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[Abe]

Metal really glitters when you pull it out of thin air.

[Abe]

Specialty Metals Group Indium IPO: Commodities Ponzi Scheme
posted on: March 28, 2008 | about stocks: IND.U

There is a difference between investing and hoarding. Investors and traders buy and sell equities and assets to make money. Hoarders pile up assets in the hope of values rising. Converting them back into money is often not a priority.

The commodities supercycle has taken hoarding to a professional level. Commodities funds have been buying up gold, metals, oil, sidelining them from the market, increasing demand while reducing available supplies.

Shell games like this have become increasingly popular as panicked investors are fleeing real estate and stock markets toward the presumed safety of gold, oil and metals. The more that pile in, the higher prices go. And the higher prices go, the more that pile in.

If this were real estate or internet stocks, people would call it a bubble. But since gold is involved, this is part of divine providence.Tired of reading? Watch the video.

Bubble business

Back in the 1990s, budding Internet entrepreneurs still required a cocktail napkin to write their business plan on before they issued an IPO. Today, a Post-It note is sufficient.

Take the upcoming IPO of Specialty Metals Group Indium Corp. (IND.U). They want to take the proceeds from their IPO, buy a stockpile of indium, sit on it for a couple of years, and hope to watch their stock price rise along with demand for indium. They won't even bother with actively speculating on price fluctuations.

Indium is actually a useful industrial metal that is used in the manufacture of flat panel displays, touch-screen interfaces, iPhones and solar energy.

IPO mania?

The company filed on February 27, 2008 and intends to sell 11 million shares at five bucks a pop. No IPO date has been set yet.

Sad to say that this commodities Ponzi scheme is probably going to be one of the hottest and oversubscribed IPOs coming down the pipeline this year. It will make plenty of money for the underwriter and the market maker. Hey, even in this market, two out of three ain't bad.

Instead of chasing this stock in the aftermarket, you might take an early position in a few of the publicly traded small indium miners that could be profiting from tight supply.

One of them, Avalon Ventures [TSE: AVL], trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Stock prices have seen better days, but for C$1.28, it seems like a worthwhile speculative position on the publication of the word "indium" through the Special Metals Group Indium IPO.

Buy it between $1.00 and $1.30 and get ready to sell a few days after the IPO for potential gains of up to 50%.

http://www.todaysfinancialnews.com/videos/?channelID=9&showID=550[/quote]
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

Emerging markets plummeted this morning. So did all those foreign markets that American advisories touted as hoards of safety and beacons of unhinged, "de-coupled" and uninhibited growth just three months ago. And the American markets sprung the safety catch on futures trading.

As I am writing, it looks like the out-of-the-gates rout has reversed. The U.S. indexes are clawing back from the 5-6.5% losses incurred in the first minutes of trading.

But let me just repeat what today's global market performance has once again confirmed: The legend of decoupling is dead. As is the myth that oil price increases last year were driven by demand. China and India didn't double demand for oil between September 2007 and July 2008. And they didn't halve it between July and October 2008. Not even OPEC's decision (or threat?) to cut production was able to keep crude oil prices from dropping another three to four dollars a barrel this morning.

As the speculators and hedge funds are unraveling, the market is flooded not just with oil but with commodities. Deleveraged, closed-out portfolios are sucking up U.S. dollar supplies. The dollar is now at $1.25... the euro having shed an unprecedented 30 cents in just five months!

Demand for physical gold may be soaring... but not as much as the demand for U.S. dollars it is supposed to hedge against. So as markets crashed yet again today, gold fell nearly 5 percent in Europe. Below $700. And uncomfortably close to $680. In fact, Gold prices lost some $40 overnight, sinking to within $5 of the $675 mark.

Make no mistake about it. You may have been told that "gold is money". But it's really just another myth that is being choked to death right now. I've noticed how more and more pundits are bringing up gold's role as an inflation hedge in the Weimar Republic's era of hyper-inflation.

But they've got it wrong even there.

You see, back then, the Reichsmark plummeted not just against gold (of which the Allies had stripped the Reich alongside its industrial assets and regions of industry). It plummeted against the dollar and the pound sterling. Germans holding greenbacks, pounds, French francs were even better off than those Germans holding bullion. Because bullion prices were determined in dollars and pounds. Gold coins were good for bartering: A 20 mark Kaiser Wilhelm II coin for a gallon of milk and a brace of Nürnberger sauages.

Once you had spent your gold coins, farmers and black marketeers would take your Persian rugs. Oil paintings. Meissen clocks. You might get some food on the table that way in what my father still refers to as the "schlechte Zeit" (the Bad Time). But you certainly wouldn't advise anyone today to learn from that experience by accumulating heaps of pile rugs and contemporary art. Or, based on the experinces of another schlechte Zeit (1944-50), to stock up on nylons and exploitation.

Gold is and always has been a speculative commodity at the tender mercies of supply and demand. People have difficulties admitting that. I sent one of my articles to a very good friend of mine yesterday, asking him to include it in the messages he sends out to his brokerage clients. "I can't use your article for a few reasons," he responded. "It is too negative on gold. Your position deviates too much from ours."

Their position has been that the dollar is doomed, foreign markets are the salvation for stock investors, and that gold will be the asset of last resort for American investors. My friend is on the lecture, television and op-ed circuit.

Two out of three ain't bad, an old broker saying goes. But three out of three seems a bit much!

There is nothing left that could keep gold from sliding further. Applying the oil-to-gold ratio, the gold investor's favorite tool in a precious metals bull market, every dollar shed by crude oil translates into a loss of $7.50 per once of gold.

Oil prices are headed to $50, if not $30 per barrel. If you hold any gold in your portfolio — if you bought as little as an ounce of gold since 2004 — it's high time to take out some insurance against further drops!
I've been nagging you for weeks that you should use this powerful downward trend to make some money, both on the inevitable downside of gold...

Recommended Reading
“Markets are casting vote of no confidence for Obama”

"Apex Silver (SIL) turning to lead — Here’s what to do now!"

"Why Americas credit crunch spells debacle for Europe"



Cordially yours,

J. Christoph Amberger

Executive Publisher, TodaysFinancialNews.com
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Ekid]

[Abe]

(CBS) 60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth - a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead.

It's worth risking a visit because much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of America. This is a story about recycling - about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland.


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That wasteland is piled with the burning remains of some of the most expensive, sophisticated stuff that consumers crave. And 60 Minutes and correspondent Scott Pelley discovered that the gangs who run this place wanted to keep it a secret.

What are they hiding? The answer lies in the first law of the digital age: newer is better. In with the next thing, and out with the old TV, phone or computer. All of this becomes obsolete, electronic garbage called "e-waste."

Computers may seem like sleek, high-tech marvels. But what’s inside them?

"Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers," Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained.

"The problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide," he said.

Asked what he meant by "fastest-growing," Hershkowitz said. "Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States."

And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually.

At a recycling event in Denver, 60 Minutes found cars bumper-to-bumper for blocks, in a line that lasted for hours. They were there to drop off their computers, PDAs, TVs and other electronic waste.

Asked what he thought happens once his e-waste goes into recycling, one man told Pelley, "Well my assumption is they break it apart and take all the heavy metals and out and then try to recycle some of the stuff that's bad."

Most folks in line were hoping to do the right thing, expecting that their waste would be recycled in state-of-the-art facilities that exist here in America. But really, there's no way for them to know where all of this is going. The recycling industry is exploding and, as it turns out, some so-called recyclers are shipping the waste overseas, where it's broken down for the precious metals inside.

Executive Recycling, of Englewood, Colo., which ran the Denver event, promised the public on its Web site: "Your e-waste is recycled properly, right here in the U.S. - not simply dumped on somebody else."

That policy helped Brandon Richter, the CEO of Executive Recycling, win a contract with the city of Denver and expand operations into three western states.

Asked what the problem is with shipping this waste overseas, Richter told Pelley, "Well, you know, they've got low-income labor over there. So obviously they don't have all of the right materials, the safety equipment to handle some of this material."

Executive does recycling in-house, but 60 Minutes was curious about shipping containers that were leaving its Colorado yard. 60 Minutes found one container filled with monitors. They're especially hazardous because each picture tube, called a cathode ray tube or CRT, contains several pounds of lead. It's against U.S. law to ship them overseas without special permission. 60 Minutes took down the container's number and followed it to Tacoma, Wash., where it was loaded on a ship.

When the container left Tacoma, 60 Minutes followed it for 7,459 miles to Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong.

It turns out the container that started in Denver was just one of thousands of containers on an underground, often illegal smuggling route, taking America's electronic trash to the Far East.

Our guide to that route was Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, a watchdog group named for the treaty that is supposed to stop rich countries from dumping toxic waste on poor ones. Puckett runs a program to certify ethical recyclers. And he showed 60 Minutes what's piling up in Hong Kong.

"It's literally acres of computer monitors," Pelley commented. "Is it legal to import all of these computer monitors into Hong Kong?"

"No way. It is absolutely illegal, both from the standpoint of Hong Kong law but also U.S. law and Chinese law. But it's happening," Puckett said.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229.shtml
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

[tycoon]

What's driving down the oil prices? Demand has decreased so much? Do you think OPEC and other oil producing nations will let Gold get down to 10 per barrel? They'll stop producing first.

I would like to find out more about the trillions of barrel of oil that we have in the US that is not being pumped. Now if that came on line - then I can see 10 oil. In the hands of OPEC - not a chance.

