By Trace Mayer, on April 13th, 2010
The exciting news from the CFTC gold and silver hearings seem to have coinincided with the predictable gold move. The past six months have had tremendous events and it appears black swans are flying in flocks. Now the gold price appears poised to reach my earlier predictions but this may not be easily played for profit. 
EARLIER PREDICTIONS
With gold trading around $995 on 9 September 2009 in Gold Party Barely Started I wrote, “This puts $1,300 gold and $25 silver within range without greatly exceeding previous trading norms”.
Slightly later on 9 October 2009 with gold below $1,050 I was interviewed on BNN:
BNN HOST: You said the credit crisis has not been calmed but intensified. Why? … So as we get more and more concerned with the top of that pyramid, the derivatives play, you are talking about $1,300 bullion. How do you get to that figure?
TRACE: $1,300 bullion comes from looking at the 200 day moving averages and where gold has consolidated and where it goes based on the usual uplegs. It looks like we are following the same thing that happened in 2004 with the rise in 2005, the consolidation in 2006, which went to the rise in 2007, and the consolidation in 2008, and it looks that it will lead to a similar rise in 2009 and 2010 which will take gold to $1,300 which should be a little bit above its 200 day moving average. But in the same trading ranges as we saw in 2005 and 2007.
SIX MONTHS OF BLACK SWANS
In the last six months many important events have transpired. The credit crisis intensified with CIT, Dubai and looming sovereign defaults. Commercial real estate is still frozen and about $600B needs to be refinanced during 2010. Massive fraud is being revealed on a grand scale such as with the 2,000+ page report on Lehman brothers. Greece is holding the Euro-zone hostage while Russia, as usual, most likely mass executed their political opposition. The spread between 2 and 10 year Treasuries has been getting omnious at highs not seen since the early 1980’s. Haiti and Chile rocked out. Civil unrest is increasing throughout the world from Bangkok to Paris. And to cap it off the CFTC gold and silver hearings led to some amazing convergence of opinions between Christian and GATA.
However, I did slightly jump the gun on timing as this late Jan 2010 chart shows.
 The consolidation lasted longer than I anticipated. But that only leads to greater strength for the upleg. And given the past events in the last six months, any of which could lead to chaotic fingers of instability, I would rather be a little early than a little late.
I still think the probability of $1,300 gold in Q2 is very probable while $25 silver may not be so likely; although there will likely be good returns in the white metal. Of course, I still like platinum and the current gain is about $600/ounce from when I recommended buying platinum.
JEFFERY CHRISTIAN’S DANGEROUS IDIOICY
Zero Hedge did an excellent analysis of Jeffery Christian’s interview on Financial Sense Newshour. Because Whiskey and Gunpowder recently featured my article Survivialism In The Suburbs and it stirred up some good discussion I thought I would hone in on some of Christian’s comments that have been lost in the kerfuffle.
Mr. Christian said, “If you look at fishes and loaves of bread, the ratio of derivatives transactions to physical underlying it’s 5 to 1; if you look at aluminum or copper it is about 15 to 1.” During his CFTC testimony he downplayed the implications of shortages, “Another thing is that there are any number of mechanisms allowing for cash settlements”.
CASH SETTLEMENTS AND EMPTY BELLIES
Using Mr. Christian’s logic about always being able to use cash settlements instead of delivery is ludicrous. How helpful is cash settlement of commodities for the people in Haiti and Chile? But then again, Mr. Christian is from Goldman Sachs and their CEO thinks they are ‘doing God’s work’. But last I checked while one can eat cash, like they can eat gold, neither are very nutritious.
Government deficits are generally funded by inflation. Inflation is used as a weak excuse for ineffective price controls. Price controls lead to shortages. These artificial, yet real, shortages lead to rationing. If shortages are too acute and in this case if the Federal Reserve is unable to turn their colored coupons or derivatives into actual physical loaves and fishes, like Jesus did, then the shortages can and will lead to starvation and death.
