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When earlier today we read a report in the Greek Enikonomia, according to which Greek taxpayers would be forced to declare all cash “under the mattress” (including inside) or boxes that contain more than 15,000 euros as well as jewelry and precious stones (including gold) worth over 30,000 euros, starting in 2016, we assumed this has to be some early April fools joke or a mistake.

After all, this would be merely the first step toward full-blown asset confiscation, conducted so many times by insolvent governments throughout history, once the government cracks down on those who made a “mistake” in their asset declaration form or simply refuse to fill such a declaration, thereby making all their assets eligible for government confiscation.

It was not a joke.

Here is the take of Keep Talking Greece, whose stunned response mirrors ours.

Cash “under the mattress” totaling more than 15,000 euro, jewelry and other valuable items such as diamonds and gemstones, should be declared to electronic system of tax authorities, Taxisnet, as of 1 January 2016. Next to properties and vehicles and shares, now the taxpayers will also have to declare their deposits. And not only that. They will have to fill if they rent bank lockers and if yes, also the name of the bank and the branch, even if abroad.

A joint ministerial decision issued by the Ministries of Justice and Finance indicates that taxpayers in Greece should add all their valuables into a new category of the tax declaration, the “Assets declaration.”

Specifically, the decision provides that:

“Assets declarations” are submitted electronically and mandatory via Taxisnet.
Starting date for the submission is 1.1.2016

Declared must be cash money if more than 15,000 euro and precious items if their total value exceeds 30,000 euro. These amounts apply cumulatively per household (husband, wife, underage children).

To facilitate the completion of the declaration, data from the income statements (E1 and E9) will be drawn automatically.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mike Maloney: The Rollercoaster Crash

November 23, 2015

Mike Maloney: The Rollercoaster Crash

An updated look on the coming global currency re-set

Precious metals sank to 5-year lows during this past week. The long painful price decline that began at the end of 2011 still continues unabated. Holders of gold & silver are understandably wondering if their faith in precious metals has been misplaced.

In this week’s podcast, we invite Mike Maloney back on the podcast. Mike is the owner of one of the largest bullion dealers in the US, GoldSilver.com, and one of the top minds we know of on monetary history. In this wide-ranging interview — which announces the release of a new educational video, The Rollercoaster Crash, which kicks off Season 2 of GoldSilver’s excellent video series Hidden Secrets of Money — Mike lays out the rationale for an approaching global reset of the existing fiat currency regimes, and why asset-backed currencies are highly likely to return in our lifetime:

History shows that whenever there is a problem with the currency, whether it is big inflation, hyperinflation, or deflation, people go back to safe haven assets. And we should be going into a deflationary episode that is overreacted to that causes big inflation or hyperinflation, which causes a breakdown of the current global monetary system, the global dollar standard that is now the longest-lived of these artificial monetary systems and has developed a bunch of stress cracks and is in the process of imploding right now. There is going to be before the end of this decade, most likely, another emergency meeting of a bunch of finance ministers and economists to try and hash out another world monetary system. It is just history repeating, and it is a natural consequence of a man-made, artificial manipulation of the free market.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sprott Unleashed: “Everything is a Lie… They’ve Got To Pretend There Is An Economic Recovery Happening”

November 23, 2015

Sprott Unleashed: “Everything is a Lie… They’ve Got To Pretend There Is An Economic Recovery Happening”

If the government’s official statistics are to be believed the U.S. economy is moving full steam ahead. Consumers are spending, the job market is expanding, real estate has recovered, stocks are soaring and the U.S. dollar is stronger than it has been in a decade.

But if you have yet to realize it, it’s all a lie. So says billionaire investor Eric Sprott of Sprott Global, which manages hundreds of millions of dollars in contrarian investment funds for clients all over the world. Well known for his long-term bullishness on the resource sector, specifically precious metals, Sprott joined First Mining Financechairman Keith Neumeyer in a must-see interview where the pair discuss everything from the state of the global economy and trade to gold market manipulation and the inevitable breakdown of highly leveraged paper trading exchanges.

