“Trader Rick Ackerman interprets the cheer-leading in the headlines:
“Could the newspapers simply be misinterpreting the signs? It would certainly seem that way. To take the headlines cited above, we see oil’s price surge as having absolutely nothing to do with a pick-up in demand. Rather, the push toward $90 a barrel represents speculative excesses in the futures markets, exacerbated by the reluctance of traders to take short positions.
How could they, when, on any given day, a terrorist with a missile launcher could cause the global price of crude to double instantly by scuttling a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz?
As for “bets on growth” pushing stocks higher, it is not bullish speculation that has been driving up shares for the last 13 months, but rather a vast excess of liquidity in the financial system.
As for the rise in T-Note yields to four percent, we seriously doubt this is being caused by competition from expansion-minded borrowers in the private sector; rather, it comes from the rising fear among lenders that they will be repaid in a currency whose value looks all but certain to fall precipitously in the years ahead.
If the central bankers truly believe that strong economic growth is about to trigger inflation, why do they continue to hold the federal funds rate near zero?“
This is a brief excerpt from a live interview with legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright (June 18, 1957), when he was ninety. The audio isn’t very clear, so I’ve provided a transcript. The words are pungent and speak succinctly to the task of weaning people from dependence on the state:
“Education has been unrealistic.
Education has not seen the nature of the thing we needed as a people.
Education has not provided enlightenment. It’s provided conditioning
By way of books, by way of what has been, by way of the past,
By the habituation of the human species to date.
And it hasn’t taken the views of the men who are capable of looking beyond
and seeing what the nature of the thing was.
What is the nature of this thing we’re in.
Now that’s the grace(?) of seeing in, not seeing at.
And all education today is a seeing at.”
Last, week there was another killing suspected to be the work of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. This one was in Budapest, Hungary. The dead man was supposedly involved in money laundering. Hungarian officials have since played down the connection, but it was widely reported there, as well as in Israel and Russia.
“On Wednesday March 17, just after seven in the morning, Dr Bassam Trache, a 52-year-old veterinary surgeon with dual Syrian and Hungarian citizenship, was shot dead in his black Mercedes at a junction in Budapest’s 16th district. The killer grabbed a black briefcase from the car and made off on foot.
Dr Trache, it was revealed, operated a money-changing business. A few years ago he was acquitted in court of attempting to bribe – with jewellery and Arab cakes – the head of the Budapest police’s money-changing investigation division.
At first, his murder was regarded as yet another killing connected with the shady world of money-changing; in the past ten years, there have been no fewer than 123 murders connected with the business in Budapest.
But then a more fantastic theory to explain Dr Trache’s murder emerged.
It transpired that on the very day that Trache was killed, two Israeli Gulfstream V-type jets were spotted flying low over the Hungarian capital, leading to speculation that, just two months after the assassination in Dubai of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Syrian might have been the victim of a Mossad hit…..”
That’s from The First Post ( UK), which goes on to list some of the puzzling inconsistencies in the government’s statements that have been fueling the rumor.
“Last week, however, it was announced that a leading official of the NKH had been sacked, with a further four members of staff disciplined, over their failure to consult Hungary’s secret services before issuing a permit for the Israeli aircraft to enter Hungarian airspace.
And while Szollar claimed that Israel’s flying manoeuvres were merely “routine”, Hungary’s transport minister, Peter Honig, conceded that they were not fully in line with Hungarian laws. Then the Hungary’s HirTV claimed that the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, though denying the term “spy planes”, had referred to the planes as reconnaissance jets.”
The New York Post has reported that the Israeli ambassador told the Hungarian news agency MTI that the jets were on a diplomatic mission and were not spying. The NY Post said the Hungarian government had declined to comment on this response.
In a Reuters report, Hungarian spokesman Domokos Szollar stated that the jets were in “routine training” and Israel had cleared the overflights with Hungary two months in advance. Szollar explained the earlier confusion by officials as a case of bad internal communications. Apparently, the Hungarian defense department hadn’t been notified, and so, on first hearing of the flights, PM Gordon Bajnai had ordered an investigation.
The head of Budapest’s criminal investigations team, Zsolt Bodnar, reportedly dismissed allegations about a Mossad link as “fiction.”
I’m going ahead, nonetheless, and posting this video, because it happens to follow two far more substantial stories I’m also watching: the story about documented Mossad links to the murder of a Hamas operative in Dubai, as well as the possible Mossad ties of David Headley, the CIA operative who admitted to being guilty of the Mumbai terror attack of November 2008, at the time blamed on Islamicists. All three events together form a news story that’s quite riveting, especially since it accompanies the continual drum-beat for war with Iran. This story also suggests that any arrests for domestic terrorism need to be looked at with a great deal of skepticism, at this point.
At this point, I should repeat, the forgery of the passports in the killing of the Hamas official is documented; any ties to Headley are very plausible but so far unproven (and have not been reported in the mainstream press, for that’s worth); and the Hungarian story seems to be still in the “allegations” stage.
