"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.
