Another day, another fresh record low in Deutsche Bank’s stock price…

 

For comparison’s sake, Deutsche Bank is analogically equivalent to where Lehman was in August 2008… when the stock soared 16% on chatter of a Korean Development Bank bailout… which then was denied, crashing the stock and ending the party…

Shares in Lehman Brothers rose substantially Friday as investors renewed hopes that the troubled investment bank was moving closer to raising capital to buffer it against a deteriorating economic environment.

 

Capping a volatile week, the stock soared 16 percent on a report that the state-run Korea Development Bank was considering buying the bank, an idea that a spokesman for the South Korean firm said was “erroneous.” Lehman’s stock closed the day up 5 percent at $14.41.

 

The spokesman for Korea Development Bank told The New York Times that the bank was in the process of being privatized and was looking at various acquisitions. But he denied that buying Lehman was an option.

 

“We have various thoughts for our future, but we don’t have any specific institutions in mind,” said the spokesman, who declined to be named, citing company policy.

 

Lehman’s suddenly soaring stock underscores the volatility surrounding the firm as it scrambles to assess its options in the face of an abysmal third quarter. Only days ago, its shares tumbled more than 13 percent.

We wait for chatter of a Deutsche Bank ‘offer’ rumor any day now.

We are sure it’s nothing. How can it be a problem given that US equities are so strong? right?

via http://ift.tt/29lLzCN Tyler Durden

Submitted by Clarice Palmer via TheAntiMedia.org,

Holly Harris may wear cowboy boots to work, but the Kentucky mom and Executive Director for the US Justice Action Network (USJAN) is far from your average southerner.

This past Saturday, June 25th, Harris talked about her work to a group of journalists and bloggers who traveled to Washington D.C. from different corners of the country to hear from leaders of the criminal justice reform movement. Harris was the first speaker at FreedomWorks’ #JusticeForAll event, and as the leader of USJAN, she set the tone for what turned out to be a fascinating conference.

The veteran litigator opened her speech by outlining USJAN’s goals, explaining the organization believes “our [criminal] code just doesn’t make sense.” That’s why their “goal is to shrink criminal codes” and “get rid of these unfair, unnecessary duplicative and inconsistent laws.”

But it was something else she told the crowd a few minutes later that got attendees worked up.

“The fastest growing segment of the prison population in America,” Harris articulated, “is women … and nobody is talking about that.”

According to the Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation (FAMM), the female prison population in the United States has grown by over 800 percent in the last 30 years, while the male population grew by 416 percent during the same period. Despite this staggering growth, violent criminals are not being sent to prison in droves. Instead, nearly two-thirds of female prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses.

About 56 percent of incarcerated women are in jail due to the drug war or over property crimes, FAMM reports. These types of offenses usually carry mandatory minimums, which are sentences that must be imposed no matter what. This strips judges of the ability to consider mitigating circumstances.

Due to mandatory minimums, FAMM contends, many women are given sentences that do not fit the crime — and the result is tragic.

Because 60 percent of women in prison are also mothers to children under the age of 18, the drug war has negatively impacted countless families; the number of American children whose mothers are in jail has more than double since 1991.

When data is broken down into racial classifications, we also learn there’s a serious racial element to incarceration in the United States.

According to FAMM, 380 out of every 100,000 black women in America are in jail, while 147 out of every 100,000 Hispanic women and 93 out of every 100,000 white women are incarcerated. While whites account for 79.8 percent of the U.S. population and 63.8 percent of women in America are white, only 45.5 percent of the female prison population is white. “By contrast,” the FAMM report explains, “black women represent 32.6 percent of female prisoners, but only 12.8% of the general population,” making black children “nearly 7.5 times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison.”

Another shocking piece of data relates to the number of individuals with mental health problems in jail. According to FAMM, 73 percent of female state prisoners have a mental illness, a high number compared to the 55 percent of the male prison population with the same conditions.

Women in jail are also more likely to carry HIV/AIDS.

Amid the discouraging data, however, Harris has been able to see an upside, working relentlessly with USJAN to bring justice reform bills to state and federal legislators. As the organization gets involved with local groups to scrap bad laws from the books — and as Harris sees a greater number of lawmakers joining her fight — she believes “every state in the country now is going to be looking at more aggressive criminal justice reforms.” Since “the Bureau of Prisons’ budget grew by roughly 88 percent in nominal dollars” between 2000 and 2015, consuming “a quarter of the Justice Department’s annual appropriations,” FreedomWorks reports, Harris believes the budget crisis every single state is currently struggling with will eventually push legislators to act.

