How (& Why) JPMorgan & COMEXShould Be Sued For Precious Metals Manipulation

Submitted by Ted Butler via Gold Silver Worlds blog,

I’ve had some recent conversations with attorneys who were considering class-action lawsuits regarding a gold price manipulation stemming from reports about the London Gold Fix. I told them that while there is no doubt that gold and, particularly, silver are manipulated in price, I didn’t see how the manipulation stemmed from the London Fix. I wished them well and hoped that they may prevail (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), because you never know – if the lawyers dig deep enough they might find the real source of the gold and silver manipulation, namely, the COMEX (owned by the CME Group) and JPMorgan.

So I thought it might be constructive to lay out what I thought a successful lawsuit might look like, although I’m speaking as a precious metals analyst and not as a lawyer. I’ll try to put the whole thing into proper perspective, including the premise and scope of the manipulation as well as the parties involved.

The first thing I should mention is how unprecedented it is that I’m writing this in the first place. Here I am, directly and consistently accusing two of the world’s most important financial institutions of market manipulation (making sure I send each all my accusations) and I have received no complaint from either. I don’t think that has ever occurred previously. Now I am taking it one step further; presenting a guide for how and why JPMorgan and the CME should be sued for their manipulation of gold and silver (and copper, too).

Let me explain why I am doing this. I am still certain that the coming physical silver shortage will end the price manipulation, but I see nothing wrong with trying to hasten that day. Over the past quarter century, I petitioned the regulators incessantly to end the manipulation, but the CFTC refused to do so. Far from regretting my past efforts, I feel it has greatly advanced and legitimized the allegations of manipulation. After 25 years, however, one must recognize that the horse being beaten is dead and that the CFTC will never act.

So, instead of simply waiting for the silver shortage to end the manipulation, I thought it advisable to try a new approach that was completely compatible with the real silver story to date. Since I (we) couldn’t get the CFTC to do its job and end the manipulation; why not try a different approach? The truth is that I have long believed that the right civil lawsuit stood a good chance at ending the manipulation before a silver shortage hit. I had high hopes initially that the class-action suit that was filed against JPMorgan for manipulating the price of silver a few years ago might succeed; but it seemed to drift off track and I wasn’t particularly surprised that it was ultimately dismissed. My intent should be clear – I want to see the next lawsuit succeed.

The stakes in a COMEX silver/gold/copper manipulation lawsuit are staggering. Not only is market manipulation the most serious market crime possible, the markets that have been manipulated and the number of those injured are enormous. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that any finding that JPMorgan and the COMEX did manipulate prices as I contend could very well result in the highest damage awards in history. That’s no small thing considering the tens of billions of dollars that JPMorgan has coughed up recently for infractions in just about every line of their business.

My point is that no legal case could be potentially more lucrative or attention getting than this one. Certainly, this also includes the pitfall that JPMorgan and the CME are legal powerhouses who are not likely to roll over easily. Because the silver manipulation has lasted so long and damaged so many, the stakes away from any monetary finding are staggering. It is no real stretch to suggest, with or without eventual criminal findings, the reputational and regulatory repercussions (from other countries) could threaten the existence of each institution in current form (or at least management).

What is the theory or premise of the legal case for market manipulation against JPMorgan and the CME? The COMEX has evolved into a trading structure that has allowed speculators to control and dictate the price of world commodities, like gold, silver and copper, with no input from the world’s real producers, consumers and investors in these metals. The CME has allowed and encouraged this development for the sole purpose of increasing trading fee income. Not only do the world’s real metal producers, consumers and investors have no effective input into the price discovery process on the COMEX; because the COMEX is the leading metals price setter in the world, real producers, consumers and investors are forced to accept prices that are dictated to them by speculators on the exchange.

Because so few of the world’s real producers, consumers and investors deal on the COMEX, the exchange has developed into a “bucket shop” or a private betting parlor exclusively comprised of speculators. Again, this is an intentional development as much more trading volume is generated by speculative High Frequency Trading (HFT) than by legitimate hedgers (like miners) transferring risk to speculators. Legitimate hedgers don’t day trade. It is no exaggeration to say that the COMEX has been captured by speculators and abandoned by legitimate hedgers.

In turn, JPMorgan has developed into the “King Rat” in the speculative bucket shop by virtue of its consistent market corners in COMEX gold, silver and copper futures. The COMEX market structure was already rotten when JPMorgan blasted onto the scene in March 2008 when the bank acquired Bear Stearns’ short market corners in gold and silver. Incredibly, the regulators engineered the Bear Stearns rescue, granting to JPMorgan a listed market control in addition to the OTC market share control that JPM held for years. Talk about a powerful manipulative combo – JPMorgan and the COMEX.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of my premise for a legal case against the CME and JPMorgan for market manipulation is that it is based exclusively on public data available from the CFTC in the form of the agency’s weekly Commitments of Traders (COT) and monthly Bank Participation Reports. There is additional proof of JPM’s controlling market share in the Treasury Department’s OCC OTC Derivatives Report (please see my public comment to the Federal Reserve at the end of this piece). The CFTC data may seem somewhat complex at first, but there can be little question as to its general accuracy and government pedigree. In fact, the data is compiled from exchange information transmitted to the CFTC, so the CME can’t deny its accuracy. There’s no he said/she said or ambiguity in these data series. In short, it is type of data that will hold up in a court of law.

