Global Financial Fraud Is WIN-WIN For Gold And Silver

The Special Inspector General for Tarp Issues a Wakeup Call … Lambasts the Government and the Banks

By George Washington on 07/23/2012, via Zero Hedge

The government’s special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (the “TARP” bank bailouts) – Neil M. Barofsky – wrote a stunning editorial for Bloomberg yesterday, concluding:

Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.

Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we hope for the type of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.

See this for background.

This is not the statement of a raving blogger (although some of the best reporters write blogs) or a conspiracy theorist living in his mom’s basement (even though some conspiracies are real).

This is the former government official who oversaw the bailouts.

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And just where did all that TARP money go?

Interest Or No Interest On Excess Reserves, That Is The Question

by Dave in Denver, The Golden Truth

For what it’s worth, there is an enormous amount of interference in the gold and silver share market. I think that will end as soon as gold and silver break their highs. When that happens, I think it’s going to unleash a rally in these stocks that is absolutely going to stun people. People will be shocked that don’t understand the full extent of the manipulation and how cheap these stocks have become as a result of it. - John Embry on King World News LINK

Before I delve into "excess reserves" held at the Fed by banks, I wanted to post two more indicators that confirm my thesis that our economy is pretty much in "plunge" mode. First, the Richmond Fed released its regional manufacturing index, considered a good proxy for the national economy. It plunged from -3 last month to a reading of -17 for July. The incompetent economists on Wall Street were expecting a reading of -1. Every sub-component of the index was horrific. You can read the details here: LINK


Second, Cisco released its Q2 guidance yesterday. It significantly lowered its expectations, said the outlook for the global economy looks grim and announced it will cut 1,300 jobs: LINK Cisco's stock price is down 6% as I write this. With regions in Italy and Spain now in insolvency and 3 large California cities in bankruptcy, with more to follow there and across the U.S., if Bernanke does not open up the liquidity floodgate again, he is going to be tagged as making the same mistake the Fed made in the early 1930's - a decision of which he claims to be an expert - in causing the Depression. Even more profound, he'll hand the Presidency to Romney. Note: Bernanke is a Democrat and, given his background, he likely despises hardcore Christian sects.


Now for the debate on cutting the interest rate on the excess reserves held by banks at the Fed. I will try to be concise as possible. First, bank excess reserves held at the Fed are bank funds - in excess of Fed capital ratio requirements - which banks keep on "reserve" at the Fed for lack of something better to do with them. Currently the Fed is paying banks .25% in interest on these reserves (IOER - interest on excess reserves). A big debate has erupted over this policy, as critics contend it's keeping banks from lending out that money into the financial/economic system. Defenders of the IOER policy say that because the Fed/bank money system is "a closed system," whether or not the Fed pays IOER is irrelevant other than as a monetary tool to regulate the Fed funds rate.


This article, if you are interested, does a good job of explaining why it is said that the Fed/banking system is "a closed system:" LINK, but you can ignore the part where Stella defends the current IOER policy. And my friend and colleague wrote an excellent piece yesterday that explains why the argument being served up in the media both for and against IOER is disingenuous and flawed: LINK In fact, I didn't really care about the whole issue until Jesse and I started emailing back and forth in depth about the topic.


Let's strip away the Orwellian gobbledygook being served up by lousy economists and retarded financial TV show hosts and commentators. As Jesse wrote in his piece linked above, the IOER is nothing but a direct means of pumping liquidity into the banks. And where did the ER come from? The excess reserves were created by the massive TARP and QE programs. TARP is directly from the Government and the assets purchased by the Fed under QE are guaranteed in value by the Treasury. In other words, the $1.46 trillion in bank excess reserves sitting at the Fed is YOUR money. So the banks are being given a nice liquidity injection from IOER using YOUR capital. Thank you Bernanke, Geithner and Obama (and Paulson and Bush).


