Word came down from Temple Obama that Treasury Secretary, Timothy ‘Turbo-Tax’ Geithner, will sit on a report concerning China’s manipulation of it’s currency. The report was due to be released on ‘Tax Appreciation Day’ (Hah!), otherwise known as April 15th. Congress had requested a study just as it is getting ready to deal with financial reforms. There is even a glimmer of bipartisan interest, as China’s actions have a negative effect on both business and labor here in the U.S.. Well, some businesses. If you’re a hedge fund jihadist, then you love a nicely rigged game to bet on.
This news comes after a news story that President Obama spoke for over an hour with Chinese President Hu Jinato on Thursday. The conversation even delayed Air Force One from taking off for some ten minutes. Some have been some chit-chat they had. The White House official statement is that China will assist in bilateral talks over nuclear weapon issues with Iran and North Korea. I think we’ve heard that tune before a few times. Geithner says the delay is to allow him time to discuss matters with central bankers and G20 financial ministers.
Here’s my non-journalistic, op-ed-only take on the subject. The Chinese threatened us, once again, and Obama backed down, once again. It’s understandable. Here we are, in a race to the bottom with the Chinese as to who can depreciate their currency faster. Our last game of chicken with the Soviets worked out, or so it seemed. That time the game was who could spend more money to build more and better weapon systems.
The advantage of having cheap currency is that it makes your export goods more attractive in the global market. In a truly honest economic system, say where all currencies are pegged to gold, then trade imbalances would eventually drive one currency down and the other up, until a point is reached where the goods sold by the nation leading in trade would cost too much. Manufacturing jobs would then migrate to the losing nation, as capital would buy more. It’s the natural ebb and flow of Capitalism. But, neither the Chinese or our currencies are pegged to anything intrinsic in value. So the game is rigged by both players cheating their citizens out of their labor and lives.
This sort of game can only end badly for both. Rumors abound of a housing and asset bubble brewing in China, ready to burst. While the two governments squabble over this, the real danger is what happens when outsiders get in on the act. We saw a few weeks ago how currency speculator, Vince Stazione issued a press release about the UK going bust with hedge fund jihadist, Jim Rogers’ name attached to it. On February 25th, the day of the press release, the UK pound took a big hit. Rogers denied the comment, but still attended as a speaker to one of Stazione’s get-rich-quick seminars, after Vince issued a retraction. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/02/26/159811/shock-jim-rogers-didnt-say-sterling-shall-collapse/
Oddly enough, Rogers did bash the pound earlier on January 21st http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/jim-rogers-sell-any-sterling-you-might-have-its-finished-1452384.html, and then again on March 19th. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-19/jim-rogers-shunning-pretty-bad-sterling-on-trade-deficit.html Rogers, an old pal of financial jihadist and Obama-supporter, George Soros, is well-positioned to attack currencies. His latest digs are against gold, the U.S. dollar and the nation of Greece. Rogers even thinks Greece going bankrupt would be good for the Euro, though only for the short run. http://www.commodityonline.com/news/World-needs-new-currency-not-dollar-Jim-Rogers-26652-3-1.html
Timothy Geithner may as well just hide his report on China’s currency manipulation in the same ‘lock-box’ that has the notes of Obama’s back-room deal with Big Pharma and Al Gore’s patent for the Internet. $5 will get you $10 that when a report is released, it will be ’scrubbed’ as squeaky clean as possible. If you want any sort of truth, you may have to wait for Nick Cage to make, “National Treasure IV: Barry Soetoro’s Passport”.
April 3rd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Your article has the making for a A movie and plot is a conspiracy secret with in a conspiracy. Is there another reason Geithner wants to Delay the Currency Report, Urges Flexible Yuan? Geithner will delay for 3 months which likely means years rather than have China counter claim that the U.S. is manipulating Silver and Gold prices? Is the information below true, is any of it true?
