Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - FOMC Meeting This Week - No Yellow Dogs Allowed

As a reminder, there will be an FOMC meeting this week, with the announcement on Wednesday the 18th at 2 PM.

Gold and silver showed some strength today, but until they break their downtrends this just the wiseguys doing the Wall Street shuffle.

Janet Tavakoli has an interesting report out today, How Hidden Bank Risks Drive Investors to Productive Assets, U.S. Treasuries, and Gold.

When I first became interested in gold, traders on the chat boards used to call it 'the yellow dog', or yaller dawg if one was of the Southern persuasion. That was because after the long and brutal bear market, gold was wallowing in the mid 200's and was getting little interest and absolutely no respect.

When this dog turns higher again, and I believe that it will, it may show us a run that would put a greyhound to shame.

Have a pleasant evening.

'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.'

SP 500 and NDX Futures - Deck the Hall With Boughs of Folly

The big tickle today was the US Industrial Production number which came in better than expected.

I have included the economic calendar for this week below.

As I said I think the funds have spend the last week or so squaring up portfolios, getting rid of losers and taking some profits, and now the paint and window dressing start going on into the year end.

After the bell Boeing announced a $10 Billion stock buyback program.

Are there no workhouses, are there no prisons?

JP Morgan 'House Account Only' Trading in Comex Deliveries for 2013

"Are the hedge funds, HFT’s and algos currently having a field day with this worn out trade paying any attention to the steady drain of physical gold on which their speculations are based? As is usually the case in a temporarily successful momentum trade where almost the entire universe is aboard, the answer is probably not."

John Hathaway, The Big Picture in Gold

Here is a chart that I was able to construct from CME data that shows JP Morgan's Comex Gold Delivery activity for their 'house account' only.

I have marked the nominal price of gold on the chart for this year. The last data is as of December 10, 2013.

The months marked with boxes are 'active months' for the delivery process. December is also an active month.

They seem to have had quite a good year for themselves so far. 

For those who would like some color commentary, JPM came into February issuing deliveries to beat the band.  They were quiet in the inactive month and then back swinging hard and delivering in size during April.

In August JPM stopped or took delivery on quite a chunk of gold bullion and the price recovered a bit from its first half of the year pounding.  I can conceptualize this as 'covering' what they have issued in the first half of the year.

Since then the gold price slumped back down into November.   JPM started taking deliveries (stopping) again very heavily in December.   I hear they are stopping something over 90% of warrants issued.

However for the year, and for the year only, their net position is still about 7,600 more contracts issued than stopped in their house account.   This is down from a high of 14,600 contract net issued which they maintained from about April through July. 

I have just added a second chart that shows just the rolling 'net position' for their house account with regard to deliveries for the year.   Just for the sake of tracking their notional position for the year I am going to refer to this as their 'short' although they could just be selling from any inventory which they had somewhere or from the prior year.   And please bear in mind that while this chart show a position that is all negative for the year,  I wanted to be able to plot it against the price of gold, so I inverted the Y axis.

Whether this represents an actual short position or not depends on their opening inventory of gold bullion owned by them, how much of the gold delivered was rehypothecated or leased, and how those contracts were actually settled, be it in equivalent instruments, cash, or actual bullion from whatever sources.

I know this is not all the data we would like to see, and does not begin to address their offsetting positions in other transactions and markets like derivatives.  

And of course I am sure that this is all 'just a hedge' being done in the CTO risk management area, just like the London whale.

Speaking of gold market antics, GATA just sent out this delightful presentation from the Banque de France entitled Managing Gold as a Central Bank.

And here is The Big Picture In Gold by John Hathaway which I recommend that you read.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - 146,000 Ounces Come Out of JPM's Registered Inventory

There were a few notable changes in the Comex gold warehouse inventory yesterday, as 146,000 ounces of gold had their warrants cancelled and were adjusted from 'registered' to 'eligible.'

What is particularly interesting about this is that it knocked the deliverables down back down to 600,000 ounces, with almost half of those held by Scotia Mocatta.

It would certainly be interesting if we knew exactly who held what, and what their net positions might be.   And it would certainly be fun if I knew everything I want to know, and had everything I want to have.  But life is a struggle to find out how things work, and it is especially hard to discover what has been hidden for whatever reason.

There is another interesting chart that Nick and I produced that shows what JPM stopped and issued in terms of Comex gold contracts over the past twelve months.  As you will recall when a party 'stops' a warrant they are taking delivery, and when they issue a warrant they are offering gold for sale. 

I don't think this sorts out what JPM is doing for its house account versus what they are doing overall as a bullion bank.  I may take a crack at that later on.

So obviously some of this is just pure correlation with what customers are doing, ie. selling on price declines, and then buying bottoms and riding it back up. 