According to the CFTC’s data, there are two primary groups of speculators setting prices on the COMEX. One group are the technical funds, traders that buy and sell strictly on price movement. Also referred to as trend followers and momentum traders, the technical funds buy and continue to buy futures contracts as prices climb; and sell and continue to sell, including short sales, as prices fall until prices subsequently reverse. These traders are included in the Managed Money category of the disaggregated version of the COT report, primarily because they are investment funds trading on behalf of outside investors, also known as registered Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA’s).

One thing that can be said for certain about these technical funds is that they are pure speculators, as there is no mining company or user of metal in this category by CFTC and CME definition. By itself, there is nothing wrong with that as regulated futures exchanges need speculators to take the other side of the transaction when legitimate hedgers wish to lay off price risk in the normal course of their underlying business. This is the economic justification for why congress had authorized futures trading originally. The problem is that there are few, if any, legitimate hedgers involved on the COMEX nowadays; only other speculators that are falsely categorized as legitimate producers and consumers.

The second group of speculators are primarily categorized as commercials, mostly in the Producer/Merchant/Processor/User category, but also in the Swap Dealers category. Since these terms are quite specific and strongly suggest that only legitimate hedgers are included, most people automatically assume the traders in these commercial categories are just that – hedgers. But that is not the case, as most of the traders in these two categories are banks, led by JPMorgan, pretending to be hedging, but which are, in reality, trading on a proprietary basis strictly for profit. Simply put, JPMorgan and other collusive COMEX traders are just pretending to be commercially engaged in COMEX trading in gold, silver and copper when, in reality, they are nothing more than hedge funds in drag.

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The lynchpin of any legal case against JPMorgan and the CME revolves around whether the traders in the commercial categories of the COT report are, in fact, hedging or simply speculating, as are the technical funds. The CME and JPMorgan will go to the ends of the earth to show that the commercials are hedging, not speculating and will hide behind the twin concepts that the commercials are either trading on behalf of clients or are actively involved in market making and are thereby providing much needed liquidity. It will sound legitimate if you believe in make believe stories instead of facts.

JPMorgan has a history of proclaiming it is hedging when confronted with an unnecessarily large speculative position. The first thing the bank declared when the London Whale debacle surfaced was that it was part of a hedge against the bank’s portfolio. But that was openly scoffed at and quickly discarded as an excuse. JPM is likely to trot out the hedging or market making justification, but any competent attorney will blow that away. No one (openly or legitimately) granted JPMorgan the right to maintain market corners in COMEX gold and silver.

In December 2012, JPMorgan held market shares on the short side of COMEX gold and silver that amounted to 20% and 35% of the net open interest in each market respectively. It is not possible that a reasonable person would not consider those market shares in an active regulated futures market to constitute market corners. After rigging prices lower by historical amounts in 2013, JPMorgan flipped its short market corner in COMEX gold to a long market corner of as much as 25% and reduced its short market corner in COMEX silver to under 15% from 35%, pocketing more than $3 billion in illicit profits. I’d like to see JPMorgan explain some connection to hedging with regards to its position change.

Undoubtedly, JPMorgan will claim it was “making markets” to explain away its huge position shifts in COMEX gold and silver (and copper), proclaiming it was always a buyer on the downside and a seller on the upside of prices. True enough, but far from being the market hero it will pretend to be, a closer examination will reveal something else entirely. The purpose of market making is to provide market liquidity and price stability. Legitimate traders are given some leeway from regulations limiting speculative positions and market shares from growing too large in order to enhance liquidity and price stability which benefits everyone.

But the record clearly indicates that JPMorgan, in cahoots with the CME, has used its dominant market shares in COMEX gold, silver and copper to instead engage in an evil form of market making whose intent is to constrict liquidity and create disorderly pricing. What record indicates that? The price record. Twice in 2011, the price of silver fell more than 30% ($15) in a matter of days and last year gold fell $200 and silver by $5 in two days. These price declines were unprecedented, had no legitimate supply/demand explanation and the regulators, including the CME did or said anything.

For sure, JPMorgan was a buyer on those deliberate price smashes and every other COMEX gold, silver and copper price smash for the past six years, but how does that make them a hero? This crooked bank and the CME and others arranged every COMEX price smash in order to create chaos, drain liquidity and disrupt pricing; the exact opposite of what legitimate market making is supposed to be. JPMorgan and the CME violated public trust in our markets as proven by the price record. For that, they should be made to pay dearly.

