The Predators Feast: Ex-JPM Bankers Raise $375 Million For Mining Company Buys

Companies.  Countries.

We will find an opportunity, or we will make them.

Ex-JPMorgan Bankers Raise $375 Million for Mining Fund
By Jesse Riseborough
Jan 29, 2014

Former JPMorgan Chase & Co. bankers Michael Scherb and Verne Grinstead raised $375 million from investors to target acquisitions of mining assets through their Appian Natural Resources Fund LP.

“The whole thesis was really created when I was at JPMorgan, when I could see that traditional sources of capital were going to dry up to the industry,” Scherb, who founded Appian two years ago after leaving the bank, said in a phone interview from London yesterday. “I thought that private equity made sense. I thought it made sense to match long-term capital to a long-term industry.”

Declining prices and a tapering in demand for commodities has dried up financing for new mining projects as investors retreat from the industry. Appian started raising funds a year ago and got commitments of $1 billion from investors, Scherb said...

Read the entire story here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - FOMC Tomorrow

"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

Another ten tonnes of eligible gold came out of the JPM Comex warehouse yesterday. I had some commentary on the inventories intraday here.

Gold and silver were under some slight selling pressure much of the day, as the word went out to bounce the equities market higher to restore confidence.

So what next. The FOMC is tomorrow, and I would think that the usual taper of $10 billion will be done. This is Bernanke's swan song meeting, and I do not expect anything otherwise important to be announced.

We might see some monkey business with the metals. The deceptions will continue until confidence returns.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Running out of Runway for The Recovery™

The FOMC announcement comes in tomorrow.

Earnings for big tech keep coming this week. Yahoo reported after hours, and the stock is selling off about 5% on the news.

The US economy is fundamentally broken at the distribution of wealth level. The Recovery™ has benefited the top one percent, because of the gaming of the rules and the profound influence that money has had on policy, both economic and fiscal.

We are seeing the classic situation of financial monopolies strangling themselves by killing off their customer base, an excess to which corrupted capitalism has been know to stray now and then. Their predatory desire to move offshore to fresher fields is being hampered by their reputations.

Have a pleasant evening.

Another Ten Tonnes of Gold Bullion Came Out of Comex Eligible Inventory at JPM Yesterday

"And we headed out of the hotel, went to the airport, got on the plane and, about halfway through the flight, I found myself alone in the President’s cabin with him. I said, 'Mr. President, you don’t have a cold. There’s something else going on.'

He said, 'You bet. There is something else going on.' And he said, 'When you find out, grab your balls [and run].'

Pierre Salinger, On the Cuban Missile Crisis

If I were short bullion I might consider squaring up and inching towards the exit, just to be on the safe side.

I cannot believe how little gold is left at Brinks.   They have gone from total ounces of about 650,000 at the end of 2012 to a little over 186,000 ounces now.

Brinks and JPM only have about five and one half tonnes up for delivery.   The two big boys are HSBC and Scotia, and they only have a little over six tonnes up for delivery between them.

That does not mean, however, that we will not see the usual shenanigans in the paper metals markets.

It's what they do, until they can't. And then they ask for a change in the rules, and a bailout.