What is interesting is the huge spike in year end buying (stopping) of contracts that has not yet been reflected in price.   I am watching this with care, because as you may remember we have seen these big dips in registered inventory signal an intermediate price change within six months, at least within the last ten years of this bull market.

I know quite a few people are getting edgy on this correction and I can't blame them for that.  But that does not mean that someone is going to be able to tell them with high certainty that the market has bottomed and the correction is over so that they can immediately rush out and put in leveraged bull bets and make a fortune. 

There are those who will tell you that, many, many times in fact, almost every other week it seems.  And when and if a turn does come, they will point to that 'call' and say see I was right, and forget about the ninety other times they were wrong. 

It does not work like that.  We will get a confirmation if we get a trend change, and you *might* miss the first ten percent of the up move by waiting.  But you will also miss a lot of wear and tear on yourself and your portfolio in the process.  Most traders who sell the top and buy the bottom with precision are either darn lucky or damn liars.   At least that is what Bernard Baruch says and my own experience tends to validate that.

I do think we are in a bottoming process and the emphasis here is on process.  If we are holding positions without leverage and a longer term time horizon, what difference does it make if the trend change comes next week or next month or even five months from now?  What is important are the fundamentals and the trend. 

I do have both a long term and a short term portfolio.  The long term I have not touched in some years.  The short term has been adjusted to match my thoughts on the current market structure, a little more aggressively than normal perhaps.

I have modified my thinking about Comex a bit, now seeing how much of an insiders' shell game it has become because of the laxity over positions and price antics, and the high amount of paper shuffling and opaque positioning that occurs relative to how much actual clearing of markets between producers and buyers is accomplished.  But it is what it is: a speculative vehicle.  And its role in world markets is changing, diminishing most likely.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Pause that Refreshes Before FOMC Next Week

Stocks were treading water this week ahead of the FOMC decision next week.

I think that even though there may be more taper talk that the Fed will not doing anything substantial.

Even if they do taper, we have to keep in mind that this is a cutback on the 80+ billion in monthly liquidity the Fed injects into the financial system by buying Treasuries and Mortgage debt.

But I do think that the discussion about what they will do will be about as substantial as what they actually end up doing which is pretty much nothing.

Have a pleasant weekend.

JP Morgan Stood 'At the Very Center of Madoff's Fraud for Over 20 Years'

I am posting this to make sure we all know that JP Morgan is no passive bank, that occasionally becomes involved with financial criminals like Madoff or the MF Global crowd.

The criminal charges are likely to be a 'deferred prosecution' which means that while JPM may admit to wrongdoing, unusual in the vast majority of settlements for financial crimes, there will in fact be no prosecution or revelations in court.

This is why the 'stimulus' of the Keynesians will not work. They have skipped the critical step in the FDR framework of reforming the financial system, or at least making a serious intent to do so. As it is, Dodd-Frank turned out to be the terms of surrender of the republic which Wall Street dictated to its servants in the government.

The tragedy of our day may have been the financialisation of the Democratic party and the evisceration of the progressive movement, which helped to remove the last remaining significant political serving the people as a counterbalance to those elements of society which have become the servile mouthpiece for Big Business and Big Money, no matter what ideological disguises or social niceties which they may wish to put upon their intentions.

As for any necessary complicity in the abuses of the world, we have the power of our refusal: our refusal to participate in the madness, to be seduced by it, to become a part of it.

Why speak out? Why attempt to do anything? Because someday we may wish, at the very least, to be able to look our grandchildren and great-grandchildren in their eyes and say, "I did what I could. I was not silent. I am sorry that I could not have done more. But I did not forget you." And for me my poor parents, both gone now these many years, will know, wherever they may be, that I did not dishonor their memory.

And we may now reread history and discover that this is the challenge of every generation and the rule of our cause, to be in the world, but not of its worst elements. Not to shun the world, but to be a comfort, and a shield, and a source of hope to our friends, our families, and so importantly, to its victims.

"Picard told the Supreme Court that JPMorgan stood “at the very center of Madoff’s fraud for over 20 years.” Picard bases this claim on his lower court filing that showed JPMorgan was well aware that Madoff was claiming to invest tens of billions of dollars in a strategy that involved buying large cap stocks in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index while simultaneously hedging with options. But the Madoff firm’s primary bank account at JPMorgan, which the bank had intimate access to review for over 20 years, was devoid of evidence of stock or options trading.

The petition to the Supreme Court reads: “As JPM [JPMorgan] was well aware, billions of dollars flowed from customers into the 703 account, without being segregated in any fashion. Billions flowed out, some to customers and others to Madoff’s friends in suspicious and repetitive round-trip transactions. But in the 22 years that JPM maintained the 703 account, there was not a single check or wire to a clearing house, securities exchange, or anyone who might be connected with the purchase of securities. All the while, JPM knew that Madoff was using the account to run an investment advisory business with thousands of customers and billions under management and knew that Madoff was using its name to lend legitimacy to his enterprise."

