Gold Daily and Weekly Charts; Silver Charts; 1099 Change Does Not 'Target Gold and Silver'

There was quite a bit of central bank concern over the results of the 'stress tests' for the European banks.

I will not address the tests themselves here, but let it suffice to say that they only involved the banks' trading portfolios, and not their loan portfolios, which could give you some idea of their lack of rigor. And 7 of 91 banks failed.

But the spokesmodels on Bloomberg were remarking, frequently, that the markets are pleased by the tests and the crisis is over because 'stocks are higher,' and 'gold was lower.'

The lies and market manipulation will continue until confidence is restored.


Gold Daily Chart



Gold Weekly Chart



Silver Weekly Chart



Miners (HUI) Weekly Chart

Gold Daily Chart

“Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.”

Sir Alan Greenspan, US Federal Reserve Bank, 24 July 1998


"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."

Sir Eddie George, Bank of England, September 1999


"The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it...The only value of nearly five decades of my work is a warning to the murderers of tomorrow, that they will never rest.”

Simon Wiesenthal

"Who is our Simon Wiesenthal? Who will track down these criminals in the coming months, years, decades? Perhaps we need some old men to spend their last years in prison after thinking they effectively fleeced the world. Perhaps the cycle of crises can be mitigated if the prosecution for these particular crimes continues for decades and every so often Wall Street is reminded that there is no sanctuary and that individuals will be hunted down at whatever time in whatever place."

The Fourteenth Banker, Financial Crime, the Statute of Limitations, and Simon Weisenthal

SP 500 September Futures at the Close

UPS said some positive things after their good earnings results, and so the market rallied.

The character of this rally is questionable, very obviously thinly traded and highly responsive to headlines and technical considerations. But it is what it is, and still hurts if you are on the wrong side of it. The intermediate trend is still lower following the economic news which is discouraging.

We are in short term rally mode, and a break out is threatened. No matter the trend, volatility must be managed. If you cannot do it, better to stay out completely.

More earnings after the close including Microsoft. Tomorrow brings Schlumberger, McDonalds, Ingersoll-Rand, Honeywell, and Ford.

China and the Goldfinger Syndrome

I have had some interesting discussions recently with correspondents about the problem which China has with its very large US dollar reserves.

To summarize what I think, China is attempting to diversify their portfolio of US Treasury dollar holdings. They are obviously accumulating 'real goods' including stockpiles of basic materials, gold, silver, oil and investments in the means of production in their own region and in key regions around the world.

This is more difficult than it might appear on the surface. Real goods are often strategic, and governments are sometimes reluctant to allow them to be acquired by a government considered a potential threat. The first difficulty is the strategic importance of some assets, such as the China's offer for the purchase of Unocal.

But there is also a need for confidentiality, stealthiness if you will. If word were to leak out that 'China is dumping its Treasuries' there would be a run on the market and the Chinese could lose a portion of their reserve wealth rather quickly.

Now, would it matter. Well, yes. It would matter because US dollars are still the currency of choice for most international trade including the all important international commodity, oil. If you think that philosophically dollars have no value because they are just paper, I would be more than happy to dispose of them for you. Limited time offer, of course.

I also posited that China, while accumulating its real goods quietly against the constraint of perturbing the markets, could do short term hedges against the less catastrophic scenario of further dollar devaluation by going into the very deep and liquid financial assets markets, and hedging risk with CDS and other obvious investments including shorts of various types.

As anyone who has attempted to acquire a company or take a substantial position in or out of an asset or company, at some point you can affect the price, making other participants aware that the asset is in play, and end up selling or buying against yourself. In the case of China it could also trigger a run on the bank of the US, which is an immediate endgame.

With regard to the use of financial instruments, someone raised the obvious issue of counter party risk. Well, of course it is an issue. But less so if you are merely hedging a portion of the portfolio for the devaluation scenario, and not a catastrophic default. And the choice of counter parties can be managed to some degree. It is a big world out there and the Swiss are always open for a bet.

But correctly, if there is a catastrophic failure of the dollar, they will be carrying banks and brokers around the world out on stretchers and almost all financial assets, or bets, will be in default. Those who are holding leap puts as insurance against a collapse may as well be holding food vouchers for a restaurant in Brigadoon.

China would most likely not lose the value of its reserves in the extreme case of a US default, even if every one of their remaining Treasuries and the financial hedges on those Treasuries became worthless. Why?

