Gold Weekly Chart: Gold 10 Yr Bond Correlation; Bond Crash

"The CME Final indicates that on volume of 291,445 lots (27.2% or 62,000 lots higher than estimate) open interest fell 15, 107 lots (46.99 tonnes or 2.49%) to 590,685 contracts. On a stock market close basis gold was down 3.66%.

This was the heaviest volume since late May, a period of significant activity somewhat distended by the roll-over. Open interest is merely back to the level of mid-June.

A purely long-liquidation driven drop would most likely seen open interest contract more than the price fell. Some important short selling took place yesterday as well."

John Brimelow

“Gold's huge drop on Thursday is not the beginning of a new major leg down for the yellow metal. That at least is the conclusion reached by a contrarian analysis of gold market sentiment. There does not currently exist the kind of stubborn optimism among gold timers that is the hallmark of major market tops...The bottom line? The sentiment winds will be blowing strongly in the gold market's sails in coming sessions”

Mark Hulbert

I am mindful of a further breakdown in equities, but the more likely we will see an important sector rotation in July from bonds to stocks, and this may provide further lift for gold.

However a short term trading range seems more likely to me now, since the bullion banks seem so terrified of gold breaking up through the 1260 level. It is not inconsistent to have a protracted handle on the current cup and handle formation on the daily chart.

What are they afraid of? The physical offtake at the COMEX, especially in silver, was beginning to cause enough strain to raise concerns of a market 'break' which would be highly embarrassing to the Obama Administration. The last thing they need now is another scandal of failed regulation and crony capitalism. But this does not resolve the problem; it merely kicks the can down the road.



Although the correlation is far from perfect, indicative of the variety of drivers that constitute the gold price, the relationship between the 10 Year Note and the Price of Gold has long been in my dataset. It makes fundamental sense when you think about it. But it should be stressed that it is only a minority correlation, and its influence waxes and wanes, especially since the prices of both assets are subject to official meddling by the Treasury and the Fed.



Someone asked me if Big Daddy was Warren Buffett. No, its trader slang for the 30 Year US Treasury Bond.

Speaking of an expected sector allocation smackdown in July, I would not be surprised to see the wiseguys driving investors out of the bonds in July, shoving them into riskier trades, the better to eat you with, my dears.

The US bond is a fairly safe place for now, as long as you don't worry about the coming devaluation of the dollar which I would expect to hit around 4Q this year when they recalibrate the SDR.

But Bonds do crash. Here is a representation of the Bond Crash that followed the stock crash of 1929. See the flight to safety, and then the collapse as the dollar was devalued, a form of soft default? Cyclepro originally posted this. As I queried him he said it was based on data from Martin Armstrong. My own analysis indicated these were not Treasuries but corporates. Treasuries did 'crash' but not to this degree. But the point remains that bond at some point will be no safe haven.

When will this crisis bottom? I don't know, but it will almost certainly end badly because the kleptocracy forgot rule number one of the Trade: bears make money, bulls make money, but pigs get slaughtered.

US Non-Farm Payrolls Report for June; Unemployment at 16.5%

Despite the 'improved' rate of unemployment, achieved by eliminating unemployed people from government statistics as if they no longer matter, the plunge in jobs growth broke an important uptrend which had been fueled by temporary, lowpaying Census jobs.

This chart looks like Obama's post election popularity. The Democrat's are heading into a November bloodbath at the polls. Obama might wish to consider firing Tim and Larry now, rather than as a reaction to angry party members and supporters. Timmy is a busboy, and Larry has failed at every real job he has attempted. Looks like he is running out of tricks. Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren are the kinds of people you should be bringing in.

A weak and insecure leader surrounds themselves with sycophants, cronies from the old neighborhood, and the hand picked stooges of the powerful. But at some point you need to get the job done for the people when you hold the reins of power. In the commercial world we used to say, "You are not really promoted, until you are successful." And in case you have not noticed, you are on your way to palooka-ville.

People of substance, Barry, people of substance. There is no substitute.




Unemployment according to the U6 Alternate Measure was steady at 16.5% thanks to discouraged workers dropping off the radar screen.



U6 Unemployment: Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workersLabor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed

SP 500 September Futures Daily Chart

The US equity markets went out on the lows, after having set a new low in this decline, ahead of a four day weekend, at least for senior traders.