Pam Martens, JPM May Face Criminal Charges Over Madoff

Read the entire piece here.

Holding Gold or Silver In Unallocated Storage Or in ETFs and Brokerage Accounts

"This is what economics now does. It tells the young and susceptible (and also the old and vulnerable) that economic life has no content of power and politics because the Firm is safely subordinate to the market and the state, and for this reason it is safely at the command of the consumer and citizen.

Such an economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public. If the state is the executive committee of the great corporation and the planning system, it is partly because neoclassical economics is its instrument for neutralizing the suspicion that this is so.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, Power and the Useful Economist

This is not a criticism on any particular precious metal institution, mint, bank, or brokerage. Rather, it is the new normal, a sign of the times.

Trust is a commodity that is in short supply, and for some very good reasons having to do with some longer term trends that I would hope are reaching their zenith.

I know that safe diversification is not always easy to accomplish.

These are the post-MF Global times in which we live.

The ultimate solution will be to reinstate a political system that is responsive to and serves the needs of its own people as its first priority, and not the interests of a global overclass as described by David Malone in The Emerging New World Order.

The most powerful impediment to this reform is the marriage of political power and big money, and the reduction of fundamental values such as freedom and dignity to mere accounting entries in the inhuman calculus of corporate selfishness and greed.   If there is any room for unreasoning optimism it is that these trends tend to be cyclical, and we have been on this current trajectory for the past forty years.

“In the old framework, cash was a risk-free asset.

In the new paradigm of systemic risks, no asset (even cash) is risk-free so long as it is in custody of a financial institution. Investors and depositors no longer have clear title to their own assets if they are held in financial accounts.

There is now a body of law (including Dodd-Frank) that allows custodial assets to be swept into the bankruptcy estate and be subordinated to senior claims.

Hand in hand with the evolution of the banking laws is the subtle but pernicious evolution of the practice of banking: “Various rules and practices have made it almost impossible to use cash and securities. Go try to make large cash withdrawal or cash deposit and see what paperwork you would be forced to complete.”

Simon Mikhailovich, Eidesis Capital LLC, Grant's Interest Rate Observer Nov 15

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Friday the 13th - JPM's Comex Deliveries

"The Fed can expand its Balance Sheet to kingdom come, but they cannot produce a single ounce of actual gold bullion in the process.

And that is why gold is such an emotional topic, so feared and derided in turn by those whose power is based on position and paper, because gold resists the forces of fiat money and the human will by its mere stubborn existence."

Jesse

I had the opportunity last night to discuss things with a few old friends, from around the world in fact, and thanks to some helpful folks I was able to get a better idea of the mechanics of delivery at the Comex.

There was intraday commentary about the delivery process for gold at the Comex here.

I have to admit that this gold situation has me interested. There are some odd things happening, and I suppose digging into things one might not ordinarily care about is what must to done to understand them better.

There is nothing of science in this, no particular body of knowledge, but just some secular process and jargon, and some exchange rules that one has to learn in order to understand what is going on better. Since I would never even consider taking delivery from the Comex for anything, it a level of detail that I don't expect to come in handy anytime in the future.

But I can see now that the Comex is more of a paper exchange than I had previously suspected, and is dominated by a relatively small number of players. I would like to think that this is a change from what I was more familiar with in the 1990's and early 2000's, but at that point I was trading in energy and commodities where delivery did not even come up in passing.

What I would really like to find out is the distribution of inventory outside the Comex, especially what encumbrances exist on central bank gold, and especially the harder figures on inventory at the LBMA.

But like the physical market, it seems like a lot of the inventory information is heading east. I don't know how much data will be released from the new Asian exchanges, but that is clearly where the action is moving.

I will be interested to see what kind of December we will end up having, given the 'December gold manipulation' pattern we saw the last couple of years. You can click on the label at the end of this for more info.

JPM is taking quite a bit of gold delivery and at this rate *could* end up with most of the registered gold at the Comex. What they are up to in this I cannot say. Someone suggested they could use it to hammer price during January and February as they did early this year. I don't think they have enough runway to really pull that one off, but I won't underestimate their aggressiveness in swinging the trade their way. One only has to look at the massive declines in inventories in the first half of this year to get an idea of what was thrown at the market. And JPM was a big seller.

Jim Sinclair and Ted Butler think that these smackdowns are used for the Banks to fill their own inventories and cover and even get long, and there is some merit in that as well. I cannot say since I am not sure I have enough data to know. You really have to see a traders whole book and not just their trades in one market to get the bigger picture.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Outsized Unemployment Claims Dampen The Recovery™

Stocks were a bit wobbly today as expectations of a bounce came and faded and then came back again, only to fail into the close. Unemployment claims came in on the high side this morning, somewhat dampening expectations for The Recovery™ which brings glorious growth and prosperity to the homeland.