It's the Goldfinger Syndrome. As you may recall, Auric Goldfinger did not wish to steal the US gold supply, at that time the currency of the nation, from Fort Knox. He merely wished to eliminate it, making his own substantial gold holdings significantly more valuable. It is a form of increasing value through deflation, a concept that is much more familiar these days thanks to quite a few amateur economists patiently waiting for the US dollar to gain in value because of it.

If the US were to actually default, the value of real goods, from basic materials to gold and silver and oil, would absolutely soar in terms of dollars of course, but in most other fiat currencies of the developed world as well. The perception of the risk of a fiat currency would border on hysteria.

Returning to the deflation meme, the elimination of US financial assets from the 'world currency base' would make all the other currencies extremely valuable, and China would be flush with them. For real goods are a form of currency suitable for the exchange of wealth. They are merely less liquid, and not often used as the unit of value anymore. But real goods are a form of currency. They just cannot be printed, except perhaps on the Comex and at the LBMA it appears, and they would be absolutely discredited and out of business.

So, that is something to think about. China need do nothing but slowly and stealthily acquire real goods, and hedging their positions along with way with financial instruments, waiting for the US to play itself into some beneficial outcome for them. I think the financial hedging is important because of the relative illiquidity of some of the real goods, and the difficultly of acquiring them in sufficient supply without triggering a 'run on the dollar.' The financial markets are deeper and more discreet than the markets for real goods.

The problem facing the holders of dollars is not inflation or deflation, per se. They are merely particular manifestations of currency risk, and the uncertainty of holding substantial assets denominated in a fiat currency that is risky, meaning something abnormal or unstable in the classic sense of the term. A serious deflation or inflation are both unusual and risky.

This is not hair-splitting. Rather it is essential to understanding why gold can increase in value during periods of both a significant deflation and inflation, which on the surface seem like opposites. In fact they are similar if view in the terms of probability. They are both the opposite of currency stability, what I call currency risk. The further one gets out on the probability curve with a currency, the better gold looks in relation to it. Gold is the ultimate in stability, almost inert, and highly resistant to corrosion and decay, bordering on the timeless, comparatively uniform in its supply.

There are those who say that when the time comes, and what is happening becomes apparent, they will buy some real goods, foodstuffs, land, gold and silver. I can assure you that when that time comes, there will be little or none available at almost any price. One has to have lived through a currency crisis first hand to understand the phenomenon.

You are holding a currency in decline and there is little or no place to spend it except as a throwaway, because no one wants it anymore. Barter becomes predominant, and any hard currency is king. This is how it was in Russia in the 1990's with the old rouble before it finally imploded, at which time I was thankfully out of country. It was quieter than you might imagine, despite the headline antics of their mafia, and a sense of quiet desperation as people watched their life savings simply evaporate.

There is almost no doubt in my mind that this is how the Chinese are playing this, and certainly Russia and a few others as well, who are playing the long game. It explains some of the recent moves in price of certain forward looking assets, a phenomenon so little understood by the many, even now.

I still see the greater probability for the US as a devaluation and a stubborn stagflation for quite a few years. But the policy errors being committed by Bernanke and the Obama Administration are making the possibility of an actual collapse more likely than I would have thought even six months ago. I suppose it is never well to underestimate the self-destructive tendencies of obsessive greed.

See also The Last Bubble: The Problem of Unresolved Debt in the US Financial System and Currency Wars: Selling the Rope

Dean Baker: Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Was Doomed From the Start

I thought this interview with Dean Baker was interesting. I obviously do not agree with everything that he says, especially regarding the deficits and the attitude of the markets towards them. The US markets are far removed from being efficient mechanisms of capital allocation these days, and as such are unreliable indicators of just about everything except the latest trading fads and speculative excess.

But Mr. Baker touches on one point that gives me much room for thought, and that is the enigmatic president, Barack Obama. His appointments have often seemed eccentric, especially for someone who was elected on a wave of reform sentiment. He largely threw his mandate away in the first year on the very controversial health care reform bill that pleased almost nobody, and was obtuse in its requirement for individuals to purchase private health insurance from monopolistic health management corporations.

But his seeming obsession with trying to teach the seasoned politicians (whoremasters all) of Washington how to act in a bipartisan and selfless manner, as if they would take the least guidance from such a relatively inexperienced upstart, seems designed to fail. It is becoming increasingly difficult to take Obama seriously in matters of reform.

