50 Tonnes In Ten Days: Gold Smuggling Overwhelms Government Restrictions In India

So much for the mainstream media reports of a waning interest in gold in India and elsewhere.

To put this into perspective, there are just under 32 tonnes of total registered gold on the Comex. 

USAToday did a rerun of 'Why Warren Buffett Hates Gold' the other day. 

Few outside the dollarsphere are listening anymore, or care.    

Things are certainly warming up.  The mispricing of risk is formidable.

The entire story can be read here.

Hindustan Times
50 tonne gold smuggled into India in 10 days, 30% reached Mumbai
By Manish Pachouly
Mumbai, September 23, 2014

About 50 tonnes of gold has been smuggled into the country in the past 10 days, and subsequently taken into the market to cater to a surge in demand for the precious metal in the festive season. There is a heavy demand for gold during Dussehra, for which booking and supply will start from Thursday, when shradh ends and Navratri starts.

Market sources said that 30% of the smuggled gold has been supplied in Mumbai to unscrupulous jewelers, while the rest was distributed to different parts of the country.

Sources said that illegal gold is finding a place in the market because of below average imports resulting from the 80:20 scheme and 10% import duty. Against the average monthly demand of 80 tonnes, the import is presently around 51 tonnes in the country.

Sources said that gold was smuggled into the country through the land route, via Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. “This is because airports have tightened security, restricting the smuggling of gold by the air route,” said a market expert. The Mumbai airport customs, which has started a serious crackdown on gold smugglers, has seized around 529 kg gold from April to August this financial year.

Experts fear that more gold will be smuggled from similar land routes in days to come, as the demand will shoot up once the marriage season begins, in the later part of November. “There will be huge demand because of the festive season, and also the low price at which gold is presently being traded,” said Kumar Jain, vice-president of Mumbai Jewelers' Association.

Jain said, “The government should immediately bring down the import duty and relax the 80:20 scheme, so that official import goes up. That will bring down the smuggling.”

Rajiv Popley, director Popley Group, said, “Smuggling of gold has been on the rise for the last eight months, due to irrational supply issues. The officially available gold was at a premium, which was higher than anywhere else in the world.”

Nomi Prins: Why Is the US So Interested In the Ukraine and Syria

"Why do we care about the Ukraine? We care about Ukraine because it’s a gateway to oil. It’s a gateway to Eastern Europe. It’s a gateway to control a situation politically, but also for our banking system to get involved from a financial perspective...

Nobody really wants to have a third world war. That’s expensive and deadly, but this fighting over financial and political gain is really continuing to crescendo. It is crescendoing because there is so much money on the table and because the economies involved, ours, China’s, Russia’s, are really all weaker than any government wants to admit on the surface.”

Nomi Prins, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine-Financial Gateways


"War is madness. Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction. In today's world, behind the scenes, there are interests, geopolitical strategies, lust for money and power, and there is the manufacture and sale of arms.  And these have engraved on their hearts, 'what does it matter to me?'.”

Francis I, Memorial of the Hundred Thousand at Redipuglia, 13 September 2014

What does it matter to me? Am I my brother's keeper? This is the mark of Cain.

In this interview below Nomi Prins is suggesting that under the guise of humanitarianism and freedom, the Anglo-Americans are pursuing an age old colonialism with a modern financial twist.  And that pursuit is manifesting in 'gateways' or friction points where its expansion meets some countervailing force.

The notion of taking and controlling 'gateways' is interesting.  These could be seen as the current areas of action in the ongoing currency wars, which are merely exercises in financial power.  The geographic importance of the gateways reminds one of strategic points of control based on topography and supply lines in the last century. 

Now we have the flow of money and debt to consider as well as the ability to set prices and value.

If a fiat currency becomes like a Ponzi scheme, without growth underpinned by organic economic activity, it must continually expand or endure the risk of collapse.  The ability to enforce a valuation becomes paramount.

