Thunder Road Reports On Irregularities In The Gold Market

Paul Mylchreest submits the following exhaustive Thunder Road report (from October 15, 2009), which is a follow-up to the previously posted Redburn Partners report. A detailed analysis on some of the less discussed aspects of the gold market, this is another must read for all who have even an incipient interest in the gold market.

Is The Federal Reserve Buying Greek Bonds?

After singlehandedly rescuing every Wall Street bonus in the prior year, is the Fed now the shadow backstop for the Greek economy as well?

Lessons from Argentina's economic collapse

A LIST OF THINGS THAT "If you had it to do over again" YOU WOULD GET.

Redburn Partners On The Coming Gold War: "Gold Is Money And Nothing Else"

A must read paper by Redburn Partners, "Gold War - Gold is money and nothing else", written in November 2007, which due to its extreme prescience on not only the shift of the economy following the bursting of the credit bubble, but being virtually spot on in its prediction on the price of gold, can serve as an sufficiently comprehensive introduction to anyone wishing to get up to speed with the primary forces determining the price of gold and its implications in a fiat-money world (and especially the prevailing current variant in which competitive devaluations galore).

Toyota – The Japanese Perspective

The American government now effectively owns General Motors, and thus has a stake in its revitalization. Certain publications infer even more nefarious purposes. Shukan Port claims that the U.S. is getting back at Japan for dragging its feet about moving the Futenma air base.

8 Financial Fault Lines Appear In The Euro Experiment!

Our research has identified eight fault lines now visible in the Euro experiment. Each is serious. As a combination they have the potential to be devastating. They are all now fully in play.

Presenting A Scientific Theory For The Fair Value Of Gold (With 88% Accuracy)

We hold that since gold fulfills the unique function of a global store of value, its yield must vary inversely to the yield required by any financial asset class, thus providing a hedge in the case where such assets are losing value.

Tiger Woods' Apology Causes Greater Market Volume Spike Than FOMC Discount Rate Hike Announcement

Head Of Greek Debt Office Replaced By Former Goldman Investment Banker

Mr. Christodoulou worked not only as head of derivatives at JP Morgan but also held comparable posts at Credit Suisse, and... wait for it, Goldman Sachs...

Greek Spies Hot On The Trail Of CDS "Speculators" Who Singlehandedly Destroyed Greece

First it was the Spanish CIA, and now Greek daily To Vima reports that the Greek National Intelligence Service, instead of focusing on such potentially more pressing issues as who may be bombing various offshore financial offices, or possible Cypriot unrest, is hot on the heels of those who were solely responsible for the Greek bond market collapse: four hedge funds who have had the temerity to buy and sell Credit Default Swaps (or, heaven forbid, GGBs). And they are not doing it alone: French and British intelligence agencies have also joined in the fray, actual people blowing themselves up all over the place be damned.

Putin Tells Greece to Relax, Points to US Debt

“As we all know, the global economic crisis started neither in Greece, nor in Russia, nor in Europe,” Mr. Putin told a news conference after talks with George Papandreou. “It came to us from across the ocean,” he said in a clear reference to the United States.

Economic Warfare Conspiracy Theory.

Ok, I haven't been paying much attention to the news lately. But now here's a story about a bomb going off at a Greek J.P. Morgan building. So let's see:
1: Greece is on the brink of "defaulting." The EU countries don't want to bail them out. However the EURO as a pan-European currency could be in jeopardy.
2: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
3: Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are historical rivals.
4: The Fed is stocked with former (and future?) Goldman dudes. Obama's new "economic advisor" (Paul Volcker) is a J.P. Morgan dude.
5: The Goldman dudes wanna hyperinflate to repudiate debt. Volcker has a history of being radically anti-inflationary.

Feel free to connect the dots for yourselves.

Hyperinflation As A Debt Repudiation Device? No According To UBS, Yes According To Recently Declassified IMF Paper

Yet a recently declassified paper by the IMF's Guillermo Calvo "Is Inflation Effective for Liquidating Short-Term Nominal Debt?" (a document which was previously not for public use) comes to a frighteningly different conclusion, one which could imply that the last weapon in the Fed's, and the administration's arsenal, could very well be just this heretofore unthinkable "bazooka approach" previously thought only possible in such developing countries as Korea and Venezuela.

Minneapolis Fed President Kocherlakota Warns Massive Debt Load Can Only Be Paid By Tax Collections Or Debt Monetization

The Romans used to cut up birds to make their economic forecasts. Our methods have improved—somewhat—but just like in Roman times, it’s very much caveat emptor with economic forecasting.

