Saturday, September 12, 2009

Imminent Doom From Massive Banking Fraud

NASDAQ in Times Square, New York City.Image via Wikipedia

This is a must read!

Written by J.S. Kim, the founder of SmartKnowledgeU™ and the evolutionary MoneyPing™ investment strategies. Kim charges USD $7,775.00 for a private consultation.

The Coming Blowback of Banking Fraud

The Double Dip Recession, or the “W” shaped recovery that a minority of economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, is now stating as a strong possible outcome of this current rally, should not be discussed in the realm of economics but rather in the more apropos realm of financial fraud. The fact that the upleg of the “W” shaped recovery that is occurring now will inevitably crumble in spectacular fashion will not be a result of any free market principle, but rather the direct consequence of a fraudulent scheme executed by an elite global financial oligarchy, otherwise known as Central Banks. If the mission of this current manufactured leg-up in Western stock markets was to fool the world into believing that global economies are recovering, then clearly, up until this point, the mission has been a resounding success. For those unfamiliar with the term “blowback”, it's a CIA term that was first used in March 1954 to describe the unintended consequences of US government international activities kept secret from the American people.

Though this term has primarily been used to describe the consequences of covert military operations, “blowback” is an appropriate term to use to describe the coming consequences of banking fraud because the US government, US Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the US Treasury, and the Exchange Stabilization Fund have all engaged in domestic and international financial and monetary transactions that have been kept secret from the world, and that will have severe and negative consequences in the not so distant future. In fact, I predict that the blowback of these activities will not only exceed, but far exceed, the fallout the world experienced in 2008 at the prior apex of this current crisis. Most people today can not even fathom how bad the situation will become primarily because of all the secrecy that the banksters have engaged in – in US Treasury markets, the gold markets, the US dollar markets, agriculture commodities, stock markets, and financial markets – in hiding reality from the people.

In an article I wrote three months ago, on June 10, 2009, titled, “Can Rising Stock Markets Serve as a Confirmation of a Crashing Economy?”, I stated, “Whether I am right or wrong about US markets tanking by summer’s end/fall’s beginning, if [we] position [our] investment assets based upon an understanding of the fraudulent monetary system, [we] can still continue to create wealth.” While true, I was a bit early in raising the proposition of a stock market correction the month before; I amended my prediction in June upon realizing the breadth of the manipulation schemes occurring in Western stock markets. In today’s markets, only a complete investment novice would try to predict market behavior without accounting for the massive government intervention schemes and forays into stock markets as well as the computerized manipulation of daily trading volume. One of the main reasons, but not the only one, that I amended my target for the end of this rally this past June to the fall season is the fact that fall normally marks the return of much higher daily trading volume from the traditional summer lulls. Thus, it is a much more difficult proposition for Central Banks and computerized trading programs to manipulate a continued rise in stock markets in the face of higher daily trading volumes.

However, should daily trading volume remain surprisingly low or muted this fall, as is also a possibility, I have no doubt that this market rise can persist for an extended period longer before these false gains are eventually flushed away (but, of course, not before all US financial executives have had ample time to exit their positions quietly). In fact, the development of this false rally was the main topic of my article. The other scenario, one that includes a significant rise in daily trading volumes that trigger the start of a second massive decline in Western stock markets, would not surprise me either. It’s just a matter of observing the signs that forecast the waning efficacy of the fraudulent stimulus of Western markets (or for this matter, the fraudulent stimulus of Chinese stock markets too).

Remember that it is only the timing of this decline that I am uncertain of, but I am very certain that a significant decline of a shocking nature is coming. The last time I issued an adamant warning of a similar nature was on April 23, 2008, when again, the only issue about a market crash was timing, though the US S&P 500 index peaked just 18 business days after I wrote that article and proceeded to fall by more than 50%.

To truly gain more clarity regarding this recent Western stock market rally, consider a hypothetical scenario in which a person was kept ignorant of any action in the US stock markets for the entire previous six months. Instead, imagine that he or she was given the task of predicting US market behavior over the past six month period solely based upon cold, hard US financial and economic data stripped bare of any of the media-slanted headlines that perpetually spin bad economic data as positive or “less bad” than it truly is. Based upon the economic data produced from the last six months, what do you think this person would conclude? That stock markets have soared during this time or that they had crashed?

Of course, factor in the plethora of evidence about numerous PPT interventions to “save” markets during this time, and the strong US stock market rally no longer seems so illogical. But strip away any evidence of free-market manipulation and interference and in the face of true, undistorted economic data, our current market rally would be enormously puzzling. And this point alone should be sufficient to tell you how this rally will end. The inevitable conclusion of this rally isn’t just about the unsustainability of the massive bailout programs implemented by global Central Banks that have engineered this current market rally out of thin air, but its manifestation should trigger an investigation into the outright fraud committed by Wall Street, banking institutions, and Central Banks that has been aided and abetted by financial journalists.

For example, consider the following stories:

Demographers recently reported that Florida, the state known as the “mecca” for wealthy retirees in America, suffered its first population decline last year in more than 60 years, an event that delineates the collapse in wealth of American retirees and an event that is likely to repeat this year.

At the end of this past July, one of the largest ports in America, Long Beach, reported that the 20% year-over-year cargo business decline is among the sharpest since the Great Depression. This is not a trend specific to Long Beach. “It’s phenomenal how much things fell away even since December,” said Paul Bingham, managing director of global trade and transportation for IHS Global Insight, the business research firm that monitors North America’s biggest ports for the National Retail Federation.

As of September 4, 2009, shadowstats.com reported that unemployment in the US is now near 21% and is showing no signs of improving any time soon (when factoring in discouraged workers, part-time workers that can’t find full-time work, unemployed workers that have fallen off the unemployment roll, etc.). In fact, yesterday, Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey reported that US employers’ hiring plans for the upcoming fourth quarter dropped to the lowest level in the history of its survey which dates back to 1962.