The key question is how did (and does) JPMorgan and the CME pull this off repeatedly? It all has to do with market mechanics, of which JPM and the CME are absolute masters. Since there are, essentially, two separate and competing speculative groups setting prices on the COMEX, it comes down one group scamming the other. (I know this is old hat to subscribers, but please remember I’m writing this to convince the right attorney to take on these crooks). So how does JPM get positioned to profit from a price smash (or price rise) and then rig prices to go in their direction? Basically, by scamming the technical funds by getting those funds to do what is profitable for JPMorgan and other collusive commercial traders and including the CME in the form of extraordinarily large trading volume.

How the heck does JPMorgan and the CME pull that off? They can pull it off because they know how the technical funds operate and because JPM and the CME also know how to cause the funds to buy and sell when JPM wants them to buy and sell. Since the technical funds only buy as prices are rising and only sell as prices are falling, particularly when prices penetrate key moving averages, all JPMorgan and the other collusive commercials have to do is occasionally set prices above and below those key moving averages. And thanks to an array of dirty trading tricks developed over the past 30 years, the most recent being HFT, JPMorgan can set short term prices wherever it chooses, whenever it desires.

In a very real sense, JPMorgan and other collusive COMEX commercials have become the puppet masters controlling the technical funds’ movements. It is an exquisite racket – JPMorgan gets the technical funds to buy or sell in order to take the other side of the transaction as counterparties. This can be seen in almost every price move in COMEX gold, silver and copper over the years. Let me try to present the data in graphic form, courtesy of some charts by my Aussie friend, Nick Laird of sharelynx.com.

Depicted below are the three main metals of the COMEX, gold, silver and copper and the net positions of the traders in the managed money category – the technical funds over the past couple of years. If you plot when the technical funds buy or sell, there is almost a 100% correlation to price. In other words, when the technical funds buy, prices for gold, silver and copper rise and when the technical funds sell, prices fall. The correlation is almost uncanny, to the point where some pundits have recently claimed that it is the technical funds, not the commercials, which are manipulating prices. But those claims melt away once one considers the nature of this bucket shop fraud.

GOLD COT March2014 physical market

Silver COT March2014 physical market

Copper COT March2014 physical market

Sure, the technical funds move prices when they buy and sell, but that’s just what JPMorgan and the CME count on. If the technical funds weren’t mechanical and predictable there would be no scam possible. It is only because the technical funds can be counted on to do the same thing repetitively that allows JPMorgan and other collusive commercials to take counterparty positions. If the technical funds weren’t predictable, JPMorgan would never have made $3 billion+ last year in COMEX gold and silver and been able to flip a short market corner in COMEX gold to a long market corner. Or just ask yourself – why would the technical funds collude to harm themselves?

I also feel it is significant that I can now include copper in the JPMorgan/CME illicit scheme to manipulate. This broadens the manipulation in a systemically important way. If ever there was a case for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), this must be it.

In one recent attorney conversation, I was asked to provide the name of a technical fund that was duped as I described and would like to seek legal redress. If I could have, I would have, but I don’t think that’s possible. It’s another reason I refer to this COMEX manipulation as almost the perfect crime. In this case, any technical fund would not likely seek redress as a victim (certainly not as the initiator of legal action) because to do so would involve having to admit being the mark at a crooked poker game, something not conducive to attracting additional investor funds. In fact, it would invalidate a technical fund’s core business and be tantamount to simply quitting a business that may have been in existence for decades. It just isn’t going to happen.

But that hardly matters because the nature of market manipulation means there are untold numbers of other victims, particularly considering the scope of the gold, silver and copper markets. Whereas the technical funds were both the enablers and sometimes victims of the scam I described above, there are many thousands of legitimate victims (including me and many of you) who did nothing to enable the scam.

I dare say that there are more potential victims of the JPMorgan/COMEX gold, silver and copper manipulations than in just about any previous financial fraud. Let’s face it, there is hardly a mining company or investor in gold and silver or mining company shares that hasn’t been damaged over the past six years to some extent. That’s when JPMorgan came to dominate COMEX trading. If a legitimate class-action lawsuit was initiated, I believe potential litigants would emerge in massive numbers. Then again, there’s only one way to find out for sure and that’s to have such a case filed.

On a number of occasions in the past, when there was still some slim hope that the CFTC might address the ongoing silver manipulation, I publicly requested that you should submit public comments on issues related to position limits. By my count, upwards of 10,000 comments were submitted collectively, for which I offered my profuse thanks. Unfortunately, because the agency appeared to be compromised on the issue, no real good came from it through no fault of our own. Therefore, I would hardly ask anyone to do that again.

But I was reminded by a subscriber that I should submit a comment in regard to the Federal Reserve’s open public comment period seeking input on whether banks should be allowed to deal in physical commodities and derivatives on such commodities. I had mentioned in a previous article that I was undecided whether to do so or not. The subscriber convinced me that it was the right thing to do in order to go on the record, to which I had to agree. I understand the comment period has been extended to April 14, for anyone wishing to submit comments for the record. There have been less than 80 comments posted thru today and mine are near the bottom

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Gold & Silver Market Manipulation: Fed Open Comment March 2014


    



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Isn’t it Ironic: Government Surveillance Version (with Remy)

“Isn’t it Ironic: Government Surveillance Version (with
Remy),” written and performed by Remy. Video and
animation by Meredith Bragg. Music performed, produced, recorded,
mixed and mastered by Ben Karlstrom. About 2 mins.