[Abe]

[tycoon]

[Abe]

Thawing Fuel For Palin's PipelineBy INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, November 13, 2008 4:20 PM PT Energy: Sometimes, America lucks out. From the Arctic, a new energy source has emerged called frozen gas. It could cut prices and bring independence. We hope Democrats and Republicans can work together on this.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Read More: Energy --------------------------------------------------------------------------------A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that 85.4 trillion cubic feet of frozen natural gas crystals lie buried beneath Alaska's icy North Slope, a region where the crude production peaked in 1988 and had to be replaced by imported oil.The frozen gas, known as gas hydrate, is a new Made-In-U.S.A. energy source that's nearly three times the 30 trillion cubic feet of estimated U.S. reserves from conventional gas sources; it had not even been counted in current estimates of domestic energy reserves. Officials say the frozen gas accounts for 11.5% of the volume of known recoverable gas in the U.S. and could heat 100 million homes for a decade. The country currently uses 23 trillion cubic feet of gas a year for heating, agriculture and industrial uses, but will see demand rise 20% in the next decade, according to Energy Information Administration estimates."The hydrates have more potential for energy than all other fossil fuels combined," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told a news conference.It's also dirt cheap, producible at less than $10 per million British thermal units, even less than that with advancements, USGS director Mark Myers told Bloomberg. It burns much cleaner than petroleum or coal, making it theoretically acceptable to those who obsess over environmental concerns. It can be produced with existing technology, and retrieved in the next decade. That means it could serve as a bridge to other cleaner alternative energy sources that are still in development for viability. That's high as an Obama administration energy priority and a golden opportunity for Barack Obama to move the U.S. toward diversified energy sources to bring energy security and a stronger economy.He's in luck, too. He has a willing partner in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who this week vowed to work with the new president to bring the U.S. toward energy independence."It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration," Palin said.She's already gotten much of the heavy lifting done. Palin pushed a $40 billion plan to build a 1,715-mile gas pipeline to the lower 48 after the project had failed to get through the legislature for 30 years. Had Palin not been around to get it done, the pipeline would be a major obstacle for gas hydrate production. But the governor signed off on it in August.What Palin's done lightens the burden on Obama to counter the usual environmental special interests' can't-do-ism and their endless lawsuits. She has already built a people's consensus in Alaska to support the pipeline. That leaves Obama to take care of the main task of bringing Congress on board and selling it to the public. Sure, there are details to be worked out around how to extract the gas so as to prevent methane emissions that contribute to the greenhouse effect. But there also are promising answers. A depressurization technique that changes the superconcentrated crystals to water and natural gas at the surface can contain the processing byproducts better than other methods is one.That's likely to require compromise from all parties. But a can-do spirit from the Obama camp will enhance the project and achieve the goal.The project is important, because gas is a bridge form of energy that uses proven resources and technology to pave the way for multiple sources of energy that are still in development — wind, solar, switchgrass. It will take a bit of time, and energy companies say it still makes sense to extract conventional sources first. But it will contribute relatively quickly, as unproven sources won't.This new source of energy has the potential to give the economy the kind of boost Obama could use to keep his public support high. That will aid him in winning the public over to his other initiatives and strengthen his bipartisan credentials. Obama would be wise to take this chance to develop this new energy in his new presidency, with Palin as an important — and interesting — partner. But all of this, the resources and the partner, are chiefly a matter of luck. Obama should go for it. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=311472581618807
You GO Girl; Now the ball is in Obama's court.

No UAW Bailout
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, November 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Carmakers: Why not let the Big Three just file Chapter 11? It's not a problem-free solution, but it beats using taxpayer money to prop up a failing union. Maybe that's why Democrats seem to dismiss it out of hand.
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Read More: Business & Regulation | Economy
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Detroit is in nose dive, no doubt about that. So is a $50 billion government bailout the answer? President-elect Barack Obama thinks so, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi points in the same direction with her call for extending "emergency and limited financial assistance" under the $700 billion bailout plan enacted last month. Democrats clearly want something big and something soon for the Big Three.
We agree that the automakers can't go on much longer burning cash and piling up an Everest of debt. They're close to the breaking point. But there's a system in place for dealing with crises such as this, even at the scale of massive corporations. It's called bankruptcy, and it should not be written off as unthinkable.
Filing for Chapter 11 protection under bankruptcy law is the normal way a company stays in business when facing an unmanageable financial situation. It keeps creditors at bay while the company reorganizes under court supervision and settles its debts. In recent years it has served as a refuge for major airlines (Delta and United) which, you may notice, continued to fly while in Chapter 11 and, post-bankruptcy, fly today.
Bankruptcy protection also frees companies from union contracts. Could this be why it seems to have been taken off the table as an option, at least among Democrats? We can only surmise, but it's clear that a bankruptcy process would be rough going for the United Auto Workers.
The Big Three's high labor expenses would no doubt need a trim. During the last round of contract talks in 2007, the average hourly costs were over $70 at all three of the domestic automakers, compared to about $48 for Toyota.
Detroit has made progress since then in dealing with one of its crucial labor issues, the funding of health care for retirees, but its unionized plants still put it at a disadvantage to rivals such as Toyota, Nissan, BMW and Honda, which run lower-cost, nonunion operations.
The success of those foreign transplants has led to a steady drain of autoworkers from both the Big Three and the UAW. The union's membership has fallen from a high of about 1.5 million in 1979 to 465,000 as of 2007 — the first time since World War II that it has stood under a half million. It would no doubt fall further if Detroit goes through the type of reorganization typical of Chapter 11.
Saving a shrinking union is the worst reason to bail out Detroit with taxpayer money. Unfortunately, it may be one of the strongest, politically. That's why the public needs to be enormously skeptical when it hears that bankruptcy for the Big Three would be a catastrophe for much of the U.S. economy.
There are some legitimate caveats against standard-issue bankruptcy as a way to handle Detroit's crisis. The automakers' obligations may be too large for any private parties to extend them debtor-in-possession financing while they're in Chapter 11. Also, they have a valid concern that customers might not want to buy a car from bankrupt companies.
But even if some federal loans or loan guarantees can't be avoided, Washington needs to make Detroit's experience as close to Chapter 11 as possible. Some suggestions: Zero out the equity investors (who've lost almost everything anyway), replace management (without golden parachutes), shut down surplus dealerships, and force the UAW to face the fact that its good old days are gone forever.
In the end, the American automakers may finally be fit to take on their more nimble global rivals.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=311560040175474
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Ekid]

Its great that the gas has been found..but is there the infrastructure in place so gas can replace oil?
_________________
Disclaimer: If in doubt..ASK ! Unsure..ASK !
If doubt remains..JUST PANIC

[Abe]

Reuters
More gold fraud likely as economy swoons-US agents
03.05.09, 4:33 PM ET

United States -
By Grant McCool

NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) - Investigators expect to uncover more fraud involving gold in a recession that has already exposed several Ponzi schemes and other crimes, law enforcement officials with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said on Thursday.

Agents with the federal agency have been working with the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and other investigators on a series of scams from Ponzi schemes in financial investments and oil futures to gold coins all over the United States.

"It's the same scam but they are just selling different products," Ronald Verrochio, Postal Inspector in Charge of the New York division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), said in an interview.

He spoke to Reuters at a seminar marking national consumer protection week to warn the public about being bilked by seemingly attractive investments.

"A lot of these scammers develop their scams following current economic trends and we're bracing to see gold being used as a carrot," USPIS spokesman Al Weissmann told the seminar, which was attended by government agents, prosecutors, attorneys and victims of fraud.

The price of gold hit an 11-month high above $1,000 an ounce on Feb. 20, just below a record of $1,030.80 reached a year ago as investors sought a safe haven from financial market turmoil. Spot gold was trading at $927.90 on Thursday.

New York division agents have helped uncover various scams involving selling unwitting investors gold coins, which turn out to be a fraction of their purported worth.

Postal inspectors investigate mail fraud, enforcing more than 200 U.S. federal laws that pertain to the mail. They investigate corporate and securities fraud cases when mail is suspected of being used to commit a crime.

"It's a very old adage but if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," said Verrochio, whose agency has been known as the "silent service" for its relatively low profile.

In 1920, its agents played a role in catching Charles Ponzi, the swindler who gives the name to the scheme in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients. Ponzi pleaded guilty to mail fraud after his arrest.

Verrochio's agents were lead investigators in a purported $370 million Ponzi fraud and arrest in January of investment firm head Nicholas Cosmo on New York's Long Island. He declined to discuss the 12 or so current investigations in his region.

The agency has played only a peripheral role in the case of once-respected Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff, who authorities say confessed to a $50 billion global Ponzi scheme over many years, but Verrochio said the Madoff case ignited people's suspicions about other investments they had.

"Some of the suspicions they might have had but didn't act on them, then we started to get some additional phone calls," he said. (Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Gary Hill)
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[bluepacific]

Man, I think Owen Platt should write a new book or sequel to "Just Numbers On A Screen". The spooky thing is that HYIP Ponzi Admins and the Ponzi Cheerleaders will look at the present world circumstances and view it as a Greenlight for running their own smaller version ponzis for no other reason than because big business does it too.

How much more perverted can the world become

[Ekid]

I note that metal has not ..as yet replaced the Greenback.
_________________
Disclaimer: If in doubt..ASK ! Unsure..ASK !
If doubt remains..JUST PANIC

[Abe]

Rare earth elements (REEs) have been the mystery metals of the mining world for years. Now, suddenly, everyone's heard about them.

Before we delve into the reasons behind all the publicity, here's the basic skinny on REEs: One, they are rare, at least sort of. Two, they are indispensable to modern technology. Three, the number of active, dedicated producers is tiny, with more than 90% of the world's supply coming from China.

If you took high school chemistry, you probably remember the periodic table of the elements. But if you're like most of us, even if you pulled a 95 on the chem final, you may not recall many of the details today. And there's a better than even chance you never bothered to memorize the names of the REEs. It's time to get reacquainted.

They're generally clustered in a separate grouping at the bottom of the table, are known collectively as the lanthanoids, and these are their names, in order of atomic number (57-70): lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, and ytterbium. Yttrium (39) and lutetium (71) are also sometimes included.

Need to know, point 1: Rarity
Fact is, we begin with something of a misnomer. These elements are not, strictly speaking, rare. Earth's crust is full of them. True, they're not as common as iron, carbon, or silicon, but are about on a par with nickel, copper, and zinc. Even the scarcest is way more abundant than gold, platinum, or palladium.

What is rare about them is that they're widely dispersed. Very seldom are they found in economically exploitable deposits. Complicating matters further is that there are so many of them, and they clump together. They have to be separated first from the ore and then from each other.

Thus REE production comes primarily from other mines' byproducts. The miner strips off the metal he's really after, then sends the REE clusters to a specialty refiner.

Need to know, point 2: Applications
It's safe to say that life as we know it would be very different without the REEs. The more our technological accomplishments pile atop one another, the more crucial these metals become. Because of their unique properties, there are generally no substitutes for them.

Of all the REEs, the one people may have heard of is neodymium. Alloys containing it have revolutionized permanent magnet technology, allowing miniaturization of all sorts of electronic components in appliances, A/V equipment, computers, communication systems, and military gear. Your hard drive probably has neodymium in it. So does your DVD player.

Liquid crystal displays depend on europium. Fiber-optic cables can't function without erbium. Virtually all specialty glass products, from mirrors to precision lenses, are polished with cerium oxide. Several REEs are essential constituents of both petroleum fluid cracking catalysts and auto emissions-control catalytic converters. Half a dozen REEs go into the manufacture of the energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs that will soon be mandatory. Lanthanum-nickel-hydride rechargeable batteries are replacing older ones based on lead or cadmium. And no REEs, no electric cars. Nor next-generation wind turbines.

That's only a partial list. But what makes REEs an increasingly sensitive topic is their role in national defense. Here are a few small items that have become dependent on them: jet fighter engines, missile guidance systems, underwater mine detectors, range finders, space-based satellite power plants, and military communications systems.

Think the Pentagon is very, very interested in maintaining a steady REE supply?

