Most of you do know that, despite a rapid acceleration in Wall Street criminality and fraud, the Eric Holder/Obama Justice Department has seen a precipitous drop in financial crime prosecutions compared to the Bush years. Hard to believe this is the same presidential candidate who promised to clean up Wall Street and Capitol Hill.
This one may well take the gold medal for examples of just how corrupt system has become:
I guess instead of "hope and change," if Obama were running for a 3rd term his new marquee campaign slogan would be: "Pay us to commit the crime and don't do any time." I stand by my prediction in 2008 that Obama's presidency would go down in history as being even more despised by the public than his predecessor's. Judging from his approval ratings my call is looking pretty solid.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/sp_en_6.gif)
Dave,
ReplyDeleteCheck your headling:
How MUCH money
WHoops!. Thanks GT
DeleteNow what would the US Postal service need Ammo for Dave?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=bc222ffef75536f044a0e0353788683b&tab=core&tabmode=list&print_preview=1
The entire govt. political process is a cesspool and will remain that way until it finally blows up and the money is removed from the system. The whole left/right thing is a joke that is used to divide and conquer as well as distract from what is really going on. I wonder if the current taper crap is designed to send the stock markets down and get treasuries bid for another wash, rinse, repeat cycle of financial rape. It sure seems like someone is working overtime to keep gold under $1270.
ReplyDeleteSuspicious Death of JPMorgan Vice President, Gabriel Magee, Under Investigation in London
DeleteBy Pam Martens
February 9, 2014
London Police have confirmed that an official investigation is underway into the death of a 39-year old JPMorgan Vice President whose body was found on the 9th floor rooftop of a JPMorgan building in Canary Wharf two weeks ago.
The news reports at the time of the incident of Gabriel (Gabe) Magee’s “non suspicious” death by “suicide” resulting from his reported leap from the 33rd level rooftop of JPMorgan’s European headquarters building in London have turned out to be every bit as reliable as CEO Jamie Dimon’s initial response to press reports on the London Whale trading scandal in 2012 as a “tempest in a teapot.”
An intense investigation is now underway into the details of exactly how Magee died and why his death was so quickly labeled “non suspicious.” An upcoming Coroner’s inquest will reveal the details of that investigation.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2014/02/report-of-intense-investigation-into.html
An Open Letter to Sam Zell: Why Your Statements are Delusional and Dangerous
ReplyDeleteThe 1 percent are being pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so. The problem is that the world and this country should not talk about envy of the 1 percent. It should talk about emulating the 1 percent. The 1 percent work harder. The 1 percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society.
- Sam Zell yesterday on Bloomberg Television
Mr. Zell,
I've seen clips of you on television several times in the past. I can't say those appearances elicited strong reactions from me. I can recall being offended at things you have said, and I can remember agreeing with you on other occasions. However, yesterday I found your statements on "class warfare," "envy" and the "1%" delusional and dangerous. I will address these two points separately.
Why Your Statements Are Delusional
While I agree that President Obama talks in simplistic, imbecilic “class warfare” terms, what does he do in reality? He is the most oligarch-coddling President this nation has ever seen. Talk is cheap Zell. I only listed a few of the root problems causing dissent in the country. They are very real, they are not going away and as long as oligarchs like you pretend they don’t exist and this is all the result of “envy” nothing will get better. In fact, it will get much, much worse. I see very little envy. I see a populace waking up to a gigantic fucking fraud, full of below average cronies thieving and people getting pissed about it. I see a 0.01% class of oligarchs to which the free market and the rule of law do not apply. So I’m not sure what exactly the 99% is supposed to be emulating. Your unaccountable criminality?
Of course I couldn’t end this section without calling you out on the most absurd thing you said: “The 1 percent work harder.”
http://wp.me/p2NEyt-2LQ
If you're not on the inside, you're on the outside.................
DeleteFed Vice-Chair Nominee Stanley Fischer Worth Up to $56.3 Million;Gained Wealth By Working for the Banksters
The man also has quite the bankster portfolio.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/02/fed-vice-chair-nominee-stanley-fischer_6.html#comment-form
American Hustle?
