A bit more on Gold Leasing

A very good explanation of central bank gold leasing, with some good charts.  I can't say I really understand the mechanism, but it seems to back up my theory that they were using it to manipulate the price.

money (pun intended) quote:

"To conclude, this final graph signals incredible stress in the financial sector in its efforts to control gold prices. The low overall rates imply that the official sector is hemorrhaging gold but that this situation cannot continue for too much longer. In short, this final graph signals the death of leasing just a surely as an EKG like this would signal the death of a critically ill patient."

Note that this is from about two years ago.  It would be nice to see a more recent chart, but I suspect that it's still pretty much flat-lined due to the sky-rocketing gold price.  So even though it's at historic highs ($927/oz) today, I'm very tempted to cash out my lame money-market IRA, (my last interest rate was 1.2%) buy coins and bury 'em in the garden, especially since they just dropped the interest rate 50 points and the dow went up about 30.  Storms a' comin', pa.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forex

I tried to do a little research a while back when the price of gold went down from about $400/ounce to about $250 and stayed there for quite a while. I assumed it was being somehow manipulated to prop up the dollar (that's right, I am a conspiracy buff). I got nowhere, though because somewhere (circa 1995?) some countries {cough, Israel, cough} stopped reporting their reserves AND something called gold leasing began, or at least began to be reported.

In my admittedly very dim understanding of leasing, it is a tool that is used by governments to count as reserves gold that it does not actually hold. Whether it is physically in some other place or gone to the private sector, I can only speculate. I'll spare you my half-baked theories, but it is interesting to note that European reported holdings have decreased substantially while only those of Spain(!), Russia and Kazakhstan have increased. I'm thinking that the net decrease in reported holding could account for the temporary lowering in the dollar price of gold (greater supply leading to lower price leading to increased demand and higher price on the private market). All I can show for it is a well-scratched head. Perhaps someone with more intellectual horsepower... MM?

It's also interesting that there is no wiki entry for gold leasing. Spooky. And why did they cancel "The Lone Gunmen" just when it started to get good?

Gold Leasing

I tried to do a little research a while back when the price of gold went down from about $400/ounce to about $250 and stayed there for quite a while. I assumed it was being somehow manipulated to prop up the dollar (that's right, I am a conspiracy buff). I got nowhere, though because somewhere (circa 1995?) some countries {cough, Israel, cough} stopped reporting their reserves AND something called gold leasing began, or at least began to be reported.

In my admittedly very dim understanding of leasing, it is a tool that is used by governments to count as reserves gold that it does not actually hold. Whether it is physically in some other place or gone to the private sector, I can only speculate. I'll spare you my half-baked theories, but it is interesting to note that European reported holdings have decreased substantially while only those of Spain(!), Russia and Kazakhstan have increased. I'm thinking that the net decrease in reported holding could account for the temporary lowering in the dollar price of gold (greater supply leading to lower price leading to increased demand and higher price on the private market). All I can show for it is a well-scratched head. Perhaps someone with more intellectual horsepower... MM?

It's also interesting that there is no wiki entry for gold leasing. Spooky. And why did they cancel "The Lone Gunmen" just when it started to get good?

Finance for Dummies

I've never owned any stocks and I barely even know what a bond is (except bail bonds - ahem) but I got up early enough yesterday to watch the tsunami hit CNBC when futures were down 400 points. Pure schadenfreude bliss, watching the talking heads panic and curse Bernanke and even accuse each other for not seeing it coming. As IOZ said "I love the smell of market corrections in the morning. It smells like victory."

I'd stand in a bread-line all day if I could see Cramer crying every morning and brokers jumping out windows, screaming "Oh, no! I can't live like everyone else. Ahhhh!" So the "Plunge (haha) Protection Team" stepped up and the Dow ended up 300 today. Can you say "bear trap". I also like "dead cat bounce". Ambrose Bierce could have said panics are God's way of teaching proles finance.

I've wondered if the government started buying enough equities to bring the market along, and it works, then what? If they sold it would have to be gradually or else it would just as likely work in reverse. What if they made a bundle? Tax rebates? Options? My brain is too tiny.

The striking writers might as well just go back to work; they couldn't possibly beat this stuff. I'm getting up early again tomorrow. I never thought I'd enjoy reality tv.

