-- Posted Friday, 22 February 2013 | | Disqus
By Stewart Dougherty
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini
It would be fortunate for the western world, particularly the United States, if it were “merely” becoming a neo-fascist dictatorship. But since all life forces evolve, particularly those that are evil, the west is actually experiencing something far more pernicious: namely, a banksterist dictatorship, which is en route to something even worse.
In Banksterism, the full arsenal of the state is deployed to preserve and protect one thing above all else: the power, wealth, influence and profits of banksters. It is only the crumbs left over after the banksters have gorged themselves at the money trough that are cast upon the dirt for everyone else to scavenge and peck upon. The problem is that history, and particularly recent history shows that banksters can never get enough. They are addicted to lucre, as if it were heroin. So in a banksterist dictatorship, capital is systematically plundered from the overall economy, causing it to weaken, and then die. This is when the covert totalitarianism of banksterism yields to overt, full-blown, state-sponsored military totalitarianism, better known as the Police State. The road to tyranny is paved with banksterism.
The week of February 11, 2013 saw one of the most persistent, concentrated and vicious attacks on precious metals prices during the entire GENERATION -long bankster-orchestrated price rigging campaign. Prices suffered repeated, waterfall declines every single day, and often multiple times per day, on precisely zero news that might have explained them. In other words, these price raids were outright, collusive and pre-meditated slaughters, conducted one after another after another. As financial market experts know, such price action is totally unnatural and illogical; no legitimate, for-profit seller in their right mind dumps supply onto a market in this fashion, unless they know for a fact that their price raid will work, and continue to work. This is the case when the price manipulator controls the market. While we are told that price fixing is illegal, this is obviously false because certain well-connected elites get away with it whenever they want, and for decades at a time. If a cabal can manipulate a large, global market such as gold, it can steal staggering sums of money.
Based on the elephantine, concentrated short positions in gold and silver held last week by the top eight cartel members, it is probable that they raked in profits of more than $1,000,000,000.00 (one billion dollars) in the gold futures market, and more than $450,000,000.00 (four hundred fifty million dollars) in the silver futures market price attacks. In total, they swindled nearly $1.5 billion dollars, in gold and silver futures alone, in one week alone, in the United States alone, by pushing a few computer keys and capturing the right regulators, whom they have trained and incentivized to look the other way. While zero true economic value was created by these price manipulations, $1,500,000,000.00 (1.5 billion dollars) flowed from the marketplace and into the already stuffed pockets of these enormously powerful, wealthy and well-connected banksters. This is the banksterist dictatorship right in the people’s face and flipping the bird at them. If you were long the metals last week, you learned who was in charge, and it wasn’t you, no matter how intelligent the investment rationale behind your position might have been.
The $1.5 billion profit figure does not include additional shorting profits that were likely made in more opaque instruments such as options, futures on options and other synthetic derivatives. Nor does it include profits that were likely engineered in international metals markets, such as Tokyo, Sydney, Zurich, London, and the Caymen Islands. Nor does it include what must have been far greater profits derived from the shorting and naked shorting of mining equities, and the purchase of mining equity puts. All in all, the price rigging cartel surely made multiples of their $1.5 billion futures market windfall.
For years, the explanation and faux-justification for the United States-centered price oppression of precious metals has been that it is a government-directed operation designed to protect a monopoly product vital to the nation and the world: the United States dollar, the world’s sole, current reserve currency. We are led to believe that the banks supposedly working in concert with the United States Treasury and Federal Reserve to support the dollar by shorting its reciprocals, gold and silver, are somehow doing “God’s work.” It is a touching Motherhood and Apple Pie tale, dripping with overtones of Red, White and Blue patriotism. Unfortunately, it is a total deception.
Kyle Bass, the credible, successful and well-respected fund manager, recently reported that a senior White House official informed him that the way the United States government intends to revive the moribund economy is to promote exports, and that in order to achieve this objective, the government intends to allow the dollar to decline, significantly. Indeed, the press is now awash in stories about the so-called “currency wars” that are now said to rage worldwide.