Neumeyer recently sent a very public letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission highlighting rampant price suppression, noting that neither real producers or real consumers are being represented by the manipulative practices of a small concentration of players. Echoing those concerns Sprott suggests that for every 5 tons of real gold there are some 1500 tons worth of claims. The inevitable outcome should claimants ever want to take delivery of physical inventory will be an unprecedented explosion in price:

To be brutally honest, I mean, that’s what I dream of… I think we’re almost at that point where we might very well have a shortage of gold and silver by a product of this last raid here, so much so that we’ll take those 5 tons from the COMEX because we have lots of people buying silver and gold.

(Watch at Youtube)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An Almost Perfect Storm of Incompetence and Felony

November 11, 2015

An Almost Perfect Storm of Incompetence and Felony

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.

But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, Age of Uncertainty

“Misdeeds, once exposed, have no refuge but in audacity. And they have accomplices in those who are fearful in their complicity.”
Tacitus, Annals

I was discussing the markets this morning with my friends Dave and Bill Murphy as we generally do. This is what I just wrote back in response to a question from Bill.

I read his columns at LeMetropoleCafe.com every day. His is an amazing crossroads for discussion of things that are interesting about precious metals. I have been a subscriber since 2000. Dave has a new site at Investment Research Dynamics that is quite good and different since he has a very different background in the heart of darkness as a NYC bond trader from mine as a Bell Lab rat and Silicon Valley roustabout.

We just saw a very historically significant decline in the precious metals in terms of days lower without relief. And we have seen a remarkable rise in the US dollar index against the Euro and the Swiss franc that cannot possibly be good for the real economy of the US, when every other developed nation is trying to devalue their currencies to stimulate their exports and inhibit imports.

I believe that a portion of the gold selling in particular is an effort to knock down the open interest in gold for December. If there was any serious attempt for holders of those contracts to stand for delivery, even JPM, which has been obviously building up its stores of gold to act as the ‘fixer’ in that market, would not be able to cover the demand.

JPM was consistently taking delivery for their house account in gold, and just transferred 70,000+ ounces over from Nova Scotia’s warehouse, from whom they had been taking delivery.

As we know, in the last big delivery month, JPM stepped up with an enormous amount of their gold, 400,000+ ounces, to provide enough real bullion to satisfy the contracts standing for delivery. Even now their inventories remain somewhat depleted.

The dollar has also been soaring, because the Fed is trying to pretend that the US is recovering so that they can raise rates. A strong dollar and higher rates are very harmful to what is almost undoubtedly a fragile economic recovery in the US.

And it is fantasy to think that the US can somehow go it alone, and continue to improve while the rest of the world is cutting rates because their economies are slowing.

The Fed wants to raise rates for their own policy purposes, so they can cut them, without going overtly negative, when their latest financial bubble starts to collapse, which it may already be doing. They cannot really raise rates in a Presidential election year past June, so they will push ahead, to serve their own purposes, even as they harm the real economy.

There will be another financial crisis as the IMF warned today. There will be a serious dislocation in several financial markets, including the precious metals and the bonds at some point, that will rock the current system to its foundations.

It is a portion of the credibility trap which inhibits any meaningful remedy and reform.

It is an almost perfect storm of incompetence and felony.

Blatant Gold/Silver Manipulation Reflects The Complete Corruption Of The U.S. System

October 31, 2015

Blatant Gold/Silver Manipulation Reflects The Complete Corruption Of The U.S. System

The morning of the FOMC announcement on Wednesday (Oct 28) gold was up $14 overnight, close to $1080 and the cartel’s dreaded 200 day moving average. The “premise” was that the market was expecting another rate hike deferral.

