Quote of the Day: Whose Conspiracy?

From former economist, blogger and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy Paul Craig Roberts at this website

What disturbs me is that no one in authority or in the mainstream media has any interest in checking the facts. Instead, those who raise awkward matters are dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

Why this is damning is puzzling. The government’s story of 9/11 is a story of a conspiracy as is the government’s story of the Boston Marathon Bombing. These things happen because of conspiracies. What is at issue is: whose conspiracy? We know from Operation Gladio and Operation Northwoods that governments do engage in murderous conspiracies against their own citizens. Therefore, it is a mistake to conclude that governments do not engage in conspiracies.

One often hears the objection that if 9/11 was a false flag attack, someone would have talked.

Why would they have talked? Only those who organized the conspiracy would know. Why would they undermine their own conspiracy?

Recall William Binney. He developed the surveillance system used by NSA. When he saw that it was being used against the American people, he talked. But he had taken no documents with which to prove his claims, which saved him from successful prosecution but gave him no evidence for his claims. This is why Edward Snowden took the documents and released them. Nevertheless, many see Snowden as a spy who stole national security secrets, not as a whistleblower warning us that the Constitution that protects us is being overthrown.

High level government officials have contradicted parts of the 9/11 official story and the official story that links the invasion of Iraq to 9/11 and to weapons of mass destruction. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta contradicted Vice President Cheney and the official 9/11 story timeline. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has said that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was the subject of the first cabinet meeting in the George W. Bush administration long before 9/11. He wrote it in a book and told it on CBS News’ 60 Minutes. CNN and other news stations reported it. But it had no effect.

Whistleblowers pay a high price. Many of them are in prison. Obama has prosecuted and imprisoned a record number. Once they are thrown in prison, the question becomes: “Who would believe a criminal?”

As for 9/11 all sorts of people have talked. Over 100 police, firemen and first responders have reported hearing and experiencing a large number of explosions in the Twin Towers. Maintanence personnel report experiencing massive explosions in the sub-basements prior to the building being hit by an airplane. None of this testimony has had any effect on the authorities behind the official story or on the presstitutes.

There are 2,300 architects and engineers who have written to Congress requesting a real investigation. Instead of the request being treated with the respect that 2,300 professionals deserve, the professionals are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”

An international panel of scientists have reported the presence of reacted and unreacted nanothermite in the dust of the World Trade Centers. They have offered their samples to government agencies and to scientists for confirmation. No one will touch it. The reason is clear. Today science funding is heavily dependent on the federal government and on private companies that have federal contracts. Scientists understand that speaking out about 9/11 means the termination of their career.

The government has us where it wants us—powerless and disinformed. Most Americans are too uneducated to be able to tell the difference between a building falling down from asymetrical damage and one blowing up. Mainstream journalists cannot question and investigate and keep their jobs. Scientists cannot speak out and continue to be funded. 

Truth telling has been shoved off into the alternative Internet media where I would wager the government runs sites that proclaim wild conspiracies, the purpose of which is to discredit all skeptics.

Quote of the Day: U.S. government knew about the Ebola outbreak but didn’t warn the public

The U.S. government knew about the outbreak in advance, but didn’t warn the public

It’s now clear that the U.S. government has long known this outbreak was coming but did nothing to warn the public.

In early September, the government sought to purchase 160,000 Ebola hazmat suits from a U.S. supplier. Furthermore, according to this report on SHTFplan.com, “Disaster Assistance Response Teams were told to prepare to be activated in the month of October.”

Don’t you find it strange that while the government itself was gearing up for an October disaster, the public wasn’t told a thing about any of this?

(bold original) 

This is from former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts at the lewrockwell.com

For those interested to read more on the politics of ebola here is an interesting article from Timothy Alexander Guzman at the Global Research: U.S. is Responsible for the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: Liberian Scientist

How Paper Wall Street Gold Dominates the Gold Markets

Now we have a better picture of the ongoing selloffs in gold.

We have been told that overall demand of gold slumped during the first quarter to a nine year low, primarily due to Paper Exchange Traded Products (ETP) gold.

