By Chris Powell | GATA

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Republished with permission of Charles Hugh Smith | oftwominds

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We hold this to be self-evident: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy.

Today I present an important guest essay by long-time contributor Zeus Yiamouyiannis, who suggests that when debt is essentially fraudulent, then debt forgiveness is both the logical and the only remedy. In case you missed his previous analyses on oftwominds.com, I list some of Zeus’s previous essays at the end of the entry.

Endgame: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy
by Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D., copyright 2011.

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Introduction

Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.

On a grand scale the only way to erase counterfeit money and (counterfeit) assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with those fake assets. (Let me underscore again, these are not “toxic” assets, they are fake assets.)… Forgiveness in general, and forgiveness of debt in particular, stand as virtues if they free us up to acknowledge, address, and learn from our culpability, start anew, and create forward.” (The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure - January 29, 2011)

Debt forgiveness, therefore, accomplishes two important things. It eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise to pay off unproductive obligations, and it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, invention, and entrepreneurialism. This is why the ability to declare bankruptcy is so essential in the pursuit of both happiness and innovation.

Currently we are mired in a “new normal” and calls for “austerity” which are nothing more than the delusional efforts of a status quo to avoid the consequences of its own error and fraud and to profit evermore. So bedazzled by the false wealth created by debt multiplication and its concomitant fantasy of ever-higher returns, this status quo continues to be stupidly amazed that people are not spending and that the economy is not picking up. But how could it be otherwise?

Productive wealth has been trapped in a web of parasitic theft, counterfeiting, liability evasion, non-regulation, and prosecutorial non-accountability. All the fundamental attributes of a functioning exchange economy have been warped to reward creative criminals. I spoke extensively about this in my posts from 2008. (Imaginary Worth, Empire of Debt: How Modern Finance Created Its Own Downfall - October 15, 2008)

The unsustainable nature of debt

Two observations: 1) Fabricated/parasitic so-called “wealth” destroys value by diluting the value of productive wealth. 2) Debt/credit that cannot be paid back is never an asset and is always a hot-potato liability (needing to be foisted to a greater fool to garner “profit” and transaction fees):

The models [modern debt are] based upon had no contact with reality. They assumed unlimited growth and ability to pay. When matched against the reality of people paying ten times their salary for mortgages that actually added more money owed to their principal (i.e. with negative amortization), required no money down, and set up “balloon payments,” large step-ups in payments after a few years) there is no possible way they could NOT default in a predictable span of time. (Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works - October 13, 2008)

Systemically, all debt that charges a percentage (“usury”) originates in delusion. Debt grows exponentially indefinitely, growth (income and otherwise) cannot. This leads to a widening condition where the fruits of productive “growth” devoted to interest payments increase until those fruits are entirely consumed. (The Elephant In The Room: Debt Grows Exponentially, While Economies Only Grow In An S-Curve - Washington’s Blog)

Once this happens, stores of wealth (hard assets) begin to be cannibalized to make up for the difference. You see this in Greece with its sale of public assets to private companies, and in middle-class America where people are liquidating retirement accounts to pay for their cost of living.

This problem is compounded by a private Federal Reserve that lends money into circulation at interest, and then allows the multiplication of this consumer debt-money liability through fractional reserve banking. The money in circulation today could pay only a small fraction of the total private and public debt. That fact alone is evidence of a kind of systemic fraud. “If you just work hard enough, save, and make sensible decisions, you can get out of debt” could only physically work for a bare fraction of the population, given the money-to-debt ratio. The rest would have to simply default to clear the boards.

This is why debt forgiveness makes not only moral but rational, mathematical sense. Finances require balancing to be coherent. There must be some way to redress systemic imbalance. One has to be able to “zero the scales” to get an accurate weight of value and to re-establish healthy value creation.

Voices in the debate

Some analysts are beginning to see the forest through the trees in terms of debt forgiveness. Steve Keen, Australian economist and current deflationist, and Michael Hudson, American economic contrarian and prescient essayist, are both using clear-sighted reality-based financial analysis to debunk accounting games that obscure the untenable debt situation and to call for debt forgiveness.

How can selling sovereign assets and imposing austerity on Greek citizens (taking money out of their hands through higher taxes and lower benefits) do anything other than hollow out value and contract the Greek economy in the face of a deep global recession? Michael Hudson: It can’t. Greece’s debt needs to be written off.

