New CME Bitcoin Futures And The Goldman Sachs Connection

Many Bitcoin zealots enthusiasts correctly believe Bitcoin futures contracts trading at the CBOE and CME would be a boon for Bitcoin.  Indeed, the price of Bitcoin has soared since the announcements, as front-runners have been driving prices up in anticipation of the exchanges trading Bitcoin futures December 11 and December 18, respectively.  But what Bitcoin cultists don't understand is that these same vampire squid bankers who have been manipulating and suppressing commodities prices (especially precious metals) now have the opportunities (and leverage) to apply the same suppression schemes on the price of Bitcoin.  They will short and crash Bitcoin.  Satoshi is rolling over in his Bitcoin nirvana.

Early adopters who got in at lower levels should be able to ride out the rollercoaster.  But Johnny-come-lately's with weak hands who sell at the faintest signs of weakness will get slaughtered.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-09/new-cme-bitcoin-futures-and-goldman-sachs-connection

“The Gold System Is Based On Trust & Trust Is Breaking Down”

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/7/24_The_Gold_System_Is_Based_On_Trust_%26_Trust_Is_Breaking_Down.html

Ann Barnhardt: The Entire Futures/Options Market Has Been Destroyed by the MF Global Collapse

This is why the MF Global collapse and subsequent non-action by the regulators will lead to a run on banks.  Nothing is safe--unless you take physical possession. 

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/2011/12/02/ann-barnhardt/interview-transcript

Something strange in the precious metals pits

COMEX gold declined a small amount, but silver prices are surging today. This bifurcation is unusual, as these precious metals usually move in tandem. I've posted numerous blogs on the dual utility of silver as an investment and industrial metal--and how the price suppression by bullion banks in London and New York is exacerbating the shortage in physical inventory. Eventually, the price of the futures markets becomes disconnected from the physical markets, as industrial buyers scramble to find supply.

Unlike retail consumers who are typically price-sensitive (i.e. retail gold jewelry buyers are priced out when when prices rise), industrial buyers must find physical supply wherever they can in order to keep their production lines humming, so they will bid up prices in tight markets. For instance, a buyer of a Bill of Materials does not want to be in the critical path of the supply chain for Apple's popular IPad, because delays translate to millions in losses. There is silver content in products as diverse as electronics, solar panels, disinfectants, antibiotics, mirrors, optics, silverware--in addition to jewelry.

A run on physical silver will eventually spill over into the paper futures market where most contracts are settled via cash. However, if longs (buyers) insist on physical delivery, there would be a deeper run on silver, causing a huge short squeeze and soaring prices. Both longs and shorts scrambling to cover their shorts will intensify buying pressure. With naked shorting prevalent in precious metals futures markets, the COMEX could experience a default, where futures contracts are undeliverable. Longs expecting delivery would be defrauded.

That's why taking physical possession is so crucial in the event of a default.

Please see disclaimers in the sidebar.

Disclosure: long physical gold and silver, long mining shares.

CFTC to holding hearing on position limits

The CFTC will be holding a hearing on March 25 to examine position limits in the gold, silver and copper futures markets. I've blogged a few entries on the need to limit and enforce concentrated positions in commodities markets in order to prevent price manipulation, including this entry yesterday: http://gregnguyen.blogspot.com/2010/02/gold-and-silver-suppression-confirmed.html (the original link was incorrect--click on it again).

http://www.gata.org/node/8364

Let's see if anything positive comes out of this meeting. I'll post the results when available.

COMEX and LBMA default?

Thanks to Dick for another gem.

Could a default, or "failure to deliver" in the COMEX or London Bullion Market Association be imminent? It probably has occurred already. There is a widening gap between the prices of paper gold contracts and physical gold bullion, due to price suppression schemes by the bullion banks and central bankers. Jim Willie believes the bifurcation of futures contracts and physical gold prices will occur when the physical shortage of gold is exposed.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/willie/2010/0203.html

The paper gold market and the physical gold bullion market have finally separated in a practical manner, meaning actual gold has almost no role anymore in London paper contract settlement. The absence of gold in London requires extraordinary tactics to settle contracts and to obtain gold bullion. Red tape procedures delay delivery for individuals, and bribes accompany gold delivery demands as standard practice. The London Bullion Market Assn has almost zero gold, its supply having been drained in high volumes since early December, a process currently in acceleration.