The markets have 'jitters' over the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow sparked by fresh concerns over a double dip recession. The "D" words, Depression and Deflation, are being tossed around aggressively.

Let's remember this and compare it to where we are in thirty days, towards the end of July.



As an aside, it is now becoming increasingly clear that Goldman Sachs 'triggered' the housing crisis by pulling its credit lines to New Centuary Financial mortage company, and helped to trigger the most recent crisis by pulling credit lines first on Lehman, and then later on AIG.

I wonder if Goldie has what it takes to pull the credit lines on the United States? One can only wonder. Keep an eye on Big Daddy, because it's the whale in the ocean.

Gold Daily Chart: Shock and Awe; Cup and Handle Formation; US Bonds on Deck

The metal bears and bullion banks certainly get an 'A' for effort in this most impressive 'shock and awe' smackdown in the gold bullion futures. I was getting concerned about this sort of attack given the recent things floated out in the press about gold and its relationship to external events.

I had an email this morning saying that 'this proves that charting has no value in a manipulated market.' If this is your understanding of charting, that it is a sure thing, that perfect system you have been looking for, then you are right, it has no value to you. Maps do not take you where you wish to go; maps let you know where you are relative to your objective.

What charting provides is perspective, a visual representation or 'map' of the market.

More importantly, it helps us to understand the context of this sell off, which looks like the banks 'threw the kitchen sink' at the futures market over growing concern about the potential for a breakaway rally, and the physical offtake at the Comex getting out of control.

That this is US-centric selling program could not be more clear from this chart, a selling phenomenon which is repeated almost every day after the London PM fix and as the US markets open.



I do think the cup and handle formation is still active, although it has been pressed to the level at which we would be more concerned about follow through selling to the downside. As we have always said, in the event of a general selloff, a liquidity panic, everything will get sold, and the charts are trumped.

I was a little surprised that they could press it all the way down to 1199 even on an intraday, expecting 1204 to provide more solid support. But the trade is thin, and the markets are 'lightly regulated' by the CFTC under Gary Gensler (Goldman alumnus) to say the least.



Now having said all that, I am not overlooking a broader setup in the markets, created by the likes of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan and their associated hedge fund cronies, in which the big financials are herding investors, shoving them around the allocation plate, keeping them moving, which is how they make their money through taxing transactions heavily with fees, commissions, and soft frauds.

Stocks are rather oversold in the short term, and the bonds are very overbought. As I mentioned yesterday, if the market does not 'crash' it would be quite seasonal for the bonds to come under bear attacks in July. Here is what that chart looks like.



Can they get ever more overbought? Sure, we just saw that sort of panic buying in the last great plunge in US equities. But historically bonds are well priced to put it mildly, and certainly not for anyone seeking value. I think a lot of tension in the market is due to the Jobs Report tomorrow, and the fact that most traders will be leaving on vacation after today.

As I recall Goldman was forecasting stocks to go lower, down to 950, if we broke support as we did a few days ago. I am interested to see if their forecasts match up with their own books. Personally I think that since they are a Fed supported bank, they should be required to disclose all their major positions in the particular, not aggregate or net, on a monthly delay at most, with weekly even better. That way the people would know if these monstrosity banks are acting honestly as a major bank supported by taxpayer dollars, or are they really enormous hedge funds which are entitled to a greater level of secrecy, but should be fully culpable for all their losses.

Net Asset Value of Certain Precious Metal Funds and Trusts

Sprott Physical Asset Fund is standing in like a champ against a determined bear raid.

I suspect the bear are trying to shake out the specs, given that we are into the delivery periods in the metals at the Comex, and the numbers appear to be intimidating in potential physical offtake. No better time to hit an asset than in the thin holiday trade.

The Financial Crisis Is Everywhere a Fraud, and Official Complacency Inevitably Leads to a Crisis

"A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability." Robert F. Kennedy, 9 May 1966

The Fed is now engaged in a control fraud, and what appears to be racketeering in conjunction with a few big investment banks. They may have entered into it with good intentions, but they seem to have been turned towards deceit and corruption.

This is not an historical event, but an ongoing theft in conjunction with a number of Wall Street banks, and politicians whom they have paid off through a corrupt system of campaign financing and influence peddling.

