Hitmen Contracts to Bust Comex?
June 2nd, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
I read these types of articles about gold all the time, but I rarely post them. However, if Colonel Kurtz himself wrote about gold from his renegade compound, deep in the jungle, with heads on stakes and all of the other trimmings, it wouldn’t be this unhinged, entertaining or interesting.
I mean, “…encrusted chambers replete with stench”??? What can I say? This is great!
Whether any of this has anything to do with what’s going to happen to the price of gold is a mystery to me, but thinking back to the final year that I spent in the world of corporate IT, I would not be surprised in the least if the parts of this that deal with death threats are true. In Unloading Toxic Waste Mortgage Backed Securities, I wrote, “At some point, this thing is going to start looking less like a financial crisis and more like a mob war.” That was two years ago. A lot of water has been under the bridge since then, and if 10% of what we read here is true, my assessment will turn out to be an egregious understatement.
Via: Financial Sense / Jim Willie:
It has come to my attention that several private parties have accepted contract assignments to neuter the COMEX and London Metals Exchange, to render ruin to its gold market. That bears repeating from the rooftops. MUTLIPLE HIRED HITMEN HAVE ASSIGNMENTS TO KILL THE COMEX GOLD MARKET. That is the lynchpin to control the USDollar, the USTreasurys, and the corrupt mechanisms used by the New York and London syndicates. Their clear criminal behavior is beyond the reach of law enforcement, but they are not beyond the reach of hitmen. The USDollar has been in violation of the US Constitution since 1971, perpetuated by a renegade series of administrations. The global creditors for the USTreasury Bonds are so angry at the past suffered losses, the prospect of deep future losses, and the corruption laced throughout the US financial system, that they have hired third parties to kill off the US$-gold platforms, to destroy the burdensome banking ballast dominated by protected entrenched fraud experts, to lay waste to the vehicles used by the US-UK bond trafficking syndicate totally saturated with corruption, dishonesty, and collusion, replete with greed, totally absent conscience.
Research Credit: Listless and Inattentive
600ft Jellyfish Crop Circle Found in Oxfordshire Field
June 2nd, 2009Well, at least it wasn’t Cthulhu.
Via: Telegraph:
A 600ft jellyfish pattern has appeared in a barley field in Kingstone Coombes, Oxfordshire, in what is one of the most intriguing crop circles ever seen in Britain.
The vast pattern appeared in the field last week and experts are claiming it to be the first of its kind in the world.
Karen Alexander, a crop circle expert, said: “We have seen butterfly and bird patterns in the past, but this is the first jellyfish crop circle in the world.
Yu: “The euro is an alternative. And there are lots of raw materials we can still buy.”
June 2nd, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
China’s former central bank adviser Yu Yongding will meet Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today and tell him the U.S. shouldn’t be complacent about China continuing to buy Treasuries.
“I wish to tell the U.S. government: ‘Don’t be complacent and think there isn’t any alternative for China to buy your bills and bonds’,” Yu said in an interview yesterday. “The euro is an alternative. And there are lots of raw materials we can still buy.”
…
“China will be shooting themselves in the foot if they push this issue too hard,” said Sean Callow, a senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Sydney. “If they are too alarmist and contribute substantially to a dollar and Treasuries sell off, they are going to feel more pain than just about anybody in the world.”
China is concerned that the U.S.’s spending and planned record fiscal deficit will eventually lead to inflation and a loss of confidence in the dollar, undermining the value of China’s Treasury holdings, Yu said.
Ireland Set to Go Bust
June 1st, 2009Via: Independent:
A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world’s leading economic historians.
“The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke,” said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money.
“The debt trap may be about to spring” he said, “for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.”
His chosen prime candidate to go bust is “Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind”.
Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but “the argument that it can’t happen in major western economies is nonsense”.
On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired
June 1st, 2009You’ve got your fast crash. You’ve got your slow crash. But then you’ve got your Snowcrash.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.
“You don’t need a TV. You don’t need a radio. You don’t even need a newspaper,” says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. “But you need the Internet.”
Mr. Pitts’s experience shows how deeply computers and the Internet have permeated society. A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack the means to buy computers and Web access. Still, in America today, even people without street addresses feel compelled to have Internet addresses.
New York City has put 42 computers in five of the nine shelters it operates and plans to wire the other four this year. Roughly half of another 190 shelters in the city offer computer access. The executive director of a San Francisco nonprofit group, Central City Hospitality House, estimates that half the visitors to its new eight-computer drop-in center are homeless; demand for computer time is so great that users are limited to 30 minutes.
Shelter attendants say the number of laptop-toting overnight visitors, while small, is growing. SF Homeless, a two-year-old Internet forum, has 140 members. It posts schedules for public-housing meetings and news from similar groups in New Mexico, Arizona and Connecticut. And it has a blog with online polls about shelter life.
Cheap computers and free Internet access fuel the phenomenon. So does an increasingly computer-savvy population. Many job and housing applications must be submitted online. Some homeless advocates say the economic downturn is pushing more of the wired middle class on to the streets.