On August 15th, when BB&T (BBT) purchased failed US bank Colonial Bank, it wrote down Colonial Bank’s loans and real estate collateral by 37% and Colonial Bank’s construction loans by 67%. Yes, 67%! The severe markdowns of Colonial Bank’s assets should have set off warnings akin to a five-alarm fire among the financial media, but it did not, for the media increasingly caters to the interests of the elite bankers of this world at the cost of truth and freedom. If there are several things we can deduce from Colonial Bank’s failure, it is the following.

Though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) refuses to disclose the names of the banks on its “watch list”, it can be safe to assume that a bank just does not go bankrupt overnight and that the process of going bankrupt can be predicted many months in advance by personnel with access to a bank's financial statements and knowledge of its true financial condition. In fact, various newspaper articles reported that Colonial Bank was in negotiations with the FDIC as early as March, 2009, yet not one time, did the FDIC force Colonial Bank to come clean regarding its true financial health before it finally shuttered the bank five months later.

The fact that the FDIC is spotting massive trouble in the American banking system and covering it up should be massively worrisome to Americans. Because revelations regarding the truth about a US bank’s health only seem to occur after it fails, the favored handling of American banks with kid gloves by the FDIC should immediately beg the question, “How many more US banks are legitimately bankrupt today and just operating on fumes?”

Personally, I would not be surprised if sometime within the next six months, a considerably larger US bank failure causes a massive ripple effect of much greater consequence. Banks that are currently struggling with unreported and covered-up deepening problems of loan delinquencies such as Wells Fargo (WFC), may be among the large banks that are candidates for future bankruptcy despite the public categorization of such institutions in the “too-big-to-fail” category. Unfortunately, Wells Fargo, from a political standpoint, does not have the “most favored bank” status of a Citigroup (C) or JP Morgan (JPM), two institutions deserving of bankruptcy but clearly favored by the US Federal Reserve and the US government.

When one considers the fact that all government or state produced economic statistics have been massively distorted towards the side of optimism and away from reality throughout this global financial crisis, one should be even more worried when the occasional sparse negative statistic is reported, for it is likely that these statistics too are misrepresenting the truth. Thus, in the face of all negative news that points to zero foundation and zero economic structural improvements, how has a multi-month stock market rally been able to spread across Asia, Europe and the US? Again, the answer is fraud, and thus should be analyzed through the prism of fraud and not the false prism of “economics”. There is no “economics” behind this latest global stock market rally, only fraud.

For many weeks in August, just four stocks accounted for as much as 40% of composite volume on the NYSE: Citigroup, Bank of America (BAC), Freddie Mac (FRE) and Fannie Mae (FNM). In early 2007, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounted for roughly 1% -3% of NYSE volume, a far cry from its recent 35%+ collective weight of the composite NYSE volume. Remember that this huge volume anomaly persisted not just for one day but for weeks on end during August. If Citigroup, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a pharmaceutical collective that just discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS, then such volume anomalies would make sense. However, such massive trading volumes, as a percent of composite volume for the entire NYSE index, makes zero sense for companies, that for all intents and purposes, are on government bailout lifelines. It makes no sense, that is, unless massive free-market intervention is occurring in an attempt to save these firms.

Again, when viewed through the “fraud prism”, such activity makes complete sense. It is obvious that the “Rise of the Machines” has created markets that are now dominated by computerized high frequency trading programs that can execute trades as quickly as 0.5 milliseconds and have as their sole purpose the creation of short-term market distortions driven by statistical arbitrage that can be used to game the system and cheat their clients. Though this link describes how this scheme works in commodity markets for those that have been following the New York Stock Exchange, the use of high frequency trading programs to game the system at the expense of the retail investor has been glaringly obvious especially in the trading behavior exhibited this past summer.

The ironic part of this huge scam that has merely just re-inflated another massive stock market bubble is that the segment of the public that is so easily angered by government bailouts, billion dollar bonus plans for Wall Street executives and the chicanery of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs (GS) (and justifiably so), are the very same people that so passively accept the mountain of lies that passes for financial reporting today (inexplicably so). It is ironic that this same collective of people, instead of rejecting this mountain of lies, continues to listen to their financial advisers at global commercial investment firms, even though these advisers are the same group of people that miserably failed to see the crash that started in the spring of 2008, when the factors behind the pullback back then was just as clear as the factors behind the future pullback that will occur in the near future. It is ironic that this same group of people continues to support, participate and fund a system that cares only about using their clients' money to lie, cheat and steal from them when a simple withdrawal of funds from the system is the antidote to ignorance-induced paralysis that will once again create massive crisis-induced losses in the future. Pulling one’s money from one’s current firm and switching to another firm that participates in this web of lies and deceit is not a solution either.

It is ironic that it is the same group of people that so readily accepts the Western media’s correct analysis of China’s stock market as a huge bubble through the lens of Austrian economic principles that simultaneously rejects any similar notion as applicable to US or UK stock markets, and instead, readily embraces heavily flawed and unsound Keynesian economic principles when evaluating Western stock markets. It is ironic that the same group of people that foolishly equates being “American” with blind support of the US stock market (i.e. “being bearish on the US market is un-American!”) is also completely ignorant of both the massive fraud that is perpetrated in US stock markets as well as the tenets of the US Constitution that sound great objections and warnings to the ruinous and foolish monetary policies that are implemented by bankers as their “solution” to our current economic crisis. And finally, the greatest irony of all is that the anger that brews inside those that have been tragically hurt by this crisis can coexist with the failure to recognize that it matters not in America if the President has the last name Clinton, Bush or Obama – that monetary and fiscal agenda inside the US for the last 17 years has not wavered nor changed one iota during this period of time because it was not these men that have been in charge of the economy but the men that manufactured these men’s rise to power and that control the US Federal Reserve and the world’s Central Banks, and thus the global monetary policy.