Original releasev date was March 20,2014 and original writeup is
below.

Remy updates the Alanis Morissette
hit
 with a certain senior
senator from California
 in mind. 

Written and performed by Remy. Video and
animation by Meredith Bragg. Music performed, produced, recorded,
mixed and mastered by Ben Karlstrom.

Approximately 2 minutes. 

Lyrics:
A Senator lady
Got the news one day
The country’s being spied on
by
the NSA


So she went out defending

on each TV set
but when she found out she’d been snooped on

she got all upset

And isn’t it ironic?
I mean, don’t you think?

It’s like you’re at Chris
Brown’s
and there’s punch in the fridge

or if The
Bachelor 
passed a geography quiz

Learning Ted
Kennedy
happened to be good at bridge
.
And who would have thought?
It figures.

Senator, this may surprise you
and the irony bites
but Congresspeople ain’t the only ones
with 4th
Amendment rights

It’s like a minimalist

who does their laundry with All
or if Woody
Allen liked to watch
Kids in the Hall

it’s like FDR
got locked in a Honda Accord

a cheap healthcare
plan

that you just can’t afford

If Oscar
Pistorius
really hated The Doors

and who would have thought?
It figures.

I heard the
government
is sneaking up on you
.
Life has a funny, funny way
of calling you out
calling you out.

Scroll down for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason
TV’s YouTube
Channel
 to receive automatic notification when new
material goes live.

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via IFTTT

China Takes Sides? Sues Ukraine For $3bn Loan Repayment

It is widely known that Russia is owed billions by Ukraine for already-delivered gas (as we noted earlier, leaving Gazprom among the most powerful players in this game). It is less widely know that Russia also hold $3b of UK law bonds which, as we explained in detail here, are callable upon certain covenants that any IMF (or US) loan bailout will trigger. Russia has ‘quasi’ promised not to call those loans. It is, until now, hardly known at all (it would seem) that China is also owed $3bn, it claims, for loans made for future grain delivery to China. It would seem clear from this action on which side of the ‘sanctions’ fence China is sitting.

 

Via RBC Ukraine (Google Translate),

In 2012, The State Food and Grain Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of China agreed to provide Ukrainian corporation loan of $ 3 billion, which was planned to be on the spot and forward purchases of grain for future delivery to China.

 

 

Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Igor Schweich confirmed that China has filed a lawsuit against Ukraine in a London court for the return of a loan of $3 billion.

The Ukraine minister disagrees with China’s case:

filed false information that there are no claims to us from China. According to the contract have different interpretations, different interpretations, which led to the treatment of the Chinese side in court Gaft who works in London. Registered dispute between the parties exists,” – said Minister told reporters.

 

According to him, the parties agreed to take the following week a representative of the Chinese corporation for the possibility of peaceful settlement of the dispute.

 

“We, for our part, will do their steps to ensure that the other party or retract its announcement, or we found another way to a peaceful settlement,” – he said. According to Schweich, a meeting will be held on March 26.

Ukraine appears to claim that these loans were made by the previous administration

The Minister added that the main problem lies in the fact that some leaders of PJSC “State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine” incorrect information. “These people are now removed during the protest,” – said Schweich, noting that China “is relevant to understand.”

 

In February 2014. the current Prime Minister of Ukraine Yatsenyuk said that “location $ 3 billion is not found.”

While China has been relatively quiet in the background – though abstaining from the UN vote waqs a clear signal of relative support for Russia – this is a meaningful step in the direction of pressure against the West, as yet again, any bailout funds would flow straight to either Russia (gas bill sor callable bonds) or China (agriculture loans).


    



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Guest Post: Oil Limits And The Economy – One Story; Not Two

Submitted by Gail Tverberg of Our Finite World blog,

The two big stories of our day are:

(1) Our economic problems: The inability of economies to grow as rapidly as they would like, add as many jobs as they would like, and raise the standards of living of citizens as much as they would like. Associated with this slow economic growth is a continued need for ultra-low interest rates to keep economies of the developed world from slipping back into recession.

 

(2) Our oil related-problems: One part of the story relates to too little, so-called “peak oil,” and the need for substitutes for oil. Another part of the story relates to too much carbon released by burning fossil fuels, including oil, leading to climate change.

While the press treats these issues as separate stories, they are in fact very closely connected, related to the fact that we are reaching limits in many different directions simultaneously. The economy is the coordinating system that ties together all available resources, as well as the users of these resources. It does this almost magically, by figuring out what prices are needed to keep the system in balance—how much materials of which types are needed, given what consumers can afford to pay.

The catch is that the economic system is not infinitely flexible. It needs to grow, to have enough funds to (sort of) pay back debt with interest and to make good on all the promises that have been made, such as Social Security.