The sad part is that as bad and ineffective Obama and his cronies may be, the same and more can be said of the opposition Republican party. Some people are retreating into mere partisanship these days because they cannot deal with the uncertainty of the situation, but the sad truth is that America is lacking in leadership capable of uniting the people except through greed and fear, a dangerous cocktail in troubled times.

The US has a range of serious problems, but the greatest of these is political reform, and the return to Constitutional, rather than corporate, governance.

"Baker says that the committee, titled the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, was doomed from the start because of the strong views of the co-chairs - Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Although the commission was designed to be bipartisan, Bowles, the Democratic co-chair, is not a typical Democrat. He is a director at Morgan Stanley, one of the banks benefiting from a Wall Street bailout.

Baker says that both co-chairs have expressed hostility toward Medicare and Social Security, two of the nation's core social programs and demonstrated a loose grip on reality. Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair and former Senator from Wyoming, said that he wanted to cut off Social Security payments to senior citizens who drive their Lexuses into their gated communities.

Baker counters that while Simpson and his friends may be wealthy, most senior citizens are not, noting average person over 65 lives on less that $30,000 a year. "It's like appointing someone you knew had racist views to head a civil rights commission," Baker says. "It's not the sort of thing you'd like to see."

Postscript: Someone sent this commentary to me, and I got a 'kick' out of it. Obama to Run as Republican in 2012

Obama does actually resemble a moderate Republican of the old school in most of what he does. That could be attributable to his desire to fit in and please the powers that be, and a further indication of the general shift to the right that the US has taken over the last 30 years. It in no way detracts from his incompetence and ineffectiveness. He reminds me of a classic modern American CEO, a well credentialed and highly articulate empty suit, a nicely appointed lump who serves his 'backers' from beginning to end and deals primarily in connections and privilege, rather than effectiveness and results. He is the new and improved version of politicians compared to the dreadful political machine troll like a Richard Shelby, or the smarmier car salesmen types like a Bob Corker, Barney Frank, or a Chris Dodd.

Gold Daily Chart; SP 500 September Futures Chart: US Dollar Long Term Chart

SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart

Still standing at the crossroads.



Gold Daily Chart

Hanging on to its active formation in the face of some determined resistance and repeated bear raids.



US Dollar Intermediate (monthly) Chart

A Bull Rally in the Dollar? Maybe, but spikes higher on euro short squeezes are not a stable platform for a sustained currency rally. Has to break out through overhead resistance and put the spike into thie trading range.



Silver Daily Chart

Bouncing along the 200 DMA looking for the strength for a sustainable rally. Interestingly enough the 50 DMA is overhead resistance. Personally I think this is a possible marker for a multi-party price manipulation. Seems rather convenient.



Mining Stocks HUI Index Weekly Chart

China: The US Is "Insolvent and Faces Bankruptcy"

The common thought amongst even reasonably educated and economically literate Americans is that China is 'stuck with US Treasuries' and has no choice, so it must perform within the status quo and do as the US wishes, or face a ruinous decline in their reserve holdings of US Treasuries.

And with real short term US Treasury interest rates decidedly negative, meaning that it is costing you money to hold dollars, there is a case to be made that there are a lot of 'price takers' out there in this world. Wow, they are just that good, aren't they. Having their heyday in a genuine deflation. A subtle tax levied on all holders of US dollars, probably more significant because of the official understatement of inflation. Yo, come git some.

I think China is already diversifying their reserve portfolio, and more stealthily and effectively than one would imagine into 'real goods.'

Further, I suspect that through the use of hedging short positions and derivatives such as Credit Default Swaps, China would be able to cover a greater portion of its reserves than the common mind might allow, which is 'none' because of the obvious counter party risk in the event of a total collapse, a typical Western reaction, never seeing the gradations of outcomes.

And if this is in reality one theater in a global struggle for power, sacrificing a pawn or two, and even a bishop, would be a small price to pay to bring down the world's remaining superpower, as indirectly and gracefully as is possible. War is never cheaply waged.

It would most certainly be a nuclear option to outright dump Treasuries outright, and would raise the ire of what is still a formidable military power. But it is the Western mind that is so incapable of seeing the many shades of gray in every situation, the subtle gradations in a range of choices that I believe China not only sees but is already actively pursuing.

China is not the only country that resents the devastating frauds that the US has perpetrated on not only its own people but the rest of the world through its Wall Street banks and ratings agencies.

