Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Currency Wars

 

"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."

Edward 'Steady Eddie' George, Governor Bank of England 1993-2003, from Reg Howe v. BIS, JPM et al.

"The general hypothesis I have put forward over a period of time at this café is that with the spike in the price of gold up to $1900, the central banks of the West became greatly concerned, and opted for a lower price, and a more orderly rise.   And so the price of gold was smacked down into a trading range between $1540 and $1780 through the various price and market operations of some central and bullion banks in what we can think of as a gold pool.

As you may recall, the great sea change was that central banks turned from being net sellers to net buyers of gold, slowly over a ten year period from 2000-2010 approximately.   This change of policy was not uniform, but driven largely from the emerging and re-emerging nations.  It ought not to surprise us.  No fiat currency has survived for so long in historical terms, and even fewer as the world's reserve currency, unless backed by an unassailable empire.  They will fall to Triffin's Dilemma, and the decay of power to self-serving and short-sighted corruption.

Forces similar to those that are working against the EU monetary union, without a comprehensive political union, are working against the dollar global reserve currency, on a much larger and slower paced scale.  This is why a global currency issued and controlled by one central entity tends to presume (and aspire to) a one world governance, or at least a cohesive governance of a rather large piece of it. It is not incidental to their financial goals.

The gold pool can rehypothecate and leverage physical gold by multiples into paper, and outright create it with naked short selling.  And they can sell this paper in bulk at whatever they wish in the markets which they control.  And they can use positional advantage and their media to bully boy anyone who dares to question this into silence.  But they cannot print gold bullion and deliver it to Asia (et al.), which quite frankly does not care what they say.

In general this is what is referred to at the divergence between the paper and physical gold markets.   It is what happens when 'semi-official' forces endeavor to set an artificially low price in a market that involves some physical commodity which is in a somewhat limited supply.   It tends to become more limited as a result.

But the supply of paper gold is not limited in the short term, especially where things like position limits and leverage are given the wink and a nod behind a wall of opaque obfuscation.  

So this is why I think things will unravel in a manner similar to the London Gold Pool's operation which sought to set and maintain an artificially low price.   How exactly this will unravel is a matter of much conjecture.  I doubt it will break at the source of the paper gold, given the power the insiders have over the rules and information there.  Rather, there is more likely to be a strain at some physical delivery source that will cause the current pool to back up the price higher to some more sustainable level.  What that will be I cannot say.

What is driving this current dynamic is what is called the 'currency war,' which is shorthand for a difference of opinion amongst the world powers over the existing global currency trade regime."

Jesse, 22 January 2014

“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

Tacitus

"Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise."

Alan Greenspan, Congressional Testimony, July 24, 1998

Paper gold is a derivative, an often non-collateralized claim that may not be available from a counterparty in the present moment.  In the NY-London markets gold is estimated to be traded at a leverage of over 100 to 1, with the individual paper chits called gold having a very ephemeral attachment to any underlying physical bullion, bearing a significant burden of unallocated risk.

As noted fund manager Kyle Bass observed, 'The [gold] exchange is a fractional reserve exchange, and they think that price will solve everything.'

By its very nature a fiat currency is a projection of political and economic force.  And as it expands beyond reasonable bounds, confidence and volition may waver, and force and fraud and compulsion will increase.

False flags of war can be economic policy (too often a euphemism for greed and lust for power) as well as diplomacy by other means.

Sometimes when things are happening that don't seem to make sense, it may be a lack of a general understanding of the bigger picture, the players and the issues and motivations behind the scenes, that is the cause of our confusion.

And often normal, hard-working human beings are not able to fully comprehend the sort of petty vanity and greed that motivates the hubris of prominent servants of the darkness of the world.

Stocks were rallying for whatever rationale this morning after a fairly predictable consumer price dataset this morning.

The Dollar plunged on the news as you can see from the first chart below.

Sometimes looking at things cross markets is the only way to see what is happening.

Producer price index tomorrow.

There are geopolitical flash points are the world, any of which could provoke a serious exogenous event effect on the world financial markets.

Some of this may be by intent.  But most often it can be explained by pride, greed, and lack of foresight, which are often close companions in human political arenas and worldly affairs.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood alone, but against principalities and powers, and the rulers of darkness of this world, and wickedness in high places.