This is nothing new in history if one reads the unsanitized version. But people never think it can happen today, that somehow yesterday things were different, as if one is looking at some distant, foreign land. This is a facet of the illusion of general progress.

Audit the Fed. Vote out incumbents until they give you what you demand. Take back the billions stolen through millionaire's taxes similar to those in place before the 'Reagan Revolution.' If there is no profit in theft, it will not happen. EU Puts Tough Restrictions on Banker's Bonuses.

The individuals in government are not a ruling class, and were never intended to be, although after a second term they start to feel themselves to be privileged, with better pensions and benefits and pay raises than the people whom they serve. These are your chosen representatives, sworn to uphold the law and governing with your consent. The United States is not the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Executive in Washington, it is the people joined freely by their mutual consent under the Constitution. It is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the NY Fed are at the heart of it. Everyone in the government, the media, and on the Street knows this. We are now in the coverup stage of a scandal, similar to Watergate when the White House was stone-walling. The difference is that the corruption and capture of the government is much more pervasive now, and includes a significant portion of the mainstream media, so meaningful reform is difficult. Most of what has transpired so far has been designed to distract and placate the people in their righteous anger.

Here is a commentary from one of my favorite analysts, Howard Davidowitz, and then the story from Bloomberg on how the Fed deceives the Congress and the public, turns a blind eye to glaring conflicts of interest, and is essentially debasing the currency while transferring the wealth of the nation to their cronies. Janet Tavakoli has been articulate and outspoken on recent financial developments, identifying the fraud and its specifics while taking on the apologists in open forums, for quite some time. And still the regulators do not enforce the laws they have, and Washington drags its feet while accepting buckets of cash from the perpetrators.

The longer reform is delayed and the peaceful protestations of the public are ignored, the worse it will be if the people actually rise and put a stop to this. The Fed could conceivably become a latter day Bastille, one would advise and hope, in a figurative manner.

One of the things I like about the English form of government is that if they behave badly enough, a prime minister can face a vote of no confidence and trigger an election. In the US, it appears that politicians scramble to be elected, and then stay safely in office barring the high hurdle of impeachment, and do what they will, breaking promises and behaving badly, with significant short term impunity. And when the next election comes over the horizon, they start behaving again, and playing the short term memory game. If the US had the British system, there is little doubt that the current Administration would be facing a general election now.

But have no doubt, change is coming, and it is still an open question if hell is also coming with it.

"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner told senators on April 3, 2008, that the tens of billions of dollars in “assets” the government agreed to purchase in the rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. were “investment-grade.” They didn’t share everything the Fed knew about the money.

The so-called assets included collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed bonds with names like HG-Coll Ltd. 2007-1A that were so distressed, more than $40 million already had been reduced to less than investment-grade by the time the central bankers testified. The government also became the owner of $16 billion of credit-default swaps, and taxpayers wound up guaranteeing high-yield, high-risk junk bonds.

By using its balance sheet to protect an investment bank against failure, the Fed took on the most credit risk in its 96- year history and increased the chance that Americans would be on the hook for billions of dollars as the central bank began insuring Wall Street firms against collapse. The Fed’s secrecy spurred legislation that will require government audits of the Fed bailouts and force the central bank to reveal recipients of emergency credit.

“Either the Fed did not understand the distressed state of some of the assets that it was purchasing from banks and is only now discovering their true value, or it understood that it was buying weak assets and attempted to obscure that fact,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in an e-mail when informed about the credit quality of holdings in the Maiden Lane LLC portfolio. The committee held the April 3 hearing."

Fed Made Taxpayers Unwitting Junk Bond Buyers - Bloomberg

Gold Daily Chart

The bullion banks are trying to make 'a goal line stand.'

SP Daily Chart Into End of Second Quarter: Not With a Bang But a Whimper

US equities went out of the second quarter on new lows.

There was a surprising amount of tape painting in individual stocks, that was almost funny at times. It is hard to hide behind the tape in these thin markets. I suppose that if I were fund manager carrying a large short position, I might want to artificially drive the price down to make things look better as I closed my books on the quarter.

The junior miners in particular are a real hoot to watch with their wide spreads, large short interests, openly aggressive naked short selling, and thin volumes. It takes a special kind of masochism to trade anything on the pink sheets, much less Canadian listed stocks.