Mark Thatcher, son of the former UK PM, seems to have been dogged with accusations of financial impropriety. I bring him up, because of a comment on this blog about his direct involvement in an international conspiracy to cover up the manipulation of precious metals that was apparently outed in 2002 in the UK, but was covered up. In researching the comment, I began with some background on Mark Thatcher.
“But hit controversy in 1984 when the Observer alleged that he benefited from his mother’s position when a large construction deal in Oman was awarded to a building firm, Cementation, with which he was involved, after Mrs Thatcher visited the tiny Gulf state. The accusations were never proven.
Further controversy dogged him through his friendship with the Middle East businessman Wafic Said – a quiet-spoken Syrian with close links with Saudi royalty.
Among other business ventures in the 1980s, he was involved in several large-scale arms deals, most notably a £20bn contract between British Aerospace and Saudi Arabia.
Although rumours of impropriety have dogged his business career, he largely disappeared off Fleet Street’s radar after moving to the US.
But it is recorded that his wealth grew to the point where he spent periods as a tax exile in Switzerland.
In the 1990s he helped secure the multimillion pound contract for his mother’s Downing Street memoirs, but after the failure of a security alarm business in the US and a prosecution for tax evasion, Mark, his wife and their two children moved again – this time to South Africa.
Three years after the move to Cape Town, in 1998, he was investigated by South African police over a money-lending business to police officers. He counter-claimed that officers working for him as agents had defrauded him and the investigation was eventually dropped.
He returned to the UK last July for the funeral of his father, Sir Denis, a former oil businessman, who died aged 88. He inherited his father’s hereditary baronetcy to become Sir Mark.
Sir Mark, who was known as “Thickie Mork” among other nicknames at Harrow and who has been criticised for his lack of charm, was once described by the Financial Times as “a sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous Mum”.
A devoted Lady Thatcher, however, has always had faith in him. “Mark could sell snow to the Eskimos, and sand to the Arabs,” she is reported to have said.
His notoriety was not welcomed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher’s former press secretary.
Asked by Sir Mark how he could best help his mother win the 1987 general election, Ingham reportedly replied: “Leave the country.”
“It’s something like out of a James Bond movie. What are the odds that my testimony gets blotted out from live coverage and then our whistleblower and wife get hit by a car the next day? … The gold scandal story is larger than life to begin with. Now throw this spooky stuff on top of it. Veteran Cafe (Le Metropole Cafe, Murphy’s website) members will recall that in the early part of this century what happened to me during a six week period …
My car was stolen and then found on a nearby highway one day after the insurance company paid me off. There was no damage to the car, money left in the console, and a cashmere sweater in the back seat.
My web site was hacked and somebody sent out a very goofy email supposedly from me, but it was not me.
Coming out of a restaurant/night spot less than two blocks from where I live, somebody jumped out from behind a wall and sucker-punched me with brass knuckles. I was out cold and thought my jaw was broken.
Nothing like this has happened before or since.
Daily Bell: Do you think, this time, that the CFTC must take all this seriously.
Bill Murphy: Outside of Bart, it appears none of them want to go there. GATA is like their worst nightmare because they are like everyone else … kowtowing to the rich and powerful. However, a firestorm is growing about what GATA has to say, partially ignited by the Andrew Maguire revelations. I suspect we are finally going to receive some mainstream press in the months ahead, which will be like shining a light on Dracula.
Daily Bell: Why hasn’t it already?
Bill Murphy: The relationship between a government agency like the SEC and the CFTC is insidious. Nobody wants to rock the boat. Heck a number of these people at these agencies end up working on Wall Street, or interact business-wise in some other manner. The Chairman of the CFTC is a Goldman Sachs alumni. That about says it all.”
Mark Mitchell comments on the CFTC hearings and the manipulation of trading of gold and silver derivatives (read IOUs):
“Maguire added: “What’s going to happen, if you’re an Asian trader, or a non-Western trader, who has no loyalty, or doesn’t care about homeland security or anything else, who says, now wait a minute, if I can establish in my mind that there is 100 ounces of paper gold, paper silver for example, for each ounce of real silver, than I have a naked short situation here that I can squeeze and they can go on the spot market which is basically a foreign exchange transaction, short dollar, long silver to any amount they want – billions, trillions — whatever they want, and they can take this market, squeeze this market, and blow it up…”
In other words, the problem isn’t just that criminal naked short sellers manipulate the metals market downwards. It is that they have created a condition where a foreign entity can merely demand delivery of real metal to induce a massive “squeeze” that sends the price of metals skyrocketing, putting huge downward pressure on the dollar. Meanwhile, says Maguire, with prices rising, “for 100 customers who show up there is only one guy who is going to get his gold or silver and there’s 99 who will be disappointed, so without any new money coming into the market, just asking for that gold and silver will create a default.”
This would be a point, except…except..
