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Leaves almost nothing to live on

In the song Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis (and made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford), the idea of the ‘company store’ referred to a system of debt bondage that effectively trapped workers within an unfair system designed to harvest all of their labor at very low cost.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Sixteen Tons – Merle Travis

How exactly did the company store system operate?

Under a scrip system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers that could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings.
Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay.
(Source – Wiki)

This model was simple enough to understand. “Pay” your workers with scrip vouchers, then sell them your marked up goods at the company store, pocketing a nice profit. On top of that, force your employees to live in company housing, too, also at terms very favorable to the company.

Add it all up and the workers found themselves in perpetual service to their employer. No matter how hard and long they toiled, there was nothing left for their own private benefit after all was said and done. The company succeeded in skimming off any and all ‘excess’ for itself.

This vast unfairness eventually led to the formation of unions as well as to regulations providing protection to the workers.

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

IT’S OFFICIAL; U.S. Silver Production The Lowest In More Than 70 Years

March 22, 2019

IT’S OFFICIAL; U.S. Silver Production The Lowest In More Than 70 Years

With the latest release by the USGS, silver production in the U.S. is now the lowest in more than 70 years. We have to go all the way back until the year after World War II ended to see U.S. silver production less than it was in 2018. While many reasons can be attributed to the decline, the main factors are falling ore grades and mine economics.

Unfortunately, there just aren’t too many economic silver deposits in the United States, especially with the high level of environmental and governmental regulations. Instead of dealing with all the bureaucracy, companies are looking to Mexico and South America to open new silver projects.

Regardless, U.S. silver production declined by more than 100 metric tons last year, or 10% in 2018, mainly due to the ongoing closure of the Lucky Friday Mine in Idaho. The Lucky Friday Mine has been shut down ever since the United Steelworkers went on strike on March 13, 2017. However, the dropoff in silver mine supply can’t all be blamed on the Lucky Friday Mine. Domestic silver production has been trending lower for the past two decades:

In 2000, the U.S. produced 63.7 million oz (1,980 metric tons) of silver compared to just 29.7 million oz (923 metric tons) last year. Thus, U.S. silver production has fallen by more than 50% in less than two decades. Silver production in the U.S. ramped up significantly during the 1990s due to the McCoy-Cove Silver Mine in Nevada. At its peak, the McCoy-Cove Mine supplied 20% of the total U.S. silver production:

I don’t have a chart of U.S. silver mine supply over the past 100 years, but I checked the USGS data, and in 1946, the country produced only 713 metric tons (mt) of silver.

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

NEW ERA OF THE MODERN PRECIOUS METALS INVESTOR: The Coming Pension Fund Disaster

February 4, 2019

NEW ERA OF THE MODERN PRECIOUS METALS INVESTOR: The Coming Pension Fund Disaster

Get ready for a new era of precious metals investor. That’s correct. Up until now, the primary buyer of gold and silver have been the older generation, 40-65+, but that will all change when the next financial crisis hits. The Millennials, or those in the 23-38 age group, have participated less in the stock market than previous generations. And, rightly so.

According to one study, Millennials preferred cash (30%) as their largest investment over stocks (23%). This should be no surprise as the older Millennials have experienced two market crashes, the dotcom NASDAQ crash and the 2008 market meltdown within a decade. Furthermore, the Millennials are likely very concerned and worried about the massive underlying debt and leverage in the system. Of course, it is probably true that most Millennials don’t understand the details of the financial markets, but have an excellent innate ability to recognize that SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG.

In my newest video update, New-Age Precious Metals Investor: Pension Fund Disaster, I discuss how surprised I was to learn that the largest age group that followed the SRSrocco Report website were the Millenials, not the older generation. Now if that wasn’t surprising enough, the next largest group of readers came from an even younger group, aged 18-24:

The chart comes from my Google Analytics dashboard so that you can thank Google for that statistic. How on earth does Google know the demographics of my website, that is a subject matter for another day? Regardless, while the mainstream media suggests that the younger generation are less interested in finances and politics, I actually believe they are hungry for GOOD INFORMATION. Unfortunately, they will not find quality information in the mainstream press. Which is precisely why many of the Millennials are quite concerned about the future and continue to question everything.

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

Why Silver & Barter Could Become the Alternative to Cryptocurrency

January 17, 2019

Why Silver & Barter Could Become the Alternative to Cryptocurrency

QUESTION: RE: ….& Coming Barter System.
So, are you suggesting that we may see a shift to Silver by private individuals as the only way to sidestep Government stupidity, or will it be even worse, like trading whiskey for toilet paper??