DeleteEver feel like it's all just one big con?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-08/american-hustle
The one and ONLY answer to the debt problem is to declare it null and void because of FRAUD! It is fraud because it is mathematically impossible to repay ! It can not be repaid because the interest is never created on the loan and that is fraud ! And fraud voids all ! If we don’t void all out of thin air debt the bankers will own almost EVERYTHING ! And we will be homeless slaves ! They have a license to counterfeit ! Can I counterfeit the money to repay the loan ? Why not ? If we even attempt to repay a impossible debt (the national debt) all we do is show our ignorance ! The way to fix this mess is so simple a 3rd grader can figure it out ! We void the fraudulent debt! and everyone keeps ALL the items they have so called debt on ! And then we start to use a debt free currency and / or gold and silver ! And then we will have a robust economy like never before — OR WE LET THE BANKERS STEAL EVERYTHING !
ReplyDeleteI was in about the third grade when the news was talking about the national debt and I asked my dad who do we owe money to and who could possibly be richer than the United States? and where did they get the money? And then my dad took a gulp off his beer and said we owe it to our self ! I said that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of ! that’s like me borrowing from my right pocket and setting fire to the interest and putting the rest in my left pocket ! This was about 1972 ! But Dad was wrong! We owe it to international Bankers running the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth called The Federal reserve system! And yes it really is this simple ! The bankers have a shoe in on ALL loans they make ! All they have to do is stop lending and then start foreclosing on ALL debts!-meaning they now own everything that has a debt by having a license to counterfeit ! So we 1 keep getting fleeced by continuing to pay this fraudulent scheme ! OR 2 we declare ALL out of thin air debt NULL AND VOID because of FRAUD ! And we ALL keep everything we have so called debt on! MOST people don't get this part Every car, boat, house, machine, tool, farm,ect. has already been paid for by the fraudulent paper! So no one looses ! WE sure as hell cant give it to the banksters! (let them steal it) AND IT DOESENT MATTER IF YOU WANT TO REDUCE THE DEBT 90% ITS STILL UNPAYABLE! So when we void the FRAUD This will be the ultimate FRESH start for everyone ! Share this if you want THE solution to the WORLDS problems! If not everything will continue to get worse until we have HONEST DEBT FREE MONEY /and GOLD AND SILVER ! And there is plenty of gold and silver! just Divide the paper money (FRN) by the gold /silver and you have the value of them! NO MATTER WHAT IT COMES TO per OZ ! Then we would be happy to work for SAY A ONE OZ. SILVER COIN A day ! Because NOW REAL MONEY will buy what $100 did before the reset! THINK ABOUT IT! This is what Scripture calls the jubilee !
The Broncos were drugged.
ReplyDeletehttp://beforeitsnews.com/sports/2014/02/denver-broncos-were-drugged-futurist-explains-how-2551618.html
Dave, What do you make of the bank drills on February 15th and 16th ? Could this be a pre cursor to a full blown bank holiday ? http://govtslaves.info/federal-reserve-issues-warning-bank-drills-possible-false-flag/
ReplyDelete06 February 2014
ReplyDeleteSnowden Interview on German Television
To this in the interview Snowden replies, "It’s interesting because he mentions three felonies. What he doesn’t say is that the crimes that he’s charged me with are crimes that don’t allow me to make my case; they don’t allow me to defend myself in an open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to their benefit.
The Espionage Act … was never intended to prosecute journalistic sources, people who are informing the newspapers about information that is in the public interest. It was intended for people who are selling documents in secret to foreign governments, who are bombing bridges, who are sabotaging communications, not for people who are serving the public good. So it’s,
I would say illustrative, that the president would choose to say that someone should face the music when he knows that the music is a show trial."
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2014/02/snowden-interview-on-german-television.html
Folks , Grab all the physical gold , silver , nickle , and copper that you can . The worldly game of charades being played by the elite 1 %, the wallstreeters , central banksters , official governmental sheisters , lobbiests , and all other croany walk of life scum is fast approaching the wall of massive explosive proportions !
ReplyDeleteThe trigger could be a derivatives meltdown which account for TRILLIONS of phony dollars in funny money.
One clue >> Blythe Masters, has just joined the CFTC in ad advisory role for swaps regulation.
WOW!!! Blythe Masters joins CFTC. The total, utter corruption has now come full circle. The only thing left is global USD rejection replete with Anglo-American Empire implosion.
ReplyDeleteI searched through the entire Rolling Stones article you posted and there's not a single mention of Obama.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's where I spend most of my time (Portland & Boulder) but I still hear people speaking of Obama in glowing terms. And these are very, very smart people who run multi-million dollar businesses, etc. I guess that government is the new religion of the "intellectual" masses.