The attempt by government to disable the chief numeraire to mask the effects of inflation indirectly acts as a price control on all goods and services; particularly raw materials such as commodities which should be viewed as competing currencies. This treasonous policy is fraught with tremendous societal risk. While no one knows precisely how it will play out; my gold chips are on the outcome that it will not end well.
GATA warned about this in the WSJ advertisement:
The objective of this manipulation is to conceal the mismanagement of the U.S. dollar so that it might retain its function as the world’s reserve currency. But to suppress the price of gold is to disable the barometer of the international financial system so that all markets may be more easily manipulated. This manipulation has been a primary cause of the catastrophic excesses in the markets that now threaten the whole world.
A LIFE HEDGE
As a basic life hedge I recommend a three month supply of food and a 72 hour kit. These will provide protection against the vast majority of probable scenarios. Just to be clear, for the extremely dense ones, I recommend taking physical possession of the food and not relying on another institution who engages in fractional reserve food storage at a 100:1 or even 5:1 ratio. When I am hungry I do not appreciate a waiter’s promise of cash settlement instead of my giant steak.
For the truly risk averse who want to ensure the safety of their family then what is the 72 hour kit for? To get somewhere else; like a cabin or for the lazy and social: La Estancia De Cafayate. As with everything just weigh the risk and probability, perform your value calculation and implement your decision. We all have different risk preferences; for example some people want meteorite insurance but I do not.
CONCLUSION
The entire worldwide financial and economic system is a Ponzi scam and will evaporate. No one knows how this will play out but those who are farsighted and understand the Austrian school of economics know this is extremely serious. I was in Chile a few weeks before the massive earthquake. Upon small hinges the wide arc of our lives turn.
The massive imbalances in the gold and silver markets and the entire worldwide economy will not be quickly corrected nor easily played for profit. Too many adhere to the cult of government for that to happen quickly and without too much disruption. But Daybreakers is a good primer so simply be prepared with every needful thing. Tell me, what do you think?
DISCLOSURES: Long physical gold, silver and platinum with no interest in the problematic SLV, Streettracks Gold ETF Trust Shares or the platinum ETFs.
By Bron Suchecki, on April 7th, 2010
In this interview, Lenny Organ (son of Harvey Organ who was at CFTC hearing) recounts how at a recent visit to the vaults of ScotiaBank they saw little physical precious metals and had to go to some trouble to get physical.
I analysed Scotia’s annual report back in September 2009 after seeing a blog by ispeakofpeak on the issue. At that time the annual report revealed that Scotia only had 43% of its gold and silver certificate liabilities backed by physical metal. The table below updates that post with the most recent report (note: Scotia’s financial year end is 31 Oct, figures in millions of dollars).
Year Ending Liabilities Assets Physical cover
Oct 09 3,856 5,580 100%
Oct 08 5,619 2,426 43%
Oct 07 5,986 4,046 68%
Oct 06 3,434 3,362 98%
Oct 05 2,711 2,822 100%
Oct 04 2,018 2,302 100%
It appears that the physical backing was running down from 2006 but is now back to 100%+, with $5.58 billion of physical. This contrasts with Lenny Organ statement. Either Scotia have run down a lot of physical in 6 months or it is stored elsewhere.
I do find it interesting that the gold and silver certificate liability has declined from $5.619b to $3.856b in the past year, a year when most ETFs, GoldMoney and BullionVault and Perth Mint have shown increasing amounts of metal held.
I agree with Adrian Douglas’ statement in the interview that many storage providers “are very vague about what is backing their paper certificates and if they are vague I think you should not give them the benefit of the doubt”. Contrast this statement from Scotia about their unallocated:
“Scotiabank gold certificates are backed by the assets of The Bank of Nova Scotia. Unallocated gold is a claim on The Bank of Nova Scotia for the ounces entitlement to a specific quantity of gold bullion.”
with the Perth Mint’s:
“With unallocated storage, also known as a metal account, clients purchase an interest in a pool of precious metal held by The Perth Mint. The Mint purchases an ounce of precious metal from the spot market for every unallocated ounce it sells to clients. Accordingly every unallocated ounce is 100% backed. … The Perth Mint is not a bullion bank and does not provide project financing or bullion lending/derivative services to mining companies or other entities. It does not lend client’s unallocated metal to support short selling transactions or other derivative activities. The unallocated metal is utilised solely to fund the Mint’s operations.”