If one can not see the connection between Presidents, Prime Ministers and the banking families that rule Central Banks, one merely needs to open up a newspaper and follow their lives after they leave government office. It is not just a coincidence that ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after leaving office, took a part-time consulting job with JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon that reportedly pays him $5 million per year as well as another well-paid consulting position with Zurich Financial Services. In office, Mr. Blair was a consultant to the banking oligarchs in secret; out of office, he is free to be a consultant publicly. And one can be certain that current UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama will be offered very considerable salaries and fees by the world’s top financial oligarchs as thanks for their current and past service to them once they leave office as well (especially Gordon Brown, for selling out his countrymen and selling more than half of England’s bank reserves to ensure that the financial oligarchs could maintain the US dollar as the de-facto international currency for 10 additional more years than it deserved to hold this status).

In the end, what is the most frustrating facet of these huge con games executed by the financial oligarchs is that the group of people that this article is most intended to help is often the group of people that will take most offense to this article and most steadfastly refuse to see the truth. Instead, they will only realize the truth when the economic future unfolds to the blueprint of those of us the media labels as “gloom and doomers” because we base our predictions on reality instead of fantasy and lies. Instead of labeling us as “gloom and doomers”, if the media at large ever conducted an unbiased analysis of the predictions of the “gloom and doomers” for the past 3 years, they would discover that the “gloom and doomers” have been spectacularly accurate in the majority of their calls while the financial demagogues they continually fawn over (that only serve the interests of the bankers) have been spectacularly wrong in the vast majority of their predictions. Yet, those that serve the international banking cartel with glowing and rosy predictions of economic recovery never suffer the negative consequences of being wrong all the time as the mass media all too happily continues to provide the largest public platform and the loudest voices to these people. Perhaps, if it is accurate to label “gloom and doomers” as realists, then one should label the optimists that make their calls based upon perpetrated fraud as banking shills and cogs in the investing machine, for their societal contribution of greatest significance is an opiate cocktail for the masses that is a mixture of deceit and lies mixed with unbridled optimism.

As they often say that life imitates art, I close my article today with a speech from the film “V for Vendetta” that is frighteningly relevant if you listen to this speech with a critical ear and replace the references to the war on terror in this speech with the current war the bankster fraudsters are committing against the people. A sound money backed by precious metals, can be the people’s liberation from this war. Anything that falls short of such a solution will be just another scam in an already long line of scams, of a solution sold to the masses, that in reality, is no solution at all.


Friday, September 11, 2009

Ex-AIG Advisor Practiced Witchcraft

Witchcraft album coverImage via Wikipedia

Ex-AIG Adviser Casts Evil Spells on Victims

This is an example of the psychotic idiots AIG hired to manage money. Bruce Kelly with Investment News reports that Barry R. Stokes, formerly affiliated with AIG Financial Advisors Inc., spent time making voodoo dolls of his victims to ward off their damaging testimony.

Kelly writes:

Stokes plead guilty to multiple counts of embezzlement, as well as mail and wire fraud, and money laundering for stealing $19 million from some 35,000 victims nationwide, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville, Tenn., from their 401(k), health savings, and dependent care accounts. On Friday Stokes was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Nashville to 12 years in prison after a hearing that presented evidence of his bizarre practices, according to reports in The Tennessean newspaper.

At a pre-sentencing hearing last week, prosecutors also said that Mr. Stokes paid a psychic with a credit card to give him readings while in jail, according to The Tennessean. He also wrote a letter to the psychic saying that he was lighting candles and throwing salt over his shoulder to keep critics and creditors at bay, according to the report. Stokes was registered with AIG Financial Advisors from October 2005 to September 2006, at which point his fraud was discovered and he was fired, according to brokerage records on file with the states where he was licensed to do business.

Some people may claim men like Stokes and Madoff are anomalies in the esoteric and once venerated world of high finance. Now we know better. Many of them are nothing but two-bit thugs, crooks and sociopaths with no conscience, high rollers spending money from the "little" people who are losing their jobs and homes. It wasn't long ago that AIG executives were partying down on taxpayer bailout money. It's clear to everyone that AIG and Wall Street executives consider American taxpayers nothing but a pathetic laughingstock.

But these people aren't just corrupt, many of them are sick and morally depraved. R. Allen Stanford may be associated with satanic cults. He became blood brothers with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank. They cut their wrists and mixed their blood in a “brotherhood ceremony” that Stanford’s chief financial officer said promoted an elaborate scheme to hide a multibillion-dollar fraud from American and other regulators. The FBI and other agencies have been conducting an ongoing investigation of Stanford since 2008 for possible involvement in money laundering for Mexico's "Gulf Cartel", a ruthless drug gang in Mexico closely associated with the satanic cult known as "Saint Death" or in Spanish "La Santa Muerte".

The cast of characters in the financial world is like something right out of Kubric's film The Shining. Not only is the corruption at the highest levels of the government, multiple government agencies are involved. The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday that "Thomas Raffanello, a federal law enforcement agent for three decades and former global director of security at a Florida office of Stanford Financial Group, was indicted Thursday on charges of conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation into the company.

"Raffanello, 61, of Coral Gables, is the second Florida-based Stanford employee to be accused of destroying records to obstruct the investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the Houston-based financial firm. He was the special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami for about four years before joining the financial firm founded by native Texan R. Allen Stanford."

The fact is, Wall Street has been laundering drug money for years as this 1994 Seattle Times News article suggests.

Feds Probe Wall Street Firms For Laundered Drug Money 1994 - Seattle Times Staff: Seattle Times News Services

NEW YORK - Federal investigators are probing several brokerage firms on suspicion of laundering illegal drug profits, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

People close to the investigation told the paper and court documents show that $10 million has been seized from accounts at Merrill Lynch, Dean Witter, Prudential Securities and PaineWebber for alleged violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law.

Federal agents from the Treasury Department's U.S. Customs Service and the Internal Revenue service are also investigating transactions at Bear Stearns, the paper said.

