So Much Ado About So Little
"A sale of 12.9 million ounces of gold as ‘probably the most viable’ option to ensure the long-term funding of the IMF. Proceeds would be used for an interest-bearing endowment."
–WSJ, 26 February 2008.
12.9 million ounces of gold at $906 per ounce, as I write, is slightly less than $12.4 billion. The Chinese would buy $12.4 billion in gold with a telephone call.
Central banks would be willing to buy twice or even ten times that amount.
How foolish the IMF and Gordon Brown have been in gold. Both sold to major buyers at historic lows in price. Brown sold at $248 and the IMF started their sales at $106 in the 70s.
What in the world are you worried about?
Their sales at any amount will, as in the past, be an enduring monument to their lack of acumen in knowing the gold price.
In fact they are both the two dumbest gold haters that exist.
My Dear Friends,
Spinmeisters always tell the Sheeples when they cannot control something that the government favors that something.
Watch this strategy unfold as the US dollar heads for .5100 on the USDX.
This will reach Spiritual Spinmeister levels as the Hollow Jolly 2009 season arrives.
OTTI Assets:
There has been a new term given to completely destroyed, absolutely valueless and always to be worthless OTC derivatives. These had previously been called "Permanently Impaired Assets."
The new name is OTTI Assets, which translates as "Other than Temporary Impairment Assets." These now under the new FASB rules will be carried as valued decided upon by the banks.
Sodom and Gomorrah at least enjoyed themselves in their drop into perdition. These criminals just count beans as they kill everybody.
"We the Sheeple" are the victims. Wall Street benefits, of course.
The disgrace is that bank shares rally on the permissions to deceive.
You think Mother Nature might be a little peeved?
Respectfully yours,
Jim
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Pakistan is CRITICAL now!
Tomorrow is too late.
How long is the Obama Administration going to discuss:
- The means of producing Nukes.
- Dr. Doom, the purveyor of Nukes.
- Knowledge of how and facilities to manufacture Nukes.
- Raw materials to produce Nukes.
- All the same on delivery systems for Nukes.
- Not just standing Nukes.
If you want the face of the world to change once again and forever and the price of crude to stay permanently over $100, all you need to do is send ambassadors, with money to discuss the problem.
Sending money only insures a comfortable retirement for the present Pakistani government.
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US Afghan envoy Holbrooke in Kabul for talks |
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Pakistan mosque blast ‘kills 20′ |
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‘Pakistan find 46 dead Afghans in truck container’ |
Suicide Bomber Kills 8 Paramilitary Officers in Pakistan
By Shaiq Hussain and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 4, 2009; 6:15 PM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 4 — A suicide bomber attacked a small paramilitary camp in an exclusive, heavily protected neighborhood of the Pakistani capital Saturday, killing at least eight paramilitary officers before blowing himself up, police said.
The bomber tried to enter the camp, a cluster of tents in a wooded area between two residential streets, just after dark, but then detonated his explosives. The blast was heard several miles away and sent panic through the nearby Jinnah Super Market, which caters to affluent residents.
Witnesses said the 7:30 p.m. blast was followed by a heavy barrage of gunfire.
No group asserted responsibility for the attack, but the leader of a Taliban militia faction in northwestern Pakistan warned earlier in the week that his fighters would soon strike in Islamabad. The leader, Baitullah Mehsud, also claimed that he had carried out an attack on a police academy near Lahore this past week.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Yes, but it is NOT a scam in the sense that all bailout money is applied to pay the debit on the failed OTC derivative as the credit is paid out to the winners inside and outside of the firm.
You do not see the inside payments. AIG is not an exception. It just paid out more externally. That is why it was visible.
Exclusive: Big Banks’ Recent Profitability Due to AIG Scam?
March 30, 2009
Zero Hedge is rarely speechless, but after receiving this email from a correlation desk trader, we simply had to hold a moment of silence for the phenomenal scam that continues unabated in the financial markets, and now has the full oversight and blessing of the U.S. government, which in turn keeps on duping U.S. taxpayers into believing everything is good.
I present the insider perspective of trader Lou (who wishes to remain anonymous) in its entirety:
AIG-FP accumulated thousands of trades over the years, all essentially consisted of selling default protection. This was done via a number of structures with really only one criteria – rated at least AA- (if it fit these criteria all OK – as far as I could tell credit assessment was completely outsourced to the rating agencies).
Main products they took on were always levered credit risk, credit-linked notes (collateral and CDS both had to be at least AA-, no joint probability stuff) and AAA or super senior portfolio swaps. Portfolio swaps were either corporate synthetic CDO or asset backed, effectively sub-prime wraps (as per news stories regarding GS and DB).
Credit linked notes are done through single-name CDS desks and a cash desk (for the note collateral) and the portfolio swaps are done through the correlation desk. These trades were done is almost every jurisdiction – wherever AIG had an office they had IB salespeople covering them.
Correlation desks just back their risk out via the single names desks – the correlation desk manages the delta/gamma according to their correlation model. So correlation desks carry model risk but very little market risk.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
The present Administration may set a record for poor vetting of their superstars or just business as usual.