Inventories are a bit bloated as well.   Aren't the puppies eating the puppy food?

Don't get me wrong. These markets are as tied to fundamentals as Eddie Lampert's management style was to Sears' customers. This is a year end holiday market already, and despite some possible taper talk about the Fed's next meeting this is a carney game hosted by Dewey, Cheatum and Howe.

Have a pleasant evening.

Delivery Day: Why a Comex Default Is Unlikely as a 'First Mover' Event

"The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty."

William Cobbett

A couple of people pointed me in the direction of this CME rulebook when I asked for some details about how there can be so many deliveries in a highly active month like December, but so little outgoing activity can be shown in the warehouse inventories.  And several more offered their own information, and I thank them for it.

Here is a link to the CME Rulebook On Deliveries

Another fellow was kind enough to send a couple of the most pertinent passages my way. They are included below. 

As you can see, a 'delivery' can be made, and most likely is most often made, by the transfer of a Warrant for the metal. The Warrants are issued and backed solely by the licensed facility, ie the specific warehouse controlled by JPM, HSBC, etc.

The Warrants have no expiration, so one might assume that they become traded around like currency, for those in the business of not actually taking physical delivery and moving their bullion out of the warehouse complex.

And I would not assume that even a licensed operator like JPM would move their house account bullion out of another operator's warehouse to save on storage costs,  because they typically are not engaging in long term holdings that would make it worthwhile. 

I don't think it becomes too hard to see how this structure, which to my knowledge is not audited, can become quite the twisted paper chase of counterparty risk and rehypothecation, given the general practices of the Banks in some many other areas.

As an aside, I do not necessarily believe that JPM's stopping the vast majority of the gold deliveries for their 'house account' is a bullish sign, not at all.   But it should at least raise some eyebrows that a 'market maker' is buying bullion so heavily for its own account.  Is this to underpin short side obligations in some other markets?   Only the bookkeepers know for sure. 

By taking these warrants and the underlying bullion for their own account, they may even be controlling its disposition of the bullion, eg. making sure it remains within the Comex licensed facility complex and is not taken out and melted into bars for use on other exchanges in Asia.   The Comex inventory is rather thin after all.

By the way, we do know that an operator is taking delivery for their house account, versus a customer, because there is a CME report that explicitly shows this.  I was surprised at this level of detail.

To sum this up, I am now even more persuaded that if there is any default or sudden deleveraging in the gold market it is unlikely that the Comex will precipitate this event. It is more likely that some incident in another market more physically based would trigger deleveraging, which would thereafter cascade throughout the paper gold market in London and New York.

Since we know rehypothecation is taking place as a customary business practice, with the only question being the extent of it, and with operators acting as their own regulators in terms of inventory, with even the exchange explicitly taking no liability for their data, I think it is very possible for an incident in the gold market to occur. 

The probability of this cannot be determined for the usual reasons, in that it is not possible to gauge the actual amount of counterparty risk because of the opaque nature of the information and the market.  It could be discovered, but that would require a third party audit.

But there is rehypothecation, and there is counterparty risk. And it appears to be a bit stretched by historical standards. And this post is certainly no defense of the Comex. If anything its connection to the broad global market for physical bullion is more tenuous than I had even thought previously, more like a shell game than a market that brings together producers and consumers. That it is a price setting mechanism for a much larger and broader physical market that plays a key role in the allocation of resources is almost unbelievable.

Some cavalierly point to 10:1 leverage as acceptable, as being customary for Banks holding around ten percent reserves (in another better day before sweeps etc., but that is no matter).

It begs the question that liquidity in the currency markets is significantly greater and more flexible than in the physical bullion market, a fact that so many modern economists often gleefully celebrate.

The Fed can expand its Balance Sheet to kingdom come, but they cannot produce a single ounce of actual gold bullion in that process. And that is why gold is such an emotional topic, so feared and derided in turn, because it resists the forces of fiat money and the human will by its mere stubborn existence.

706.E. Delivery Day
The day on which the long clearing member receives the Warrant for the metal shall be referred to as "Delivery Day." Delivery may take place on any business day beginning on the first business day of the delivery month or any subsequent business day of the delivery month, but no later than the last business day of the current delivery month

705B-5. A Warrant shall be of unlimited duration and remain valid until cancelled by the Licensed
Facility that issued it.

705B-6. Licensed Facility shall be solely responsible for insuring that no duplicate Warrants are
issued, printed or released by it.