It seems unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that large sectors of the New European population can be made subject to salary garnishment throughout their lives, reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage… (T)he only way to resolve it is to negotiate a debt write-off…” (The Coming European Debt Wars: EU Countries sinking into Depression - Michael Hudson, Global Research, April 9, 2010)

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([We’ll Have] a Never-Ending Depression Unless We Repudiate the Debt, Which Never Should Have Been Extended In The First Place - Washington’s Blog)

Why isn’t “quantitative easing” and flooding the U.S. economy with debt-money working to prime borrowing and lending? Steve Keen: Because the money is going into deleveraging in a time of overextension:

“Bernanke is throwing (a) trillion dollars into the system. Rather than that leading to ten trillion dollars of additional credit money, creating the inflation people are expecting, that trillion dollars is all that goes in, and people deleveraging actually reduce their level of spending by more than a trillion dollars by trying to pay their debt down, and it cancels out what the government is trying to do… We need a 21st century jubilee.” (On the Edge with . . . Steve Keen (Max Keiser, video)

Other well-known commentators are not seeing the debt forest at all. In their contentious debates over deflation and inflation, neither Rick Ackerman nor Gonzalo Lira seem to be aware of the overwhelmingly fraudulent nature of present global debt- including the 600 to 1,000 trillion dollars of fabricated notional wealth represented by the derivatives markets, fraudclosure, and a host of other sources.

Rick Ackerman: “’Ultimately, every penny of every debt must be paid — if not by the borrower, then by the lender.’ Inflationists and deflationists implicitly agree on this point… and we differ only on the question of who, borrower or lender, will take the hit.” (Let’s Think This Through Together….)

I posted a pithy response in the comment section:

Both Rick and Gonzalo left out the obvious third way-debt forgiveness. No… debt does not have to be paid by someone; it can be absolved, especially debt created upon fraudulent and/or counterfeit-ridden practice… (D)erivatives are not real wealth, and neither was the ostensible climb in the values of housing resting in large part on those phony-wealth derivatives.
The only “real wealth” here revolves around ability to produce real and needed goods (to allow us to survive), and the ability to create something that increases one’s quality of life (to promote our thriving). Precious little of the present global economy involves either one of these. Yeah, if we use FASB standards and Goldman Sachs accounting, we can pretend our worthless junk is all really simply very rare, “unique condition” collectibles worth trillions of dollars.

I’ve got a better idea. Take our financial junk out of the global attic in boxes, put them out on the front lawn, and see if anyone wants to pay a few bucks for the various items, give away the leftovers to anyone interested passing on the sidewalk, and recycle, donate, or dispose of the rest. It’s a moving sale, and if our economy is going to get moving, maybe we ought to have one.” (Zeus Yiamouyiannis - April 6, 2011 at 4:11 pm)

How it might play out

This subtle debt extortion creates a system of never-ending debt-slavery for a vast majority of the population. When this “manageable” slavery is aggravated by a desire to use hardship to extort ever greater assets from the overburdened at ever cheaper prices (what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism”), by open and unapologetic widespread fraud, and by the unjust offloading of risk and liability to taxpayers who had nothing to do with poor decisions of private banks, then the systemic abuse is revealed in the daily lives of citizens.

Debt creates scarcity, which stimulates fear, which drives manic competition, which favors opportunism, collusion, and concentrations of power, which translates to abuse, which results in a collapse of legitimacy for the economic system. Overreach causes a breaking point, and we are getting close to it. Will the response be warfare, taxpayer revolt, political upheaval, mass default, debt forgiveness, something other, some combination? I have predicted pockets of violence would be mixed with some softer combination of taxpayer revolt, mass default, political upheaval, and debt forgiveness, along with a return to community exchange to meet basic needs. (The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure - January 29, 2011)

This possibility of epic reprisal may very well compel banks to come to the table around debt forgiveness to avoid violent backlash and criminal prosecution, even over preserving their gravy train companies. The bitter irony of these companies and their galloping greed is that they ended up victimizing each other by selling junk to each other and extracting all the real value in salary and bonuses. Their assets rest on notional values, that when unmasked would drive each into immediate insolvency. They have simply been scam artists, producing little value and extracting mountains of money.

What might this look like? Looking at present trends and using the very useful framework of Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief, it might go something like this…

Average debtor:

1. Denial: Liquidate savings to pay for over-priced house and cost of living.
2. Anger and fear: Exhaust resources, experience want, compounded by austerity measures.
3. Bargaining: Attempt to negotiate with bank through HAMP and other mechanisms to lower payments. Banks don ‘t bite and even have incentives to foreclose.
4. Depression: Lose/default on the house and move in with family or cheap rental.
5. Find out life is better without being a debt slave and spend more time with community and the ones you love.