Energy use is very closely tied to economic growth. When energy consumption becomes slow-growing (or high-priced—which  is closely tied to slow-growing), it pulls back on economic growth. Job growth becomes more difficult, and governments find it difficult to get enough funding through tax revenue. This is the situation we have been experiencing for the last several years.

We might think that governments would be aware of these issues and would alert their populations to them.  But governments either don’t understand these issues, or only partially understand them and are frightened by the prospect of what is happening. The purpose of my writing is to try to explain what is happening in terms that people who are used to reading the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times can understand.

I am not an economist, so I can’t speak to the question of what economists are saying. I do know that what economists say tends to change from time to time and from researcher to researcher. For example, in 2004, the International Energy Agency prepared an analysis with the collaboration of the OECD Economics Department and with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund Research Department (Full Report, Summary only). That report said, “.  . . a sustained $10 per barrel increase in oil prices from $25 to $35 would result in the OECD as a whole losing 0.4% of GDP in the first and second year of higher prices. Inflation would rise by half a percentage point and unemployment would also increase.” This finding is consistent with the issues I am concerned about, but I expect that not all economists would agree with it. Oil prices are now around $100 per barrel, not $35 per barrel.

The Tie of Oil and Other Forms of Energy to the Economy

Oil and other forms of energy are used to power the economy. Historically, rises and falls in the use of oil and other types of energy have tended to parallel GDP growth (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Growth in world GDP, compared to growth in world of oil consumption and energy consumption, based on 3 year averages. Data from BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy and USDA compilation of World Real GDP.

Figure 1. Growth in world GDP, compared to growth in world of oil consumption and energy consumption, based on 3 year averages. Data from BP 2013 Statistical Review of World Energy and USDA compilation of World Real GDP.

There is disagreement as to which is cause and which is effect—does GDP growth lead to more oil and energy demand, or does the availability of cheap oil and other types of energy power the economy? In my view, the causality goes both ways. Oil and other types of energy are needed for economic growth. But if people cannot afford oil or other types of energy products, typically because they don’t have jobs, then energy use will drop. And if oil prices drop too low, we will be in real trouble because oil production will stop.

How Oil Limits Work

People tend to think of limits as working in the same manner as having a box with a dozen eggs. Once the last egg is gone, we are out of luck. Or a creek dries up from lack of rainfall. The water is no longer available, so we have lost our water source.

With the benefit of the economy, though, limits are more complicated than this. If we live in today’s economy, we can purchase another box of eggs if we run short of eggs, assuming markets provide eggs at a price we can afford. If the creek runs dry, we can figure out a different approach to getting water, such as buying bottled water or hiring a tanker to get water from a source at a distance and bringing it to where it is needed.

Oil limits are a kind of limit we often hear concerns about. Being able to drill oil wells at all and refine the oil into products of many kinds requires a complex economy, one that can educate engineers working in oil extraction and can build paved roads, pipelines, and refineries. The economy needs to be able to produce high tech equipment using raw materials from around the world. Thus, there must be an operating financial system that allows buyers at one end of the globe to purchase materials from the other end of the globe, and sellers to have the confidence that they will be paid for contracted products.

If a company wants to extract oil, it can almost always figure out places where this theoretically can be done. If a company can gather together all of the things it needs—trained workers; enough high tech extraction equipment of the right type; enough pollution-fighting equipment, to prevent oil spills and spills of radioactive water; and leases on land where drilling is to done, then, in theory, oil can be extracted.

In fact, the big issue is whether the extraction can be done in a sufficiently cost-effective manner that the whole economic system can be supported. Even if the cost of extraction “looks” fairly cheap, such as in Iraq, or in some of the older installations elsewhere in the Middle East, the vast majority of the revenue that is generated from oil extraction (often as much as 90%) goes to support the government of the country where the oil is extracted (Rogers, 2014). This revenue is needed for many purposes: desalination plants to provide water for the people; food subsidies, especially when oil prices are high because food prices will tend to be high as well; new ports and other infrastructure; and revenue to provide jobs and programs to pacify the people so that the government will not be overtaken by revolt.

A major issue at this point is the fact that most of the easy-to-extract oil is already under development, so companies that want to develop new projects need to move on to locations that are more difficult and expensive to extract (Bloomberg, 2007). According to oil industry consultant Steven Kopits, the cost of one major category of oil production expenses increased by an average of 10.9% per year between 1999 and 2013. In the period between 1985 and 1999, these same expenses increased by 0.9% per year (Kopits, 2014) (Tverberg, 2014).

When production costs are higher, someone loses out. It is as if the economy is becoming less and less efficient. It takes more people, more energy products, and more equipment to produce the same amount of oil. This leaves fewer people and less energy products to produce the goods and services that people really want, putting a squeeze on the economy. The economy tends to grow less quickly because part of the goods and services available are being channeled into less productive operations.