But this can hardly be called news, because a weak currency is already guaranteed in a country that is bankrupt. Currency momentum can only last so long, even for so-called King Dollar. The United States currently has debt and unfunded contingent liabilities exceeding $200,000,000,000,000.00 (two hundred trillion dollars); the nation’s annual, federal cash deficit has hovered around $1,000,000,000,000.00 (one trillion dollars) for four years, is stuck, and does not include state, county or municipal deficits; the nation’s federal GAAP deficits have exceeded $5,000,000,000,000.00 (five trillion dollars) for four years, and are also stuck; state and local government employee unfunded pension obligations exceed $3,500,000,000,000.00 (three and one half trillion dollars), despite a Federal Reserve-engineered and totally artificial price levitation of the stock market; and the long, sharp deficit horns of Obamacare, which no one in Congress even read before passing and the negative fiscal implications of which are completely and utterly incomprehensible to anyone and everyone other than God, are now starting to rip into economic and fiscal reality and tear it to shreds. Obamacare will unquestionably become a multi-trillion dollar deficit catastrophe, on top of all the others. So any commentary about a “strong dollar policy” should be restricted to two venues, only: Comedy Central; and the jackass cages at zoos.
But now we have a contradiction. One the one hand, we are told that the government smashes precious metals prices in order to prop up the value of the dollar. On the other hand, we learn that the government intends to trash the dollar, in an effort to jump start the dying economy through export growth. Which is it then, and what does the government really want? If they want a strong dollar (which we just demonstrated they cannot have even if they do want it, which they don’t), then yes, suppressing metals prices might be a useful, temporary gimmick. If they want a weak dollar, then they should leave metals prices alone and allow them to find their true market levels. There is no possible way that the United States, with $200,000,000,000,000.00 in debts and unfunded obligations, chronic trade deficits, and a shrinking economy could seriously want a strong dollar; that would be a vote for economic self-destruction.
So while the explanation that precious metals prices are being artificially depressed to support the dollar sounds logical and patriotic, it has actually been a calculated and clever misdirection. In misdirection, observers are told to look to the left, while the real action takes place to the right. Another word for misdirection is “sting.”
Like Hemingway’s saying about how one goes bankrupt, in a sting, the victims (or “marks”) learn slowly, and then all at once. By the time the “all at once” learning phase has occurred, the marks’ “investments” are long gone. The thieves who stung the victims will be traveling at break neck speed 100 miles ahead of the marks, and the marks will never catch up. The 30+ year precious metals price manipulation has been a generation-long sting that is still going on. Sadly for the world, no one yet understands the sting, so everyone keeps paying into it. In a way, you have to hand it to these criminals; they have taken greed and shamelessness to a whole new, intergalactic dimension.
The fatal flaw in the “God’s work” narrative that has accompanied the precious metals price rigging crime is that it assumes the government is in charge. But in a banksterist dictatorship, that is not how it works: governments do not control banks; banks control governments.
As we are taught by Occam’s Razor, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is likely to be the truth. And when it comes to the bankster-controlled precious metals price fixing sting, the Razor cuts right to the core of the matter. The real reason for the persistent price rigging of precious metals prices is simple: Money. For the past 30+ years, the banksters have enjoyed an outright license to print profits in the metals markets, and they have leveraged that license to make tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars in the process.
In banksterism, it is not the government that prints the money, but rather the banksters who print the money, and once it is printed, they give it to themselves. The irony is that they use the government’s printing presses and computers, apparently to keep costs low and boost returns. One problem with the bankster license to print profits is that in zero-sum markets, such as futures, bankster gains must by definition be stolen from the victims on the other side of the trades, resulting in serious harm to others. But far worse, the bankster license to print is simultaneously a license to kill an economy.
Bankster-orchestrated precious metals price rigging represents the longest-running public theft in history. It is 100% aided and abetted by the United States government and others, including Britain’s. The legions of regulators in these jurisdictions, who have sworn oaths to enforce laws and prosecute fraud and who are clearly aware of the problem, have done precisely nothing to stop it. The only thing changing today is that the fraud is getting even more brazen, endemic and profitable.
The price of this massive crime against the society of the United States and the nation’s economy is literally impossible to overstate.
First, by routinely crashing gold and silver paper prices for private gain, the banksters have given economic competitors such as China and Russia the ability to acquire massive amounts of gold at bargain basement prices. This is occurring at a time when dozens of countries are expressing open disdain for the dollar reserve currency regime, and actively working to subvert it. When the banksterist price manipulation scheme ultimately fails, as such schemes always do, metals prices will surge to their true levels, giving countries such as China epic windfall profits. China’s rapidly increased wealth, combined with its new found ability to back the yuan with gold will pole vault their currency into quasi- or full-reserve status, particularly among key trading partners. In monetary terms, this will be the equivalent of a 9.0 earthquake for the United States, particularly since it could happen suddenly. A matter as serious as this is one of national security.
