Just been alerted by a reader that the document below might be a fake. I will take a look. Zerohedge is widely quoted and Matt Taibbi cites them as the blog to which he owes his Goldman bashing. I’ve had my doubts about that attribution, and I expressed them. I tried to go back and look at when Zerohedge began posting but it’s not clear when their archives begin.

My fault for not checking this myself.

Of course, it matters little to proving any gold conspiracy theory, since there are so many other statements that can do that. But it’s an interesting document and I’d like to find out if indeed it’s authentic. I will follow up on this in a fresh post.

Zerohedge has a copy of a declassified telegram to the Secretary of State in 1968 that seems to reveal market manipulation by something called the “reshuffle club” (today’s plunge protection team?)

Zerohedge: “A recently declassified telegram to the Secretary of State sent in 1968, has some very distrubring [sic] revelations to gold “conspiracy theorists” who believe there could be an international arrangement to maintain a control over gold prices in the international arena. This is especially true as the G-20 meets currently in Pittsburgh behind closed doors. Could gold be one of the issues discussed?

We particularly bring readers’ attention to paragraph 13 in the telegram below, which present some troubling revelations (emphasis ours):

QUOTE: “If we want to have a chance to remain the masters of gold an international agreement on the rules of the game as outlined above seems to be a matter of urgency. We would fool ourselves in thinking that we have time enough to wait and see how the S.D.R.’s will develop. In fact, the challenge really seems to be to achieve by international agreement within a very short period of time what otherwise could only have been the outcome of a gradual development of many years.”

Part One of a 12 part series on the Argentina economic collapse of 2001.

From Reuters:

“Capital flight climbed during the second quarter, with net outflows of $4.279 billion from the non-financial private sector.
 
INDEC also reported that the August trade surplus narrowed by 48 percent from the same month a year ago to $1.16 billion, below market expectations [nN18267672].

 Six analysts polled by Reuters gave a median forecast for a surplus of $1.53 billion with estimates ranging from $1.2 billion to $1.90 billion.

Imports fell by 37 percent during the month of August to $3.25 billion, while exports dropped by an even bigger 40 percent to $4.40 billion due to lower prices and reduced volumes — particularly by the drought-hit farming industry.”

My Comment:

Mind you, even these figures are considered “upwardly mobile” (that is, massaged upward) by private analysts. The government has been habitually manipulating economic data (over at least the last two years), exaggerating growth and understating inflation, in order to pay lower interest rates on bonds. Previous figures for the current account surplus (from Q2 2008) have been revised three times, which gives you an idea about the unreliability of official statistics.

Meanwhile, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal real estate transactions in Buenos Aires in July were down almost 40% from a year ago, and down nearly 2% from June, 2009. Those are government figures too, so it’s likely that sales have slowed even more.

Adding to the hit in global trade (especially the decline in commodity prices) was a lengthy drought, the worst in 50 years, that devastated the farming sector, spilling over also into parts of Uruguay and Paraguay.

Here’s a NY Times piece from earlier in the year (February) on some of the fall-out:

“A separate problem is that the country’s supply of dollars is falling as demands increase and capital flight continues, said Daniel Kerner, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a risk consulting firm. That could add pressure on the government to tap Central Bank reserves or to severely devalue its exchange rate. Last year, Argentines pulled out about $25 billion from the country, Mr. Kerner said.

Though most economists say they believe the government can squeak by and avoid another crippling default on its debts, sidestepping a major devaluation of the currency, the peso, will be a more delicate dance.

For now, the Kirchner government appears committed to gradually devaluing the peso to avoid stoking a widespread panic.

With the cash that the government seized from private pension funds and other instruments, it can shave down a $10 billion financing gap this year to a more manageable $2 billion, said Esteban Medrano, an economic adviser at LatinSource, a consulting firm. .”

Apparently, one farmer lost 106 cattles in three hours, the investment and work of five years.

Not what I would call a confidence-builder..

” Wow. In China, the “moral outrage” police aren’t in charge, at least not as they are in most of America. This article is about how a woman was NOT reprimanded, let alone arrested, for her toplessness on a beach because there were no laws banning it…”

A blog post from Lew Rockwell, about a Belgian-Chinese teacher who went topless, but wasn’t hassled by the police because there was no law against toplessness.

(I’ll get the links up a little later – in a rush)

If the blog post confined itself to admiring the fact that officials didn’t trot her off because there was no law against toplessness, I’d be in agreement. It does say something positive about China that the officials wanted to stick with the law. But it doesn’t say nearly as much as the article’s author seems to think. I’m more inclined to think it tells us how foreigners (half or full) can get away with things locals can’t.

But if we’re meant to admire the story as a kind of libertarian fable, I’m a bit baffled. I doubt if local Chinese people liked the display – despite the gawkers and photographers – and thumbing your nose at every kind of social convention doesn’t strike me as the actions of a free spirit so much as the rudeness of the very selfish. If I turned up at Christmas mass in the US in a loin cloth (as many swamis in India might attend a religious ceremony), is that to be applauded or does it show my utter lack of respect for how other people might feel?

The latter, in my opinion. I might not want a law against rudeness, but as a libertarian, I would support censure and disapprobation for it.

[Substitute a man pulling down his shorts on a beach, and see if you think that should fly too].

Unfortunately this inability to discriminate between contexts seems to be pervasive in political discourse today. If people would consider context, you’d see this has nothing to do with the moral police. It has everything to do with courtesy, respect for others, and cultural sensitivity.

Don’t insist on wearing your entire native paraphernalia complete with feathers and train on a public bus in France; don’t wear daisy dukes to a corporate office in Manhattan, and don’t take your top off where it’s not done. It’s uncouth.

We needn’t have laws against it. But we should have public opinion against it.

Public opinion that applauds uncouthness and uncivility doesn’t encourage libertarianism. It encourages license. Which in turn invites an expansion of the state.

Jim Rogers (LOL) via Lew Rockwell:

*Conduct your own research and trust your own judgment.
*Focus on what you yourself love.
*Be persistent.
*Broaden your horizons and see as much of the world as you can.
*The most important thing you can learn is how to think and question everything you hear.
*Study and learn from history.
*Master more than one language – and make sure one of them is Mandarin.
*Don’t panic.
*Take care of yourself and don’t neglect the sunscreen.
*Remember that boys need girls more than girls need boys.”

— Jim Rogers’ A Gift to My Children

My Comment

Good advice all of it, and on the money, except for that last bit. Mr. Rogers makes a chivalrous..and politically correct… genuflection, but the truth is, women need men as much as men need women, only in different ways.

But, of course, a certain sort of feminist is only too happy to have political correctness coincide with chivalry when it suits her.

The world economic forum’s Global Competitiveness rankings for 2009-2010 are out.

Notable:

1. The US lost its top spot to the Swiss.

2. China, India, and Brazil all improved their rankings, coming in at 29, 49, and 56.

3. Russia fell back to 63.

4. In Latin America, Chile was the most business-friendly, at 30 and Paraguay the least, at 124. Uruguay weighed in at 65 and Argentina at 85.

This isn’t a measure of the country’s laws or political stability. The press release from the WEF has this:

“The GCI is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness, providing a comprehensive picture of the competitiveness landscape in countries around the world at all stages of development. The pillars include Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication, and Innovation.”