Of course they speak glowingly. It isn't wise for a man to bite the hand that feeds him (hell, I'd speak glowingly even of Jack the Ripper if that's which side my bread was buttered on)
DeleteI suspect the reason that it took years to prosecute HSBC that only ended in a fine is because:
ReplyDelete- The CIA and other alphabet agencies also used HSBC to launder their drug profits and black ops money. If HSBC really was taken down they might be exposed and they would loss this ability to launder their money and pay off all their assets that are connected to terrorists and other unsavories, which leads me to my second point.
- Al Qaeda etc were created and are now run by these same alphabet agencies for their fun and games false flag attacks, etc. The Syrian chemical attack is a recent case in point about such an attack where the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels that are backed by the US did it and they need funding. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar (US allies and outright dictatorships in their own right) are fingered to be the supporter. Someone needs to transfer the money in such situations, so banks like HSBC do it and since they are necessary to such activities they don’t get taken down for doing what is ultimately US supported work. They maybe too big to jail, etc, but what I described is what really be behind it.
Post-Lehman era coming to an end
ReplyDeleteAs one would expect, these gold-friendly countries have seen more rapid expansion of wealth than experienced in the West. They have 1,400,000 HNWIs between them with an estimated $6 trillion to protect in 2012, which could be considerably more today. If gold is going to form just 5% of their reallocated assets, at current prices that amounts to at least 30,000 tonnes. Given that the majority of the world's above-ground gold is already locked up in Asia and the Middle East, and that Western central banks have leased out significant portions of their own gold reserves which have also ended up in Asia, there is insufficient gold to supply anything like this quantity.
http://www.goldmoney.com/research/analysis/post-lehman-era-coming-to-an-end
I had to stop reading that article about halfway through, it's sickening and deplorable and I couldn't allow it to completely ruin my weekend. Like one poster stated the Gov't allows these types of activities to flourish and would plunge head first into a credibility trap if they did anything other than leveling fines which is just Kubuki Theater.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I haven't seen on in the last year or so HSBC has a tricked out checker cab (it's possible there's more then one) that drives around Manhattan which anyone with an HSBC account could flag down and get a ride from for free. I'm guessing the driver probably worked in the money laundering dept. Try to enjoy the first football free weekend in quite some time.
Ken
http://gata.org/node/13616
ReplyDeleteExcerpt:
Roberts and Kranzler: Market manipulations become more extreme, dangerous
Submitted by cpowell on Sat, 2014-02-08 13:28. Section: Daily Dispatches
9:25a GT Saturday, February 8, 2014
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Former Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts and market analyst Dave Kranzler yesterday documented what was obviously somebody's attack on gold and goosing of the stock market on Thursday. Their commentary is headlined "Market Manipulations Become More Extreme, More Desperate" and it's posted at Roberts' Internet site here..."
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/07/market-manipulations-become-extreme-desperate/
ReplyDeleteNice collaberation again Dave. The self-defeating tycoons, financial aristocrats and pseudo-political rock stars have succumbed to their own hypnosis. They're in a rut of undettered fractal, exponentional desperation. No holds barred deregulation and experimentation, looting and burning and suiciding the evidence. Argentina's Iron Mountain records storage fire and the latest banker deaths symbolize the blatant extent of last ditch diversions.
From that, even more wild and arbitrary collateral damage ensues. Markets and governments (even Bosnia is back in the news) everywhere suffer more loss of confidence, transparency, viability, even functionality. New riots, smuggling, vigilantes and black markets go unreported Businesses lose customers, loans dry up, forecasts and capital investment go sour.
In turn these social, political, economic disruptions and dislocations lead people and state and local governments to overreact, counteract or turn on each other, further fueling instability and dysfunction. Breaching tipping points cause larger domino chain reactions, some with more complex and therefore epochal consequences.
Beyond your clearly detailed Comex misadventures, the macrocosm is engilfed in greater cloaked, unreported and censored fraud, inflation, stagflation, shrinkage and decay. Officials buryn themselves deeper in graft, secrecy, perjury, and criminal lifestyles, signalling extreme time compression before a radical, inevitable restructuring.
If they can do it in Greece, why not here?
ReplyDeleteSo Many Bribes, a Greek Official Can’t Recall Them All
By SUZANNE DALEYFEB. 7, 2014
But the team appears undeterred. In the wake of Mr. Kantas’s first testimony in December, they have made several more arrests, including the representatives of several German arms manufacturers and a subcontractor in the German submarine deal, who recently provided prosecutors with details of the bank accounts he used to transfer about $95 million worth of “useful” payments.