According to USJAN’s website, the organization has successfully lobbied and worked with both Republican and Democratic senators to develop bills like the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, which, if passed, would reform mandatory minimums for drug offenses, give judges discretion on sentencing, and expand programs that help to keep former prisoners from ending up back behind bars. The bill would also apply reforms retroactively to those already in prison.

The full Senate floor is expected to vote for this proposed law in the near future.

During her conversation with political bloggers in D.C. about justice reform this past weekend, Harris also talked about the “cycle of failure” her organization wants to break by helping former inmates rebuild their lives. But reforming the criminal code is not enough. Harris maintains “the drug epidemic is why we’re seeing this growth” of the female prison population. Cleaning the criminal code is only the first step toward a much greater shift in policy.

via http://ift.tt/29tOOXX Tyler Durden

 

 

 

Something Huge Is Coming From Japan

Posted with permission and written by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse (CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL)

 

 

Pretend, for a minute, that your country responds to the bursting of a credit bubble by borrowing unprecedented amounts of money and using it to prop up banks and construction companies. This doesn’t work, so you create record amounts of new money and push interest rates into negative territory in an attempt to devalue your currency. But this — amazingly — doesn’t work either. Your currency soars and the inflation you’d hoped to generate never materializes.

 

Now what? Is there even anything left to try, or is it simply time to stand back and let the current system melt down? Those are the questions facing Japan, and the answers are not obvious. Here, for instance, is its inflation rate two years into the largest major-country money creation binge since Wiemar Germany:

 

 

Deflation is to be expected and even desired in a well-run country where debt is minimal, money is sound and rising productivity makes things continuously cheaper. But in an over-indebted financial system, deflation is death because it magnifies the debt burden and raises the odds of an existentially threatening financial crisis. To continue to borrow money under such circumstances is to court disaster. And yet Japan is still at it:

 

 

What we’re witnessing, in short, is a catastrophic loss in the currency war. Contrary to every mainstream economic theory, debt monetization and full-throttle currency creation have resulted in a rising yen and falling prices. Here’s an excerpt from a recent — and really gloomy — Financial Times analysis of Japan’s situation:

 

It’s time for investors to admit it: Abenomics has failed

 

The past few weeks have not been happy ones for many central bankers — and none more so than Haruhiko Kuroda, the hapless governor of the Bank of Japan.

That is because the threat of moving rates deeper into negative territory and buying up even more assets has done nothing to weaken the yen down as he desires. Brexit, which briefly sent the yen beyond the ¥100 mark against the dollar on Friday, is a fresh headwind.

The Bank of Japan is likely to move rates from negative 0.1 per cent to minus 0.3 per cent come the end of July, increase its holdings of ETFs from ¥3.3tn to ¥6.3tn as well as its purchases of Japanese Reits from ¥90bn to ¥200bn, economists at JPMorgan in Tokyo predict.

With the yen ever stronger, Abenomics and the desired impact of central bank policies are going into reverse. The irony is that these policies, which were meant not to change traditional Japan but to revive it, are likely to end up wounding it — perhaps irreparably.

Abenomics was never about real reform. Instead, it was merely meant to weaken the currency, undercutting competitors like Korea and China and allowing Japan Inc to more easily export its cars and other manufactured goods to the rest of the world.

Since corporate profits for the last three years were only ever about currency translation gains, these are now going in reverse and dragging down industrial shares with them.

Surveys suggesting companies plan to invest have failed to materialise: in April core machinery orders, the best proxy for capex, dropped 8.2 per cent from the previous year, while exports fell in May with the trade surplus down 32 per cent compared with the previous month.

The March tankan survey showed corporate Japan expected the yen/dollar rate at ¥117 going forward — today it sits at ¥101.5 to the dollar. Masaaki Kanno, chief Japan economist for JPMorgan, expects the currency to surge to ¥90 next year.

Meanwhile, negative rates are especially murderous for bank shares. “Why should a central bank policy that hurts bank shares be good for a credit-driven economy?” asks Christopher Wood, strategist for the CLSA unit of Citic Securities.

In a way, the fact that Mitsubishi UFJ is preparing to give up its primary dealership in the government bond market is immaterial — at least from a narrow economic or financial perspective. The Bank of Japan’s purchases of JGBs far exceed net new issuance. Trading volumes have collapsed.

