Yeah bro, I'm well aware of your proclivity to hate, even those who are black, but who fall within your Plessy-in-Reverse ^ One-Drop-White Rule
`
Gold: $1,116.20 Per Ounce
- Thread starter Lamarr
- Start date
Yeah bro, I'm well aware of your proclivity to hate, even those who are black, but who fall within your Plessy-in-Reverse ^ One-Drop-White Rule
`
Yeah bro, I'm well aware of your proclivity to hate, even those who are black, but who fall within your Plessy-in-Reverse ^ One-Drop-White Rule
`
I don't know why you are fixated on that.
Times are a'changing.
1 thread (from years ago) and you won't let it go.
What... I'm supposed to think like that forever?
I also thought Obama was going to lose in 2012.
Live and learn.
Well damn Cruise, I'm proud of you. Only last year you deemed any brother with some degree of white DNA in his/her line of ancestry as, NOT BLACK
-- when if that silliness was the rule, few would pass, least of all your-damn-self. But, gotta give you credit, you've come along way in a year. 
.
Well damn Cruise, I'm proud of you. Only last year you deemed any brother with some degree of white DNA in his/her line of ancestry as, NOT BLACK
.
I don't believe it. Post the evidence.
Source
The Real Story Behind Germanys Gold Recall
By Byron King | 01/22/13
Did you hear the news? Germany, the world’s second largest gold-holding nation, is recalling some of its gold. The Germans are bringing the physical metal – once on hold outside its borders – back in country.
This is a huge development in the world gold market. But more importantly may portend a life-changing trend that gold buyers like you and I can take to the bank.
Today let’s connect a few more dots, and talk gold…
Germany, Russia, Ronald Reagan, Clausewitz, this story has it all. Let’s start by covering a distant memory, the Cold War.
Indeed, the Cold War is not just over, it’s REALLY over. Get over it. The world is REALLY changing, and I mean in ways that you can scarcely begin to comprehend.
Yes, I know. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. Germany reunified – expensive as that was – and the Red Army went home to Mother Russia in the mid-1990s. (I was in Berlin, in 1991, right after I did my thing in Operation Desert Storm. Wow, I could tell you some stories about the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, headquartered at Potsdam. Another time, perhaps.)
But now? In 2013? What’s happening? There’s big news, which the mainstream media evidently fails to comprehend, while they fixate on the wrong sorts of shiny stuff – “gun control,” for instance, and what Hollywood celebrities think about it.
Here’s the real news. Long-term, this will change your life. You paying attention?
Germany is recalling some of its central bank-owned gold from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, as well as all “German” gold on deposit in France. It’s back to der Heimat.
Let’s back up. Why was German gold not in Germany? It’s a monetary relic of the Cold War. Back in the 1950s-1980s, the “Federal Republic of Germany” (the Bundes Republik Deutschland, or BRD – “West” Germany) was basically a potential nuclear battlefield. So part of the monetary preparation for fighting World War III in Europe was to keep West Germany’s gold away from the Russian tanks and nuclear fallout.
There was also something of a “conqueror’s legacy” about it. Post-World War II, the immediate challenge to U.S.-British-French policymakers was to keep Germany tame, considering the horrible memories of the late unpleasantness of 1939-1945. As Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac once quipped, “I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.”
One way for the U.S., Britain and France to keep a leash on Germany was to keep “German” gold under control outside of that country’s borders. The West German “mark” — the national currency that predated today’s euro — was thus, to a significant extent, at the mercy of people in Washington, London and Paris.
Indeed, the German gold in New York, London and Paris was a form of conquerors’ deference to maintaining “gold backing” for the mark. It’s a much longer story than this, but the point is that the policy lasted three generations.
Now, however, that issue of outside control over the German currency has come to a new turn of events. The Germans are burying the last of their grandparents who lived through World War II. And they are revisiting the rationale for storing their gold under the jurisdiction of conquering powers of World War II. There are all manner of policy implications — immediate and long term.
What will Germany do with its gold after it is back inside the traditional national boundaries? Well, we’re going to find out, aren’t we?
Germany is removing all of its gold from France. The publicly-stated reasoning is that there’s no further reason for the French to store German gold, in that both nations are part of the “euro” monetary union. Of course, just a glance at the past 200 years of history tells you that there’s likely much more to the underlying rationale.
Germany will still keep some gold in New York and London, but only after conducting a complete inventory of every bar – by weight and assay, for each serial number. (Remember what Ronald Reagan said? “Trust, but verify.”)
The monetary rationale, here, is that – despite what some banker-types want you to believe — gold plays a role in balancing terms of trade between Germany and the U.S. and Britain. In other words, the dollar-euro and pound-euro exchange system works better with gold in the gearbox.
It’s accurate to say that as history shows, gold goes to where it’s respected. As I see things, just the idea that Germany is assaying its gold, and wants some of it back, speaks volumes. The gold will boost the credibility of the German government and its central bank, and generally strengthen the German economy for all manner of reasons.
Here’s a future scenario on which to chew. Perhaps Germany might look at its gold, smile and then back out of the euro as we know it. The effect will be to ditch the southern countries — certainly Greece, Spain and Portugal — from a “European” currency.
Then Germany will do what we all know it wants to do anyhow — that is, form a “new” euro including the economies of northern European countries. Think in terms of an expanded version of the old Hanseatic League, perhaps, with Germany as the center of gravity. Very Clausewitz, no? And there’s the possibility of offering membership to Italy (or perhaps just “northern” Italy).
Oh, and don’t dismiss the possibility of a German-Russian monetary alliance. They already have a strong, and growing energy alliance. Why not start coordinating things in terms of currency as well. We’ll see, right?
I'd like to see that, too.
You can't make a case without evidence. And, there is no case here.
The Real Story Behind Germanys Gold Recall
By Byron King | 01/22/13
Did you hear the news? Germany, the world’s second largest gold-holding nation, is recalling some of its gold. The Germans are bringing the physical metal – once on hold outside its borders – back in country.
This is a huge development in the world gold market. But more importantly may portend a life-changing trend that gold buyers like you and I can take to the bank.
Today let’s connect a few more dots, and talk gold…
Germany, Russia, Ronald Reagan, Clausewitz, this story has it all. Let’s start by covering a distant memory, the Cold War.
Indeed, the Cold War is not just over, it’s REALLY over. Get over it. The world is REALLY changing, and I mean in ways that you can scarcely begin to comprehend.
Yes, I know. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. Germany reunified – expensive as that was – and the Red Army went home to Mother Russia in the mid-1990s. (I was in Berlin, in 1991, right after I did my thing in Operation Desert Storm. Wow, I could tell you some stories about the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, headquartered at Potsdam. Another time, perhaps.)
But now? In 2013? What’s happening? There’s big news, which the mainstream media evidently fails to comprehend, while they fixate on the wrong sorts of shiny stuff – “gun control,” for instance, and what Hollywood celebrities think about it.
Here’s the real news. Long-term, this will change your life. You paying attention?
Germany is recalling some of its central bank-owned gold from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, as well as all “German” gold on deposit in France. It’s back to der Heimat.
Let’s back up. Why was German gold not in Germany? It’s a monetary relic of the Cold War. Back in the 1950s-1980s, the “Federal Republic of Germany” (the Bundes Republik Deutschland, or BRD – “West” Germany) was basically a potential nuclear battlefield. So part of the monetary preparation for fighting World War III in Europe was to keep West Germany’s gold away from the Russian tanks and nuclear fallout.
There was also something of a “conqueror’s legacy” about it. Post-World War II, the immediate challenge to U.S.-British-French policymakers was to keep Germany tame, considering the horrible memories of the late unpleasantness of 1939-1945. As Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac once quipped, “I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.”
One way for the U.S., Britain and France to keep a leash on Germany was to keep “German” gold under control outside of that country’s borders. The West German “mark” — the national currency that predated today’s euro — was thus, to a significant extent, at the mercy of people in Washington, London and Paris.
Indeed, the German gold in New York, London and Paris was a form of conquerors’ deference to maintaining “gold backing” for the mark. It’s a much longer story than this, but the point is that the policy lasted three generations.
Now, however, that issue of outside control over the German currency has come to a new turn of events. The Germans are burying the last of their grandparents who lived through World War II. And they are revisiting the rationale for storing their gold under the jurisdiction of conquering powers of World War II. There are all manner of policy implications — immediate and long term.
What will Germany do with its gold after it is back inside the traditional national boundaries? Well, we’re going to find out, aren’t we?