Need to know, point 3: Supply
95% of the world's REE production originates in China. If you're looking for reasons why we're so nice to the premier Communist power left standing, this is a biggie.

We weren't always so dependent. Not long ago, mines such as Mountain Pass in California made us nearly self-sufficient in REEs. But in the early '90s, China flooded the market with cheaper product, until it had driven all of its competitors out of business.

Today, Mountain Pass is being revived, but the start-up of an old mine is a lengthy and costly process. There are also some from-scratch REE development projects under way in the U.S., as well as Canada and Australia. But for the moment, China holds the hand with all of the high cards in it.

Forget your hard drive. Forget 11th-grade chemistry experiments. This is a national security issue. The American government cannot afford to lose that supply source, period. Maybe someday, but not now.

And that's what's behind the recent furor over these obscure elements. Because China threatened just that, a cutoff. The one thing that really gets Washington's knickers in a twist.

In August, the story broke in the mainstream press. Sources in China leaked news of a draft copy of a report from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It allegedly calls for a total export ban on five of the rare earths, with the rest restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 metric tons a year, far below annual global consumption of 125,000 tons, and rising fast.

This doesn't look like a move they'd follow through on, if only because of the lost trade revenues. And it's only a recommendation; final approval rests with China's State Council. But consider it an opening shot across our bow, if you wish. Or perhaps they're telling us they need their REEs for the domestic economy, and we'd best go find our own supplies. Either way, the scramble is on to find alternatives.

That could backfire. REE prices and demand were already dropping last fall as the recession deepened, and China maintains a decided competitive advantage beyond control of supply: lax environmental standards (many REEs are highly toxic). Thus the new companies could spend the fortunes required to come on line, only to find themselves victims of yet another market glut engineered by the Chinese. Still, these metals are so important, it wouldn't surprise us if the U.S. government subsidized domestic production, rather than risk a squeeze.

The Market
The market took due notice of the China story, driving the stocks of Western REE producers, and would-be producers, nearly straight up. Since late August, Avalon Rare Metals has gained 120%, Arafura Resources is up 75%, Rare Element Resources has added 72%, and Lynas Corp. is 50% higher (China, ever the master strategist, exploited the credit crisis to grab 25% of Arafura and more than 50% of Lynas). Lurking in the background is Molycorp, the private company redeveloping Mountain Pass. It's planning an IPO that may well come out of the gate red hot.

With market action this frantic, the sector is on the frothy side at the moment. The heady market caps being awarded to these companies are obviously not based on fundamentals, and a savvy investor takes care not to get caught on the wrong side of a bubble.

Even though the Chinese export ban may never materialize, the ever-growing need for REEs is dead serious. And while the current bubble may pop any day, the long-term prospects for successful miners are outstanding.
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Ekid]

Lynas Corp

Its got the richest resource amd can be mined with open cut mining and its still Aussie.
_________________
Disclaimer: If in doubt..ASK ! Unsure..ASK !
If doubt remains..JUST PANIC

[Abe]

China flexes its muscles

Video:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/700.html


While right wing and left wing pundits in the US bray on and on about trivia, there's been a major shift in world power with China putting the rest of the world in a headlock - and barely anyone has noticed.

According to a recent New York Times article, China now currently produces 93% of all the world's so-called rare earth elements and more than 99% of the output for two of these elements.

What are rare minerals used for?

Oh, nothing terribly important. Just missiles and green energy technology and other fringe stuff like that.

China has declared they're going to continuously cut down their exports of these vital raw materials and compel the manufacturers that need them to set up their facilities in China if they want access to them.

Not only that, but China appears to be the only country left on earth with cash so they're in a perfect position to pick up the mineral resources of countries like Australia, the US and Canada at fire sale prices.

Ever heard the phrase "game over?"

But don't worry, the US will continue to grind down its forces and finances in one pointless military engagement after another. Great strategy.

And right wing "free market" economists will continue to reassure us that not only can afford the wars, but also that by getting big screen TVs cheap from China, we're getting the better part of the deal.

Treasonous idiocy.

Interestingly, I was only able to find one relevant Youtube video with the keywords "china mining." Talk about off the radar. This one's a clip about China's ability to call the tune and make Australia dance.


Why we're broke

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/739.html

Gore confronted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwkR3uuZMIM
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

[Abe]

Offshore Oil Suffers From Obama Restrictions on New Drilling
Friday, May 22, 2009
By William La Jeunesse

ABOARD THE NOBLE PAUL ROMANO — Almost 140 miles off the Louisiana coast, aboard the drill ship Noble Paul Romano, workers punch an 8-inch steel pipe four miles under the ocean in search of America's next barrel of oil.

"If we don't increase our own oil production in the U.S., our dependence on foreign oil won't go down," said Marathon Oil executive Woody Pace.

The drill ship is the size of a football field. Twelve anchors the size of an average living room hold the rig in place while a synthetic-diamond cutting blade bores deep into sand and rock.

Like other oil explorers, Marathon is being forced farther and farther out into the Gulf to find oil. Deeper water means more expensive oil.

"We may spend anywhere from $100 to $200 million just to find out if we have commercial hydrocarbons," Marathon Vice President Annell Bay told FOX News.

• Click here for photos.

Marathon is a Houston-based oil company than not only explores for oil and natural gas, but refines oil as well.

Marathon dumped $230 million into developing the Droshky oil field, which it acquired in 2007, but expects to spend more than $1.3 billion when it begins pumping next year, about the time the economy is expected to recover.

And while every drop counts, many fear it won't be enough.

"We all have hope for green energy, but it is going to take time — and in the meantime, oil and natural gas will have to be the bridge to the energy future," says Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute.

Congress lifted its 27-year moratorium on drilling off Florida and the East and West Coast last year, but billions of barrels of that oil remains untouched and off-limits because the Obama administration has postponed development there.

The Obama administration favors green energy and provides generous tax subsidies to wind and solar. By contrast, this week the oil industry complained that Obama proposed hiking their taxes by $70 billion over 5 years, including a $122 million on leases the administration considers non-producing.

"If you penalize oil and gas, and add taxes, it is going to make it much more difficult and more expensive. That means U.S. jobs are exported and we won't get the revenues from royalties," said Landry.

Oil executives fear the lesson of $5-a-gallon gasoline is lost, and that American consumers will pay the price, vulnerable to shortages in the short term and a continued dependence on foreign oil for decades to come.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521341,00.html
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and the “final decision”
Forget Cap and Trade: EPA Regulation of CO2 Emissions Will Begin in 10 Months
By Fred Dardick Friday, April 2, 2010

So much for the spectacle of Democrats and Republicans fighting their way through Congress over the future of Cap and Trade energy legislation. Thanks to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in little noticed press releases from March 29 and April 1, the “final decision” that “greenhouse gases (GHGs)” and “carbon pollution” will be regulated (taxed) by the federal government is complete and the imposition of “construction and operating permit requirements for the largest emitting facilities will begin.”

The first misleadingly titled release “EPA Formally Announces Phase-in of Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gases/Agency reiterates no stationary source requirements until 2011” makes it clear the EPA absolutely will regulate (tax) stationary sources of greenhouse gases (power plants, factories, farms, homes, etc…) starting Jan 2011.

Administrator Jackson is quoted as saying “This is a common sense plan for phasing in the protections of the Clean Air Act. It gives large facilities the time they need to innovate, (and) governments the time to prepare to cut greenhouse gases”. The amount of time being 10 whole months from now when apparently vast new supplies of energy derived from pixie dust and the tears of clowns will come online to power the U.S. economy.
Not only has the final decision been made to regulate (tax) the release of CO2, but limits for emissions will be set by the government in the near future, presumably without the inconvenience of public hearings: “The agency will make a decision later this spring on the amount of GHGs facilities can emit before having to include limits for these emissions in their permits.”

Interestingly enough the March 29 release does not explicitly state that stationary source CO2 emission standards would go into effect, only that “the rule limiting GHG emissions for cars and light trucks would trigger these requirements in January 2011.”

That’s where the April 1 press release comes in. Titled: “DOT, EPA Set Aggressive National Standards for Fuel Economy and First Ever Greenhouse Gas Emission Levels For Passenger Cars and Light Trucks”. While cloaked in the language of automobiles and trucks, it is the trigger for the direct control of all energy use in the nation by the EPA and their political overloads (President Obama) and by extension the U.S. economy.

The release leaves little room for misinterpretation: “Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards.”

The purpose of the new emissions standards is to greatly increase the price of energy in America leading to $8 or more for a gallon of gas and electricity bills which will “necessarily skyrocket” according to Obama. This may lead to increased energy efficiencies, but it will also force businesses to lay off millions of workers during a time of 10% unemployment (and 20% underemployment) to pay for higher energy costs and will ultimately transform what has been a terrible recession into another Great Depression.

The fact that not one shred of evidence proves CO2 is responsible for global warming does not appear to concern the EPA or Obama. On the contrary, even ClimateGate scientists agree that the world has not warmed since 1995. By all accounts the earth is entering a cooling period likely to last 30 or more years due to solar and ocean cycles, which have a far greater effect on global temperatures than CO2.

It is strange to see not one single mention regarding these alarming developments in the main stream media however, given the timing of the April 1 press release, the day before Good Friday, and the avoidance of direct language by the EPA, I suppose it isn’t all that surprising.

But soon enough Americans are going to wake up and realize they’ve been had.

[url=http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/1ef65148678fb4fc852576f50059a95b!OpenDocument]March 29 EPA Press Release[/url]:
[url=http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/562b44f2588b871a852576f800544e01!OpenDocument]April 1 EPA Press Release[/url]:


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Fred Dardick Bio
Fred Dardick Most recent columns
Fred Dardick is the owner and operator of a medical staffing company based in Chicago. Prior to the business world, he worked as a biological researcher at various highly regarded universities in the United States. Fred can be reached at: fdardick@hotmail.com


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21600
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

Since the damn releases didn't come thru I will be posting them.

News Releases By DateEPA Home Newsroom News Releases By DateEPA Formally Announces Phase-in of Clean Air Act .... Share
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EPA Formally Announces Phase-in of Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gases/Agency reiterates no stationary source requirements until 2011

Release date: 03/29/2010

Contact Information: CONTACT: Cathy Milbourn milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-7849 202-564-4355



WASHINGTON – Under a final decision issued today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) no stationary sources will be required to get Clean Air Act permits that cover greenhouse gases (GHGs) before January 2011. EPA has pledged to take sensible steps to address the billions of tons of greenhouse gas pollution that threaten Americans’ health and welfare, and is providing time for large industrial facilities and state governments to put in place cost-effective, innovative technologies to control and reduce carbon pollution. Today’s announcement is the first step in EPA’s phased in approach to addressing GHG emissions laid out by Administrator Lisa P. Jackson earlier this month.