Bankers:

1. Denial: Collect 144 billion in bonuses after financial collapse and laugh as not a single trading day loss arises for zombie TBTF banks completely subsidized by governments.
2. Anger: Express false righteousness, indignation, and hubris over even modest/toothless demands/regulations attempted to be placed on them by governments. Exhibit sadistic zeal at being able to simply claim you own and liquidate properties they have no clear title to.
3. Bargaining: Experience dawning awareness that may have just cooked your own gooses as strategic defaults skyrocket, populist demands to prosecute fraudclosure gain traction, and quantitative easing ad infinitum dwindles and fails to keep stock prices artificially aloft. Improvise panicked attempts to “be reasonable” and actually negotiate, once the asset and money flow well runs dry.
4. Depression: Contemplate and realize possible bankruptcy by big banks. Retreat to the Hamptons to hire criminal defense lawyers, contemplate empty life, and shoulder the abuse of media and contempt of a global citizenry.
5. Acceptance: Trying to regain “good guy” status and avoid criminal prosecution by agreeing to be part of debt forgiveness.

Once defaults happen in increasing numbers and certain asset prices plunge (i.e. real estate), what will initially look like a bonanza for capitalist parasites could easily get out of hand, with people either unable or unwilling to buy inventory even at greatly reduced prices. Profits would tank at banks, liabilities would skyrocket even with most of it transferred to government guarantee. Because no one plays the game anymore, banks could go under as well, as people rise to vote out bank-friendly politicians and simply refuse to pay. This unraveling could easily force exposure of the notional value of derivatives in banks as worthless, meaning they are as bankrupt as the people they exploited. At this point, there will be a common desire and need to simply “forgive” the debts and try to find some way to distribute these empty homes.

Conclusion

Debt forgiveness simply calls out either the inherent systemic inability to make good on debts or the recognition that debt was produced through fraudulent means. In the present situation, both conditions obtain. There has likely been no point in world history where debt forgiveness has been so comprehensively merited. The only speculation from my point (barring world-wide global feudalism and eternal debt slavery) is whether we will initiate such forgiveness or be forced into it.

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Thank you, Zeus, for this prescient and insightful analysis of debt and debt renunciation. The Kondratieff Cycle can only turn to Spring after debt renunciation completes the Winter cycle. Let’s stop pretending we’re still in Summer, and that the Fed’s puny “quantitative easing” and monetary cargo-cult machinations can reverse the seasons.

(all essays by Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D.)

Part I: A 70 Trillion Dollar Counterfeiting Ring
(September 23, 2008)

According to several sources the market for so-called “credit default swaps” last year alone was nearly equal to the total global GDP, around 70 trillion dollars by some estimates. Yet these derivatives have no discernible “origin” or value.

Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works
(October 13, 2008)

Instead of asking the obvious, complex, and obscuring question, “What value DO they have?”, one should ask the elegant and simple question, “What value COULD they have?” Even a cursory examination would seem to indicate that the answer is either zero or less-than-zero.

Part III: Credit Default Swaps Create Less-Than-Zero Value
(October 13, 2008)

Now, how can a supposed “asset” like credit default swaps have a “less-than-zero” (negative) value. First, credit default swaps were insuring debt. Debt is not an asset as I explained in previous essays, but a liability. Mistake number one was to confuse asset and liability.

Part IV: There Is Ultimately No Gaming the System: When the Micro Crash Reflects the Macro Crash
(September 29, 2008)

The proposed 700 billion dollar bailout cannot really “work” from a system level. I know it’s real intention is to cover the butts of Wall Street investors, but you have the same problem in macro that homeowners have in micro. Nobody knows what homes are worth right now, so buyers are sitting it out. It isn’t about restricted credit (even though that is a factor). It isn’t about being too cash strapped to make a down payment (though that too is a factor). It’s about not wanting to be suckered into buying something that may still be overpriced.

By Ned Naylor-Leylan | Cheviot Asset Management Limited

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The Pan Asia Gold Exchange and Hugo Chavez, a curious meeting of minds

The Pan Asia Gold Exchange and Hugo Chavez, a curious meeting of minds? The recent story picked up in the media about Hugo Chavez and the ‘calling’ of Venezuelan Gold held in London generated a good deal of interest and drew attention to the little-discussed issue of Precious Metals custody and ultimately, delivery.

Unlike the Venezuela delivery angle, however, an even bigger and related story is emerging outside of the coverage of the mainstream western press. China has recently launched a new Precious Metals exchange in Kunming City, Yunnan province, called the Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE). I had the great pleasure of being part of a small group of interested parties in London observing and participating in the opening ceremony for the new exchange. We saw the clear support of central and regional government in this venture, evidenced by the participants on the day and their comments. PAGE has been steered at central government level by key economic ministers and mavens and is a formal part of the PRC’s present 5 year plan, one which places Yunnan province as a new gateway to international trade. The photo on the right shows the scale (and colour!) of the new exchange building in Kunming City.