From Bloomberg: (all bold mine)

Gold demand dropped 13 percent to the lowest in nine years in the first quarter as record exchange-traded product sales by investors outweighed a surge in buying from China and India, the World Gold Council said.

Yet most of the selling in Paper gold has been US based. Same article...

Prices that rallied as much as sevenfold in the past 12 years entered a bear market last month as inflation failed to accelerate and as equities climbed on mounting optimism that the U.S. will lead a global economic recovery. Some investors’ loss of faith in gold as a protection of wealth is being reflected in ETP holdings that have declined every month this year. About 75 percent of the ETP sales were from U.S. products, the council estimates. The price slump boosted demand for coins and jewelry….

Investors sold a record 182.1 tons of gold through ETPs in the three months through March, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Assets have since dropped another 230.1 tons, falling to 2,219.7 tons by May 14, the lowest since July 2011. Holdings are down 16 percent this year after increasing every year since the first product was listed in 2003.

The impression painted by the media is that buyers of jewelry and coins have not been due to monetary "purchasing power preservation" reasons. Only Wall Street people are qualified to be labeled as "investors".

On the other hand, falling prices have boosted demand for physical gold around the world

Global jewelry demand rose 12 percent to 551 tons in the latest quarter, as purchases jumped 19 percent to 184.8 tons in China and climbed 15 percent to 159.5 tons in India, the report showed. U.S. jewelry consumption was up 6.2 percent, the first quarterly increase since 2005, Grubb said…

Total consumer demand in China jumped 20 percent to 294.3 tons, beating Indian consumption that climbed 27 percent to 256.5 tons, the council said. Bar and coin investment advanced 22 percent to 109.5 tons in China and rose 52 percent to 97 tons in India. While the council previously said China will probably overtake India as the biggest buyer on an annual basis, it expects Indian demand may reach about 965 tons this year, remaining above Chinese consumption of about 880 tons.

“You may see a situation in the future where these two markets change places with each other on quite a regular basis,” said Grubb. “Before, it did look as if China was going to accelerate through India quite quickly and become the larger market for a sustainable period. I think that’s now much less clear. The good thing is you’ve got two big markets now.”

Global coin sales were up 19 percent from a year earlier and bar demand rose 8.1 percent. Over-the-counter and stock flow demand, partly a statistical residual, was at 119.6 tons, compared with sales of 75 tons a year earlier, the council said. That left total investment little changed at 320.4 tons.

So essentially this reveals of the escalating conflict between Paper Wall Street gold versus Physical real gold: Wall Street versus the world.

Current activities validates my perception where paper gold sales in the US are being transferred to the physical market across the globe. More from the same article:

There’s a dichotomy here between what’s happened in the ETFs, which is mainly U.S. based, and what’s happened in OTC investment, which is more outside the U.S.,” said Grubb. The OTC estimate “suggests that some investors in other geographies were buying gold and they were doing it through allocated and unallocated bullion accounts. My hunch is that a lot of that increase in demand will have been outside North America.”

It’s not just physical markets though, emerging market central banks have remained as vigorous net buyers too

Central banks added 109.2 tons to reserves in the three months through March, a ninth successive quarter of net buying, the council said. Nations from Brazil to Russia added 534.6 tons to reserves last year, 17 percent more than in 2011 and the most since 1964, it estimates. Buying may be between 450 and 550 tons this year, Grubb said.

The chart, courtesy of the World Gold Council shows of the distribution of gold demand. It also has been a revelation of the current activities in the gold markets: Wall Street versus the world

Let us summarize: the major categories of gold demand specifically jewelry, bars and coins and central banks remain net buyers, whose rate of purchasing activities have been robustly growing even as prices fall.

Net sellers have mostly been ETFs which are 75% based on the US. Technology demand which is a fraction of the overall also posted a slight decline.

Bottom line: the current selling pressures in gold has MOSTLY been a Wall Street dictated affair.

So how large are the ETFs?

According to the World Gold Council’s latest report

As of end-March, total ETF gold holdings accounted for just 1% of the entire 175,000t above-ground stock of gold. The outflow of from ETFs in the first quarter, while sizeable and significant in its impact on the overall demand figures represents an equally small proportion of the overall stock gold held by private investors.