Recklessly wicked and destructive things, which the normal human being finds it almost inconceivable to consider.

Have a pleasant evening.

A Currency War That Few Economists and Analysts Notice, Much Less Understand

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."

Michael Parenti

Most economists and financial analysts think that 'currency war' merely refers to the competitive devaluations that nations sometimes engage in to help boost their domestic economies, as they had done in the 1930's for example.

This time the currency war is a much more profound confrontation of differing agendas revolving around the historically unusual role of the US dollar, based on nothing more than the will of the Federal Reserve and the 'full faith and credit' of the US, as the reserve currency for global central banks and international trade.

When a single nation begins to wield such an 'exorbitant privilege' to underwrite the speculative excesses of a crony capitalist banking system, and perhaps even more importantly, as an instrument in support of their international policy, one ought not be surprised that the rest of the world will begin to resist it.

A currency must be policy neutral, without regard to any party if it is to be a true medium of exchange.  Can this still be said of the US Dollar as it has been managed, especially since 1990?

As Alan Greenspan once correctly pointed out, but certainly did not heed when he was at the Fed, if a fiat dollar is managed by monetary policy such that it emulates gold, then it will be perceived as fair, and will certainly be above the particular domestic issues or international policy biases of a single nation that de facto wields the reserve currency status.

"And so it is an odd situation where all the central bankers -- while none of them are advocating a return to the gold standard -- nonetheless try to replicate the various types of interest rate policies that the gold standard would have created. And it is an interesting question whether you call that regulation, or basically functioning of a central bank in stabilizing the economy."

Greenspan: Role of Central Bankers Is To Emulate the Gold Standard

It might help one to understand this if they were to imagine a world in which Russia, for example, in a quirk of history had established the ruble as the benchmark currency for the world.  The ruble was recommended for use by all nations as the means of paying for oil,  and for settling international trade even when Russia is not involved in the transaction.  Each country was thereby compelled to hold a substantial portion of its international reserves in rubles.

And how would one be likely to react if the Russian Central Bank started using the ruble as an instrument of their international policy and extension of their quest for imperial power?  What if they began creating more rubles to underwrite the domestic bubbles which were created in their own corrupted financial system to bail out their banks and oligarchs?

And let's be serious and think 'like the other guys' for a moment.  What if some other nation that held the enormous power of the world's reserve currency was exhibiting a crop of candidates for their leader like the current choices for the US Presidency?   I would expect that some of the rhetoric being tossed about in these debates would send a chill to the very bottom of our toes.  Who could place their confident trust in their good and selflessly wise judgement to do the right things for other nations around the world, even if it might not favor the powerful special interests that give them so many millions in campaign donations?

Would you be content if your own government went quietly along with this abusive sort of monetary system?  Is this not indeed taxation without representation when the money supply is expanded and handed over directly to the hands of a few Bankers?

The intransigence of the Anglo-American financial establishment to recognize the legitimate issues of the rest of the world with regards to the manner in which they have conducted their control of the IMF, the World Bank, and the international reserve currency has ignited a currency war that is now becoming increasing visible, to just about everyone it seems except for those sequestered in their ivory towers at the heart of the Empire.  Or perhaps they think it too dangerous to even acknowledge that it exists, because then they might be compelled to render an opinion on it.

This is a 'big event' and it is all the more remarkable because the policy makers in the US act as though it is not even happening, or is not happening for any of the reasons for which it is.  They prefer to view it as a challenge to their authority, and to react uncompromisingly and with force.

I think that historians will find the start of the currency war in the Asian currency crises and the fall of the Russian ruble in the 1990's, with the roots of it in the closing of the gold window by Nixon in 1971.    But from the following essay it seems that China and a few astute Western observers have marked it as being visible from March 2015.

But whatever the date of its commencement, this dispute over the international monetary regime is the basis for the ongoing currency war that seeks to rebalance the terms of international trade and finance.

It is the old story of the very powerful resisting change that benefits the few of them inordinately. And as in so many wars of the past, those few who benefit from it do not include the bottom 90% of their own people at the least.