Follow the MoneyBomb

Watching the Ron Paul MLK money bomb on Ron Paul Graphs my jaw is dropping; right now (11:30 am EST) it's coming in about $2200 per minute! It's already the third biggest day of donations.  I'm amazed that the server doesn't choke, and the charts keep updating in realtime like clockwork. The future is now - "The Revolution will be Digitized", indeed.  When the New Republic fired the Newsletter ABM, backed up enthusiastically by the Orange Line Libertarians, it was like getting punched in the gut.  Fortunately, it really was old news, and the Paul campaign was able to handle it reasonably well even though it seemed to be pretty damaging, timed perfectly before New Hampshire for maximum effect.  I have to grudgingly congratulate the bastards, but I think they fired their only shot, because that crap had been floating around the internet bowl, more or less unnoticed for a couple of months, and I figured they would save it for the general election.  Now, they got nothing, so they're trying to get back to ignoring him. No high fives yet, orcs.

My first opinion of moneybombs was that they were a pointless exercise and would wouldn't really generate more money because people would hold off donating before and after the big day (the charts show this to be true - reverting to the mean), however, the publicity from the huge daily totals was so much greater than anything they could have actually purchased, that I now see them as the stroke of genius they obviously are.  I'm hoping for a massive total today, simply to show the world the truth about Ron Paul's, and by extension our, racism; money talks, bullshit walks. Or, in this case, bullshit crawls along the gutter like Jamie Kirchick coming out of a Reason party at 4:00 am with cum on his chin.  Maggots.

I Hope, therefore I Am. Hopefully.

I read Chapati Mystery as a crash-course in Pakastani politics. As a pleasant surprise, I found a pretty good run-down of the current crop of Presidential candidates. The author likes Obama, and I suppose we should start getting used to the idea, but he gives Paul a relatively good plug - 

"Neither Kucinich nor Paul should be forgotten, even as we mourn their candor-killed candidacies. Only grown-ups can handle Libertarianism, and even then it would take a good Democrat, or perhaps a fired-up, ready to go Dennis Kucinich, to speak for collective conscience and save Libertarians from themselves. America is ready for neither of these men, but it was delightful to see Ron Paul speaking in syllogisms so sensible they physically hurt the other candidates."

I agree that libertarianism demands personal responsibility and I know what he means by "collective conscience", although we would probably disagree on how this conscience might be assuaged.  Progressives are not prepared to lose any of the ground they have gained in order to stop the US government from murdering people, and can't support Paul's stance on the constitution, because many of those gains were achieved by extra- and therefore un-constitutional means.  The "right to privacy" as well as "the unitary executive" could be established by amendment, but they haven't been.  

On Obama's "support that so bewilders America’s chattering classes; he is unstoppable precisely because he is inexperienced, because he does not yet carry the taint of the Imperial Corporate Machine that fleeces citizen, subject and enemy alike; he is too young to have investments in their entrenched isms, ists, and grievances; he is too new a convert to consider his ascendancy ordained by Jesus; he is just naive enough to believe that, by building a mandate across parties, races and classes, that he might at last rouse the great and drowsy American spirit that once a century rises to correct the hundred years’ of errata preceding it. Hope is indeed naive, and Americans have perhaps decided at last that naivete about the possibilities of tomorrow, no matter how improbable, is preferable the beastly, apocalyptic guile that promises to drown us." 

I don't understand how the author could shoot down Libertarianism because it requires "adult" responsibility and wisdom, and endorse Obama because of the child-like faith that propels his candidacy.  Ron Paul's  uncomfortable syllogisms won't be nullified because Obama "does not yet carry the taint" He'll certainly have plenty of opportunity to acquire it.  As far as rousing the great and drowsy American spirit: be careful what you wish for.

Hope might be naive but it doesn't have to be abandoned just because it's too difficult to work with very tools that were designed to prevent rule by guile.  I naively hope that Americans will deconstruct the empire before it deconstructs the very means to speak to whatever remains of our collective conscience, a very small and meek voice, and fading.

Never play Chicken with Someone you don't Know

Iranian "gunboats" Threaten U.S. Navy (Unh-huh)

And the american public still doesn't get it; I first got this from the business channel (CNBC?) this morning and the usually straight (worldly, joking-uncle type) Marc Haines asked "Why don't they just blow 'em out of the water?(chortle)". 

Meanwhile the oil ticker over his head shows $96.00.

Ass-hats in all sizes. "In this style - 10/6"