How Far Can the Fed Go in Manipulating Markets Before It Becomes a Private Banking Fraud?

When does public policy go too far and become an instrument primarily serving private fraud?

I have had this video on the manipulation of the debt markets by the Fed in the Matières à Réflexion links since last week, but moved it here on request because apparently many missed it, and did not understand its importance, the implications.

It is a fairly good example of the rationale for the Fed and its member banks dealing in paper derivatives to manage perception and attempt to 'manage' longer term interest rates. And by extention it also provides the reason and even some of the means in manipulating the price of gold and silver.

Papers such Gibson's Paradox by Larry Summers demonstrate a belief that the price of gold and silver have a definite correlation to long term interest rates, which the Fed is admittedly trying to 'shape.'

One may make the argument that this correlation between gold and the bond no longer exists since the US is no longer on a gold standard, and futher, just because the FED may use derivatives to distort long term rates, that does not mean the Fed and their multinational banking associates are doing the same thing in related markets such as gold, silver, stock prices, LIBOR, etc. It is circumstantial.

But in point of fact the evidence from the Fed's own transcripts, and quotes from various members and bankers, demonstrates that the perception of at least gold and silver in the market is still an active concern and of serious interest to the Fed. So now we have motive and means, and indications in half hidden documents that it is indeed occuring.

Why else would JPM short multiples of the entire supply of silver that probably exists in the world, while also holding massive positions in the derivatives markets, except for the purpose of manipulating the prices?

The recent stonewalling on the release of the relevant documents by the Fed is not frivolous, as well as the antics at the CFTC concerning position limits and investigation into the silver market. What starts out innocently enough obtains a life of its own, and the cover ups ensue, along with the abuses and private profiteering as we saw in the TALF disclosures, and the situation becomes much greater and more far-reaching than its original intent. A well intentioned program can indeed become a money machine for looting the public trust.

The problem of course is that while the Fed and its associated private banks can never run out of their own paper, or the ability to write derivatives on that paper, they can and may very well run out of physical gold and silver to support their financial engineering, if the demand is made to 'stand and deliver.' This has long been identified here as one of their weak spots which may be reached before the more extreme limit of the value at exchange of the bonds and the notes of zero duration, the dollar.

It is never so much the original scheme that brings them down, but it is almost always the ever-expanding cover up of personal larceny.

In other words, gold and silver bullion may expose the weakness of the Treasury, and the Fed and their member banks, and thereby restrict their ability to operate freely in managing perception by manipulating prices and rates. This is why they hold such an animosity to it, and attempt to conceal so many of their dealings in it, even promoting hysterical attacks from friendly sources in the establishment media.



Related: More on the Literal Bernanke Put- FT

SP Changes US Debt Rating Outlook to 'Negative' and SP Intraday, NAV Of Precious Metals

This is the same SP whose ratings were for sale to the banks throughout the build up to the financial crisis, and which has largely escaped investigation and indictment. So, even though their opinion here may be valid, how are we to know that it has not been bought again, with regard to timing and impact?

And of course the word of the downgrade was held completely confidential, even from insiders, right?

As I had cautioned last week, something wicked this way comes.  Its tracks were on the tape, most likely in word leaking out to insiders who succeed as they usually do, not in any personal merit, but by breaking the rules for their benefit.

That is the problem in dealing with an unreformed, unindicted, and corrupt financial sector. Who do you trust? And this has a decided drag on economic recovery.

The failure to reform when he held the mandate was Obama's greatest mistake. But others made the same mistake, from the Congress to the Fed. Their motivation for this policy error will be the subject of much future speculation.

This negative outlook is not a surprise. It is consistent with a growing crisis in the US.

Notice that gold and the Swiss franc, and to a lesser extent silver, were safe havens choice of the people. The bonds were hit especially on the long end, with a flight to the short end. Stocks were hammered in the flight from risk down to support in a fairly cynical manner it seemed to me.

Of course in the secondary action the wiseguys took the opportunity to stage a calculated bear raid on the metals. Kind of like machine gunning the refugees and burning the life boats. Their criminality knows no bounds, has little self restraint, and is lawless, respecting nothing but power.

"Give me control over a Nation's Currency and I care not who makes its Laws."

I am not certain of the attribution of this quote, but as my old school economics professor demonstrated to us again and again, it is certainly the case as we analyzed the development of the European Union and World Trade Organizations in a transnational fiat currency regime.

There is opportunity in these short term swings but only for those will a cool head tempered by experience. In the short term fraudulent pricing and manipulation is widespread, with deceit as their currency. For most it is better to hold to your long term trend investments and not be overextended.

I shifted the weighting in my trading portfolio out of the overweight to the short side taking profits, to overweight bullion on the dip, still hedged.

If you wonder why these bear raids happen, and why the paper bullion bankers defend certain price levels so viciously, often stepping in to hold gains to one or two percent in a day, this may help.

"Open interest in gold futures and options traded on the Comex typically exceeds supplies held in its warehouses. If the holders of just 5 percent of those contracts opted to take delivery of the metal, there wouldn’t be enough to cover the demand, Bass said."

