Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

[swannmex]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Love the backhanded compliment. Way to woo a girl ej. Of course anyone who believes that the gold market is manipulated is a gold bug. Its just silly hogwash based on fairies and gnomes and those rascally rabbits. And all gold bugs are too stupid to realize when to jump ship and will all be so so miserable and bankrupt. And of course anyone who thinks the gold market is manipulated is a miserable, foul smelling, ill tempered troll! Oh yeah, poor too cause they are so foolish because they are so desperate to catch a little girl or boy skipping merrily over his bridge that he'll never know when too late is too late. Sad pathetic existence. You hear that Jessie? I'm talking about chu! Chu smalz lit' tro'z thoz.

I agree. This whole thing has been really low level analysis and I have come to expect much better from EJ. The chief "goldbug" Jim Sinclair sold out at the top of the last big bull run. This is documented. He bought back in and resurfaced in 2001 before the start of this big bull run. It is documented.

I consider myself a "goldbug" I had about 5% in gold during the 1990's. I went 100% into gold ( and gold stocks ) and oil and gas on Jan. 1st , 2003. Tons of volatility and a real ass whippin' in 2008 BUT I have outperformed 30% bullion 70% T-bills by a VERY wide margin. I fully realize there will be a time to sell most of my gold holdings. I fully realize that time is not now.

My guess is anyone in the mainstream dealing with the public is so afraid of appearing "unsophisticated" that they have to preface every utterance with "while I am bullish on gold, I AM NOT A GOLDBUG" ?? Dennis Gartmen does not let 5 min. go by without saying that at least twice. He is a shill.

The main thrust of GATA's argument is exactly correct and will be proved correct before this is all over.

The gold price has been "managed" and there is a HUGE fraud going on in the paper gold market.

What is it about this statement that is not crystal clear???

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

Please tell me what about that statement is confusing and why anyone would not come to the conclusion that the gold price is being actively managed.

AND please do not trot out, "the price has steadily gone up so that proves the price has not been managed". Good grief that is worse than first grade analysis.

have a nice day and buy some physical gold today.

[metalman]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

I agree. This whole thing has been really low level analysis and I have come to expect much better from EJ. The chief "goldbug" Jim Sinclair sold out at the top of the last big bull run. This is documented. He bought back in and resurfaced in 2001 before the start of this big bull run. It is documented.

I consider myself a "goldbug" I had about 5% in gold during the 1990's. I went 100% into gold ( and gold stocks ) and oil and gas on Jan. 1st , 2003. Tons of volatility and a real ass whippin' in 2008 BUT I have outperformed 30% bullion 70% T-bills by a VERY wide margin. I fully realize there will be a time to sell most of my gold holdings. I fully realize that time is not now.

My guess is anyone in the mainstream dealing with the public is so afraid of appearing "unsophisticated" that they have to preface every utterance with "while I am bullish on gold, I AM NOT A GOLDBUG" ?? Dennis Gartmen does not let 5 min. go by without saying that at least twice. He is a shill.

The main thrust of GATA's argument is exactly correct and will be proved correct before this is all over.

The gold price has been "managed" and there is a HUGE fraud going on in the paper gold market.

What is it about this statement that is not crystal clear???

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

Please tell me what about that statement is confusing and why anyone would not come to the conclusion that the gold price is being actively managed.

AND please do not trot out, "the price has steadily gone up so that proves the price has not been managed". Good grief that is worse than first grade analysis.

have a nice day and buy some physical gold today.

no group on god's green earth has done more to ruin the gold market than goldbugs.

sinclair is great, if you don't mind wading thru dozens of hysterical 'THIS IS IT!!!' type posts on his site.

if you got into gold in 2003 you were 2 yrs late. shoulda read ej.

you'll be 2 yrs late getting out, too. you're bought into the ideologogy & magic. you won't sell.

[swannmex]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

no group on god's green earth has done more to ruin the gold market than goldbugs.

sinclair is great, if you don't mind wading thru dozens of hysterical 'THIS IS IT!!!' type posts on his site.

if you got into gold in 2003 you were 2 yrs late. shoulda read ej.

you'll be 2 yrs late getting out, too. you're bought into the ideologogy & magic. you won't sell.

Fact is you have no idea what I wii or will not do but you can rest assured I will not ever be an ass kiss.

