Monday 22 September 2008

GOLD: Bearish sentiment, bullish action? 2008-09-22

Monday 22 September 2008, 11:19 pm: GOLD: Bearish sentiment, bullish action?

I was just doing an eBay listing from a template that I originally created on 22 September 2007.

Look at how the gold price has changed since then, even despite the bearish sentiment over the summer! Look at the devaluation of the Pound!

US$ gold price gone from 731 to 902 !
£ Sterling price gone from 361.81 to 485 !

This is despite all the bearish sentiment over the last few months - the bull market is over and all that stuff. Or maybe it is because of it. Gold has remained above 2007 levels on a year over year basis, except for maybe one or two monents in the low 700s a week or two ago. I shall try to find out whether it was ever down on a y-o-y basis in 2008.

So what anyway?

Clive Maund the well known gold analys is also a Genesis fan. See his US bond chart here:
Clive Maund Gold Market Update September 21st, 2008 and look for the one liner from'The Lamb' - what a man of taste! I am going to listen to 'Deep in the Motherlode' now!

Since Kitco has been down for maintenance (of John Nadler's BS commentaries perhaps), I have gone here to look at the gold price instead:
http://www.bullionvault.com/gold_market.do
and
http://www.bullionvault.com/gold-price-chart.do

The price is holding above $900 this evening, also at £486 Sterling, just over €610. The recent sharp upward move has taken the price back over $1000 Australian $, too.

To get this in perspective, £486 is £100 above the old 1980 high in Sterling around the £380 level. A gold Sovereign is worth £114 in melt. That used to be a pound coin, so since the Gold Standard was ended, the Pound has devalued by more than 99%. Thank you, Central Bankers.

Please see these eBay auctions:

NICE 1884 SYDNEY SHIELD GOLD SOVEREIGN OF VICTORIA

DECENT 1862 VICTORIA SHIELD GOLD SOVEREIGN NO RESERVE !

LOVELY 1898 MELBOURNE MINT GOLD SOVEREIGN OF VICTORIA !

CHOICE 1916 (London) Gold Sovereign - RARE on eBay

RARE 1899 PERTH MINT GOLD SOVEREIGN OF VICTORIA ! EF

Sunday 21 September 2008

US Bond Default imminent? 2008-06-21

Sunday 21st September 2008 6:24 pm: US Bond Default imminent?

Well, no emergency measures came this weekend from the Fed or the Bank of England, since they need to rest after spending most of last week on last weekend's emergency measures! Note that the emergency last week lasted from the previous Friday to the next Thursday, almost one full week.

The post-bailout stock market rally then came on Friday, thereby postponing the collapse for at least ... one more day.

Dow Jones Industrial Average Technical Chart ^DJI XC0009694206 Yahoo! Finance UK


and
FTSE 100 Technical Chart ^FTSE GB0001383545 Yahoo! Finance UK



In fact, the rally was pathetic, because all those rule changes barely manged to erase the losses of the previous 4 days in the week, let alone all those in the previous weeks and months! What rules can they change to save them next week?


Thanks to Yahoo! for providing us all with indispensible charts. Clicking the links above will take you to the 5-day chart, current to the day you are looking! The above charts are what was displayed this weekend and will be gone by Monday 22/9/2008. So might the banking system.

The newspapers and TV have trumpeted Friday's rally as a positive record event, failing to mention that it happened only because many of the rules of share trading and banking have been changed overnight. It is basically a large short-covering rally, since much of short selling has been banned altogether on a huge number of (financial) stocks in a bold fascistic move that Hitler or Mussolini would have been proud of. (Actually, I don't think that Hitler would have been proud of such a move. He certainly would have had something to say about a bunch of bankers running the Fatherland!) It is at times like these that we need to take a breath and compare last week's events to other momentous ones in history.

At any rate, we witnessed the end of free markets in the Western world last week. They were already highly manipulated anyway by a fascist/socialist alliance of government, central banks and some highly favoured private banking corporations. Now at least that truth is more or less out in the open. It is done for private gain in the boom and the socialisation of losses in the breakdown (i.e. the bankers gain in the good times, then the taxpayer pays for any losses). Isn't that fascism? Please someone tell me if it isn't.

I feel it in my bones that the USA will default on its sovereign debt and may do so soon. Perhaps the pre-inauguration period may be a suitable time to do this. So to my list of 10 items in the previous post I might add:

11. USA receives a credit downgrade and/or defaults on its sovereign Treasury debt, with all the consequences that it entails.