“This is a common sense plan for phasing in the protections of the Clean Air Act. It gives large facilities the time they need to innovate, governments the time to prepare to cut greenhouse gases and it ensures that we don’t push this problem off to our children and grandchildren,” said EPA Administrator Jackson. “With a clear process in place, it’s now time for American innovators and entrepreneurs to go to work and lead us into the clean energy economy of the future.”

Today’s action determines that Clean Air Act construction and operating permit requirements for the largest emitting facilities will begin when the first national rule controlling GHGs takes effect. If finalized as proposed, the rule limiting GHG emissions for cars and light trucks would trigger these requirements in January 2011 – the earliest model year 2012 vehicles meeting the standards can be sold in the United States. The agency expects to issue final vehicle GHG standards shortly.

EPA has committed to focusing its GHG permitting requirements on the largest sources. The agency will make a decision later this spring on the amount of GHGs facilities can emit before having to include limits for these emissions in their permits.

Today’s action is the final step in EPA’s reconsideration of the December 18, 2008 memorandum entitled “EPA’s Interpretation of Regulations that Determine Pollutants Covered by Federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) Permit Program.” The final action clarifies when GHGs and other pollutants are covered under Clean Air Act permitting programs.

More information and the letter Administrator Jackson sent last month outlining this approach and timeline: http://www.epa.gov/nsr/guidance.html

Sound bites available: http://www.epa.gov/adminweb/multimedia/newscontent/2010-3-25-oa/index2.html

get them via e-mail:

http://www.epa.gov/newsroom/email_signups.htm
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

I don't know How reliable this is but this is the forth time I've run across it.

The Paper Gold Market is a Ponzi Scheme
Contributed by Anonymous (Editor)
Sunday, April 04, 2010 7:40
More stories from this contributor




We've had a string of amazing revelations recently regarding the world's precious metals market. This is important stuff for anyone (like me) who holds gold as a means to avoid currency turmoil and counterparty risk.

(My earlier post on shenanigans at the Comex gold market.)

This news has been actively suppressed in the mainstream media.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a U.S. government regulatory agency, held hearings in Washington D.C. in late March regarding position limits in the futures market.

People involved in the markets have known/suspected for years that they have been manipulated by certain large entities, notably JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Analysts like silver maven, Ted Butler, hedge fund giant, Eric Sprott, and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) have been collecting evidence of this manipulation for years.

These hearings were supposed to be a non-event. However, despite the media lock-down, the word is getting out.

The CFTC, like the SEC, is a conflicted agency. Some people, notably Chairman Gary Gensler and Commissioner Bart Chilton, seem to want to clean up the sleaze, fraud and corruption.

The CFTC even invited GATA's Bill Murphy and Adrian Douglas to make statements. Would you be surprised to learn that the cameras had a "technical malfunction" during Bill Murphy's statement, which magically righted itself immediately after he finished?

After the hearing, according to Douglas, Murphy was contacted by several major media outlets for more interviews. Within 24 hours, all the interviews were canceled. All of them.

More Here..

Hat Tip to source

http://thecomingdepression.blogspot.com/2010/04/gold-market-is-ponzi-scheme.html


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This posted by Nathan Lewis
Fund manager, author of Gold: the Once and Future Money (2007)
Posted: June 26, 2009 07:45 AM

Where's The Gold?

The Comex is the name for the largest gold futures market in the world, traditionally centered in New York City. Although the market recently became part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, it has retained its old nickname. Also, the depositories which hold the actual bars of gold used to settle the futures contracts remain in New York City.

A gold depository must be the most boring business on earth. They charge a small monthly fee to store 100oz. standardized bars of gold in an insured vault. It is an industrial-sized version of a safe deposit box.

The owner of a 100oz. bar owns a specific chunk of gold. It has a manufacturer, a serial number, and an exact weight measured to the 1/100th of an ounce. A written depository receipt -- similar to an old-fashioned paper share certificate -- shows the exact date the bar entered the depository, and the entire chain of ownership since that date; they often change hands without leaving the depository. You can request to withdraw the bar from the depository, and you should receive exactly the bar indicated.

Interest in precious metals as an investment has been heating up, and some fund managers have begun to take very large positions. Demand for Comex gold bars has been increasing -- especially as they are significantly cheaper per ounce than alternatives like 1oz. bullion coins or the kilogram bars popular in Europe.

Jim Sinclair of jsmineset.com, a legendary gold trader, reported that some of his contacts have told him that, when they request to withdraw their 100oz. bars from the Comex depositories, they have not received the proper indicted bars. They received a bar, but not one with the correct serial number or weight.

Why not? One possibility is that an honest mistake was made. The high demand recently has apparently kept the depository workers very busy. Wall Street veterans recall that delivery errors were chronic in the days of paper share certificates.

Another possibility is that the bar indicated on the warehouse receipt does not actually exist. The implications of that are rather dire.

This would not be so troubling if there were not already a series of very odd things happening down at the Comex. Delivery delays have been chronic. This could be a symptom of an overworked staff. Or, it could be a purposeful stalling tactic. In any case, it should not take weeks and possibly even months, and sometimes dozen of inquiries, to get the gold you already own out of the warehouse.

The Comex itself, however, has been reporting that business at the warehouse is very slow. The daily reports of warehouse movements show almost nothing happening, day after day. So which is it, busy or not busy?

As futures contracts expire, a certain number of holders elect to pay cash to receive the physical gold. The number of delivery notices has been very high since autumn of last year. For example, in May, investors requested the delivery of 20 million ounces of silver, against a dealer inventory of about 64 million ounces. Since then, there has been no record of anywhere near that amount of silver leaving dealer inventory, being delivered into the warehouse, entering customer inventory, or leaving the warehouse. Another 17.45 million ounces of silver were requested in March, evidence of which was nowhere to be seen in the warehouse reports.

In April, delivery notices were sent on a whopping 1.5 million ounces of gold, against 2.5 million ounces of dealer inventory. That month, Deutsche Bank alone delivered 850,000 ounces. This coincided, rather suspiciously, with a sale of 1.14 million ounces of gold by the European Central Bank that month, suggesting that Deutsche Bank was being bailed out in a big way. Nothing of this size turned up in the warehouse reports. Nothing followed similarly large deliveries in December 2008. By Comex rules, all physical deliveries must go through the warehouse. What happened? Until investors receive an explanation from the exchange, which has thus far been silent, we must regard it as being very suspicious. Very, very suspicious.

What does it all mean? First, there are indications that the seller side of futures contracts (such as Deutsche Bank in April) are having a difficult time making good on their commitments. Second, the information reported by the Comex regarding physical inflows and outflows is looking more and more like a convenient fiction. Third, there is some doubt as to whether there is gold in inventory -- as there absolutely should be -- to match existing warehouse receipts. Fourth, the Comex warehouse is one of the most secure forms of gold investment in the world. If they can't be trusted, what does that say about ETFs, pooled accounts, futures, forwards, options, and all the other forms of "paper gold" out there? Fifth, if it becomes clearer that there is no physical supply to meet physical demand, the dollar price of gold could go much higher.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-lewis/wheres-the-gold_b_216896.html
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

Gold Trader: Fed Keeping Gold Prices Low
Monday, 12 Apr 2010 09:06 AM

JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, which do the Federal Reserve's bidding in the precious-metals markets, reportedly have long been the government's lead actors in keeping down the prices of gold and silver.

"JPMorgan acts as an agent for the Federal Reserve; they act to halt the rise of gold and silver against the U.S. dollar. JPMorgan is insulated from potential losses [on their short positions] by the Fed and/or the US taxpayer," Andrew Maguire, a 40-year veteran of the metal pits, told the New York Post.

"HSBC conducts an ongoing manipulative concentrated naked short position in gold. Silver is much easier to manipulate due to its much smaller [market] size," Maguire added.

Maguire was scheduled to testify last week before the Commodities Futures Trade Commission, which is looking into the activities of large banks in the metals market, but was knocked off the list at the last moment.

"No one at JPMorgan is familiar with Andrew Maguire," said Brian Marchiony, a company spokesman. HSBC declined to comment.



Metal$ are in the pits
Trader blows whistle on gold & silver price manipulation
By MICHAEL GRAY

Last Updated: 4:33 AM, April 11, 2010

Posted: 2:10 AM, April 11, 2010

Comments: 34

| More Print
EXCLUSIVE

There is no silver lining to the activities of JPMorgan Chase and HSBC in the precious-metals market here and in London, says a 40-year veteran of the metal pits.

The banks, which do the Federal Reserve's bidding in the metals markets, have long been the government's lead actors in keeping down the prices of gold and silver, according to a former Goldman Sachs trader working at the London Bullion Market Association.

Maguire was scheduled to testify last week before the Commodities Futures Trade Commission, which is looking into the activities of large banks in the metals market, but was knocked off the list at the last moment. So, he went public.


AP

Brokers and traders transact gold futures on the Comex floor of The New York Mercantile Exchange, Thursday, April 6, 2006. Gold prices topped $600 an ounce in Comex trading Thursday. (AP Photo/John Marshall Mantel)

Maguire -- in an exclusive interview with The Post -- explained JPMorgan's role in the metals pits in both London and here, and how they can generate a profit either way the market moves.

"JPMorgan acts as an agent for the Federal Reserve; they act to halt the rise of gold and silver against the US dollar. JPMorgan is insulated from potential losses [on their short positions] by the Fed and/or the US taxpayer," Maguire said.

In the gold pits, Maguire sees HSBC betting against the precious metal's price without having any skin in the game in the form of a naked short.

"HSBC conducts an ongoing manipulative concentrated naked short position in gold. Silver is much easier to manipulate due to its much smaller [market] size," Maguire added.

"No one at JPMorgan is familiar with Andrew Maguire," said Brian Marchiony, a company spokesman. HSBC declined to comment.

Also during the CFTC hearing, Jeff Christian, founder of the commodities firm CPM Group, said that the LBMA, the physical delivery market for gold and silver in the UK, has been using leverage, which is another way to depress the price of gold and silver.

Christian said that the LBMA -- the same market Maguire trades in -- has leverage of about 100-1 on the gold bars settled on the exchange. In layman's terms, that means if 100 clients requested their bullion bars be delivered, the exchange could only give one client the precious metal.

The remaining requests would have to be settled for cash equivalent. "That is tantamount to a default on the trade," says Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Antitrust Action committee.

Maguire goes further and calls it a fraud: "If you sell something you do not own, then that is fraud."

Back in 2007, Morgan Stanley agreed to settle a $4.4-million lawsuit brought by precious-metal clients, who alleged that Morgan offered to buy gold and silver and store it for the investors, but never purchased any metal and still charged them storage fees.