Germany is removing all of its gold from France. The publicly-stated reasoning is that there’s no further reason for the French to store German gold, in that both nations are part of the “euro” monetary union. Of course, just a glance at the past 200 years of history tells you that there’s likely much more to the underlying rationale.
Germany will still keep some gold in New York and London, but only after conducting a complete inventory of every bar – by weight and assay, for each serial number. (Remember what Ronald Reagan said? “Trust, but verify.”)
The monetary rationale, here, is that – despite what some banker-types want you to believe — gold plays a role in balancing terms of trade between Germany and the U.S. and Britain. In other words, the dollar-euro and pound-euro exchange system works better with gold in the gearbox.
It’s accurate to say that as history shows, gold goes to where it’s respected. As I see things, just the idea that Germany is assaying its gold, and wants some of it back, speaks volumes. The gold will boost the credibility of the German government and its central bank, and generally strengthen the German economy for all manner of reasons.
Here’s a future scenario on which to chew. Perhaps Germany might look at its gold, smile and then back out of the euro as we know it. The effect will be to ditch the southern countries — certainly Greece, Spain and Portugal — from a “European” currency.
Then Germany will do what we all know it wants to do anyhow — that is, form a “new” euro including the economies of northern European countries. Think in terms of an expanded version of the old Hanseatic League, perhaps, with Germany as the center of gravity. Very Clausewitz, no? And there’s the possibility of offering membership to Italy (or perhaps just “northern” Italy).
Oh, and don’t dismiss the possibility of a German-Russian monetary alliance. They already have a strong, and growing energy alliance. Why not start coordinating things in terms of currency as well. We’ll see, right?
I'd like to see that, too.
You can't make a case without evidence. And, there is no case here.
He knows what I am talking about. I'll let him deny it a bunch more times before I post it. (actually, the search engine sucks, but I'll come across it)
is that what the fundamentals tell you?
The fundamentals tell me that all of your predictions have been wrong since you came from Hannity's board.
I disagree that you should hate the concept of the US or that nothing defines it.
I would characterize the US as the only country in history that allows human nature to flourish. Human nature is choice. We can choose to be fucked up or great, but the system is set up to be conducive to our choice.
We could choose to love life in this country, and if we do, the system will be just as accommodating as it currently is while we value death.
But it's not the system, the concept, or definition of America thats the problem. It's our values.
been holding pretty steady around the $1600ish mark for about 18 months though, so it's not like it has been a constant upward trend. It went up like a laser from the time to banking crisis really took hold until things started to flatten out a bit. We'll see if it starts going up steeply anytime again soon. I'd be surprised if it were to move like that again. Right now it's too rich for my blood.
It was a real nice ride if you were holding any between 2008 and 2011 though. I only had a little, and sold some at like $1200
angry and then sold the rest a year ago at $1724 yes. I kept the silver I was holding, but now I think I should have sold when it was really high back in 2011. It's still up 50% from where I bought it, but damn....
It was a real nice ride if you were holding any between 2008 and 2011 though. I only had a little, and sold some at like $1200
angry and then sold the rest a year ago at $1724 yes. I kept the silver I was holding, but now I think I should have sold when it was really high back in 2011. It's still up 50% from where I bought it, but damn....
Cruise, the search engine sucks.
BUT, lol, I came across a piece about Haiti -- and I was searching posts with the word "Haiti" to see if there was a good place to post the piece, and damn, LOL . . .
,
Your witness counsel.
a lil' somethin to think about
When the DOW hit it's previous high on 10/1/07 of 14,087.55, Gold was $745/oz. Today's DOW high of 14,253.77 we have Gold at $1,575.
In 2007, 18.9oz Gold bought the DOW. Today 9.04oz Gold buys the DOW.
The DOW is going up, nominally YES, but the purchasing power of the DOW when compared with Gold, (The 5000 Year monetary ruler) the DOW has actually LOST 1/2 of it's value.
Another way to say it would be in 2007, $100 USD bought $100 USD worth of goods. Today that same $100 USD only buys $50 worth of goods.
We're all getting poorer by the day as the Fed banking cartel continues to inflate.
When the DOW hit it's previous high on 10/1/07 of 14,087.55, Gold was $745/oz. Today's DOW high of 14,253.77 we have Gold at $1,575.
In 2007, 18.9oz Gold bought the DOW. Today 9.04oz Gold buys the DOW.
The DOW is going up, nominally YES, but the purchasing power of the DOW when compared with Gold, (The 5000 Year monetary ruler) the DOW has actually LOST 1/2 of it's value.
Another way to say it would be in 2007, $100 USD bought $100 USD worth of goods. Today that same $100 USD only buys $50 worth of goods.
We're all getting poorer by the day as the Fed banking cartel continues to inflate.
The Dow Isn't Really At A Record High (And It Wouldn't Matter If It Were)
The Dow Isn't Really At A Record High (And It Wouldn't Matter If It Were)
by JACOB GOLDSTEIN
March 05, 201311:53 AM
Just a quick, cranky reminder: Despite what you may have read, the Dow Jones industrial average did not hit a new high today in any meaningful sense.
After adjusting for inflation, the Dow was higher in 2000 than it is today. It was also higher in 2007. It would need to rise another 10 percent or so to hit an all time high in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms.
When reporting on other numbers that change over time, it's routine to adjust for inflation. So when people talk about wages stagnating for American households, it means that, after you adjust for inflation, the median wage is roughly the same as it was 15 years ago. If you didn't adjust for inflation, you would say the median wage has risen by more than 40 percent over the past 15 years. But that would be a meaningless statement.
It's equally meaningless for the Dow. And even if the Dow did hit a real, inflation-adjusted, all-time high, it wouldn't mean much anyway. As our colleague Adam Davidson wrote last year:
There are other, less arbitrary indexes of the U.S. stock market, such as the S&P 500, which tracks 500 (rather than just 30) big U.S. companies. The S&P 500, for what it's worth, is below it's all-time highs in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...-record-high-and-it-wouldnt-matter-if-it-were
The Dow Isn't Really At A Record High (And It Wouldn't Matter If It Were)
by JACOB GOLDSTEIN
March 05, 201311:53 AM
Just a quick, cranky reminder: Despite what you may have read, the Dow Jones industrial average did not hit a new high today in any meaningful sense.
After adjusting for inflation, the Dow was higher in 2000 than it is today. It was also higher in 2007. It would need to rise another 10 percent or so to hit an all time high in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms.
When reporting on other numbers that change over time, it's routine to adjust for inflation. So when people talk about wages stagnating for American households, it means that, after you adjust for inflation, the median wage is roughly the same as it was 15 years ago. If you didn't adjust for inflation, you would say the median wage has risen by more than 40 percent over the past 15 years. But that would be a meaningless statement.
It's equally meaningless for the Dow. And even if the Dow did hit a real, inflation-adjusted, all-time high, it wouldn't mean much anyway. As our colleague Adam Davidson wrote last year:
The Dow average, drawn out to two decimal places, may seem like some perfectly scientific number, but it's far from it. A small committee selects 30 big companies — I.B.M., G.E., McDonald's, Disney and so forth — and then adds up the price of their stocks. Then the analysts divide it by the Dow Divisor, a misleadingly precise-seeming number formulated to account for things like dividends and splits that right now is, well, about 0.132129493. The resulting figure is repeated throughout the country.
And those are the least of the Dow's problems. More troubling is that it ignores the overall size of companies and pays attention to only their share prices. This causes all sorts of oddities. ExxonMobil, for example, divides its value into nearly five billion lower-cost shares, while Caterpillar has around 650 million more expensive ones. Therefore ExxonMobil, one of the largest companies in history, pulls less weight on the Dow than a company less than a fifth its size.
And those are the least of the Dow's problems. More troubling is that it ignores the overall size of companies and pays attention to only their share prices. This causes all sorts of oddities. ExxonMobil, for example, divides its value into nearly five billion lower-cost shares, while Caterpillar has around 650 million more expensive ones. Therefore ExxonMobil, one of the largest companies in history, pulls less weight on the Dow than a company less than a fifth its size.
There are other, less arbitrary indexes of the U.S. stock market, such as the S&P 500, which tracks 500 (rather than just 30) big U.S. companies. The S&P 500, for what it's worth, is below it's all-time highs in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...-record-high-and-it-wouldnt-matter-if-it-were
source: Huffington Post
Gold Could Be The Next Libor Scandal
The Libor scandal is so 2012 you guys, so so boring, but thank goodness we have a brand new market-rigging scandal to enjoy now, one that will entertainingly interest the hyper-paranoid: Yes, the next Libor scandal is in gold.