Federal agents told the paper that brokerage firms are becoming the choice for drug dealers to make their profits look like they were made legally, because of the globalization of the securities business and a loophole in how cash is defined in the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act.

Banks have fallen out of favor for drug profits because all transactions that exceed $10,000 have to be reported to the IRS under the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, the paper said.

Our country is controlled by corrupt psychopaths wearing business suits calling the shots from banks and investment firms; they not only control the government, they are the government. To anyone but the walking dead, this realization can no longer be attributed to tinfoil conspiracy theorists. These people are the enemy. This is who we're all up against. It's a class war from here on out until it's over.

75% of Americans Support Auditing the Federal Reserve

Barney FrankImage via Wikipedia

Barney Frank who chairs the Financial Service Committee better think twice about watering down Ron Paul's bill. There's talk he intends to morph it into a broader bill which would weaken or defeat Paul's bill all together.

American Banking News reports,
Congressman Ron Paul informed the Campaign for Liberty that the House Financial Services Committee will hold hearings on Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve (H.R. 1207). The hearings are currently tentatively set for Friday, September 25th at 9:00 AM.

H.R. 1207: the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 would require the Government Account Office to audit the Federal Reserve’s funding facilities, including the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, Term Securities Lending Facility, and Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility. The GAO would then provide a full report of its findings to Congress. Paul believes that the legislation will shine light on the Federal Reserve’s secrecy and demonstrate to the country that the Federal Reserve doesn’t have the country’s best interest in mind.

Currently H.R. 1207 has 284 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and a similar piece of legislation, S.604: the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act has 24 co-sponsors in the senate. A recent opinion poll indicated that 75% of the American People support the idea of auditing the Federal Reserve.

John Tate, president of the Campaign for Liberty, stated in a press release, ”The Federal Reserve wields tremendous power and is at the center of our current economic storm of deficits, debt and bailouts. Congressman Barney Frank should be commended for his willingness to hold hearings on Fed transparency.”

Now that the legislation is gaining steam, some Libertarian activists are worried that the legislation will be attached to a larger financial regulatory reform bill that will provide increased power to the Federal Reserve or other agencies. Tate stated that attaching the bill to other legislation “would be a betrayal to the intent and spirit of H.R. 1207, and would be vigorously opposed by Campaign for Liberty.”

US Census Bureau: 40 Million Live in Poverty

MARKS, MS - MAY 7:  Unemployed handyman Napole...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

According to a Thursday US Census Bureau report, nearly 40 million people lived in poverty in the United States last year as the recession forced the first significant rise in the US poverty rate in five years. The official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to the Census Bureau's annual "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage
in the United States" report.

The rise marked the first time since 2004, when the poverty rate climbed from 12.5 percent to 12.7 percent, that the percentage measure of US poor rose significantly, said David Johnson, head of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division at the Census Bureau.

From the report:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income in the United States fell 3.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coincides with the recession that started in December 2007.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. There were 39.8 million people in poverty in 2008, up from 37.3 million in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at 15.4 percent.

These findings are contained in the report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008. The following results for the nation were compiled from information collected in the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC):

Income

Race and Hispanic Origin (Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.)

  • Between 2007 and 2008, the real median income of non-Hispanic white households declined 2.6 percent (to $55,530); for blacks, it declined 2.8 percent (to $34,218); for Asians, it declined 4.4 percent (to $65,637); and for Hispanics, it declined 5.6 percent (to $37,913). Except for the difference between the declines for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic households, all other differences between the declines were not statistically significant.

Regions

  • Between 2007 and 2008, real median household income declined in the South by 4.9 percent (to $45,590), declined in the Midwest by 4.0 percent (to $50,112) and declined in the West by 2.0 percent (to $55,085). Income in the Northeast was statistically unchanged ($54,346). The apparent differences in the declines in median household income between the South and Midwest, and the Midwest and West were not statistically significant. The apparent difference between the median household incomes for the West and Northeast was not statistically significant.
Poverty

Overview

  • The increase in the poverty rate between 2007 and 2008 was the first statistically significant annual increase since 2004. The 2008 poverty rate (13.2 percent) was the highest since 1997.
  • In 2008, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 10.3 percent and 8.1 million, respectively, up from 9.8 percent and 7.6 million in 2007.
  • For married-couple families, both the poverty rate and the number in poverty increased — 5.5 percent (3.3 million) in 2008, up from 4.9 percent (2.8 million) in 2007. Both measures, however, showed no statistical change in 2008 for female-householder-with-no-husband-present families (28.7 percent and 4.2 million) and for male-householder-no wife-present families (13.8 percent and 723,000).

Thresholds

  • As defined by the Office of Management and Budget and updated for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2008 was $22,025; for a family of three, $17,163; for a family of two, $14,051; and for unrelated individuals, $10,991.

Race and Hispanic Origin (Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.)

  • In 2008, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites (8.6 percent in 2008, up from 8.2 percent in 2007), Asians (11.8 percent in 2008, up from 10.2 percent in 2007) and Hispanics (23.2 percent in 2008, up from 21.5 percent in 2007). The poverty rate in 2008 was statistically unchanged for blacks (24.7 percent).

Age

  • The poverty rate increased for children younger than 18 (19.0 percent in 2008, up from 18.0 percent in 2007) and people 18 to 64 (11.7 percent in 2008, up from 10.9 percent in 2007), while it remained statistically unchanged for people 65 and older (9.7 percent).
  • Similar to the patterns observed for the poverty rate in 2008, the number of people in poverty increased for children younger than 18 (14.1 million in 2008, up from 13.3 million in 2007) and people 18 to 64 (22.1 million in 2008, up from 20.4 million in 2007) but remained statistically unchanged for seniors 65 and older (3.7 million).