Click Here to Read the Full Story
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[Abe]

http://www.thedailybell.com/940/GATA-William-Murphy-Explains-CFTC-Hearing-Andrew-Macguire-Whistleblower-Statements.html

Exclusive Interview

William Murphy Explains his Testimony at the Recent CFTC Hearing and the Future of Precious Metals Markets
Sunday, April 04, 2010 - with Scott Smith


William Murphy
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with William Murphy

Introduction: Bill Murphy grew up in Glen Ridge, New Jersey and graduated from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in 1968. His senior year he broke all single season Ivy League pass receiving records and was Honorable Mention on the All-America Football team. He went on to become the starting wide receiver for the Boston Patriots in 1968. Bill went on to a career in the futures industry as a commodities broker. Early on he worked for Shearson Hayden Stone and Drexel Burnham before starting up his own introducing brokerage on 5th Avenue in New York. In 1998 he opened up LeMetropoleCafe.com, a financial market website geared to the gold market. In January 1999 Bill became chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) to expose the manipulation of the gold price by The Gold Cartel.

Daily Bell: You have long held that silver and gold are manipulated by the elite powers-that-be. Can you explain what the current CFTC hearings are about - run through a bit of history?

Bill Murphy: The nation's commodities regulator, the CFTC, is proposing to limit the vast amounts of oil, natural gas and other vital goods the world's biggest investment firms can buy and sell. A CFTC commissioner, Bart Chilton - in response to a zillion emails, Ted Butler's superb efforts regarding the ridiculous over concentration of the short positions in silver, and the GATA camp's tireless exposes on gold manipulation - proposed to do the same in the precious metals. The CFTC, at Bart's urging, held hearings on March 25. FIFTEEN individuals were invited to make presentations regarding position limits and related precious metals matters.

In December of 2008 I went to Washington to meet with Bart, the CFTC senior council, and two staffers. I was very impressed with the intensity of the questions that Bart asked following my presentation about the market manipulation of the gold and silver markets. Bart is unique in that he is very accessible, even answering most of his emails, which are considerable. Unfortunately, Bart is the only Commissioner in favor of precious metals position limits - which would dampen the manipulations that are evidently taking place.

Daily Bell: Please be more specific about GATA's role in all this.

Bill Murphy: On behalf of GATA I gave a super-speed five-minute presentation. Had to rush the commentary to get it all in. My presentation began like this:

"The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) was formed in January 1999 to expose and oppose the manipulation and suppression of the price of gold. What we have learned over the past 11 years is of great importance in regard to this hearing on position limits in the precious metals futures markets. Our efforts to expose manipulation in the gold market parallel those of Harry Markopolos to expose the Madoff Ponzi scheme to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Initially we thought that the manipulation of the gold market was undertaken as a coordinated profit scheme by certain bullion banks, like JPMorgan, Chase Bank, and Goldman Sachs, and that it violated federal and state anti-trust laws. But we soon discerned that the bullion banks were working closely with the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve in a gold cartel, part of a broad scheme of manipulation of the currency, precious metals, and bond markets."

[url=https://marketforceanalysis.com/index_assets/CFTC%20HEARING%20ON%20METALS%20MARKETS.pdf]My testimony may be viewed by clicking here:

Bill Murphy Testimony at CFTC Hearings

The presentations were webcast all over the world. But, for some reason the main TV feed failed just when I was making my presentation and then came back on when I was done ... yet another GATA coincidence.

In my question and answer period I was then able to make the following statement due to Bart Chilton asking me a question about some of the evidence GATA has about the manipulation of the gold and silver markets:

ADDITIONAL STATEMENT BY BILL MURPHY, CHAIRMAN OF THE GOLD ANTI-TRUST ACTION COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON THE METALS MARKETS, MARCH 25, 2010

On March 23, 2010 GATA Director Adrian Douglas was contacted by a whistleblower by the name of Andrew Maguire. Mr. Maguire, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is a metals trader in London. He has been told first hand by traders working for JPMorganChase that JPMorganChase manipulates the precious metals markets and they bragged how they make money doing so.

In November 2009 he contacted the CFTC enforcement division to report this criminal activity. He described in detail the way in which JPM signals to the market its intention to take down the precious metals. Traders recognize these signals and make money shorting the metals along side JPM. He explained how there are routine market manipulations at the time of option expiry, Non-farm payroll data releases, and Comex contract rollover as well as other adhoc events. On February 3 he gave two days advance warning by email to Mr. Eliud Ramirez, a senior investigator of the Enforcement Division, that the precious metals would be attacked upon the release of the non-farm payroll data on February 5. Then on February 5 as it played out exactly as predicted further emails were sent to Mr. Ramirez in real time while the manipulation was in progress.

It would not be possible to predict such a market move in advance unless the market was manipulated.

In an email on that day Mr. Maguire said "It is 'common knowledge' here in London amongst the metals traders it is JPM's intent to flush out and cover as many shorts as possible prior to any discussion in March about position limits. I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue."

Expiry of the COMEX APRIL call options is today. There was large open interest in strikes from $1100 to $1150 in gold. As always happens month after month HSBC and JPM sell short in large quantities to overwhelm all bids and make unsuspecting option holders lose their money. As predicted in advance by GATA the manipulation started on March 19th when gold was trading at $1126. By last night it traded at $1085.

This is how much the gold cartel fears the enforcement division. They thumb their noses at you because in over a decade of complaints and 18 months of a silver market manipulation investigation nothing has been done to stop them. And this is why JPM's cocky and arrogant traders in London are able to brag that they manipulate the market.

It is an outrage and we are making available the emails from our whistleblower, Andrew Maguire available to the Press wherein he warns in advance of a manipulative event.

Additionally Mr. Maguire informed us that he has taped recordings of his telephone communications with the CFTC for which we are taking the appropriate legal steps to acquire.

That statement may be viewed by clicking here:

Andrew Maguire Tape Recordings

Daily Bell: Who is Andrew Maguire and how has he been helpful?

Bill Murphy: His emails between CFTC counsel Eliud Ramirez and himself are electric and are already reverberating all over the place. Andrews told him when JP Morgan Chase was going to bomb the market and why. Then it happened just like Andrew told Ramirez that it would. Andrew Maguire confided in Adrian because the CFTC refused to let him appear at the hearing. How bad is that!

Can you imagine the police getting information about a rapist, who then should be under surveillance, but does not do anything about it when an informer confirms who the rapist is and says exactly how the rapist will commit a rape in advance. The rape occurs, and STILL the police do nothing? Then there is an investigation into rapes and the police do whatever they can do to squash the inquiries. You have to be kidding me!


Now Online



Swiss Photo Gallery

Here at the Daily Bell, we've been inundated with requests for us to create a library of the Swiss background images that appear behind all ARBP websites – including the Daily Bell.

So, you asked and we listened.

To view the images, you can either click the Photo Gallery link located in the footer navigation bar or Click Here Now.

Daily Bell: Can you give us more details about his perspectives and why they were important?

Bill Murphy: Andrew has known the JP Morgan trader for years and got fed up with his boasting ... saying this is just very wrong. This is truly epic whistleblower stuff. These things take time to have their effect.

Daily Bell: Why didn't the CFTC take Maguire serious when he contacted the CFTC enforcement division to report the criminal activity he observed?

Bill Murphy: Why didn't the SEC take Harry Markopolis seriously? What government agency takes anyone seriously when people like us go against the rich and powerful like JP Morgan Chase? Heck, Morgan is the Fed's bank.

Daily Bell: How common is the knowledge that Maguire imparted to the CFTC?

Bill Murphy: Having a whistleblower show up is a rare event. GATA has been pounding away to wake up people about the manipulation in the gold and silver markets, and we have 11 years of evidence, which hangs together. Some of our evidence is in the public record. What was that great line by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men? "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH." The CFTC, US financial market press, mainstream gold world, and Wall Street, can't handle the gold truth.

Daily Bell: Can you give us a concrete example of how a manipulation works?

Bill Murphy: The bullion banks work with the Fed/Treasury to keep gold and silver excitement to a minimum. Gold has been up 10 years in a row because The Gold Cartel has orchestrated a managed retreat. For example the cabal traders have their 2% Rule, which is the maximum they have allowed gold to up this year during a Comex trading session. This has occurred 7 times already since January 1.

On a day-to-day basis, The Gold Cartel uses physical gold supply, fed into physical market via surreptitious swap or lending operations, and then uses their concentrated power in the derivatives markets to cap the price and then to terrorize the longs and flush them out when they are ready to attack.

A perfect example is the recent April option expiry. The price of gold collapsed before the April option expiry from $1126 to $1085. Now that the expiry is over and the April call options expired worthless, the price is back to $1126 again. It was a two week round turn.

Daily Bell: Have you acquired Mr. Maguire's taped recordings of his telephone communications with the CFTC?

Bill Murphy: We hope to get the tape, but have to clear it through legal channels first. It is legal to tape another person in England without their knowledge, but illegal to give it to a third party. We are looking into mitigating circumstances like exposing a crime. I would think the fact that Andy M. and his wife were almost killed the next day following GATA revealing those damning emails to the world is a mitigating circumstance if their ever was one.

Daily Bell: Why did you testify?

Bill Murphy: To get the GATA story out there. I was on CNBC 11 years ago. Once they heard what we had to say, the US financial market press blackballed us. How bizarre, Russia's Channel One is doing a documentary on gold and the dollar. They sent a reporter and cameraman to where I live in Dallas and interviewed me for hours. Yet, not even the name GATA is mentioned in the United States. There is no such thing as free press in America for certain people who take on the rich and powerful.

Daily Bell: How was your testimony received?

Bill Murphy: Before I made my GATA presentation, the guy next to me called GATA a bunch of charlatans. Another panelist also disparaged GATA by name. We never have been very popular with the mainstream gold world. Nothing has changed. Bart Chilton is the only CFTC person willing to do homework on the manipulation issue.

As dramatic as Maguire's revelation was at the CFTC hearing, there was another "bombshell" exposure during the hearing. This was the testimony that GATA Board member, Adrian Douglas, was able to deliver during the hearing while assisting Harvey Organ with his testimony. Adrian was able to introduce arguments that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) OTC gold market is nothing but a massive "paper gold," Ponzi scheme.

What was then astonishing is that the bullion bank apologist, Jeffery Christian of CPM Group who has always been staunchly against GATA, endorsed Adrian's comments as being "exactly right." He went on to confirm that the LBMA trades over 100 times the amount of gold it actually has to back the trades.

There is no way Christian, who was speaking from a remote location, knew that Adrian was a GATA guy. How funny that Adrian's comments were received well by one of our biggest critics. He must be horrified.

Daily Bell: Are you afraid for your personal safety?