I friend called me that morning and I told him to not get excited because when the FOMC policy decision hits the tape, they will annihilate gold and push the S&P 500 up toward 2100. I was only 10 pts off on the S&P call, as the S&P 500 closed at 2090, up an absurd 24 points. Gold was taken to the cleaners:

What’s incredible is not one mainstream media analyst or reporter questions this market action. If the premise behind the gold sell-off was a “hawkish” FOMC statement and the threat of a rate hike in December (yawn), then the exact same premise should have cause a big sell-off in stocks. Since when does the threat of tighter monetary policy not hit the stock market?

Just to recount the play-by-play in gold, the moment the FOMC announcement hit the tape, the Comex computer system was bombarded with sell orders. At this point in the trading day, the ONLY gold/silver market open is the Comex computer Globex system. In the first 30 minutes 29.6k contracts were unloaded – 2.6 million paper ounces. In the entire hour after the announcement 50.5k contracts were unloaded – 5.1 million ounces. Note that the Comex is showing around 200k ounces to be available for delivery.

The blatant, unfettered manipulation and intervention in the gold and silver market is sponsored by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury, executed by the big bullion banks and fully endorsed by the CFTC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Overstock Holds 3 Months Of Food, $10 Million In Gold For Employees In Preparation For The Next Collapse

October 25, 2015

Overstock Holds 3 Months Of Food, $10 Million In Gold For Employees In Preparation For The Next Collapse

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s crusade against naked short sellers in particular, and Wall Street and the Federal Reserve in general, has long been known and thoroughly documented (most recently with his push to use blockchain technology to revolutionize the multi-trillion repo market).

But little did we know that Overstock’s Chairman Jonathan Johnson is as vocal an opponent of the fiat system, and Wall Street’s tendency to create bubble after bubble, if not more than Byrne himself. That, and that his company actually puts its money where its gold-backed money is and in preparation for the next upcoming crash, has taken unprecedented steps to prepare for what comes next.

One week ago Johnson, who is also candidate for Utah governor, spoke at the United Precious Metals Association, or UPMA, which we first profiled a month ago, and which takes advantage of Utah’s special status allowing the it to use gold as legal tender, offering gold and silver-backed accounts. As a reminder, the UPMA takes Federal Reserve Notes (or paper dollars) which it then translates into golden dollars (or silver). The golden dollars are based off the $50 one ounce gold coins produced by the Treasury of The United States. They are legal tender under the law and are protected as such.

What did Johnson tell the UPMA? Here are some choice quotes:

We are not big fans of Wall Street and we don’t trust them. We foresaw the financial crisis, we fought against the financial crisis that happened in 2008; we don’t trust the banks still and we foresee that with QE3, and QE4 and QE n that at some point there is going to be another significant financial crisis.

So what do we do as a business so that we would be prepared when that happens. One thing that we do that is fairly unique: we have about $10 million in gold, mostly the small button-sized coins, that we keep outside of the banking system.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

20 Reasons Why All The People That Quit Prepping After September Are Dead Wrong

October 21, 2015

20 Reasons Why All The People That Quit Prepping After September Are Dead Wrong

Millions of Americans were gearing up for some huge event to happen in September, but the world didn’t end and now many of them have given up entirely on prepping. Of course the truth is that some absolutely earth-shattering events did take place last month, but because September did not play out exactly as some were anticipating, a lot of people feel very let down. My contacts in the emergency food industry tell me that sales have dropped off dramatically, and yesterday I was told by someone that I trust that the same is true for those that sell precious metals. But this should not be happening. What we witnessed in August and September was just the warm up act, and all of the numbers are absolutely screaming at us that we are right on track for a major global crisis. In this article I am going to focus on economic and financial issues, but there are so many other things going on around the planet right now that threaten to throw our world into turmoil. Anyone that thinks that it is safe to “relax” now is simply not paying attention. The following are 20 reasons why all the people that quit prepping after September are dead wrong…

#1 U.S. exports are down 11 percent for the year so far. The only other times they have fallen this dramatically since the turn of the century were during the last two recessions.

