Oldtent Archives 2010

Bill H:

Basel III and other jokes!

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/12/AR2010091202292.html

To all; Basel Switzerland was host to a meeting of the world’s top bankers this past weekend. While they strut around like roosters telling us they have saved the world again, I am just sitting here scratching my head. They are imposing new capital standards that will fully kick in by 2019, my initial question would be “how do we even get to 2013 (when the new rules start to bite) much less 2019? I guess another question would be “if governments are literally teetering on the brink of insolvency, how and where do these banks get this new capital from”?

As long as I am asking questions, how about “…and how do they clean up the derivatives that brought all this about in the first place”? Should we even believe these goat heads because Europe is giving their “credible” stamp of approval? Didn’t we just find out that the European bank stress tests were a fraud? …And now we should put stock in this? If these banks REALLY follow these new rules (forget about their bullshit accounting practices) how do they have capital available to lend into a deflating credit system? And WHO will borrow other than governments?

In the private sector, for the most part only those who NEED the money are wanting to borrow, these are generally not the customers that the banks want to lend to. On the other hand, those who have the ability to borrow, don’t WANT to! This is because these are the ones who were conservative in the first place and don’t want to step in front of the deflation train. In reality the greatest credit demand is coming from sovereign, state and municipal governments because they HAVE to! They have to just to keep their doors open and to make current interest payments, in my opinion this new Basel III agreement is worse than a bad joke.

Speaking of “bad jokes”, the IMF banksters (jokesters) who trotted out so many times for so many years “we will sell our Gold”, don’t even have a punch line anymore. Of the 400 tonnes they were going to destroy the market with, they only have 90 remaining. The value of this SCARY SCARY 90 tonnes is roughly a measly $3.5 Billion. Now here is the real punchline, this $3 1/2 Billion is roughly what the U.S. budget deficit is EVERYDAY SINGLE DAY! In case it needs to be spelled out, in other words the U.S. government is pissing away 90 tonnes of Gold each and every day. Columbo might ask something like “umm, I umm don’t want to bother you Uncle Sam because I know you’re real busy and all with really important stuff, but do you really have 90 tonnes of Gold that you can spend each and every day? …Wow you umm, umm must be REALLY REALLY rich! By the way, how much Gold do you really have if you know what I’m saying?”.

OK, only one more joke for today, have you seen how badly the Dollar cracked today? More than 1%? Wow, Gold must be exploding right? Silver, Platinum and Palladium are strong while Copper, Aluminum, Zinc and Lead are all screaming like scalded dogs, so let’s get a Gold quote. DOWN .90 cents? What kind of joke is this? Unfortunately the worst kind! The worst kind because not only is this fraudulent, the punchline (when it comes) will bring with it total currency, credit market and sovereign defaults which will certainly not lead to “peace and goodwill toward man”. No joke! Regards, Bill H.

U.S. economic news:

Hey wasn’t there a bet placed a few weeks ago,  somthing about $HUI at 365 by the 13th of Sept. I believe it was with that Testy Guy without a EDIT Button…. :)   I know I’m Bad

Our STALKER source called today with the following:

*The STALKER, who has been uncanny with his gold trading over the years, is looking for $1600 gold next year. That’s a 25% move from present levels. It is helpful to keep in mind that he is usually conservative.

*Other London traders connected to our STALKER source say silver is “Rocking and Rolling” over there.

*It is thought the new buying by our STALKER, his first entry into silver, has influenced the market.

*This same London trading group is very bullish on crude oil, looking for $80 soon and then up from there.

Bill,
There’s a new acronym in Washington causing gold’s counterintuitive weakness that parallels dollar weakness. It’s called GSA’s, or Government-Sponsored Algos.