Most Americans overlook this developing estrangement that is beginning to isolate the US and UK from even their traditional allies in Europe and South America and Asia. This is a serious error, but so typical of the short term mentality dominated by greed, dishonesty, and self-delusion that captured the American psyche in the latter part of The New American Century. But what choice does Europe have except to take what the Anglo-Americans serve them. Take it or leave it. And ain't currency war hell?

It never pays to have a 'checkerboard mentality' when your opponent is playing Go."

Financial Times
China rating agency condemns rivals
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
July 21 2010 16:22

The head of China’s largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing the global financial crisis and said that as the world’s largest creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated.

“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview. “China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”

He specifically criticised the practice of “rating shopping” by companies who offer their business to the agency that provides the most favourable rating.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis “rating shopping” has been one of the key complaints from western regulators , who have heavily criticised the big three agencies for handing top ratings to mortgage-linked securities that turned toxic when the US housing market collapsed in 2007.

“The financial crisis was caused because rating agencies didn’t properly disclose risk and this brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests,” Mr Guan said.

Recently, the rating agencies have been criticised for being too slow to downgrade some of the heavily indebted peripheral eurozone economies, most notably Spain, which still holds triple A ratings from Moody’s.

There is also a view among many investors that the agencies would shy away from withdrawing triple A ratings to countries such as the US and UK because of the political pressure that would bear down on them in the event of such actions.

Last week, privately-owned Dagong published its own sovereign credit ranking in what it said was a first for a non-western credit rating agency.

The results were very different from those published by Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, with China ranking higher than the United States, Britain, Japan, France and most other major economies, reflecting Dagong’s belief that China is more politically and economically stable than all of these countries.

Mr Guan said his company’s methodology has been developed over the last five years and reflects a more objective assessment of a government’s fiscal position, ability to govern, economic power, foreign reserves, debt burden and ability to create future wealth.

“The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation but the rating agencies still give it high rankings ,” Mr Guan said. “Actually, the huge military expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from borrowed money, which is not sustainable.”

A wildly enthusiastic editorial published by Xinhua , China’s official state newswire, lauded Dagong’s report as a significant step toward breaking the monopoly of western rating agencies of which it said China has long been a “victim”.

“Compared with the US’ conquest of the world by means of force, Moody’s has controlled the world through its dominance in credit ratings,” the editorial said...

Fiscal Union Is Implied if Not Required by a Monetary Union

In 1991 during a visit to Brussels for a discussion of the EU '92 event with some of the bureaucrats engaged in planning there, my old economics professor predicted that no matter what they said, a monetary union implies a fiscal union, greater than the targets and harmonisation which they would admit, men being the creatures that they are.

It makes sense when one understands monetary policy and its theory, and the implications it has in restricting the freedom to save or spend as one may wish to pursue as a fact of fiscal policy.

Here is a story below in which France and Germany discuss their moves to bring more uniformity to their fiscal policies. Quite frankly I am surprised that it has taken this long for it to happen. With the financial crisis tearing down the facades, the extend and pretend policies of the EU have collapsed, and the cheating behind their targets have been exposed for the farce that they are.

And by extension, if one's monetary and fiscal policies are no longer their own, but shared with another and intimately bound by a common currency, then a greater political union and independent governance is a moot point.

This is what my old professor predicted in 1991. And on the train ride back to Paris he said, "Watch what happens if there is a move to establish a single world currency that is a sovereign instrument, and not merely a reference to a basket of currencies and commodities. And then he quoted the famous observation from Mayer Rothschild: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."

It has been many years since we have spoken. He was tottering towards his retirement then, and I suspect that he is smiling at all these developments from some better and kinder vantage now, as I know he would be even if it was a profane preference. It was always his first joy to probe the subtle mysteries of money, and how they related to the political follies of men. It was he who first infused me with an interest in the study of money, an aspect of macroeconomics which bordered on his obsession. And it opened a new world to me, and an endless fascination with what is difficult, but so wonderfully, and often subtlety vast.

"Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

John Keats, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

LesEchos.fr
France
et Allemagne s'attaquent à l'harmonisation de leur fiscalité

La bonne gouvernance européenne implique, notamment, l'harmonisation des politiques fiscales. Paris et Berlin en font leur credo, qui ont fait un pas ce mercredi vers une convergence de leurs systèmes fiscaux, à l'occasion de l'invitation au Conseil des ministres français du ministre allemand de l'Economie et des Finances Wolfgang Schäuble.