#2 Since March, the amount of stuff being shipped by truck, rail and air inside the United States has been falling every single month on a year over year basis. This is a clear indication that economic activity is really slowing down.

#3 Wholesale sales in the U.S. have fallen to the lowest level since the last recession.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold & Politicians – Getting it Right For Once

October 20, 2015

Gold & Politicians – Getting it Right For Once

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I heard you on Infowars. I understand how the gold standard would not solve anything for the problem is politicians and not what we call money. Some think that you can create a floating gold standard so gold would be money but not fixed. I really have a hard time seeing where this would solve anything for you still would have loans then in gold and you end back at the same spot with paper gold. This is really getting confusing. That was the question I wanted to ask.

Thank you

ANSWER: It really does not matter what we use for money. It is only a medium of exchange. Before 1934, private loans always had a gold clause. So yes, you are correct. You ended up with more gold owed than actually existed, This is fundamental to any credit system.

The problem is people are arguing over what should be money as if this really matters. There were defaults under a gold standard just as there were under paper. This is kind of blaming your wife because she failed to compel you to take the trash out.

The problem is not money and as long as people only focus on money assuming some return to a gold based system will magically convert all politicians into saints, then we doom ourselves to repeat history for this nonsense is arguing at the surface and ignoring the fact that governments and monetary systems have collapsed for countless millennium. The list of empires, nations, and city states that have collapsed are countless since the beginning of recorded history regardless of what money was.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Economist Rings Out Cognitive Dollar Dissonance

October 11, 2015

**The Economist Rings Out Cognitive Dollar Dissonance**

Two years ago, prior to travelling to Sydney to present at the Annual Precious Metals Symposium, I prepared an article for the Gold Standard Institute Journal titled Cognitive Dollar Dissonance: Why a Global De-Leveraging Requires the De-Rating of the Dollar and the Remonetisation of Gold (see here). This article highlighted the growing inconsistency between those arguing on the one hand that the dollar’s role in international trade and finance was clearly diminishing; yet denying that it was in any danger of losing the near-exclusive monetary reserve status it has enjoyed since the 1940s.

This apparently contradictory yet mainstream thinking about the future of the international monetary system continues to the present day. Indeed, earlier this month the Economist magazine ran a special feature on fading US economic power replete with dollar dissonance. The experts cited note the accelerating trend towards bilateral trade settlement, say between Russia and China, who plan to finance their multiple ‘Silk Road’ infrastructure projects using their own currencies and their own development bank (The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB: See http://www.aiib.org/). They also observe that Russia, China and the other BRICS are no longer accumulating dollar reserves (although curiously overlook that they continue to accumulate gold). They acknowledge that not only the BRICS but many other countries have repeatedly expressed their desire that the current set of global monetary arrangements should be restructured in some way, although they are not always clear as to their specific preferences.

Note the sharp contrast in these two paragraphs, both on the very same page of the Economist feature:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold

October 10, 2015

The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold

Belgium sold 1,098 tonnes of its official gold reserves since 1978.

For our global investigation how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, I decided to submit the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at the central bank of Belgium, de Nationale Bank van België (NBB), to obtain information about the amount of Belgian official gold reserves, the exact location of all gold bars, the type of gold accounts NBB holds at the Bank Of England (BOE) and how much is leased out and to whom. The outcome of this research was not what I had expected.

History Of The Official Gold Reserves Of Belgium

Some of the questions I directed at the NBB I used a stepping stone, as this information is publicly available in part. At the end of August 2015 NBB was holding 227.4 tonnes of gold, down 0.04 tonnes from 227.44 tonnes in July, according to data from the Bundesbank that publishes the gold holdings of 19 European central banks and the ECB in compliance with the IMF’s most recent version of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The Bundesbank (BuBa) publishes the fine troy ounces of the official gold reserves in ‘Gold bullion’ and ‘Unallocated gold accounts’. If we add up both categories the outcome for all countries equals the reserves disclosed by the World Gold Council.