The public is unaware of government and central bank intervention in markets. They are also unaware of the pipeline between Wall Street and Washington, DC. The populist anger expressed by Congress and the Obama Administration is manufactured, armed with public opinion polls. You know the best way to eliminate taxpayer-funded banker bonuses? Don't bail out the banks in the first place. The media is complicit, cheerleading green shoots, while ignoring accurate data.

The financial press is critically important precisely now, for not spilling the facts on the current gold market breakdown and divergence. Much of the pressures are hidden though, since the financial press networks report only the official paper-based prices. Do not expect to read in Reuters or Bloomberg or the Associated Press or Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or Investors Business Daily or Barrons that a grotesque gold shortage exists in the London metals exchange or at the COMEX in New York and Chicago. They will not report that London is virtually drained of gold, yet still sells gold contracts. Accurate news reporting would accelerate the breakdown and remove the possibility for time extension. The press will not report that billionaires are emptying their gold bullion accounts at rapidfire pace, out of gross distrust of the bankers, since gold leasing has illegally been standard practice for many years. Imagine selling lumber contracts without wood delivered. Imagine selling mortgages without home titles delivered. Actually, Wall Street did precisely that from 2003 to 2007.

The crack spread

I posted a blog entry on January 19 on the increasingly uneconomical industry of petroleum refining in the US. A consequence of refineries moving offshore due to shrinking profit margin are higher prices across the energy complex.

According to the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) "Derivatives and Risk Management in the Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Electricity" publication, a "crack spread" is the following:

Refiners’ profits are tied directly to the spread, or difference, between the price of crude oil and the prices of refined products. Because refiners can reliably predict their costs other than crude oil, the spread is their major uncertainty. One way in which a refiner could ensure a given spread would be to buy crude oil futures and sell product futures. Another would be to buy crude oil call options and sell product put options. Both of those strategies are complex, however, and they require the hedger to tie up funds in margin accounts. To ease this burden, NYMEX in 1994 launched the crack spread contract. NYMEX treats crack spread purchases or sales of multiple futures as a single trade for the purposes of establishing margin requirements. The crack spread contract helps refiners to lock-in a crude oil price and heating oil and unleaded gasoline prices simultaneously in order to establish a fixed refining margin. One type of crack spread contract bundles the purchase of three crude oil futures (30,000 barrels) with the sale a month later of two unleaded gasoline futures (20,000 barrels) and one heating oil future (10,000 barrels). The 3-2-1 ratio approximates the real-world ratio of refinery output—2 barrels of unleaded gasoline and 1 barrel of heating oil from 3 barrels of crude oil. Buyers and sellers concern themselves only with the margin requirements for the crack spread contract. They do not deal with individual margins for the underlying trades.

Traders are profiting from the closure of American refineries, as the crack spread is widening. However, the bottom line to US consumers and businesses are higher energy prices going forward.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=amg1Ou18W4wY&pos=15

More crooks

Stephen Obie, Director of Enforcement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which oversees the futures exchanges, is on Fox Business News preaching about transparency, oversight, regulation, and enforcement, and waving his hands on TV like a Dale Carnegie salesman. He's saying how the SEC and investors didn't oversee and perform due diligence on Bernie Madoff.

What's unbelievable is that the commodity pits are rife with manipulation and corruption beyond imagination. Big commercial traders and banks have artificially suppressed prices on the futures markets for years--yet, the CFTC never investigates the commercials--they know where their bread is buttered. Naked shorting makes it possible for the commercials to dampen prices on commodities like gold and silver, with no intention for physical delivery on settlement date. In other words, they'll sell short a futures contract with no inventory, and no intention to deliver at that date. These are phantom contracts, much like the toxic credit default swaps which were uncollaterized. These naked short-selling commercials are selling vaporware, and their massive short positions alone can drive prices lower due to no other reason than market manipulation.

Instead, the CFTC goes after the small-time speculators for minor non-compliance, but they will not reveal who takes large positions on either side of a trade--including the commercials who manipulate the markets. Transparency? What a crock--Fort Knox hasn't had an independent audit for its gold reserves since the early 1950's. Many conspiracy theorists are saying half of what is reported in vaults has either been sold off or leased, yet is still counted.

Eventually, this con game will be exposed when a seller will default, unable to meet physical delivery demands. That day is approaching, as buyers in the middle east are scrambling to buy gold and dealers are unable to meet that demand.