Bill Murphy: Well, the day after GATA dropped the bombshell about the Maguire emails between him and Ramirez, GATA's Adrian Douglas sent me the following:

GATA Whistleblower Andrew Maguire Injured in Hit and Run Car Accident

On March 25th at the CFTC Public Hearing on Precious Metals GATA made a dramatic revelation of a whistleblower source, Andrew Maguire, who has first hand evidence of gold and silver market manipulation by JPMorganChase, and who has even tipped off the CFTC in advance of manipulative attacks on gold and silver. Just as in the Madoff case the regulator has done nothing to stop such manipulation.

On March 26th while out shopping with his wife, Mr. Maguire's car was hit by a car careening out of a side road. The driver of the vehicle then tried to escape. When a pedestrian eyewitness attempted to block the driver's escape, he accelerated and would have hit him had the pedestrian not jumped out of the way. The car then hit two other cars in escaping. The driver was apprehended by the police after police helicopters were called in and following a high speed chase.

Andrew and his wife were hospitalized with minor injuries. They were discharged from hospital today and should make a full recovery.

Cheers, Adrian

I followed that up with this note in my daily, LeMetropoleCafe.com commentary:

It's something like out of a James Bond movie. What are the odds that my testimony gets blotted out from live coverage and then our whistleblower and wife get hit by a car the next day? ... The gold scandal story is larger than life to begin with. Now throw this spooky stuff on top of it. Veteran Cafe members will recall that in the early part of this century what happened to me during a six week period ...

My car was stolen and then found on a nearby highway one day after the insurance company paid me off. There was no damage to the car, money left in the console, and a cashmere sweater in the back seat.

My web site was hacked and somebody sent out a very goofy email supposedly from me, but it was not me.

Coming out of a restaurant/night spot less than two blocks from where I live, somebody jumped out from behind a wall and sucker-punched me with brass knuckles. I was out cold and thought my jaw was broken.


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Nothing like this has happened before or since.

Daily Bell: Do you think, this time, that the CFTC must take all this seriously.

Bill Murphy: Outside of Bart, it appears none of them want to go there. GATA is like their worst nightmare because they are like everyone else ... kowtowing to the rich and powerful. However, a firestorm is growing about what GATA has to say, partially ignited by the Andrew Maguire revelations. I suspect we are finally going to receive some mainstream press in the months ahead, which will be like shining a light on Dracula.

Daily Bell: Why hasn't it already?

Bill Murphy: The relationship between a government agency like the SEC and the CFTC is insidious. Nobody wants to rock the boat. Heck a number of these people at these agencies end up working on Wall Street, or interact business-wise in some other manner. The Chairman of the CFTC is a Goldman Sachs alumni. That about says it all.

Daily Bell: What's changed at the CFTC if anything?

Bill Murphy: Bart Chilton. He is a bit like Elliott Ness ... and a very rare government bird. Neat guy too.

Daily Bell: If nothing happens, is it important to build a historical document, anyway?

Bill Murphy: You nailed it with that question. My initial presentation was 6 ½ minutes. After three edits, I got it down to 5 minutes and chump change, and I still got gaveled by Chairman Gensler. It's hard to put 11 years worth of market manipulation evidence into five minutes. But we got the essence of what we wanted out there in the public domain via the official CFTC public record.

Daily Bell: Where does the CFTC go after the hearings?

Bill Murphy: Our best bet is that manipulation revelations continue to gain the attention of the press and the pressure grows on the CFTC to get off their duffs and eventually do something about it. The problem is how do they tell the Fed and Treasury their heinous activities have to come to and end?

Daily Bell: Are you hopeful that the manipulation will be exposed?

Bill Murphy: Yes, of course. My initial reaction following the CFTC hearing was that what GATA was able to get out there, in that very visible and "official" forum will be a slow burn. Then, at some point, the story will be everywhere.

Daily Bell: What will Wall Street try to do?

Bill Murphy: Wall Street loathes gold because when the price is soaring, it is bad for business. Every time the gold price explodes, the press/analysts explain the rise due to inflation, crisis of sorts, terrible dollar action, rising interest rates, etc ... so it's not good for their stock and bond markets. If you look at their price forecasts the past decade, most of the Wall Street firms have been neutral to bearish all the way up, and still are.

However, the only firms that will face some heavy angst are those doing the manipulation like JPM and HSBC. Goldman Sachs used to be the ringleader of the gold price suppression scheme. However, they are nowhere to be found these days and are actually one of the few Wall Street firms which has a bullish price forecast for gold. Just a few years ago they were short as much as 50,000 contracts on the TOCOM (Tokyo futures market).

Daily Bell: Will the manipulation - exposed - be in some sense stopped? Can it be stopped?

Bill Murphy: There is a zero chance it will not be stopped because The Gold Cartel will run out of enough ammunition (available central bank gold) to meet the annual supply/demand deficit. For the last 15 years they have required an average of an extra 1,000 tons per year to keep the price under control. It is commonly said by the mainstream gold world that the central banks have 30,000 tons of gold. The work of GATA consultants Reg Howe, James Turk and Frank Veneroso suggest that central banks actually have fewer than 15,000 tons. This is why The Gold Cartel is running out of ammunition.

At GATA's May 2001 GATA African Gold Summit in Durban, South Africa Frank Veneroso said that the central banks would run out of enough central bank gold to dump on the market in 7 to 10 years. The European central banks were selling 400 to 500 tons per year for the last decade ... until a few months ago. The last few months they haven't sold an ounce. The tide is turning.

Daily Bell: Where will gold and silver go if the manipulation ceases?

Bill Murphy: Numerous commentators state that if gold had kept up with the price of inflation, the gold price would be around US$2300 per ounce. That is how much damage The Gold Cartel has inflicted on countries that produce gold, which are getting nowhere near its real value.

At our historic Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon in August 2005, we predicted that gold would need to rise to $3,000 to $5,000 per ounce to clear the price. We said the same thing on January 31, 2008 in our $264,400 full-page color ad in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Anybody Seen Our Gold?"

Daily Bell: Where will the dollar go?

Bill Murphy: With the fiscal problems facing the US in the years ahead, it is very difficult imagining the dollar not taking a big swoon. However, because of the currency problems elsewhere, there is no reason the price of gold can't fly no matter what the dollar does. After Gold Rush 21, which was attended by Andrey Bykov, a key economic consultant to Russia's President Putin, the price of gold rallied from $436 to $730 in seven months, while the dollar only dropped to 87 from 89.

Daily Bell: Has the Internet helped make all this possible?

Bill Murphy: The Internet made it all possible. That is how I met everyone associated with GATA. It is also the mechanism by which we can all share information. It is no friend to The Gold Cartel.

Daily Bell: Is the Internet like the Gutenberg press? Will we see an era unfolding? A kind of modern-day Reformation?

Bill Murphy: I think that is happening now. Your forum, among others, is a perfect example of the way people are receiving information these days.

Daily Bell: Does history repeat in some sense when these massive communication revolutions take place?

Bill Murphy: This certainly is the information age. If GATA is instrumental in exposing, and ending, the gold price suppression scheme, it will be some testimony to the power and value of the Internet.

Daily Bell: How do you see your role and GATA's within this context?

Bill Murphy: For the most part, the mainstream financial press, outside of certain countries like Russia, wants nothing to do with GATA. Years ago I spoke at a conference in Washington, which featured Ralph Nader. The Washington Editor of Barron's was there and he told a story how he really took Alan Greenspan to task a number of years ago, soon after he took the job. It wasn't long before he was taken off the A-party list, he said. That puts in perspective how the mainstream press and Wall Street folks view GATA.

Daily Bell: Would you do anything differently or are you satisfied with your participation thus far?

Bill Murphy: I don't think any of us will be satisfied until the gold price suppression scheme is exposed all over the world and the bad guys are taken to task.

Daily Bell: Thanks for the information and your courageous work.




When we came to the conclusion around 2000 that - with the Internet - the West was living through a replay of the Gutenberg press communication revolution, we figured the results would start showing up in about 20-40 years. Things seem to be moving more quickly, however, or at least that's our impression.

Technology is more powerful today than in the era of Gutenberg. But nonetheless, it took almost 100 years from the time of the invention of the press to the beginning of the Reformation, etc. Still, the Internet has only been around (seriously) for maybe 25 years. How is it we see evidence of its impact?

Yet, we think we do. The CFTC hearings that have taken place are a direct result, in our estimation, of the work done by such Internet-oriented efforts as Bill Murphy's GATA.

Yesterday (metaphorically speaking) GATA was a kind of punch-line, its story removed regularly from Wikipedia, its "conspiratorial" exposes ridiculed by the mainstream press when they were mentioned at all. Today, GATA testifies at CFTC hearings about an issue - gold and silver manipulation - that it has brought to the forefront of consciousness of traders and investors throughout the Western world. Tomorrow, there will be results - the fruit of years of courageous education.

It is not just market manipulation that the Internet has revealed. Courageous people like Bill Murphy and Ted Butler have brought out the crookedness of investing in the 21st century, but others have helped expose the fraud of global warming. And still others have been busy explaining the peak-oil fraud, and additional memes of scarcity (water, food, etc.). Brave individuals throughout Europe are leading the charge against America's endless, serial wars.

What is really happening, of course, is that the power elite's dominant social themes are foundering. The promotions that a handful of incredibly wealthy and powerful families and individuals rely upon to direct society are not working anymore. The Internet - and the bloggers who have used it - is exposing them.

When we think of what is going on today, we often think of the great Narnia tales written buy C.S. Lewis. Not the parts about royalty, kings and queens and the big battles. But the truly poetic ones featuring the return of the Christ-Lion and the thawing of the Ice Queen's realm.

We feel we are watching the thawing not just of an entire continent but an entire epoch. The mercantilist central banking/fiat money era which has lasted at least 100 years and spawned some of the most horrible violence humankind has ever encountered is, perhaps, losing its grip. The CFTC hearings are just one more sign, one more warming trend in an eventually-thawing wilderness.

We are not so naïve as to believe the Anglo-American power elite will let go of authority without a fight. But if history is any guide, the deep freeze of Western authoritarianism is gradually being warmed up by the attentions of the 'Net. The heat is on and it's difficult to see how the process can be arrested.

There are plenty of people, of course, who don't believe that anything out of the ordinary is occurring. They just haven't noticed yet. And within the audience that reads the alternative press, there is likely a sizeable majority that still believe the power elite is unstoppable. They are, in fact, the victims of yet another power elite promotion - the endlessly repeated meme that the power-elite is all-powerful. It hardly is. It is made up, we imagine, of a handful of (mostly) older men whose unbridled arrogance must gradually give way to disbelief and even astonishment.

One can see the desperation rising, or at least smell it. Gold and silver rise inexorably while paper currencies stumble. The EU dithers as Greece goes broke. The Anglo-American axis throws the cream of its youth into battle for nearly a decade against small states in and around the Middle East and, in the end, may have little to show for it.