From BuBa:

The balance of payments statistics will … be consistent with the framework set out in the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The application of the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6) is binding for EU member states by virtue of a regulation adopted by the European Commission.

Back in 1965 NBB was holding over 1,300 tonnes of gold. Since 1978 it has sold a whopping 1,098 tonnes, or 83 %.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Watch: This Is Why The Elite Are Moving Into Gold and Silver: “There’s Blood In The Streets”

October 5, 2015

Watch: This Is Why The Elite Are Moving Into Gold and Silver: “There’s Blood In The Streets”

The 18th century banking magnate Baron Rothschild laid the foundation for contrarian investing when he said, “the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” And if there were ever a time to take advantage of this advice, it may be right now.

For the last few years we’ve seen prices for gold and silver collapse to such an extent that mining companies around the world are cutting hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs from their operations. It’s gotten so bad that many are moving into unrelated businesses just to stay afloat.

The following must-see video from Future Money Trends highlights why major investors are piling into resources as if their lives depended on it and explains a strategic approach that could pay significant dividends as prices for precious metals inevitably rise in coming months.

(Watch at Youtube)

Devastation… an unmitigated disaster… the worst bear market in half a century…

Home to the junior mining companies, the TSX Venture Exchange is down 85% in nominal terms and 90% down in real terms.

The smart money is getting in. Ray Dalio, George Soros and Carl Icahn are all making big entries into this sector…

When it comes to the mining sector there’s blood in the streets.

This is, by all accounts, an environment in the resource sector not seen for over 50 years. But with investors around the world losing confidence in their governments and the broader economy, it’s only a matter of time before the worst bear market in half a century turns to the upside.

If you’re paying attention you can see the veritable blood in the streets that Baron Rothschild described.

Precious metals may have been left for dead by retail investors, financial advisers, and most mainstream pundits, but that usually means one thing: It’s time to buy.

Silver Coin Shortage Is Now a Global Phenomenon

October 4, 2015

Silver Coin Shortage Is Now a Global Phenomenon

silver eagles

While the price of silver has reached a 5 year low, demand continues to surge in the opposite direction, and not just in the United States. Reuters reports that both the US Mint and the Canadian mint had to ration their supply of silver coins last Summer, while Australia’s Perth Mint had record sales this month. They sold over 2.5 million ounces of silver in September, which was 4 times more than what they sold in August.

Curiously, the rationing isn’t being caused by an actual shortage of silver, at least according to the wholesale manager of the Perth Mint. “There seems to be a bit of frenzy as people think there is a shortage of silver. But in fact it is a (crunch in) manufacturing capacity.” The surge in demand is largely being fueled by what the mint is calling “mom and pop” investors in the United States who want to take advantage of the price dip. As shortages worsen at the US Mint, Americans are now buying coins from foreign mints, and the demand is even spilling over into Asia and Europe.

Still, the silver price continues to fall as the “institutional and retail investors” place their bets on the US dollar, and our (supposedly) improving economy. Prices will likely stagnate until these big money investors lose confidence in the global economy. But until that day arrives, lower-income buyers will continue to outstrip the manufacturing capacity of national mints across the world, a trend which silver retailers expect to continue for at least another year.

UBS Is About To Blow The Cover On A Massive Gold-Rigging Scandal

September 28, 2015

UBS Is About To Blow The Cover On A Massive Gold-Rigging Scandal

With countless settlements documenting the rigging of every single asset class, it was only a matter of time before the regulators – some 10 years behind the curve as usual – finally cracked down on gold manipulation as well, even though as we have shown in the past, central banks in general and the Fed in particular are among the biggest gold manipulators.

That said, we are confident by now nobody will be surprised that there was manipulation going on in the gold casino. In fact, ever since Germany’s Bafin launched a probe into Deutsche Bank for gold and silver manipulation, it has been very clear that the only question is how many banks will end up paying billions to settle the rigging of the gold market (with nobody going to prison as usual, of course).

