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.

Trial Balloon For First Steps Toward Quant Ease 2: FT Says Fed Set to Downgrade Outlook for US

The Federal Reserve had used Washington Post business reporter John Berry to release trial balloons ahead of its actions to gauge market sentiment and to soften any reactions to changes in their policy outlooks.

Since John is no longer on the scene, have they switched to the Financial Times? This reporters speaks as though someone has already disclosed the intentions of the upcoming FOMC meeting.

This does sound like the sort of trial balloon we would expect to pre-release a change in the Fed outlook so that it does not suprise the bond markets.

Given the oversized percentage that the financial sector is taking from the real economy, like an unproductive tax on commercial business, it is unlikely that any measures will rejuvenate the US without creating another bubble.

"From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent." Simon Johnson

It is unlikely the Fed will announce any new programs on Tuesday. That will come intra-meeting, probably after another bad round of economic news, or on some event that makes it clear that the economic "recovery" is floundering.

Financial Times
Fed set to downgrade outlook for US
By James Politi in Washington
August 8 2010

The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.

Faced with weak economic data and rising fears of a double-dip recession, the Federal Open Market Committee is likely to ensure its policy is not constraining growth and to use its statement to signal greater concern about the economy. It is, however, unlikely to agree big new steps to boost growth.

Smaller measures to help the economy could initially take the form of a decision to reinvest proceeds from maturing mortgage-backed securities held by the US central bank, thereby preventing the Fed’s balance sheet from shrinking naturally.

Investors will also examine closely any changes to the pledge made by the FOMC in June to “employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability”, which could be hardened if policymakers choose to signal the potential for more aggressive move to boost the economy in the future.

But even if that happens, most economists believe that it would take several more months of poor data for the Fed to actually begin a new round of asset purchases on the scale of those carried out during the recession....

Chris Whalen: Nothing Has Changed Because It's The Fraud and Corruption, Stupid

Chris Whalen provides a devastating analysis of the Financial Reform legislation, and then goes on to eviscerate the Federal Reserve as regulator.

"Even as the big banks make a public show for the media of implementing the new Dodd-Frank law with respect to limits on own account trading and spinning off private equity investments, these same firms are busily creating the next investment bubble on Wall Street -- this time focused on structured assets based upon corporate debt, Treasury bonds or nothing at all -- that is, pure derivatives."

What I resent most about this current climate are the whispering campaigns and not so subtle attacks on the whistleblowers and victims: the unemployed, the homeless, the dislocated. These use stereotypes, character assassination, prejudice, and the darker elements of the human soul.

The better educated and fortunate members of the middle class are too often too willing to stand by and permit this without lifting a finger or saying a word, sometimes because it is to their benefit, or so they think. That is a mistake, because as history as shown, it is only a matter of time before the predators come for them.

Enjoy.

Institutional Risk Analyst
Is Fed Supervision of Big Banks Really Changing?
By Chris Whalen

With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, many financial analysts and members of the press believe that investment banking revenues and resulting earnings are in danger, but nothing is further from the truth. The Volcker Rule and other limitations on the principal trading and investment activities of the largest universal banks.

It is not own account trading but the derivatives sales desks of the largest BHCs whence the trouble lies. Even as the big banks make a public show for the media of implementing the new Dodd-Frank law with respect to limits on own account trading and spinning off private equity investments, these same firms are busily creating the next investment bubble on Wall Street -- this time focused on structured assets based upon corporate debt, Treasury bonds or nothing at all -- that is, pure derivatives. Like the subprime deals where residential mortgages provided the basis, these transactions are being sold to all manner of investors, both institutional and retail. It is the perverse structure of the OTC markets and not the particular collateral used to define these transactions that creates systemic and institution specific risk.

One risk manager close to the action describes how the securities affiliates of some of the most prominent and well-respected U.S. BHCs are selling five-year structured transactions to retail investors. These deals promise enhanced yields that go well into double digits, but like the subprime debt and auction rate securities which have already caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to bank shareholders, the FDIC and the U.S. taxpayer, these securities are completely illiquid and often come with only minimal disclosure.