The Anglo-American elite has apparently spent a century or more in a secret, intra-generational plot to create a kind of feudally-organized global government. But the word is out now. All of the tricks are being reported on the Internet, all the forbidden history has been explained over and over. This is no way to run a secret conspiracy - with thousands of bloggers speculating on your every move.

Is it like having cancer? You probably go through the stages. The first stage is disbelief, and the second stage is furious action. The third stage is violence - a determination to impose one's will on a recalcitrant population - and the fourth stage probably is resignation, at which point the power elite takes a step back and regroups as it did during the era of the Gutenberg press.

We figure the power elite is somewhere in between the furious action stage and the resort-to-violence stage. But it doesn't really matter where it is so much as where its most recent set of plans is headed. Which is into the dustbin of history. You see, the biggest secret of all is that there are billions of average people and only a few thousand of the elite. That's why planning was done in secret. That's why hundreds of millions had to be made to believe that all these dominant social themes of fear and control - leading to further wealth concentration - were THEIR idea.

You can't run a billion people down with cars. You can't just turn off a billion computers. You can't silence the rising tide of communication technology by shutting down factories. Certainly, you can pass the laws you want, but what use are the laws if fewer and fewer believe in them? What happens when more understand that laws are essentially an economically distortive price fix?

You can print money, but what use is it if enough understand its innate worthlessness and cease to believe in its value? You can promote authoritarian memes, and even totalitarian solutions, but of what use is it if fewer are frightened and more analyze them as a manipulation? The tree is green. The flower is white. The thaw arrives? Thanks, Bill.



Contributed by Market Force Analysis (Reporter)
Sunday, March 28, 2010 12:11
More stories from this contributor
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By Adrian Douglas



The “bombshell” that GATA dropped at the CFTC Public Hearing on Precious Metals, March 25, 2010 was stunning. The video of Bill Murphy, Chairman of GATA, revealing a whistleblower source who has warned the CFTC Enforcement Division of market manipulation by JPMorganChase in advance of it happening and witnessed JPM traders bragging of their exploits can be viewed here.



Murphy explained that despite the Enforcement Division receiving detailed information in December 2009 the manipulation continues unabated as can be seen by the way gold was taken down this week to rob holders of April gold call options in the strike range of $1100-$1150 as the hammering made them expire worthless.



GATA believes that this new evidence and “smoking gun” will be a watershed event in liberating the gold market from its shackles of price suppression.



As dramatic as this revelation was at the CFTC hearing there was another “bombshell” exposure during the hearing. This was the testimony that GATA Board member, Adrian Douglas, was able to deliver during the hearing while assisting Harvey Organ with his testimony. Adrian was able to introduce arguments that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) OTC gold market is nothing but a massive “paper gold” Ponzi scheme. What was then astonishing is that the bullion bank apologist, Jeffery Christian, of CPM Group, who has always been staunchly against GATA endorsed Adrian’s comments as being “exactly right” and went on to confirm that the LBMA trades over 100 times the amount of gold it actually has to back the trades.



There were lots of almost as equally explosive admissions so I have taken the time to make a transcript of the relevant section of the webcast. I have posted the two short video clips



www.youtube.com/watch?v=jok3XLBz_SI



www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfCn8NlLHko



which are what have been transcribed.



The transcript is given below with some notes and discussion added by me.



S. O’MALIA: Both Mr. Organ and Mr. Epstein in the second panel, raised the concerns that short positions exceed the physical supply. The second panel kind of argued that that wasn’t a concern. Are you concerned that the shorts will not be able to deliver if called upon?



J. CHRISTIAN: No. I am not at all concerned. For one thing it has been persistently that way for decades. Another thing is that there are any number of mechanisms allowing for cash settlements and problems and a third thing is as many people who are actually knowledgeable about the silver market and the gold market have testified today that almost all of those short positions are in fact hedges, the short futures positions are hedges, offsetting long positions in the OTC market. So I don’t really see a concern there.



[Note: It is interesting that Mr. Christian is not concerned about the ability of the shorts to deliver because they can cash settle! He clearly has no understanding that when someone wants to buy precious metals giving them cash instead is a failure to deliver. It is a default! But he is not concerned!

He says that the short position is actually hedged by a long position on the OTC but we will see later in this testimony how he describes the “OTC Physical Market” and we will see that the long position is not bullion but is in fact an unbacked (or only partially backed) I.O.U. bullion.]



S. O’MALIA: Mr Organ would you like to respond?



H. Organ: I do see a risk on this, and I think it is a risk that we have to be very, very careful of. As countries like China, South Korea and Russia start demanding and taking physical delivery of their gold and moving it offshore to their shores and putting pressure on the Comex, and we will probably come to a point in time where we will have a failure to deliver.



A DOUGLAS: Mr. Chairman, could I make a comment?



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: No! Who are you?



A DOUGLAS: I would…



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: No! I said “No!”



A DOUGLAS: Oh! You said “No”?



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I don’t know who is this?



A DOUGLAS: I am Adrian Douglas; I am assisting Harvey.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Alright, Sir. Yes.



A DOUGLAS: I would just like to make a comment. We are talking about the futures market hedging the physical market. But if we look at the physical market, the LBMA, it trades 20 million ozs of gold per day on a net basis which is 22 billion dollars. That’s 5.4 Trillion dollars per year. That is half the size of the US economy. If you take the gross amount it is about one and a half times the US economy; that is not trading 100% backed metal; it’s trading on a fractional reserve basis. And you can tell that from the LBMA’s website because they trade in “unallocated” accounts. And if you look at their definition of an “unallocated account” they say that you are an “unsecured creditor”. Well, if it’s “unallocated” and you buy one hundred tonnes of gold even if you don’t have the serial numbers you should still have one hundred tonnes of gold, so how can you be an unsecured creditor? Well, that’s because its fractional reserve accounting, and you can’t trade that much gold, it doesn’t exist in the world. So the people who are hedging these positions on the LBMA, it’s essentially paper hedging paper. Bart Chilton uses the expression “Stop the Ponzimonium” and this is a Ponzi Scheme. Because gold is a unique commodity and people have mentioned this, it is left in the vaults and it is not consumed. So this means that most people trust the bullion banks to hold their gold and they trade it on a ledger entry. So one of the issues we have got to address here is the size of the LBMA and the OTC markets because of the positions which are supposedly backing these positions which are hedges, but it is essentially paper backing paper.



[8 seconds of silence]



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Oh! I guess I get time. Errr…Umm. I don’t have any other questions. Commissioner Dunn.



M. DUNN: I appreciate the difficulty of trying to do this by remote but at the end of your testimony you start talking about bona fide hedge exemptions for commercial traders and must be part of position limits and not to grant hedge exemptions to swap dealers would be devastating for liquidity of exchanges and the price discovery capacity, and we got into who determines what is legitimate, but could you amplify on that a bit and what you see as a danger there?



J. CHRISTIAN: Yes I can amplify on it; but amplify on it a bit is more difficult because it is a very big subject. The first thing is that precious metals, copper, other metals, energy these are all traded internationally and are fungible commodities by and large. There are a lot of strange things that have been misspoken about the difference between the wholesale and the retail market and we don’t really have the time to go over those, I think. But the fact of the matter is…



[The lights go off]



J. CHRISTIAN: Oh excuse me. I am in a building with motion sensitive lighting and it doesn’t recognize what I do as human activity.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: Those were your words not anybody’s here.



J. CHRISTIAN: No, they were my wife’s! If you start putting position limits on bona fide hedgers for example, the bullion banks, and the previous fellow was talking about hedges of paper on paper and that is exactly right. Precious metals are financial assets like currencies, T-Bills and T-bonds they trade in the multiples of a hundred times the underlying physical and so people buying them are voting and giving an economic view of the world or a view of the economic world and so when you start saying to a bank I have a number of people…



[Note: This is mind blowing. He openly admits that the LBMA OTC market is not trading in physical gold or silver; it is trading in paper promises. Gold is not intended to be a “financial asset” like T-Bills and currencies. That is the whole point of owning it. Actual physical bullion is a tangible asset with intrinsic value that doesn’t have counterparty risk. He believes the purpose of trading paper promises in gold is for investors to “vote” on their view of the economic world! He confirms that the LBMA trades hundreds of times the real underlying physical. This is even a higher estimate than I have previously made! It is, as I asserted before the Commission, a giant Ponzi Scheme.]



J. CHRISTIAN: well, actually let’s go back to a concrete example of Mr. Organ when he was talking about August of 2008 when there was an explosion in the short positions in gold and silver held by the bullion banks on the futures market and he seemed to imply that that was somehow driving the price down. If you understand how those bullion banks run their books the reason they had an explosion in their short positions was because they were selling bullion hand over fist in the forward market, in the physical market, and in the OTC options market. Everyone was buying gold everywhere in the world so the bullion banks who stand as market makers were selling or making commitments to sell them material and so they had to hedge themselves and they were using the futures market to do that. So if you place position limits on the futures market they will have to find some other mechanism to hedge themselves …and they will. And someone else will provide that market…



M. DUNN: Jeffery, I am going to cut you off because I want to ask another question of Mr. Organ.



[It is hard to imagine more inane drivel than this. He conjures up the image of bullion bankers selling bullion like crazy to the general public who are in a feeding frenzy and the bullion bankers are “hedging themselves” by selling gold short on the COMEX!!! Did he get that idea from a blonde? A little while later Chairman Gensler also realized that this was the biggest baloney ever concocted as a cover for massive gold market manipulation by JPMorgan and HSBC in 2008 and so poses a follow up question]……





CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I would like to follow up on Commissioner Dunn’s question for Mr. Christian, if I might, because I didn’t quite follow your answer on the bullion banks. You said that the bullion banks had large shorts to hedge themselves selling elsewhere, and I didn’t understand; I might just not have followed it and you’re closer to the metals markets than me on this, but how do you short something to cover a sale, I didn’t quite follow that?



J. CHRISTIAN: Well, actually I misspoke. Basically what you were seeing in August of 2008 was the liquidation of leveraged precious metals positions from a number of places and the bullion banks were coming back to buy it, and they were hedging those positions by going short on the COMEX and that is really what it was.

[Even on a second attempt Mr. Christian invents the most ridiculous poppycock to explain away the blatant manipulation of the precious metals in 2008. If, in his own words, investors were buying gold hand over fist everywhere in the world why would leveraged long holders dump all their long holdings? They would have ordinarily been making a fortune. The bank participation report of August 2008 shows that 2 or 3 bullion banks sold short the equivalent of 25% of world annual silver production in 4 weeks and the equivalent of 10% of world annual gold production. There was simultaneously a decrease in their long positions, which were almost non-existent anyway, which is incoherent with a notion the bullion banks were mopping up dumped leveraged investments. For an intelligent and coherent explanation of what happened in August 2008 read my CFTC written testimony here]



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: So I am glad I asked because I really didn’t follow that. But if I think of the earlier charts of the positions of the bullion banks that Mr. Sherrod had these concentrated shorts have been, well you know, reasonably consistent, they are not exactly the same on every day, but his charts showed a similarity across a couple of years. So what are bullion banks, I mean I am just trying to understand, what are bullion banks hedging on the other side, we heard from other panels, but you seem to be familiar, is it warehouse receipts, what is it?