[metalman]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Fact is you have no idea what I wii or will not do but you can rest assured I will not ever be an ass kiss.

puckered up for gata, sinciar, etc, tho... eh?

[jtabeb]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

no group on god's green earth has done more to ruin the gold market than goldbugs.

.

Really? You've made some VERY INTERESTING COMMENTS AS OF LATE.

If you replace "Gold Bugs" with "Central Banks", THEN your statement would ACTUALLY be CORRECT.


Goldbugs, people who arguments are later proven substantially correct (after the fact).

Or

Goldbugs, the only people who, when seeing an elephant in the room shout "ELEPHANT!", while everyone else just looks around trying to figure out what they are talking about.

[metalman]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Really? You've made some VERY INTERESTING COMMENTS AS OF LATE.

If you replace "Gold Bugs" with "Central Banks", THEN your statement would ACTUALLY be CORRECT.


Goldbugs, people who arguments are later proven substantially correct (after the fact).

Or

Goldbugs, the only people who, when seeing an elephant in the room shout "ELEPHANT!", while everyone else just looks around trying to figure out what they are talking about.

goldbugs see elephants before the reality show addicted j6p's do, true nuff. but goldbugs also see elephants where their ain't none. ruins their credibility... & the cred of every gold investor. on the plus side... by scaring away the ave. investor, the goldbugs are making more cheap gold for you & me.

[jtabeb]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

goldbugs see elephants before the reality show addicted j6p's do, true nuff. but goldbugs also see elephants where their ain't none. ruins their credibility... & the cred of every gold investor. on the plus side... by scaring away the ave. investor, the goldbugs are making more cheap gold for you & me.

I agree, too much of the fanciful. But at the same time, the stuff we've witnessed (esp since 2008) makes the fanciful appear MUCH closer to reality than fiction. (If that's not a sad commentary on the state of this country, I don't know what is).

How bad is it when ACTUAL events make the wildest conspiracy theory look utterly pedestrian? (me thinks pretty bad)

[Spartacus]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Hudson's supposed to be a historian, so he must know of a past period where Canadian mortgages were not full recourse.

This is NOT the situation today though

http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada...ient=firefox-a

I wonder who changed it back, if it was as Hudson says? Or is "common knowledge" wrong here? I've found no posts or articles by lawyers so far on this issue.

by-product of the Great Depression in the US and Canada was to free mortgage debtors from personal liability, making it possible to recover from bankruptcy. Foreclosing banks can take possession of collateral property, but do not have any further claim on the mortgagees.

[Rajiv]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

I am presuming that Hudson is not talking about recourse/non recourse loans, but rather the ability of individuals to file for bankruptcy so that they can get out of an unsustainable debt load. Credit card companies lobbied for a bill that greatly reduced this ability for credit card debt in the US in 2005

President signs bankruptcy bill - What you should know about a new law that will make it tougher for consumers to clear their debts.

[Pascal]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Thanks Jessie. Great posts.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

I almost forgot to mention, look for Michael Hudson's latest in the Financial Times tomorrow. I'm interviewing him Friday.

I notice that Hudson advocates using property tax rather than income or sales or various other taxes. This seems to be in the tradition of Henry George.

I like the idea of a "single tax" (not that there's any chance the current VAT or other such proposals will remove the income tax), but I don't see why the Fair Tax (sales tax with prebate to counter the regressive bias) wouldn't be just as good.

Can you ask Hudson why he prefers property tax over sales tax (with prebate)?

[phinolerun]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

Thank you EJ for your response.

[ViC78]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

I almost forgot to mention, look for Michael Hudson's latest in the Financial Times tomorrow. I'm interviewing him Friday.

Looking forward to reading the interview. When will it be posted?