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Map of Collapsed U.S. 2010

The prediction of the United States collapse in 2010 was made in 1998 by the Russian academic Igor Panarin. The prediction received substantial media attention since the 2008 financial crisis and has been widely criticized since.

In the summer of 1998, based on classified data about the state of the United States economy and its society supplied to him by fellow FAPSI analysts, Igor Panarin forecast the probable disintegration of the United States into six parts in 2010 (at the end of June – start of July 2010, as he specified on 10 December 2008), following a civil war triggered by mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation. He forecast financial and demographic changes provoking a political crisis in which wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government, effectively seceding from the Union, leading to social unrest, civil war, national division, and intervention of foreign powers.

Name of the new formation Country or union to join or be under influence of States and/or regions of the current USA comprised
Californian Republic China California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho
Texas Republic Mexico Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida
Atlantic America European Union Northeast (including all BosWash states and West Virginia) + Kentucky, Tennessee, North & South Carolina
Central North American Republic Canada Midwest + Montana, Wyoming, Colorado
Alaska Russia Alaska
Hawaii Japan Hawaii

Source
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U.S. Prepares for Possible Nuclear War With NKorea

Map of North KoreaImage via Wikipedia

Hwang Doo-hyong with Yonhap reports:
The United States is preparing for the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea and of a regime collapse in the isolated state, a Washington-based think tank said in a recent report.

In the analysis of an upcoming Defense Department review, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said a government team is examining several scenarios including "regime collapse in North Korea." It also said Washington may plan how to handle a confrontation with the North "that involves a nuclear strike."

The CSIS report, dated Aug. 27, offered a preview of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the first to be released under the administration of Barack Obama. The paper is critical in setting defense policy.

Other contingencies for which the U.S. is preparing include a "loss of control over nuclear weapons in Pakistan" and a clash between China and Taiwan.

The possibility of regime collapse in North Korea has been a topic of discussion since rumors surfaced last year that leader Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke without a clear heir. In the months that followed, speculation has grown that Kim is grooming his third and youngest son, Jong-un, 26, to succeed him.

Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said in July that the U.S. has come up with scenarios to cope with any contingency in North Korea in the event of the senior Kim's death.

"We are prepared to execute a wide range of options in concert with allies in South Korea and in discussions through (the Department of) State, which would have the lead, with countries in the region, and internationally if necessary," he said.

"I don't think it is axiomatic that the departure of Kim Jong-il means a national security crisis. We'd hope it wouldn't. But we are going to be prepared if it does mean that."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February has also touched on the sensitive issue of North Korea's leadership change.

"There is an increasing amount of pressure because, if there is succession, even if it is a peaceful succession, that creates even more uncertainty and it also may encourage behaviors that are even more provocative as a way to consolidate power within the society," she said.

China has reportedly shunned proposals to discuss the possibility of a regime change or collapse in the North, apparently to avoid provoking its ally.

The CSIS draft analysis also said the U.S. faces "coordinated attacks on offshore energy production facilities, container ships and underwater communication lines that collectively are designed to upend the domestic and global economies."

From Recession to Depression on 5th Avenue



Wow, this is graphic. Video documenting the collapse of New York Commercial Real Estate -- 5th Ave between 59th Street and 14th Street.

Six Unemployed For Every Job

According to MarketWatch:
The number of open U.S. jobs fell 50% over the past two years to a seasonally adjusted 2.4 million in July, the lowest in the brief history of the data, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

The job-opening rate fell to a record-low 1.8% in July.

Job openings track the demand for labor, the flipside of the unemployment rate, which measures the supply of labor. Read the full government report.


In July, there were 6.05 unemployed people for every job opening, according to the most recent data on labor turnover. In December 2007, when the recession began, there were 1.72 unemployed people for every job opening.

The number of workers hired in July was little changed at 4.06 million, while the number of workers separated from their jobs was little changed at 4.29 million. The hires rate rose to 3.1%, while the separations rate remained at a series-low 3.3%.

In the past 12 months, hires have fallen 13.9%, while separations are down 12.8%.

Layoffs were little changed in July at 2.3 million, while 1.7 million people quit their job. Layoffs have increased 15% in the past year, while quits are down 32%.

In the 12 months ending in July, hires totaled 51.3 million, and separations totaled 56.6 million, with a net job loss of 5.3 million.

Rep. Joe Wilson: "You LIE" Obama!



Watch Nurse Ratchet's -- I mean Pelosi's reaction. It's hilarious. Proof positive that behind that phony eternal smile is a woman with contempt for anyone or anything she can't control.


Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie" during Obama's health care speech to Congress on Wednesday.

Wilson issued this apology: "This evening, I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president's remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill," the statement said. "While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

According to CNN, Wilson also called the White House to apologize and spoke with Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who accepted the apology on the president's behalf, according to a senior administration official.

"We can disagree without being disagreeable," Emanuel said to Wilson, according to the official. "That was the point of the president's speech."

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Debtors Revolt Begins Now!



Message to Bank of America: I've decided to it's time to take a stand against the banksters' usury and greed! If our founding fathers were willing to sacrifice their LIVES for our FREEDOM, then I can certainly sacrifice my credit score and be willing to be sued. I'm staging a DEBTOR'S REVOLT!

Wealthy Individuals’ Bankruptcies Skyrocket

Bloomberg reports wealthy individuals’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings jumped 73 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the National Bankruptcy Research Center, a research firm in Burlingame, California.

More individuals or families with at least $1,010,650 in secured debt and $336,900 unsecured are using Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code typically associated with business reorganizations. Falling U.S. home prices leaves them unable to refinance or sell their property when they drop below the value of their mortgage, said Chicago bankruptcy attorney Joseph Baldi.

Chapter 11 is more expensive and time-consuming for debtors and creditors than a Chapter 7 liquidation of assets. Wealthier people filing for bankruptcy typically have large homes, two car payments and children in private schools, said Leslie Linfield, executive director of the Institute for Financial Literacy in Portland, Maine, a credit-counseling and research group.