The situation of the economy becoming less and less efficient at producing oil is called diminishing returns. A similar problem exists with fresh water in many parts of the world. We can extract more fresh water, but it takes deeper wells. Or we have to ship in water from a distance, using a pipeline or trucks. Or we need to use desalination. Water is still available but at a higher per-gallon price.

Diminishing Returns is Like a Treadmill that Runs Faster and Faster

There are many ways we can reach diminishing returns. One easy-to-illustrate example relates to mining metals. We usually extract the cheapest-to-extract ores first. An important cost consideration is how much waste material is mixed in with the metal we really want–this determines the ore “grade.” As we are gradually forced to move from high-grade ores to lower-grade ores, the amount of waste material grows slowly at first, then dramatically increases (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Waste product to produce 100 units of metal

Figure 2. Waste product to produce 100 units of metal

We know that this kind of effect is happening right now. For example, the SRSrocco Report indicates that between 2005 and 2012, diesel consumption per ounce of refined gold has doubled from 12.7 gallons per ounce to 25.8 gallons per ounce, based on the indications of the top five companies. Such a pattern suggests that if we want to extract more gold, the price of gold will need to rise.

The economy is affected by all of the types of diminishing returns that are taking place (oil, fresh water, several kinds of metals, and others). Even attempting to substitute “renewables” for nuclear and fossil fuels electricity production acts as a type of diminishing returns, if such substitution raises the cost of electricity production, as it seems to in Germany and Spain.

If the total extent of diminishing returns is not very great, increased efficiency and substitution can act as workarounds. But if the combined effect becomes too great, diminishing returns acts as a drag on the economy.

Oil Increases are Already Higher than the Economy Can Comfortably Absorb

For oil, we can estimate the historical impact of increased efficiency and substitution by looking at the historical relationship between growth in GDP and growth in oil consumption. Based on the worldwide data underlying Figure 1, this has averaged 2.0% to 2.4% per year since 1970, depending on the period studied. Occasional years have exceeded 3%.

The problem in recent years is that increases in the cost of oil production have been much higher than 2% to 3%. As mentioned previously, a major portion of oil extraction costs seem to be increasing at 10.9% per year. To make this comparable to inflation adjusted GDP increases, the 10.9% increase needs to be adjusted (1) to take out the portion related to “overall inflation” and (2) to adjust for likely lower inflation on the portion of oil production costs not included in Kopits’ calculation. Even if this is done, total oil extraction costs are probably still increasing by about 5% or 6% per year—higher than we have historically been able to make up.

According to Kopits, we are already reaching a point where oil limits are constraining OECD GDP growth by 1% to 2% per year (Kopits, 2014) (Tverberg, 2014). Efficiency gains aren’t happening fast enough to allow GDP to grow at the desired rate.

A major concern is that the treadmill of rising costs will speed up further in the future. If it is hard to keep up now, it will be even harder in the future. Also, the economy “adds together” the adverse effects of diminishing returns from many different sources—-higher electricity cost of production, higher metal cost of production, and the higher cost of oil production. The economy has to increasingly struggle because wages don’t rise to handle all of these increased costs.

As one might guess, when economies hit diminishing returns on resources that are important to the economy, the results aren’t very good. According to Joseph Tainter (1990), many of these economies have collapsed.

Why Haven’t Governments Told Us About these Difficulties?

The story outlined above is not an easy story to understand. It is possible that governments don’t fully understand today’s problems. It is easy to focus on one part of the story such as, “Shale oil extraction is rising in response to higher oil prices,” and miss the important rest of the story—the economy cannot really withstand high oil (and water and electricity and metals) prices. The economy tends to contract in response to a need to use so many resources in increasingly unproductive ways. We associate this contraction with recession.

We have many researchers looking at these issues. Unfortunately, most of these researchers are focused on one small portion of the story. Without understanding the full picture, it is easy to draw invalid conclusions. For example, it is easy to get the idea that we have more time for substitution than we really have. Financial systems are fragile. The world financial system almost failed in 2008, after oil prices spiked. We are still in very worrisome territory, with many countries continuing a policy of Quantitative Easing and ultra low interest rates. We may have only a few months or a year or two left for substitution, not 40 or 50 years, as some seem to assume.

Of course, if governments do understand the worrisome nature of our current situation, they may not want to say anything. It could make the situation worse, if citizens start a “run on the banks.”

The other side of the issue is that if governments and citizens don’t understand the full story, they may inadvertently do things that will make the situation worse. They certainly won’t be looking long and hard at what collapse might look like in the current context and what can be done to mitigate its impacts.


    



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Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian on Internet Freedom, Plus Independents Rerun Open Thread for Episode w/ Belle Knox, Greg Gutfeld, Julie Borowski & Greg Lukianoff!

At 7 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. PT the Wednesday episode of The
Independents
will re-air on Fox Business Network. That was
the
Red Meat Wednesday
show with Greg Gutfeld talking about his new
book
Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You
,
18-year-old porn
actress
and Duke freshman
Belle Knox
discussing self-ownership and libertarianism,
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President Greg Lukianoff commenting on
the UC Santa Barbara Feminist Studies professor
assaulting a pro-life teenager
, and beloved Internet
libertarian Julie
Borowski
talking about everything from Rand Paul to Joe Biden
to civilizational collapse.

