Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The hedge funds seem to be having their way with the metals market.

This makes us wonder how relevant the paper market is to the physical market.

It must be very difficult to be a retail provider of gold and silver in market where your base pricing is set by such fluffy nonsense. 

Jim Cramer offers what could be at least a partial explanation although I am sure the mainstream pundits will be quick to defend the system as it is.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Metals Hold Up While Miners Trounced Again

"Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street."

Cornel West


"Fraus est celare fraudem. It is a fraud to conceal a fraud...And the regulators may wish to consider that when they continually turn a blind eye to glaring instances of market manipulation they foster a climate of lawlessness that opens the door for widespread fraud amongst normally law abiding market participants. It becomes a competition in larceny and a moveable feast of fraud. “Poverty wants, but greed wants everything, and more.” Customers run for safety, from one place to another, not sure what or whom they can trust."

Jesse, MF Global: The Issue Is Fraud and the Cover Up


“Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

Louis D. Brandeis

As it turns out the Cyprus 'gold sales' touted yesterday were merely an idea floated by a politician, that had never been discussed at all with the central bank of Cyprus that controls ownership of the gold.

There are spot shortages of physical bullion on the retail level with silver of various types in particular commanding decent premiums over spot.

EMU Seizes Cyprus' Gold Reserves

Let's see how this develops.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Complacency in Pig Heaven

I think that stocks are in a bubble now.

Earnings season should prove to be quite interesting.

It is not central bank policy failing so much as the complete lack of serious reform in the financial system that is thwarting a sustainable recovery.

What is a sustainable recovery? One that is not reliant on $85 billion per month in Fed purchases at non market prices in the debt markets. It is a recovery marked by growing demand support by a rising median wage, and not fueled by credit bubbles.

Background Music for Today's Market Culture and the Risk On Trade - Derivatives Agonistes

"Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet


"Which shall I first bewail, thy bondage or lost sight?"

John Milton, Samson Agonistes