Chapter 113
113102.E. Termination of Trading
No trades in Gold futures deliverable in the current month shall be made after the third last business day of that month. Any contracts remaining open after the last trade date must be either:

(A) Settled by delivery which shall take place on any business day beginning on the first business day of the delivery month or any subsequent business day of the delivery month, but no later than the last business day of the delivery month.
(B) Liquidated by means of a bona fide Exchange for Related Position (“EFRP”) pursuant to Rule 538. An EFRP is permitted in an expired futures contract until 12:00 p.m. on the business day following termination of trading in the expired futures contract. An EFRP which establishes a futures position for either the buyer or the seller in an expired futures contract shall not be permitted...

CME Group Rule Book Chapter 7:
703A-5. "Eligible" shall mean, with respect to any metal, that such metal is acceptable for delivery against the applicable metal futures contract for which a Warrant has not been issued.

538. EXCHANGE FOR RELATED POSITIONS
538.B. Related Positions
The related position (cash, OTC swap, OTC option, or other OTC derivative) must involve the commodity underlying the Exchange contract, or must be a derivative, by-product, or related product of such commodity that has a reasonable degree of price correlation to the commodity underlying the Exchange contract.

It appears that an ETF can be used to settle a Comex futures contract, noting that this is a negotiated settlement and not forced upon the receiving party. There could be subsequent rule changes to this one, but it really doesn't matter much since I am fairly sure they can settle in cash if both parties agree.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - JPM the 'Stopper' - Winter Is Here

"This is the first generation of Americans in modern history expected to enjoy lower living standards than their forebears. It is the first generation in modern history whose life expectancy is dwindling.

It is the first generation of modern Americans whose educational attainment is declining. It is the first generation of modern Americans who face less opportunity than their parents.

Shorter, nastier, dumber, harder, bleaker. That’s the future for not only Americans, but for many in the world’s richest countries."

Harvard Business Review, America's Economy Is Officially Inside Out

Holding precious metals in unallocated storage with a gold or silver dealer to save on storage fees is a particularly risky proposition at this time. The reason that storage fees are waived is because the entity has the right to borrow your metal and to fractionalize your claim on bullion for their own financial purposes, without your specific knowledge of when, and for how long, and to what extent.

It seems to undermine the very nature of a long term precious metals investment as insurance against an unexpected and disruptive financial event.

I hear from those who watch these sorts of things that JP Morgan is said to be 'stopping' or taking delivery on the gold contracts offered in this delivery month to the rate of something like 95%. That certainly is notable.

And even more odd is that they are stopping about 60% of the silver contracts, which is even more odd since they are nominally net short silver in the futures.

Ted Butler has proven to be a useful source of information on these things for me and I thank him for this.

Mr. T. Ferguson has some remarks on the bullish composition of the precious metals markets and JPM's gold acquisitions here.

And as always, Aussie data wrangler Nick Laird and his charts are indispensable.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Back to Support and Trend

US stock indices fell back to key support and trendlines today in a relatively light volume controlled selloff.

The cynical side of me thinks that they are 'taking out the trash' and getting squared up for the serious window dressing and tape painting with which to celebrate their bonuses and the end of year.

They may be also enticing bears to come back in with short positions in order to provide some fuel for their New Year's party.

We'll obviously know more when we see how things go the rest of this week, and how intense the drumbeat of 'Fed taper' starts to become.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Economics, a Thoroughly Disgraced Profession

"I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis.

Concepts including “rational expectations,” “market discipline,” and the “efficient markets hypothesis” led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur.

Not all economists believed this – but most did."

James K. Galbraith

But in the defense of the economists I would like to add:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding [or seeing] it.”

Upton Sinclair

In other words, I don't think in many cases that there was a failure of the intellect, so much as a failure of intellectual and moral integrity.

Economics is a profession that succumbed almost en masse, whether by individual actions or the complicit silence of careerism, to the pervasive corruption of financial fraud, and of the persuasive power of Wall Street, the Banks, and big money. The only group that approaches their failure is the national political and financial class, including the accountants and the regulators.

For the most part this has not yet changed because of the unreformed state of the financial system, combined with the snare of the credibility trap. And they cover their shame by calling themselves the 'scholar-gentry' and tut tutting about the failure of the public in much the same tones that the plutocrats of past colonial empires would agonize over the plight of the victims of their perfidy in terms of the white man's burden.

Scotia Mocatta managed to squeeze out another 20,000 or so ounces of bullion for the registered (deliverable) category at the Comex. The bullion banks now have it back up to 723,000 which should be more than enough to meet deliveries.

So when will there be any actual deliveries of gold bullion out of these warehouses?

Someone redeemed 19,200 ounces of gold out of the Sprott gold fund.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Floating on Highs, But the Markets Seem 'Tense'

The markets seems a bit edgy, even given their stratospheric heights which *should* hold until year end at least.

There was more Fed taper talk today for their meeting next week. I doubt it, but they could do 'something.'

Have a pleasant evening.

Jan Skoyles Interviews Ben Davies On Gold and Silver

I found this to be interesting. Jan did a nice job on what seems to be her debut on a new show called 'Get Real.' As she settles into her role as interviewer I am sure the show will add quite a bit to the discussion of the precious metals and other commodities as well.