In an odd twist, Mr. Kantas, 72, was apparently tripped up by his own banker, according to his lawyer, Yannis Mantzouranis. Like many other Greeks, Mr. Mantzouranis said, Mr. Kantas would bring bundles of cash to his banker, who would fly to Switzerland to make the deposits when enough cash had accumulated to make the trip worthwhile.
At one point, however, Mr. Kantas’s banker lent €500,000, about $680,000, of Mr. Kantas’s cash to representatives of the German telecommunications giant Siemens. Then, the banker allowed Siemens, which is under investigation for bribing officials over various contracts in Greece, to wire a deposit directly into Mr. Kantas’s Swiss account with Dresdner Bank.
Investigators looking into Siemens found Mr. Kantas’s name on a list of people the company had sent money to, his lawyer said. Mr. Kantas was forced to explain where the €500,000 in his account came from. At first, he told investigators it was from the sale of some paintings. But they raided the home of the supposed buyer and found evidence that the paintings had been in his possession since the 1980s.
In his various depositions since his arrest, Mr. Kantas, who was a deputy in the Defense Ministry’s procurement department, has described a tangle of bank accounts and offshore companies used to store his bribes, one named Kourkoumpini, after a Greek sweet. When the so-called Lagarde list — a roster of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts — became news, Mr. Kantas quickly moved most of his money to Singapore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/world/europe/so-many-bribes-a-greek-official-cant-recall-all.html?
High-Speed Trading Isn't About Efficiency—It's About Cheating
ReplyDeleteWhen hedge funds use bots to buy and sell stocks within milliseconds, they're not improving the market. They're rigging the market.
"You cheat."
Our teachers looked confused, then horrified. They kept waiting for Auerbach to say he was just kidding, that of course there's no substitute for hard work. He didn't. Instead, he calmly explained that if you're playing a better fast-breaking team, you should install nets so tight that the ball gets stuck. Or if you're playing a faster baseball team, you should water the basepaths till they turn into muddy quagmires that nobody can run on. But most of all, he wanted to make sure we didn't misunderstand him. He cleared his throat, and said, "So, if you want a competitive edge, just cheat." Then he walked off stage, and the mayor's mother, who was inexplicably there, led us in a solemn rendition of America the Beautiful.
That brings us to high-frequency trading (HFT) hedge funds. These funds use computer algorithms—a.k.a.: algobots—to buy and sell stocks at incredible speeds. We're talking milliseconds. The idea is to react to any market news or inefficiencies before actual humans can process them. And it's any idea that has taken over stock trading: algobots make up about half of all stock transactions in 2012 (which is actually down from its peak of 61 percent).
It's Wall Street at its most socially useless. HFT funds aren't allocating capital to where they think it'll be most productive. HFT funds are allocating capital to where they think other people will put it 50 milliseconds from now. It's a tax on everybody else. And it's a tax that has basically no benefit. Sure, HFT funds defend themselves by saying they're increasing liquidity, but increasing liquidity is the last refuge of bullshitters.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/high-speed-trading-isnt-about-efficiency-its-about-cheating/283677/
Dave, I read your lastest article with Paul Roberts. But I can't understand this part.
ReplyDelete"One way for the Fed and bullion banks to hold off defaulting on Chinese purchases is to coerce holders of gold futures contracts to settle in cash, not in delivery of gold, by driving down the price during heavy Comex delivery periods." Could you elaborate a bit on it?
The Comex gold contracts only allow Physical settlement. At least, that's according the Comex's website.
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/gold_contract_specifications.html
And if you stand for delivery on a spot month contract, you must have 100% margin and there is no leverage. How can the Bullion banks coerce you into settlement in cash? I'm quite puzzled.
Actually, contracts can be settled in physical gold, cash or GLD shares, at the option of the holder of the contract. Yes, you have to have the possibility of being noticed for delivery fully funded by 1st notice day, but the deliverer has until the last delivery day to deliver the goods and there's actually a 3-day grace period beyond that.
DeleteIF, you get noticed but not delivered yet, you can still sell your contract. That's known as selling with a warehouse receipt. If you sell your contract before you actually take delivery, you are settling in cash.