This exchange is offering a new international-facing allocated ‘Spot’ Gold and Silver contract, with an 8am Beijing-time ‘fix’. The fix will only involve Chinese Banks; indeed the owners and members of the exchange are in no way related to the western banks that dominate the existing Spot and Futures Precious Metals markets. PAGE is launching in Q4 2011 a new Spot Precious Metals contract to challenge the emaciated LBMA ‘loco London’ system. International investors will now be able to buy allocated and, crucially, Rmb-denominated ‘Spot’ Gold and Silver contracts. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The Renminbi will be accessible to international investors through this exchange, but in a controlled fashion - using Gold as a synthetic choke on demand for the currency. By buying an Rmb Gold contract on PAGE and selling the equivalent $ denominated contract elsewhere, investors will be left with Rmb exposure. One would imagine that the incentive to own Rmb in the present climate is by inference likely to lead to a whole lot of demand for Gold contracts through this new exchange. Add to that the real demand for allocated Gold that will migrate across from the existing Spot market and you are looking at something that looks sure to have major implications for the Precious Metals market.

Historically the emergence of new Gold and Silver exchanges is met with a collective yawn. The reason for this is that there has never before been any expectation that new exchanges could/would affect the price discovery mechanism. Each new exchange was effectively an extension of the status quo. The mainstream has become dissociated with regard to this issue of price discovery. Many assume that Precious Metals prices are discovered in the healthy way one would normally expect - the body of the market being the ‘real’ Spot market, where the forces of supply and demand meet, with a small tail wagging merrily away in the form of a futures market (see the Jack Russell illustration). In Gold and Silver the size of the Spot market is ten or more times that of the futures market, so the use of a dog as an analogy holds up in scale terms. The current price discovery mechanism, however, as expressed by my Basset Hound illustration, works instead as follows:

The body of the dog (the Spot market) has become the plaything of its ‘tail’. Rather than the dog wagging its tail, the dog is being wagged BY the tail. This is achievable because the actors wagging the dog by its tail are some of the same LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) members that effectively make up the body of the dog. The LBMA system (aka ‘loco London’) has held sway beyond living memory and countless nations rely on the system for both price discovery and storage/custody. This system has not only allowed itself to be corrupted by fractionalisation, it is clear that the body of the dog actually welcomes being wagged, for fear of the repercussions of being caught short were it not! The ‘spot’ dog has been reduced to shell of its former self, so much so that even apologists for the status quo admit that the ‘spot’ market has around 100 paper claims outstanding to each physical bar. At any cost the existing mechanism will resist delivery, which is what makes the recent demand by Hugo Chavez to repatriate Venezuelan Gold reserves so interesting. This move towards delivery by the Venezuela leader plays into the same important dynamic as the Pan Asia Gold Exchange.

My contention is that this new exchange represents a far bigger challenge to the hegemony of the existing bullion banking system and it price discovery mechanism than most realise. Given the choice between being the unallocated and unsecured creditor of a fractionalized LBMA market or holding title to deliverable and allocated bars within the PAGE system I anticipate much of the ‘loco London’ business will migrate east, lured by the twin benefits of certainty of outright ownership and long-awaited international market access to Renminbi.

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Richard Poulden, Director of Power Capital Financial Trading (PCFT) discusses the new Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) with James Turk of GoldMoney.

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It scares me!

Gold punched through $1,900 today. If the current financial system can withstand the stress and remained intact till the day gold trades at $20,000 an ounce, what will life be like then?

If we’re holding gold at that time, we may be doing fine but we are not likely to be 10 times richer. That’s because nothing much has happened to our gold. Rather, paper currencies would have lost so much purchasing power that it would take 10 times more of the same to buy what we could buy today. A Big Mac will most likely cost around $43 in the US. In Malaysia, NZ and Britain, it’ll like be  around RM76, NZ$54 and £25 respectively (estimates based on Big Mac Index). When a basic meal costs that much, life can be very tough for savers who continued holding on to their paper currencies or other paper assets.

Many of my friends and relatives, from retired professionals to missionaries have been ill advised to rely on supposedly safe or high yielding investments like mutual funds, government managed pension schemes, term deposits or hot stocks to generate passive income or preserve the value of their retirement funds. Despite being presented with information from this website and elsewhere, there’s little affinity shown towards gold or silver. This scares me and for their sake, I hope gold does not get anywhere close to $20,000 before they get on board.