NAV Premiums Of Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Sprott Gold Has 19,200 Ounces Redeemed

Premiums on the gold and silver funds remain depressed, show little sign of any short squeeze.

Interestingly enough another 19,200 ounces of gold bullion were redeemed from the Sprott Gold Trust. Apparently the premiums on physical gold make this an attractive proposition. There is no leverage in the Sprott fund that I can determine, so I doubt it is a risk factor that prompted the redemption.

Physical gold bullion is in tight supply judging by a number of factors including the forwards rates and the inventory levels at the ETFs and exchanges.

If I had unallocated gold at a dealer or a bullion bank, I would be inclined to move it to a storage only facility where I had very clear title and access if it was a long term holding.

And based on my own experience I am not sure I would trust an active bullion bank or dealer with the storage of even allocated gold. MFGlobal showed us how 'sacred' customer assets can be when the biggest claimants start lawyering up.

If the rehypothecation in the gold bullion market starts unwinding quickly it could get a bit muddy with cash settlements and crossed claims.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”

C.S. Lewis

It appears that the bullion banks have the Comex warehouses prepared to meet December delivery.

Perhaps they can now start actually delivering into the standing demand.

The admonishment of arrogance is at hand.  Watch and be amazed.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Stocks are simply irresistible.

India Gold Price Premium at 23.2%, Equivalent US $1514

"The phenomenon develops calmly, but it is invisible, unstoppable. One feels, one sees it born and grow steadily..."

Leon Foucault

What happens when an irresistible trend meets an unreasonable and unsustainable obstruction?

University of London Bans All Student Protests, Institutes Curbs On Freedom of Speech

A sign of the times. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

"The nine largest colleges of the university are King's College London; University College London; Birkbeck, University of London; Goldsmiths, University of London; the London Business School; Queen Mary, University of London; Royal Holloway, University of London; SOAS, University of London; and London School of Economics and Political Science."

Et tu, LSE?

World Bulletin
London's Biggest University Bans Student Protests

The University of London has obtained a court order banning student protests on its campuses for the next six months after a demonstration against how the university is run resulted in 38 arrests last week.

“This is a regrettable but necessary step that we have taken in order to prevent the type of violent and intimidating behaviour that we have seen by protesters at Senate House recently,” said Chris Cobb, Chief Operating Officer and University Secretary, regarding the injunction.

Police were brought in to break up a sit-in on Wednesday after which students accused the police of assaulting students.

The students' demands include a halt to privatisation, fair pay for workers and a halt to a controversial plan to close the student union. They are protesting against the way higher education as a whole is controlled they say.

The student union outlined their stance, “Occupations are a legitimate form of dissent. When our university exploits our staff, shuts down our student union, and are utterly unaccountable to the students and staff that give it life and make it function, students have no choice but to gain leverage in whatever way they can.”

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Michael Chessum, president of the University of London Student union said, “I have myself been thrown to the ground and I’ve witnessed widespread violence from the police, including crutches being kicked away from under someone, a lot of swinging punches, and people being beaten to near unconsciousness during their arrest.”

Some 135,090 students (approximately 5% of all UK students) attend one of the University of London's affiliated schools.

Reich: JP Morgan, the Corruption of America, and the Age of Cynicism

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

I thought this article below was a striking, insightful and important set of observations from Robert Reich. 

Rather than merely link to it, I thought an extended excerpt was appropriate, since it strikes to the heart of a key theme of this Café, the credibility trap that diminishes the reforms essential for a sustainable recovery by co-opting transparency and equal justice under the law, making the governing process both complicit and co-dependent with even the worst abuses and frauds of the monied interests.

Pam Martens has an interesting take on the Fed's role in this shifting of power to the unelected power brokers on Wall Street which you can read here.

I listen carefully to what Robert Reich has to say, and often find it to be well founded and thoughtful.  But whenever I quote or link to something of his,  it seems as though I get some comment about why I like that liberal.   That comes, as so many others know, with the turf of managing a thought centered blog, but it helps to illustrate one of our key problems today.  We cannot even speak to one another long enough to identify the problems, without resort to slogans, labels, and shouting.

It is too bad that so many are distracted, if not ensnared, in the well-crafted emotionalism and stage play of the left vs. right puppet show which is put forward in the headlines, while the looting of the nation by its ruling class proceeds virtually unimpeded and to almost everyone's detriment, except for an obscenely fortunate few.  This is what the data shows, and the role of policy in this is almost unmistakable, except for those who are willfully blind.

Are there any remaining who would still, at this late date, consider Obama as a real progressive? By now he has been repeatedly shown as merely the less repugnant of two bad choices in which the 'liberal opposition' now resembles the corporate-friendly Republicans of only a couple decades ago.   But as Richard Cobden is said to have observed, 'For every credibility gap there is a gullibility gap.'