Most economists and analysts are ignoring this, or are unaware of it.  When they do finally wake up they will likely get busy finding ways to justify it, or dismiss it as an issue, and 'prove' that there is nothing wrong with it.  And very few will acknowledge the price of it in terms of economic stagnation and human misery.  All is well.

Here is an excerpt of a recent article that was published in Chinese and then translated into English in the journal of the International Monetary Institute in Beijing.  (It is a little funny that they published his last name as Widdlekoop, but if you were writing in hanzi would you know if a similar looking character is upside down?)

Has the US Lost its Role as the Underwriter of the Economic System?
By Willem Middlekoop

The recent news that Britain aspires to become one of the founding members of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), has shocked many. Larry Summers, who served as a Secretary of the US Treasury between 1999 and 2001, immediately understood the significance of these developments, and wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post:   'March 2015 may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China's effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the United States to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out.‘

This British announcement was highly criticized by the US. The Financial Times quoted an unnamed US official:  'We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power. This decision was taken after no consultation with the US.‘

Summers was also highly critical of the US‘ strategy toward the newly founded AIIB: 'The U.S. misjudged the situation tremendously, put pressure on allies and developing countries to under no circumstances be part of AIIB. Largely because of resistance from the right (neo-conservatives more precisely), the United States stands alone in the world in failing to approve International Monetary Fund governance reforms that Washington itself pushed for in 2009. By supplementing IMF resources, this change would have bolstered confidence in the global economy. More important, it would come closer to giving countries such as China and India a share of IMF votes commensurate with their increased economic heft.‘

With Britain and many more major European countries signing up as founding members of the AIIB, the US economic hegemony has been dealt an enormous blow. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the US is not in the driving seat during the foundation of a highly significant global institution. Of course, this will not change the world economic system overnight, but when we look back in five, ten or even fifteen years‘ time, March 2015 may be remembered as a turning point in economic history...

Another criticism is that the US move to more neoliberalism and global capitalism since the 1980‘s, has led to a change in the functions of the IMF. Critics claim allies of the US receive 'bigger loans with fewer conditions‘. Foreign governments who are non-allies have to sacrifice their political autonomy in exchange for IMF-funds and often have to sell assets crucial for their economy to foreign (often US) companies.

The former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who was angered that debt-ridden African states were forced to hand over their sovereignty to the IMF (and World Bank), once asked:  'Who elected the IMF to be the ministry of finance for every country in the world?‘ And now the Chinese have openly asked for a 'new world wide central bank‘.

Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, has also agreed that the IMF 'was reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community‘. The 'helpful hand‘ by the IMF and World Bank towards military dictatorships friendly to the West‘ has been criticized as well.

It might be remembered as the start of an openly Chinese confrontation with the US over the world‘s economic leadership. As Summers points out, all of this has taken place because the Chinese leadership has had to wait a full five years for a change in the IMF-voting structure...

Willem Middlekoop, International Monetary Review, International Monetary Institute, Beijing July 2015, page 32

Lawrence Wilkerson: Travails of Empire - Oil, Debt, Gold and the Imperial Dollar

"We are imperial, and we are in decline... People are losing confidence in the Empire."

This is the key theme of Larry Wilkerson's presentation.  He never really questions whether empire is good or bad, sustainable or not, and at what costs.  At least he does not so in the same manner as that great analyst of empire Chalmers Johnson.

It is important to understand what people who are in and near positions of power are thinking if you wish to understand what they are doing, and what they are likely to do.  What ought to be done is another matter.

Wilkerson is a Republican establishment insider who has served for many years in the military and the State Department. Here he is giving a 40 minute presentation to the Centre For International Governance in Canada in October, 2014.

I find his point of view of things interesting and revealing, even on those points where I may not agree with his perspective.  There also seem to be some internal inconsistencies in his line of thinking.

But what makes his perspective important is that it represents a mainstream view of many professional politicians and 'the Establishment' in America. Not the hard right of the Republican party, but much of what constitutes the recurring political establishment of the US.

As I have discussed here before, I do not particularly care so much if a trading indicator has a fundamental basis in reality, as long as enough people believe in and act on it. Then it is worth watching as self-fulfilling prophecy.  And the same can be said of political and economic memes.

At minute 48:00 Wilkerson gives a response to a question about the growing US debt and of the role of the petrodollar in the Empire, and the efforts by others to 'undermine it' by replacing it.  This is his 'greatest fear.'