Believe it or not, the global benchmark prices for gold and silver, the "London spot" prices, are not set by such old-timey folderol as "trading," but by a small cabal of European banks that get together twice a day and decide what they think the price of gold and silver should be.
If that sounds familiar to you, then you win the prize for staying awake through all of last year's tedious stories about the Libor scandal. The gold-pricing process is in fact akin to the process of setting the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a key short-term interest rate. In that case, a slightly larger group of banks sets Libor each day by self-reporting their borrowing costs, and it turns out they had constantly manipulated it for years and years.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission thinks it's possible that something could also be amiss with the system for pricing gold and silver and has started asking around about it, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's not a formal inquiry yet; we're still just in the getting-to-know-you phase of the scandal, if that's what this is going to be.
The London Bullion Market Association, which has nothing to do with the pricing, tells the WSJ that the gold-pricing process is "fully transparent. It's nothing like Libor." And as the Guardian notes, the process of setting gold and silver prices does involve some input from the banks' customers.
But you could forgive the CFTC for wanting to double-check all the same. After all, a study last year by the International Organization of Securities Commissions found that bankers will just straight-up manipulate any interest rate they can get their hands on in this fashion, all over the world. If they'll manipulate interest rates, why not manipulate other stuff, too, like gold? Or silver, or coal, or any other market where benchmark prices are set this way?
It also happens that the five banks that set gold and silver prices include three that have settled or are under investigation for manipulating Libor. Those would be Barclays, which paid $450 million to settle Libor charges last June; Deutsche Bank, which has already suspended some traders and is reportedly close to settling its own Libor charges; and HSBC, which is also under investigation in the Libor scandal and last year agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle money-laundering charges.
The other two banks are Bank of Nova Scotia and Societe Generale, whose noses are relatively clean, unless you count SocGen's failure to rein in alleged rogue trader Jerome Kerviel.
This doesn't mean the banks are guilty of manipulation. But it's another reason for the CFTC to feel the urge to double-check.
SocGen declined to comment. The other banks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
One sticky question here, maybe even more so than in the Libor scandal, is: so what? Who really gets hurt if the price of gold is off by a few dollars here or there? Well, the London spot price of gold affects jewelry prices, derivatives and raw-materials costs, the WSJ points out. There could be some deep-pocketed people claiming victimhood down the road.
</SCRIPT>
Gold Could Be The Next Libor Scandal
The Libor scandal is so 2012 you guys, so so boring, but thank goodness we have a brand new market-rigging scandal to enjoy now, one that will entertainingly interest the hyper-paranoid: Yes, the next Libor scandal is in gold.
Believe it or not, the global benchmark prices for gold and silver, the "London spot" prices, are not set by such old-timey folderol as "trading," but by a small cabal of European banks that get together twice a day and decide what they think the price of gold and silver should be.
If that sounds familiar to you, then you win the prize for staying awake through all of last year's tedious stories about the Libor scandal. The gold-pricing process is in fact akin to the process of setting the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a key short-term interest rate. In that case, a slightly larger group of banks sets Libor each day by self-reporting their borrowing costs, and it turns out they had constantly manipulated it for years and years.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission thinks it's possible that something could also be amiss with the system for pricing gold and silver and has started asking around about it, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's not a formal inquiry yet; we're still just in the getting-to-know-you phase of the scandal, if that's what this is going to be.
The London Bullion Market Association, which has nothing to do with the pricing, tells the WSJ that the gold-pricing process is "fully transparent. It's nothing like Libor." And as the Guardian notes, the process of setting gold and silver prices does involve some input from the banks' customers.
But you could forgive the CFTC for wanting to double-check all the same. After all, a study last year by the International Organization of Securities Commissions found that bankers will just straight-up manipulate any interest rate they can get their hands on in this fashion, all over the world. If they'll manipulate interest rates, why not manipulate other stuff, too, like gold? Or silver, or coal, or any other market where benchmark prices are set this way?
It also happens that the five banks that set gold and silver prices include three that have settled or are under investigation for manipulating Libor. Those would be Barclays, which paid $450 million to settle Libor charges last June; Deutsche Bank, which has already suspended some traders and is reportedly close to settling its own Libor charges; and HSBC, which is also under investigation in the Libor scandal and last year agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle money-laundering charges.
The other two banks are Bank of Nova Scotia and Societe Generale, whose noses are relatively clean, unless you count SocGen's failure to rein in alleged rogue trader Jerome Kerviel.
This doesn't mean the banks are guilty of manipulation. But it's another reason for the CFTC to feel the urge to double-check.
SocGen declined to comment. The other banks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
One sticky question here, maybe even more so than in the Libor scandal, is: so what? Who really gets hurt if the price of gold is off by a few dollars here or there? Well, the London spot price of gold affects jewelry prices, derivatives and raw-materials costs, the WSJ points out. There could be some deep-pocketed people claiming victimhood down the road.
</SCRIPT>
Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion
Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion
By Amanda J. Crawford
Apr 8, 2013 4:52 PM CT
Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.
Arizona is poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.
The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.
“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”
Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth.
Tame Inflation
Consumer prices rose just 1.3 percent in February from a year earlier, according to an inflation measure favored by the Fed. That was below the central bank’s 2 percent target and compares with occasional bouts of more-than 10 percent increases in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Bets that inflation would pick up because of economic- stimulus measures helped fuel a 78 percent jump in gold since December 2008. The dollar’s rise to less than 1 percent below a one-year high set in July and monthly increases of about 2 percent or less in the U.S. consumer price index have curbed demand for bullion. Since reaching a record $1,923.70 an ounce in 2011, gold prices have fallen and are near a bear market.
Gold futures for June delivery fell almost 0.2 percent today, to $1,573.20 an ounce on the Comex in New York and have lost 6.1 percent this year. The price touched $1,539.40 on April 4, a 10-month low for a most-active contract.
Texas Depository
In Texas, lawmakers are considering a measure supported by Republican Governor Rick Perry to establish the Texas Bullion Depository to store gold bars valued at about $1 billion and held in a New York bank warehouse. The gold is owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Co., or Utimco, which took delivery of 6,643 bars of the precious metal in 2011 amid concern that demand for it would overwhelm supply.
The proposed facility would also accept deposits from the public, and would provide a basis for a payments system in the state in the event of a “systemic dislocation in a national and international financial system,” according to the measure.
Should Texas take such a step, it would offer sovereign backing for deposits and make buying and storing gold easier, said Jim Rickards, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners LLC in New York and author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.” He said the coin measures, while impractical, have symbolic value.
“We are seeing a distinct movement back to a world where gold is considered money,” Rickards said.
Inflation Protection
The measures give “people the option of using money that won’t lose any purchasing power to inflation,” said Rich Danker, economics director at the American Principles Project. The Washington-based public-policy group supports the steps as well as a return to the gold standard, which pegged the dollar’s value to bullion. President Richard Nixon formally ended the convertibility of U.S. currency to the precious metal in 1971.
“People in these states find the idea of having the option to use hard currencies appealing over these policies they have no control over,” Danker said.
The U.S. Constitution bars states from coining money and also forbids them from making anything except gold and silver coin tender for paying debts. Advocates say that opens the door for the states to allow bullion as legal tender. The measure being considered in South Carolina would recognize foreign or domestic minted coins as legal tender.
Utah’s law applies only to U.S.-minted coins, while other states are less clear on whether privately produced coins qualify. Arizona leaves the door open for private coins if they are declared legal by a non-appealable court order.
Tax Breaks
In Utah and some other states, the measures also eliminate state capital gains or other taxes on the coins.
Critics say the state measures are unwieldy. In Arizona, Senator Steve Farley, a Democrat, unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have recognized as legal tender other state commodities, such as citrus fruit, as well as sunbeams. The amendment was intended to reflect the absurdity of the bill, said the 50-year-old lawmaker from Tucson.
“It is simply grandstanding to get people afraid that somehow President Obama’s agenda is going to drive us into hyperinflation and economic collapse,” Farley said. “We have enough real problems to deal with. I don’t see undercutting our entire financial structure as a priority.”
In Utah, officials haven’t yet figured out how to accept gold and silver for tax payments -- though some residents have asked to pay that way -- or integrate the precious metals into commerce, state Treasurer Richard Ellis said. Lawmakers have established a task-force to study implementing the law and to examine how the state can accept gold and silver, with their fluctuating values, for payment, Ellis said. He’s not optimistic that it will work, he said.
Regulatory Barriers
“People point to Utah and say we are leading the way, but nothing much has happened because regulatory hurdles have gotten in the way,” said Ellis, a Republican. If gold and silver is being used in the state as legal tender, it is probably only in transactions between individuals, he said.