But as a symbolic political gesture it is huge, suggesting that the mutual support and trust of the old convoy system have totally broken down. Moreover, it is no accident that the protest comes from Nobuyuki Hirano.

There are other signs that the private sector has become less compliant as well. Both the heads of the GPIF and Japan Postal Savings say this is no time to buy risky assets at home since they reflect only the BoJ’s buying (and perhaps foreign fund front-running of that buying). Given the flat yield curve, insurers can hardly hold JGBs, and anyway fear losses on their holdings should rates eventually move up.

In addition, there is likely worse to come for many major investors. They have been pushed abroad by the central bank. But with the yen rising in a world which has been mostly risk-off, they will have big losses on assets held in foreign currencies, especially since only a small part of their exposures have been hedged, according to data from JPMorgan.

Rather than reboot Abenomics, it is time to replace it. Investors should not bet on Japan any longer.

So what happens — and doesn’t happen — now? Several things:

 

The bad stuff gets worse. Post-Brexit Europe will be a source of anxiety and therefore capital flight for years. See What is Frexit: Will France leave the EU next?

That means more money looking for a place to hide, some of which will choose yen-denominated bonds. So Japan’s already-negative interest rates will fall even further, which is catastrophic news for the Japanese banks and pension funds now suffocating under the current yield curve.

 

Regime change — but not yet. In upcoming elections the ruling party looks likely to hold its legislative majority. Longer term, though, Japan will find itself in pretty much the same boat as every other major democracy, with inept incumbents having handed lethal ammo to opposition parties more than willing to pull the trigger. New leaders won’t be able to fix the problem (which is by now unfixable) but the uncertainty surrounding a contested election will raise the odds of a crisis of involving currencies, debt, banks or any number of other things.

 

Plunging US rates. Eventually, hundreds of trillions of yen will have to find a new home with more hospitable returns. And 30-year Treasuries yielding 2% will look pretty tasty in a relative if not absolute sense. Rising foreign demand will push down Treasury yields, killing off numerous US banks, pension funds and insurance companies but giving the remaining solvent Americans a chance to refinance their mortgages at 1%.

 

Governments become the biggest stock market players. This is already happening, as Japan, China and (probably) the US buy equities and ETFs to blunt natural corrections in share prices. But with nothing else left to try, expect these programs to be ramped up virtually everywhere. This will prop up stock prices until it doesn’t, and then look out below.

 

Soaring gold. Everything that happens these days points to higher precious metals prices. I’m thinking of writing a piece of boilerplate to that effect for placement at the end of every future article.

 

 

 

Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something Huge Is Coming From Japan

Posted with permission and written by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse (CLICK HERE FOR ORIGINAL)

via http://ift.tt/29iH2Sf Sprott Money

In the summer of 2007, two inconsequential Bear Stearns property-related funds were gated and then liquidated, exposing the reality of the US housing bubble and catalyzing the collapse of the financial system. While equity markets have rebounded exuberantly post-Brexit, suggesting all is well, British property-related assets have tumbled and, as The FT reports, Standard Life has been forced to stop retail investors selling out of one of the UK’s largest property funds for at least 28 days after rapid cash outflows were sparked by fears over falling real estate values. As one analyst warned, "the risk is this creates a vicious circle, and prompts more investors to dump property."

Standard Life Investments has suspended trading on its £2.7 billion U.K. Real Estate fund, effective immediately, following Brexit, Investment Week reported, citing a statement.

 

The firm has suspended trading on the SLI UK Real Estate PAIF and the SLI UK Real Estate income and accumulation feeder funds.

 

The company cites "exceptional market circumstances" following an increase in redemption requests from the referendum.

The drop in NAV is the largest since Lehman…

 

The £2.9bn commercial property fund will need to sell real estate to raise cash before any money can be redeemed.

And, as The FT reports, the last property crash in the UK in 2007 was preceded by a wave of similar gatings by funds struggling to meet investor demands for cash. They led to firesales of property that added to the pressure on an already falling market.

Last week, Standard Life was one of a handful of UK open-ended property funds to mark down the value of the buildings they own by 5 per cent in the wake of the UK’s vote to leave the EU.

 

In another sign of stress in the sector, some closed-ended property trusts are trading at discounts of more than 10 per cent to their net asset value, which reflects fears over the future of commercial property.

 

“Given the outflows the sector seems to be experiencing, this could well put downward pressure on commercial property prices,” said Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The risk is this creates a vicious circle, and prompts more investors to dump property, until such time as sentiment stabilises.”