“You’re living on the edge, you’re juggling those financial balls,” Linfield said. “When one ball goes, they all fall down.”

Listings of homes for sale worth $1 million or more increased 27.3 percent in July from October, according to Zillow.com, a Web site that tracks real-estate transactions. The number of homes sold with a value between $1 million and $2 million fell 23 percent in July from a year earlier, according to the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors. There was a 21-month supply, up from 16 months last year.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Muslim Special Ops Expert Predicts Suitcase Nukes 7 US Cities

Set us up the bombImage by spinneyhead via Flickr

Lee Benson with Deseret News writes,

"Heart of a Soldier" tells the story of two men who, well before it happened, foretold not only of the terrorist attack of 9/11 but also the 1993 bombing in the World Trade Center parking garage that preceded it.

One of the men, Rick Rescorla, was chief of security for Morgan Stanley with an office in the World Trade Center. He died on 9/11, but not before he shepherded all but six of Morgan Stanley's 2,700 employees to safety because of a well-prepared and well-executed evacuation plan. He'd have made it out, too, had he not gone back in the building looking for those six.

The other man, Daniel J. Hill, is still alive. "Muslims that I talk to say things like, 'America thinks they're safe now. They've forgotten about 9/11. But watch, Daniel. Stay near your TV. It's going to be bigger than 9/11,' " he said.

Hill said the next terrorist attack will involve suitcase nuclear bombs that will be detonated in small, low-flying two-seater private airplanes manned by men hanging onto the belief that, like the 9/11 hijackers, they are about to die as martyrs and enter paradise.

The nukes, he said, will be detonated over New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

"I don't know the second, hour or day. I just know they have the means, will, motivation and desire to do it," he said, noting that it's believed that years ago the suitcase nukes, acquired from former USSR operatives, were smuggled into America across the Mexican border.

"I'm a Muslim," he says. "I'm a special ops expert, I'm a terrorist and I've lived among Muslims. I fought the Russians with the same guys we're now fighting in Afghanistan. I met Osama. I volunteered to assassinate him. I know (the enemy) so well because I've worked, slept and prayed alongside them for years. I've become one of them. I know their nature, I know their culture, I know how they think. I can quote the Koran like a Southern Baptist minister can quote the New Testament. I know these are people who do not tire, who do not quit. There are odds this won't happen, but they aren't big odds."

Read More...

China's Secret Gold Move

NEW YORK - JANUARY 9:  (FILE PHOTO)   Gold bul...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Lawrence Williams

China's hidden gold purchase policy

Evidence suggests that China is continuing to buy gold for its reserves, but is doing so in a manner designed not to over-disrupt the global gold market.

There seems to be little doubt that China continues to buy gold for its reserves, but surreptitiously, as it has no desire to move the markets unduly, and it knows full well that any announcement of a big gold purchase will likely do just that.

It is not exactly a secret that Chinese government economists and bankers are disturbed about the U.S. Quantitative Easing moves. They feel that this has ultimately to lead to significant inflation and a corresponding big decline in the value of the dollar within the next few years and with some $2 trillion in reserves this is not something they are keen to precipitate by announcements of a major gold purchase programme - or even by showing the world that its gold reserves are increasing.

In an interesting article in the U.K's Daily Telegraph, International Business Editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard comments on views expressed by Cheng Siwei who he describes as being "until recently Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party's Standing Committee, and now a sort of economic ambassador for China around the world" and thus in a good position to understand the country's policies vis-a-vis gold purchases and the dollar.

The gist of the comments was that China has fundamentally lost confidence in the dollar and is looking towards a more significant proportion of gold in its reserves.

But this is easier said than done without causing huge disruption in the gold market itself and Cheng is quoted thus: "Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as to not stimulate the market".

This looks as though it means not only is China buying on dips in the gold price - and there is evidence of strong support from somewhere every time gold falls to a certain level - but is also concealing its purchases by not moving the gold into official reserves, but the holding of it by some other government entity so it stays off the official books. When China relatively recently announced its big jump in gold reserves it was apparent the purchases had actually taken place over about five years and were only moved into the official reserves this year, and thus only then reported to the IMF. Thus it is likely that purchases are continuing in the same manner - off the open books.

If all this is correct it does mean that there is little in the way of downside risk for gold holders with potentially massive support coming in at about $930, but perhaps a cessation of this major support buying at around current gold price levels which could keep gold range-bound. But, of course, if and when China announces its next significant rise in its gold reserves this could have a substantial impact. But on past performance such an announcement may not happen for a few years - when it may suit China to do so.

42% US Voters Say People Randomly Selected from Phone Book Better Than Congress

{{Potd/-- (en)}}Image via Wikipedia

Bankers and politicians are among the most despised people on Earth for a reason. Even people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than a Congress bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder.

Rasmussen Report
Forty-two percent (42%) of U.S. voters say a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that an identical number (42%) disagree, but 16% are not sure.

Last fall, just 33% thought the random group could do as good a job. Today, Republicans by a two-to-one margin believe that the phone book sample would be better than the current Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats, by a similar margin, have the opposite view. A slight plurality of those not affiliated with either major party say the randomly selected group would do a better job.

Polling released earlier today showed that most Republican voters believe that their representatives in Congress are out of touch with GOP voters.

If they could vote to keep or reject the entire Congress, most Americans would vote to get rid of all the legislators and start all over again. Additionally, just 29% are even somewhat confident that Congress knows what it’s doing when it comes to the economy.

Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely get reelected every two years. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently heard in Washington, D.C. is that “people hate Congress but love their own congressman.” But, 50% of voters say 'rigged' election rules explain high reelection rates for Congress.

Interestingly, though, when it comes to their own representative in Congress, just 44% of voters say he or she is about the same as them ideologically.

Other recent polling found that just 22% believe Congress has a good understanding of the health care reform legislation currently being considered. Voters tend to think that they understand the legislation better than Congress and about as well as Obama.

