Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - FOMC Rate Decision Tomorrow at 2:15

"God has numbered your reign.  You have been weighed, and found wanting."

The FOMC will issue its rate decision at 2:15 tomorrow.

I would expect some wording change to reflect the deteriorating macroeconomic outlook in the US, even if they do not admit it.

The Chicago PMI came in weak, showing a contraction. Tomorrow we get the national ISM number and I think that will show a slight contraction as well, a little light of 50. But its hard to say.

We will also get the latest ADP employment change number, although it seems to have little impact except during a Non-Farm Payrolls week and at the extremes of estimates.

ECB will make a rate decision of their own on Thursday.

AAPL cheered the equity markets today by announcing its intentions to issue a record amount of new debt, on the order of $17 billion, in order to 'pay dividends and buy back stock.'   They are doing this to avoid bringing back profits they have sequestered overseas to avoid paying taxes.

This is innovation, American style.

There are repeated rumours of a private run on the bullion banks from the ranks of the wealthy. Apparently they are pulling their bullion holdings out of even the 'allocated stores' of the banks and moving them to private storage facilities.

As you know, Ben Bernanke will be leaving the Fed soon, most likely to retreat back to Princeton and start writing his version of history, while taking a few spins through the revolving door.  The discussion of his possible successors makes one's skin crawl.  The economists are lining up to be considered for a chance at this largess of power and position, strutting their stuff like tarts on 11th Avenue.    A sign of the times perhaps that the job will go to some smarmy insider.  That is Obama's style.

Let's see what happens.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - NYSE Margin Debt Levels Back to Post-Crisis Highs

The SP made a new record high today as April draws to a close.  Sixth month in a row that the stock markets have turned in a gain.

Sell in May and go away.

The FOMC will make a decision about rates tomorrow at 2:15.

Chicago PMI came out with a contraction today. Most economic indicators are now showing a contraction except for stocks and 'confidence' which is led by the equity market.

Complacency rules. And it is dangerous.

And this in a thinly traded market. Seems like an almost certain recipe for disaster if the easy momentum trade turns lower on even some seemingly trivial event.

NYSE Member Firm Debit Balances In Margin Accounts (MARGDEBT).
John Mendelson

MARGDEBT, at the end of March 2013 (latest figures released) rose to $380 billion up 4% over February and just a hair below the all-time high of $381 billion as of July 31, 2007….a period some may recall.

I am often told in meetings that there is no speculation or notable leverage in the current market. I believe the March figure speaks for itself.

A chart of Margin Debt back to the end of 2006 is included.

But When She Got There, the Cupboard Was Bare...

Where is all the gold?

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard,
To get the poor dog a bone;
But when she got there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Educators And the School of Probability

According to LeMetropole Café this word from UBS:

"Demand out of Asia was exceptional last week: Indian demand was the strongest we’ve seen in five years, while volumes and premiums on the Shanghai Gold Exchange reached record highs. This seemingly insatiable appetite is not necessarily limited to the region, though.

Reports of long queues, refinery capacities being maxed out, lead times being extended, stocks running out, and surging premiums are also evident. Retail buyers in Europe and the US have shown strong appetite, too.

Our flows indicate both strong demand for physical gold and growing difficulty in sourcing metal."

And apparently the Perth Mint Works Through Weekend Because of Surging Gold Demand.

As you may recall I showed a video interview with the head of the Hong Kong Precious Metals Exchange who said that their stores were exhausted by demand, and they were having to import gold from London and Switzerland.

This is hardly a sign of long liquidation caused by disenchantment with the precious metals.  Rather, it is the natural outcome of a bifurcation between the paper derivatives markets and the real world.  And such a divergence can be dangerous to the speculative trade if they fail to converge again as expected, no matter the size and power of the paper trade.

Just ask the laureates of Long Term Capital Management.  At the end of the day they were less Nobel in their risk management than misgiven in their assumptions, like the advisors of King Canute.  Fat tails are like tides in their relentless ability to make the experts all wet. And their backers get soaked.

This is what Walter Bagehot meant when he said, 'Life is a school of probability.'

I have been re-reading one of John Kenneth Galbraith's lesser known works, Economics in Perspective: A Critical History.

It struck me today, having audited a history of economics not all that long ago on the web, what a profound difference there is between a teacher and an educator.   It reminded me of some of the great minds which I have had occasion to stumble across in the long cycle of learning.