L'objectif est que « nos deux gouvernements soient ensemble en mesure de prendre des décisions pour aller vers la nécessaire convergence fiscale, tant dans le domaine de la fiscalité des entreprises que dans celui de la fiscalité des particuliers », a annoncé l'Elysée dans un communiqué. « La convergence entre nos systèmes fiscaux est un élément essentiel de notre intégration économique et de l'approfondissement du marché intérieur en Europe », a estimé Nicolas Sarkozy. La première étape de cette convergence devrait passer par un état des lieux des deux systèmes. La Cour des comptes s'en chargerait, côté français, un organisme équivalent s'y attelant outre-Rhin.

Le plan de rigueur allemand est soumis à des risques d'exécution

Le rapprochement franco-allemand en matière de fiscalité ressemble fort, côté français, à une volonté d'aligner le système fiscal sur le modèle allemand. Le poids des prélèvements obligatoires sur l'économie est globalement inférieur chez les deux plus proches partenaires de l'UE (42,8% du PIB en France et de 39,5% en Allemagne en 2008, selon les données énoncées par Nicolas Sarkozy ce mercredi), et leur répartition y est sensiblement différente (moins d'impôt direct, mais TVA plus forte
outre-Rhin)...

Jim Grant on the New Federal Reserve Governor Nominees; Economic Groupthink

Organizations, whether it be a club or a profession or a department, too often over time develop a sort of intellectual inertia, a bureaucratic mindset that tends to perpetuate and validate a certain view of the world amongst its members, particularly if they share other elements in background and world view.

This works to its advantage when they are right, and when the scope of the tasks which they must address are limited to largely operational concerns, without significant risk in the classic sense of the term.

But when the situation becomes different, the environment changes, this organizational mindset not only stifles innovation and adaptation, it can literally reach out and strangle it, well beyond its members, using the entrenched power of its tenure. We see this tendency clearly in organizations that have enjoyed long periods of organizational growth under the leadership of strong personalities, such as the FBI under Hoover, and the Federal Reserve under Greenspan.

We can see this same tendency on a micro level in our daily life on chatboards, in clubs, in our company departments, in civic organizations. It is a tribalistic instinct, that urges the adoption of a consensus view, often influenced and promoted by articulate and single minded individuals, which then musters and focuses the energy and vitality of the group in the execution of its mission.

When it is right, it brings success. But when it goes wrong, when it feeds on itself, becomes defensive and inwardly focused, when perpetuation of the group view overtakes all other considerations, when tribal loyalty and sameness is valued over results, it leads to a cult like behaviour, inbred thinking, that may be inimical to the best intentions of the group, and the sort of behavioural anomalies which we have seen in the tragedies of Watergate, the latter stage Hoover FBI, and even Jonestown.

Economics is in the grips of such a period in its development. One of the primary causes of this problem has been the rise of a few well funded think tanks, universities, and of course the Federal Reserve, that have become powerful influencers, and guardians, dogmatisers of the status quo. The petty sniping among the schools notwithstanding, the current debate of stimulus versus austerity serves to show how anemic, how self referential, how predictable the discussion has become.

The US politicians and economists are doing the same things over and over, expecting a different outcome. For the past twenty years the world has been lurching forward in a series of increasingly destructive asset bubbles, supported by the corruption of thought, and the transfer of wealth from the many to the few, as a direct result of fiscal and monetary policy fomented by relatively small number of powerful people, the monied interests. At some point this will change, and the grip of the status quo will be broken. How much energy will be released, and in what directions, only time can tell.

Janet Yellen: "...has had thirty six opportunities to vote on monetary policy at the FOMC, and she has voted 'aye,' yes, thirty six times. Thirty six for thirty six. Has the Fed been right thirty six consecutive times? No. A well credentialed, consensus hugging economist straight out of the Fed HR department. She is ideal from the point of view of the Fed bureaucracy. She will make not one ripple."

Peter Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin: "Diamond is a formidable academic, and Raskin is a formidable regulator, but neither is a formidable thinker about the nature of money, or about the history of money, or about how the Fed might paradoxically make things worse by doing what it does, trying to make things better, which I think is the great question. These are people who I think are unlikely to propose novel solutions to our fundamental monetary dilemma which is that the US dollar is a faith based currency of no intrinsic value that is manipulated by the Fed, and the consequences of the manipulation are often quite distinct, different from what was intended. That's the problem."

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in a man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Thomas Jefferson