The Continual Failure of Paper Money

1 yuan, silver commemorative coin of President...Image via Wikipedia

History of Chinese Currency
The currency issued by the Yuan was the world's first fiat currency, known as Chao. Every paper currency that the Chinese ever implemented failed.

During the early Song dynasty (Chinese: 960-1279) China again reunited the currency system displacing coinages from ten or so independent states. Among pre-Song coins, the northern states tended to prefer copper coins. The southern states tended to use lead or iron coins with Sichuan using its own heavy iron coins which continued to circulate for a short period into the Song dynasty. By 1000 unification was complete and China experienced a rapid period of economic growth. This was reflected in the growth of coining. In 1073, the peak year for minting coins in the Northern Song, the government produced an estimated six million strings containing a thousand copper coins each. The Northern Song is thought to have minted over two hundred million strings of coins which were often exported to Inner Asia, Japan, and South-East Asia where they often formed the dominant form of coinage. Song merchants rapidly adopted forms of paper currency starting with promissary notes in Sichuan called "flying money" (feiqian). These proved so useful the state took over production of this form of paper money with the first state-backed printing in 1024. By the twelfth century various forms of paper money had become the dominant forms of currency in China and were known by a variety of names such as jiaozi, qianyin, kuaizi, or guanzi.

The Mongol-founded Yuan dynasty (Chinese: 1271-1368) also attempted to use paper currency. Unlike the Song dynasty they created a unified, national system that was not backed by silver or gold. The currency issued by the Yuan was the world's first fiat currency, known as Chao. The Yuan government attempted to prohibit all transactions in or possession of silver or gold, which had to be turned over to the government. Inflation in 1260 caused the government to replace the existing paper currency with a new paper currency in 1287, but inflation caused by undisciplined printing remained a problem for the Yuan court until the end of the Dynasty.
Silver sycee (yuanbao) ingots

The early Ming dynasty (Chinese: pinyin: Míng, 1368-1644) also attempted to use paper currency in the early re-unification period. This currency also experienced rapid inflation and issues were suspended in 1450 although notes remained in circulation until 1573. It was only in the very last years of the Ming dynasty when Li Zicheng threatened Beijing in 1643 and 1644 that printing took place again. For most of the Ming China had a purely private system of currency for all important transactions. Silver, which flowed in from overseas, began to be used as a currency in the Far South province of Guangdong where it spread to the lower Yangzi region by 1423 when it became legal tender for payment of taxes. Provincial taxes had to be remitted to the capital in silver after 1465, salt producers had to pay in silver from 1475 and corvée exemptions had to be paid in silver from 1485. The Chinese demand for silver was partially met by Spanish imports from the Americas, in particular Potosi in Peru and Mexico, after the Spanish became established at Manila in 1571. However the silver was not minted. It circulated as ingots (known as sycee or yuanbao) which weighed a nominal liang (about 36 grammes) although purity and weight varied from region to region. The liang was often referred to by Europeans by the Malay term tael.

Late Imperial China maintained both a silver and a copper currency system. The copper system was based on the copper cash (wen). The silver system had several units which by the Qing Dynasty were: 1 tael = 10 mace = 100 candareens = 1000 li (silver cash).

In 1889, the Chinese yuan was introduced at par with the Mexican Peso and was subdivided into 10 jiao (not given an English name, cf. dime), 100 fen (cents), and 1000 wen (cash). The yuan was equivalent to 7 mace and 2 candareens (or 0.72 tael) and, for a time, coins were marked as such in English.

The earliest issues were silver coins produced at the Kwangtung mint in denominations of 5 fen, 1, 2 and 5 jiao and 1 yuan. Other regional mints were opened in the 1890s producing similar coins. Copper coins in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 wen were also issued. The central government began issuing its own coins in the yuan currency system in 1903. Banknotes were issued in yuan denominations from the 1890s by several local and private banks, along with the "Imperial Bank of China" and the "Hu Pu Bank" (later the "Ta-Ch'ing Government Bank"), established by the Imperial government.

China issues a “Beijing Put” on Gold

Territories currently administered by two stat...Image via Wikipedia

Gold should get interesting now.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

China has issued what amounts to the “Beijing Put” on gold. You can make a lot of money, but you really can’t lose.

I happened to see quite a bit of Cheng Siwei at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a gathering of politicians and global strategists at Lake Como, including a dinner at Villa d’Este last night at which he listened very attentively as a number of American guests tore President Obama’s economic and health policy to shreds.

Mr Cheng was until recently Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party’s Standing Committee, and is now a sort of economic ambassador for China around the world — a charming man, by the way, who left Hong Kong for mainland China in 1950 at the age of 16, as young idealist eager to serve the revolution. Sixty years later, he calls himself simply “a survivior”.

What he said about US monetary policy and gold – this bit on the record – would appear to validate the long-held belief of gold bugs that China has fundamentally lost confidence in the US dollar and is going to shift to a partial gold standard through reserve accumulation.

He played down other metals such as copper, saying that they could not double as a proxy currency or store of wealth.

“Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not stimulate the market,” he said.

In other words, China is buying the dips, and will continue to do so as a systematic policy. His comment captures exactly what observation of gold price action suggests is happening. Every time it looks as if the bullion market is going to buckle, some big force steps in from the unknown.

Investors long-suspected that it was China. We later discovered that Beijing had in fact doubled its gold reserves to 1054 tonnes. Fait accompli first. Announcement long after.

Standing back, you can see that the steady rise in gold over the last eight years to $994 an ounce last week – outperforming US equities fourfold, even with reinvested dividends – has roughly tracked the emergence of China as a superpower in foreign reserve holdings (now $2 trillion).

As I have written in today’s paper, Mr Cheng (and Beijing) takes a dim view of Ben Bernanke’s monetary experiments at the Federal Reserve.

“If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies,” he said.