Unemployment report out tomorrow, after which time the adults will be heading out to the Hamptons for the long holiday weekend, leaving the underclass of traders in charge with strict instructions and most likely a short leash.

The Non-Farm Payrolls report will be out on Friday, July 2. The consensus is for a loss of 100,000 jobs. The ADP report came in this week with a gain of 13,000 jobs, which was well below expectations of 61,000. A recovery in the US economy is an illusion.

It is typical Wall Street arrogance when they say that 'no one will be there to even hear the number, much less trade it.' As I recall, Asia and Europe will be open for business on Friday and Monday. But some might imagine them to be junior traders, taking their orders and queues from New York and London as well.



I am still running the long gold / short stocks hedge, with the add of a slight short in the long Bond which is probably anticapatory of a decline in July unless we get another leg down in equities that has legs.

Class War and the Decline of the West

Before he rediscovered his self interest, ignoring the outrageous financial frauds perpetrated by his own ratings agency, Warren Buffett famously said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

I find it remarkable that there is so little meaningful discussion of this in mainstream circles. Well perhaps not, considering that most of them are now owned by a few major corporations.

The key to stopping this theft of your freedom is purging the political system of the corruption of paid influence, campaign contributions by non-persons like corporations, special interest groups, and unions, the breaking up of the media conglomerates that seek to control the news, and the implementation of a system of sound money for international trade at least, using a standard that resists the manipulation of the financial system as outlined in Hugo Salinas-Price's quietly brilliant and remarkably insightful essay, Gold Standard: Protector and Generator of Jobs.

The powers that be will fight reform every step of the way, using propaganda and your prejudices and emotions against you. The best way to conquer a people is to persuade them to enslave themselves using slogans and simplistic views of the world that play on their fears and hatreds. The neo-liberal economic fraud that was scripted by the monied interests is played out daily to vast audiences using actors and actresses masquerading as politicians, analysts, and commentators.

I receive at least ten emails per day from the self-enslaving, sadly to say mostly older men like myself, that repeat the slogans and urban myths like faithful party members, seasoned with hateful prejudice and mindless propaganda, so I know that the influence peddlers and indoctrinators are doing a good job of it, subverting the middle class.

It is a little remembered fact that the greatest boost in support for the rise of the National Socialist party came not from the underclasses which had always been a minority player on the political stage, but from the more influential professional class, the petit-bourgeois: doctors, dentists, accountants, shop owners, and small business owners. They added their force to the earliest supporters , the industrialists and the monied interests, the bankers and the industrialists.

This is how the National Socialists were able to so easily co-opt the medical profession and educated classes into the early horrors of euthanasia, sterilization, and then finally extermination of whole categories of 'undesirables.' The middle class thought they could ride the wave, the will to power, in their greed and hate and revenge, but they soon learned that madness has no master, consuming all with fire.

This is how your freedom, your wealth, will be taken from you and your children, their futures devastated. So it is something with which you might wish to be familiar, so you can at least explain it to them when they are homeless in the land their forefathers gave you.

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12

Here is a recent essay by Professor Ismael Hossein-zadeh that is worth reading.

"Never before has so much debt been imposed on so many people by so few financial operatives--operatives who work from Wall Street, the largest casino in history, and a handful of its junior counterparts around the world, especially Europe.

External sovereign debt, as well as occasional default on such debt, is not unprecedented [1]. What is rather unique in the case of the current global sovereign debt is that it is largely private debt billed as public debt; that is, debt that was accumulated by financial speculators and, then, offloaded onto governments to be paid by taxpayers as national debt. Having thus bailed out the insolvent banksters, many governments have now become insolvent or nearly insolvent themselves, and are asking the public to skimp on their bread and butter in order to service the debt that is not their responsibility.

After transferring trillions of dollars of bad debt or toxic assets from the books of financial speculators to those of governments, global financial moguls, their representatives in the State apparatus and corporate media are now blaming social spending (in effect, the people) as responsible for debt and deficit!