The Utah Precious Metals Association, established after passage of the 2011 law to advocate for the use of gold and silver coins, has about two dozen members enrolled in a two month-old bill-pay service in which their accounts are held in gold, said Lawrence Hilton, the group’s chairman. Hilton envisions a future with an alternative monetary system based on precious metals in which merchants accept silver coin while gold mostly backs electronic transfers.
Gold Producers
The Republican-sponsored Arizona measure passed the House of Representatives 36-22 today, after being amended last week. Before landing on the desk of Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, the bill must go back for another vote in the Senate, where it was approved 17-11 on Feb. 28. Gold is mined in both Arizona and Utah, while Nevada is the largest U.S. producer, according to figures from the National Mining Association in Washington.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Chester Crandell, 66 of Heber, said he is convinced the move is the “logical thing for the state of Arizona to do.”
“I think you look at some of the things that are happening and the amount of money printed by the Federal Reserve and who has control of that money, and I think anybody would be concerned,” Crandell said. “Gold and silver have been around a long time and people are secure with it and we should give them an opportunity to use it.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...t-bernanke-as-u-s-states-promote-bullion.html
Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion
By Amanda J. Crawford
Apr 8, 2013 4:52 PM CT
Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.
Arizona is poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.
The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.
“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”
Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth.
Tame Inflation
Consumer prices rose just 1.3 percent in February from a year earlier, according to an inflation measure favored by the Fed. That was below the central bank’s 2 percent target and compares with occasional bouts of more-than 10 percent increases in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Bets that inflation would pick up because of economic- stimulus measures helped fuel a 78 percent jump in gold since December 2008. The dollar’s rise to less than 1 percent below a one-year high set in July and monthly increases of about 2 percent or less in the U.S. consumer price index have curbed demand for bullion. Since reaching a record $1,923.70 an ounce in 2011, gold prices have fallen and are near a bear market.
Gold futures for June delivery fell almost 0.2 percent today, to $1,573.20 an ounce on the Comex in New York and have lost 6.1 percent this year. The price touched $1,539.40 on April 4, a 10-month low for a most-active contract.
Texas Depository
In Texas, lawmakers are considering a measure supported by Republican Governor Rick Perry to establish the Texas Bullion Depository to store gold bars valued at about $1 billion and held in a New York bank warehouse. The gold is owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Co., or Utimco, which took delivery of 6,643 bars of the precious metal in 2011 amid concern that demand for it would overwhelm supply.
The proposed facility would also accept deposits from the public, and would provide a basis for a payments system in the state in the event of a “systemic dislocation in a national and international financial system,” according to the measure.
Should Texas take such a step, it would offer sovereign backing for deposits and make buying and storing gold easier, said Jim Rickards, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners LLC in New York and author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.” He said the coin measures, while impractical, have symbolic value.
“We are seeing a distinct movement back to a world where gold is considered money,” Rickards said.
Inflation Protection
The measures give “people the option of using money that won’t lose any purchasing power to inflation,” said Rich Danker, economics director at the American Principles Project. The Washington-based public-policy group supports the steps as well as a return to the gold standard, which pegged the dollar’s value to bullion. President Richard Nixon formally ended the convertibility of U.S. currency to the precious metal in 1971.
“People in these states find the idea of having the option to use hard currencies appealing over these policies they have no control over,” Danker said.
The U.S. Constitution bars states from coining money and also forbids them from making anything except gold and silver coin tender for paying debts. Advocates say that opens the door for the states to allow bullion as legal tender. The measure being considered in South Carolina would recognize foreign or domestic minted coins as legal tender.
Utah’s law applies only to U.S.-minted coins, while other states are less clear on whether privately produced coins qualify. Arizona leaves the door open for private coins if they are declared legal by a non-appealable court order.
Tax Breaks
In Utah and some other states, the measures also eliminate state capital gains or other taxes on the coins.
Critics say the state measures are unwieldy. In Arizona, Senator Steve Farley, a Democrat, unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have recognized as legal tender other state commodities, such as citrus fruit, as well as sunbeams. The amendment was intended to reflect the absurdity of the bill, said the 50-year-old lawmaker from Tucson.
“It is simply grandstanding to get people afraid that somehow President Obama’s agenda is going to drive us into hyperinflation and economic collapse,” Farley said. “We have enough real problems to deal with. I don’t see undercutting our entire financial structure as a priority.”
In Utah, officials haven’t yet figured out how to accept gold and silver for tax payments -- though some residents have asked to pay that way -- or integrate the precious metals into commerce, state Treasurer Richard Ellis said. Lawmakers have established a task-force to study implementing the law and to examine how the state can accept gold and silver, with their fluctuating values, for payment, Ellis said. He’s not optimistic that it will work, he said.
Regulatory Barriers
“People point to Utah and say we are leading the way, but nothing much has happened because regulatory hurdles have gotten in the way,” said Ellis, a Republican. If gold and silver is being used in the state as legal tender, it is probably only in transactions between individuals, he said.
The Utah Precious Metals Association, established after passage of the 2011 law to advocate for the use of gold and silver coins, has about two dozen members enrolled in a two month-old bill-pay service in which their accounts are held in gold, said Lawrence Hilton, the group’s chairman. Hilton envisions a future with an alternative monetary system based on precious metals in which merchants accept silver coin while gold mostly backs electronic transfers.
Gold Producers
The Republican-sponsored Arizona measure passed the House of Representatives 36-22 today, after being amended last week. Before landing on the desk of Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, the bill must go back for another vote in the Senate, where it was approved 17-11 on Feb. 28. Gold is mined in both Arizona and Utah, while Nevada is the largest U.S. producer, according to figures from the National Mining Association in Washington.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Chester Crandell, 66 of Heber, said he is convinced the move is the “logical thing for the state of Arizona to do.”
“I think you look at some of the things that are happening and the amount of money printed by the Federal Reserve and who has control of that money, and I think anybody would be concerned,” Crandell said. “Gold and silver have been around a long time and people are secure with it and we should give them an opportunity to use it.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...t-bernanke-as-u-s-states-promote-bullion.html
Man, gold and silver been dropping a lot lately... silver especially. I'm holding on to the silver I have left, but if it gets up to $30/ounce again, I'll sell for a nice profit. It it goes down to $20, I'll buy up some more. Gold is still too expensive for my blood... glad I bought and sold a few ounces when I did, although I could have done better on the selling part.
aaah, yea!
I haven't seen the drive-by poster in here for awhile.
source: USA Today
Falling gold, oil show concern about demand
If you're worried about inflation, world financial markets have something to say to you: You're looking in the wrong direction.
Gold, the world's premier inflation-fighter, has plunged nearly $200 an ounce the past two trading days. It's now down 25% from its 2011 high. Silver has fallen more than 9% in frenetic trading Monday.
Futures prices for copper – sometimes called the commodity with a Ph.D. in inflation – fell 3.6% overnight, according to CRB Fundamental Market Service. Oil has fallen below $90 a barrel, to $88.50, lowest since Dec. 21.
GOLD: Keeps falling Monday
The collapse in commodity markets signals worldwide weak economic demand, which was confirmed by China's GDP report Monday.
China's GDP rose 7.7% -- a monster move in every nation but China, where analysts were calling for 8% growth or better. The lower figure means lower demand from Asia.
With China slowing and Europe in recession, it seems unlikely the U.S. , with its anemic economic growth, will be able to pick up the slack. And that means lower prices.
What's wrong with lower prices? In a weak economy, lower prices lead to even lower prices, which means deflation. Ultimately, it means companies that can't slash prices are forced out of business, which leads to further economic weakness.
The Federal Reserve has been trying to fight deflation and keep the economy growing with rock-bottom interest rates and a program of buying longer-term bonds to keep interest rates low. Currently, the Treasury market is signaling that the Fed could have a long way to go: The yield on the 10-year Treasury note swooned to 1.72% Monday morning.
The Assault On Gold - Paul Craig Roberts
For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices.
When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an ounce on August 23, 2011, a gain of more than $500 an ounce in less than 8 months, capping a rise over a decade from $272 at the end of December 2000, the Federal Reserve panicked. With the US dollar losing value so rapidly compared to the world standard for money, the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing $1 trillion annually in order to support the impaired balance sheets of banks and to finance the federal deficit was placed in danger. Who could believe the dollar’s exchange rate in relation to other currencies when the dollar was collapsing in value in relation to gold and silver.