Earlier today, we learned that the Swiss competition watchdog just became the latest to enjoin the ongoing gold manipulation probe when as Reuters reported, it launched an investigation into possible collusion in the precious metals market by several major banks, it said on Monday, the latest in a string of probes into gold, silver, platinum and palladium pricing.

Here are the details that should come as a surprise to nobody:

Global precious metals trading has been under regulatory scrutiny since December 2013, when German banking regulator Bafin demanded documents from Deutsche Bank under an inquiry into suspected manipulation of gold and silver benchmarks by banks. Even though the market has moved to reform the process of deciding on its price benchmarks, accusations of manipulation have refused to go away.

Switzerland’s WEKO said its investigation, the result of a preliminary probe, was looking at whether UBS, Julius Baer, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Mitsui conspired to set bid/ask spreads.

“It (WEKO) has indications that possible prohibited competitive agreements in the trading of precious metals were agreed among the banks mentioned,” WEKO said in a statement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Prediction: Gold and Gold-Silver Ratio Up, Stocks Down

September 28, 2015

A Prediction: Gold and Gold-Silver Ratio Up, Stocks Down

A Trend Change may be in the Works

The price of gold moved up moderately, and the price of silver moved down a few cents last week. However, there were some interesting fireworks in the middle of the week. Tuesday, the prices dropped and Thursday the prices of the metals popped $23 and $0.34 respectively.

Everyone can judge the sentiment prevailing in gold and silver articles for themselves, but we think there is a growing feeling of optimism (that is a renewed fall in the dollar, which most think is a rise in gold). This goes along with a sense that the long bull run in the stock market is rolling over.

gravity-2 Gravity… ever since Einstein invented it, stocks occasionally go down

We are inclined to agree that the stock market may be overdue for its appointment with gravity. This is not a good business climate, and we sure don’t see where earnings growth could come from. At the same time, we see lots of forces that could cause margin compression, not to mention rising default risk in many disparate places (e.g. shale oil bonds). We are not stock market prognosticators, so treat this as nothing more than a feeling.

Gold market participants may be expecting the price of gold to move up if the stock market moves down. This would be a continuation of the pattern of the last several years, with the prices moving opposite to each other. We are inclined to agree with this. That said, to shamelessly borrow a phrase from the London Underground (we’re currently visiting London), please mind the gap between the theory and the data.

For an updated picture of the only true supply and demand data read on…

Last Week’s Market Data

First, here is the graph of the metals’ prices.

The prices of gold and silver – click to enlarge.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Buy Gold While You Still Can!

September 26, 2015

Buy Gold While You Still Can!

An important update on the supply of physical gold

One of our long-running themes here is that the truly historic and massive flows of gold from West to East is (someday) going to stop, for the simple reason that there will be no more physical bullion left to move.

It’s just a basic supply vs. demand issue. At current rates of flow, sooner or later the West will entirely run out of physical gold to sell to China and India. Although long before that hard limit, we suspect that the remaining holders of gold in the West will cease their willingness to part with their gold.

So the date at which “the West runs out of gold to sell” is somewhere between now and whenever the last willing Western seller parts with their last ounce. As each day passes, we get closer and closer to that fateful moment.

This report centers on preponderance of fascinating data revealing the extent of the West’s massive dis-hoarding of physical gold, for the first time, begins to allow us to start estimating the range of end-dates for the flow to the East.

Here’s the punchline: there’s an enormous and growing disconnect between the cash and physical markets for gold. This is exactly what we would expect to precede a major market-shaking event based on a physical gold shortage.

Stopping the Flows

There are only two outcomes that will stop the process of Western gold flowing East, one illegitimate and the other legitimate.

It becomes illegal to sell gold. This is the favored approach of central planners who prefer to force change by dictate rather than via free markets and free will. Unfortunately, this strain of political intervention is dominant in the West, particularly in the US and EU.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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