Second, the demonstrable bankster greed that has been the foundation of the precious metals price rigging scandal makes it likely, if not virtually certain that another greed-fueled scandal has also been playing out in the shadows: namely, that the United States’s official gold reserves have been leased to banksters in exchange for pittance interest payments, and then sold to the Chinese and others, for profit. Further, given that the banksters know for a FACT that metals prices are far below market, since it is they, the banksters that have collusively fixed them there, we have to wonder if a serious portion of the official U.S. gold reserves have not been appropriated by the banksters, at dirt cheap prices at best, or maybe simply in exchange for pieces of paper called “Leases,” at worst. In a banksterist dictatorship, this kind of thing can happen without anyone on the outside knowing about it, or anyone on the inside saying a word.
If, in the future, the banksters claim that they cannot return the gold, nothing will happen to them, because in banksterism, the government is captured and controlled by the banksters. Further, in banksterism, the people are brainwashed to believe that the banks are “too big to touch,” in other words, “too big to prosecute.” People are fearwashed (a form of brainwashing and mind control) to believe that prosecuting banksters will “bring down the economy.” This kind of propaganda is the height of irony, because it is actually banksterism itself that destroys an economy.
There already exists copious evidence indicating that the United States gold reserve is gone, either in whole or in part. This evidence ranges from the persistent refusal by the government to even audit its supposed stockpile, to the snail’s-pace proposed return of Germany’s gold. If Germany wants its gold returned from the New York Fed, why must they wait seven years to get only a small fraction of it?
Third, flagrant, unprosecuted corruption causes people to lose faith in government and its institutions, particularly those related to justice. People come to realize that if a nation’s monetary and banking systems are corrupt, then such corruption likely filters into other vital areas of government. Since money and banking constitute the core of a so-called capitalistic economy, the corruption of these functions is crippling.
The paradox is that by trying to discredit gold, the banksters actually discredit the dollar by sewing suspicions and concerns about its value. People will ask themselves, “If the only way the U.S. government can create the illusion of dollar strength is by illegally manipulating the prices of its reciprocals, gold and silver, then the dollar itself must be in trouble.” If the dollar were intrinsically sound, it would not be necessary to illegally and artificially support it via price manipulations and fraud. More, people will start to realize what is truly going on: a banksterist, double-standard regime, in which there is total freedom for the banksters to plunder and to print profits at will; and a strict set of laws and regulations for everyone else, punishable by everything from draconian fines to prison terms.
Ayn Rand described this phenomenon well when she wrote: “We are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” Just substitute the word “banksters” for “government” to get a true read of today’s situation.
Fourth, as with socialism, fascism and communism, banksterism is guaranteed to fail, and will destroy an entire economy in the process. While the small elite will become enormously wealthy during the reign of any of these “isms,” it becomes so at the expense of the remainder of society. This is exactly what has been happening since the 2008 meltdown, when despite trillions of dollars’ worth of direct aid for banksters, the true economy continues to deteriorate. This deterioration would be even more obvious if inflation were properly reported, as it would become clear that GDP is in structural decline. Predictably, bankster profits have increased throughout the ongoing financial crisis, while the poverty level in the United States has exploded, incomes have eroded, the middle class has been destroyed and the real economy has contracted. This type of dynamic is inevitable in a banksterist dictatorship, because as capital is continuously looted from the economy, true economic recovery becomes impossible.
Fifth, by smashing metals prices, the banksters have frightened ordinary people away from metals investments, and this is no doubt an intended and desired outcome, at least from the government’s perspective. The government wants people to spend, not save; it wants them to be poor, not rich; it wants them dependent, not free. When the inevitable crisis occurs, those who have not diversified their savings into metals will have nothing but rapidly depreciating pieces of paper called dollars, which have zero intrinsic worth, to protect them. Because their assets will be trapped in dollars, they will be lost. In a banksterist dictatorship, the people are encouraged, and ultimately forced to commit financial suicide by directing their money into idiotic stock market and similar “investments,” as they desperately search for yield and capital gains. It is no coincidence that the banksters earn fees from these desperation transactions. Such mal-investments will ultimately implode, ruining investors. Governments know for a fact that it is easy to control people who are completely helpless and financially dead.