Retail investors have been attracted to property funds in recent years in part because returns from other types of investment have been so low.

Investors in the fund will be unable to redeem their holding for at least 28 days. The asset manager said the suspension on the fund’s trading will end “as soon as practicable”, and will be reviewed every 28 days.

 

Standard Life said the decision was taken to avoid the fund’s managers being forced to sell buildings quickly in order to satisfy redemption requests, which have increased “as a result of uncertainty for the UK commercial real estate market following the EU referendum result”.

 

“Unless this selling process is controlled, there is a risk that the fund manager will not achieve the best deal for investors in the fund, including those who intend to remain invested over the medium to long term.”

 

Adrian Lowcock, head of investing at Axa Wealth, said the suspension of the fund “brings back to focus the issues with investing in open-ended property funds”.

 

“During the financial crisis many investors were stuck in funds which had closed to redemptions as liquidity dried up,” he said.

*  *  *

Storm in a teacup we are sure… because once Carney drops the next QE bomb, everything will be fixed, right? Or dead canary in the Brexit contagion coalmine?

via http://ift.tt/29cdEZD Tyler Durden

Submitted by Shawn Ritenour via The Mises Institute,

When I was a boy, one of my favorite holidays was Independence Day. I was an enthusiastic student of the War for Independence. My favorite book was the How and Why Wonder Book of the American Revolution by Felix Sutton. I spent a lot of my childhood reading about the colonial era, the lives of people like Sam Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. I learned all about our American forefathers’ struggle for liberty against a king who merely treated them as revenue-generating pawns. I was nine years old when the US celebrated its bicentennial and my mother wallpapered my room with a red, white, and blue colonial American themed paper and I had various prints of famous revolutionary war scenes hanging on the walls. I looked forward every year to the day celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Over the years, alas, my enthusiasm became dampened so that now, if I am exposed to any mainstream media celebrations of Independence Day, I do not feel the joy I once did. Instead I feel more like Charlie Brown at the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Remember in that childhood classic how, when Christmas approaches, Charlie Brown tells Linus that he knows he should be happy, but instead he always ends up feeling depressed. I increasingly get the same feeling as people gear up for 4th of July celebrations.

Now, much older and perhaps wiser, when I hear the popular media gushing about our freedoms, the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell, Celebrate America concerts, and all the rest on the Fourth of July, instead of being happy, I feel a tinge of sadness. I like celebrating the Fourth of July by, say, gathering with friends, teaching my children about the Founding Fathers, reading the Declaration, and watching fireworks, but when I think about where we started and what we have become, like Charlie Brown I end up melancholy. This is because the politicians and the media talking heads clearly have no idea what they are talking about. Most seem to not even know what liberty really is. The only politician at the national level who spoke about freedom and the Constitution with actual conviction was Ron Paul and they laughed him off the stage. Instead, popular journalists and pundits try to make us believe that we are free because we are allowed to have other people vote away our liberties.

At the beginning of every major sporting event, Americans pay lip service to “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but everywhere they are in economic chains. Last year total government spending was $6.4 trillion. That is $6.4 trillion with a t. That number amounts to over 36 percent of GDP. The Federal budget deficit the past fiscal year was $438 billion. Over the past eight years, our government debt has skyrocketed. By the end of this fiscal year, gross Federal government debt is expected to be over $19 trillion. That will be 106 precent of GDP.

Now, the important point to remember with respect to our freedom is that every single penny of government spending represents government control. When you spend money to purchase a loaf of bread, a tank of gas, or a pair of pants, you become owners of these economic goods and can use them as you see fit. When the government spends money, its bureaucrats gain control of economic resources. And the more of our resources under their control, the less free we become.

Additionally, government control of our society is greatly bankrolled by the central money creating machine, the Federal Reserve. It has maintained a monetary base in the stratosphere as the money supply increased $880 billion over the past year. That is an 8 percent increase over 12 months. It is all too obvious to the man on Main Street that such monetary inflation provides no social benefit, but sows much economic harm. It decreases the purchasing power of the dollar, and especially hurts the most vulnerable of our citizens who live on fixed incomes. At the same time it rewards cronies — not for producing goods that are actually profitable, but for going to the right parties and exerting the right influence on members of the ruling class. Inflation also generates the business cycle which always results in recession and unemployment. Perhaps you’ve heard of the real estate and derivative bubbles of 2008?