You may read the entire, original piece here.

JP Morgan Chase, the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act, and the Corruption of America
By Robert Reich
Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Justice Department has just obtained documents showing that JPMorgan Chase, Wall Street’s biggest bank, has been hiring the children of China’s ruling elite in order to secure “existing and potential business opportunities” from Chinese government-run companies.

“You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program,” says one JP Morgan executive in an email, because “it almost has a linear relationship” to winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. The documents even include spreadsheets that list the bank’s “track record” for converting hires into business deals.

It’s a serious offense. But let’s get real. How different is bribing China’s “princelings,” as they’re called there, from Wall Street’s ongoing program of hiring departing U.S. Treasury officials, presumably in order to grease the wheels of official Washington? Timothy Geithner, Obama’s first Treasury Secretary, is now president of the private-equity firm Warburg Pincus; Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag is now a top executive at Citigroup.

Or, for that matter, how different is what JP Morgan did in China from Wall Street’s habit of hiring the children of powerful American politicians? (I don’t mean to suggest Chelsea Clinton got her hedge-fund job at Avenue Capital LLC, where she worked from 2006 to 2009, on the basis of anything other than her financial talents.)

And how much worse is JP Morgan’s putative offense in China than the torrent of money JP Morgan and every other major Wall Street bank is pouring into the campaign coffers of American politicians — making the Street one of the major backers of Democrats as well as Republicans?

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, under which JP Morgan could be indicted for the favors it has bestowed in China, is quite strict. It prohibits American companies from paying money or offering anything of value to foreign officials for the purpose of “securing any improper advantage.”  Hiring one of their children can certainly qualify as a gift, even without any direct benefit to the official.

JP Morgan couldn’t even defend itself by arguing it didn’t make any particular deal or get any specific advantage as a result of the hires. Under the Act, the gift doesn’t have to be linked to any particular benefit to the American firm as long as it’s intended to generate an advantage its competitors don’t enjoy.

Compared to this, corruption of American officials is a breeze. Consider, for example, Countrywide Financial’s generous “Friends of Angelo” lending program, named after its chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, that gave discounted mortgages to influential members of Congress and their staffs before the housing bubble burst. No criminal or civil charges have ever been filed related to these loans...

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is important, and JP Morgan should be nailed for bribing Chinese officials. But, if you’ll pardon me for asking, why isn’t there a Domestic Corrupt Practices Act?

Never before has so much U.S. corporate and Wall-Street money poured into our nation’s capital, as well as into our state capitals. Never before have so many Washington officials taken jobs in corporations, lobbying firms, trade associations, and on the Street immediately after leaving office. Our democracy is drowning in big money.

Corruption is corruption, and bribery is bribery, in whatever country or language it’s transacted in.

David Simon: A Festival of Dangerous Ideas

"Another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation.

These are free of political controls and social responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital."

Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series 3, 1976

In winning, the one percent strips capitalism of what made it work in practice during the 20th century.

And in ruthlessly pressing their advantage, and corrupting the system that has served them, they may bring about their eventual self-destruction. We have any number of examples of this in history and literature.

Why the Fed and the US Government Confiscated Gold in 1933, And What They May Be Doing Now

"He who does not punish evil commands that it be done."

Leonardo da Vinci

I believe that this example of how the Fed and the US government 'directed' gold to preferred parties prior to a major revaluation is even more relevant now than I did when I first wrote about this in 2009.

As you know, I think that a new 'Bretton Woods' will be reconstituted at some point, and what we are seeing right now is a vigorous 'negotiation of terms' between the Anglo-American banking cartel and the developing countries, or at least those that cannot be cowed by force. The wild card is why China has been included so graciously and so deeply in the scheme, and what role they are expected to play.

This has been referred to here and other places for some time now as the 'currency war.'

There is plenty of propaganda, also known as semi-official 'advice,' being put forward in support of the various intentions of the worldly powers. China is clearly urging its people to buy gold for themselves, and the West is encouraging its people to turn their gold over to the Banks. To expect China to act in the interest of the Western peoples is a bit too altruistic to be credible.

And while I do not expect a 'hard confiscation' of gold and silver, given the likelihood of credible resistance at least in the States, I do think that expecting a 'bail-in' to occur, even from so-called allocated assets in storage in a few countries in the Banks' sphere of influence, from the US and the UK to their former colonies and client states, to be increasingly possible.

If this is correct, then the public of America and the UK, not to mention Europe and Japan, may be in for what is colloquially referred to as 'a royal screwing.' That is so dark that it seems to be almost impossible, inhuman. It would be taking money from innocent people, especially the poor and the weak, to bailout the Banks and the thoroughly corrupt monied interests. But based on what we have seen, it is certainly not out of the question.

