getting consumed and in that course destroyed (gone forever) at wharp speed. I can well imagine that a few years from now the mining and oil companies will refuse to accept the paper futures markets as benchmark for real commodity transactions.
silver will almost be gone completely 60-70 years from now, and with completely, I mean completely. mines exhausted, stockpiles depleted, no major discoveries anymore because it has all been discovered and mined by then. the price per ounce will be astronomical by that time.
10years from now people might start to realize that in earnest - watch out above. you need not put 20% of your savings in silver- i would not advise that (even though i might do myself). But 5% in any case you should hold in PHYSICAL SILVER. It will be the ultimate diversification and protection - much better than goldwhich hasn't been consumed in any significant manner, hence it is all still there.
"Yes, they are influenced by lobbyists, but this is because they are stupid and think that a few favors doesn't mean they are doing something wrong."
Sorry Philman, ignorance is no excuse for corruption.
Nothing goes straight up (except real estate ha! ha! ha!) everday.
Corrections are healthy. I would be concerned if the commodity markets went up, up and away. Then we would be facing another dot.com and real estate bubble.
Patience is the key here. Precious metals will resume their upward momentum with a vengeance. The dollar is fininshed.
Here is two little videos, for those of you who think our government is capable of manipulation and do not know just how much.
If you watch these you will be taking the red pill. If you love the current state of affairs and think that the war is a great thing may want to not watch and thus take the blue pill. I warn you that once you watch these you may never be able to go back to the old way of thinking. Most of you do not have the backbone to watch to the end.
www.youtube.com/watch?...
www.youtube.com/watch?...
Tyrants hate a free press and they hate the internet. Silver and gold represent an autonomous money system. And here is where we intersect. Hate, hate, hate and hate. But tyrants are weak at this time. Like devils or cockroaches they must flee when the light is turned on. One grain of truth can destroy a mountain of lies, that is the nature of things.
But since tyrants and devils cannot work in the light, they must scheme in the dark. And 99% of their schemings are about control of your mind, why? Because if they cannot control autonomous systems, they can mess around with the inputs: mind control. Let's use the free market as an example. A free market is one of the most powerful autonomous systems to ever exist. The "invisible hand" of the free market allocates resources and decision making in a way that no tyrant or commitee of tyrants could ever hope to.
But a free market is really only made up of many little individuals, all acting in rational self-interest. But what happens if the actors become irrational? If a small number do so then they will be taken out by the others who are still rational. But what if a large number or even the majority become irrational? Welcome to the United States of mass mind-control.
Do you want to take back your country from the satanic mind controllers? Would you like to restore the autonomous systems that made this country great? One of the most powerful things you can do is really very small and simple. Just simply start buying physical silver. Silver is still money even though the mind controllers have told you it isn't. Governments of the earth have stockpiled it since the dawn of civilization, nearly 50 billion ounces of it. Yet now it is all gone. Why? Well, the conspiracy is long and drawn out and takes many years of study to understand, but if you really want to know why go over to silver-investor.com and read the archives.
But for those without that kind of time let me summarize it all. They had to convince you that silver isn't money so that they could use it all up cheaply building their machines. Machines NEED silver, especially the electronic kind. Every single one of them in your house right now has a tiny bit of silver in it.
Now let me ask you a question. What is the main thing that 2.2 billion Chindians want right now? You got it, MACHINES. And machines need silver. But we have almost used it all up. Think about it. 50 billion ounces, accumulated by every kingdom on earth for millenia, now being irrecoverably depleted to create machines like the one you are reading these words on right now.
Now you know why Johnson-Mathey is closing shop. Why silver eagles are backlogged. Why shortages are appearing. THEIR GAME IS BEGINNING TO UNRAVEL. And you can have a part in it. Even if you just go and buy one silver dime and sock it away YOU HAVE HELPED THE CAUSE.
If just one million Americans went and bought a thousand ounces of silver and TOOK DELIVERY, it would be GAME OVER. That's one billion ounces, and they don't have that much, trust me. So please, strike a blow for freedom, help preserve our autonomous systems, help bring the tyrants to their knees. BUY PHYSICAL SILVER!!!
I have inquired about my proposed scenario to several people and apart from the usual notes of discouragement from many I have called several brokerages that will work to set up futures accounts and get inconsistant answers to the following questions.
If I take delivery, do they deliver or do I have to pick up. If I have to pick up...from where do I go? One brokerage said I will get an official piece of paper/certificate and that they consider that delivery...ha ha..thats a good one. Another brokerage said I would have to travel to New York to pick up my silver. Another said any Federal Depository. Could you give me a tip on who to contact?
If I get delivery..what do they deliver? 100 oz. JM bars would be best but I am afraid they would give me 1000 oz. bars which as far as I can tell are not as liquid...I mean who would I sell to....most coin stores do not stock or sell those and I really do not see 1000 oz. bars on E-bay. Can I specify what I want delivered? What does the COMEX store?...besides paper.
I hope to take advantage of this spread and thus fund my additional silver purchases by taking my profit in silver and repeat.
I believe if everyone did this true price discovery would occure....1 contract at a time. Maybe you could make this an article...akin to a reverse boycott of the COMEX...a COMEX run on delivery...1 contract at a time. Just a thought.
As an anecdote ...I was recently filled on an order of 16 JM 100 oz. bars @ 14.5, as luck would have it..from someone...through a coin shop that I have frequented for over a year now. I got filled buy a fluke. My coin dealer found someone in San Diego who supposedly, accidently took delivery of several contracts and wanted to unload them only in 10,000 oz./100bar lots for $1.00 over spot ($14.10 at the time) so he called me Wed. afternoon knowing I only wanted JM bars and this is what was delivered to this guy in San Diego who at that time still had some 800 bars. I did not have that much cash available so it took me a day to get another person to buy in. In that one day...the next morning, no less he had sold all 800 bars.