See the excellent charts by Clive Maund at these two links:
US TREASURY BONDS - major reversal believed imminent...
and
THE BAILOUT PLAN - what does it mean? - especially for gold and T Bonds...
I just love those Dojis candlesticks!
Introduction to Candlesticks - StockCharts.com

I also saw Rick Ackerman's commentary about Friday's rally. He doesn't think much of it at all:
614-Point Rally A Patent Fraud (with a telling chart)
and
Why Mega-Bailout Is Destined to Fail

Since the US financial system is so incestous, it is unlikely that anyone inside the USA will downgrade US debt until it has already defaulted, either through (1) Outright failure to pay default or (2) Hyperinflation and currency devaluation Zimbabwe style.

To think that Zimbabwe knocked 10 zeros off all its banknotes! The highest value banknote was 100 billion Zimbabwe $ (which would buy a loaf of bread or thereabouts) and that became 10Z$.

Bringing this to reality would mean that, if you were a BILLIONAIRE and you stored your money under the mattress for the last 5 years, you would have come out with 10 cents!

Maybe you could buy a stick of chewing gun with that.

I was actually thinking of outright US default (i.e. 'can't pay, won't pay') as the outcome. I am not sure that the convenient way will occur.

The best situation for the USA is to have very high inflation to allow it to make a gradual default on the debt. The next best is to have outright hyperinflation with no actual formal default (i.e. debts technically paid but in extremely depreciated dollars) and the worst humiliating case would be actual default, the failure to pay interest on bonds issued. This could happen if there is a run of US bonds and the yield (interest rate) spikes very high. A run of US bonds could collapse the currency too and result in default and then hyperinflation due to the consequent US$ devaluation, which would be the famous double whammy.

No-one would want the interest on the debt then, because the US$ would be worthless anyway and no-one would want to receive US dollars at all, in exchange for anything. That is the time that some oil exporters might demand gold payment from America for oil and we might all find out at last how much gold, if any, is actually in Fort Knox - or whether it has all been leased out to suppress the gold price to give the impression of a strong US dollar in the last decade or so, as GATA bravely claims.

If the US were to issue a new currency to pay for its oil imports, a full audit of US treasury gold would surely be demanded by its creditors.

Friday 19 September 2008

Systemic bank collapse -> Dictatorship? 2008-09-19

Conclusions from this week's disastrous financial events mentioned in the previous post:

In the end, what conclusion can we draw from all of this?

1. The entire US/UK financial system is broke, busted, caput.
2. The rescues and manipulations of this last week are quite extreme and they attest to the above.
3. The true state of affairs is being hidden from public view to prevent a panic and runs on all major banks in the Western world.
4. The Fed and the Bank of England know this and the current rescues have been to conceal the truth long enough to reach the upcoming US election (if there is one) before the collapse happens.
5. The collapse is likely to be timed after the presidential election (if there is one) and before the inauguration of the next president (if there is one).
6. During this time, the current leaders will take emergency powers before any handover that may take place.
7. Whoever is in the White House by 20 January 2009 will have dictatorial powers and...
8. We will be in the midst of a second Great Depression by 20 January 2009.
9. The collapse could actually happen sooner because the wheels have already fallen off the wagon.
10. I would not be that surprised if the 2008 US election is postponed, perhaps indefinitely and there could be a fascist dictatorship by year end.

Broken banking system + market manipulations 2008-09-19

Friday 19th September 2008 7:21 pm:
Broken banking system plus market manipulations.
To say that they 'cannot be allowed to fail' defines that they are above the law!

The past week has been a most eventful one in the financial markets, the most eventful since The Great Depression.

1. Lehman Brothers is busted and in Chapter 11 'Bankruptcy Protection'
2. Merrill Lynch had a 'shotgun wedding' takeover by Bank of America.
3. AIG had an 84bn$ rescue from the Federal Reserve courtesy of the unconsulted taxpayer.
4. Lloyds TSB High Street UK Bank bought of HBOS, another UK High Street bank.
5. The USA and UK have banned short selling of stocks, at least the stocks of favoured corporations, i.e. the banks and investment houses.
6. The regulators in the USA raised the margin requirements to punitive levels in gold and silver, to discourage people from investing in gold and silver.

It is a cornucopia of market manipulations and fascistic alliances designed to protect the banking elite at the expense of the public and against anyone who is an ultimate creditor of these organisations (or the equally busted US or UK governments).

Introducing these rules that have not been in force since the 1930s Depression, if ever, has bought some time (a little) by rallying the markets temporarily.