TWE

ANSWER: Assuming government attempts to follow the IMF’s advice and create cryptocurrencies to replace paper money, then the only alternative will be the barter system. To make this clear, the likelihood of the USA following this route is a last resort. It will NOT be the first, but the last. We will see this in Europe before we will ever see it in the USA.

This cannot be a question that is answered based upon OPINION, for we all have one. The only rational way to approach that question is to look at history and see how people responded to similar but not identical positions. What comes to mind in Japan. Each new emperor devalued the money issued his own coins worth 10x that of the coins of the previous emperor. People resorted to bags of rice and they used the coins of China. Everyone refused to use Japanese coins. The result was that Japan LOST the right to issue coins at all for 600 years.

Moving to a cryptocurrency to stop the underground economy from using paper money will simply switch it to foreign currency (dollars in Europe) or something commodity based. In federal prisons, when they banned smoking back in 2004, packs of mackerel industry became the prison currency. Everyone operated an internal economy. They used cigarettes as their currency of choice to purchase anything from food and home-brewed prison hooch. They also used books of stamps. Prisoners could ship books of stamps out and they could resell them at a discount.

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

GET READY FOR TURBULENT MARKETS IN 2019: Gold & Silver To Outperform Most Assets

January 14, 2019

GET READY FOR TURBULENT MARKETS IN 2019: Gold & Silver To Outperform Most Assets

Investors should prepare for crazy and turbulent markets in 2019. As the correction in the broader markets picks up speed and heads much lower, investor worry will start to turn into fear. At this point, the precious metals will likely disconnect from the markets and move higher as investors move into gold and silver to protect wealth.

I discuss this in my newest video update: DOW, GOLD & SILVER: Markets Disconnect In 2019. In the video, I show how gold and silver rallied over the past month while the broader markets, copper, and energy sold off. I believe the precious metals will continue to disconnect even further from the markets in 2019 and 2020.

In the video, I also describe the image below and why the U.S. Shale Oil Industry continues to lose money:

This shows the typical slick water shale frac completion layout and the massive amount of equipment and energy it takes to produce shale oil and gas. The drilling rig has been removed, and the wellheads (in RED) receive an enormous amount of water, frac sand, and chemicals under high pressure from the 20 pressure pumping truck rigs.

Furthermore, I explain the following chart and why the gold price will continue to disconnect from the Dow Jones Index in 2019:

While I explain more technical analysis in the video, the fundamentals will still play a leading role in guiding the economy and markets over the next several years. However, the technicals provide us with a crystal ball in how the prices will trade over this period.

The Big Picture: Paper Money vs. Gold

December 12, 2018

The Big Picture: Paper Money vs. Gold

Numbers from Bizarro-World

The past few months have been really challenging for anyone invested in gold or silver; for me personally as well. Despite serious warning signs in the economy, staggering debt levels and a multitude of significant geopolitical threats at play, the rally in risk assets seemed to continue unabated.

Bizarro-World intrudes into our reality, courtesy of central banks. [PT]

In fact, I was struggling with this seeming paradox myself. As I kept looking at the state of the markets, I couldn’t help but wonder “what if they just keep kicking the can down the road for the next 20 years, or even longer?”

Since the peak in 2011, gold and silver have been in a strong correction period and overall, prices haven’t benefited from all the trillions that have been injected into the markets since 2008. Total credit growth was approximately $80 trillion, climbing from $160 trillion to around $240 trillion in a mere 10 years.

The major central banks combined increased their balance sheet by buying government and institutional debt from $6 trillion to $21 trillion (FED, ECB, BOJ, PBoC), but none of it went into gold. However, even though these days we read and hear these numbers so often, it is still almost impossible for the true meaning of these sums to really sink in.

A trillion is hard to truly take in and understand; $80 trillion in debt is something already so far beyond our grasp that it might as well be $100, $200, or $300 trillion and it would almost make no conceptual difference. A good way to correct this dissonance is just think about the fact that 1 million seconds are 8 days, 1 billion seconds are 35 years and 1 trillion seconds translate into 32,000 years – bringing us back to the Stone Age.

Assets held by major central banks.

PBoC balance sheet

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

Gold & Silver Prices Rise As The Markets & Oil Decline

December 9, 2018

Gold & Silver Prices Rise As The Markets & Oil Decline

Over the past week, the gold and silver prices have held up rather well compared to the overall markets. While precious metals investors still fear that a huge sell-off in the gold and silver prices will take place during the next market crash, it seems that the metals continue to be very resilient during large market corrections.