What’s even scarier is the fact that an enormously huge segment of society do not have the means to get on board, even if they wanted to. We’re looking at the 1.4 billion people living on less than NZ$2.25 a day. That’s less than 0.05 ounces of silver! They worry not about the Fed nor the Cartel but about how to provide food, clothing, housing and healthcare with that amount each day. It’s about survival, not savings. Pause for a moment to imagine their plight when gold hits $20,000.  Spare them a thought today, and check out their appeal for assistance.

Why $20,000 gold?

In this recently released documentary, Mike Maloney presents the case for $20,000 gold by stepping back and looking at the big picture. He takes us back, very far back, and paints us a very big picture. This excellent educational video is a must watch, especially if you’re new to the Political Metals space. It’ll be your 90 minutes well spent.

But if you can’t spare the time, I’ve highlighted some of his key points with some new charts below for a quick read.

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Dow/Gold Ratio Chart: Where are we in the Wealth Cycle? 

Using the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow) as a measure of performance of the equities market in general, the ratio of the Dow to the price of gold indicates the performance of equities market relative to gold. Currently each point of the Dow is worth about 6oz of gold. During the process of correction after the biggest stock market bubble in history, the ratio is expected to head towards the historical mean (4oz) and overshoot it before finding its fair value again.

The bigger the bubble (deviation from mean), the larger the overshoot. During the present cycle, Mike expects the overshoot to touch 0.5:1 (1 oz of gold worth 2 points of Dow). In its extreme, the Dow would have to collapse from 11,000 to 950 if the price of gold remains at current level of $1,900. Conversely, gold will increase to $22,000 if the Dow remains at current levels.

Relative performance of Dow Vs Gold & Silver since Jan 2000
(Worst reference point, at peak of stock market bubble)

Relative performance of Dow Vs Gold & Silver since March 2009
(Best reference point, at the start of QE1)

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Currency Supply Chart: Where are we in the Inflation/Deflation Cycle?

For simplicity, “money” & “currency” are used interchangeably here. Watch the video to see the difference.

Monetary inflation is the increase in money supply resulting in price inflation (rising prices of goods & services), with a time lag between the former and the latter. The reverse applies to monetary deflation and price deflation. Studying the trend in money supply or the total amount of currency in circulation (CinC) over a period of time gives us an idea of where we are and where we’re heading in terms of inflation and deflation.

Money is created in two stages. The initial Base Money is created by the Fed (or other central banks). More new money is then created (up to 9 times the initial Base Money) within the private banking system through credit. It is loaned into existence. Watch the video to learn more about the money creation process.

The chart above  represents the amount of CinC that’s exclusively created by the private banking system. The highlighted area indicates that this component of the overall money supply has dropped by $1.7T since the 2008 crisis. This is the Debt Collapse or Credit Contraction. Less lending by banks results in less money chasing goods and services, leading to price & asset deflation. It is evident from the chart that a contraction of this magnitude has never happened since 1960. The last time it happened was just before the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In response to this credit contraction, and in an attempt to prevent another Great Depression, the Fed has been rapidly increasing the Base Money supply by creating new money. The recent rate of increase is unprecedented. The first trillion dollars was created over a period of about 90 years. The next $1.4T came into existence over the last 2 years!

This rapid increase in Base Money (red chart) was an attempt to offset the decrease in the credit money (blue chart). When we add these two components of money supply together, we obtain the total CinC (Base Money plus Credit Money) as shown in the chart below.

Notice the contraction at the top of the chart, albeit a smaller one. It is evident that despite the frantic pace of money printing by the Fed, it has not succeeded in offsetting the reduction in money supply due to credit contraction.

The Fed has little choice but to continue creating money.  With such a large perturbation in total currency supply and due to the complexity and size of the monetary system, it is not possible for the Fed or anyone else to create just sufficient money at just the right rate such that the total CinC won’t overshoot its long term trend. The principle that the larger the deviation from the mean, the larger will be the overshoot during the correction applies here as in the stock market above. The fact that there’s an undetermined time lag, between monetary inflation and price inflation further adds to the likelihood that the next round of money printing will result in a massive overshoot. Coupled with other factors, hyperinflation could be just round the corner.

In his book, Rich Dad’s Advisors: Guide to Investing In Gold and Silver: Protect Your Financial Future, and again in his presentation, Mike predicted the following sequence of events:-

1. Threat of deflation - At the onset of the 2008 crisis (Past)
2. Money printing - TARP, QE1, QE2 (Past & more to come)
3. Big inflation - Here and now (anyone disagree?)
4. Real deflation - Asset deflation in real estate & stock market (The severe but short deflation  is ahead)
5. Hyperinflation - Just round the corner?

