"'We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,' says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. 'They were totally opposed to it,' Born says. 'That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?'"
PBS Frontine, The Warning, October 2009
"Successful crime is dignified with the name of virtue; the good become the slaves of the wicked; might makes right; fear silences the power of the law."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Hercules Furens. CCLI.
"Gold has worked down from Alexander's time. When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."
Bernard M. Baruch
"Gold is unique among assets, in that it is not issued by any government or central bank, which means that its value is not influenced by political decisions or the solvency of one institution or another."
Salvatore Rossi, Central Bank of Italy, 30 Sept 2013
"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."
Eddie George, Governor Bank of England, Reg Howe v. BIS, JPM et al. September 1999
“Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”
J. P. Morgan, Testimony to the US Congress, 1912
"You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability and intelligence of the members of the government. And with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."
George Bernard Shaw, playwright
"Synthetic gold, sourced in pyramids of credit extended to bullion bankers by central banks with little or no claim on physical substance, have provided a more efficient, better-camouflaged form of intervention. The volumes traded are huge, and bear little resemblance to actual flows of physical metal. Demand for physical gold has exceeded new mine supply for several years running."
John Hathaway, Tocqueville Newsletter, 2Q 2015
“Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort.”
Antony C. Sutton, historian
"There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence."
Charles De Gaulle, Press conference, February 4, 1965
"Before the end of the week."
Jesse, X, Sunday, July 27 AM
Donnie's tariffs went into effect on Liberation Day 2.0.
Stocks dumped hard on the worse than expected Jobs Report, and some earning clinkers from the Stocks of Olympus.
It was just a matter of time with a market this overbought and so badly mispriced to value and risk.
The Dollar fell a buck.
Gold and silver rallied, with gold going out at the high.
VIX woke up and rallied up sharply.
There is plenty of room to the downside.
And many potential trigger events out there to help it along.
But, with a market as bent as this, it's not so easy to tell what the next move will be.
Have a pleasant weekend.