The Federal Reserve realized that its massive purchase of bonds in order to keep their prices high (and thus interest rates low) was threatened by the dollar’s rapid loss of value in terms of gold and silver. The Federal Reserve was concerned that large holders of US dollars, such as the central banks of China and Japan and the OPEC sovereign investment funds, might join the flight of individual investors away from the US dollar, thus ending in the fall of the dollar’s foreign exchange value and thus decline in US bond and stock prices.
Intelligent people could see that the US government could not afford the long and numerous wars that the neoconservatives were engineering or the loss of tax base and consumer income from offshoring millions of US middle class jobs for the sake of executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains. They could see what was in the cards, and began exiting the dollar for gold and silver.
Central banks are slower to act. Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are dependent on US protection and do not want to anger their protector. Japan is a puppet state that is careful in its relationship with its master. China wanted to hold on to the American consumer market for as long as that market existed. It was individuals who began the exit from the US dollar.
When gold topped $1,900, Washington put out the story that gold was a bubble. The presstitute media fell in line with Washington’s propaganda. “Gold looking a bit bubbly” declared CNN Money on August 23, 2011.
The Federal Reserve used its dependent “banks too big to fail” to short the precious metals markets. By selling naked shorts in the paper bullion market against the rising demand for physical possession, the Federal Reserve was able to drive the price of gold down to $1,750 and keep it more or less capped there until recently, when a concerted effort on April 2-3, 2013, drove gold down to $1,557 and silver, which had approached $50 per ounce in 2011, down to $27.
The Federal Reserve began its April Fool’s assault on gold by sending the word to brokerage houses, which quickly went out to clients, that hedge funds and other large investors were going to unload their gold positions and that clients should get out of the precious metal market prior to these sales. As this inside information was the government’s own strategy, individuals cannot be prosecuted for acting on it. By this operation, the Federal Reserve, a totally corrupt entity, was able to combine individual flight with institutional flight. Bullion prices took a big hit, and bullishness departed from the gold and silver markets. The flow of dollars into bullion, which threatened to become a torrent, was stopped.
For now it seems that the Fed has succeeded in creating wariness among Americans about the virtues of gold and silver, and thus the Federal Reserve has extended the time that it can print money to keep the house of cards standing. This time could be short or it could last a couple of years.
However, for the Russians and Chinese, whose central banks have more dollars than they any longer want, and for the 1.3 billion Indians in India, the low dollar price for gold that the Federal Reserve has engineered is an opportunity. They see the opportunity that the Federal Reserve has given them to purchase gold at $350-$400 an ounce less than two years ago as a gift.
The Federal Reserve’s attack on bullion is an act of desperation that, when widely recognized, will doom its policy.
As I have explained previously, the orchestrated move against gold and silver is to protect the exchange value of the US dollar. If bullion were not a threat, the government would not be attacking it.
The Federal Reserve is creating $1 trillion new dollars per year, but the world is moving away from the use of the dollar for international payments and, thus, as reserve currency. The result is an increase in supply and a decrease in demand. This means a falling exchange value of the dollar, domestic inflation from rising import prices, and a rising interest rate and collapsing bond, stock and real estate markets.
The Federal Reserve’s orchestration against bullion cannot ultimately succeed. It is designed to gain time for the Federal Reserve to be able to continue financing the federal budget deficit by printing money and also to keep interest rates low and debt prices high in order to support the banks' balance sheets.
When the Federal Reserve can no longer print due to dollar decline which printing would make worse, US bank deposits and pensions could be grabbed in order to finance the federal budget deficit for couple of more years. Anything to stave off the final catastrophe.
The manipulation of the bullion market is illegal, but as government is doing it the law will not be enforced.
By its obvious and concerted attack on gold and silver, the US government could not give any clearer warning that trouble is approaching. The values of the dollar and of financial assets denominated in dollars are in doubt.
Those who believe in government and those who believe in deregulation will be proved equally wrong. The United States of America is past its zenith. As I predicted early in the 21st century, in 20 years the US will be a third world country. We are halfway there
For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices.
When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an ounce on August 23, 2011, a gain of more than $500 an ounce in less than 8 months, capping a rise over a decade from $272 at the end of December 2000, the Federal Reserve panicked. With the US dollar losing value so rapidly compared to the world standard for money, the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing $1 trillion annually in order to support the impaired balance sheets of banks and to finance the federal deficit was placed in danger. Who could believe the dollar’s exchange rate in relation to other currencies when the dollar was collapsing in value in relation to gold and silver.
The Federal Reserve realized that its massive purchase of bonds in order to keep their prices high (and thus interest rates low) was threatened by the dollar’s rapid loss of value in terms of gold and silver. The Federal Reserve was concerned that large holders of US dollars, such as the central banks of China and Japan and the OPEC sovereign investment funds, might join the flight of individual investors away from the US dollar, thus ending in the fall of the dollar’s foreign exchange value and thus decline in US bond and stock prices.
Intelligent people could see that the US government could not afford the long and numerous wars that the neoconservatives were engineering or the loss of tax base and consumer income from offshoring millions of US middle class jobs for the sake of executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains. They could see what was in the cards, and began exiting the dollar for gold and silver.
Central banks are slower to act. Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates are dependent on US protection and do not want to anger their protector. Japan is a puppet state that is careful in its relationship with its master. China wanted to hold on to the American consumer market for as long as that market existed. It was individuals who began the exit from the US dollar.
When gold topped $1,900, Washington put out the story that gold was a bubble. The presstitute media fell in line with Washington’s propaganda. “Gold looking a bit bubbly” declared CNN Money on August 23, 2011.
The Federal Reserve used its dependent “banks too big to fail” to short the precious metals markets. By selling naked shorts in the paper bullion market against the rising demand for physical possession, the Federal Reserve was able to drive the price of gold down to $1,750 and keep it more or less capped there until recently, when a concerted effort on April 2-3, 2013, drove gold down to $1,557 and silver, which had approached $50 per ounce in 2011, down to $27.
The Federal Reserve began its April Fool’s assault on gold by sending the word to brokerage houses, which quickly went out to clients, that hedge funds and other large investors were going to unload their gold positions and that clients should get out of the precious metal market prior to these sales. As this inside information was the government’s own strategy, individuals cannot be prosecuted for acting on it. By this operation, the Federal Reserve, a totally corrupt entity, was able to combine individual flight with institutional flight. Bullion prices took a big hit, and bullishness departed from the gold and silver markets. The flow of dollars into bullion, which threatened to become a torrent, was stopped.
For now it seems that the Fed has succeeded in creating wariness among Americans about the virtues of gold and silver, and thus the Federal Reserve has extended the time that it can print money to keep the house of cards standing. This time could be short or it could last a couple of years.
However, for the Russians and Chinese, whose central banks have more dollars than they any longer want, and for the 1.3 billion Indians in India, the low dollar price for gold that the Federal Reserve has engineered is an opportunity. They see the opportunity that the Federal Reserve has given them to purchase gold at $350-$400 an ounce less than two years ago as a gift.
The Federal Reserve’s attack on bullion is an act of desperation that, when widely recognized, will doom its policy.
As I have explained previously, the orchestrated move against gold and silver is to protect the exchange value of the US dollar. If bullion were not a threat, the government would not be attacking it.
The Federal Reserve is creating $1 trillion new dollars per year, but the world is moving away from the use of the dollar for international payments and, thus, as reserve currency. The result is an increase in supply and a decrease in demand. This means a falling exchange value of the dollar, domestic inflation from rising import prices, and a rising interest rate and collapsing bond, stock and real estate markets.
The Federal Reserve’s orchestration against bullion cannot ultimately succeed. It is designed to gain time for the Federal Reserve to be able to continue financing the federal budget deficit by printing money and also to keep interest rates low and debt prices high in order to support the banks' balance sheets.
When the Federal Reserve can no longer print due to dollar decline which printing would make worse, US bank deposits and pensions could be grabbed in order to finance the federal budget deficit for couple of more years. Anything to stave off the final catastrophe.
The manipulation of the bullion market is illegal, but as government is doing it the law will not be enforced.
By its obvious and concerted attack on gold and silver, the US government could not give any clearer warning that trouble is approaching. The values of the dollar and of financial assets denominated in dollars are in doubt.
Those who believe in government and those who believe in deregulation will be proved equally wrong. The United States of America is past its zenith. As I predicted early in the 21st century, in 20 years the US will be a third world country. We are halfway there
Update: Assault On Gold - Paul Craig Roberts
NOTE: Gold weights are based on metric tons and Troy ounces. 500 metric tons of gold would be 16,075,000 troy ounces. This changes the arithmetic slightly but not the point
I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing. With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars is increasing, the price or exchange value of the dollar is set up to fall.