Even today when I am well past the pursuit of formal education (I went back for an advanced degree in a subject unrelated to any past studies at 40, and even that now seems ages ago), I still am jolted now and then by the education one can obtain from not only personal reading, but from friends and acquaintances, who impart knowledge without perhaps even realizing it and sometimes by example.

An educator (ex-ducare: to draw out from) brings the student along, gives them a model or a framework on which to hang the facts through which they are led by selective readings, draws out what is best in them, beyond even their own nascent ability to see their capabilities.  They are groomers of talent.  And they are able to impart knowledge, and the tools with which to increase it, and often in a wide ranging field of subjects.

Even an older work like Galbraith's,  intended for public consumption,  and which I am quite sure is out of favor and out of date among professionals, and has much to be taken issue with based on more current thoughts, provides a platform or a foil on which to assess new data, and to challenge according to one's own particular thought and inclinations.

An educator provides a lasting substance. An educator illuminates the subject, and the result is a kind of inner satisfaction in the developing mind that serves to provide a new view of things through renovated eyes.

Too many teachers on the other hand, merely provide endless lists of thoughts and a complexity of facts in a hodgepodge manner to be memorized, without providing much in the way of insight or lasting frameworks.  They exult over their own knowledge as compared to their students. They tend to exasperate, rather than inspire. Not because they are demanding, but because they are not quite able to impart knowledge, a deeper understanding of things.  They cannot give what they do not have.

I have known educators that were incredibly demanding, sometimes almost amazingly so.  I had one professor who I thought would break me in the rigor of his expectations.   He changed me for life by showing me what I could do when I put my mind to it using the right tools.  He would not settle for second best.

An educator brings the mind of the student flush up against the mind of genius, explaining without condescension or false complexity, exposing without imposing or overwhelming, and cultivating without judging and demanding except to bring the mind to full flower.  They impart a sense of the joy of learning, the ecstasy of understanding, and can bring people to a greatness and fulfillment that they might not otherwise have achieved.

This is the highest calling that I can imagine, if one has the gift for it, a gift which is honed over long years of practice, often through the hands of other educators.  After all, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Effusive praise, and not intended for Galbraith per se, but for all those educators in my past of whom he reminds by his gentle, elegant style of coaxing one to learning.  I owe much to them,  most likely the better part of me, and certainly those things I might reflect on that have made me more human.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Stocks rose today on a better than expected pending home sales number.

The volumes were remarkably thin.   You know what they say about shorting a thinly traded market -- don't.  But you may not wish to establish investment positions in them either.  Thin markets are often a prelude to volatility.

You know what I think about this market. Do not get in front of because the Fed is feeding the trade, and providing what is likely to be seen as a false sense of recovery and complacency that can turn on a dime, or stray bit of bad news.   But in the meanwhile it serves the more agile financial interests to keep it floating higher on a crest of easy liquidity.

The Irresponsibles: The Bubble In Financial Assets Paper and Bernanke's Policy Errors

Here is the failure of the Fed as monetary policy and regulator with greatly expanded portfolio in one picture assuming that one remembers that stocks have risen back to all time highs.

The Fed has been stuffing its expanding Balance Sheet into the reserves of the Too Big To Fail Banks, where they and their Wall Street cronies use the funds to game the markets for financial paper and real goods.

If your goal is to support the one percent at all costs, then creating new bubbles in financial paper that they own makes perfect sense.    And as regulator the Fed promotes a lack of transparency, of financial secretiveness, of cronyism, and laissez-faire corruption that is deadly to healthy markets.

Reform is the only viable response.   And that is best measured by the levels of transparency and accountability.

But the public is no longer heard in the halls of a Congress and a White House dominated by special interest money. And so things become increasingly unsustainable.

"Based on the above data, how is the stock market fundamentally sound when earnings are collapsing? I guess the Federal Reserve is going to print profits for the S&P 500 companies.

Actually earnings are irrelevant when central banks all over the world including the Federal Reserve are juicing the markets with a sea of liquidity and where multiple expansion trumps real earnings or value."

Read the entire story at Minyanville here.

And from the RealNews:

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Thin premiums.  Certainly no exuberance here.

Weekend Reading

"God beholds you individually, whoever you are. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you, as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your own peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strength, your weakness.

He views you in your day of rejoicing, and your day of sorrow. He sympathises in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the rising and failings of your spirit. He has numbered the very hairs of your head and the height of your stature.