The dirty little secret of the Dodd-Frank legislation is that by failing to curtail the worst abuses of the OTC market in structured assets and derivatives, a financial ghetto that even today remains virtually unregulated, the Congress and the Fed are effectively even encouraging securities firms to act as de facto exchanges and thereby commit financial fraud. Allowing securities firms to originate complex structured securities without requiring SEC registration is a vast loophole that Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) deliberately left open for their campaign contributors on Wall Street. But it must be noted these same firms have a captive, client relationship with the Fed and other regulators as well, thus a love triangle may be the most apt metaphor.

Of course retail investors love the higher yields on complex structured assets. Who can blame them for trying to get a higher yield than available on treasuries, while the Fed keeps rates at historic lows to, among other things, re-capitalize the zombie banks. The only trouble is that the firms originating these ersatz securities, as with the case of auction rate municipal securities, have no obligation to make markets in these OTC structured assets or even show clients a low-ball bid. And because of the bilateral nature of the OTC market, only the firm which originates the security will even provide an indicative valuation because the structures and models behind them are entirely opaque.

In fact, we already know of two hedge funds that are being established specifically to buy this crap from distressed retail investors as an when rates start to rise. The sponsors expect to make returns in high double digits by making a market for the clients of large BHCs who want to get out of these illiquid assets. But the one thing that you can be sure of is that nobody at the Fed or the other bank regulatory agencies know anything about this new bubble. As with the early warnings brought to the Fed about private loan origination and securitization activities as early as 2005, the central bank and other regulators are so entirely compromised by the political pull of the large banks that they will do nothing to get ahead of this new problem.

Consider a specific example:

Shall We Reward Incompetence? The Case of Sarah Dahlgren and the Fed of New York

Despite initial indications that Congress would reduce the scope of Federal Reserve's financial company supervision, in the end the Dodd-Frank legislation substantially increases the Federal Reserve's responsibility. Chairman Ben Bernanke and other Federal Reserve officials made the argument that the Fed's supervision function didn't do any worse than any other financial regulators -- an assertion we cannot validate. This combined with heavy lobbying by other Reserve Bank Presidents and the grudging acknowledgement to the Congress by Fed Chairman Bernanke and Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo that significant improvements are necessary ultimately won the day.

Given its second lease on regulatory life, one might expect that the Fed's bank supervision function would be gearing-up to take a fresh, smart, and tough line with respect to financial company oversight. However, a recent key supervisory officer appointment by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) indicates this may not be the case. The largest and most important of regional Reserve Banks appears to be going back to the future with its choice of Sarah Dahlgren as Head of Supervision. See FRBNY press release link.

If the name sounds familiar, that's because Ms Dahlgren has been at the center of many of the Federal Reserve's most embarrassing failures in the area of bank supervision and in particular with respect to the failure of American International Group (AIG). Going back in time now and remembering the period before the crisis, Dahlgren typified the arrogance and refusal of Fed officials to acknowledge warnings from various members of the financial community that the subprime mortgage market was melting down after years of unsafe and unsound lending and underwriting practices by the largest banks. Roger Kubarych, a former economist for the FRBNY, described the refusal of Fed officials to acknowledge the crisis in a 2008 interview with The IRA ('Fed Chairmen and Presidents: Roundtable with Roger Kubarych and Richard Whalen', October 30, 2008).

"It makes me so mad to think back how ignorant, arrogant, and dismissive she was with people who knew what they were talking about pre-crisis," one former Fed colleague told The IRA. Dahlgren was running the AIG show for the FRBNY. She ignored the recommendations from the Fed's own advisors and the Board of the FRBNY that AIG counterparties be forced to take haircuts. For her to ignore good advice on AIG and then deliberately take steps to hide that decision from the Congress and the public, and then be rewarded with a promotion, is quite disheartening..."

Read the rest here.