You should always read the fine print.
By Bron Suchecki, on April 6th, 2010
“Since criminal prosecution is only a remote threat, and since the fines and damages are generally paid by the companies, not by the individuals, the question is: what’s to keep a Sumitomo from happening again, perhaps in precious metals?” – Modern Market Manipulation by Mike Riess, International Precious Metals Institute 27th Annual Conference, 16 June 2003.
The recent statements by Mr Maguire may well prove Mr Riess right. It is well worth reading Mr Riess’ presentation. It is not long and neatly identifies the factors that contributed to the copper manipulation, factors that also apply to the metals markets.
For the young’uns, “a Sumitomo” refers to the case where, as the CFTC itself found: “the principal copper trader for Sumitomo engaged in a scheme, in conjunction with an entity operating in the United States, with the intent of manipulating the price of copper. In particular, during 1995 and 1996, Sumitomo, acting through its agent or agents, established and maintained large and dominating futures positions in copper metal on the London Metals Exchange (”LME”). In the fall of 1995, Sumitomo stood for delivery on a significant percentage of its maturing futures contracts. It thereby acquired a dominant and controlling cash and futures market position, which directly and predictably caused copper prices, including prices on the United States cash and futures markets, to reach artificially high levels. … Sumitomo intentionally exploited these artificially high prices in order to profit on the liquidation of its large portfolio of futures contracts and holdings of LME warrants.”
It is because of the Sumitomo case that I am not surprised by the revelations of Mr Maguire. However, the question for me is what sort of manipulation are we talking about? It is being spun as proof of GATA’s claim that the gold market is manipulated by the US Government via bullion banks in an attempt to support the dollar. While I don’t begrudge GATA some PR mileage, at this time all that Mr Maguire has is potentially another “rouge trader” case, only affecting the silver markets. He is not providing any evidence about gold market manipulations or Governmental involvement.
This may come in due time if the CFTC investigate further but that does beg the question of why rely on the Government. If they are ultimately party to the manipulation, will they not make the issue go away in a backroom deal? Alternatively, if the CFTC presses on and does find something initially in the silver markets, will it just be explained away as a rouge trader who will take the fall?
In this case it may be best to fight fire with fire. GATA would achieve more, and quicker, by doing a roadshow with Mr Maguire to hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc and making its case that the market has been manipulated via the surreptitious leasing and selling of central bank gold that is now all used up and hence there is a large short position that can be squeezed. The standard of proof would be much lower, just enough to convince an investor that the odds are in their favour.
Would it not be better to use brawn rather than bureaucracy? Only if you’re sure the bet your pitching won’t turn bad, because then your buddies will be blue (to put it mildly).
By Trace Mayer, on March 30th, 2010
Starting 25 March 2010 the CFTC has been conducting an investigation into the concentrated short positions in the gold and silver markets. There has been some very interesting testimony come out of the Goldman Sachs vampire squid’s mouths that the informed gold bugs already knew. The size and scope of this Ponzi scam is beginning to be comprehended. As the idea spreads the demand for various types of ‘physical gold’ will increase and decrease.
STRAIGHT FROM THE VAMPIRE SQUID’S MOUTH
On 9 September 2008 I appeared on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code in episode 788, which has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and has recently been reactivated, I casually remarked, “There are about 140 ounces of paper gold for every one ounce of physical gold.”