The Leviathan state’s control goes beyond dollars, however. In fact, our rulers seem to want to control as much of our lives as possible. The 2013 Code of Federal Regulations had a near-record 178,277 pages. And these laws regulate virtually every area of our lives. Government bureaucrats simply do not trust buyers and seller to voluntarily agree on acceptable goods at acceptable prices. Did you know that the federal government regulates the production of battery chargers, ceiling fans, central air conditioners, clothes dryers, clothes washers, clothing itself, computer and battery backup systems, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, furnaces and boilers, kitchen ranges and ovens, lawn mowers, microwave ovens, swimming pool heaters, refrigerators and freezers, window air conditioners, televisions, cable and satellite TV boxes, water heaters, commercial ice makers, industrial clothes washers, compressors, electric motors, fans and blowers, refrigerated beverage vending machines, refrigeration equipment, walk-in coolers and freezers, ceiling fan light kits, lamps, fluorescent lamp ballasts, illuminated exit signs, light bulbs, flash lights, faucets, showerheads, and flush toilets? And this is not even an exhaustive list. Exhausting yes, but exhaustive, no. The USDA regulates the marketing of cotton, milk and dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and livestock, poultry, and feed. Government bureaucrats even have detailed instructions mandating the cornbread-to-meat ratio required in a commercial corn dog! The state will not even let us produce and sell corn dogs on our own! In the land of supposedly free enterprise, a full 38 percent of workers employed in 2008 needed a government license or certification just to do their job. In the 1950s the number was about 5 percent.

One of the great intellectual errors that drive such despotism is the view that the independence we celebrate is primarily about egalitarianism. After all, the most famous phrase in the Declaration does say, “All men are created equal.” Hear this statement in context, however. The passage in question reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” What the Declaration affirms is every person has the divine and natural right to liberty. The common way of stating the doctrine at the time was that each person has a natural right to life, liberty, and property. He has the right to not be murdered, the right to use his mind and body without restraint by others, and the right to the fruits of his labor.

That one of “the unalienable rights” asserted by the signers of the Declaration was the right to property makes it clear that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are antithetical to our current government’s policy of confiscation and control. Missing the connection between freedom and property is a tap root of our nation’s interventionist culture­­ — a culture that yields the bitter fruit of social and economic destruction.

The lesson of economic theory and practice is clear. As the institution of private property goes, so goes society. This was recognized by the great nineteenth century pastor and college president Francis Wayland. He noted in his Elements of Moral Science that

Just in proportion as the right of property is held inviolate, just in that proportion civilization advances, and the comforts and conveniences of life multiply. Hence it is, that, in free and well-ordered governments, and specially during peace, property accumulates, all the orders of society enjoy the blessings of competence, the arts flourish, science advances, and men begin to form some conception of the happiness of which the present system is capable. And, on the contrary, under despotism, when law spreads its protection over neither house, land, estate, nor life, and specially during civil wars, industry ceases, capital stagnates, the arts decline, the people starve, population diminishes, and men rapidly tend to a state of barbarism.

This insight was also significantly recognized by Ludwig von Mises:

All civilizations have up to now been based on private ownership of the means of production. In the past civilization and private property have been linked together. Those who maintain that economics is an experimental science and nevertheless recommend public control of the means of production, lamentably contradict themselves. If historical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. There is no experience to the effect that socialism could provide a standard of living as high as that provided by capitalism. (Human Action, pp. 264–65)

Thus, when a society rejects the right to private property, which is the bedrock of all of our freedoms, it is committing suicide. And yet that is what too many in our culture seemed primed to do.

A couple of years ago, when the darling of the left, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren seemed to be flirting with a presidential campaign, she wowed a convention of liberal bloggers and activists with 11 tenets of progressivism. They included calls for increased regulation of financial markets, the environment, the internet, and labor markets, a higher minimum wage, and subsidies for higher education, increased Social Security, Medicare, and pensions. Now, we surely have serious social ills that need addressing. However, they are consequences of government aggression against private property in all its variety. And what is the suggested solution? More of the same: increased regulation, more government spending, higher taxes on the productive, more monetary inflation. In short — the destruction of private property. And with that, the destruction of freedom and the selling of our American economic birthright for a mess of socialist pottage.

Nevertheless, we must not give in to despair as the enemies of freedom would have us do. We must, instead, proceed ever the more boldly against the evil. We must jump once more into the breach to defend our American tradition of liberty, property, and the free society. And this requires that we refuse to be duped by our politicians. Remember that the Psalmist says, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes” (Ps. 118:9). We need, instead, to hold their feet to the fire. We should not put up with their mere sloganeering about freedom. It is too easy for politicians and their intellectual supporters to champion “markets,” all the while finding reasons to curtail private property in their efforts to regulate the economy. They praise freedom and then expand the welfare-warfare state. Such empty rhetoric results in little except angry cynicism fostering an anti-capitalistic mentality that believes that the persistence of our economic problems is the result of a free market, instead of the consequences of the obstacles that hamper it.