The algorithm trading lately is very obvious. There is always selling pressure commensurate to the dollar weakness. Look at how Kitco shows today’s action:

Gold Price Change due to Weakening of US Dollar +13.55

Gold Price Change due to Predominant Selling -13.55

Gold Price: Total Change 0.00

How perfectly algorithmically rigged is that? I’ll bet the algo boys at JPM get a chuckle whenever they reach total rigging nirvana. They must now turn their attention to silver or else it will all be in vain. If you ever needed the correct visual of a reason to own gold then visualize a bunch of oblivious twenty-somethings giddily programming computers to battle other computers. If that doesn’t make a chill go up your spine then nothing will.
James Mc

“CNSNews.com) – Federalism is on the line in Virginia’s lawsuit to invalidate the federal mandate to purchase health insurance, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said.

Cuccinelli is one of several state attorneys-general who is suing the federal government to drop the mandate. Virginia’s lawsuit is somewhat different because the state legislature passed a bill, signed by Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, that said state residents cannot be required to buy health insurance.

On Aug. 2, a federal court ruled against the federal government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, giving Virginia a green light to proceed with the case.

“If we lose — if they can just order you to do something and penalize you financially for not doing it, that is what we call a police power,” Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com Sunday, shortly after speaking at the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington.

“If they can do that, there’s nothing they can’t do because if all they have to do is lay a penalty on you for disobeying them, they can order you to do anything,” Cuccinelli added.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75212

..and tonight I opened one with this:

“The People’s Republic of China now holds about $850 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, most of it quietly moved over the past few months into notes maturing in less than a year.”

And it reminded of the old saying we had when I was in the Air Force:

“When you have them by the balls, their hearts and  minds follow!”

New High Silver Close/New STALKER Input/Revolting JP Morgan Chase

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” … Ralph Waldo Emerson

GO GATA!

Bizarro time again. Starting with last night’s gold trading, the price was generally not allowed to go green and kept in a very tight range. Silver, on the other hand, didn’t want to go red and stood out for its resistance to following gold lower. This morning silver punched through $20 again, even as gold was capped and not allowed to go up. It is as if The Gold Cartel is so petrified of what silver might do on the upside, it felt compelled to stay all over gold. Their silver troubles continued during the day. Once through $20, silver surged to $20.23 before setting back. That leap took gold to $1249 when the bums showed up to knock the price right back down to below unchanged. The good news for gold is that there were buyers in the wings on every $2/$3 hit during the Comex trading session.

If there ever was a day for gold and silver to go much higher, this was it … a QE special. Commodity markets were on fire with stock markets up all over and the dollar was very weak (the euro was up .0133 in the early going.)

Every time silver has launched through $20+, JPM has knocked the price back down. But their consistent knockdowns, especially last week, are not working, and the reason is simple. The physical market is well bid. Some anecdotal evidence of this from Ranting Andy yesterday…

Ebay this weekend…

All silver coins, not just Eagles, of 20 roll lots going for MORE than $23/oz. now.
Clearly, the price has RISEN this weekend.
I have a good feeling about this week!
A

Then the Rant Man this morning…

I knew it. I have never seen silver prices actually rise on eBay during a weekend.
How on earth they keep the paper price below $20 when the real price is $23 is beyond me.
And how EVERY commodity on earth can be soaring today (and the dollar down sharply) and they can keep gold from rising is even more amazing.
A

What’s going on…

*A major theme the past many weeks has been the noticeable way silver has been trading differently than in the past, MUCH differently, suggesting the market was “in play.” Big league players are buying up the physical market along with futures contracts.

*As mentioned, commodity markets are on fire. The base metals were up 1.5 to 3.5% across the board today. Dec copper finished up 7.5 cents to $3.47 per pound. Crude oil closed up 74 cents per barrel to $77.19. The CRB went up 2.45 to 277.59. As mentioned a few weeks ago in this column when silver was $17.76, it was TOO CHEAP. It is still too cheap vis-à-vis gold and other commodity markets.