A fall in the dollar’s exchange rate would push up import prices and, thereby, domestic inflation, and the Fed would lose control over interest rates. The bond market would collapse and with it the values of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big too fail” balance sheets. The financial system would be in turmoil, and panic would reign.
Rapidly rising bullion prices were an indication of loss of confidence in the dollar and were signaling a drop in the dollar’s exchange rate. The Fed used naked shorts in the paper gold market to offset the price effect of a rising demand for bullion possession. Short sales that drive down the price trigger stop-loss orders that automatically lead to individual sales of bullion holdings once their loss limits are reached.
According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.
A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.
In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.
People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.
Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.
Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $1,550, that comes to $24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?
What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $73 dollars 16 million times, or $1,168,000,000.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.
I believe that the authorities would like to drive the gold price down further and will, if they can, hit the gold market twice more next week and put gold at $1,400 per ounce or lower. The successive declines could perhaps spook individual holders of physical gold and result in actual net sales of physical gold as people reduced their holdings of the metal.
However, bullion dealer Bill Haynes told kingworldnews.com that last Friday bullion purchasers among the public outpaced sellers by 50 to 1, and that the premiums over the spot price on gold and silver coins are the highest in decades. I myself checked with Gainesville Coins and was told that far more buyers than sellers had responded to the price drop.
Unless the authorities have the actual metal with which to back up the short selling, they could be met with demands for deliveries. Unable to cover the shorts with real metal, the scheme would be exposed.
Do the authorities have the metal with which to cover shorts? I do not know. However, knowledgeable dealers are suspicious. Some think that US physical stocks of gold were used up in sales in efforts to disrupt the rise in the gold price from $272 in December 2000 to $1,900 in 2011. They point to Germany’s recent request that the US return the German gold stored in the US, and to the US government’s reply that it would return the gold piecemeal over seven years. If the US has the gold, why not return it to Germany?
The clear implication is that the US cannot deliver the gold.
Andrew Maguire also reports that foreign central banks, especially China, are loading up on physical gold at the low prices made possible by the short selling. If central banks are using their dollar holdings to purchase bullion at bargain prices, the likely results will be pressure on the dollar’s exchange value and a declining market supply of physical bullion. In other words, by trying to protect the dollar from its quantitative easing policy, the Fed might be hastening the dollar’s demise.
Possibly the Fed fears a dollar crisis or derivative blowup is nearing and is trying to reset the gold/dollar price prior to the outbreak of trouble. If ill winds are forecast, the Fed might feel it is better positioned to deal with crisis if the price of bullion is lower and confidence in bullion as a refuge has been shaken.
In addition to short selling that is clearly intended to drive down the gold price, orchestration is also indicated by the advance announcements this month first from brokerage houses and then from Goldman Sachs that hedge funds and institutional investors would be selling their gold positions. The purpose of these announcements was to encourage individual investors to get out of gold before the big boys did. Does anyone believe that hedge funds and Wall Street would announce their sales in advance so the small fry can get out of gold at a higher price than they do?
If these advanced announcements are not orchestration, what are they?
I see the orchestrated effort to suppress the price of gold and silver as a sign that the authorities are frightened that trouble is brewing that they cannot control unless there is strong confidence in the dollar. Otherwise, what is the point of the heavy short selling and orchestrated announcements of gold sales in advance of the sales?
NOTE: Gold weights are based on metric tons and Troy ounces. 500 metric tons of gold would be 16,075,000 troy ounces. This changes the arithmetic slightly but not the point
I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing. With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars is increasing, the price or exchange value of the dollar is set up to fall.
A fall in the dollar’s exchange rate would push up import prices and, thereby, domestic inflation, and the Fed would lose control over interest rates. The bond market would collapse and with it the values of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big too fail” balance sheets. The financial system would be in turmoil, and panic would reign.
Rapidly rising bullion prices were an indication of loss of confidence in the dollar and were signaling a drop in the dollar’s exchange rate. The Fed used naked shorts in the paper gold market to offset the price effect of a rising demand for bullion possession. Short sales that drive down the price trigger stop-loss orders that automatically lead to individual sales of bullion holdings once their loss limits are reached.
According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.
A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.
In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.
People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.
Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.
Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $1,550, that comes to $24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?
What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $73 dollars 16 million times, or $1,168,000,000.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.
I believe that the authorities would like to drive the gold price down further and will, if they can, hit the gold market twice more next week and put gold at $1,400 per ounce or lower. The successive declines could perhaps spook individual holders of physical gold and result in actual net sales of physical gold as people reduced their holdings of the metal.
However, bullion dealer Bill Haynes told kingworldnews.com that last Friday bullion purchasers among the public outpaced sellers by 50 to 1, and that the premiums over the spot price on gold and silver coins are the highest in decades. I myself checked with Gainesville Coins and was told that far more buyers than sellers had responded to the price drop.
Unless the authorities have the actual metal with which to back up the short selling, they could be met with demands for deliveries. Unable to cover the shorts with real metal, the scheme would be exposed.
Do the authorities have the metal with which to cover shorts? I do not know. However, knowledgeable dealers are suspicious. Some think that US physical stocks of gold were used up in sales in efforts to disrupt the rise in the gold price from $272 in December 2000 to $1,900 in 2011. They point to Germany’s recent request that the US return the German gold stored in the US, and to the US government’s reply that it would return the gold piecemeal over seven years. If the US has the gold, why not return it to Germany?
The clear implication is that the US cannot deliver the gold.
Andrew Maguire also reports that foreign central banks, especially China, are loading up on physical gold at the low prices made possible by the short selling. If central banks are using their dollar holdings to purchase bullion at bargain prices, the likely results will be pressure on the dollar’s exchange value and a declining market supply of physical bullion. In other words, by trying to protect the dollar from its quantitative easing policy, the Fed might be hastening the dollar’s demise.
Possibly the Fed fears a dollar crisis or derivative blowup is nearing and is trying to reset the gold/dollar price prior to the outbreak of trouble. If ill winds are forecast, the Fed might feel it is better positioned to deal with crisis if the price of bullion is lower and confidence in bullion as a refuge has been shaken.
In addition to short selling that is clearly intended to drive down the gold price, orchestration is also indicated by the advance announcements this month first from brokerage houses and then from Goldman Sachs that hedge funds and institutional investors would be selling their gold positions. The purpose of these announcements was to encourage individual investors to get out of gold before the big boys did. Does anyone believe that hedge funds and Wall Street would announce their sales in advance so the small fry can get out of gold at a higher price than they do?
If these advanced announcements are not orchestration, what are they?
I see the orchestrated effort to suppress the price of gold and silver as a sign that the authorities are frightened that trouble is brewing that they cannot control unless there is strong confidence in the dollar. Otherwise, what is the point of the heavy short selling and orchestrated announcements of gold sales in advance of the sales?
For real Lamarr, how much you got tied up in gold? When it drops below $700 oz, I'll take some of your hands!
ok brotha.......you've been warned! I'll stick to the fundamentals
It's all good, right?
Last edited:
We Have Seen Gold Prices Act Like This Before
We Have Seen Gold Prices Act Like This Before
Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC
Gold has not behaved like money in decades, rather gold is, for the most of the world, an investment class. We may not like such a development (it is one of the most insidious actions intentionally undertaken by central banks, including Basel rules) but gold is a liability on a bank’s balance sheet complete with a greater-than-zero risk-weighting. That means for banks gold is no different than, say, “high quality” mortgage bonds.
However, despite this diminished status, gold holds a property in banking that makes it especially valuable (pun intended) – it is universal. It crosses national boundaries easily. In the modern financial world of short-term liabilities and wholesale money, this universality can come in handy. A US$ mortgage bond can obtain a bank wholesale repo funding only in US$’s, but gold can obtain “repo” funding in any currency trading.
That means in times of extreme stress, gold acts like a universal liquidity stopgap – when all else fails, repo gold. The operational reality of a gold repo is a gold lease, charged at the forward rate (GOFO). In terms of market mechanics, a dramatic increase in gold leasing is seen as a massive increase in supply on the paper markets.
For various reasons in the past five years, collateral chains and the available collateral pool has dwindled dramatically. That has left banks to scramble for operational bypasses, but it also has led to periods of very acute stress.
When we match the price of gold against these stressed periods, they coincide perfectly. In other words, whenever collateralized lending has become problematic banks appeal to the universal collateral. Unfortunately, that looks like gold selling to the uninitiated.
These large declines in gold prices match date for date the extreme developments in the banking system across several currencies. And in each case the gold selloff has previewed a larger decline in systemic liquidity that eventually catches other asset classes.