How does gold perform under inflation and deflation environment? Check out the study by Oxford Economics: “Impact of inflation and deflation on the case for gold”.

Related Resources:

• Fractional Reserve Banking - Two short video clips on money creation
• Crash Course on Banking, Finance & Economy. By Chris Martenson
• Central Banking and the Federal Reserve System (Fed)

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The largest physical movement of gold in recent history is under way.

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s President wants to move his country’s 211 tonnes of gold (over $12B at Friday’s close) currently stored in American & European banks back to Caracas.

Major upward moves in gold prices over the past couple of years have been tied to central banks’ activities in the gold market, like the big purchases by India, China & Russia.

However, this recent move by Venezuela is rather unique. Instead than buying more gold, Venezuala merely wants to repatriate what is already hers. Unlike central bank purchases, which could involve just a ledger entry, this is the real thing. Physical gold is being moved around. What’s more significant is the discovery that after accounting for the 99 tonnes and 11.2 tonnes being held at the Bank of England (BoE) and Bank of International Settlements (BIS) respectively, about half of this huge stash are held in bullion banks like JP Morgan Chase et al - all major gold shorts. The move has left them scrambling for the real stuff.

This has led many to believe that the “Golden Retrieval” may have been a contributing factor to the most recent spike in gold price. It hits at the core of what GATA has been highlighting for over a decade - that bullion banks have been working hand in glove with central banks to suppress the price of gold, and that much of the physical gold at bullion banks and central banks are encumbered, leased or sold many times over, resulting in multiple claims for each bar of physical gold.

Bullion Bank Run - Pressure from all sides

When a major “client” like Venezuala suddenly decides to take physical possession of her gold, it may cause a run on the bullion banks, not unlike the much feared bank run for cash. Bank runs start when depositors begin to lose confidence in the banks holding their cash. All it takes is a a few large depositors withdrawing at the same time, thereby creating the initial stress in the fractional reserve banking system. Soon, the panic hits the masses and long lines form outside the banks.

We have to depend on what the west often refers to as rouge nations - and there are good reasons to believe that there are several out there in a position to take the cue from Venezuala. That’s because it is common practise among central banks to hold their gold outside their countries at ”trading centers” where the bank conducts “its gold activities” - according to a report by GATA citing a comment from Bundesbank. Take a look at this list and see how many potential rouge nation triggers you can spot among the larger holders of gold. As highlighted by Adrian Salbuchi in the video above, there is a political element to Chavez’s radical decision. I can see several rouge nations in that list having similar political motives.

With increasing awareness that the perils of wars, global poverty and social injustice can be attributed in part to our present fraudulent monetary system, there have been many calls to help speed up the inevitable demise of the failed experiment to run a global economy on a debt-based monetary system. All adopt the common strategy of advocating the purchase of physical gold & silver (especially the latter) to protect oneself financially while helping to create stress in the supply of physical bullion to bring down the banking cartel. They include:

• Silver Liberation Army - Buy physical silver coins, bring down JP Morgan & the banksters
• Sons of Liberty Academy - The Silver Bullet And The Silver Shield
• Underground Investor - Smack down the criminal global banking cartel with gold & silver

The set up before us is interesting. While the masses apply pressure from the bottom, we have the deep pocketed boys, institutional investors and money managers primed to move big time money into gold & silver following the recently concluded GATA’s Gold Rush 2011 London conference.  That’s pressure from the middle. Now, with the likes of Venezuala starting to apply pressure from the very top, we may see the tipping point for a bullion bank run soon.

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Updated:

Aug 22, 2011
Libya Down: The link between Libya’s swift regime change, its 144 tonnes of gold & Venezuela’s gold repatriation.

Related Articles:

• Gold Manipulation
• What Big Banks are doing in the commodities market

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Submitted by Richard (Rick) Mills | Ahead of the Herd

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As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

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In 1873, the Fourth Coinage Act was enacted by the US Congress. Western silver miners labeled this measure the “Crime of ’73″ because it stopped the printing of US silver dollars. The US had, unofficially, abandoned its bimetallic standard in favor of a monometallic one – gold.

The supply of silver not being used for coinage increased - European Nations had just gone from a silver to a gold standard, the US was no longer coining silver dollars and these two factors, when coupled with massive new silver discoveries in the American west, caused the price of silver to collapse.