The recent surge of gun purchases by citizens demonstrates that there is a deep understanding among them about what is happening, and coming. While many have been conned into worshipping at the altar of Bernankeism, and are buying stocks in a market that only goes up thanks to desperate and deliberate Fed intervention, countless others have gone to the gun stores instead. This is known as Voting with one’s Wallet, and the American wallet can actually be quite smart in times of looming chaos. Those who have discounted the collective intelligence of the American people have always lived to regret it.
Combined, the cost of the precious metals price fixing scandal has been incalculable for the United States economy and people. People worry about nuclear bombs, but the fallout from nuclear stupidity can be far more deadly. The fact that the banksters have had free reign to perpetrate their fraud for more than three decades represents nuclear stupidity of an epic magnitude. The fallout of this nuclear stupidity is so dangerous that it has undermined the prospects of an entire nation, and possibly made inevitable the country’s ruin. The vast enrichment of the Chinese, at the same time that the United States attempts to deal with national bankruptcy and a structurally failing economy is a potentially explosive scenario with zero upside and enormous downside prospects for America.
In conclusion, for those concerned about what has been happening to precious metals prices, the following summary might provide some helpful context, and even consolation. Those of you who have chosen to denominate some portion of your wealth in precious metals have not been intellectually wrong; you have just been cheated, at least for now. To summarize:
1) The precious metals price rigging campaign that has taken place for the past 30+ years has been a simple, blatant, obvious crime.
2) This crime has been orchestrated by banksters for one purpose only: to make money. The money they have made has not come out of thin air; it has been stolen from people on the other side of the respective trades. Therefore, it is a crime scene strewn with real victims. The fuel for this crime has been the clinically diagnosable mental illness called Greed.
3) This crime has not had one redeeming virtue, patriotic or otherwise. It has not in any way had anything to do with helping to “defend” the dollar or aid the United States or its people. It has only been about money, and greed.
4) This crime has created enormous threats to the United States economy, the dollar, and national security.
5) This crime has set the stage for the vast enrichment of powerful economic competitors, such as China and Russia.
6) By financially empowering the nation’s competitors, it will also empower them militarily, so the ruinous consequences of this crime are unpredictable, immeasurable and stark.
7) The road to tyranny is paved with banksterism, which is a supreme threat to human beings worldwide.
8) While smart nations such as China encourage their citizens to buy gold and silver, stupid nations such as the United States discourage gold ownership via metals price manipulation, and instead encourage spending on consumer products that ultimately impoverishes citizens. When metals prices are revalued, which is absolutely inevitable, China’s citizens and government will gain, while America’s citizens and government will lose. This is a living example of nuclear stupidity.
9) Greed is the seed of its own destruction, and price manipulations always fail in time. When the precious metals price manipulation fails, prices will surge from current depressed levels.
10) Ultimately, the truth will come out about the status of the United States gold reserve, and it is likely to be shocking. If the U.S. gold reserve has in fact been sold, for example to the Chinese, and/or appropriated by the banksters, the consequences for the United States economy and dollar will be dire and irreversible. The United States could become the equivalent of a third world nation virtually overnight, with staggering inflation, violent social unrest, exploding poverty, surging homelessness, and unprecedented hunger. Such news would outright guarantee the swift emergence of uncontrolled totalitarianism that would make previous historic episodes of this curse in countries such as the USSR and Germany look tame.
11) Readers should contact their elected representatives and ask why “too big to fail, and too big to touch” banks, that have been and continue to be backstopped by the American taxpayer, are allowed to speculate in the futures casino with tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. If these banksters lose, who pays? The taxpayer, obviously, but why is such insanity permitted to continue?
12) Readers should also ask their representatives, “Where is our gold? Do we still have any? How, Mr. or Ms. Elected Representative, do you know? If it is gone, who got it? And how much did they pay for it? Anything, or did they just give our government a piece of paper called a “Lease”? Why is the status of the people’s gold a state secret? How do you justify that, Mr. or Ms. Elected Representative? If you lie about our, the people’s gold, what else are you lying about? Is it, in fact, everything?”
The End Game is coming. It is inevitable, despite official pronouncements to the contrary. Just look at the numbers. They do not lie. It is urgent that you take steps right now to protect not just your financial freedom, but your personal freedom as well.
-- Posted Friday, 22 February 2013 | Digg This Article
| Source: GoldSeek.com