1. This kind of fraudulent activity in the markets in the West is going to be seen by most foreigners as a direct act of financial aggression against them, not just domestic market participants. You can’t admit that your entire market system is rigged in favor of US and European banks, and then expect that the rest of the world is just going to stand there and not retaliate in some way…with justification.
Turnabout is fair play. Defense is not offense.
2. I doubt that Chinese, Saudis or any other foreigners are interested in squeezing the dollar, since they are the primary holders of dollars. In international markets, the dollar is still the reserve currency and most people save in it. Nor is the American middle class, loyal or disloyal, going to want a weaker dollar. They earn their money in dollars. The only people likely to attack the dollar are speculators, who will do it because they see a gain to be made from it. And the people most likely to do it successfully are the same people who are involved in manipulating it in the first place...the corrupt bankers and financiers who’ve got the most to gain in this and the least to lose.
Nothing that Paulson, Greenspan, Geithner, Summers, or Bernanke have been doing adds up to anything like a “strong dollar” policy. They’ve done everything but shout “bail” to dollar holders.
A January 29, 2002 piece in the Los Angeles Times suggests that 25% of the defense budget is “missing in action.” Have you ever wondered about the financing of blackops (here and abroad), bribery of public officials (here and abroad), and arms sales without Congressional approval?
“On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, “the adversary’s closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said.
He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.
“In fact, it could be said it’s a matter of life and death,” he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11– the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.
Just last week President Bush announced, “my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending.”
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
“According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions,” Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion — that’s $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
“We know it’s gone. But we don’t know what they spent it on,” said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency’s balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.
“The director looked at me and said ‘Why do you care about this stuff?’ It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job,” said Minnery.
He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.
“They have to cover it up,” he said. “That’s where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can’t do the job.”
The Pentagon’s Inspector General “partially substantiated” several of Minnery’s allegations but could not prove officials tried “to manipulate the financial statements.”
Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the “accounting games.” He’s still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse.
“Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year,” he said.
Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy’s 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.
In his opinion, “With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers.”
Is it permitted to wonder if there wasn’t also deliberate siphoning off of funds for illegitimate purposes…
Tyler Cowen has listed from “his gut” the 10 books that have influenced him the most. Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is not on the list. None of Mises’s books are on the list. Keynes makes the list. Of Keynes, he writes:
John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes is one of the greatest thinkers of economics and there are new ideas on virtually every page.
Which raises the question for me, “Why does Cowen even care what Austrian economists call themselves?” If he can’t put a Mises book on a list of ten books that influenced him,when Human Action is the greatest economic text ever written, yet finds room for Keynes and “his new ideas,” I have to classify him a Keynesian, pure and simple.”
Why does Cowen care? It’s all about subversion of language…
“Libertarianism” thus defined (or, more accurately, labeled) comes to mean something not very removed from “liberalism”….
…which today has moved so much to the left that in many areas it’s indistinguishable from communism.
Which means you get to call yourself a libertarian but still push for the same programs and policies that the left-liberals push for.
Which keeps you within the range of “respectability.”
And keeps you out of SPLC lists that have you rubbing shoulders with the Pentagon shooter and anyone else who decides to get physical with the state apparatus.
Mind you, at our little blog, we have no quarrel with communism or communists. We don’t think they’re evil. We just don’t want them turning us into guinea pigs for their experiments. When they feel an urge to test the limits of human malleability, we suggest that they try it out first on their spouses and off-spring. See how that turns out after a generation, and then give us a call and we’ll talk….
“Eric King told GATA today, “We are on one of the top grid server systems in the world, where traffic is not an issue, and this has never happened before. This was a case of an entity needing to silence the messenger.”
No Internet site has given as much voice to GATA and other pro-gold and free-market advocates as King World News has, so given the scope of the attack on the the King World News Internet site, it is hard not be awfully suspicious about it.
King’s interview with Murphy, Douglas, and your secretary/treasurer can be found here:
Meanwhile, GATA’s friend Trace Mayer, proprietor of RunToGold.com, reports that his March 28 commentary on last week’s hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission —
— was followed by a similarly massive attack on RunToGold’s Internet server. “To handle spikes in traffic,” Mayer says, “I am on an expensive enterprise-level cloud server with a company that handles hosting for some of the big dogs, like Sony and Toyota, and my server got hammered. The site was down for 2 1/2 hours, from about noon to 2:30p PT on March 30. There were no issues with my hosting provider and it appears we have everything under control now. I have never had an issue like this before. Anyway, it looks like we have someone’s attention. Keep yanking on that tail.”
My Comment:
You see. This isn’t paranoia. In the past, following certain sorts of posts, I’ve experienced peculiar things too. Sometimes, the blog feels like it’s been hacked. Or my email suddenly doesn’t work. Or I get nasty comments from what sounds like the same person, only writing from different IP’s. Or I get flooded with spam from porn sites (more than the usual quota, I mean).
You tend to dismiss these things as coincidental. But after a couple of years of noticing when they happen, you start realizing that someone doesn’t like what you’re saying.
And if that’s true of my little blog, it’s going to be doubly so for bigger venues.