We must also champion private property to ourselves and to our neighbors. Each of us needs to be willing to turn away from the Leviathan State and any goodies it promises us. And then we need to explain to our fellow man why prosperity and human flourishing is able to abound only in a free society undergirded by private property. Only a change in reigning social ideology can accomplish the sea change necessary for a free society to survive. Surveying our contemporary cultural horizon, the vista is clear and the battle lines are starkly drawn. What Patrick Henry said about himself over two centuries ago, is sadly true about our contemporary society, culture, and the American tradition “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

via http://ift.tt/29dT778 Tyler Durden

In an interview at the 2016 Mauldin Economics Strategic Investment Conference, legendary investor Jim Grant noted, “Cash simply enables one to retain wealth, with an eye towards being opportunistic.”

Raising cash and reducing your exposure to volatile financial markets in turbulent times obviously make sense. The key, of course, is finding a safe, profitable investment opportunity to deploy your cash.

The founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer believes gold may be that investment. In the interview, he went on to say, “Gold isn’t so much a hedge against Armageddon… as it is against monetary shenanigans.”

He also noted he expects gold to continue moving up: “When the economic establishment encourages the idea that gold is ‘good for nothing,’ it’s almost always a good time to buy [gold].”

via http://ift.tt/29hP1Ot Tyler Durden

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The mighty Shakespeare in his direst night sweats could not have conjured up the Clinton family in all their sharp angles and dark corners, but we can try to reconstruct the scene last week on Loretta Lynch’s plane out on the Phoenix airport tarmac. Former president Bill steps aboard:

Loretta:   What the fuck are you doing here?

 

Bill:            I just had to tell you what Charlotte did last week.

 

Loretta:   Who the fuck is Charlotte?

 

Bill:           Our grand-kid. She’s turning into a good little earner.

 

Loretta:   We can’t meet like this. We’re about to depose your wife.

 

Bill:           Charlotte gave a speech to the whole Citibank C-suite.

 

Loretta:   I don’t give a fuck. Get off my plane right now!

 

Bill:           Well, I don’t know if ‘speech’ is the right word. She gurgles nice.

 

Loretta:     I guess you didn’t hear me.

 

Bill:             She pulled in fifty grand for that. Of course it was a hundred percent remitted to the foundation. Well, bye now. (Exits plane).

I have a theory about the Clinton family dynamic. Bill does not want Hillary to win because he doesn’t want to live in the White House again. For sure he does not want to live with The Flying Reptile, but he especially doesn’t want to be on display in that fishbowl where folks pretty much can see what you’re up to 24/7. For one thing, “The Energizer” can’t discreetly come and go. But he certainly doesn’t want to concern himself as “First Husband” or “First Gentleman” (title TBD) with deciding which fabric to choose in replacing the East Room draperies. So Bill decided to fix things for sure with that innocent visit to the US Attorney General’s airplane to talk about grand-kids.

It seems to be working. If there was any question that Loretta Lynch could just sit on her hands about Hillary’s email investigation through the November election, it went up in a vapor last week. It also left FBI director on the hot seat because now he will have to either cough up a referral to Justice Department prosecutors, or he’ll have some ‘splainin to do in the heat of a presidential election campaign. If you thought Watergate was a ripe peach, this one is beginning to look like a stinking durian (Durio zibethinus).

Both The New York Times and the WashPo are spinning the Hillary email scandal as being about security protocols, which is to say they are deliberately putting too fine a point on the matter as a ruse to deflect from the deeper issue: namely, did Hillary as Secretary of State use her office to shovel money from sources in foreign lands into her family foundation? It sure looks that way if you match the contributions from foreign lands to the arms sale deals she approved as part of her official duties. In any case, whatever connection there might be between those arms deals and the foundation revenue, is there not under any circumstances some obvious conflict of interest (and legal liability) about a secretary of state doing personal business with foreign governments?

This matter is swelling like an abscess ready to burst just as the Hon (?) Debbie Wasserman Schultz whacks the gavel to open the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Bernie’s troops will be ready to rock and roll both inside and outside the convention, with perhaps some diversionary skirmishes by the Black Lives Matter cadres. Throw in another “Lone Wolf” massacre, say, at a cheese-steak stand and you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye.