Silver Short Squeeze Could Be Imminent
On December 11th, 2009 NIA declared silver the best investment for the next decade. In our December 11th article, we said that it wasn’t a coincidence that the very day Bear Stearns failed was the same day silver reached its multi-decade high of over $21 per ounce. We went on to say, “The reason why we believe the Federal Reserve was so eager to orchestrate a bailout of Bear Stearns, is because Bear Stearns was on the verge of being forced to cover their silver short position.”
JP Morgan took over the concentrated short position in silver from Bear Stearns and gained complete control over the paper price of silver. Within weeks, JP Morgan was able to manipulate the price of silver down to below $9 per ounce. NIA believes they were able to drive the price of silver down through “naked short selling”, selling paper silver that is unbacked by physical silver.
On February 5th, we witnessed another sharp decline in silver prices, which NIA described on February 7th as being “just a temporary wash out, before a huge surge in silver prices later in 2010″. Since then, silver prices have rebounded by 18%. The temporary wash out that occurred on February 5th was predicted by independent metals trader Andrew Maguire, who came out this week exposing the fraud that is taking place in the paper silver market.
On February 3rd, Andrew Maguire wrote Eliud Ramirez, a senior investigator for the CFTC’s Enforcement Division, giving him the “heads up” for a “manipulative event” signaled for February 5th. He warned the CFTC that JP Morgan was about to manipulate down the price of silver after the release of non-farm payroll data on February 5th. Andrew said that the takedown would happen regardless of if employment was better or worse than expected and the price of silver would be flushed to below $15 per ounce. During the next couple of days, silver was crushed from $16.17 per ounce down to a low of $14.62 per ounce.
Despite all of the evidence given by Andrew Maguire to the CFTC of gold and silver manipulation, Andrew wasn’t allowed to speak at last week’s CFTC hearing on limiting gold and silver positions held by banks like JP Morgan. Bill Murphy of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) was allowed to speak (within a five-minute time constraint) and present some of Andrew Maguire’s evidence, but right when his presentation began there was a technical failure of the live television broadcast, which was mysteriously fixed as soon as he was done speaking. Bill Murphy was scheduled for several mainstream media television interviews after the CFTC hearings, but they were all abruptly cancelled at once.
A couple of days after the CFTC meeting, Andrew Maguire and his wife were involved in a bizarre hit-and-run car accident in London where a second car coming out of a side street struck their vehicle, which resulted in a police chase using helicopters and patrol cars before the suspect was nabbed. Andrew and his wife were released from the hospital with minor injuries. (NIA does not believe in conspiracy theories but when you consider that this is a potential multi-trillion dollar fraud that could bring down the world’s financial system, it really makes you think.)
The silver market provides a window into what is happening in the gold market. Because the silver market is very small and its short position is so concentrated, its price is easier to manipulate than gold, but the same manipulation is taking place in gold on a much larger but less noticeable scale. In our opinion, the CFTC is under pressure not to do anything about the manipulation because the lower gold and silver prices are, the stronger the U.S. dollar appears to be. If we saw an explosion to the upside in gold and silver prices, it would result in a complete loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar.
NIA believes the precious metals markets are currently being artificially suppressed by paper gold and silver that doesn’t physically exist. At last week’s CFTC hearings, Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group admitted that banks have leveraged their physical bullion by 100 to 1. This means for every 100 ounces of paper gold/silver that trade, there could be as little as 1 ounce of physical gold/silver in the vaults backing it. However, Mr. Christian sees no problem with this because he says “it has been persistently that way for decades” and there are “any number of mechanisms allowing for cash settlements”.
What Mr. Christian fails to realize is, most investors around the world holding paper gold/silver believe they own physical gold/silver. There will come a time when these investors don’t want cash settlements in U.S. dollars, but they will want the physical precious metals themselves. When investors around the globe eventually call for physical delivery of their precious metals, NIA believes it will result in the biggest short squeeze in the history of all commodities.