Now to the issue of whether manipulating IOER will stimulate bank lending. The answer is yes, but not to the private sector economy. Think about it this way: given what we know about the economic prospects of this country, would you lend money to a new Mercedes Benz dealership, a new shopping mall development or to build a new Cisco manufacturing plant? No. So why would we expect the banks to do that? Taking the IOER to zero or negative will absolutely not stimulate lending to the private sector UNLESS there are loan opportunities that make sense from a risk/return standpoint. On this basis, the .25% IOER is irrelevant because a bank can make several percentage points more in interest if it could find risk/return worthy lending projects. Banks are still lending to homebuyers, but that's because ultimately that loan is being guaranteed by the Government/YOU. It's also not relevant as a tool to manage the Fed funds rate - the argument against cutting the IOER. As Jesse points out, IOER is irrelevant other than as a liquidity subsidy to the big banks. To that I add: using YOUR capital.


Now, if the Fed were to cut the IOER to zero or take it negative, it will increase bank lending to the Government via Treasury auctions. If the IOER goes to zero, the Fed will "force" a lot of that $1.46 trillion from the excess reserve account at the Fed and into the longer-maturity Treasury auctions. The Government will be funded through the election and beyond without the Fed having to increase the size of its balance sheet - that is, print money.


They say the devil's greatest trick is to make you think it doesn't exist. The second greatest trick - ironically by a surrogate devil, the Fed - is to finance the U.S. Government using your money and likely against your desires. Welcome to this country's transition to totalitarianism. Orwell smiles, Atlas shrugs.

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If this smells like a FRAUD to you, maybe that's because it is!  And of course we are to believe that this FRAUD is in our best interests as taxpayers and citizens of the USA...

Paul Craig Roberts: World financial system now can be sustained only by fraud

The Libor Scandal In Full Perspective

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Thursday, July 19, 2012

The article about the Libor scandal, coauthored with Nomi Prins, received much attention, with Internet repostings, foreign translation, and video interviews. To further clarify the situation, this article brings to the forefront implications that might not be obvious to those without insider experience and knowledge.

The price of Treasury bonds is supported by the Federal Reserve’s large purchases. The Federal Reserve’s purchases are often misread as demand arising from a “flight to quality” due to concern about the EU sovereign debt problem and possible failure of the euro.

Another rationale used to explain the demand for Treasuries despite their negative yield is the “flight to safety.” A 2% yield on a Treasury bond is less of a negative interest rate than the yield of a few basis points on a bank CD, and the US government, unlike banks, can use its central bank to print the money to pay off its debts.

It is possible that some investors purchase Treasuries for these reasons. However, the “safety” and “flight to quality” explanations could not exist if interest rates were rising or were expected to rise. The Federal Reserve prevents the rise in interest rates and decline in bond prices, which normally result from continually issuing new debt in enormous quantities at negative interest rates, by announcing that it has a low interest rate policy and will purchase bonds to keep bond prices high. Without this Fed policy, there could be no flight to safety or quality.

It is the prospect of ever lower interest rates that causes investors to purchase bonds that do not pay a real rate of interest. Bond purchasers make up for the negative interest rate by the rise in price in the bonds caused by the next round of low interest rates. As the Federal Reserve and the banks drive down the interest rate, the issued bonds rise in value, and their purchasers enjoy capital gains.

As the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England are themselves fixing interest rates at historic lows in order to mask the insolvency of their respective banking systems, they naturally do not object that the banks themselves contribute to the success of this policy by fixing the LIbor rate and by selling massive amounts of interest rate swaps, a way of shorting interest rates and driving them down or preventing them from rising.

The lower is Libor, the higher is the price or evaluations of floating-rate debt instruments, such as CDOs, and thus the stronger the banks’ balance sheets appear.

Does this mean that the US and UK financial systems can only be kept afloat by fraud that harms purchasers of interest rate swaps, which include municipalities advised by sellers of interest rate swaps, and those with saving accounts?

The answer is yes, but the Libor scandal is only a small part of the interest rate rigging scandal. The Federal Reserve itself has been rigging interest rates. How else could debt issued in profusion be bearing negative interest rates?

As villainous as they might be, Barclays bank chief executive Bob Diamond, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs are not the main villains. The main villains are former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chairman Robert Rubin, who pushed Congress for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the sponsors of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall was put in place in 1933 in order to prevent the kind of financial excesses that produced the current ongoing financial crisis.

President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, presented the removal of all constraints on financial chicanery as “financial modernization.” Taking restraints off of banks was part of the hubristic response to “the end of history.” Capitalism had won the struggle with socialism and communism. Vindicated capitalism no longer needed its concessions to social welfare and regulation that capitalism used in order to compete with socialism.