In the latest press release, the WGC confirmed the substance of the real markets over ETFs:

Marcus Grubb, Managing Director, Investment at the World Gold Council commented: 

“The price drop in April, fuelled by non-physical moves in the market, proved to be the catalyst for a surge of buying that has left many retailers short of stock and refineries introducing waiting lists for deliveries. Putting this into context, sales of bars and coins, jewellery and consumption in the technology sector still make up 81% of the market

And who are these ETP/ETF holders? 

Wall Street people like George Soros, Blackrock Inc. and etc.…

If ETF products are just a smidgen of the overall markets how can they negate the influence of the much larger physical real markets?

The answer: through leveraged derivatives gold markets

Former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Paul Craig Roberts at the lewrockwell.com explains:

The price of bullion is not set in the physical market where individuals take delivery of bullion purchases. It is set in the paper futures market where short selling can drive down the price even if the demand for physical possession is rising. The paper gold market is also the market in which people speculate and leverage their positions, place stop-loss orders, and are subject to margin calls.

When the enormous naked shorts hit the COMEX, stop-loss orders were triggered adding to the sales, and margin calls forced more sales. Investors who were not in on the manipulation lost a lot of money.

The sales of GLD shares are accumulated by the banksters in 100,000 lots and presented to GLD for redemption in gold acquired at the driven down price.

The short sale is leveraged by the stop-loss triggers and margin calls, and results in a profit for the banksters who placed the short sell order. The banksters then profit again as they sell the released gold into the physical market, especially in Asia, where demand has been stimulated by the sharp drop in bullion price and by the loss of confidence in fiat currency. Asian prices are usually at a higher premium above the spot prices in New York-London.

Some readers have said “don’t bet against the Federal Reserve; the manipulation can go on forever.” But can it? As the ETFs such as GLD are drained of gold, their ability to cover any of their obligations to investors diminishes. In my opinion, these ETFs are like a fractional reserve banking system. The claims on gold exceed the amount of gold in the trusts. When the ETFs are looted of their gold by the banksters, the gold price will explode, as the claims on gold will greatly exceed the supply.

Kranzler reports that the current June futures contracts are 12.5 times the amount of deliverable gold. If more than 8 percent of these trades were to demand delivery, COMEX would default. That such a situation is possible indicates the total failure of federal financial regulation.

12.5 times leveraged!! No wonder Wall Street can dictate on such terms.

Unfortunately, Wall Street cannot print gold. Physical gold buyers will demand possession.

 

Thus the ongoing fire sale in gold which also means shifting ownership from Wall Street to the world, would eventually translate to less leverage for the former to manipulate on the gold markets

For now, Wall Street hope and prays that given their huge leverage, claims on Paper gold will not be transformed into demand deliveries.

Quote of the Day: To Forestall Armageddon, Central Banks cap the Price of Gold

It is important to the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate policy to suppress the bullion price. If the prices of gold and silver continue to rise relative to the US dollar, the Fed cannot keep the prices of bonds high and interest rates low. If the dollar is widely perceived to be declining in value in relation to gold, the price of dollar-denominated assets will also decline, including bonds. If the dollar loses value, the Fed loses control over interest rates, and the US financial bubble pops, with hell to pay.

To forestall armageddon, the Fed and its dependent banks cap the price of gold.

This is from Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal at the lewrockwell.com

Why Washington has been Brewing a Conflict with China

I’ve said a mouthful about the controversial territorial disputes which I think has been no more than a duplicitous squid tactic meant to promote some hidden political agenda.

Former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former Wall Street editor Paul Craig Roberts thinks all these have been surreptitiously designed for the benefit of the US military industrial complex.

Writes Mr. Craig Roberts at the lewrockwell.com

Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States’ national interests.

Washington has not made it clear what Washington’s stake is in the disputes. The reason Washington cannot identify why China’s disputes with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined “threat” has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines and South Korea.

What this is all about is provoking a long-term cold war conflict with China that will keep profits and power flowing into Washington’s military-security complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of the profits reflow into campaign contributions to “the people’s representatives” in DC and to presidential candidates who openly sell out their country to private interests.

