Philman

Metals Manipulation - Or Simply Deleveraging?

Yes. Leverage is what allows the manipulators to do what they do. They take out the stop loss points, sequentially, as explained by James Conrad. I agree that now is the time to buy gold and silver, because something bad is about to happen. He says this also.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Tradertom, I am also looking forward to information about total costs.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Ag, what are you talking about when you say "basis"? Are you talking about the spread, or profit between the price you buy it at and the price you sell it at? Who cares if there is not enough of a spread within the wholesale market? Doesn't matter, unless people in the retail market can afford to buy a minimum of 5 bars, per Tradertom. Mints can, obviously, do that, but not all regular people can. Also, not everyone is willing or farsighted enough to wait for physical delivery on a futures contract. That being said, if you don't have enough cash to keep the silver bars if you can't sell them, then you shouldn't buy them on the COMEX. That being said, there are guys who have the cash, and we can and should buy wherever we can get metal.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Bron, Tradertom, I am VERY interested in buying 1,000 ounce bars of silver at near the current spot. VERY INTERESTED whether I can buy immediately OTC COMEX LBMA (but, maybe, it would cost a fortune to deliver it to America?) or as a delivered as a COMEX future. A lot of other people will also be interested. I might try the business of selling on EBay, as I stated, but, then, I might just put 10 or 20 bars away, in a very big safe deposit box, for my retirement. Whatever the manipulators do now to reduce silver prices, in 15 -20 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the world will close to running out of silver. Yes, I know they will find probably find some new deposits, but, unless they invent anti-gravity devices to allow meteor mining, not as much as needed to meet the increased electronics demand. RFID, especially, will be using silver up in huge quantities, and that's just the beginning.

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!

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Wouldn't it be great to force the COMEX to convert from a fantasy futures market, to a real physical delivery market! I'd love to buy 1,000 ounce bars!

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Oh, and, did I forget to say, in capital letters, THANKS FOR THE EXCELLENT INFORMATION YOU ARE PROVIDING!!

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Tradertom, how do I know how much I am really getting? Who weighs the bars? Do I weigh the bars?

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

As far as I know, the futures markets only deal in 1,000 ounce bars, not 100 ounce bars. And, it seems like they are allowed to short you by up to 50 ounces, because the COMEX contract defines "good delivery bars" as being either 5% more or less than 1,000 ounces. That, of course, is cheating since it is very easy to be accurate when pouring a bar. Another reason why the futures price is B.S. But, anyway, assuming they short you by 5%, you still pay only about 62 cents extra, if the price per ounce is "officially" $12.26 on the COMEX. Then, there is another "time premium" because silver is in contango. That means that future delivery is worth more than getting the product now. By the time you finish with all the premiums (and commissions), I think the final price would be about $12.90 when the spot price is supposed to be $12.26 per ounce. But, if you can sell the bars for $1.50 over spot on EBay, then you can pocket about 65 cents per ounce, even after you've paid all the premiums and been cheated of 5% of the silver you supposedly bought.

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?

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Tradertom, how can we contact you to buy on the futures market for physical delivery? What is the delay between the time the metal is delivered to the NY bank, and the time they send it to me. What minimum contract must be purchased? I read about "good delivery" bars on COMEX, and it says that they can be 5% over or under weight, and still be "good delivery". Suppose I take delivery of a 1,000 ounce bar of silver? Seems likely, since it is to the advantage of the fabricators, that most bars will be 950 ounces, not 1,000. Will that shortage be compensated by a supplemental bar, or a price reduction? Or, is that yet another stealth premium we need to pay to take physical delivery? Thanks for your anticipated answers!

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

xsuddensam, you are right. I'm not saying it is an excuse. It isn't. I was just responding to someone's crazy suggestion that the U.S. military will be unleashed against its own people, which is ridiculous. No matter how stupid or corrupt some people may be, that is not going to happen. Not yet.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

Frankly, some of you are really going overboard. We are not yet at the point of the "Fall of the Roman Empire". Most Americans are not corrupt. Guys like James Conrad are simply the "Ciceros" of our Republic. During the chaotic latter half of the first century BC, marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero was an orator who championed a return to the more honest traditional republican government. He lived in the 1st century B.C. It took 650 years more of corruption, after Cicero, for the Roman Republic, which had turned into an Empire by that time, to fall.

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.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

I don't think it will be too hard to tame these manipulators, once people begin to fight back. It is only because people are complacent and some have the attitude of foolish CLH, that they sit back and let the powerful corrupt people abuse them.

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!

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

I don't think they have control over the courts, or the state attorney general's offices. Remember, the manipulators are not the only institutions that have an interest in this. A lot of big investors got burned. Only 3 banks made a fortune off the manipulation. They took most of their money from other members of the monied elite. So, while the Feds may be so intertwined with the 3 corrupt banks that they won't help, there will be a lot of help coming from a lot of powerful people, who had their money stolen.

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

What these James Conrad articles say is backed by stronger and stronger facts, it seems. Here is a quote I found, from UBS' Metals Letter, which was published yesterday. UBS is the biggest gold bullion dealer, and, evidently, NOT among the "perps", involved in the precious metals fraud. It is a Swiss bank, not one primarily based in the USA, which may say everything:

"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...

Precious Metals Manipulation: Lawyers Prepare for Battle

No less an "in-the-know person", than John Reade, the analyst over at UBS, who has proven to be right, many times before, says that gold buying is now going wild at $800 or so per troy ounce. UBS happens to be the world's largest bullion bank, so they see what the real gold demand is, right now. He is predicting $900 by the end of this month. I'm sure that the manipulators will try to stop that from happening, but, so what?

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.