*The Gold Cartel has gone to the well too many times with their silver market maulings. They have done so with their derivatives market trading. However, they are hitting the wall because relative to market demand they don’t have enough physical supply to support their derivatives trading on a sustained basis. Somehow, they have been able to do so in the past, perhaps bailed out by the general economic distress of the last two years. But, now the game is changing in terms of commodities in general and I think they are CAUGHT short. And who knows who else might be short along with JPM. That was a winning hand for a long time.

*With QE a necessity in the US, silver is a natural bet.

*There are numerous investors out there who are looking for deflation to win the day. Perhaps that will be the case for certain assets, but those assets weren’t artificially suppressed for who knows how long. Those investors are out of the gold/silver markets, which adds to latent demand that is creeping back into the silver arena. If deflation does surface further in our real estate and stock markets, then the Fed will have to step on the money pedal that much more, adding more fuel to the gold/silver bonfires.

*Technically, the daily, weekly and monthly silver charts are as good as they get. The very powerful base silver has below its current price can support much higher prices. Certain big time traders wait for these chart patterns to develop and then move in, regardless of what market it is. They know how explosive a market like silver can be once it shirks off its shackles and has completed such a supportive, staunch basing process. The odds of a Commercial Signal Failure are quite high and growing

I remember back then…and am happy for you in the profits of your decision. You alone had to think it over and make the choice. You  deserve the credit. You are very welcome, Buymore..and Thank You for such a kind gesture.

Now that ad gave me a good belly laugh!

LOL, that’s a good one. It is not hard to put up with the men here - you are a lovable bunch. I’m too old to get upset about much anyway. Hubby even bothers me less these days; he is mellowing out a lot in his old age. Part of being a libertarian (and I am about as pure a libertarian as you will find) is being tolerant. If I don’t like certain posts I can just scroll on by. At least people can post more or less what they want here (unlike Gold-Eagle).

I have hardly looked at this tent at all this week and just happened to drop in this evening to see your post. I have been super busy trying my best to get some real small government conservatives onto our ballot here in New Hampshire and the job is almost done: Tomorrow I will spend the day at the local polling place holding signs for a couple of my favorite candidates and after that it is all in God’s hands. There may well be an unprecedented upset in our superheated senate race that makes national news tomorrow evening. I hope so!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7jJI1cfEgc

I want to thank you for turning me on to GORO………….. I bought in a while back……….. with  intent to hold in my core…….. good move…..thanks again

will

buymore

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb County is suing a local farmer for growing too many vegetables, but he said he will fight the charges in the ongoing battle neighbors call “Cabbagegate.”

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/24979774/detail.html

….But….what kind of handle is that ?

…..are we talking Woodrow Wilson ?….or Bears in a row at the woodshed ?

….bet thats a first

The joke’s on us!

Your joke reminds me of a true story of this guy Chris McCandless who liked to live on the edge and rely on God to provide.  Anyway he went into the Alaskan wilderness only partially prepared and ended up slowly starving to death …. all told in his diary.  Jon Krakauer wrote a book about it “Into the Wild” and it was also made into a movie.  Anyways, when this guy realizes he’s not going to make it through the winter he decides to walk out to a main road and get out of there.  He comes to a river he crossed previously and now it is too high to cross so he heads back to the trailer and waits for the end.  The point, there is one, is that if he only had a map he would have seen on the map that there was … a pulley system with a basket?  I forget exactly but there was a way to cross the river only a few miles downstream, but Chris didn’t like using maps, it was against his philosophy… so he died instead.

Me … I like maps.  Maps are great!

Cheers

Citigroup defends $75M deal

1 minute ago

By The Associated Press

CITIGROUP DEFENDS SETTLEMENT: Citigroup Inc. is defending as fair and in the public interest its $75 million civil settlement with the government over charges it misled investors about billions in potential losses from subprime mortgages.

TELLING IT TO THE JUDGE: Citigroup made its arguments in a filing to a federal judge, who said last month she was “baffled” by the proposed settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citigroup said it was “fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest.”

SEC DEFENSE: The SEC defended the settlement on the same grounds in its own filing last week.