University of Texas Takes Delivery of Bullion

The US markets cannot withstand a determined run on the assets which the banks, and funds, and probably even the Fed have already sold. The financial sector is a deepening cesspool of cover up and deception resembling a confidence scheme, an accident waiting to happen. If it did not involve so many of the well placed and powerful it would have already fallen of its own weight and arrogance.

What more can I do, what else is there to say? What wonders will persuade a people determined to be as gods? What, indeed, is truth, in times of general deception, when even the caretakers cannot be trusted to hold their sacred oaths and duties? And yet this is nothing, compared to what is to come. Walk carefully in the light of God's love, holding to His tender mercies, unless you be misled, gaining some objects and advantages, but losing yourself.

"Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and rely on his God." Is. 50:10

AFP
S&P adopts 'negative' outlook for US debt

WASHINGTON — Ratings agency Standard & Poor's on Monday revised its outlook on US sovereign debt to "negative" from "stable", citing Washington's looming debt and fiscal deficits.

"Because the US has, relative to its 'AAA' peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable," S&P said in a statement.

A Review on Where We Stand with Regard to Deflation, Hyperinflation and Stagflation

Well, the good news for everyone is that nothing seems inevitable here, that there is almost always a choice, but it is often wrapped up in a nice looking rationale, with all the compulsion of a necessity, for the good of the people.  Us versus them in a battle for survival and all that.  And clever leaders on the extremes provide the 'them' to be dehumanized and objectified.  The leftist wishes to murder the bankers, and the fascist the lower classes and outsiders.  The extremes of both end up making life miserable for almost everybody except for a privileged few.

And so I reiterate that in a purely fiat currency, the money supply is indeed fiat, by command.

People like to make arguments about this or that, about how so and so has proved that the Fed does not or cannot do this or that, that banks really create money only by borrowing, that borrowing must precede this or that.

It's mostly based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what money is all about, with a laser beam focus on hair-splitting technical definitions and loquacious arguments more confusing than illuminating, lost in details.  In a simple word, rubbish.

Absent some external standard or compulsion, the only limiting factor on the creation of a fiat currency is the value at exchange of the issuers bonds and notes, and currency which is nothing more than a note of zero duration without coupon.

If I had control of the Fed, unless someone stopped me, I could deliver to you hyperinflation or deflation without all that much difficulty from a technical standpoint. The policy reaction of those who might be in a position to fire or lynch me is another matter.  The Fed not only has the power to influence money creation in the private banking system.  It has the ability to expand its balance sheet and take on existing debt of almost any type at will and at any price it chooses.

But that is the case as long as the Fed has at least one willing partner in the primary dealers, and the Treasury is in agreement. And even that requirement for a primary dealer is not all that much of an issue given the amounts of existing sovereign and private debts of which the Fed might avail itself for the forseeable future.

So at the end of the day, a thinking deflationist is almost reduced to the argument that 'the authorities will not allow it' or 'will choose deflation rather than inflation'  And this is technically correct. However, let us consider my earlier statement about those who might fire or lynch one for making a highly unpopular choice.

It is economic suicide for a net debtor to willingly engage in deflation when they have other options at their disposal, and especially when those decisions involve people outside the system.

That is not to say that the deciders could not opt for economic suicide, but the people designated to suffer and die for that choice and cause might not take kindly to it. Deflation favors the creditors significantly, and those creditors tend to be a minority of domestic elites and foreign entities.   Both the extremes, hyperinflation and deflation, are choices best implemented in autocratic governments.

There are those who observe that Franklin Roosevelt 'saved capitalism' by his actions in the 1930's and I believe they are correct. If one considers the various other outcomes in large developed nations to the Great Depression, whether it be Italy, Germany, Russia, or Spain, the US came out of it fairly intact politically. People conveniently overlook the undercurrent of insurrection and violence that was festering amongst the suffering multitudes, and the growth of domestic fascist and communist organizations.  There were several plots to overthrow the elected government by military means, although the history books tend to overlook them.

So it is really about making the best choice amongst bad choices. This is why governments choose to devalue their currency, either with quantitative easing, or explicitly against some external standard as the US did in 1933. Because when the debt is unpayable, it must be liquidated, and the pain will be distributed in a way that best preserves the status quo.

Hyperinflation and a protracted deflation are both very destructive choices. So therefore no rational government will choose either option.

They *could* have those choices imposed upon them, either by military force, political force, or by economic force. Economic force is almost always the cause of hyperinflation.

So you can see why a 'managed inflation' is the most likely outcome at least in the US. The mechanism has been in place and performing this function for the last 100 years.

The problem or twist this time around comes when the monetary stimulus does not increase jobs and the median wages, because of some inherent and unreformed tendency in the economy to focus money creation and its benefits to a narrow portion of the populace. The result of this is stagflation which although not indefinitely sustainable can be maintained for decades.  Most third world republics are like this.  A vibrant and resilient middle class is sine qua non for a successful democratic republic, and this has strong implications for the median wage.  The benefits and the risks of growth and productivity must be spread widely amongst the participants.  Oligarchies tend to spread only the risks, keeping most of the benefits to themselves.