Eastern Europe won’t pay what it can’t pay

By Michael Hudson
Published: April 7 2010 23:06 | Last updated: April 7 2010 23:06

Greece is just the first in a series of European debt bombs about to go off. Mortgage debts in the post-communist economies and Iceland are more explosive. Although most of these countries are not in the eurozone, their debts are largely denominated in euros. Some 87 per cent of Latvia’s debts are in euros or other foreign currencies, and are owed mainly to Swedish banks, while Hungary and Romania owe euro-debts mainly to Austrian banks. These governments have been borrowing not to finance a budget deficit, as in Greece, but to support their exchange rates and thereby prevent a private-sector default to foreign banks.
All these debts are unpayably high because most of these countries are running deepening trade deficits and are sinking into depression. Now that property prices are plunging, trade deficits are no longer financed by an inflow of foreign-currency mortgage lending. For the past year, these countries have supported their exchange rates by borrowing from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The terms of this borrowing are politically unsustainable: sharp public sector budget cuts, higher tax rates on already over-taxed labour, and austerity plans that shrink economies and drive more workers to emigrate.
Bankers in Sweden and Austria, Germany and Britain are about to discover that extending credit to nations that cannot (or will not) pay may be their problem, not that of their debtors. No one wants to accept the fact that debts that cannot be paid, will not be. Someone must bear the cost as debts go into default or are written down, to be paid in sharply depreciated currencies, and many legal experts find debt agreements calling for repayment in euros unenforceable. Every sovereign nation has the right to legislate its own debt terms, and the coming currency re-alignments and debt write-downs will be much more than mere “haircuts”.
There is no point in devaluing, unless “to excess” – that is, by enough to actually change trade and production patterns. That is why Franklin Roosevelt devalued the US dollar by 75 per cent against gold in 1933, raising the metal’s official price from $20 to $35 an ounce. To avoid raising the US debt burden proportionally, he annulled the “gold clause” indexing payment of bank loans to the price of gold. This is where the political fight will occur today – over the payment of debt in currencies that are devalued.
Another by-product of the Great Depression in the US and Canada was to free mortgage debtors from personal liability, making it possible to recover from bankruptcy. Foreclosing banks can take possession of collateral property, but do not have any further claim on the mortgagees. This practice – grounded in common law – shows how North America has freed itself from the legacy of feudal-style creditor power and the debtors’ prisons that made earlier European debt laws so harsh.
The question is, who will bear the loss? Keeping debts denominated in euros would bankrupt much local business. Conversely, re-denominating these debts in local depreciated currency would wipe out the capital of many euro-based banks. But these banks are foreigners, after all – and in the end, governments must represent their own home electorates. Foreign banks do not vote.
There is growing recognition that the post-communist economies were structured from the start to benefit foreign interests, not local economies. For example, Latvian labour is taxed at more than 50 per cent (labour, employer, and social tax) – so high as to make it non-competitive, while property taxes are less than 1 per cent, providing an incentive towards speculation. This skewed tax philosophy made the “Baltic tigers” and central Europe prime loan markets for Swedish and Austrian banks, even as domestic labour struggled to find well-paying work. Nothing like this (or their abysmal workplace protection laws) is found in western Europe or North America.
It seems unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that large sectors of the new European population can be made subject to salary garnishment throughout their lives, reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage. Future relations between Old and New Europe will depend on the eurozone’s willingness to redesign the post-communist economies on more solvent lines – with more productive credit and a less rentier-biased tax system that promotes employment rather than asset-price inflation. In addition to currency realignments to deal with unaffordable debt, the solution for these countries is a major shift of taxes from labour to land. There is no just alternative. Otherwise, the age-old conflict between creditors and debtors threatens to split Europe into opposing camps, with Iceland the dress rehearsal.
The writer is professor of economics at the University of Missouri and chief economic adviser to the Reform Task Force Latvia, an opposition think-tank

[Adeptus]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

And in today's silver news...

Jason Hommel is a guy who owns a mom & pop shop (and yes his mom is actually involved) silver operation online. But it looks like he's gotten a little bigger lately, apparently he can now handle "7 figure silver orders" since he's opened his own mint in California. ( His official website here).

Anyway, Jason has filed a complaint with the DoJ against JP Morgan for Silver Market Manipulation (ZeroHedge article). Apparently, he's the first to do so, so this is news. Of course JP is billions of times bigger than this little guy... but hey, at least he's trying.

Warning: I've read some of Jason's free online weekly email distribution letters between 2008 and 2009 with news about silver, and his perspective has a "bit" of a biased slant (not to mention a sprinkle of totally unecessary Christian evangelical commentary now and then), but still; I do like that he's doing something he believes in, and I do like his sense of humour... check out his "New World Order" Silver coins (can you find it in the picture below?). One of his specialties is Melting 1000 oz Silver bars and minting coins with whatever design he feels like that week, and then auctioning them online.