This does not change the appeal of gold on the demand side – in these stressed periods there are defined trends of safety buying. The volatility in gold prices in 2008 shows this counterintuitive dichotomy very well.
Physical prices in London hit an all-time high of $1,023.50 on March 17, 2008. That happened to be the Monday morning after Bear Stearns “failed”. From that point until May 2, gold prices dropped more than 16%. Banks had become keenly aware of counterparties and collateral, particularly with daily rumors of monoline insurers heading for bankruptcy filings. But ultimately, the price of gold stopped falling on May 2, 2008, which happened to be the very same day the FOMC expanded the list of eligible collateral in its TSLF Schedule 2 to include private label MBS and asset-backed paper. The Fed also increased the ceiling on its dollar swaps with the ECB (to $20 billion) and to the SNB (to $6 billion).
In other words, the entire 16% correction in gold prices resided exactly in the time between the fall of Bear Stearns and the Fed’s eventual reduction in collateral restrictions. This is not coincidence here.
By early July 2008, mortgage stress had begun to strain the main MBS GSE’s, Fannie and Freddie. Not only did these two quasi-government entities package mortgages into the private markets, their liabilities formed one of the primary backbones of the entire repo market. Agency debt at that time was the second largest source of US$ repo collateral in the multi-trillion repo markets across the globe. As liabilities, these assets in a repo are extremely sensitive to factors like insolvency and government takeover.
From July 8 through July 15, 2008, the stocks of both Fannie and Freddie collapsed 60% each. Treasury Secretary Paulson initiated a prior-approved (so he claimed) backstop of the GSE’s through the Federal Reserve, including a line of credit and a right of the US Treasury to purchase equity. On July 15, 2008, the SEC instituted a short sale “restriction” in both GSE’s.
Gold topped its intervening run at $981.75 ($986.00 in the PM fix) on July 15, 2008. From there it fell an astounding 24% as the collateral chain disrupted by agency repo counterparty fears (especially from foreign banks) led to another appeal to universal collateral.
The drop in gold continued on through Fannie and Freddie’s eventual demise into conservatorship on September 5, 2008. It was not until September 11 that gold prices would bottom.
That week Lehman rumors (as well as those of other financial firms including AIG and Wachovia) dominated. Gold prices abruptly reversed course, as demand for the metal due to growing panic pushed prices into a spike. On Friday, September 12, 2008, the Friday before the Lehman weekend, gold closed at $750.25. By the next Thursday, through Lehman’s bankruptcy and the rest, gold was up to $863, an amazing 15% rise in just four trading days. Gold exhibited its safety appeal on the demand side.
The run continued until October 10, 2012, the last day of the market panic. Prices had risen all the way to $918 an ounce, moving dramatically opposite the rest of the world’s “risk” assets.
As markets seemingly stabilized, the credit/repo crisis on the supply side took over and gold prices dropped like a stone, all the way to $692.50 on October 24, 2008; another 24% “correction”. However, markets were roiled again, as overseas stocks were pummeled on October 24: Nikkei -9.6%, London -7%, Paris -8%, Frankfurt -8%, Moscow -14%, etc. The NYSE was even forced to dispel rumors the US markets would not open on time. Not coincidentally gold prices began to reverse yet again as paper money sought hard money – from October 24 through December 29, 2008, gold rose 27%!
Again, these moves were not coincidence and each time gold prices were routed it related directly to collateral problems in the banking system – universality of gold as collateral acted as an anchor on general gold prices in all currencies.
The process was eventually repeated the very next time interbank stress heightened, in 2011.
The scale of the volatility was less, but the pattern was unmistakable. Starting with the fears over the US debt downgrade, gold prices rose counter to the dramatic selloff in global stocks in late July/early August 2011. In Europe, the sovereign debt crisis had come to a head, so much so that the world’s central banks were forced into action.
The actions of the Swiss National Bank (pegging to the euro) and the Federal Reserve (offering a quasi-dollar swap through allotment auctions) demonstrated that once again banks were navigating a debilitating funding environment. Gold prices fell, as expected, by about 16%, only to rebound and fall again as funding realities ebbed and changed.
In every case where a dramatic selloff in gold has been seen across currencies, the hard collapse has been coincidental to collateral issues in the global system. In 2011, US$ repo funding was made more difficult by QE (more on this below). There was a reason European chaos led directly to the US central bank acting in US dollar liquidity arrangements.
These volatile movements in gold prices do not conform to traditional ideas about what makes gold prices move. Conventional wisdom posits, all too simplistically, that gold prices correlate exclusively with inflation expectations and real interest rates. What has been proven otherwise, without ambiguity, is that this is at best an incomplete explanation. Given the manner in which the banking system dominates asset markets and currency markets, the often more extreme motivations from financial firms should be given a more prominent place, particularly since these very factors match prices in exact chronology. This is entirely a product of global liquidity and the true interbank currency pool (collateral availability).
While central banks and politicians have proclaimed the Great Crisis as a relic of the past, there is an element to all this “liquidity” coming from central banks that acts in a counterproductive fashion. We saw this with QE 2, and the Federal Reserve itself has studied liquidity under these large scale asset purchases (such as QE) and determined that QE’s actually disrupt collateral chains. The bigger the QE, the less liquid the financial system grows because QE essentially removes usable collateral from the aggregate collateral pool.
The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve have been embarking upon the largest combined QE ever conceived – there has to be a drain on effective collateral liquidity at some point. We saw an atypical shortage of the 10-year UST for repo just last month. It is very possible, in my opinion likely, that QE is again wreaking havoc on collateral systems across the globe. If that is the case, then the collapse in gold prices both indicates this illiquid stance and portends something worse developing down the road.
Recent history has been very clear about the role of gold and interbank financing. There is no reason to think this time is different. Some observers might be inclined to see Goldilocks – the Fed’s crowning and crowing achievement of low interest rates/steady growth, but would that likely result in a collapse in gold prices? It seems a far more plausible explanation, given that this has transpired five times in the past five years, that bank liquidity explains gold rather than a new prosperous age of investor content surrounding central banks.
After all, does it not seem the least bit odd that every major central bank (and some minors) on the planet is debasing at the same time yet gold prices in most currencies have seemingly been “ignoring” this development? It is far more likely that investors have not been ignoring debasement, as physical gold inventory has been declining precipitously since the beginning of the year, and that “supply” due to collateral problems has been driving gold prices. Like most things, this time isn’t different.
http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2013/04/15/we-have-seen-gold-prices-act-like-this-before/
We Have Seen Gold Prices Act Like This Before
Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC
Gold has not behaved like money in decades, rather gold is, for the most of the world, an investment class. We may not like such a development (it is one of the most insidious actions intentionally undertaken by central banks, including Basel rules) but gold is a liability on a bank’s balance sheet complete with a greater-than-zero risk-weighting. That means for banks gold is no different than, say, “high quality” mortgage bonds.
However, despite this diminished status, gold holds a property in banking that makes it especially valuable (pun intended) – it is universal. It crosses national boundaries easily. In the modern financial world of short-term liabilities and wholesale money, this universality can come in handy. A US$ mortgage bond can obtain a bank wholesale repo funding only in US$’s, but gold can obtain “repo” funding in any currency trading.
That means in times of extreme stress, gold acts like a universal liquidity stopgap – when all else fails, repo gold. The operational reality of a gold repo is a gold lease, charged at the forward rate (GOFO). In terms of market mechanics, a dramatic increase in gold leasing is seen as a massive increase in supply on the paper markets.
For various reasons in the past five years, collateral chains and the available collateral pool has dwindled dramatically. That has left banks to scramble for operational bypasses, but it also has led to periods of very acute stress.
When we match the price of gold against these stressed periods, they coincide perfectly. In other words, whenever collateralized lending has become problematic banks appeal to the universal collateral. Unfortunately, that looks like gold selling to the uninitiated.
These large declines in gold prices match date for date the extreme developments in the banking system across several currencies. And in each case the gold selloff has previewed a larger decline in systemic liquidity that eventually catches other asset classes.
This does not change the appeal of gold on the demand side – in these stressed periods there are defined trends of safety buying. The volatility in gold prices in 2008 shows this counterintuitive dichotomy very well.
Physical prices in London hit an all-time high of $1,023.50 on March 17, 2008. That happened to be the Monday morning after Bear Stearns “failed”. From that point until May 2, gold prices dropped more than 16%. Banks had become keenly aware of counterparties and collateral, particularly with daily rumors of monoline insurers heading for bankruptcy filings. But ultimately, the price of gold stopped falling on May 2, 2008, which happened to be the very same day the FOMC expanded the list of eligible collateral in its TSLF Schedule 2 to include private label MBS and asset-backed paper. The Fed also increased the ceiling on its dollar swaps with the ECB (to $20 billion) and to the SNB (to $6 billion).