The reason that the US dollar has become a Ponzi scheme is because of the utterly artificial and unsustainable recovery that has been created.  Inequality of opportunity, wealth and justice is the hallmark of aristocracy, oligarchy, and all the empires of the past in which a narrow group of people skew the economic performance of the economy for their own benefit.

The choice has apparently been made to engage the world in financialisation, which has had its way with many of the developing countries, and is now confronting opposition from competing forces in more distant lands where it seeks to expand.

You can see the write up and view the original source of this Nomi Prins interview at USAWatchdog here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Prisoner's Dilemma, Bureaucrats Agonistes

“The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire, or fire.”

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

"And he led him up to the highest place, and showed him the kingdoms of the world and all their splendours."

Matt 4:8

If you are not familiar with the classic game theory example of The Prisoner's Dilemma you may read about it here.

I see quite a few instances in the world today that seem like the types of standoffs as described in that example of two people who can broadly benefit if they come to an agreement, or both suffer if one or the other seeks a short term advantage.

The Ukraine, Syria, Israel, the Congress, the great inequality in the US economy. The examples are almost everywhere. It seems as though working for some broader benefit, and engaging in productive compromise, is out of temper in this utterly selfish, morally purblind world of ours.

For me the most interesting aspect of The Prisoner's Dilemma is watching the Western Central Banks trying to come to terms with their unsustainable positions in the monetary metals markets, vis a vis the BRICS.

Certainly no one in some better, more objective future will view an ulta-easy monetary policy for the Banks combined with domestic fiscal austerity for the people as anything short of a bizarre form of policy error, bordering on malpractice if not sadism.

The notion of giving free money to the very entities that caused the recent financial crisis, while saying nothing while the fiscal authorities do little or even punish their innocent victims, requires a monumental ability to rationalize the unthinkable for the benefit of one's career.

Well, perhaps the economic class is just following that one divine commandment of the modern order: Thou shalt not speak ill of insiders. Even when the ruling class begins acting like the Captain in The Caine Mutiny.

China, and to a lesser extent Russia, have the Banks by the short hairs. And you know exactly what I mean by this. He who sells what isn't his'n, must make it good, or go to prison. And they don't know how and who to stick with the tab for their folly.  And to take responsibility is off the table.

So the Banks and their high priests are refusing to come to terms with their counterparts in the international currency regime based on the principle that the truly powerful never concede any substantial and recurring advantage. 

 

Besides, they have become so used to controlling the world's reserve currency that they cannot imagine any life without it.  What is an empire without power?  And bureaucrats charged with the public trust have been caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place of their sworn duties and the political puppet masters.

Always, it is that terrible choice, no matter how they might phrase it.  All who assume high office must decide.  Whom do you serve?   

Truth is the only recourse from their error, but that option does not make the short list of the things that our moderns' love.  Truth does not serve power well, or the will to have it all. This is the credibility trap.  This is the wheel of fire to which we are bound.

And the pressure continues to build, day by day, with the reckoning's choice between fire, and fire.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Air Continues To Come Out of Post-Alibaba Markets

The air continued to come out of the point men on the recent stock market bubble as the SP 500 led the markets lower today.

As you may recall, in the 1990's Robert Rubin established that one could pump up the market most efficiently by buying the SP futures, and in a sense forcing all the index followers and funds to buy stocks to keep up with that trend. It has been used any number of times, and I suspect is still in the back pocket of the Exchange Stabilization Fund, aka 'The Plunge Protection Team,' as a tool for 'saving the markets.'

As Rubin's dictum went, it was cheaper to pump up stocks in a falling market, rather than coming in after the fact and repairing the post bubble damage with a genuinely productive effort, or even a bail out.

The market makers have certainly learned that lesson and they have pumped up the US equities, at least selectively. One can see this in the first chart tonight, which shows the ratio of the SP 500 to the Russell 2000. This has been a fairly selective rally, and as you know I suggested we would see the market makers, who all have a keen interest in the success of Alibaba IPO, smoothing the way for it.