While you gear up for some hot Saturday-night rerun
comments-thread action, here’s a clip from Monday’s boozy
after-show, starring Reddit co-founder,
serial entrepreneur
, and Internet freedom activist Alex Ohanian, author of the new
book
Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made,
Not Managed
. Also on board is Demos Senior Fellow and
proud statist (I’m serious!) Rich Benjamin:

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Puerto Rico Bonds Tumble On Possible Hedge Fund Pump-And-Dump Probe

In what many thought was a miracle of modern money-printing-driven yield-chasing, Puerto Rico managed to get $3.5 billion of bonds off last week with no problem (albeit at a 8.73% yield). The issue (while perhaps not as surprising as the low yield issues of Uganda we have reflected on previously) raised some eyebrows and in the trading since its release, FINRA noticed something concerning.  The bonds, as Bloomberg reports, are supposed to ‘minimum denomination $100,000’ blocks and yet 75 trades this week have been for no more than $25,000 violating regulations which deem these for “institutional purchasers” and strongly suggesting the heavy hedge fund demand was nothing more than a pump-and-dump scheme to unsophisticated retail investors. PR bonds have plunged from par to $92 this week.

  • *PUERTO RICO SOLD $3.5 BLN OF GENERAL-OBLIGATION DEBT MARCH 11
  • *FINRA SAYS IT’S EXAMINING TRADING IN NEW PUERTO RICO BONDS

 

 

 

Puerto Rico borrowed $3.5 billion at 8.73% yield maturing in 2035 – funding itself through June 2015 and staving off imminent default risk with the biggest ever high-yield muni offering! As Bloomberg notes,

Hedge funds made up the majority of buyers in the tax-exempt deal, according to David Chafey, chairman of the island’s Government Development Bank.

 

Sale documents stipulate that “the bonds shall be issued in the minimum denomination of $100,000 and any integral multiple of $5,000 in excess thereof,” unless one of the three largest rating companies raise Puerto Rico to investment grade.

However, once the bonds were free to trade March 11, things changed…

Since then, they changed hands in at least 75 transactions less than $100,000, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bonds’ highest price, 100 cents on the dollar, was for a $25,000 trade at 10:47 a.m. in New York on March 12.

This is a problem that FINRA is looking into…

Trades below the minimum amount for investors that don’t already own at least $100,000 of the debt violate the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s Rule G-15 subsection F, said Martha Haines.

 

The rule Haines referenced states that brokers and dealers can’t execute a trade of a municipal security that’s below the minimum denomination of the issue, according to the MSRB’s website.

 

“These are intended for institutional purchasers, or at least for people that can afford the risk by making it a minimum denomination of $100,000,” said Haines, who teaches municipal finance at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington.

A glance at the chart shows both the illiquidity in the market (huge bid-offers) and the major drop on Friday as FINRA unveiled its probe (suggesting those wanting to get rid – hoping to find greater fools – dumped them fast).

However,

Given the commonwealth’s challenges, the debt should be held by investors who are aware of the possibility of default, said Sean Carney, a municipal strategist for New York-based BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager.

 

“It’s irresponsible,” Carney said about trades below $100,000. “It’s not what the deal was meant to do — to keep the risk with those who understand it.” 

Of course, this could be merely splitting across accounts (or smal lupsizing from already $100,000 accounts) and all be a big misunderstanding… you decide which is more likely.


    



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Rick Santelli & Jim Grant On Hazlitt’s Timeless Wisdom

Submitted by Doug French via the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada,

CNBC’s Rick Santelli used his “Santelli Exchange” segment on March 14th to highlight the wisdom of Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson written in 1946.

The financial network’s tea party rabble rouser and sparring partner to economist Steve Liesman said, Warren Buffett had talked that morning about reading Timothy Geithner’s new book Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crisis and the Oracle of Omaha said maybe the government saved the world back in 2008.

Santelli highlighted chapter six from Hazlitt’s great work where he wrote that if government makes loans, that private lenders won’t make, to entities that can’t pay back, economic signals get destroyed, and chaos ensues. Hazlitt also emphasized that all credit is debt.

Another Hazlitt fan, Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, delivered the Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture in Auburn, Alabama less than a week after Santelli’s comments.  Grant said, “I can’t imagine what the world would be like without Economics In One Lesson.”

Full Jim Grant presentation below

 

The  very witty Grant spoke in a humbled tone of being asked to provide the Hazlitt lecture at the Mises Institute, comparing it to a baseball journalist being asked to speak in Cooperstown.   Grant’s hero was one of the few giants in financial journalism where, Grants said, “the pinnacle, is still at sea level.”

At the young age of 22 Hazlitt figured out the future involves too many factors for anyone to predict, not to mention just knowing what the relevant factors are. Grant admitted it took him 40 years in the business to finally realize he couldn’t understand the future.