As luck would have it that same morning another seller showed up with 25 bars at $14.50 and I told the coin guy to purchase 16 with the money deposited for the prior failed deal. I called less than one hour later to change that to all 25 but was told the remaining 9 were already gone. WOW they go like hotcakes here! TraderTom can you contact me at searchnmn@yahoo.com. Thank You
Here's my idea. Are there any metallurgists out there? Someone trained in metallurgy could easily melt down the 1,000 ounce bars, and repour them into 100 ounce bars. Seems like the business opportunity of a lifetime, now that Johnson Matthey is ignoring the retail market.
Another business idea I have is selling 1,000 ounce bars on EBay. Obviously, I'm not going to get away with cheating my customers of 5% of their silver, like they will be cheating me, at the COMEX fantasy futures exchange. However, even when I factor this hidden cheat in, I can still make decent money by buying futures, and then selling the product on EBay.
Once silver prices start soaring again, I'll have to stop because I won't know when they will collapse them again, and I could lose money in the interim. But, so what? Whenever the crooks collapse the price, I can go back into business, again! You can sort of feel when they've sucked out all the juice they can, mostly by observing when the weak handed speculators on COMEX have all been chased out of the market, like now.
Are there any entrepreneurial metallurgists out there?
Ag Enemy, You would be receiving 1000 (approx) oz bars if you take delivery from the Comex. You needn't worry about a default anytime soon as they have about 137 million ounces currently stored. Delivery would be to a New York bank where you could pick it up, or have it delivered to you by probably Brinks. I would think that if you could sell 1000 oz bars at 3 over spot that there would be money to be made. There are some miscellaneous delivery charges and Brinks would obviously charge to deliver. I will check Monday to see If I can get a ballpark figure for all charges and let you know. I have been a futures broker for 15 years and have never had a customer take physical delivery, but will look into it if you are interested.
That's what they said in Rome, just before the fall of the Roman Empire.
In fact a "1000 oz" bar can vary from 750 to 1100 ounces - see www.lbma.org.uk/delive... for the accepted specifications. As long as the bar is stamped by someone on this list www.lbma.org.uk/delive... - it will be accepted in the wholesale market without need for assay. The bars out of COMEX will be OK as they would not have been accepted into the warehouse in the first place if they did not meet the LBMA specs.
So, really, who cares if COMEX is corrupted. Of course, they should be prosecuted because they seem to be engaged in illegal actities. But, if they are too well connected, then they will play their game anyway. I'll just buy, whenever the foolish over-leveraged long futures buyers get scared away. Then, I'll put away my gold and silver bars for retirement and my children.
Once you adjust for inflation, which will soon be huge for us in America at least, silver will be selling at a real price of about $200 - $300 per ounce, in 20 years, or, maybe, a lot more, if a lot of new discoveries (which aren't being made yet) are not made.
As everyone else's retirement plan goes bust due to U.S. government mismanagement of the economy, I will be holding my pretty white metal, and I'll sell it off, bar by bar. Hopefully, by then, the world will have returned to the gold standard, and dollars, or Ameros, or whatever else is being used as a paper currency, will be more solid than now. But, if not, I could just pay someone to melt the big bars down, 20 years from now, so that I can sell it, maybe, $1,000 worth at a time.
Imagine if you had bought Rhodium, just 12 years ago, when it was selling for about $200 per ounce? Now, it is close to $7,000 per ounce, and that's after this big price collapse from $10,000 per ounce!
I'm betting one day, paper money will never exist. It will be electronic or actual coin with a special "get your electronic gold in your hands day" where the entire population will get retrieve their entire money out of they bank to verify no extra paper exist...
That's my next post :-)
Ag Enemy- I will email you Monday morning after I get more details on the specifics of taking delivery and try to get a handle on the total costs.
I've been saying this for a while over at Tickerforum - if you want physical gold or silver, then buy a futures contract for delivery (check with your broker to see if you can do it through them - you might need a different company than you currently use), deposit the cash, and take delivery.
End of problem - you own it for the price you bought it at, plus the handling and delivery fee (which is reasonable.) It goes to your clearing bank and you then make arrangements to pick it up or have it delivered to your physical possession.
There is no "juju" here - if you think the markets are manipulated and the price too low, there's your solution. Gold is more difficult to do this with than silver due to the higher price but if you want to swing around five-digit+ amounts of cash in silver you certainly can do it this way.
A few big guys set the rules; ignore the law; and the CFTC remains clueless, probably purposefully; and Congress is....................... Congress apparently believes these folks? WHY? FACTS contradict the CFTC - unconditionally.
Real data exits; show me the facts -- lets see the real databases, in detail. Toss the past theoretical arguments in the trash -- don't offend me with such ignorance - meaning the folks at the CFTC.
When the gatekeeper (CFTC) is supposed to guard the chickens, but lets the foxes in at all times, the chickens disappear; despite claiming to protect the chickens (our funds), the foxes are in charge (2 or 3 bullion banks). The CFTC appears to be assisting this overt fraud -- so, why do they exist.
The data is obvious; so lets dispense with the excuses; the CFTC ought to get off their butts........freeze assets......and reimburse those who lost funds because the foxes, courtesy of the CFTC, promotes fraud through inaction.
Perhaps the FBI ought to arrest the top dogs at the CFTC -- and then go after the CEO of JP Morgan, and its also speculated that the other bullion bank "might be" Goldman; this remains only a rumor. The bullion banks have not been identified -- and my reference is based upon articles by authors such as Ted Butler.