He compasses you round and bears you in His arms; He takes you up and sets you down. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears, whether healthful or sickly. He looks tenderly upon your hands and your feet; He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards....

God has created you to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to you which He has not committed to another. You have your mission -- you may never know it in this life but you shall be told it in the next.

You are a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created you for naught. You shall do good, you shall do His work. You shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in your own place while not intending it if you do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about."

John Henry Newman

Matt Taibbi Discusses the Market Rigging in the Swaps and LIBOR Markets By the Banks

Derivatives and many real world calculations of risk and price are based on a relatively few published data, such as LIBOR.

Similarly, the 'spot' price of gold and silver is based in large part on the front month contract for gold and silver on the Comex. And those prices in turn have enormous leverage over the price of mining stocks.

Some have pointed to the 'physical market' in London for metals at the LBMA as the true price market for physical bullion, with their AM and PM 'price fix.'  And while it is true that the LBMA is a market dominated by insiders, with less disclosure than many exchanges,  it has come out that even on the LBMA the price is largely based on paper trading with leverage approaching 100 to 1. 

And LBMA is heavily interconnected with the Comex.

Since those making markets on the Comex in metal futures deliver a very small percentage of the actual gold and silver that is traded on paper, and much of that is settled for cash, the opportunity for price rigging is significant, hugely so.

And as in the case of other long running market schemes, like Bernie Madoff's, the stony silence and arrogant denials of any irregularities, despite very unusual trading activity in quiet hours and around key dates, is disconcerting considering the opaque nature of some unusually large market positions and significant circumstantial evidence with regard to motive and opportunity.

"All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings ­ in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP ­ are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above.

And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati ­ this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want."

Matt Taibbi: Everything Is Rigged

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Post-Expiration Gut Check - Taibbi: Everything Is Rigged

From last night's gold and silver commentary:

Today was option expiration on the Comex and it was quiet. After the recent bloodbath I cannot imagine it would be otherwise. If I were of a manipulative mind I would hit the metals again hard tomorrow."

So what next? There will not be any halt to QE for the forseeable future.

Gold and silver are lightly owned. When they break out and the common person becomes more aware of what is going on, there will be a huge shift in buying to the upside.

And those who manage the markets fear this.  They not only fear their loss of control, but also the exposure of their market antics and the widespread corruption in the system.  We are in a credibility trap, after all.

If you have not yet seen it, the most recent piece by Matt Taibbi, Everything Is Rigged, is worth reading.

Have a pleasant weekend. See you Sunday evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - GDP Disappoints

GDP came in light today and the markets move lower, although they were able to shrug off the news.

Volumes remain light, and the markets remain gamed.

Volatility is complacent.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Premiums remain thin.

I think today is the obligatory post-expiration gut check for the metals.

Let's see how we close and how it goes next week.

Read Taibbi's piece posted early about the latest market rigging scandal.

When the rigging in the metals is revealed it may be a 'career ender' and an 'exchange breaker.'

Matt Taibbi: Everything Is Rigged - The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.”

Tacitus

There are more scandals to come.   Wall Street is now a pathological environment, and the City of London is as bad or worse.

When someone raises their voice over these abuses they are often met with stony denial and ridicule.  That is the credibility trap at work.  Those who owe their positions to the system, as corrupt as it may be, feel the need to defend it rather than reform it.

There will be no sustainable recovery until the system is reformed.  

Rolling Stone
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
By Matt Taibbi
April 25, 2013

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."

That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps...

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings ­ in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP ­ are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati ­ this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.


Read the entire story here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Voilà, Les Jeux Sont Faits

"If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will knock down everything that stands in its way."

Émile Zola

Gold and silver rallied sharply today from their deeply oversold condition, which remained so even after several days of steady increases.

Today was option expiration on the Comex and it was quiet. After the recent bloodbath I cannot imagine it would be otherwise.  If I were of a manipulative mind I would hit the metals again hard tomorrow.

But I hear that this recent market operation has put a dent in the physical bullion under the control of one of the Fed's favorite banks, so that might be a dangerous play, and a risk of a run on the bullion banks.

GDP for Q1 tomorrow.

This seems to be a season for scandals. 

First it has been shown that the bulwark of austerity, the work of Rogoff and Reinhart, was not only mistaken in its Excel spreadsheet, but it was also highly selective in its use of data. 