J. CHRISTIAN: Well it’s a tremendous number of things. You were at Goldman shortly after me and we had an MIS system that kicked out a daily gold book.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: That’s really remarkable because we don’t seem to have a lot of similar views, but you know, a lot of people were at Goldman Sachs.



J. CHRISTIAN: Well I didn’t like the trends at Goldman so I left in 1986. But honestly, and bad jokes aside, if you look at a bullion bank’s book, its gold book for example, you will see an enormous number of things; there will be gold forward purchases from mining companies, there will be forward purchases from refineries, there will be gold that has been leased out to electronics manufacturers, component manufacturers, and countless manufacturers and jewelers. As gold flows through the beneficiation process and again these are all long complex issues that are hard to reduce, but you know, a lot of producers will sell their gold the moment it leaves their possession at the mine. It might be in concentrate form or it might be in dore form. It then goes to a smelter or a refinery. The bullion bank buys that and it agrees a price at the time it is buying it but it won’t be allowed to sell that metal until the refinery outturn which maybe two weeks but it could be six months. So they will go into the market and short the market in order to cover the commitment they have made to buy at that price and then when they get the metal in the physical market then they can either sell that metal in the physical market and unwind the hedge in the futures market or the forward market or do something else. There are all sorts of other derivative contracts that investment banks and bullion banks will sell to investors, to other banks, pension funds, to insurance companies and each of those will often have a long exposure in gold which will be hedged with an offsetting short position [note: There he goes again with that blonde idea that when you sell gold to someone you hedge that with a short position!]. So if you look at a bullion bank’s gold book or silver book you would find a large range of topics. One of the things that the people who criticize the bullion banks and talk about this undue large position don’t understand what is the nature of the long positions of the physical market and we don’t help it; the CFTC when it did its most recent report on silver used the term that we use “the physical market”. We use that term as did the CFTC in that report to talk about the OTC market in other words forwards, OTC options, physical metal and everything else. People say, and you heard it today, there is not that much physical metal out there, and there isn’t. But in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that…there is a hundred times what there is. If I look at the large short positions on the COMEX my question is where are the other shorts being hedged? because the short position, that I believe the bullion banks use to hedge their physicals, is larger than their short position on the COMEX and the answer is that they hedge it in the OTC market in London.



CHAIRMAN GENSLER: I thank you for that detailed discussion

END



This is a stunning revelation. Mr. Christian confirms that the “physical market” is not in fact a physical market at all. It is a loose description of all the paper trading and ledger entries and some physical metal movements that occur each day on behalf of people who believe they own bullion in LBMA vaults but in fact they don’t. They are told they have “unallocated gold” or “unallocated silver” but that does not mean the LBMA has physical metal set aside for those customers and has just not given specific bar numbers to the customers. No, it is the most cynical and corrupt definition of “unallocated”…the customer has NO bullion allocated to him. NONE! The LBMA defines the owners of “unallocated accounts” quite clearly as “unsecured creditors”. That means they have NO collateral. NONE. Can it be any clearer? It is a giant Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Christian confirms what many analysts and GATA have been alleging that there is not much REAL physical metal, but testifies that there is actually one hundred times the REAL Physical metal being sold based on the much more “loose” definition of what “physical” means to the bullion banks.



The last sentence of his statement is mind-blowing. He says the “physical” positions of the bullion banks are so huge that they are much bigger than the COMEX short position. He says the “physicals” are hedged on the OTC market in London! Did you get that? Let me walk you through it. The bullion banks are selling what is supposed to be vault gold but it is just a ledger entry if the customer never asks for delivery. They must balance their exposure with a ledger deposit entry. This has to be some paper promise of gold from a third party, or some derivative, or even some real gold bullion. If all the ledger entries balance out then the bullion bank has no net exposure in exactly the same way the futures market works with a short offsetting a long. A futures market can never default if no one asks for delivery as only paper contracts are traded. The loosely defined “physical” London market is an identical scheme. As long as everyone is prepared to buy and sell “ledger entries” for imaginary gold in the vault no one will ever discover the fraud.

The LBMA does, however, buy and sell some real physical metal as well. But we now know form Mr. Christian’s testimony that this is one one-hundredth the size of the paper gold trading. The LBMA states on its website that it trades 20 million ozs of gold each day on a net basis. We can calculate the net trade of REAL physical gold should be about 200,000 ozs each day; that is 6.25 tonnes per day or 1625 tonnes per year. This is very much in line with the size of total global mining output of approximately 2200 tonnes per year.

So the giant Ponzi trading of gold ledger entries can be sustained only if there is never a liquidity crisis in the REAL physical market. If someone asks for gold and there isn’t any the default would trigger the biggest “bank run” and default in history. This is, of course, why the Central Banks lease their gold or sell it outright to the bullion banks when they are squeezed by high demand for REAL physical gold that can not be met from their own stocks.



Almost every day we hear of a new financial fraud that has been exposed. The gold and silver market fraud is likely to be bigger than all of them. Investors in their droves, who have purchased gold in good faith in “unallocated accounts”, are going to demand delivery of their metal. They will then discover that there is only one ounce for every one hundred ounces claimed. They will find out they are “unsecured creditors”.



GATA has long advocated the ownership of real physical bullion. The “bombshells” dropped in the CFTC Public Hearing have only served to reinforce that view. We believe we have made significant new inroads into exposing the fraud, and the suppression of precious metals prices and it is documented in the CFTC’s own hearing.



March 27, 2010



Adrian Douglas

Director of GATA

Proprietor of Market Force Analysis

www.MarketForceAnalysis.com

info@marketforceanalysis.com



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covering this story.



also see:

https://marketforceanalysis.com/index_assets/LBMA%20OTC%20GOLD%20PONZI%20SCHEME.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jok3XLBz_SI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfCn8NlLHko

http://www.marketskeptics.com/2010/04/gold-manipulation-officially-confirmed.html
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/

[Abe]

http://www.businessinsider.com/gatas-chris-powell-weighs-in-on-the-ongoing-imf-sprott-gold-saga-2010-4

GATA's Chris Powell Weighs In On Sprott, The IMF, And The Missing Gold
Vince Veneziani | Apr. 12, 2010, 10:00 AM | 1,832


Last week, we gave you the International Monetary Fund's view of why it wouldn't sell investor Eric Sprott gold from its fund.

Mostly, the Fund pointed to following protocol and saying that its available gold can only be sold to central banks or sovereign nations.

Then we contacted Mr. Sprott himself to find out his side of the story, which was starkly different from the IMF's rhetoric.

Sprott believes the IMF doesn't have all the physical gold it claims it has and that these deliveries to the central banks that have bought gold from the IMF are all just bookkeeping fallacy. He believes the price of gold is being suppressed.



Enter the third part of the equation: Chris Powell (pictured here with Ron Paul), Secretary and Treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, better known as GATA.

Powell's opinion is similar to that of Sprott's in that they both believe the IMF is lying its ass off in order to manipulate the price of gold.

When we spoke to Powell, he insisted that the IMF has no gold whatsoever in stock. His reasoning behind this dates back to April of 2008 when Powell asked the IMF many questions about gold and was evaded in "every respect" of the matter. Some may decry GATA as a conspiracy theorist group that's out to plot against the central banks of the world.

But GATA has been asking the questions that a lot of people would normally just accept for themselves.

Some of the topics GATA has attempted to discuss with the IMF include:

Records on physical gold including serial numbers and proof that the physical bullion actually exists.
Did physical gold actually change hands with central banks like Mauritius or was it just bookkeeping to create the illusion of a physical gold transfer?
What are the designated depositories for gold?
The involvement of various governmental bodies in the manipulation of metal prices.
None of these questions could be answered by the IMF and as a result of asking such questions, Powell has since been unable to extract any sort of legitimate response from the IMF as they continue to evade GATA's investigation. In fact, the IMF now refuses to answering all GATA/Powell emails after Powell asked for an audit in April of 2008.

And it's not just Powell and GATA members who are up in arms over the alleged manipulation of gold prices.

An article in the New York Post from Sunday tells a story of how one JP Morgan commodities trader is coming out and detailing how the banks play hardball in order to manipulate gold and silver prices. One of the choice quotes from the article is from Andrew Maguire to another trader at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission or CFTC:

"Subject: Fw: Silver today A final e-mail to confirm that the silver manipulation was a great success and played out EXACTLY to plan as predicted yesterday. How would this be possible if the silver market was not in the full control of the parties we discussed in our phone interview?"

So what exactly is the incentive for the IMF and other central banks to manipulate metals?

It's a matter of preserving western currencies and interest rates, Powell says. "The Federal Reserve runs the world" and that's not changing anytime soon. Heck, even various ex-Fed Reserve chairman all say they rigged the gold market, including Volcker and Greenspan. And this isn't something GATA concocted in a media laboratory to get what they want - this is straight from the Federal Reserve's official website.

In FOMC minutes from 1995, one can easily read for themselves that the Federal Reserve is engaged in multiple gold swap agreements with other countries and their central banks.

Mr. Powell backs up his position, reiterating:

Meanwhile, for years the International Monetary Fund, the central bank of the central banks, has been openly intervening in the gold market by threatening to sell gold. The IMF said its intent in selling gold was to raise money to lend to poor nations. This explanation was ridiculous on its face, though the IMF has never been challenged about it in the financial press. No, the financial press has been happy to tell the world that central banks that lately have effortlessly conjured into existence fantastic amounts of money in many currencies could find a little money to help poor countries only by selling gold.

Of course the intent of the IMF and its member central banks was not to help poor countries but to intimidate the gold market and control the gold price.

That the IMF intimidated the gold market so long with this threat of gold sales was all the more remarkable because the IMF probably has never had any gold to sell in the first place.

Basically, Powell and GATA are of the belief that the gold market is ultimately rigged and suppressed. Before speaking with Powell, we were also skeptical of some of GATA's claims on allegations that the Federal Reserve would undertake a role in this manipulation, but the group is not as crazy as they come off.

We'll be following up with the IMF this week to address the allegations made by Sprott and GATA. Meanwhile, here is a video of Chris Powell speaking with Max Keiser on gold and markets


Press TV-On the edge with Max Keiser -04-09-2010 (part2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3b62WbZnhw&feature=player_embedded
_________________
Yes all HYIPS are SCAMS. Click Here and watch this. http://www.bornagainamerican.org/