White House Financial Disclosures Paint Scarlet $ on Larry Summers
The White House did a Friday left-cheek sneak yesterday, announcing that Executive Branch Financial Disclosure reports are now available through an online ordering process. Making hay out of these reports is the nature of the beast in politics, and by dumping them on a Friday, they blunt the impact of criticisms like this:
Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, earned millions working at a hedge fund and speaking to banks such as Citigroup Inc. that later received taxpayer bailout money.
Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. paid Summers more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the past 16 months, according to a financial disclosure form released by the White House yesterday. Summers served as a managing director at the New York-based firm. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, also earned more than $2.7 million in speaking fees.
A report like this cuts both ways. Do we want advisers who couldn’t get arrested on the lecture circuit? Should the President be raiding The Learning Annex to staff his administration? One of Bloomberg’s experts makes the point succinctly:
The disclosure statement for Summers and several other top administration officials illustrates the quandary Obama and his predecessors have faced in their personnel decisions because "powerful people are almost always also rich people" who have earned money from private interests, said Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
How can you possibly fear the pittance of gold the IMF has for sale? It is a total joke.
AIG Bailout Exceeds Value of Fort Knox Gold
April 02, 2009
At the end of this Fox Business News video with Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), it is learned that, if indeed all the gold in Fort Knox is still there, it is worth less than all the bailout money already paid to AIG.
That, in itself, is a weighty argument for the yellow metal being undervalued at today’s prices, perhaps by a quite considerable margin. The current GATA media blitz is related to their recent Freedom of Information Act request to see if they can get someone to audit the contents of Fort Knox, besides the Treasury Department, that is.
This report in the TimesOnline provides many of the details:
Is there any gold inside Fort Knox, the world’s most secure vault?
It is said to be the most impregnable vault on Earth: built out of granite, sealed behind a 22-tonne door, located on a US military base and watched over day and night by army units with tanks, heavy artillery and Apache helicopter gunships at their disposal.
Since its construction in 1937 the treasures locked inside Fort Knox have included the US Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, three volumes of the Gutenberg Bible and Magna Carta.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
How in the name of all that is holy can you be afraid of the IMF?
A bear’s bear
There is a time for stocks and a time for gold. Now is the time for gold, Ian Gordon says
BRIAN MILNER
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
April 2, 2009 at 7:14 AM EDT
Anyone wondering what a bear’s bear sounds like need only spend some time with Ian Gordon, a Vancouver-based investment adviser and market historian whose genial nature seems at odds with his decidedly grim outlook. Basing his views on an interpretation of market cycles going back more than 200 years, the president of Long Wave Analytics has been consistently accurate in his forecasts in recent years. And if he is right now, much worse is yet to come.
Can you explain how your thesis works?
I sort of extended Kondratieff’s economic cycle into something far bigger than he had ever intended. [Nikolai Kondratieff was a Soviet economist who concluded in the 1920s that capitalist economies endure recurring booms and busts over long cycles running up to 60 years.] I quickly discovered that it was very easy to recognize exactly where you were in the cycle.
You divide the cycle into the four seasons of the year and say that right now we’re at the beginning of a long winter. Why is that?
‘We’re only really at the beginnings of this massive collapse of the debt structure. Much as the central banks are trying to feed money into the system, the collapse basically takes money out faster than they can put it in,’ Ian Gordon says. (Laura Leyson for the Globe and Mail)
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Washington is going to fire the CEOs. That is the job of the directors under pressure from the stockholders in a capitalistic system.
If the new system requires a name, the closest parallel is FACISM.
Welcome to change brought about by many Administrations, Nixon forward.
U.S. May Oust CEOs at Banks Needing ‘Exceptional’ Aid (Update1)
By Jesse Westbrook
April 5 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he’s prepared to oust the senior management and boards of directors at banks that require “exceptional” assistance from the U.S. government.
“If in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we will make sure that assistance comes,” while ensuring taxpayers are protected, Geithner said today in an interview on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that.”
Geithner noted that American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their chief executives removed after it became clear the companies couldn’t survive without government rescues. The Treasury is reviewing how much capital the biggest U.S. financial companies need in order to endure a severe economic downturn.
“Where we’ve had to do exceptional things,” the government has replaced management and boards of directors, Geithner said.
Geithner’s pledge comes as signs emerge that the world economy may be stabilizing. Confidence among U.S. consumers climbed last month from the lowest level on record, according to the Conference Board. U.K. house prices rose in March for the first time since October 2007, while Chinese manufacturing increased, reports last week showed.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Let’s see, everything starts in California, so you will within a year read about this in the US.
Cops storm G20 ‘rioters HQ’
3/04/2009
Police hunting G20 rioters threatened 70 squatters with tasers after storming their derelict HQ yesterday.
The dramatic arrests came as further violent protests failed to materialise.
Petros Persad, 20, who was in one of the East London squats, said: "They battered down the doors.
They didn’t beat us up but it was scary. They burst into the room, pointed tasers at us and told us to get down with our faces on the floor." The Met said officers were hunting for suspects wanted for "violent disorder".
Outside the G20 summit at the ExCel Centre in Docklands, more than 1,500 police officers were deployed. But only 500 demonstrators turned up.