Washington is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea. Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases. Washington is acquiring bases in Australia for US Marines to protect Australia from China, despite the lack of Chinese threats against Australia. Bush and Obama are the leading models of the “people’s president” who sell out the people, at home and abroad, to private interests.

Why is Washington ramping up a new cold war?

The answer begins with President Eisenhower’s warning to the American people in his last public address about the military/industrial complex in 1961. I won’t quote the warning as it is available online. Eisenhower pointed out to Americans that unlike previous wars after which the US demilitarized, after World War II the cold war with the Soviet Union kept the power and profits flowing into the military/industrial complex, now known as the military/security complex. President Eisenhower said that the flow of power and profit into the military/industrial complex was a threat to the economic wellbeing and liberty of the American people.

Read the rest here

Promoting free trade with everyone will bring this contentious and politically concocted issue to oblivion.

The US as Human Rights Violator

US President Obama recently dissed on China’s human rights record.

However, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts exposes on this charade,

Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.

One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.

Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.

In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.

He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.

Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.

For US politicians, moral standards seem to fall into “might makes right”—where there is one set of morality for political opponents and another set for the self-instituted policeman of the world.

The numerous atrocities committed by the US, as part of their imperial foreign policy, serves as further evidence that in Asia (particularly on the US military's proposed expansion due to the Spratly’s issue) the China threat has mostly been a contrived issue which exemplifies H.L. Mencken’s series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Such is borne out of the continuing promotion of war policies meant to uphold the interests of the political class and their welfare-warfare clients/cronies.

Of course, infractions on human rights issues does not extend only to foreigners but to the Americans themselves, in their homeland.

Again Mr. Roberts,

Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.

More signs that the US appears to be moving away from the embodiment of the “Land of the Free”.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Judge, Jury and Executioner

Paul Craig Roberts on the assassination of Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama’s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama’s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America’s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution’s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates’ acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Read the rest here

Any foreigners, for whatever reason which mostly will signify as political opposition, can be labeled a ‘terrorist’, and thus, subject to unilateral summary execution.

How Socialism Failed: The Soviet Union Experience

Paul Craig Roberts gives a good account of this. [source:American Conservative] (bold emphasis mine)

The Soviet economy failed because it used more valuable inputs to produce less valuable outputs. The outputs would be measured as statistical product, but the values of the outputs were less than the values of the inputs. In other words, instead of producing value, the Soviet system was destroying value.

This was the result of ideological aversion to using prices and profits to allocate resources and investments. Instead of profit serving as a manager’s success indicator, managers were judged according to whether they fulfilled a plan measured in gross physical output, such as weight, number, square meters.

For example, the success indicator for the construction industry was the number of projects under construction. Consequently, Moscow was littered with unfinished projects because all activity was concentrated in starting new ones. The plan produced a housing shortage because the incentive was to start new constructions not to complete ones already underway.

If a shoe factory’s gross output indicator was a specified number of pairs of shoes, there would be plenty of baby shoes, but none for large feet, because the same amount of material could be used to produce one large pair or several small pairs.

If nails were specified in number, there would be small nails but no large ones. If specified in terms of weight, there would be assortments weighted heavily with large sizes. A famous Soviet cartoon shows the manager of a nail factory being awarded Hero of the Soviet Union for over-fulfilling his quota. In the factory yard are two giant cranes holding one giant nail.

If light fixtures were specified in number, they would be small. If in weight, they would be heavy. Nikita Khrushchev complained of chandeliers so heavy that “they pull the ceilings down on our heads.”

An abundance of natural resources with low extraction costs and the minimal allocation of resources to consumer needs permitted the Soviet economy to continue despite its enormous waste of resources in terms of consumer satisfaction and economic efficiency. But it couldn’t go on forever.

I am reminded of the great Ludwig von Mises who presciently augured for the demise of the Soviet Union’s socialism/communism:

A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

Prof von Mises actually predicated his forecast based on the lack of property rights which resulted to the economic calculation problem that has been visibly demonstrated by the above narrative from Mr. Roberts.