He speaks about 'a principal advisor to the CIA Futures project' and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), whose views and veracity of claims are being examined closely by sophisticated assets.  He believes that both Beijing and Moscow are complicit in an attempt to weaken the dollar.

This includes the observation that "gold is being moved in sort of unique ways, concentrated in secret in unique ways, and capitals are slowly but surely divesting themselves of US Treasuries. So what you are seeing right now in the supposed strengthening of the dollar is a false impression."

The BRICS want to use oil to "force the US to lose its incredibly powerful role in owning the world's transactional reserve currency."   It gives the US a great deal of power of empire that it would not ordinarily have, since the ability to add debt without consequence enables the expenditures to sustain it.

Later, after listening to this again, the thought crossed my mind that this advisor might be a double agent using the paranoia of the military to achieve the ends of another.  Not for the BRICS, but for the Banks.  The greatest beneficiary of a strong dollar, which is a terrible burden to the real economy, is the financial sector.  This is why most countries seek to weaken or devalue their currencies to improve their domestic economies as a primary objective.  This is not so far-fetched as military efforts to provoke 'regime change' have too often been undertaken to support powerful commercial interests.

Here is just that particular excerpt of the Q&A and the question of increasing US debt.




I am not sure how much the policy makers and strategists agree with this theory about gold. But there is no doubt in my mind that they believe and are acting on the theory that oil, and the dollar control of oil, the so-called petrodollar, is the key to maintaining the empire.

Wilkerson reminds me very much of a political theoretician who I knew at Georgetown University. He talks about strategic necessities, the many occasions in which the US has used its imperial power covertly to overthrow or attempt to overthrow governments in Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the Ukraine. He tends to ascribe all these actions to selflessness, and American service to the world in maintaining a balance of power where 'all we ask is a plot of ground to bury our dead.'

A typical observation is that the US did indeed overthrow the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 in Iran. But 'the British needed the money' from the Anglo-Iranian oil company in order to rebuild after WW II. Truman had rejected the notion, but Eisenhower the military veteran and Republic agreed to it.  Wilkerson says specifically that Ike was 'the last expert' to hold the office of the Presidency.

This is what is meant by realpolitik. It is all about organizing the world under a 'balance of power' that is favorable to the Empire and the corporations that have sprung up around it.

As someone with a long background and interest in strategy I am not completely unsympathetic to these lines of thinking. But like most broadly developed human beings and students of  history and philosophy one can see that the allure of such thinking, without recourse to questions of restraint and morality and the fig leaf of exceptionalist thinking, is a terrible trap, a Faustian bargain. It is the rationalization of every nascent tyranny. It is the precursor to the will to pure power for its own sake.

The challenges of empire now according to Wilkerson are:

1) Disequilibrium of wealth - 1/1000th of the US owns 50% of its total wealth. The current economic system implies long term stagnation (I would say stagflation. The situation in the US is 1929, and in France, 1789. All the gains are going to the top.
2) BRIC nations are rising and the Empire is in decline, largely because of US strategic miscalculations. The US is therefor pressing harder towards war in its desperation and desire to maintain the status quo. And it is dragging a lot of good and honest people into it with our NATO allies who are dependent on the US for their defense.
3)  There is a strong push towards regional government in the US that may intensify as global warming and economic developments present new challenges to specific areas.  For example, the water has left the Southwest, and it will not be coming back anytime soon.

This presentation ends about minute 40, and then it is open to questions which is also very interesting.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William Mary, and former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Related:  Chalmers Johnson:  Decline of Empire and the Signs of Decay

Comex Registered 'Deliverable' Gold Bullion Stores - Money Is All About Power To Some

"The conventional wisdom seems to be that the problems of the euro zone are, as economist Martin Feldstein once put it, 'the inevitable consequence of imposing a single currency on a very heterogeneous group of countries.'

What this commentary gets wrong, however, is that single currencies are never the product of debates about optimal economic solutions. Instead, currencies like the U.S. dollar itself are the result of political battles, where motivated actors try to centralize power.