A sobering, but still bullish case for gold from Morningstar

From Vahid Fathi of morningstar.com:

I never thought I'd see the day that gold markets went into backwardation (spot prices higher than futures prices). However, the seemingly unthinkable has indeed happened. Of course, I'm not suggesting that backwardation will be a permanent feature of the market, as the misalignment of interest rates that theoretically caused gold backwardation is most likely not a permanent feature, either. Nonetheless, the question remains: Where do we go from here? This writer speculates that gold could very well turn out to be in a win-win situation, whether there is deflation or inflation. How is this possible? Adam Smith told us that gold is a barbaric relic, although it is more commonly known as the metal of kings. I remind you all that the world is still full of barbarians.

The above-ground stocks of gold, presumably available for disinvestment at any time, are some 60-fold of annual production of about 2,500 metric tons. This is why gold has never been in backwardation. Unlike any other commodity, all gold that has been mined throughout the ages is still out there somewhere. At an estimated 150,000 metric tons, this above-ground stock of gold--with most obvious portions in private hands or tucked away in central bank vaults--dwarfs annual production. Unlike industrial commodities such as copper, aluminum, or zinc, where prices can go into backwardation at the slightest hint of a temporary supply disruption from major producers, contango pricing has always been the norm for gold, where futures prices exceed the spot price.

Earlier this month, however, for the first time in history gold prices went into backwardation. Put differently, physical demand was to be met only by higher prices; those that held gold appear to be more reluctant to part with their hoard today than they may be in the future. Naturally, one wonders why it is that gold is now dearer in the face of what could turn out to be a potentially painful deflationary environment ahead.

Historically, it is understood that the role of gold is more of a hedge against inflation. Accordingly, the usual cadres of gold bugs have been telling us that gold strength reflects the enormous sums of money that are being printed and spent to bail out failing financial institutions and to shore up the flow of credit to prevent the economy from falling ever more deeply into recession. The inflationary implication of printing so much new fiat money is clear-cut to gold bugs; after all, Milton Friedman taught us that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Most gold bugs equipped with charts showing money supply going through the roof see this as the precursor to runaway inflation ahead.

The flaw with that rationale, however, is that while it is true that money supply has increased significantly and inflation is a monetary phenomenon, it is the velocity of money that matters. And velocity has decelerated dramatically--a natural outcome of deleveraging. That's why I speculate that the deployment of monetary tools, including reducing the cost of credit through the Fed window to prevent deflation, is akin to pushing on a string. As long as the velocity of money is decelerating, one should expect that nominal economic growth will remain at best anemic worldwide, even if the cost of credit gravitates toward zero (and for all practical purposes is there already).

However, should the Fed decide to monetize debt, then inflation would become a threat. For now though, given the subdued velocity of money, swapping financial institutions' illiquid assets for liquid Treasuries to stimulate credit flow can hardly be viewed as inflationary, and it's not even having much success yet as financial institutions appear to be hoarding liquidity.

The last era of any significant period of deflation was in the 1930s. Although gold was fixed for a long time at $20.67 per ounce, in 1934 a massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar saw its fixed price jump to $35 per ounce. During this period of entrenched deflation, and in spite of the fixed price of the metal, gold proxies saw a dramatic rise in price. The NYSE-listed shares of Homestake Mining Company rose from about $4 to $500 from 1929 to 1935; the company operated for some 120 years until its flagship Homestake mine in Lead, S.D., ran out of economic reserves a few years ago and the company ceased to exist.

From my perspective, we dare not expect such returns from gold producers' shares, but I remain confident that our revised target price of $1,250 per ounce (our previous target of $1,000 was met) has a reasonable probability of panning out. That would likely result in handsome returns for gold producers' shares. The likes of Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM - News), Barrick (NYSE:ABX - News), Anglogold Ashanti (NYSE:AU - News), Gold Fields (NYSE:GFI - News), and Agnico Eagle (NYSE:AEM - News) would benefit in such an environment.

That said, we could very well experience some deflationary forces first, before inflation (or more precisely, reflation) changes the course. Surely, a fast cure for deflation may simply be another major devaluation of the dollar, however unthinkable this may seem. Perhaps the following excerpt from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suffices as support for my take on gold prices:

"Although a policy of intervening to affect the exchange value of the dollar is nowhere on the horizon today, it's worth noting that there have been times when exchange rate policy has been an effective weapon against deflation. A striking example from U.S. history is Franklin Roosevelt's 40 percent devaluation of the dollar against gold in 1933-34, enforced by a program of gold purchases and domestic money creation. The devaluation and the rapid increase in money supply it permitted ended the U.S. deflation remarkably quickly. Indeed, consumer price inflation in the United States, year on year, went from -10.3 percent in 1932 to -5.1 percent in 1933 to 3.4 percent in 1934. The economy grew strongly, and by the way, 1934 was one of the best years of the century for the stock market. If nothing else, the episode illustrates that monetary actions can have powerful effects on the economy, even when the nominal interest rate is at or near zero, as was the case at the time of Roosevelt's devaluation."