Now, I am not saying that the metals prices cannot fall any lower, but a lot of the leverage in the gold and silver market has already been removed and is now at a near all-time low. So, even though we could see weaker precious metals prices, the overwhelming leverage and bubble asset prices are in the stock and real estate markets.

Furthermore, one of the reasons precious metals investors still fear that a major selloff is imminent is that they are using the 2007-2008 economic market meltdown as a guideline. However, when gold and silver prices were plummeting from their highs in 2008, along with the rest of the market, speculators held huge long positions while the commercials controlled an enormous number of short contracts.

If we look at the following Gold Hedgers Chart, we can clearly see that the market setup today is the exact opposite of what it was in 2008:

When gold was trading near $1,000 in early 2008, the commercial banks held a record high of 252,000 net short contracts compared to the present gold price of $1,222 (time of chart), with the commercials only holding 16,000 net short contracts. The commercial short positions are shown by the blue line. Thus, the higher the commercial short positions, the lower the line goes and the lower the number, the higher the line moves. Currently, the gold price and commercial net short positions are both at the near lows. Also, the speculator net long positions are close to their lows as well

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

GOLD, SILVER & THE MARKETS: What’s Next For 2019

December 6, 2018

GOLD, SILVER & THE MARKETS: What’s Next For 2019

The big question on the minds of most investors is what will happen to the markets and precious metals in 2019. Well, the answer depends mainly on two factors, the oil price and overall weakness in the economy. If the oil price continues to decline, it will indicate a deflationary outcome for the economy and markets.

While this sounds counter to the notion that falling oil prices will drive higher consumer demand, we also must remember that it will negatively impact the U.S. shale oil industry. A lower sustained oil price, as I wrote about in my previous article, IT BEGINS… Rapidly Falling Oil Prices First Guts Tar Sands, Then Shale Oil will begin to destroy the oil industry, especially the unconventional oil industry. I don’t believe Americans or the investors realize the tremendous amount of economic activity it takes to produce shale oil.

Now, the last U.S. economic bubble in 2007-2008 was based on a highly leveraged housing market. However, the present economic bubble is being propped up by the U.S. Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme. Some energy analysts don’t believe the U.S. shale oil industry has that much of an impact on the market, but I disagree. Since the 2008 market crash, the U.S. shale oil industry has brought on nearly 7 million barrels per day (mbd) of tight oil. U.S. oil production has surged from 5 mbd in 2008 to 11.7 mbd currently.

So, to understand what happens to the markets in 2019, we need to focus on the number one driver of the economy… THE OIL PRICE. In my most recent video, GOLD, SILVER & MARKETS: What’s Next For 2019, I discuss what is taking place in the broader markets, gold-silver, and the oil price:

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

2019 Outlook: The State of Sound Money in the United States

December 6, 2018

2019 Outlook: The State of Sound Money in the United States

The Great Recession, coupled with the “Ron Paul Revolution,” prompted a renaissance of the sound money movement in the United States.

As Germany, Russia, and China — to name a few — continue to increase their gold holdings, the hegemonic power of Federal Reserve Notes (referred to today as the dollar) is slowly slipping away.

Simultaneously, whispers—once relegated to fringe corners—of restoring sound money have become passionate, concerned, and loud.

The destruction of sound money over the past century stems from actions at the federal level, but there are steps which states can take —and even have already taken —to move toward real, sound, constitutional money.

As state legislatures reconvene in the next few weeks, let’s take a look at the current state of play…

Since 2016, sound money has made a splash on the state level. According to the 2018 Sound Money Index, a new ranking of all 50 states on the extent to which they have implemented the pro-sound money policies, there are currently 38 states with an exemption of sales and use tax on the purchase of gold and silver.

Since 2016, legislators in 10 different states have introduced bills, seven of which were signed into law, to restore sound money by eliminating taxes on gold and silver within their borders.

In 2017, a quarter of all states without a sales tax exemption on gold and silver introduced new measures to eliminate the tax against the monetary metals. As states continue to make inroads on the sales tax issue, Tennessee and West Virginia are expected to introduce bills to remove sales and use taxes on sound money in 2019.

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

Will 2019 Bring a Free and Fair Gold & Silver Market?

December 4, 2018

Will 2019 Bring a Free and Fair Gold & Silver Market?

JPMorgan Chase and a number of other bullion banks are in a whole lot of trouble. Evidence detailing years of rigging markets and swindling clients is piling up.

Deutsche Bank pleaded guilty two years ago and forked over hundreds of thousands of documents. John Edmonds, a former JPMorgan trader, entered his own guilty plea last month and turned state’s evidence.

The carefully cultivated system of captured regulators may not help the banks this time.