The reason the banks try to rip the price lower during the delivery period is to try and shake loose as many holders standing for delivery as possible. It's also why all the contracts aren't noticed on 1st notice day. The bullion banks have all month to "coerce" selling. This is what we meant by "settle in cash."
Clearly they would do this in order to try and reduce the amount of metal they have to deliver.
In addition, there have been periods when we get reports of contract longs being offered a big premium to spot in order to settle in cash. It hasn't happened often, but it has happened.
In addition, the deliverer can offer to settle in GLD shares but the long side has to agree to this.
Hope that clears it up.
Thanks for your explanation. I know that GLD shares can be used through Exchange for Physical to "settle" spot month contracts because spot month contracts can still be traded and open for EFP.
DeleteHowever, if the bullion banks drive the price down, won't they be afraid that some bargain hunters may buy some spot month contracts and stand for delivery since spot month contracts can still be traded. This may create additional problems for those evil banksters.
It's actually known as the "front month." Technically, the "spot" price of gold is the price established at the London a.m./p.m. fix. Kitco's "spot" price is really a mathematical/theoretical "spot" price derived from a formula that uses the previous fix price + the term structure of futures (that's approx what the formula is).
DeleteThe $64k question is why a big hedge fund doesn't make a run at squeezing the Comex. In any given delivery month, only about 1% of the longs actually takes physical delivery. No has ever provided a answer to that puzzle.
"The $64k question is why a big hedge fund doesn't make a run at squeezing the Comex. In any given delivery month, only about 1% of the longs actually takes physical delivery. No has ever provided a answer to that puzzle."
DeleteI have no answer to that puzzle, but I can make a few good guesses-
-The hedge funds can make more money playing the game than ending the game.
-The hedge funds that actually could do this have been told quite politely by the powers that be "Do this and you Die, literally."
Just me thinking out loud- this could be China's hydrogen bomb to be used on the COMEX/CRIMEX if Uncle Sam gets a bit too pushy for China's liking (I know, just a theory, not fact, but as we have witnessed on Wall Street/banksters et all, anything is possible.)
Crybabies of the 1 percent: Spoiled rich kids, Tom Perkins and the real affluenza
ReplyDeleteForget affluenza. The rich's real "disease" is failing to get that their privileges come at a price: our contempt
More than half a century ago, “West Side Story” satirized the idea that what was then known as juvenile delinquency was a product of poverty and the psychological maladjustments it produced, and that therefore “this boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care.”
Since then, America has been busy transforming itself into an unabashed plutocracy: while median household income has barely budged since the mid-1960s, the annual income of the top 1 percent has increased by an average of approximately 200 percent in real terms.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that the belief that economic deprivation leads to psychological hardship, which in turn inspires youthful crimes, has not merely been discarded but, in some cases, actually inverted.
Consider the case of a Texas teenager who killed four people and severely injured two others while drunk-driving in his father’s pickup truck. Prosecutors wanted to send him to prison for 20 years, but a judge decided to give him no jail time at all after an expert witness for the defense testified that the defendant was suffering from “affluenza.”
This affliction, the psychologist testified, was a product of the defendant having spent his life in the lap of luxury. Having his parents’ cash between himself and reality had left the killer of four of his neighbors unable to make the connection between his decisions – such as his decision to drive a two-ton truck down a residential street at 70 miles per hour while drunk out of his mind – and the potential consequences of those decisions.
In short, the defense team argued, their client was depraved because he wasn’t deprived.
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/08/crybabies_of_the_1_percent_spoiled_rich_kids_tom_perkins_and_the_real_affluenza/
John Mack Whines About How Badly Wall Street CEOs are Treated
DeleteThe CNBC story flags the inflammatory portion, which starts at 5:23:
He [Mack] said he would love to see people “stop beating up on Lloyd and Jamie.” He added: “I think that would make a lot of sense, and I’m in favor of that.”
The worst is that Mack and other members of his class (elite financiers and the 0.1%) really don’t get it. They live in such a cloistered world that the fact that they’ve gotten away with abject incompetence, malfeasance, and in the case of JP Morgan, almost certain criminal conduct (among other things, as we have discussed in considerable detail, Sarbanes Oxley violations and the criminal case that the DoJ settled rather than prosecuted), according to Mack, is perfectly kosher if investors don’t mind. And why should investors mind? Last I checked, crime and predatory conduct are very lucrative businesses if you can get away with it.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/versailles-watch-john-mack-whines-badly-wall-street-ceos-treated.html