President Obama's recent motto of "fiscal responsibility" and his frequent grumbles about "out of control government spending" are reflections of this insidious strategy of blaming victims for the crimes of perpetrators. They also reflect the fact that the powerful financial interests that received trillions of taxpayers' dollars, which saved them from bankruptcy, are now dictating debt-collecting strategies through which governments can recoup those dollars from taxpayers. In effect, governments and multilateral institutions such as the IMF are acting as bailiffs or tax collectors on behalf of banksters and other financial wizards.

Not only is this unfair (it is, indeed, tantamount to robbery, and therefore criminal), it is also recessionary as it can increase unemployment and undermine economic growth. It is reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover's notorious economic policy of cutting spending during a recession, a contractionary fiscal policy that is bound to worsen the recession. It is, indeed, a recipe for a vicious circle of debt and depression: as spending is cut to pay debt, the economy and (therefore) tax revenues will shrink, which would then increase debt and deficit, and call for more spending cuts.

Spending on national infrastructure, both physical (such as roads and schools) and social infrastructure (such as health and education) is key to the long-term socioeconomic developments. Cutting public spending to pay for the sins of Wall Street gamblers is bound to undermine the long-term health of a society in terms of productivity enhancement and sustained growth.

But the powerful financial interests and their debt collectors seem to be more interested in collecting debt claims than investing in economic recovery, job creation or long-term socioeconomic development. Like most debt-collecting agencies, the IMF and the states serving as banksters' bailiffs through their austerity programs may shed a few crocodile tears in sympathy with the victims' of their belt-tightening policies; but, again like any other debt-collecting agents, they seem to be saying: "sorry for the loss of your job or your house, but debt must be collected--regardless."

A most outrageous aspect of the debt burden that is placed on the taxpayers' shoulders since 2008 is that most of the underlying debt claims are fictitious and illegitimate: they are largely due to manipulated asset price bubbles, dubious or illegal financial speculations, and scandalous conversion of financial gamblers' losses into public liability.

As noted earlier, onerous austerity measures to force the public to pay the largely fraudulent external debt is not new. Benignly calling such oppressive measures "Structural Adjustment Programs," the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have for decades imposed them on many less developed countries to collect debt on behalf of international financial titans.

To "help" the indebted nations craft debt-servicing arrangements with external creditors, the IMF imposed severe conditions on the way they managed their economies--just as it is now imposing (in collaboration with the European and American bankers) those austerity policies on the debtor nations in Europe. The primary purpose of such restrictive conditions is to divert or transfer national resources from domestic use to external creditors. These include not only belt-tightening measures to cut social spending and/or raise taxes, but also selling-off public enterprises, national industries, and future tax revenues.

Calling such fire-sale privatization deals "briberization," the ex-World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz revealed (in an interview with the renowned investigative reporter Greg Palast) how finance ministers and other bureaucratic authorities in the debtor countries often carried out the Bank's demand to sell off their electricity, water, transportation and communication companies in return for some apparently irresistible sweetener. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billions off the sale price of national assets..."

Ismael Hossein-zadeh, The Vicious Circle of Debt and Depression: It Is a Class War

Here is a lengthier history of the undermining of the US political system using financial fraud from Renaissance 2.0.

The bailout of AIG is near the core of the great fraud. Crack that nut, and we may learn something about financial fascism and the Fed. That is why they may dance around it, but they will never take down the principals and bring the truth out into the light of day.

Le monde est sourd. The world is deaf, and the truth has no place to lay his head in their hearts.



I am a citizen of the world, and nothing is alien to me except sin.

Passcode: Israel

Never waste a crisis.

By the way, I learned yesterday that my site is now banned in mainland China with a few exceptions. I saw a short list of blogs that were banned, and those that were not, and it was telling an interesting story. As Bill Gates said, the PRC are his kind of capitalists.

MEDIA ADVISORY
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
-----------------------------------------------------

Benjamin Netanyahu's Meeting with President Obama

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet in Washington on July 6 to discuss the Gaza blockade and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. CFR's new fellow Robert Danin will discuss the implications of the prime minister's visit in a media conference call.

Date: Thursday, July 1, 2010
Call Time: 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. ET

Dial-in Information:
U.S. callers: 1.800.351.6805
International callers: 1.334.323.7224
Passcode: ISRAEL

The on-the-record discussions are not so nearly as interesting as the long term private discussions that take place, often in picturesque places, that feature great skiing, good food, and fine wines. Trust me on this one.