The constraints on capitalism could now be thrown off, because markets were self-regulating as Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, among many, declared. It was financial deregulation–the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the removal of limits on debt leverage, the absence of regulation of OTC derivatives, the removal of limits on speculative positions in future markets–that caused the ongoing financial crisis. No doubt but that JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others were after maximum profits by hook or crook, but their opportunity came from the neoconservative triumphalism of “democratic capitalism’s” historical victory over alternative socio-politico-economic systems.

The ongoing crisis cannot be addressed without restoring the laws and regulations that were repealed and discarded. But putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again is an enormous task full of its own perils.

The financial concentration that deregulation fostered has left us with broken financial institutions that are too big to fail. To understand the fullness of the problem, consider the law suits that are expected to be filed against the banks that fixed the Libor rate by those who were harmed by the fraud. Some are saying that as the fraud was known by the central banks and not reported, that the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England should be indicted for their participation in the fraud.

What follows is not an apology for fraud. It merely describes consequences of holding those responsible accountable.

Imagine the Federal reserve called before Congress or the Department of Justice to answer why it did not report on the fraud perpetrated by private banks, fraud that was supporting the Federal Reserve’s own rigging of interest rates (and the same in the UK.)

The Federal reserve will reply: “So, you want us to let interest rates go up? Are you prepared to come up with the money to bail out the FDIC-insured depositors of JPMorganChase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, etc.? Are you prepared for US Treasury prices to collapse, wiping out bond funds and the remaining wealth in the US and driving up interest rates, making the interest rate on new federal debt necessary to finance the huge budget deficits impossible to pay, and finishing off what is left of the real estate market? Are you prepared to take responsibility, you who deregulated the financial system, for this economic armageddon?

Obviously, the politicians will say NO, continue with the fraud. The harm to people from collapse far exceeds the harm in lost interest from fixing the low interest rates in order to forestall collapse. The Federal Reserve will say that we are doing our best to create profits for the banks that will permit us eventually to unwind the fraud and return to normal. Congress will see no better alternative to this.

But the question remains: How long can the regime of negative interest rates continue while debt explodes upward? Currently, everyone in the US who counts and most who don’t have an interest in holding off armageddon. No one wants to tip over the boat. If the banks are sued for damages and lack the money to pay, the Federal Reserve can create the money for the banks to pay.

If the collapse of the system does not result from scandals, it will come from outside. The dollar is the world reserve currency. This means that the dollar’s exchange value is boosted, despite the dismal economic outlook in the US, by the fact that, as the currency for settling international accounts, there is international demand for the dollar. Country A settles its trade deficit with country B in dollars; country B settles its account with country C in dollars; and so on throughout the countries of the world.

For whatever the reason–perhaps to curtail their accumulation of suspect dollars or to bring Washington’s power to an end–the BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are agreeing to settle their trade between themselves in their own currencies, thus abandoning the use of the dollar.

According to reports, China and Japan have reached agreement to settle their trade between themselves in their own currencies.

The moves away from the dollar as the currency of international transactions means that the dollar’s exchange value will fall as the demand for dollars falls. Whereas the Federal Reserve can create dollars with which to purchase the Treasury’s debt, thus preventing a fall in bond prices, the Federal Reserve cannot prop up the dollar’s exchange value by creating more dollars with which to purchase dollars. Dollars would have to be taken off the foreign exchange market by purchasing them with other currencies, but in order to have these currencies the US would have to be running a trade surplus, not a long-term trade deficit.

In the short-run, the Federal Reserve could arrange currency swap agreements in which foreign central banks swap their currencies for dollars in order to supply the Federal Reserve with currencies with which to soak up dollars. However, only a limited number of swaps could be negotiated before foreign central banks understood that the dollar’s fall in value was not a temporary event that could be propped up with currency swaps.

As the value of the dollar will fall as countries move away from its use as reserve currency, the values of dollar-denominated assets also will fall. The Federal Reserve, even with full cooperation from the banking system employing every fraud technique known, cannot prevent interest rates from rising on debt instruments denominated in a currency whose value is falling.

Think about it this way. A person, fund, or institution owns bonds or any debt instruments carrying a negative rate of interest, but continues to hold the instruments because interest rates, despite the increase in debt, are creeping down, raising bond prices and producing capital gains in the bonds. What happens when the exchange value of the currency in which the debt instruments are denominated falls? Can the price of the bond stay high even though the value of the currency in which the bond is denominated falls?