This has most often occurred 'through iron and blood,' as Otto van Bismarck, the unifier of Germany put it, as a result of catastrophic wars. Smaller geographic units were brought together to build the modern nation state, with a unified fiscal system, a common national language that was often imposed by force, a unified legal system, and, a single currency. Put differently, war makes the state, and the state makes the currency....

European leaders weren’t stupid or self indulgent when they decided to move ahead with the euro, without fiscal union or strong Europe-level democracy. They just cared more about politics and international security than economics. They wanted to build a Europe that had transcended the divisions of the Cold War, and bind together Germany, which was reunited and much more powerful, with the rest of Europe."

Kathleen McNamara, This is what economists don’t understand about the euro crisis – or the U.S. dollar

Why is it that 'great people' always seem compelled to build their dreams of empire on the backs and broken bodies of innocents.  As always, it is for the greater good, and there will be collateral damage.

I do think some of the things that McNamara says is just a rationale for a certain philosophy of government.  The historical example of the US is almost embarrassing, revisionist, especially when she discusses the civil war, and how aimless the US had been until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

But it serves the hypothesis that the ends of pursuing 'order' justify the means including the overthrow of freedom, and that this is the lesson from history.  It certainly is a lesson, but I am not sure it is the one that she intends.

Money is indeed a medium of exchange, and a store of value. And it can also be a means of power, if it is abused and distorted to serve selfish ends.   We certainly have seen enough of that sort of thing in the first fifteen years of this century, with bailouts, and selective justice, and the abuse of regulation and monetary policy to favor a few over the many.

According to this line of thought, those who foresaw the pitfalls of the euro wanted nevertheless proceed in order to foster a unified political system which they felt would be more orderly, controlled by a collection of technocrats.

There is a similar school of thought with regard to a single world currency like the US dollar for example, that is to be controlled centrally by a cadre of technocrats that will be able to bring order, if not freedom, to everyone.   And somehow these benevolent technocrats always turn out to be merely human.  And then with time something less, much less.

After all, we must have order.  And in establishing that order, there must be collateral damage. Like Greece.

Have we forgotten the long line of thought that money and the banking system are utilities, that were put in place under state charter and regulated to provide for their function within a greater, productive economy in order to serve the public good?  And not as a tool of power and oppression by a privileged few?

Is this not the message one receives in reading of the law, and the long history of thought from the founders to the New Deal, with the usual digressions and abuses of monopoly power that will use a variety of means, including finances?  And not as an instrument primarily of state power and control over the people.

The central hypothesis of Professor McNamara seems to be that money, like most other things, is primariily an instrument of power, and that the deployment of the euro is an exercise in the centralization of power over a heterogeneous collection of nations and economies, and a means to bring Germany to its natural place at the head of a United Europe.

I am not saying that this view of public finances, banking and money as instruments of power is the intention or perspective of all economists.  Such a view of monetary theory exists as a willful distortion and abuse of economics, fostered by hubris and the will to power.

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing--that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence."

Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a perspective that is shared by some of the powerful and the privileged.  It is just not normally associated with popular or democratic governments.   Just as other public utilities like the police are not intended as a force used to terrorize the people and quell any dissent, or the judiciary exists to permit and facilitate the abuses of a privileged few, while serving as an instrument of oppression over the general populace.  Such things can and do occur.  But these are aberrations, and not the norm, except in a society that has lost its conscience and moral moorings.

It is ironic that McNamara is a Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown, Carroll Quigley's old university.  I am not familiar with her body of work, and so admit I may be construing what she has written about the European Monetary Union, or was even being satirical.  But what she says calls to mind the writings of another Georgetown professor Carroll Quigley who, as you may recall, was Bill Clinton's mentor, and sponsor for his Rhodes Scholarship.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

As old as Babylon— or Babel.

The amount of gold deliverable at these prices at the Comex seems to be a bit thin by historical standards. 

Debt, War and Empire By Other Means

This video below may help one to understand some of the seemingly obtuse demands from the Troika with regard to Greece.

The video is a bit dated, but the debt scheme it describes remains largely unchanged. The primary development has been the creation of an experiment called the European Union and the character of the targets.   One might also look to the wars of 'preventative intervention' and 'colour revolutions' that raise up puppet regimes for examples of more contemporary economic spoliation.

From largely small and Third World countries, the candidates for debt peonage have become the smaller amongst the developed Western countries, the most vulnerable on the periphery.  