The authorities have ignored the fact that some investment banks have previously made billions by short selling industrial companies and commodities over the past century. Now those very culprits are being protected from astute investors who are betting that these institutions are already bankrupt in all but name. Short selling is a pricing mechsnism. Why should it be banned now? Some investment banks have previously indulged in 'naked short selling' which has always been illegal - but the regulatory authorities turned a blind eye. Some small and middle-sized but strategically important industrial companies have allegedly been more or less financially destroyed by these 'investment' practices - but the law was never enforced upon investment banks profiting from this practice.

They were and are above the law and cannot be allowed to fail. To say that they 'cannot be allowed to fail' defines that they are above the law, i.e. the law is made specifically for their benefit and against the interests of citizens and against the interests of entrepreneurs everywhere.

This is the absolute proof of the fascist business and government model rampant in the USA and the UK. They are now able to be defined correctly as fascist regimes and not democracies, free republics or anything else. Of course, the Iraq war and the immoral occupation of that country was already enough evidence of that. Qui bono?

These most recent actions in the markets have been purely to buy time for a Wall Street rally to enable one last chance for the insiders (and outsiders) to sell those banking stocks, so the elite can move their money away from a system that is almost certainly going to fail systemically very soon. Short selling is banned but selling isn't, so astute investors can liquidate their holdings of banking stocks and walk away. That is unlikely to be banned by law, at least not yet!

It is possible that some of the banks have been short selling their competitors to force them into mergers at extremely disounted prices and the new law was enacted to prevent this kind of vulture behaviour and monopoly formation. That would be the more innocent explanation but it doesn't change the details of the corruption that has gone on and the illiquidity and likely insolvency of the banking system that seems to be getting more exposed for all to see.

So why raise margin requirements on gold and silver now, when gold is still well below its March 2008 high of $1030? There is no innocent explanation for that. It is sheer government and central bank market manipulation to protect the SHORT SELLERS in the precious metals at the same time that no-one is allowed to short sell banking stocks. WHAT IRONY!

As economics expert Jim Sinclair of multi-decade experience implores us to protect ourselves, so we should, by being as far out of the financial system as we can possibly be and removing as many intermediaries between ourselves and our assets as possible. Preferably to remove all intermediaries, which means direct ownership of physical assets that cannot be lost by bankruptcy of financial institutions. This involves coming out of Babylon, as spoken of in Revelation Chapters 17 and 18. The fall of our financial Babylon is at hand. Those two books in the Holy Bible should be read by everyone, religious and athiest, including Richard Dawkins, because they described incredibly accurately 1900 years ago, what is happening today. Our modern Babylon is the Dollar Standard System of banking, usury and theft as practiced by Britain's and America's ruling classes.

Alistair Darling, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (that is, Finance Minister) on television last night on the programe 'Newsnight' basically admitted that the takeover by Lloyds TSB (an already merged pairing of banks: Lloyds and TSB) of HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland - another company made up of two previously merged banks) broke the rules on Monopolies and mergers (known as anti-trust laws in the USA) but that the consequences of not allowing the merger at this time would have been 'very serious' for the financial system. Serious consequences would have followed and we all know what that means (Saddam certainly found out)!

What can you read from that? HBOS was broke and they were taken over at a fire sale price to conceal the fact that a major UK high street bank was bankrupt, perhaps? This entity wasn't Northern Rock. In years gone by, when I lived in Aberdeen in 1989, the Bank of Scotland used to issue its own currency notes in Scotland! It's not a piddling little ex-building society like Northern Rock was. HBOS was a major institution.

In the end, what conclusion can we draw from all of this? My conclusions are:

1. The entire US/UK financial system is broke, busted, caput.
2. The rescues and manipulations of this last week are quite extreme and they attest to the above.
3. The true state of affairs is being hidden from public view to prevent a panic and runs on all major banks in the Western world.
4. The Fed and the Bank of England know this and the current rescues have been to conceal the truth long enough to reach the upcoming US election (if there is one) before the collapse happens.
5. The collapse is likely to be timed after the presidential election (if there is one) and before the inauguration of the next president (if there is one).
6. During this time, the current leaders will take emergency powers before any handover that may take place.
7. Whoever is in the White House by 20 January 2009 will have dictatorial powers and...
8. We will be in the midst of a second Great Depression by 20 January 2009.
9. The collapse could actually happen sooner because the wheels have already fallen off the wagon.
10. I would not be that surprised if the 2008 US election is postponed, perhaps indefinitely and there could be a fascist dictatorship by year end.