There was once a time in history when people acted. . . . Farmers were trapped in debt. They were the most oppressed of Americans, they experimented with cooperative purchasing and marketing, they tried to find their own way out of the strangle hold of debt to merchants, but none of this could work if they couldn’t get capital. So they had to turn to politics, and they had to organize themselves into a party. . . . The populists didn’t just organize a political party, they made a movement. They had picnics and parties and newsletters and classes and courses, and they taught themselves, and they taught each other, and they became a group of people with a sense of purpose, a group of people with courage, a group of people with dignity.

Lawrence Goodwin, author of The Populist Moment

Western miners, seeking the right to turn silver directly into money, mid-western grain and southern cotton farmers (who both had immense debts because of price deflation caused by overproduction) rallied to silver’s cause and the movement became known as Free Silver. The Populist Party had a strong Free Silver element and its merger with the Democratic Party moved Democrats from being in support of a monometallic gold standard to the Free Silver position.

Free Silver supporters were called “Silverites.”

Silverite’s argued that silver should continue to be part of the monetary standard with gold, their slogan was “16 to 1″ – sixteen ounces of silver would be equal in value to one ounce of gold, using the ratio established in the Coinage Act of 1834.

Silverites also wanted “free coinage of silver” as authorized under the Coinage Act of 1792. Free coinage meant anyone who possessed uncoined gold could bring it to one of the United States Mints and trade it for its equivalent in gold coins, less a small deduction - Free Silver advocates wanted the mints to accept silver on the same principle. These inflationary measures would have increased the amount of money in circulation and helped debtors pay off their debts, while harming creditors and savers.

Opponents to the Free Silver movement were mostly the financial establishments of the Northeast - the moneylenders, creditors, banks, leaseholders, and landlords - they backed a monometallic gold standard - the expanding economy had constrained the money supply available on a gold only standard, this had made the dollar stronger and decreased prices, opponents of Free Silver wanted to keep it that way.

The Republican Party was against Free Silver, the party’s position being that the best way to national prosperity was “sound money.” Republicans favored a continued strong dollar, which rewarded savers and creditors.

Battle lines were drawn, on one side were the Free Silver proponents – miners, farmers, debtors and Democrats - who wanted a bimetallic standard, the free coinage of silver and inflation. On the other side of the line were the creditors and Republicans who wanted to keep a strong currency using a gold only standard.

Intense pressure caused the U.S. government to agree to the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, this act directed the Treasury to purchase silver at a high price. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was enacted on July 14, 1890. It didn’t authorize the free and unlimited coinage of silver that the Free Silver supporters wanted, but it did increase, by a large amount, the amount of silver the government was required to purchase every month.

Using a special issue of Treasury Notes that could be redeemed for either silver, or gold, the US government became the second largest silver buyer in the world - after the government of India.

By 1893 the US was in one of the worst depressions in American history and people were turning in the new Treasury Notes for gold and depleting the government’s gold reserves. President Grover Cleveland (R) forced the repeal of both the Bland-Allison and Sherman Silver Purchase Acts.

Democrats failed to win any presidential elections in which the Free Silver issue was front and center. When a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won in 1912 he signed into law, in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act that created and set up the Democrats version of a Federal Reserve - having congressional oversight.

The Republicans had their own Aldrich Plan for a Federal Reserve - it gave control to private bankers. There was strong opposition, mostly from rural and western states. They feared that the Fed would become a tool of rich and powerful eastern bankers based in New York City - the “Money Trust.”

In 1913 the Pujo Committee Report concluded that a group of influential financial leaders had gained control of US manufacturing, transportation, mining, telecommunications and financial markets - no less than eighteen different major financial corporations were under control of a cartel led by J.P Morgan, George F Baker and James Stillman.

Silver metal was recognized as more precious than gold when bartering in ancient Egypt - this recorded as early as 930 BC. Silver’s use as money in coin form began around 2600 years ago. Silver and gold have stood the test of time, as a medium of exchange, a storehouse of value and a safe haven in times of turmoil.

Back to the future where we find the little bit of history, just presented, made even more fascinating by events unfolding in a Far Far Away place - Washington. Interesting to read a bit about the history of both sides in the now concluded debt ceiling debate.

One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.

No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the “cuts” being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.

Ron Paul (R)

Only a third of mined silver production comes from the production of primary silver mines, the rest comes from mined production of other metals, namely zinc and lead, 25% is from production of copper mines (Chile has very little primary silver production but is the fifth largest silver producing country) and the rest is from production at gold mines.

Mined silver production rose by 2.5 percent to 735.9 M oz in 2010 - gains came from primary silver mines and as a by-product of lead/zinc mining activity. Silver produced as a by-product of gold mining fell four percent in 2010.