The drop in the exchange value of the currency hits the bond price in a second way. The price of imports rise, and this pushes up prices. The inflation measures will show higher inflation. How long will people hold debt instruments paying negative interest rates as inflation rises? Perhaps there are historical cases in which bond prices continue to rise indefinitely (or even hold firm) as inflation rises, but I have never heard of them.

As the Federal Reserve can create money, theoretically the Federal Reserve’s prop-up schemes could continue until the Federal Reserve owns all dollar-denominated financial assets. To cover the holes in its own balance sheet, the Federal Reserve could just print more money.

Some suspect that the Federal Reserve, in order to forestall a declining dollar and thus declining prices of dollar-denominated financial instruments, is behind the sales of naked shorts every time demand for physical bullion drives up the price of gold and silver. The short sales–paper sales–cancel the impact on price of the increased demand for bullion.

Some also believe that they see the Federal Reserve’s hand in the stock market. One day stocks fall 200 points. The next day stocks rise 200 points. This up and down pattern has been ongoing for a long time. One possible explanation is that as wary investors sell their equity holdings, the Federal Reserve, or the “plunge protection team,” steps in and buys.

Just as the “terrorist threat” was used to destroy the laws that protect US civil liberty, the financial crisis has resulted in the Federal Reserve moving far outside its charter and normal operating behavior.

To sum up, what has happened is that irresponsible and thoughtless–in fact, ideological–deregulation of the financial sector has caused a financial crisis that can only be managed by fraud. Civil damages might be paid, but to halt the fraud itself would mean the collapse of the financial system. Those in charge of the system would prefer the collapse to come from outside, such as from a collapse in the value of the dollar that could be blamed on foreigners, because an outside cause gives them something to blame other than themselves.

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Shocking isn't it?  The entire US financial system dances on a pin financed unknowingly by the citizens it serves, and these citizens are held hostage by the banks, which they unknowingly prop up with their taxpayer money, so that these banks can purchase US Government debt to keep interest rates artificially low not to make cheap loans to private citizens and businesses, but to make it affordable for the US Government to keep selling debt?

This is FREAKING brilliant!

Fed official highlights benefits of flexible QE: FT

(Reuters) - An open-ended round of quantitative easing that could be adjusted to suit economic conditions should be considered if the Fed launches a fresh round of monetary stimulus, a top policy official in the Federal Reserve said in an interview with the Financial Times.

There is "pretty significant" downside risks to the U.S. economy from theeuro zone crisis, John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in an interview with the Financial Times on Monday.

"The main benefit from my point of view is it will get the markets to stop focusing on the terminal date and also focusing on, ‘Oh, are they going to do QE3?'" he is quoted as saying.

If the Fed launched another round of quantitative easing, Williams said that buying mortgage-backed securities, rather than Treasuries, would be more advantageous.

"There's a lot more you can buy without interfering with market function and you maybe get a little more bang for the buck," he said.

He said the Bank of England's "funding for lending" scheme, which will provide cheap funding for British banks that increase their lending to households and businesses, would not work in the United States.

Williams is regarded as close to the center of gravity on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, of which he is a voting member this year. The FOMC will conclude its next meeting on August 1.

(Reporting by Stephen Mangan; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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You have got to be kidding!

It should be growing more obvious be the day, THE IS NO SOLUTION to the global financial crisis.

Hit the reset button already...

Sprott - The Frightening Black Swan Nobody Is Talking About

From Eric King, KingWorldNews.com

July 21, 2012

Today billionaire Eric Sprott spoke with King World News about his greatest fear.  Sprott literally shocked KWN by saying, “My biggest black swan, Eric, is that I think I’ll be right one day.  My worry is that one day they just shut everything down.”  Sprott, who is Chairman of Sprott Asset Management, also added, “They (central planners) say, ‘You know what, we just can’t keep this up anymore, the whole Ponzi (scheme), we just can’t do it and we shut it down.’”  

Sprott went on to say that all of the markets would then “freeze.”  But first, here is what he had to say about the ongoing ciris in Europe:  “It’s beyond the ability of governments to deal with all of these weak countries.  There are only one of two answers:  Yes, someone could print as much money as they want.  Maybe they could print $5 trillion and say, ‘We’ll back up all of the banking systems.’”