Note that this convergence of bad karma will take place against the background of deteriorating events on the banking scene. The European banks in particular are melting away to nothing while European Union officials wring their hands in prayer. You can bet it’s going to affect all the global banks, daisy-chained as they are in counterparty obligations. Somewhere in a dark subterranean chamber, the magma of financial derivatives is getting ready to blow.

Happy Independence Day everybody! Who needs space aliens when we’ve got Hillary and Trump?

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July 4 – Gold $1350.40 up $13.70 – Silver $20.40 up 86
cents
(Last prices over prior Comex close)

Fireworks: Silver SOARS … Gold Roars!

“The gold
price manipulation scheme will go
down as the biggest financial market scandal in U.S.
history.”
— Bill Murphy, Chairman of the Gold Anti-
Trust Action Committee

 

Brad Hoppmann
Publisher, Uncommon Wisdom Daily

Simply click
this link for all the details.

GO
GATA!

Last night was something else and a sign of the times for
what will be standard fare for the precious metals over the
months ahead.

After the briefest of dips, silver popped a dime and then
began to steadily move up to take out $20 an ounce. Once
that level was breached, all heck broke loose. Silver began
a run higher rarely ever seen. Its price moved up and up and
then began trading EXACTLY like gold did the evening
following the Brexit vote, shooting up ten cents at a click.
Just as gold soared to only pennies less than a gain of $100
an ounce at that time, silver rose $1.50 over its prior
Comex close and blew through $21 to $21.13 in the process.

Excitement would be an understatement. Gold was acting
sluggish at the time, but then caught some fire, as silver
finally did briefly following that gold post Brexit run, by
rising to $1356. Both precious metals corrected, giving up
most of their gains, but then began to move right back up
again as the trading hours in London progressed. In a
relative blink silver was back to $20.50 with gold back
above $1350.

“Can’t tell the players without a scorecard,”
is an old sports expression we used as kids.

While watching the action last night in the silver price
arena was exhilarating, it probably is no surprise to
Café members in that it has all been laid out over
the past two weeks. Now that what has been discussed is
playing out almost as part of a script, it is time to really
pound the table about what the silver price is in the
process of doing, and that is a historic move towards $100
an ounce and probably at lightening speed. The lack of
comprehension and enthusiasm by the general public of what
is occurring is astounding.

Some retro MIDAS comments for focus purposes:

June 23 – Gold $1261.20 down $6.80 – Silver $17.35 up 4
cents

An emphasis in this column for some time now has been on
the “whacked out” silver price action. Never seen anything
like it over the past 40 years. And now, after all that
focus, the silver OI confirms that something “wacky”
(profound?) is indeed making itself felt in the silver
market … and that STRANGE is being reflected in the silver
open interest itself.

I was very fortunate in my early commodity trading days
to be a part of spotting situations such as what I think I
see developing in the silver market via the genius of some
big time market legends…

*Dan Ritchie, former CEO of Westinghouse Broadcasting who
turned down running the empire of the richest man in the
world at the time DK Ludvig; and turned down an offer from
Harvard to be their chancellor to take that same position at
Denver University. Dan made fortunes trading cattle, hogs,
pork bellies and soybeans by spotting the mega moves before
most anyone else.

*Ray Dalio, who has become the number one hedge fund
manager in the world. Ray’s acumen in spotting the big moves
began to take hold way back in late 1970’s and 1980’s.
Veteran Café members will recall his feeder
cattle/corn/cattle profit margin trade (and the reverse)
which always made 100% within a month (usually within a
week) every time we put it on.

*Frank Veneroso, who wrote The Gold Book, and was
instrumental to bringing GATA’s attention to The Gold Cartel
because of their secretive gold lending operations via the
central banks. In 1987 Frank realized the investment world
was failing to take into account all the copper demand
emanating from Asia. In 9 months the copper price went from
46 cents a pound to $1.46.

Will never forget the ah-ha moment in early May of 1987
with copper trading under 50 cents. There were NO
deliveries, which no one expected, and it was off to the
races. By the time most investors caught on, copper was over
75 cents per pound.

What each of them had in common was to spot what was
REALLY going on in a commodities market before most anyone
else. They were visionaries in that sense and that is how
they could spot coming MEGA moves WAY before the herd showed
up. They paid attention to details, when few others were,
which foretold what the big picture was going to look like
price-wise in the near future … and they made big bets with
their own money.