Adeptus

[xPat]

Re: Silver price manipulation? If it looks too bad to be true, it probably is - Eric Janszen

My (2) replies on the ZH thread in case anyone's interested:


by xPat
on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 14:54
#292743


GATA's incompetence has been mind-boggling, and it's frustrating to see yet another well-meaning but completely mis-placed effort to do the right thing that will only distract attention from what's important.

Folks, here's what's important:

• CFTC has a comment period on COMEX position limits open right now, and they appear (just maybe) to actually be listening.
• JPM has a massive concentrated short in silver futures (Ted Butler's research)
• Andrew Maguire claims to have compelling evidence that JPM is consciously and intentionally using that short to manipulate the market.

That's really big stuff. What the investment community needs to do is stay focused on what's important. But instead GATA insists on taking Jeff Christian's testimony completely out of context, and using it to form largely baseless allegations of "the fraud of the century" on the LBMA.

What's important is to stay focused on how to effect real change.

CFTC has no regulatory jurisdiction over LBMA. They do have jurisdiction over COMEX. We need to pressure CFTC to take meaningful action within the scope of their authority. That's the opportunity before us right now (comment period still open) and that's where we need to focus our energy.
I'm not saying there's no scandal on the LBMA. There very well may be, although Jeff Christian's testimony in the CFTC hearing certainly doesn't "admit" any such thing in the way the incompetents at GATA keep alleging. But my point is, save LBMA for another day. Thanks to GATA and Eric King, way too many people are confusing way too many issues and writing in to CFTC about "fractional reserve scandals" and "fraud in the London market". Those are not within the scope of CFTC's jurisdiction, and are therefore irrelevant even if true.

All this nonsense about "illegally selling contracts on the COMEX when they don't own the metal" is nonsense. The COMEX is a derivative market and there's nothing wrong with selling what you don't own there. It's legal. But we have strong and compelling evidence that something very illegal is going on, and that CFTC should act to correct (JPM concentrated short being used for price manipulation before major economic data releases). We need to stay focused on that and keep the LBMA conspiracy theories and related GATA rhetoric out of the process.

Please, google "ted butler a time to act" and read Ted's excellent piece also emphasizing the importance of staying focused on what CFTC actually has authority to regulate. That piece also contains instructions on adding your own comments to the public comment process, and a sample letter for reference.

IMHO, Eric King and yes, even Tyler Durden should be ashamed of themselves for their role in helping GATA's incompetent leadership to distract everyone's attention from the solid, irrefutable evidence in favor of theory, which although it might eventually be proven true, isn't relevant to the regulatory opportunity now before us.

xPat



by xPat
on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 15:08
#292751


Forgot to mention...

GATA keeps trying to make a big deal about how Jeff Christian "admitted" in his testimony that the LBMA (that's the PHYSICAL market in London) is "leveraged" 100:1 by paper over real gold. GATA and Eric King would like you to believe that this is "the biggest fraud in history" and that selling something you don't have - as they allege Jeff Christian to have admitted is the case 99% of the time on the LBMA - is fraudulent default.
Wow! Them's some pretty darned incriminating words, and anyone who listened to the GATA round table interview by Eric King would certainly be expected to come away outraged that 99% of what's being sold on the physical market really has no physical gold behind it. And Jeff Christian even admitted it! That Bastard!!!

Unless, that is, you listened to what Jeff Chritian actually said, as opposed to the nonsense GATA is claiming he said. You don't have to take my word for it. Go to the CFTC website, bring up the official video of the hearing, and go to the 5:32 mark, where Christian makes the now-infamous "100 to 1 statement".

All he really says is that the term "physical market" is something of a mis-nomer, because a lot of people in the industry use the words "physical market" to refer not only to the real physical market (LBMA), but collectively to LBMA plus OTC derivatives, and other stuff. He goes on to say that when you consider that collection of markets including both the actual physical market and the derivative markets, perhaps as much as 100 times as much gold is traded than really exists in physical metal.

There's no scandal or great revelation in Christian's testimony, folks. I'm not saying there is no fraud on LBMA - there probably is. But as noted in my earlier post, this is not the time to make a case about LBMA. It's time to focus on what CFTC has authority to regulate, and that's position limits on COMEX Gold and Silver contracts.

xPat