Let's see how all this plays out.

The Last Time the Feds Devalued the Dollar to Save the Banks
14 January 2009

We dipped once again into the Federal Reserve Bulletin Publication from June, 1934 to take a closer look at the growth of the monetary base, and found an interesting graphic that shows the accounting for the January 1934 devaluation of the dollar and the subsequent result on Bank Reserves in the Federal Reserve System.

As you will recall, the Gold Act, or more properly Executive Order 6102 of April 5, 1933, required Americans to surrender their gold coinage and certificates to the Federal Reserve Banks by May 1, 1933. There were no prosecutions for non-compliance except one benchmark case which was brought voluntarily by a person who wished to challenge the act in court.

After a substantial portion of the gold was turned in by US citizens and taken from their bank based safe deposit boxes, the government officially devalued the dollar from 20.67 to 35.00 per ounce in the Gold Reserve Act of January 31, 1934.

The proceeds from this devaluation were used to provide a significant boost to the Federal Reserve member bank positions as shown in the first chart below.

The inflation visited on the American people because of this action helped to take the CPI as it was then measured up 1200 basis points from about -8% to +4% by the end of 1933. To somewhat offset the monetary inflation the Fed also contracted the Monetary Base which served the nascent recovery in the real economy rather poorly and is viewed widely as one of a series of policy errors.

Considering that the actions did little for the employment situation this was painful medicine indeed to those who were dependent on wages.



Fortunately at the same time FDR was initiating the New Deal programs which, despite continual opposition from a Republican minority in Congress, managed to provide a small measure of relief for the 20+% public that was suffering from unemployment and wage stagnation.

People ask frequently "Will the government seize gold again?"

While there is no certainty involved in anything if a government begins to overturn the law and seize private property, one has to ask for the context and details first to understand what happened and why, to understand the precedent.

Technically, the government did not engage in a pure seize of private property, since at that time the US was on the gold standard, and much of the gold holdings of US citizens were in the form of gold coinage and certificates.

Governments always make the case that the currency is their property and that the user is merely holding it as a medium of exchange. The foundation of the argument was that the government required to recall its gold to strengthen the backing of the US dollar against the net outflows of gold for international trade. The devaluation helped with this as well, since dollars brought less gold for trade balances.

People also ask, "Why didn't the government just revalue the dollar without trying to recall all the gold from the American public?"

The answer would seem to be that this would have been more just, more equitable recompense for the public. The Treasury could have purchased gold from the public to support its foreign trade needs.

But it would have left much less liquidity for the banks.

One can make a better case that the recall of the gold, with the subsequent revaluation to benefit a small segment of the population in the Banks, was a form of seizure of wealth without due compensation. Hence the lack of active prosecutions.

So, will the government take back gold again to save the banks by devaluing the dollar?

Highly unlikely, because they not only do not need to this, since the dollar is no longer backed by gold, and is a form of secular property except perhaps for gold eagles, but they do not have to, because they are devaluing the dollar already to save the banks.

This time the confiscation of wealth to save the banks is called TARP. (And QE I&II, financial asset inflation, and gold leasing and suppression with the soft confiscation of price manipulation. - Jess).

If one thinks about it, US Dollars are being created and provided directly to the banks to boost their free reserves significantly, at a scale comparable and beyond to 1933-34.

The confiscation of wealth is being spread among all holders of US dollars and dollar assets, foreign and domestic, in the more subtle form of monetary inflation.

Granted, the government must be more opaque to mask their actions in order to sustain confidence in the dollar while the devaluation occurs, but this is exactly what is happening, and all that is required to happen in a fiat regime.

There is no need to seize widely held exogenous commodities like gold and oil, but merely dampen any bellwether signals that a significant devaluation of the dollar is once gain being perpetrated on the American people in order to save the banks.

Its fascinating to look carefully at this next chart below.



First, notice the big drop in gold in circulation of 9.8 million ounces, or roughly 36% of the measured inventory at the end of 1932. Think someone was front-running the dollar devaluation? We suspect that the order went out to start pulling in the gold stock to the banks.

The reduction in gold in circulation AFTER the announcement of the Gold Act in April would be about 3.9 million ounces, or roughly 22% of the gold remaining in circulation in March 1933.

Considering that all gold coinage held by banks in the vaults was automatically seized, the voluntary compliance rate is not all that impressive. We are not sure how much of this was being held in overseas hands by non-US entities.

But beyond a doubt, there was an unjust, if not illegal, seizure of wealth by requiring citizen to turn in their gold to the banks, which was then revalued at the beginning of 1934 by 69% from 20.67 to 35 dollars.

It would have been much more equitable to devalue the dollar and to change the basis for dollar/gold first, before requiring private citizens to surrender their holdings. But of course, this would have lessened the liquidity available for direct infusion into the Federal Reserve banks.