Posted: Sep 13 2010     By: Dan Norcini 

Dear CIGAs,

Click chart to enlarge today’s hourly action in Gold in PDF format with commentary from Trader Dan Norcini

Thanks for the explanation my choice is much clearer now.

Allways had a likeing for low hanging fruit.

Cheers

Well Well Well…. (FINRA / HFT / Manipulation)

Now this is some interesting stuff….

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) today announced that it has censured and fined New York-based Trillium Brokerage Services, LLC, $1 million for using an illicit high frequency trading strategy and related supervisory failures. Trillium, through nine proprietary traders, entered numerous layered, non-bona fide market moving orders to generate selling or buying interest in specific stocks. By entering the non-bona fide orders, often in substantial size relative to a stock’s overall legitimate pending order volume, Trillium traders created a false appearance of buy- or sell-side pressure.

Gee, who’s been talking about this for over a year?

Myself and Zerohedge, primarily, and more recently, Nanex.

Got the above?  These folks were entering orders they had no intention of executing for the purpose of manipulating the price.

That’s illegal.

This trading strategy induced other market participants to enter orders to execute against limit orders previously entered by the Trillium traders. Once their orders were filled, the Trillium traders would then immediately cancel orders that had only been designed to create the false appearance of market activity. As a result of this improper high frequency trading strategy, Trillium’s traders obtained advantageous prices that otherwise would not have been available to them on 46,000 occasions. Other market participants were unaware that they were acting on the layered, illegitimate orders entered by Trillium traders.

46,000 times you (in total) got screwed - that FINRA caught this time.

In concluding this settlement, Trillium and the individual respondents neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA’s findings. This conduct was initially referred to FINRA by NASDAQ’s MarketWatch Department.

Of course not.  Nobody ever is actually prosecuted for garden-variety fraud any more, and sent to the hoosegow.  Instead we just fine ‘em, slap their hands, and make it a “cost of doing business.”

If we’re going to keep to fines, they have to be a LOT larger.  Like 100x as large as the profits made, so that if you do it and get caught, you’re fooked and out of business.

These practices will not stop until they become so dangerous to engage in that nobody in their right mind will take the risk of being immediately and permanently bankrupted by the practice.

How many of these are there again…

http://market-ticker.org/

This one is for GoldenAge and the other fine ladies here. They put up with the guys here with very little complaint and lots of dignity. Mrs Lifeboat has ordered me to send this to all our friends, which of course includes everyone here.

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large raging, violent river.
Needing to get to the other side, The first man prayed:
‘God, please give me the strength to cross the river.’
Poof! .. God gave him big arms and strong legs. And he was able to swim across in about 2 hours, though he almost drowned twice.

After witnessing that, the second man prayed:
‘God, please give me strength and the tools to cross the river’
Poof! .. God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and strong legs. He was able to row across in about an hour, though he almost capsized once.

Seeing what happened to the first two men, the third man prayed:
‘God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross the river’
Poof! .. He was turned into a woman. She checked the map, hiked a few hundred yards up stream and walked across the bridge.

Moral - If at first you don’t succeed, do it the way your wife told you!

a little up angle on the pm dangle. we might just have a good overnight tonight.
wj

to your blog. it is pending moderation. best of cheers wj

Thanks Wanka, for your positive feed back - now, if I could just get you to use the comment page on the post vs. commenting here, that would be terrific. It helps get ones blog listed better in the google, bing, and other search engine type things.
Comments and responses on the blog show the search engine that there is an interest and following of the blog, and it comes up better when you search for , lets say, central america, belize or travel.
Please, anything that keeps the bugs away - like not wearing a black shirt - tell me that BEFORE I go out on my hikes! Those bugs down here are really bad in certain places!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the post. Positive feedback helps a lot.
Cheers for now
John

I met him in Tottsville, had a long talk with him on the patio the night we arrived and really did like him very much-straight talker with no B.S. Prayers for his family.