Unfortunately the folks working at the Eccles Building have not come to this realization. The PhDs believe they can depreciate the currency at the proper rate to cause everyone gainful employment and live happily ever after.

Hazlitt was on the job during a depression that no one ever mentions—the 1920-21 downturn. Christine Romer called the episode, “a bump in the road.” Grant disagrees. While Romer may use analytics to make her case, he mentions the song that came out in 1921, “Ain’t We Got Fun.” After reciting a few lines, Grant told the audience, “They don’t write songs about recessions. It was a depression.”

Prices plunged in 1920-21, but the Fed, having just been created a few years before was “not quite out of short pants.” Lord Keynes had not written The General Theory and there were no Bernankes or Yellens running the central bank. In response to deflation, the Fed raised interest rates.

Grant looked into the camera and asked, “How did we ever recover, Dr. Krugman? I know you’re watching.”

Of course no one has heard of this depression because it was over so quickly and they certainly don’t talk about it at the Fed’s monthly meetings. The government did not enable capitalism’s losers with low rates and bailouts. Before they knew it the economy was back on track. Murray Rothbard said the only way to treat depression is with laissez faire. “This experience would seem to prove Rothbard right,” Grant said.

The financial historian and wordsmith emphasized that it was not just crops and commodities that fell in price, but also stocks. Coca-Cola traded at just 1.7 times earnings and yielded 5 percent. Radio Company of America shares traded at one times earnings. At the time, the tender new Fed was not yet in the securities boosting business as it is today, where “a higher stock market is part of public policy.”

Like Santelli, Grant mentioned 1946 and a couple of Hazlitt columns that “could have been written yesterday.”    “Economic experts see deflation as the problem,” cracked Hazlitt snidely in one piece while titling another, “The Fetish of Low Interest Rates.” He explained that lowering rates by government fiat requires more money (inflation).

Today’s investors don’t realize artificially low rates make stocks artificially high in price as future earnings are capitalized at a lower than natural discount rate to create present values. The Fed’s stomping on rates has distorted this calculus making the market “a house of mirrors.” Valuations would be much different if interest rates were “organic, free-range, and local,” instead of being nurtured in the Fed’s “hothouse.”

While Grant and his audience of hard money true believers look with disdain on the Fed’s distorting rate policy, corporate executives are all for it. Executives for Homebuilder Toll Brothers thanked their banker on a recent earnings call for arranging a loan with a two percent rate. Grant pointed out the company should give credit where credit is due and thank Janet Yellen.

Hazlitt was not a trained economist, but as Lew Rockwell writes, “he was familiar with the work of every important thinker in nearly every field. At an early age, he lacked in formal education but ended in knowing more than most learned men of any age; and he certainly was more principled than most.”

Hazlitt would, by his estimation,  write 10 millions words, mostly about economics. He was surprised when Economics in One Lesson became his signature work. “He wrote it to expose the popular fallacies of its day,” Rockwell explains. “He did not know that those fallacies would be government policy for the duration of the century.”

What Janet Yellen is doing has been done time and time again since John Law’s system created the Mississippi Bubble in 1720. It never ends well. As long as there is an over-reaching government and ever-expanding central bank, Hazlitt will be looked to for guidance and inspiration.  He warned us then. He warns us now.

 

 

 


    



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Ares Armor CEO Tries to Reason with ATF over Customer Privacy; Raid Ensues

“Ares Armor CEO Tries to Reason with ATF over Customer
Privacy; Raid Ensues,” produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. The video is
about 6 mins.

Original release date was March 19, 2014 and original writeup is
below.

“This isn’t just a second amendment issue, it’s not just a
firearms issue. It’s an issue of an overreaching government that
wants to come into your kitchen, that wants to come into your
living room, and just see what you’re doing,” says Dimitrios
Karras, CEO of Ares Armor in
Oceanside, Calif.

Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF)
raided Ares Armor
to confiscate 80 percent polymer receivers
for AR-15s. These receivers are the lower part of the gun that
contain the trigger operations when
fully completed. The polymer version that the ATF is contesting is
not completed and requires the purchasers to finish machining it.
The ATF claimed that these are unlicensed firearms, but Karras says
otherwise.

“It’s an object that’s in the shape of a receiver, but it hasn’t
been completed to a point that it would be considered a firearm,”
says Karras. “This was a nice way for them to get their arm inside
of the business and grab the information that they are actually
looking for. To think that this is over a piece of plastic is
ludicrous.”

Karras says the true reason for the ATF’s piqued interest in his
shop was his refusal to relinquish the list of customers who had
purchased the polymer product. He sat down with Reason TV’s Tracy
Oppenheimer to discuss why he plans to continue fighting the ATF to
maintain his customers’ privacy and other Constitutional issues at
stake.

“They have trampled on the entire Bill of Rights,” Karras
says.

About six minutes.

Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Alex Manning and Zach
Weissmueller.

Scroll down for downloadble versions and subscribe to Reason
TV’s YouTube Channel for notifications when new material goes
live.

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