In other words, the entire 16% correction in gold prices resided exactly in the time between the fall of Bear Stearns and the Fed’s eventual reduction in collateral restrictions. This is not coincidence here.
By early July 2008, mortgage stress had begun to strain the main MBS GSE’s, Fannie and Freddie. Not only did these two quasi-government entities package mortgages into the private markets, their liabilities formed one of the primary backbones of the entire repo market. Agency debt at that time was the second largest source of US$ repo collateral in the multi-trillion repo markets across the globe. As liabilities, these assets in a repo are extremely sensitive to factors like insolvency and government takeover.
From July 8 through July 15, 2008, the stocks of both Fannie and Freddie collapsed 60% each. Treasury Secretary Paulson initiated a prior-approved (so he claimed) backstop of the GSE’s through the Federal Reserve, including a line of credit and a right of the US Treasury to purchase equity. On July 15, 2008, the SEC instituted a short sale “restriction” in both GSE’s.
Gold topped its intervening run at $981.75 ($986.00 in the PM fix) on July 15, 2008. From there it fell an astounding 24% as the collateral chain disrupted by agency repo counterparty fears (especially from foreign banks) led to another appeal to universal collateral.
The drop in gold continued on through Fannie and Freddie’s eventual demise into conservatorship on September 5, 2008. It was not until September 11 that gold prices would bottom.
That week Lehman rumors (as well as those of other financial firms including AIG and Wachovia) dominated. Gold prices abruptly reversed course, as demand for the metal due to growing panic pushed prices into a spike. On Friday, September 12, 2008, the Friday before the Lehman weekend, gold closed at $750.25. By the next Thursday, through Lehman’s bankruptcy and the rest, gold was up to $863, an amazing 15% rise in just four trading days. Gold exhibited its safety appeal on the demand side.
The run continued until October 10, 2012, the last day of the market panic. Prices had risen all the way to $918 an ounce, moving dramatically opposite the rest of the world’s “risk” assets.
As markets seemingly stabilized, the credit/repo crisis on the supply side took over and gold prices dropped like a stone, all the way to $692.50 on October 24, 2008; another 24% “correction”. However, markets were roiled again, as overseas stocks were pummeled on October 24: Nikkei -9.6%, London -7%, Paris -8%, Frankfurt -8%, Moscow -14%, etc. The NYSE was even forced to dispel rumors the US markets would not open on time. Not coincidentally gold prices began to reverse yet again as paper money sought hard money – from October 24 through December 29, 2008, gold rose 27%!
Again, these moves were not coincidence and each time gold prices were routed it related directly to collateral problems in the banking system – universality of gold as collateral acted as an anchor on general gold prices in all currencies.
The process was eventually repeated the very next time interbank stress heightened, in 2011.
The scale of the volatility was less, but the pattern was unmistakable. Starting with the fears over the US debt downgrade, gold prices rose counter to the dramatic selloff in global stocks in late July/early August 2011. In Europe, the sovereign debt crisis had come to a head, so much so that the world’s central banks were forced into action.
The actions of the Swiss National Bank (pegging to the euro) and the Federal Reserve (offering a quasi-dollar swap through allotment auctions) demonstrated that once again banks were navigating a debilitating funding environment. Gold prices fell, as expected, by about 16%, only to rebound and fall again as funding realities ebbed and changed.
In every case where a dramatic selloff in gold has been seen across currencies, the hard collapse has been coincidental to collateral issues in the global system. In 2011, US$ repo funding was made more difficult by QE (more on this below). There was a reason European chaos led directly to the US central bank acting in US dollar liquidity arrangements.
These volatile movements in gold prices do not conform to traditional ideas about what makes gold prices move. Conventional wisdom posits, all too simplistically, that gold prices correlate exclusively with inflation expectations and real interest rates. What has been proven otherwise, without ambiguity, is that this is at best an incomplete explanation. Given the manner in which the banking system dominates asset markets and currency markets, the often more extreme motivations from financial firms should be given a more prominent place, particularly since these very factors match prices in exact chronology. This is entirely a product of global liquidity and the true interbank currency pool (collateral availability).
While central banks and politicians have proclaimed the Great Crisis as a relic of the past, there is an element to all this “liquidity” coming from central banks that acts in a counterproductive fashion. We saw this with QE 2, and the Federal Reserve itself has studied liquidity under these large scale asset purchases (such as QE) and determined that QE’s actually disrupt collateral chains. The bigger the QE, the less liquid the financial system grows because QE essentially removes usable collateral from the aggregate collateral pool.
The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve have been embarking upon the largest combined QE ever conceived – there has to be a drain on effective collateral liquidity at some point. We saw an atypical shortage of the 10-year UST for repo just last month. It is very possible, in my opinion likely, that QE is again wreaking havoc on collateral systems across the globe. If that is the case, then the collapse in gold prices both indicates this illiquid stance and portends something worse developing down the road.
Recent history has been very clear about the role of gold and interbank financing. There is no reason to think this time is different. Some observers might be inclined to see Goldilocks – the Fed’s crowning and crowing achievement of low interest rates/steady growth, but would that likely result in a collapse in gold prices? It seems a far more plausible explanation, given that this has transpired five times in the past five years, that bank liquidity explains gold rather than a new prosperous age of investor content surrounding central banks.
After all, does it not seem the least bit odd that every major central bank (and some minors) on the planet is debasing at the same time yet gold prices in most currencies have seemingly been “ignoring” this development? It is far more likely that investors have not been ignoring debasement, as physical gold inventory has been declining precipitously since the beginning of the year, and that “supply” due to collateral problems has been driving gold prices. Like most things, this time isn’t different.
http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2013/04/15/we-have-seen-gold-prices-act-like-this-before/
And haven't learned a damn thing!
source: Investing.com
Gold prices set for worst annual loss since 1981
Investing.com - Gold prices were lower on the final trading day of the year on Tuesday, with the precious metal heading for its biggest annual loss since 1981.
Gold prices on track for a loss of 29% in 2013, the worst annual decline since 1981
On the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, gold futures for February delivery traded at USD1,198.10 a troy ounce during European morning trade, down 0.5%. Gold prices traded in a range between USD1,194.10 a troy ounce and USD1,201.20 a troy ounce.
Futures were likely to find support at USD1,186.00 a troy ounce, the low from December 19 and resistance at USD1,218.30, the high from December 27. The February contract settled down 0.84% on Monday to end at USD1,203.80 a troy ounce.
Gold is down approximately 29% this year, on track for its first yearly loss in 13 years and the worst since 1981, as solid U.S. economic data underlined expectations the Federal Reserve will begin curbing stimulus.
Meanwhile, silver for March delivery dropped by as much as 1.2% earlier in the session to hit USD19.54 a troy ounce, before coming off the lows to trade at USD19.43, down 0.9%. Comex silver prices lost nearly 36% this year.
Market players looked ahead to U.S. data on consumer confidence and manufacturing activity in the Chicago region later in the day, to gauge if the U.S. economy will be strong enough to allow the Fed to continue withdrawing support through 2014. The U.S. central bank will reduce its bond-buying stimulus program by USD10 billion a month starting in January.
Some market participants believe the Fed will likely taper its bond purchases by USD10 billion in each of its next seven meetings before ending the program in December 2014, amid indications of an improving U.S. economy.
Trading volumes are expected to remain light as many investors already closed books before the end of the year.
Elsewhere on the Comex, copper futures for March delivery dipped 0.15% to trade at USD3.378 a pound.
Copper prices have been well-supported in recent weeks amid indications the U.S. economic recovery is deepening. The U.S. is second behind China in global copper demand.
Prices of the industrial metal are on track to post a gain of nearly 4.5% in December, but are still approximately 8% lower in the year to date
ok brotha.......you've been warned! I'll stick to the fundamentals
It's all good, right?
Is that why you disappeared from this board?
I still intend to play around in precious metals... Aside from the remaining silver I have being back down almost to where I bought it at, I have made money so far. Just gotta see how far the shit falls so I can buy and hold some for the next rise. For Gold, I don't think I'll touch it unless it gets down under like $850. Silver.... if it gets down below $16, I may buy some.
What are you talking about? Did I say something wrong or something you don't believe? I just mentioned my experience with the stuff and what I may do in the future. Wasn't attempting to tell you or anyone else what's what.
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