So much so that an unbiased examination of the data shows that not only is their hypothesis not proven, it is proven false! And Reinhart is working for the Peterson Institute.

After all the crowing with the paper smash of gold and silver, and the widespread glee that investors were rejecting it, in fact there have been widespread shortages of actual gold and silver bullion available for sale. 

And there is still no heavy buying from the general public.  Ownership is still narrowly concentrated in those who follow money and financial matters.  That type of broader buying may be to come, but it has not happened yet. 

The open interest and other data show it was largely a bear raid driven by the manipulation of the markets in off hours using tried and true manipulative techniques of gaming the system.

What wonders and revelations will the future bring?

Intraday commentary regarding what may be behind the hysterical antagonism towards gold and silver here.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

After the bell Amazon beat on earnings, but guided lower next quarter. Their profit margin is thin, and getting even thinner.

Stocks remain thinly traded, without substantial underpinnings.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Thin premiums, but positively so.

Reinventing Bretton Woods: Global Finance In Transition - Currency Wars - Exorbitant Privilege

As you may recall, Bretton Woods was the name of the conference, taken from its location, that set up the post World War II international currency arrangement with the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was based on a dollar convertible in gold.

When Nixon arbitrarily shut the 'gold window' in 1971 the world entered a reserve currency system of purely fiat dollars, often called Bretton Woods II.

There are a number of theories that suggest that such a system is not sustainable, for many of the same reasons that the euro is not sustainable. 

And as some have remarked, the control of a currency by a small group of men operating in private is an exorbitant privilege.

But putting that aside, the BRICs in particular are not happy with the existing arrangement which has been slowly falling apart for some time as the Federal Reserve imposes its domestic needs and policy on what is intended to be the rest of the world's currency. It finds itself in much the same position as is Germany in the EU.

I have addressed this many times before, suggesting that the eventual outcome may be a reconstituted SDR-like instrument based upon a broader basket of currencies and the inclusion of gold and perhaps silver as well.

The Anglo-American banking cartel are fighting this at every turn, because as we know to control the world's currency brings remarkable power. I suspect quite of bit of the hysterical antagonism against gold and silver is tied up in this.  And an ardent desire to 'cover up' some of their past shenanigans.  Germany should put pictures of its gold on milk cartons.

It is possible that they will thwart the objectives of this effort and most likely this conference. And what will happen then is a continuing fragmentation of the world into regional trading zones and spheres of influence.

This may be used as a reason to propose a one world government, that will be similar in composition to the European Union and controlled by a few elite politicians and their bureaucrats. 

We are eyewitness to one of the great events of economic history, and if anything it is remarkable how few economists and politicians understand what is happening. They are firmly embedded in their theory, and too often are willfully blind. 

Let us free markets from regulation, the Banks from restraint of law, and the money creation process from the bindings of oversight and transparency, and we will reach new pinnacles of prosperity.

I find that a well educated layman with a grounding in history and the practical side of finance and business has a better understanding of what is going on than the great bulk of theoreticians whose models are heading quickly towards the dustbin. I just read a strikingly good letter from my friend Hugo Salinas-Price, that proposes a basic model for regulating international trade.

And I told him it would get nowhere, even though it was probably directionally correct, and about as good a start as many I have seen. The status quo and their hounds would rise up against it, because they are not ready to accept change.

They will produce many weighty and learned papers that 'prove' that it is wrong. And they will twist and torture the data to serve their ends no matter what the data may actually say.  The Rogoff-Reinhart scandal is not an outlier in what is a generally disgraced profession.  But these are signs of the times, where there is little downside and enormous profits for deceit in the obsessive pursuit of money and power, at least for the exorbitantly privileged.

Money is power, and those who love power above all seek to control any and all changes to its structure, for their own ends.

Global Finance in Transition conference to take place in Istanbul


On May 7-8, 2013, Istanbul (Turkey) will host the Global Finance in Transition conference. The event is organized by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey jointly with the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee and the Russian Ministry of Finance.

Representatives of G20 finance ministries and central banks, international organizations, research institutions and businesses will take part in the conference. Head of Turkey's Central Bank Erdem Basci, Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Sergei Storchak and Executive Director for the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee Marc Uzan will give the opening remarks at the conference.

Five panel discussions are planned as part of the event. They will cover the international financial architecture, in particular, changes in the flow of global investments, local bond markets and growth in emerging economies, incentives and determinants of investment and other issues.