The physical silver market is now more tight than ever before. In the first quarter of 2010, the U.S. mint sold 9,023,500 American Silver Eagles, the most since the coin debuted in 1986 and up from 8,299,000 sold in the fourth quarter of 2009. All U.S. silver mines combined are currently producing only 40 million ounces of silver annually. This means the U.S. needs to use almost all of its silver production just to keep up with the demand for American Silver Eagle coins.
Silver closed this week at a 10-week high of $17.89 per ounce and a major short squeeze to the upside could be imminent. With the spotlight now on JP Morgan, NIA believes they will be less likely to naked short silver at these levels and manipulate the price down like in February. With the mainstream media blackout, it is important for NIA members to work harder than ever to spread the word and help expose what could be the largest fraud in the history of the world.
April 3rd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Transparency huh ?
April 3rd, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Most liberals can’t stand Geithner. Here’s a recent blog post from Robert Reich to that effect.
April 4th, 2010 at 6:32 am
@ Ron Nussbeck
Well said, Ron! I wrote about Andrew Maguire’s testimony to the CFTC a few days ago, though not in as great as detail as you just did. One of my common themes in my articles here is how our markets are rigged. Commodities, currency, bonds, all of them are being manipulated.
The other day I brought up how Gordon Brown, as chancellor, sold half of UK’s sovereign gold at discounted prices to suppress gold prices. More recently, we saw at the Davos meeting where George Soros trashed gold, causing it to fall. Then, he bought a bunch!
This bunch of financial jihadists are playing a dangerous game. They move like locusts from one target to another, looting and squeezing all they can along the way. Goldman Sach’s assault on Greece, Lehman’s assault on Iceland, it’s all one big casino to them. The incident I described in the article shows how just one person can damage an economic.
From what I have seen thus far of the Dodd reform bill, it comes nowhere near offering safeguards to prevent another financial crisis. Our leaders have no real understanding of the mechanics, and, sad to say, are probably in the pockets of the Looters.
A good and smart friend of mine and I were discussing the situation 2 or 3 years ago. He said that in his opinion, our last, best chance of turning the game around was in 1992 with Ross Perot. At the time I disagreed, but today I would he may have been right. We need somebody like an Andy Jackson who has the temperament to kick the table over regardless of the short-term costs.
April 4th, 2010 at 6:35 am
@ ‘Me’
Hey, for once we agree on something! Geithner has not done one right thing in the last 10 years of his career. Probably never. He’s a stooge for the Financial Junta.
April 4th, 2010 at 8:04 am
As said in the beginning of the article “a game”. This looting game is destroying the planet. Do these beings sleep at night? None of them have a conscious. Grab all you can for yourself and destroy who ever gets in your way. Evil! Evil! Sometimes the only thing keeping me going is my faith in God. As Bea Arthur would say “I hope God gets you for that”.
April 4th, 2010 at 10:23 am
If you help me with Iran, I wont b*tch if you hide your numbers.
They’ll fall for it
April 4th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
@ Sue Marie
Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankenstein says, “We’re doing God’s work.” A lot of the fat cats are building their survival bunkers already. Montana seems to be the most popular location. I read that Bill Gates and a bunch of Hollywood types have set up a community out there.
Back in the early 1990s, when I was planning my own exodus, I picked out a nice spot near Bad Axe, Michigan. It’s corn & bean country, plus oodles of fresh water. Nice people, too. Just north of Bad Axe is an Amish community, too. Just the sort you want around when the electricity stops.
April 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
@ micky
You hit the nail on the head. Obama and his gang are such naive idiots that they’ll buy anything they think will get them a good headline. They have such a marvelous record when it comes to diplomacy. DVDs in the wrong format, Ipods loaded with his own speeches, sneaking the Dahli Lama out the back door by the trash dump, dissing the PM of Israel so Obama can have dinner.
Can you imagine Ross Perot dealing with the ChiComs? “Now listen here, and listen good. Quit dumpin’ your junk here, or you’ll hear a giant sucking of me flushing your crud down the toilet.”
April 4th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Correction: “giant sucking sound”