Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Monkey Shines

“What happened yesterday in the gold market was very interesting. One full hour before Bernanke's testimony, the bullion banks started selling. Over the next 4 hours, the bullion banks sold the equivalent of 515 metric tons of paper gold. This was in just 4 hours, and again, the selling started one hour before Bernanke’s testimony...

The real question here is, how could an entity begin selling such a massive amount of paper gold when there hadn’t been any news? (starting to sell before Bernanke's testimony)...

The bullion banks are ringing the register at both ends, while trying to extricate themselves from their short positions in the paper market. They are attempting to do this before transparency comes in to the market. They do not want a situation where the aggressive hedge funds actually get evidence that these bullion banks are naked short.

They are concerned that if it is discovered they are naked short gold and silver, those hedge funds will aggressively target those banks. This is what happened to JP Morgan, recently, when the London Whale got caught. As soon as Jamie Dimon was forced to admit a $2 billion loss, the sharks realized they were vulnerable and came in to attack. That has greatly magnified the size JP Morgan’s loss. The last thing powerful entities want to see is for this to occur in the gold and silver markets.”

London Trader at King World News

One has to consider information such as this as input to be compared to other things, since we cannot directly view what the unidentified source is specifically seeing.

However, having watched the tape in real time and looked at the changes in Open Interest, it seems to be a credible description of what happened.

It also tracks closely with my own view of the game which we are in.

So as a further word of caution, if you cannot bear irrational volatility, do not trade the paper gold and silver markets. Take your positions according to your investment plans and then sit and wait.

I am perhaps not so sanguine that an end to the manipulation will come anytime soon as the London Trader seems to imply. Or perhaps this is just how I interpret what he says.

While Bart Chilton and the CFTC promise change and reform, it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, at least before the national elections.

Still, one never knows.  Change is in the wind.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Looking For Mr. Goodbar

Spain is asking the ECB for 'help' tomorrow. The anticipation there help fuel some of the speculative games today.

Is this like asking for an invitation to one of Signor Berlusconi's bunga bunga parties?  I think it would be of the foremost importance to discuss all the specifics in advance.

So far the IMF and ECB are not helping resolve the situation.  One has to wonder what they are thinking.  

If you have read the paper on Sovereignty and globalisation by the Council on Foreign Relations president Haass which I had linked you recently, you may have some better idea of where this may be heading.

The Greek electons are on June 17th. Speculation will intensify as the date approaches, and the Greek people decide if they wish to accept the proposition on the table.

It looks like rough trade to me. Perhaps it would be best just to say 'no.'

I remain long bullion, having added on the dip the other day, but am also carrying some short stock index positions as a hedge again.

Chris Hedges: Resistance and Faith, Faith and Unbelief - Prague Spring 1968

“Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Robert Francis Kennedy


"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."

Václav Havel, Letter to Alexander Dubček, August 1969

The impulse to freedom and democracy always seems weak and hopeless when matched against the forces of oppression, because aggressive oppression is always more single-minded, having already crushed internal dissent and perspective, and is generally better organized and equipped.

And yet even the greatest tyrannies have fallen, always. This is because they carry within themselves the seeds of their own renewal and return to balance, or utter destruction.

As in most human things, their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, and it is their inability to master and evolve that strength, to reform and achieve sustainability, that brings them crashing down, every time. Their strength is their weakness, in its overreach and self-absorption.




Faith, Unbelief, and Their Fundamentalisms



The Locus of Intolerance and the Objectification of the Other



I am sure that Hedges would agree that, as a person, he is subject to the same impulses, the same tendencies, the same foibles, the same snares of pride, harsher moments and failures to love, that he descries so capably in their more extreme manifestations of the abuse of faith and humanness.

I would have liked to have seen a little more expansion of the continuum of unbelief to include the uncertainty of agnosticism versus the certainty of atheism, for I believe that to be a fateful threshhold which one crosses with their own 'leap of faith' as it were, that being the difference between 'I do not know' and I am certain enough to declare and commit myself, whether it be for faith or for unbelief. - Jesse

At Their Extremes, Most Belief Systems Become Indistinguishable From their Putative Opposites

I noticed today that I have never posted a memoir which I had intended about Prague, and my time as a forty year old 'student' at a symposium there when I was taking my MBA in 1991, a period of great change. I shall have to do that sometime. I thought I had done so already.

It was particularly meaningful to me because this is where my father's grandfather had been from many years ago. And of course it is a city with a great tradition of learning, manufacturing, and engineering.   And the 'hometown' of my great-grandfather, although all family traces seem to have been erased by time, and by the decisions of the great powers to hand the region over first to the Germans and then to the Soviets.

Coincidentally enough I am informed by readers via email that two organizations have blocked access to Le Café Américain of late: the government of mainland China, although I think that applies to all blogs and has been on and off for some time, and just recently Bank of America. Plus ça change, plus c'est la similar bureaucratic mentality.

'Prague Spring' 1968 - The 99 Percent

Marta Kubišová, Modlitba pro Martu , 1968

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

The cloud is slowly sailing away from the skies,
Everyone is reaping his own harvest.
Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Let my prayer speak to the hearts that are
Not burned by the times of bitterness like blooms by a late frost.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.

Jan Palach Memorial, Wenceslas Square, Prague, 1989

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Chart - Providing Air Cover for Ben

Obvious, heavy-handed, and in no further need of comment.