In addition it is expected that new instruments and incentives for making the global financial system safer will be suggested during the forum.

You may visit the conference web site by clicking here.

Related:

Currency Wars Part II
Currency Wars
Russia Stockpiling Gold Likely For a New Trading Currency
Devaluing the Dollar, Against What?
What Will the World Reserve Currency Become?

This is the lesser known entry in the private contest that spurred Shelley to write his famous Ozymandias.

"In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,
The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand. — The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race,
Once dwelt in that annihilated place."

Horace Smith, Ozymandias, 1818

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Comex Option Expiration Tomorrow

"If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will knock down everything that stands in its way."

Émile Zola

Tomorrow is Comex Option Expiration for gold and silver.

On Friday the US will release its advance number for Q1 GDP growth. Estimates are around 3 percent with a range of from 2.8 to 3.2.

I would not wish to hazard a guess on the number as they are quite fluffy and it appeals that they will become increasingly so when the addition of 'intangibles' is done a little later this year.

Watch employment and the median wage for a better indication, with and eye to corporate revenues, but not earnings which are often accounting fictions.

The shareholders of Barrick have rejected the Executive Compensation plan in what has been described as a 'tumultuous meeting.'  Good for them.

The rejection, which occurred at Barrick’s annual general meeting on Wednesday, was a direct challenge to a board that last year agreed to pay US$17-million to co-chairman John Thornton, which included a staggering US$11.9-million signing bonus — an unprecedented payout in Corporate Canada.

Barrick founder Peter Munk was defiant during the meeting, defending his company’s decision to bring on Mr. Thornton, who was a former president at Goldman Sachs.

Speaking of hubris, the Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to establish priorities in the event of a US sovereign debt default this summer.

Democrats are calling this the 'Pay China First Act' because of the manner in which it prioritizes interest payments to foreign holders of US bonds over veterans, soldiers, students and the military.

I would hope that Congressional salaries and expense reimbursements, perks and allowances are at the very bottom of the list. And I think clawbacks are not a bad idea as well.

This absurd talk about an artificially contrived sovereign US debt default may be one of the areas in which I could certainly find common ground with the Modern Monetary theorists. This is all posturing, reckless economic baby talk.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Durable goods came in a bit light today, but since those numbers are marked by high month to month volatility it is usually good to ignore them and watch only the trends.

Of more concern is the general weakness in the revenues of reporting companies. Earnings less so because they are often accounting fictions.

GDP on Friday is expected to come in around 3 percent with a range of 2.8 to 3.2.

Even the Innocent Were Knowingly Imprisoned and Tortured So As Not to Embarrass the Powerful

"Now, in a sworn declaration obtained exclusively by Truthout, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush's first term in office, said Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld knew the "vast majority" of prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror were innocent and the administration refused to set them free once those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued...

Wilkerson said he "made a personal choice to come forward and discuss the abuses that occurred because knowledge that I served in an Administration that tortured and abused those it detained at the facilities at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere and indefinitely detained the innocent for political reasons has marked a low point in my professional career and I wish to make the record clear on what occurred."

"I am also extremely concerned that the Armed Forces of the United States, where I spent 31 years of my professional life, were deeply involved in these tragic mistakes. I am willing to testify in person regarding the content of this declaration, should that be necessary," he added..."

Truthout, Ex-Bush Official Willing to Testify Bush, Cheney Knew Gitmo Prisoners Innocent

"As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit...

At this solemn moment, in the presence of this tribunal which is the representative of human justice, before you, gentlemen of the jury, who are the very incarnation of the country, before the whole of France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent.

By my forty years of work, by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By all I have now, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have helped for the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent.

May all that melt away, may my works perish if Dreyfus be not innocent! He is innocent.

All seems against me — the two Chambers, the civil authority, the most widely-circulated journals, the public opinion which they have poisoned.

And I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice.

I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor."

Émile Zola

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

William Wilberforce, Speech in the House of Commons, 1791

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

Gold hit an important overhead resistance level and back off of it today, although it did hold its ground.

Silver is hanging on the 23 dollar level.

Intraday commentary on the rating agencies here.

AAPL reports after the bell.

GDP Advance number for the 1Q on Friday.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Intraday Tweet Flash Crash

Intraday commentary on the twitter inspired flash crash here.

The market is rising on thin volume and skittish positions.

The volatility index, which is a measure of risk perception, is trending back towards complacency.