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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Stuff I Can't Explain

I have lots of questions - 

Why gold is suddenly trading at incredible volumes.  This image of Comex gold sales volumes is from Kitco.com.  It is part of a technical analysis chart service.  As I've noted before, I am clueless over most of the "technical" precious metals analysis techniques, but this caught my eye because it is such a divergence from the norm (click to enlarge) -


Is this good or bad?  I dunno.  Seems odd, though...  You can see the technical charts each day by going to this site, and clicking Gold2 at the bottom of the page.  Silver2 and Platinum2 will give you similar data, but for those metals.
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As noted in the last post, the SEC is now exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests.  In scanning all of the major online news services, I am unable to find a single article on this subject written since early this week.

Why isn't the press in general going bat dung crazy over this?  Not just the financial press, but ALL of the press.  Don't they see this as setting a precedence that when one government agency gets granted super-secret cloaking powers, other agencies are likely to jump on the bandwagon?

Seriously, all of the American press should be rioting over this.  Yet they're quiet as church mice.  Why dat?
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Bloomberg financial press is unable to find the resources to report on the SEC getting granted secrecy powers, but they DO find the resources to write a story about the wife of an ex-employee of the NY Mets baseball team -
The owners of the New York Mets should be responsible for reimbursing more than $16 million in pension benefits invested on behalf of their workers in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, according to a lawsuit filed by the widow of an employee.

Elyse S. Goldweber, the beneficiary of her late husband’s 401(k) plan, filed suit yesterday against Sterling Equities Inc., which owns the Major League Baseball team, in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The lawsuit, which also named Mets Chief Executive Officer Fred Wilpon, said most of the couple’s $280,420 retirement fund was “wiped out.”
It sucks to be this woman, but does it justify an article in Bloombergs?  Really?  Maybe they could do a hard-hitting story about how the lady's pet poodle has been forced to eat canned dog food as a part of their forced austerity plan.

Hey wait a minute.  Isn't the SEC the governmental agency that was given detailed information about the Bernie Madoff scheme WAY before it blew up?  Hmmmm.  I wonder if they would have had to disclose their incompetence if this story broke today...
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Why doesn't Arizona just tell the federal government to "shove it" and take matters into their own hands?   They passed a law, go ahead and enforce it.

What will the feds do?  Arrest the whole state?  Perhaps the whole executive office of the state government?

Go ahead, punk.  Make my day...


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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think a good and legitimate approach Arizona could use would be to legislate numerous laws to deal with their illegal alien problem. In each case try to make sure the law is constitutional and simple to understand even by those of us who are not lawers.

Two suggestions: 1) be more agressive in following up on the I-9's every employee has to fill out. Check the ID's so that illegals cannot successfully pass false id. When you find cases of people using false ID charge them with a felony. 2) Fine employers, be more agressive finding employers who knowingly hire illegals and fine them.

The federal government knows where every illegal is working. This is because of the requirement that employers submit payroll taxes on every employee and it shows their SSN. It would be a simple computer program that would cross reference all SSN's for indicators of misuse. If we did this it would be impossible for illegals to work in this country.

MikeH. said...

Chief,

Regarding the gold trading; I am wondering if, perhaps, there is a lot of artificial number manipulating going on to (1) elevate the price out of reach by us common peons and (2) to spur us peons into selling off what we have, making more gold available to the filthy rich and famous, because the price is going to soon(?) go hyper-ballistic.

If only I could have known back then... five years ago, gold was selling for around $450.00 an ounce!!!

MikeH.

Chief Instructor said...

Anon, your second item - fining employers - if enforced, would stop illegal aliens almost overnight. If we had a week of CEO's being perp-walked into jail for hiring illegals, their peers would see the writing on the wall, and stop immediately. This would encompass the illegals that fill out fraudulent IRS paperwork, AND the illegals that work under-the-table. No jobs, no reason to be here.

But they - Democrats or Republicans - won't do this because they know it would work, and their various constituencies would turn on them and cut off their re-election funds. They're BOTH bought and paid for.

Mike, actually, the manipulation is the other way - it has artificially depressed gold and silver prices.

It is way too entangled to go in any detail here. If interested, start at:

http://www.gata.org/

Ask yourself, "Who benefits by lower gold and silver prices?"

The easy answer is, "Any country that produces fiat currency". If gold is strong, that means your currency is weak...

Google search "silver shorting +JP Morgan Chase". Your head is going to explode.

When GATA first started ranting and raving, it was all very tinfoil hat/conspiracy theory. They've now proven much of their theory, and people are beginning to get what's happening.

The Feds are now starting to do some cursory investigations, but they'll turn up nothing, because it's not in their best interest to do so.

suek said...

>>If we had a week of CEO's being perp-walked into jail for hiring illegals>>

Even if they took reasonable (I know - define 'reasonable') measures to try to determine legality??

Chief Instructor said...

Suek, the feds currently have a system to verify SSNs immediately. Employers key in the name and number, and verify the name - as they are required to do now - with a driver's license or passport.

Otherwise, you don't hire or you do the perp walk.

Anonymous said...

You are correct that there is a system in place to allow employers to verify a SSN. What I was suggesting was a simple computer program at SS headquarters to cross reference SSN's when they come in from employers who file the payroll taxes (social security taxes). If they get a SSN from California and a similar SSN is being used in Michigan my guess is the guy isn't flying back and forth every day and one of these SSN's is being used fraudulently. Or if someone in California named Jose Jimenez is using a SSN that belongs to James Bond in New York, I'm guessing it is an illegal using someone else's SS. I can think of 10 more ways to cross check the validity of an SSN used to get a job and since every employer is required to submit the form and payment to the SS they have the information to do it with.

Chief Instructor said...

Anon, yep, it is VERY doable. The political will simply doesn't exist.

I'd love to know how the farmers, grape growers and orchards get around this (hell, any business, really). If ICE simply told every grower that next year, every itinerant worker will be required to show ID, OR they will be looking through every single I9 (employment verification form) and that there will be a $1000 fine per exception, things would change dramatically.

The growers would tell us we'd end up with $25 heads of lettuce, and other such garbage. I did a post on another blog a few years back where I showed that to be wholly falsified.

Maybe I need to resurrect that post...