FBI investigators and Department of Justice attorneys are involved now. This investigation is out of the hands of CFTC bureaucrats who hope to avoid rocking the boat and/or land high-paying jobs on Wall Street someday.

The DOJ might be ready to actually prosecute crimes this time around. Bankers may have to explain to criminal juries what they have been doing. When they have finished, class-action attorneys and civil juries will get in on the action.

Perhaps for the first time since metals futures began trading, the possibility exists that crooked bankers will be held to account. There is still a long way to go, and there is certainly plenty of reason to doubt the Department of Justice will live up to its name. But there is hope.

Recent Prosecutions Could Spark and End to Fake Markets for Precious Metals

It is never too early for market participants to be thinking about what free and fair metals exchanges might look like.

For starters, electronic metals markets need a direct, unbreakable connection to physical supply and demand.

Banks should not be able to meet extraordinary demand for metal with an unlimited supply of paper.

There are days during which futures contracts purporting to represent the entire annual mine production of silver trade on the COMEX. Yet, once all the furious trading is over, barely any actual silver changes hands. That must end.

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

GLOBAL DEBT INCREASE 2018 vs. GOLD INVESTMENT: Must See Charts

November 23, 2018

GLOBAL DEBT INCREASE 2018 vs. GOLD INVESTMENT: Must See Charts

Global debt increased at the fastest rate at the beginning of 2018. In just one quarter, total global debt jumped by more than $8 trillion. That is quite surprising as total world debt rose by $22 trillion for the full year in 2017. Thus, the increase in global debt last year averaged $5.5 trillion each quarter.

However, global debt according to the Institute of International Finance dropped by $1.5 trillion in the second quarter of 2018. While mature markets saw their debt decline in Q2 2018, emerging market debt increased by $1 trillion lead by China. In looking at the data from the Institute of International Finance (IIF), they stated that global debt jumped by over $8 trillion in the first quarter of 2018 to $247 trillion, but then declined $1.5 trillion to $247 trillion in Q2 2018.

So, the global debt must have jumped by $9.5 trillion to $248.5 trillion during the first quarter of 2018 and then dropped $1.5 trillion in Q2. Thus, the IIF must be revising their figures each quarter. Either way, the net increase in global debt in the first half of 2018 was $8 trillion.

If we look at the following chart below, we can see how the increase in global debt compares to the value of the total global gold investment as well as the value of world gold supply:

From my research, total world gold investment, Central bank and private investment total approximately $3 trillion. This is based on the data from the next chart that estimates global gold investment of 2.25 billion oz valued at a $3 trillion:

Interestingly, when I did the chart above earlier this year, the market price of gold was trading at $1,330. Today, it is $100 less. So, if I want to be totally accurate, total Central bank and private gold holdings are presently valued at $2.8 trillion. Regardless, global debt increased $8 trillion in the first half of 2018, more than 2.5 times than the value of all world investment gold holdings.

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

Tom Cloud Update: Mainstream Financial Planners Getting More Interested In Gold & Silver

November 20, 2018

Tom Cloud Update: Mainstream Financial Planners Getting More Interested In Gold & Silver

In Tom Clouds newest update, he discusses many topics on rising precious metals premiums, silver miners production cost higher than the market price, skyrocketing debt and the coming rise in the gold and silver price. However, one of the most important parts of his video is the number of financial planners now calling him because they are becoming more interested in precious metals.

Tom starts by discussing the rising precious metals premiums on certain products since the summer. He then talks about the primary silver miners average cost of production is above the current market price. I have written a recent article on this, which he quotes, and it’s true:

As I mentioned, Tom was quoted the data from the chart below which shows how the top primary silver miners average All-In-Sustaining Cost (AISC) is now $16.10. However, the AISC does not include all costs and also deducts by-product credits. I believe the costs are even higher:

All the primary silver miners shown in red posted a higher AISC than the current market price. There were only two that posted a lower AISC. Even though the silver production cost is not the only factor that determines the market price, it is at least helps provides a floor. We must also remember, these AISC were based on much higher oil prices in the third quarter. Oil prices have now fallen by more than $20 from their highs. So, I believe the primary silver miners costs will continue to decline over the next several quarters if oil prices remain at the current level or fall further.

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

JPMorgan Chase Trader Pleads Guilty to Gold Manipulation, Turns State’s Evidence

November 13, 2018

JPMorgan Chase Trader Pleads Guilty to Gold Manipulation, Turns State’s Evidence

Gold and silver investors got a rare bit of good news on the enforcement front last week.

A trader from JPMorgan Chase pled guilty to rigging the precious metals futures markets.