Jeffrey Christian, formerly of Goldman Sachs and currently of CPM Group, considers himself among the world’s foremost experts on gold. Before the CFTC Christian testified:
One of the things that the people who criticize the bullion banks and talk about this undue large position don’t understand what is the nature of the long positions of the physical market and we don’t help it; the CFTC when it did its most recent report on silver used the term that we use “the physical market”. We use that term as did the CFTC in that report to talk about the OTC market in other words forwards, OTC options, physical metal and everything else. People say, and you heard it today, there is not that much physical metal out there, and there isn’t. But in the “physical market” as the market uses that term, there is much more metal than that there is a hundred times what there is.
WHAT IS PHYSICAL GOLD?
Let’s untangle some of Christian’s weak verbal jiu-jitsu. In my book The Great Credit Contraction I start off the first paragraph of the first chapter with definitions because if there is no agreement on definitions then it is impossible to analyze and conclude properly. While I focus on the terms money, money substitutes, illusions and currency we may want to shift our focus and attention towards the bottom of the liquidity pyramid and the terms ‘gold’ and ’silver’.
Physical gold, AU 79 on the periodic table, has a density of 19.30 grams per cubic centimeter at room temprature and a liquid density at the melting point of 1,947.5°F of 17.31 grams per cubic centimeter. Physical silver has a similar definition.
Physical Fake Tungsten Gold has been demonstrated to exist and is differentiated from physical gold because of its tungsten composition.
GLD ETF gold differs from physical gold in many ways which I have examined several times. On page 11 of the prospectus it states:
Neither the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of the gold allocated to the Trust in connection wtih the creation of a Basket [issuances].
So for that reason and many others, in A Problem With GLD And SLV ETFs I concluded, “There is no assurance that the ‘gold’ held in the ETFs is actually the same gold as defined under the periodic table.”
I casted even more aspersions on these instruments in Another Problem With The GLD ETF where I showed from the 21st of November 10-K:
“Gold held by the Custodian’s currently selected subcustodians and by subcustodians of sub-custodians may be held in vaults located in England or in other locations.” and “In addition, the Trustee has no right to visit the premises of any subcustodian for the purposes of examining the Trust’s gold or any records maintained by the sub-custodian for the purposes of examining the Trust’s gold or any records maintained by the sub-custodian, and no sub-custodian is obligated to cooperate in any review the Trustee may wish to conduct of the facilities, procedures, records or creditworthiness of such sub-custodian.”
Physical London LBMA OTC Forward gold is another interesting form of Christian’s physical gold. But I touched on the Massive Institutional Gold Market Change over six months ago.
CFTC TESTIMONY
Here are two key excerpts from the CFTC gold and silver hearings on 25-26 March 2010.
And the clip with Christian’s failed verbal jiu-jitsu which is actually a blatant admission (at 3:48) of the Ponzi scam nature of the ‘physical gold market’.
So what has Christian attempted to do? Conflate the gold as defined in the periodic table with other forms of ‘gold’ such as GLD ETF gold, London LBMA OTC gold, Comex futures gold, etc. under the term ‘physical gold market’. Of course, such contorted logic is absurd. The ability of a piece of paper with the letters ‘G-O-L-D’ written on it, that can become worthless, is no more efficacious at providing protection of value than a piece of cardboard with ‘C-O-W’ written on it is efficacious at providing a gallon of milk.
CONCLUSION
The knowledge that there are at least a hundred pieces of paper masquerading as physical gold in the physical gold market for every ounce of gold as defined on the periodic table is old news. What is breaking news is that one of the vampire squids would testify before government officials that this is the case.
So, if possession is 9/10ths of the law and if there are 100+ claims on an ounce of gold for every actual physical ounce and if there is a demand by the market for those actual physical ounces, because The Great Credit Contraction continues and capital seeks safety and liquidity by moving down the liquidity pyramid, then what happens to the value of the gold ounce in one’s hand or trust third-party service? For comparison there is about $7,000,000 of capital, real and fictional, for each ounce of physical gold.