And even the domestic populations of the monetary powers, the US, Germany, and the UK, are now feeling the sting of financialisation, debt imposition through crises, and austerity.   What used to only take place in South America and Africa has now taken place in Jefferson County Alabama.  Corrupt officials burden taxpayers with unsustainable amounts of debt for unproductive, grossly overpriced projects. 

It would be wrong in these instances to blame the whole country,  the whole government, or all corporations, except perhaps for sleepwalking, and sometimes willfully, towards the abyss.  For the most part a relatively small band of scheming and devious fellows abuse and corrupt every form of government and organization and law in order to achieve their private ambitions, often using various forms of intimidation and reward.  It is an old, old story.

And then there is the mass looting enabled by the most recent financial crisis and Bank bailouts.  If the people will not take on the chains of debt willingly, you impose them indirectly, while giving the funds to your cronies who use them against the very people who are bearing the burdens, while lecturing them on moral values and thrift.  It is an exceptionally diabolical con game.

The TPP and TTIP are integral initiatives in this effort of extending financial obligations, debt, and control.  You might ask yourself why the House Republicans, who have fought the current President at every turn, blocking nominees and repeatedly staging mock votes to denounce a healthcare plan that originated in their own think tank and was first implemented by their own presidential candidate, are suddenly championing that President's highest profile legislation, and against the opposition of his own party?  Where did that come from?

The next step, after Greece is subdued, will be to extend that model to other, larger countries.  And to redouble the austerity at home under cover of the next financial crisis by eliminating cash as a safe haven, and to begin the steady stream of digital 'bailing-in.'   They will not even have to ask, as if it mattered.

This is why these corporatists and statists hate gold and silver.  And why it is at the focal point of a currency war.  It provides a counterweight to their monetary power.  It speaks unpleasant truths. It is a safe haven and alternative, along with other attempts to supplant the IMF and the World Bank, for the rest of the world.

So when you say, the Philippines deserved it, Iceland deserved it, Ireland deserved it, Africa deserves it, Jefferson County deserved it, Detroit deserved it, and now Greece deserves it, just keep in mind that some day soon they will be saying that you deserve it, because you stood by and did nothing.

When they are done with all the others, for whom do you think they come next?   If you wish to see injustice stopped, if you wish to live up to the pledge of 'never again,' then you must stand for your fellows who are more vulnerable first.

The economic hitmen have honed their skills amongst the poor and relatively defenseless, and have been coming closer to home in search of new hunting grounds and fatter spoils.  There is nothing 'new' or 'modern' about this.  The only thing that changes are the names for it.

This is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.  It is the power of darkness of the world, and of spiritual wickedness in high places.   The difference is that it is not happening in the past, or in a book, it is happening here and now.

"Economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain. As a result, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which becomes the only rule."

Francis I, Laudato Si

You may also find some information about the contemporary applications of these methods in The IMF's 'Tough Choices' On Greece by Jamie Galbraith which I highly recommend.

"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

The Global Monetary Phenomenon That Almost No One Is Seriously Discussing

I wish to present, in just a few charts, a remarkable monetary phenomenon that almost no one is discussing publicly.

 

As you can see below, the central banks of the world, largely those of the West led by the US and the UK, were net sellers of gold throughout the 1990's and through the turn of the century.  

 

As the Bankers to the world's reserve currency and sole global superpower, the Western central banks will make no major international policy decisions without the involvement of the Treasury, and especially the Federal Reserve and its constituent global banking machinery including the behemoth

Banks and the SWIFT system.

 

Gold purchases by central banks, at least those they were willing to publicly acknowledge, turned positive by 2010 at most.

 

The pundits did not expect this change to continue, as is shown in the 'forecast section' for 2012 and after in this first chart from RBC/Bloomberg below.

 

This chart shows most clearly perhaps how the Western central banks stepped up their gold selling attempting to control and then crush the price of gold, driving it down to a low of $250 in 1999-2001.

 

Interestingly enough this came to be known as Brown's Bottom.    England, under the leadership of Gordon Brown, then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, very publicly sold 400 tonnes of its sovereign gold starting in late 1999 and 2001, reportedly to bail out some of the Banks who had gotten over their heads on short sale positions.