SO, based on the sort of market analysis they taught me
so long ago, it is time to jump up and down and suggest that
the historic move up in silver, which we are waiting for, is
finally in play. Predicting the exact moment when the silver
plug will be pulled is impossible. But, based on all the
unusual anecdotal happenings which seem to confirm each
other, the time bomb clock is ticking MUCH LOUDER. If this
is correct, the silver price explosion is not far off. Very
few in the investment world are prepared for the coming
fireworks…

***

How appropriate to have such fireworks really commence on
our July 4^th celebration day. There are much more
spectacular ones to light up the scoreboard as this year
progresses.

Ah, what fun to watch. Now for some commentary written
on Saturday in preparation for today…

On the open interest front the gold
“Preliminary” open interest numbers show a 23,749
contract increase to 644,984, which if even coming close in
the “Final” number, puts it only thousands of
contracts off of its all-time higher number around 650,000.
And this is with the lowly price of gold not even above
$1350. The silver open interest Preliminary number also
shows a hefty increase, up 4782 contracts to 216,311, which
means it too is just a tad below its recent all-time high.

The latest guesstimate OI numbers reveal a couple of
critical observations…

*How intent The Gold Cartel is to prevent the gold/silver
prices from going to where they want to go and how much
trouble they are having right now preventing them from doing
so.

*Their obvious growing desperation. As such, it strongly
suggests THEY are in a quickly developing process of
finally reaching that Tipping Point in which their
price suppression efforts are overrun. Dynamic demand forces
are overpowering their dwindling physical supply to stop the
inevitable.

Silver is worth pounding the table focus at the moment
because of the increasing odds the beginning of one of the
most unusual moves in market history is now (finally) in
play. For repeat emphasis purposes the deal (supposition on
my part) is this…

*The price of silver has been suppressed as a monetary
metal to enhance The Gold Cartel’s efforts of the gold price
for the many reasons discussed here for the last 17+ years.

*The ringleader behind the scene is the U.S. Government,
with their number one key agent over all this time: JP
Morgan, the acknowledged Fed’s bank. It has long been
discussed that JP Morgan took over Bear Stearn’s massive
silver short position when Bear blew up. My take on it all
is that the Bear position was at the behest of our
government, or a trading group acting as an agent for, or in
sync, with The Gold Cartel. Stunned by the Bear collapse,
THEY went into emergency mode, shifting that position to the
safest of hands, JP Morgan.

*JP Morgan has honchoed the short silver operation on
behalf of The Gold Cartel ever since and taken it into
higher gear with their MASSIVE selling of silver futures,
taking it to all-time high levels.

*Based on all what has been brought your way the past two
weeks in this commentary, the thought here has been that JPM
and The Gold Cartel have reached a stage when they are
beginning to operate on physical silver supply fumes.

The smart guys in our camp in line with the GATA type of
thinking/analysis, have not been able to figure out where
the physical silver supply has been coming from to meet
demand at such pitifully low price levels. However it was
done, that available supply may be quickly disappearing.

*There is a very good chance that some VERY big money
buyers have moved in to squeeze The Gold Cartel and make a
huge fortune by doing so … first by getting to all-time high
long positions in the futures market and then by buying up
the remaining available physical supply as best they can.

*If all of the above is the case, or close to it, then it
explains The Tipping Point price action we saw last week,

The technical silver chart picture supports what is very
likely to be a historic silver price move to the upside,
which at times trades in volatile price action higher rarely
ever seen before.

The daily chart shows the powerful outside day price
reversal to the upside immediately following the Brexit
surprise. Once silver was able to close above the neckline
of its prominent reverse head and shoulders formation at
$18,
it was ready to move…

However, the big picture real key was at $18.50, which
proved out on Friday … the reason being is that a move above
$18.50 meant the completion of a massive base formation,
with no short term minor resistance until the price rises
to a little above $21…

It is the monthly chart, which did not include Friday’s
dramatic surge, which sets up what is coming for the price
via a technical picture. Important technical resistance
doesn’t surface until $25 and then $35 an ounce. But the
most exciting aspect of reviewing this chart is that IF the
simple fundamental analysis put forth here is correct, it
shows how fast the price of silver can move up when it is a
“go.”

My bet is that silver is so explosive that it will move
up faster than it did in late 2010/early 2011 to reach $50.
The third time being the charm (the first in 1980), silver
will take out $50 this time and shoot for $100…

***

And here we are two days later…

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