Thomas Drake On Government Overreach, Obsessive Secrecy, and Constitutional Abuses

I was not familiar with this person or his case, but I found his speech to the National Press Club to be interesting, informative, and well articulated.

I recommend that you listen to it. I am a little surprised that he has not received more exposure in the media given the subjects that are being discussed these days. But I am often underinformed about current political affairs that do not involve finance so it could just be my own deficiency and over-concentration in certain areas.

What he reveals starting around minute 49 until almost the end is very eloquent, and quite disturbing.

Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower.

In 2010 the government alleged that Drake 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake's defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award.

On June 9, 2011, all 10 original charges against him were dropped. Drake rejected several deals because he refused to "plea bargain with the truth". He eventually pled to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer.

COMEX Gold Remains At Low Levels - Owners Per Registered Ounce of Gold Tops 50

It will take higher prices to move more of the gold from the eligible to the registered, or deliverable, category during this August delivery month.

With fifty potential owners for every ounce put forward for delivery, the COMEX is quite obviously not a market with purchase and delivery of actual metal as its primary objective. I think this may have been sufficient during the long bear market, but with the increased demand for physical gold, the COMEX begins to look out of place.

It seems almost a relic of a type of market that is falling out of favor with regard to physical things, where people are just playing games, placing bids for things which they have no intention of actually buying, most of which are not really being offered for sale.

What would one call that? An ethereal auction? Or a market that has degenerated into just an odd form of gambling plagued by secrecy, imposition, and fraud?

Weighed, and found wanting.

Stand and deliver.

The above chart on ownership per ounce is from Sharelynx.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Où est la masse de manoeuvre?

Winston Churchill: "Où est la masse de manoeuvre?" (Where are your reserves?)

French General Gamelin: "Aucune!" (None!)

Stocks, Bonds and the Dollar were dropping today, while the metals caught a ferocious bid to the upside just after mid-day with silver leading the charge.

The TIC data came in quite negative this morning show a net long term outflow of 67 billion as both public and private foreigners were dumping US Treasuries in size during June.   When traders see a number like that, their first impulse is to start asking around and checking other data to see if this is a one off, or a trend.  So the reaction is often delayed.

From watching the tape during the day you could almost feel the precious metals coiling, as money was fleeing -- just about everything else.  

And since the metals would just not go down and stay down, the bears gave way and there was a remarkable 'pop' as gold moved almost twenty dollars higher in about a minute.  Money came pouring out of overpriced equities, bonds were no haven, and the dollar was in disfavor.   What are you going to do?

This was an absolutely classic flight to safety into the precious metals that triggered a short squeeze.

Some of the miners took off like scalded cats as the heavy propaganda of the last six months evanesced into the big repository for all official myths, the dustbin of history.

Weighed, and found wanting.

So what next.  The metals need to hold their gains over resistance, and not give way to another efforts from the bears to get the price back down.  I think they will have quite a bit of trouble making that work because physical gold is being held by strong hands, and is in very short supply.

Let's keep an eye on this, and see how far we run and what chart patterns continue to evolve as it appears that the great metal massacre is done.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Who Let the Bears Out?

Stocks took the gas pipe today, suffering their biggest one day drop of the summer after yesterday's decline.

And the guest expert on Bloomberg TV opined that this was because of fresh fears of tapering in September. Even though today's economic data was rather weak.

'Oh I see,' one lone voice chimed in. 'Then why isn't the dollar rallying?'

To which the expert replied, 'Duh, I don't know. That concerns me.'

More on this in the gold and silver commentary tonight.