“And then one could maybe say the problem is solved.  Of course the problem is, if they print $5 trillion, everyone knows they can’t back it up with anything.  Then you will lose confidence in the currency and you will go into hyperinflation because people will realize that real things are safer than paper things, including bonds and stocks and things like that.

So there are only two choices, they’ve got to print or there are going to be some defaults, which is the natural offspring of a Minsky moment.... 

“Sooner or later you have to write off the debt or you have to inflate it away.

Continue reading the Eric Sprott interview here

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Embry - Expect Shortages Of Gold As Soon As Next Month

From Eric King, KingWorldNews.com

July 23, 2012

“We are moving toward a fundamental shortage of gold, and I believe it may start as soon as next month.  I think the bottom is being put in right now.  You see once again with the stock market trading lower, they just turn the algorithms on and grind the price down.

But this action is all just building a massive base in gold.  I think the big issue going forward is this growing shortage of available physical gold.  I strongly believe one of the reasons for the shortage is a lot of it is headed East.  The last four or five months of the year gold should challenge and easily take out its all-time high.  

For what it’s worth, there is an enormous amount of interference in the gold and silver share market.  I think that will end as soon as gold and silver break their highs.  When that happens, I think it’s going to unleash a rally in these stocks that is absolutely going to stun people.  People will be shocked that don’t understand the full extent of the manipulation and how cheap these stocks have become as a result of it.”

Continue reading the John Embry interview here

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London Trader - The LBMA Gold Price Fixing Scheme Is Over

From Eric King, KingWorldNews.com

July 20, 2012

With many global investors still concerned about the recent price action in gold and silver, today King World News interviewed the “London Trader” to get his take on these markets.  The source told KWN that “... the LBMA’s price fixing scheme is coming to an end.”  The source also said that because of this, the eventual “move in gold and silver will literally frighten most people.” 

Here is what the source had to say:  “It is now beginning to be discussed, openly, that the unallocated gold is not at the banks.  This is definitely the case with many of the allocated accounts as well.  The reason I’m pointing this out is you have a more ‘open’ disclosure that’s taking place with regards to this.”

“This tells me there is something major that is happening behind the scenes.  It tells me that the LBMA’s price fixing scheme is coming to an end.  You have these naked short positions, that are incomprehensible to most people, in both gold and silver....

“As this scandal is brought to light, that the unallocated gold and silver are not there, and much of the allocated gold and silver is not at these banks either, and as you see these naked short positions unwound, the world will witness a massive price rise in in both gold and silver.  The move in gold and silver, at that point, will literally frighten most people.  They simply won’t understand what is happening.

When someone goes to a bank and deposits money, if you look at the small print, you don’t actually own that money, you’ve simply loaned it to the bank.  The banks will then turn right around and lend ten to one or whatever leverage they determine to use with your cash.  Well, when there is a run on the banks, as there has been in Europe, the money is printed by governments and given to the customers to calm things down.

The underlying problem here is that when the run on physical gold and silver begins, how will the banks print the gold and silver?  It’s not possible.  So something is brewing here.  There’s no smoke without a fire.  The reason this information is beginning to be discussed more openly is because of legal reasons.  They need to be able to say, ‘We disclosed to people that the gold and silver wasn’t there.’  

Yes, this will include a scandal at the LBMA in those unallocated accounts.  The paper leverage in the LBMA system is off the charts.  Investors believe their gold and silver is sitting in those unallocated accounts, and they will be in shock when they find out it isn’t there.

We are talking here about a run on the bullion bank.  As this unfolds there will be a failure.  These people will only receive the fixed price before trading is halted.  This will not be called a default.  Then there will be a massive gap in the price of gold and silver.  But the bullion banks will not be allowed to go bankrupt during this process.  There is a ring of counterparties here.  If one of them fails, the whole system can fail.  So they will not be allowed to fail.”

Continue reading the London Trader interview here

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It should be OBVIOUS now, print money - Precious Metals WIN.  Default on global sovereign debt - Precious Metals WIN.

IT'S WIN WIN FOR GOLD AND SILVER!!!

Got Gold You Can Hold?

Got Silver You Can Squeeze?

It's NOT To Late To Accumulate!!!