Caveat emptor: This win-win proposition for gold is not for the faint of heart and is only speculation on my part. There is no reason to believe that the randomness of events will favor any one particular scenario. Only time will tell.

The return of the gold standard? Why gold is poised to explode...

Blue-collar, white-collar, manufacturing, services, etc.---it doesn't matter what type of jobs--the more the merrier, altho it would be nice to have higher-skilled job growth.

If you think about it, who invented the internet? (No, it wasn't Al Gore). It was a British scientist educated in Switzerland (or it was a Swiss educated in the UK). But as far as monetizing the technology, most of the $$ were generated here, as well as accompanying technologies and services. It's okay to be a consumer-oriented economy, as long innovation continues domestically.

I think that's what dawg was sarcastically inferring--we can't go backwards.

To be honest, the only way we go back to real economic growth--without inflation and the abuse of leverage, is to go back to the gold standard. History has shown time again that when sovereign governments abandon gold-backed currencies, paralyzing hyperinflation becomes the unintended consequence down the road. With fiat currencies, central banks are permitted to print money unjudiciously--most of the time to try to dampen deep recessions (sounds familiar?). Deflation and avoidance of The Great Depression category 5 is the concern du jour, but the Coming to Jesus day will arrive soon enough, and we will all pay for these bailouts, literally with higher taxes and a higher cost of living (and accompanying lower standard of living).

Think about it: with our reserve banking system, a 20% run on demand deposits would make every single one of our major banks insolvent. This is not just a mortgage crisis, a credit crisis, etc.--it's a crisis of confidence. And with flimsy fiat, finance-based economies, confidence is everything (since there is no gold backing up the currency).

Of course, resetting of a new gold standard would mean a level of around $1500/ounce, which would cut everybody's cash accounts in half, but that's what it would take. It happened in the early 30's, when FDR declared gold would be set at $35/oz, instead of the previous $20/oz. The federal government then went on to confiscate all individually held gold (with the exception of wedding rings), or citizens risked 10 years of prison and a $10,000 fine. All that gold is now at Fort Knox. This was due to the profligate Treasury printing presses during the easy money 20's, which in turn caused the Great Depression of the 30's. (See any parallels?).

I could go on and on about what's going on with the currency and gold markets right now, with the manipulation and placating of short-sellers, but I'll summarize with this: if JP Morgan and Citibank are openly predicting $1500/oz gold for next year, and if they are accumulating gold bullion as we speak (as are Dubai, Saudi and Chinese governments), then why are they selling short gold? Could it be they want to keep its price artificially low, in order to boost their purchases? Thing is, it's a dangerous parlor game, as short sellers have to deliver against futures contracts, and there are rumors that these shadow contracts entail no deliveries. But that is precisely why the two major banks are accumulating physical gold bullion, because when the shorts are covered (i.e. gold explodes upward in price), their inventory will (partially) offset their losing sales contracts.

Another compelling case for gold: The Treasury is printing trillions of dollars for bailouts--equal to half the US GDP. What happens when you have oversupply of a commodity--including a local currency? It removes scarcity, plummeting that currency. What happens when your currency is devalued? Gold soars--it's a mathematical reality, not some wild rantings of a gold bug.

Look, gold has been the absolute worst investment vehicle from 1980 - 2000.

But in the 70's, it was the absolute best--even with inventory costs taken into account. Gold went up 23-fold in that decade. Gold mining shares went up twice that level. If many prognosticators are saying this run is much worse than 73-74 and 78, what does that say about the price of gold? Does anybody think post-2008 will be a replay of the roaring 80's and late-90's stock market booms? Or are we headed for a very subdued 70's-like stagflation scenario? You decide.

BTW, the Big 3 is old news, despite the headlines. I called their demise 18 months ago, and their shares are down a nice 98%. It's done, finito. The next shocks will be a result of de-leveraging and the precipitous decline of most currencies and US long-term debt. Whoever buys US 10-year notes or Treasury bonds is going to get crushed. Taking on all that risk (after all, one could argue the US government is insolvent), and yet earning 2% on your money? When inflation rears its ugly head, and interest rates are in the double digits, those bonds will be worth less than Monopoly money.