This line of argument is by now well-known. Less understood is how much trouble the Fed’s QE policies are causing in China itself, where they have vicariously set off a speculative boom on the Shanghai exchange and in property. Mr Cheng said mid-level house prices are now ten times incomes.

“If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise.”

“Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down.”


Monday, September 7, 2009

Obama's School Speech Smacks of Orwellian Fascism

1984 (for the love of big brother) album coverImage via

Extracted excepts from:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

"...if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country."

"Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country."

"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best."

"What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?"

"So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down."

---Barack Obama

There's no such thing as "county" anymore; there are only corporations who run the country. Corporate and state power have merged into one entity. Obama wants you to pledge your love and allegiance to corporate power. By country, Obama means all his banking buddies and Wall Street thugs that he appointed to fix the economy -- the same people who gambled away taxpayer money and created this mess. Was Obama thinking of his country when he continued the policy of privatizing profits and socializing losses? "Today, the Orwellian mantra of the Keynesians is DEBT IS WEALTH." Governments and central banks are the greatest and most powerful crime syndicate in the world."

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

A commenter writes:

While the speech may seem harmless and overly generalized on the face of it, it is filled with subtleties that can not be ignored.

"What is expected of you"....

"I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox."

"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country."

Seriously, who does this guy think he is? [The] ...text of the speech is filled with self aggrandizing hyperbole. This speech reeks of "I am your Dear Leader, look at what I have done, and you better do as demanded, or else you fail me."

Sorry Obama, you have no right, nor calling, to be the "father figure" to an entire generation of kids. And you certainly do not have the right to dictate to my kid what is expected of her. That is MY job.

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress." -- Gore Vidal

Brings to mind Orwell's chilling account of indoctrination in his book 1984:

"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it... All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children." - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 2

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Americans Printing Their Own Money

BerkSharesImage via Wikipedia

It short-circuits banks and recharges local economies. A growing number of communities are printing their own money. Under the BerkShares system, a buyer goes to one of 12 banks and pays $95 for $100 worth of BerkShares, which can be spent in 370 local businesses. Since its start in 2006, the system, the largest of its kind in the country, has circulated $2.3 million worth of BerkShares. In Detroit, three business owners are printing $4,500 worth of Detroit Cheers, which they are handing out to customers to spend in one of 12 shops.

When someone pays for goods or services with local money, the income to the business is taxable, says Tom Ochsenschlager of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. "It's not a way to avoid income taxes, or we'd all be paying in Detroit dollars," he says.

Pittsboro, N.C., is reviving the Plenty, a defunct local currency created in 2002. It is being printed in denominations of $1, $5, $20 and $50. A local bank will exchange $9 for $10 worth of Plenty. "We're a wiped-out small town in America," says Lyle Estill, president of Piedmont Biofuels, which accepts the Plenty. "This will strengthen the local economy. The nice thing about the Plenty is that it can't leave here."

Source

China Slashes US Bond Holdings by $25 Billion

BEIJING, CHINA - JUNE 02: U.S. Treasury Secret...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Mike Larson notes:
The U.S. Treasury Department revealed that China actually REDUCED its note and bond holdings by $25 billion in June. Although China did NOT sell shorter-term Treasury bills — and isn’t expected to — it’s still the largest amount of Treasuries China has ever sold in a single month.

This is a huge development:

  • In 2006, China and Hong Kong accounted for more than 50 percent of the increase in the amount of Treasury debt sold to the public …

  • In 2008, their share had fallen to 22 percent as the U.S. government increased its public debt by a record $1.2 trillion …

  • In the first half of THIS year, China and Hong Kong acquired only 9 percent of the more than $800 billion worth of Treasury bonds that were sold — and now …

  • In June, China became a net SELLER of U.S. Treasury notes and bond


One of Washington’s most dependable sources of loans to finance our out-of-control deficits is drying up. Demand for longer-term Treasuries is softening.

Will gold ETFs shut you out?

Wade Hansen
Gold prices have been rocketing higher the past two days. Since the start of the trading day on Wednesday, September 2, gold prices have climbed from just above $950 per ounce to just below $1,000 per ounce.

To put things in perspective, gold prices have only been above $1,000 per ounce on two other occasions---March 2008 and February 2009. Gold prices reached their highest levels on March 17, 2008 (it's quite fitting that the market found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow on St. Patrick's day, if you ask me) at $1,033.18 per ounce.

Needless to say, this is an extremely important time for gold prices. If they can break up and through resistance at $1,000, we could see an exponential rise in the value of gold. The question is, will you be able to take advantage of rising gold prices?
You see, for the past few years, individual investors have been taking advantage of rising commodity prices---like gold---by buying commodity-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) [ETFs vs. ETNs]. Commodity ETFs and ETNs track the performance of various commodity prices. So when you buy a commodity ETF or ETN, you make money when commodity prices go up, and you lose money when commodity prices go down.

The SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD)---an ETF that actually buys gold and holds it on reserve---has been a favorite of gold investors. It has been so popular, in fact, that the trust now holds more than $32 billion of gold on reserve.

But herein lies the problem. Commodity ETFs are getting so big that they are directly affecting the commodity markets---both the futures markets and the markets for hard commodities. For instance, when investors buy shares of United States Oil Fund LP (NYSE: USO), the fund managers have to go out into the futures market and buy more crude oil contracts, which pushes the price of those contracts higher.

The impact these commodity ETFs have on the futures market has caught the attention of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the CFTC is now investigating whether or not it will curb the amount of futures contracts any ETF can hold. Regulators are also looking at potential limits on the amount of gold and other commodities ETFs can hold.

So what does this mean for you?

ETFs may be forced to limit the number of shares they have available. They may even be forced to redeem shares and cut availability even further. Hopefully everyone involved will be able to figure our a solution that will allow us individual investors to maintain access to the commodities market via ETFs, but we'll have to wait and see.

Wade Hansen in an analyst for Learning Markets