This is essentially the reasoning that occurred to me when I looked at the US economy and monetary system in the year 2000.

The one point I remain a little unclear on is how 'hard' the law is regarding the direct monetization of debt issued by the Treasury. I am not an attorney, but I am informed by those familiary with federal statutes that this is a gray area in the existing law but currently prohibited.  But it is easily overcome as I said with the inclusion of one or two amiable primary dealers who will allow the debt issued by Treasury to 'pass through' their hands in the market, on its way to the Fed at a subsidized rate.  For this reason, and for purposes of policy matters, and occasional economic warfare, countries may tolerate TBTF financial institutions with whom they have 'an understanding.' 

I have also come to the conclusion that no one knows the future with any certainty, so we must rely probability and risk management to guide our actions.

So really absent new data the argument is pointless, a matter of uninformed opinions. The dollar will continue to depreciate, and gold and silver and harder currencies appreciate, until the fundamental situation changes and the US economic system is reformed.

I think there are other probable outcomes that involve world government and a currency war, and this also is playing out pretty much as I expected.  Fiat currency can take on the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme, whose survival is only possible by continuing growth until all resistance is overcome.

This is the conclusion I came to in 2000. I admit I was surprised by the Fed's willingness to create a massive housing bubble, and the willingness of the US government to whore out the middle class in their deals with mercantilist nations; their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

So that is the basis of much of my thinking and I wanted to take a moment to share it with you in a compact, highly condensed format.

I remain a little unsettled on the issue of hyperinflation, because there is the possibility that a large bloc of countries could join together to repudiate the dollar. Since so much dollar debt is held in these foreign hands, that is the kind of exogenous force that could trigger a bout of what might be termed hyperinflation. I don't see the dollar going to zero in this, but rather the dollar having a couple of zeros knocked off it, with a new dollar being issued. I have read John Williams case for hyperinflation several times now, and see nothing more compelling in it.

Indeed I think the reissue of the dollar with a few zeros gone is inevitable. It is the timing of that event that is problematic. It could be one year, or it could be fifty years. There is a big difference there for your investment strategy.

“One day you will go the ATM and the dollars will be Blue---not Green ---and you will get a few less than you expected.”

And yes, the government could just get medieval on your asses, and seize all the gold and silver, force you to take the value of the dollar at whatever they say it should be. They could also seize all the farm land, all the means of production, and tell certain groups of people to get on freight trains for resettlement in Nevada. I think we can stipulate that governments can do this, and the people can accept it to varying degrees. If you wish to make this the dominant assumption in your planning then by all means.

For those who simply say "I disagree" or "Go read so and so he has proved this or that" I say that people believe lots of things, and can find data selectively to support almost any outcome they prefer,  But the market is the arbiter here, and the verdict so far is beyond all question. The Fed is doing exactly what they said they would do, so there should be no surprises. And they have more in their bag of tricks.

If there is new data I would certainly adjust my thinking but absent that I now consider this settled to my satisfaction, and wish to turn instead to more thinking on what changes need to occur to prevent the system breaking down, and restoring it to some semblance of reasonable functionality.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Something Wicked This Way Comes

Today was a very early April options expiration for US equities, and we saw quite a few antics in the stocks. Of special interest to many were the games being played with the mining stocks.

There is intraday commentary on gold and silver and the closing of the retail gold window at the Belarus central bank here.

April is supposed to be one of the better months for stocks, but so far it has been correcting fairly steadily from the early April highs.

Gold and silver are starting to get a second wind in this breakout, and the increasing inflationary environment in the global fiat currencies, particularly the dollar, are driving them higher.

This is the latest on US inflation from John Williams at Shadowstats. John tracks the underlying inflationary trends better than anyone else that I know.

"The pace of consumer inflation is accelerating rapidly, with annual CPI-U at 2.7% and CPI-W at 3.0%, while the annualized quarterly, seasonally-adjusted inflation rates have hit 5.2% for the CPI-U and 6.0% for the CPI-W.

These higher inflation numbers are tied directly to the Federal Reserve's successful and ongoing efforts to debase the U.S. dollar, which in turn have boosted dollar-denominated commodity prices such as oil. The inflation pace here normally would be of concern to the Fed, except the U.S. central bank officially ignores inflation tied to food and energy prices, even though, again, those debilitating price increases for consumers are a direct result of Fed policy.

Of particular discomfort to consumers, this inflation has not resulted from booming economic activity and wages, but rather from Fed monetary policy in the context of stagnant/declining broad economic activity.

Inflation has gained the upper hand in retail sales, with sales gains now more than accounted for by rising prices. A pending benchmark revision (April 29th) should show a much weaker recent history for retail sales activity, as the just-published benchmark revision to industrial production did for that series...

Inflation Above 3% Tends to Rattle Consumers. Where consumers look at inflation in terms of out-of-pocket expenses, the threshold of pain has been crossed, with popularly used consumer price indices at or within one month of topping 3% annual inflation. Further, for those who do not get paid in seasonally-adjusted dollars, the 0.5% adjusted CPI-U monthly gain felt more like the 1.0% unadjusted gain."