Federal Reserve Puzzled by Yield Curve Steepening
June 1st, 2009Well .gov just went into the automobile manufacturing business. What could possible go wrong?
Via: Reuters:
The Federal Reserve is studying significant moves in the U.S. government bond market last week that could have big implications for the central bank’s strategy to combat the country’s recession.
But the Fed is not really sure what is driving the sharp rise in long-dated bond yields, and especially a widening gap between short and long term yields.
“Black Swan” Author to Start Hedge Fund Betting on Hyperinflation
June 1st, 2009Via: Bloomberg:
Universa Investments LP, which has links to “Black Swan” author and New York University professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is starting a hedge fund to bet that efforts by governments and central banks to end the global recession will lead to hyperinflation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Taleb. The fund will invest in commodities and options on oil and gold stocks, the Journal said.
Dollar Under Pressure Again in Asia; Oil and Gold Up; Geithner Tells China Its Dollar Assets Are Safe, Room Erupts in Laughter
June 1st, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instruments.
Disclosure: I own gold. I am a BullionVault client and affiliate.
Gold longs with a short term outlook: Lock stops in here on the strength or take profit now. Resistance is just over head and the dollar is right around support. The Geithner theatrics are likely staged to coincide with a short squeeze on the dollar, which would be a simple matter to pull off with the USDX at a support level.
Personally, I’m not selling one gram of my gold, but I’d like to buy more if a short squeeze on the dollar materializes.
Long term gold longs and dollar bears, let out a big yawn for now.
Spot gold, daily interval
U.S. Dollar Index, daily interval
Via: Reuters:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency.
A major goal of Geithner’s maiden visit to China as Treasury chief is to allay concerns that Washington’s bulging budget deficit and ultra-loose monetary policy will fan inflation, undermining both the dollar and U.S. bonds.
China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China’s total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.
“Chinese assets are very safe,” Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.
The Beijing-based Global Times greeted Geithner by publishing a survey of Chinese economists who called big holdings of U.S. debt “risky.”
Geithner renewed pledges that the Obama administration would cut its huge fiscal deficits and promised “very disciplined” future spending, possibly including reintroduction of pay-as-you-go budget rules instead of nonstop borrowing.
“We have the deepest and most liquid markets for risk-free assets in the world. We’re committed to bring our fiscal deficits down over time to a sustainable level.
“We believe in a strong dollar … and we’re going to make sure that we repair and reform the financial system so that we sustain confidence,” he said.
Geithner also offered strong backing for a bigger Chinese role in international policymaking.
“China is already too important to the global economy not to have a full seat at the international table,” he said.
GM to Seek Bankruptcy
June 1st, 2009UPDATE: GM Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Via: Washington Post:
General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection this morning, marking the end of financial independence for the 100-year-old industrial leviathan that once conflated its interests with the country’s and — counting jobs at the company and its suppliers — employed well over 1 million people.
—End Update—
Via: New York Times:
President Obama will push General Motors into bankruptcy protection on Monday, making a risky bet that by temporarily nationalizing the onetime icon of American capitalism, he can save at least a diminished automaker that is competitive.
The bankruptcy, to be filed in New York, is a moment of reckoning for an industry that was once at the heart of the American economy. It culminates a remarkable four months of confrontation between Washington and Detroit that is expected to result in a drastic downsizing of the company.
It also places the government in uncharted territory as a business owner, as it takes a 60 percent ownership stake in the company during its restructuring.
Reflecting the government’s extraordinary intervention in industry, aides say, Mr. Obama plans to tell the nation on Monday that he believes G.M. can be brought back from the brink of insolvency, even if the company looks almost nothing like the titan of old.
Meanwhile, a federal judge late Sunday night cleared a path for Chrysler to get out of bankruptcy by approving a sale of most of that carmaker’s assets to a new entity to be run by Fiat of Italy.
Administration officials briefed reporters on the G.M. plans Sunday night, as President Obama began to inform members of Congress. But the White House insisted that the aides who talked to reporters could not be named.
In his remarks on Monday, Mr. Obama will spell out a strategy in which a shrunken G.M. can make money even if new car sales remain at a sluggish 10 million a year in the United States and even if G.M., once the giant of the industry, drops below its current 20 percent market share in this country.
But to get there, American taxpayers will invest an additional $30 billion in the company, atop $20 billion already spent just to keep it solvent as the company bled cash as quickly as Washington could inject it. Whether that investment will ever be recovered is still an open question.
The company will also have to shed 21,000 union workers and close 12 to 20 factories, steps that most analysts thought could never be pushed through by a Democratic president allied with organized labor.
Forty percent of the company’s 6,000 dealers will close, the workers’ union will be forced to finance half of its $20 billion health care fund with stock of uncertain value in the restructured G.M., and bondholders, including many retirees, will be forced to take stock worth 10 cents for every dollar they lent the company.
The company’s last steps toward bankruptcy took place over the weekend as a majority of G.M. bondholders agreed not to challenge the filing in court and to exchange their debt for stock.
Cryptogon Reader Sends Contribution
May 31st, 2009Thanks to FT for sending €10.