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period -- to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.

Exclusive: The Bank Of England Engaged In Flagrant Gold Manipulation In The Interwar Period Via The New York Fed; Does History Repeat Itself?

Is this the reason why the Federal Reserve is so opposed to exposing itself to public scrutiny and audits? If the BOE was engaging in outright fraud in the 1925-1931 period, why would today be any different?

Suspicious Timing Surrounding The "De-risking" of AIG's Toxic Obligations

As with everything related to the backdoor bailout of the banks, timing and dates are critical. In the weeks and months following the de-risking of AIG's CDOs, the ratings of those seven deals were slashed severely. The ratings agencies are regulated by the Federal government. There is no way that Congress can understand the AIG bailout without carefully scrutinizing the decision making process behind these specific ratings and subsequent downgrades.

Exposing The Story Behind Goldman's Record Profits - Part 2: The Role Of The Taxpayer

Do Goldman employees deserve any compensation, much less the $16 billion paid out in salaries and bonuses in 2009 when one considers that the firm would not only have no money to pay, but would be defunct had the US taxpayer not stepped in and bailed them out? Should this money have been used to prepay the firm's $20 billion TLGP exposure instead, thus truly making the firm independent of taxpayer support, instead of just claims to Goldman's public funding independence?

Exposing The Story Behind Goldman's Record Profits

You know the official version of how god's bank, aka Goldman, makes money: in the traditional, and not at all mysterious god's way, as a pureplay investment bank, which allocates capital, provides financing, advisory services, etc. Despite what Mr. Blankfein would want you to believe, that's only half the story.

Asia Times' David Goldman Discusses The Imminent Chinese Asset Dump

The Dumping Begins: Chinese Reserve Managers Notified That Any Non-USG Guaranteed Securities Must Be Divested

It appears that this time China's posturing is for real.

Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways

Securing US Control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden

by Michel Chossudovsky

"The [Indian] Ocean is a major sea lane connecting the Middle East, East Asia and Africa with Europe and the Americas. It has four crucial access waterways facilitating international maritime trade, that is the Suez Canal in Egypt, Bab-el-Mandeb (bordering Djibouti and Yemen), Straits of Hormuz (bordering Iran and Oman), and Straits of Malacca (bordering Indonesia and Malaysia). These ‘chokepoints’ are critical to world oil trade as huge amounts of oil pass through them." (Amjed Jaaved, A new hot-spot of rivalry, Pakistan Observer, July 1, 2009)

Senior Chinese Military Officers Join Iran In Delivering "Punch" To U.S., Propose Selling Treasuries As Arms Sales Punishment

Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.

"Recapitalization Time" The Latest Conflicting Data On Greece

Germany and other EU member states are weighing measures to help Greece climb out of its financial emergency and plan to discuss the matter this week at the European Commission, Germany's finance ministry said Tuesday.

Insider Selling Outpaces Buying By 24 Times In Last Week

Insiders are selling into the neverending rally, as domestic mutual funds have no equity inflows, yet stocks somehow miraculously keep rising, providing yet more attractive exit price points for directors and insiders. In the past week insiders bought $18 million worth of stock and sold $419 million. There is no way to spin this data.


NOTE: Courtesy of the notorious Joseph Bleau.

In Defense of Drunken Sailors

Why has it become so chic in the blogosphere to make the analogy that the Congress, the States, the Municipalities all spend like drunken sailors? Why the sudden urge to besmirch, dare I say libel, drunken sailors?

Greece "Discovers" $40 Billion Of Previously Unknown Debt, CDS Gaps

It appears not even one day can pass without some new and improved indication of Greece's economic collapse. The latest comes from website Kathimerini.gr which discloses that the recently appointed "Committee on the Reliability Of Statistics" has uncovered $40 billion of previously hidden debt (one wonders when America will get a comparable commission: no question we are in dire need of one).

The Fed - Just One Giant Money Counterfeiter

Once you understand the details of modern central banking, you are able to step back and see that it truly is a way for the government to use the printing press to pay its bills. All of the complicated process of targeting interest rates through buying Treasuries simply hides this essential point — and perhaps deliberately so.

The Greece Matrix: Summarizing The "What Ifs"

In response to several reader inquiries into the Bank Of America report behind the post highlighting the potential outcomes for the Greek nation, we present this simplified summary matrix from BofA that rates the probability of each possible scenario and the implications that would follow as a result. A useful cheat sheet for those sovereign default situations.