As I mentioned on Friday morning, despite the awful jobs numbers it was likely that the stock markets would find support into the FOMC meeting, which is tomorrow. I also suggested that despite the moves higher, gold and silver would be capped going into this meeting. Check and double check.
The story being promulgated by the oligarchs, with a strong lead from Robert Rubin and friends, is that the economy is doing well on its own and recovering, and no stimulus is required, except for tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations.
This is America today, and that theme utterly dominated the conversation on Bloomberg television with hardly a dissenting voice from any of the guests.
Even the NY Times can only manage to squeeze out a piece of corporatized news such as this, The Rise of the Perma Bears.
09 August 2010
SP 500 and NDX September Futures Daily Charts; Gold Daily Chart; NY Times Disses Bears
Why the Official Antipathy to Gold and Silver? The Second Oldest Profession
Every so often someone asks, 'Why do the government and the banks manipulate the price of gold and silver?'
There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence to support this, even some blatant quotes pertinent to the topic from the likes of Volcker, Greenspan, and Bank of England governor Eddie George. Of course it can all be denied. People can deny anything, even well known historical events with many witnesses, if it suits their bias and purposes.
But putting aside the operational aspects, what is the motive?
Most recently a correspondent from India asked the question 'why do the banks wish to control silver from the short side? Why would they not blow it into a bubble like they do with stocks and make their profit there? Why do the banks wish to hold these prices down and make people think badly of silver and gold which we here value so much?'
When asked this, I will usually attempt some explanation that begins with the fact that the banks involved are the Primary Dealers for the most part, and very involved with the Federal Reserve and the government on a variety of levels in the issuance and arbitrage of official US debt.
The motive therefore involves aspects from an 'official' monetary perspective. It will often include a reference to Gibson's Paradox, a paper by Larry Summers involving the price of gold and its perceptual relationship with the long end of the curve. It might include Volcker's and Greenspan's comments about the price of gold casting a negative light on the stability of the currency if it rises too high or too quickly. I may even get into the Second Bank of the United States, and Andrew Jackson's populist role in exposing its frauds, and refusing to renew its Charter in favor of constitutional money.
But if I am ever asked about this in the future, I can think of no better, no more concise statement of a possible motive for the manipulation of gold and silver than this:
“The central economic problem plaguing this country since 1913 has been the presence of the Federal Reserve System. Without the Federal Reserve System’s debt-currency scheme having effectively supplanted the constitutional monetary system based upon silver and gold, it would have been impossible - not simply improbable, or difficult, but impossible - for politicians in the public sector and speculators in the private sector to have amassed the staggering level of unpayable, unconstitutional, and unconscionable debt that now bears down upon this country.”
Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Going to the Roots of the Problem
It's enabling the fraud, always and everywhere, and the power obtained in controlling the supply and issuance of money. There are those who are involved in productive labor, and those who wish to unproductively tax it. It is an old story with deep roots in history.
And once again, the government and the financiers seem to have formed an unholy alliance to harness the real economy with excessive, unjust, and unproductive taxes for the private benefit of a privileged few, protecting and promoting their schemes when they win, and covering and subsidizing their losses when they do not. In either case the money is coming out of the real economy, and like a paraiste is starving it of its vitality.
So there is your motive, from what might be called the second oldest profession. Find out what people need to have, and then seek to control it to obtain your wealth by exacting a tax on it, but without having to deliver anything for it, a mere exploitation of informational and procedural advantage.
There is a difference between amassing capital, building a business, and assuming the risks for its success and failure, and this modern form of banking which is nothing more than an enormous tax on the productive economy granted by a corrupted government that turns a blind eye to fraud and abuses. And when its schemes go wrong, it obtains subsidies and relief from its partners in government.
As Andrew Jackson noted of the Second Bank of the United States, the predecessor to the Fed which came back into being 80 years after:
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out."
Matt Simmons Found Dead of Drowning, Apparent Heart Attack
In addition to promoting alternative energy, Matt Simmons was also a noted proponent of the 'peak oil' theory. He was also an outspoken critic of BP and the US government, and their handling of the Gulf Oil spill.
His most recent extended interview on the Gulf Oil spill was on King News World in July.
Be he right or wrong, as time will tell, he was a human being with a family and friends who loved him. His untimely death is their loss, and we should remember this even as he becomes a target for political back and forth, given his involvement in controversial topics.
Kennebec Journal
Energy expert Simmons dies in North Haven
By Tux Turkel
Matthew Simmons, an international oil expert who most recently focused on developing renewable energy from the waters off Maine, died Sunday night of an apparent heart attack, his office is reporting. He was 67.
Simmons founded the Ocean Energy Institute in 2007, hosting a grand opening of its new office last month in Rockland. The goal of the think tank and venture capital fund was to attract investment in research to make Maine a global leader in offshore wind and other ocean energy sources.
According to police reports, Simmons suffered a heart attack while in a hot tub at his home on North Haven. An autopsy is planned for today in Augusta, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
Simmons was a leading energy investment banker, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, and author. He wrote the 2005 book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” which laid out an argument that the world was approaching peak oil production.