Alas, I think that the leveraged buy of the VIX I had put on for this post-Baba world worked, but I took it off a bit too quickly as VIX climbed a bit more today.  Well, I am not comfortable with these triple play derivatives which are generally designed to lose money, and ten percent is ten percent.

So what next? Now the air starts coming out, and Alibaba starts moving back down towards its original IPO price point of $68. The actual price doesn't matter all that much. It is not clear after looking over the structure just what the hell the holder of the stock actually owns if anything, except for a piece of a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands.  It is like a modern derivative, a betting vehicle, more a state of mind that a productive piece of anything when push comes to shove.  It has all the substance of a punchboard or hoop and bottle in a carny game.

I thought it was telling that the US got the IPO business because Hong Kong was too fastidious to allow an IPO on their exchange with such an odd ownership structure.  Scams 'R Us - With subsidiaries in London and Frankfurt.

None of this, and I mean absolutely none of this, is doing the public or the economy of the United States or anywhere else any good, except perhaps for small segments of Manhattan and the City of London. It is merely a vehicle for diverting even more of the central banks' stimulus directly into the pockets of the one percent.

And the world will reap yet another bubble, blood and tears.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Unchanged

"For all that has been, thank you.

 For all that will be, yes."

Dag Hammarskjöld

Gold and silver finished the day largely unchanged. There were the usual overnight and early morning antics.

The mining sector was taken out behind the woodshed and beaten up a bit.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange is now open for business. Some are concerned because of the participation of the 'usual suspects' on the exchange.

I am not so concerned, because China is quick to issue some fairly draconian judgments for those that engage in non-sanctioned official and business corruption. Luckily Bill Holter speaks to this issue in his latest missive, so let him say it as he does so well.

This Thursday, 25 September, is the options settlement for October metals contracts on the Comex. October is not an active month for either gold or silver on that exchange, but they may find a more lively turn in overseas trade.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - First Day of Fall - Nature's Doxology

Today is the first day of Autumn.   This is the season to give thanks for all, our blessings and sorrows.

There was another down day on Wall Street as the post-Alibaba retrenchment set in.

Late in the trading day UK retailer Tesco's stock was knocked down on news that they have overstated their profits significantly.

"Tesco has suspended four executives, including its UK managing director, after the supermarket overstated its half-year profit guidance by £250m. That would be almost a quarter of its expected profit for the period. It has launched an investigation headed by Deloitte, and says it is now working to establish the impact of the issue on its full-year results..The news prompted a plunge in Tesco's share price, which closed 11.6% lower at 203p."

The economic news this week is the usual, and the third revision of 2Q GDP which is dead fish now, unless there is a major unexpected revision.

The dichotomy between what the leaders say the economy is doing, and what it is actually doing and where it is heading, looks to have a bit more air in it than usual, and it is increasing.

Have a pleasant evening.

Two Estimations of Chinese Gold Demand

I found it interesting that these two estimations of Chinese gold demand arrive at similar answers from two different methods and assuming two different start dates.

 

Before anyone asks, Koos Jansen has addressed the notion of 'round trips' of gold on the Shanghai Exchange in some detail.   It is not the same sort of bullion game that is the hall mark of the Comex.

 

The first chart is from the data wrangler Nick Laird at Sharelynx.

 

The second chart is from GoldSilver.com.

 

I don't think anyone knows the exact amount of physical gold that China and the BRICS are absorbing.   And how much unencumbered gold remains in many of the Western vaults either.

 

One has to chuckle at 'analysts' who just ignore what of the more significant trend changes in the international money markets.   The BRICS are buying tonnes of gold and adding them to their reserves?  Nothing to see here.  Just the usual hijinks of the uninformed and unsophisticated.

But no matter how one looks at it, there was a profound change in the metals markets around 2006, and that it is somehow involved with what has been called a 'currency war.'  As it has done in the past, the nature of the global reserve currency system is changing.

Gold is flowing from West to East.