Of course, Christian would probably argue it is illogical and irrational to contemplate such events unfolding. But they already have. David Einhorn moved billions from the GLD ETF into physical gold in his own warehouse.
DISCLOSURES: Long physical gold, silver and platinum with no interest in the problematic SLV, Streettracks Gold ETF Trust Shares or the platinum ETFs.
By Trace Mayer, on February 25th, 2010
Operating a website requires monitoring to make sure there are no problems but doing so can uncover very interesting nuggets of information. For example, on 24 February 2010 at 11:15 EST in the evening someone at Goldman Sachs Company in the main NYC office found RunToGold through Google by searching for the phrase ‘buying silver‘.
 Gee, I wonder who that someone was and what they are thinking. Originally, I was thinking of posting their home address, picture, resume, social security number and other websites they visited but they are not safe for work and considering the hostile feelings towards the company I decided against the personal information. But Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, would probably not mind considering his statement to Maria Bartiromo:
I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.
BUYING SILVER INTENT
The brilliance of the Google Superbowl ad was in its ability to communicate an entire story with only a few lines of text.
Truly, one’s search patterns can reveal intentions. Now, what can be discerned by these virtual footprints from one of Goldman Sachs’ 36,000+ employees? Conclusively, probably not much and we (NSA) would need access to more transactional databases and the passage of S. 733 the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 but we can still speculate about talk around the water cooler or higher order drama. Who knows if that someone was the secretary, their boss or both. It was 11:15PM after all!
SILVER BACKWARDATION CLOSE
Lately I have not followed the SIFO rates closely so this was my initial suspicion and once again it appears that silver is nearing backwardation. While the paper silver market which has an unlimited supply of silver and the physical silver market is constrained by actual metal the fractures between the two are beginning to emerge again.
In 2009 I chronicled the silver backwardation that led to a 60% rise in silver prices over a seven month period. Additionally, the gold to silver ratio has moved over 10% in less than two months. With silver recently slipping below its 200dma it is becoming a good value. But with silver getting cheaper this move in the ratio portends a slowing of the precious metals bull. And so there are conflicting signals.
CFTC SILVER MARKET INVESTIGATION
The slide towards backwardation is particularly enthralling given the CFTC’s three investigations of the silver market in five years. Ironically, silver analyst Ted Butler who has been particularly vehement of the CFTC’s faux investigations seems to like the new Chairman Gensler and on 10 February 2010 wrote,
I have been unabashed in my praise for Chairman Gensler since the time he assumed office. I have called him the greatest chairman in CFTC history. … I understand that disagreement [with the praise]. Yes, he was a partner of Goldman Sachs, the dreaded “vampire squid” of the financial world. Yes, he was a participant in the deregulation of 2000, which added greatly to the financial crises of the past couple of years. Yes, he is an “insider,” with connections and access to those in power.
What could Goldman Sachs know about the silver market, what might be being discussed around the water cooler and how might Chairman Gensler’s influence with his old cronies play into this?
CONCLUSION
The digital world offers tremendous opportunity to covertly monitor and draw inferences. In this case, someone at Goldman Sachs was researching about buying silver and they could have easily cloaked their behavior with anonymous web surfing. Imagine the latent power Google and the NSA have and would using it constitute ‘insider trading‘?
Yet, a former Goldman Sachs employee is the CFTC chairman who is embarking on the third investigation of the market in five years while the metal drifts towards backwardation. The paper price of gold and silver may be drifting lower but the physical silver is getting cheaper and a better value.
If you do not have a core position, to protect against the Laboon of sovereign debt defaults, negative FDIC funds, quantitative easing, etc. then yesterday was when you should have acquired. If you already have a core position then it may good to wait a little while longer for even better silver prices such as 0.95x the 200dma.
Order the new Bank Privacy Report before the end of February and get 50% off.
DISCLOSURES: Long physical gold and silver with no interest in sovereign debt from Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain, etc., GS, or the problematic SLV, Streettracks Gold ETF Trust Shares or the platinum ETFs.
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