John Edmonds admitted to cheating the bank’s clients and plenty of other people naive enough to expect fair treatment on the COMEX and other exchanges.

While this is by no means the first time a banker has been caught cheating, some aspects of this case are certainly worth noting.

Below is some detail on the who, what, when, why, and how of Mr. Edmonds’ activities at JPMorgan.

As part of his plea, Edmonds admitted that from approximately 2009 through 2015, he conspired with other precious metals traders at the Bank to manipulate the markets for gold, silver, platinum and palladium futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (NYMEX) and Commodity Exchange Inc. (COMEX), which are commodities exchanges operated by CME Group Inc.

Edmonds and his fellow precious metals traders at the Bank routinely placed orders for precious metals futures contracts with the intent to cancel those orders before execution (the Spoof Orders), he admitted.

This trading strategy was admittedly intended to inject materially false and misleading liquidity and price information into the precious metals futures contracts markets by placing the Spoof Orders in order to deceive other market participants about the existence of supply and demand. The Spoof Orders were designed to artificially move the price of precious metals futures contracts in a direction that was favorable to Edmonds and his co-conspirators at the Bank, to the detriment of other market participants.

In pleading guilty, Edmonds admitted that he learned this deceptive trading strategy from more senior traders at the Bank, and he personally deployed this strategy hundreds of times with the knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors.

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

Mike Maloney: “One Hell Of A Crisis”

November 7, 2018

Mike Maloney: “One Hell Of A Crisis”

Crashing stocks, bonds, real estate & currency all at once?

Mike Maloney, monetary historian and founder of GoldSilver.com, has just released two new chapters of his excellent Hidden Secrets Of Money video series.

In producing the series, Maloney has reviewed several thousand years of monetary history and has observed that government intervention and mismanagement — such as is now rampant across the world — has alwaysresulted in the diminishment and eventual failure of currency systems.

As for the world’s current fiat currency regimes, Mike sees a reckoning approaching. One that will be preceded by massive losses rippling across nearly all asset classes, destroying the phantom wealth created during the latest central bank-induced Everything Bubble, and grinding the global economy to a halt:

Gold and silver are tremendously undervalued right now, and I dare you to try to find another asset that is tremendously undervalued. There just is not. By all measures, everything is just in these hyper-bubbles. OK, real estate is not quite a hyper-bubble; it’s not quite as big as 2005 and 2006, but by all measures, it’s back into a bubble. But now, we’ve got the bond bubble, the biggest debt bubble in the world. These are all going to pop.

We had a stock market crash in the year 2000, and then in 2008, we had a crash in stocks and real estate. The next crash is going to be in stocks, real estate and bonds — including a lot of sovereign debt, corporate bonds and a whole lot of other bonds that will be crashing at the same time. So, it will be all of the standard financial asset classes, including the traditional ‘safe haven’ of bonds that are going to be crashing at the same time that the world monetary system is falling apart.

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

The Same Old COMEX Games

November 1, 2018

The Same Old COMEX Games

A small move in price enables The Banks to lay the shorts right back on.

Just three weeks ago, we warned you to ignore newsletter pundits who were claiming that one day soon, The Banks that operate on the COMEX will be long and on the side of the regular investor/stacker. As with all nonsense, this sentiment ignores reality. Before reading further, I urge you to read this post from October 9: https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/the-banks-are-not…

October 9 was a Tuesday, and that’s pretty handy because all of the CFTC’s Commitment of Traders surveys are taken after the COMEX close on Tuesdays. Back on October 9, the price of COMEX gold closed at $1191. The CoT survey taken that day was reported on Friday, October 12. And what did it show? Check the handy spreadsheet below from Goldseek.

As you can see, on October 9 the positions were summarized as follows:

• The Large Speculators (primarily hedge funds, managed money, trading funds) NET SHORT 38,175 contracts. This was a new ALL-TIME HIGH NET SHORT position for this category.

• The Commercials (primarily Big Banks like JPM, HSBC, MS, etc.) NET LONG 25,866 contracts . This was a new ALL-TIME HIGH NET LONG position for this category.

• On the disaggregated report, the sub-category “Managed Money” was historically NET SHORT 109,544 contracts, as you can see below.

Fast-forward two weeks to Tuesday, October 23. The price of COMEX gold had risen $45 to $1236 and another CoT survey was taken. This report was released last Friday, the 26th, and it is shown below.

So, on a price move of less than 4%, it’s quite clear that The Banks have revealed themselves as NOT “on your side”. Not now, not ever. The positions on this most recent report can be summarized as:

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

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