The largest net sales amount of gold reserves was in 2005, as the central banks attempted to dampen the price of gold which had risen from $250 to $450.   This selling was co-ordinated under the Washington Agreement, which was a so-called gentleman's agreement amongst some of the Western central banks, first created in 1999 and thereafter revised and extended in 2004. 

The banks included the ECB, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK.   Although it was not a signatory, the Federal Reserve was obviously involved.   In August 2009 this agreement amongst 19 central banks was extended for another five years. 

Spun positively by the financial media as 'good for gold,' this coordination of selling was designed to allow the Banks to coordinate their efforts, and not clumsily disrupt the markets as the Bank of England had done in 1999, allowing them to manage their sales and announcements for a smoother effect on price.  

As can be seen on the chart below, the central bank gold selling was unable to obtain traction, and the price of gold continued to rise as the Banks began to taper off their attempts to control the price through outright physical selling which seems to have had its last hurrah in 2007 as noted by Citigroup. 

"Official sales ran hot in 2007, offset by rapid de-hedging. Gold undoubtedly faced headwinds this year from resurgent central bank selling, which was clearly timed to cap the gold price. Our sense is that central banks have been forced to choose between global recession or sacrificing control of gold, and have chosen the perceived lesser of two evils. This reflationary dynamic also seems to be playing out in oil markets."

There are other non-bullion instruments which the central banks may employ to manage the price of gold which include strategic leasing, derivatives, and the use of proxies to influence markets in the manner in which certain financial entities have been recently exposed to be manipulating many other global prices and benchmarks, over periods of many years.   Yet there is still a great deal of denial over the central bank attempts to manage the price of gold relative to their currencies, despite an abundance of circumstantial, historical, and direct evidence.

 

This simple chart more vividly portrays how the forecasts of declining purchases of gold by central banks after 2011 were wrong-footed.

Since that time, central bank purchases have risen to 48 year highs.

One thing that we should bear in mind here is that the central bank numbers are based on 'official' numbers given to the World Gold Council.  

There is significant evidence that some of the central banks, notably China, are significantly understating their acquisition of gold as a matter of their own discretion.

 

Here is my own depiction below of the sea-change called 'The Turn' in global central bank purchases of gold.

This turn coincides with what I along with more important others have called the currency war,  most notably in a bestselling Chinese book published in 2007 by Song HongBing called Currency Wars (货币战争), and a book published in Nov. 2011 by Jim Rickards by the same name.

 This is different from the 'currency war' which the financial media likes to portray, as the devaluation of national currencies to obtain competitive advantage, is more of an artifact from the 1930's.   This new currency war involved a rethinking of the US as the global reserve currency, an unusual condition for a fiat currency which has been in place since at least 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.  

 

From the end of WWII the Bretton Woods Agreement had set up the US dollar reserve as a proxy for gold, redeemable at least by other central banks and their governments.  After the closing of the gold window the world was pushed into a scenario of central monetary authority it had not experienced in recorded history:  a single country, through a semi-public banking entity controlled the issuance of the world's global reserve currency unencumbered by a hard reference to some neutral external standard. 

 

This currency regime has been maintained by military and political power, informal agreements, treaties and trade sanctions, between 700 to 900 foreign bases of power and influence, and the indirect control of key global resources such as oil, the so-called petrodollar.

 

 

I certainly cannot predict where this will end, except to point to the example of past endeavours such as the London Gold Pool, and suggest that absent draconian government actions, market forces tend to overcome and overwhelm such efforts over time.  

 

As I have forecast for many years, at least from 1999, the natural objective of a global fiat currency regime is a unipolar, or quite possibly a multipartite global government that is more centrally directed oligarchy than sovereign democracies.  

 

The relationships of the various countries with the central authority in the evolving Eurozone are an approachable example on a small scale, a test run for the inverted totalitarianism, or neo-corporatism, of the bureaucrats and their corporate sponsors, to be a bit extrapolative.  Although I think that the TTP and TTIP are glaring signposts along the way.

 

One particular point of frustration has been how slow on the uptake so many economists and financial commentators have been in thinking through the various monetary schemes that they promote.  I doubt if they understood where they were leading that they would support them, even as their objectives are thought to be good.