"I am writing to alert you to a possible circumstance of fraud and manipulation in your popular ETF, SLV, due to the excessive short-selling of its shares. Current reports indicate the most recent level of total short sales now exceed 36 million shares. This is an increase of more than 14 million shares from the previous reported amount.
Publicly-traded ETFs that have specific metal backing are highly unique securities. Perhaps a small short position may be overlooked on a temporary basis until the metal is deposited in the Trust due to logistical considerations. But a short position that represents more than 10% of the outstanding shares issued means that many buyers of the shares have no metal backing. This is clearly not in keeping with the spirit of the prospectus that each share issued be backed by one ounce of silver on deposit with the custodian."
Ted Butler, Open Letter to Larry Fink, CEO BlackRock, April 28, 2011
“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.”
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, 2004
"This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. And I was one of them."
John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 2004
"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole. If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."
London Banker, Lies, Damned Lies, and LIBOR, 10 July 2012
"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."
R. J. Rummel, Death By Government, 1994
We are advised not to look at things which the empire's elites wish to do, but find inconvenient to be made known.
And so there is a steady progression in the decline of their morals, from swindles, to frauds, and lawlessness.
This will not end well, but it will end.
They take offense at everything except their greed, but have no shame in their own unrighteousness.
And so when the fall comes, and they are caught up short, they will reach into our pockets for another bailout.
Stocks managed to sustain a little bounce, after several days of declines.
Gold and silver rebounded as the Dollar declined.
VIX remains subdued and most likely mispriced.
We are not pricing in the enormous risks being engaged by the madness of the elite.
A reckoning is coming. I will take no joy in it, because of the number of innocents who will be harmed.
As the empire staggers, one or more of its vassal states will fall first, as a sign and a warning.
Denial is more likely than reform.
The madness serves none but itself.
Have a pleasant evening.