Tom Albanese, CEO Rio Tinto Group, the world’s second largest mining company, said that the copper industry has struggled to maintain supply because of declining ore grades (ore grades averaged 0.76 percent copper content in 2009, compared with 0.9 percent in 2002), delays to mine expansions and disruption from strikes. Christine Meilton, chief consultant at CRU Group said there was a risk some copper projects, expected to come on stream in 2012 and 2013, will be delayed because of red tape, poor infrastructure and funding difficulties.

A Report by the APS Panel on Public Affairs and the Materials Research Society coined the term “energy-critical element” (ECE) to describe a class of chemical elements that currently appear critical to one or more new, energy related technologies.

Energy-related systems are typically materials intensive. As new technologies are widely deployed, significant quantities of the elements required to manufacture them will be needed. However, many of these unfamiliar elements are not presently mined, refined, or traded in large quantities, and, as a result, their availability might be constrained by many complex factors. A shortage of these energy-critical elements (ECEs) could significantly inhibit the adoption of otherwise game-changing energy technologies. This, in turn, would limit the competitiveness of U.S. industries and the domestic scientific enterprise and, eventually, diminish the quality of life in the United States.

The focus of the report was on energy technologies with the potential for large-scale deployment so the elements they listed are energy critical: silver was listed as one of their choices based on its use in advanced photovoltaic solar cells, especially thin film photovoltaics.

Conclusion

Silver investment rose by 40% during 2010 to 279.3 million ounces, almost double the amount for 2009. Demand increased to 167.0 M ozs (+5.1%) for jewelry and 101.3 M ozs (+22%) for coins. Other major usage categories are photography (72.7 M ozs, down 8.3%), and silverware (50.3 million ozs).

Industrial use accounted for the bulk of silver fabrication demand in 2010,  487.4 million ounces, up from 403.8 million ounces in 2009 - an annual increase of 20.7 percent.

Total silver demand in 2010 jumped 14.59 percent while the silver surplus - the difference between supply and fabrication demand - dropped 12 percent to 173.4 million ounces. Primary silver mining cash costs were unchanged at $5.27 an ounce in 2010.

The Federal Reserve first issued its debt based paper money in 1913. Since then the US dollar has lost plus 95% of its value. The history of fiat money has always been one of failure. The US dollar was backed by gold and silver, then just gold - the dollar use to be the rock all the worlds currencies were anchored to but when it became fiat, all the worlds currencies became fiat.

The Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange (HKMEx) has recently announced that they will roll out Yuan denominated silver futures contracts. This exchange will:

• Grant Asian investors direct access to silver futures
• Blunt U.S. dominance in silver trading by reducing the importance and influence of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)

According to the HKMEx China is already becoming a  factor in the silver market. From 2008 to 2010, silver demand soared 67% in China and China accounted for nearly 23% of global silver consumption in 2010.

In 2010 India consumed 2,800 tonnes of silver, 2011’s consumption is forecast to rise to 5,000 tonnes. India’s state-owned trading company -  Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation (MMTC) said it would import 1,200 tons of  Silver in 2011-12 as demand for the precious metal is rising fast.

The rising demand for silver bullion products with 99.99% fineness has started a new trend - silver denominated notes reminiscent of turn of the century American silver certificates are becoming quite popular in India, the difference is, these Indian notes are actually made of silver.

The silver notes closely resemble the country´s rupee and are very popular among the country´s younger generation and rapidly growing middle class. The nominal value of each note corresponds to its respective weight in silver - a note with a face value of 10 rupees is equal to 10 grams of silver.

Silver should be on every investors radar screen. Is it on yours?

If not, maybe it should be.

Richard (Rick) Mills
[email protected]
www.aheadoftheherd.com

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Richard is host of Aheadoftheherd.com and invests in the junior resource sector. His articles have been published on over 300 websites, including: Wall Street Journal, SafeHaven, Market Oracle, USAToday, National Post, Stockhouse, Lewrockwell, Uranium Miner, Casey Research, 24hgold, Vancouver Sun, SilverBearCafe, Infomine, Huffington Post, Mineweb, 321Gold, Kitco, Gold-Eagle, The Gold/Energy Reports, Calgary Herald, Resource Investor, Mining.com, Forbes, FNArena, Uraniumseek, and Financial Sense.

Legal Notice / Disclaimer

This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. Richard Mills has based this document on information obtained from sources he believes to be reliable but which has not been independently verified; Richard Mills makes no guarantee, representation or warranty and accepts no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Richard Mills only and are subject to change without notice. Richard Mills assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, I, Richard Mills, assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information provided within this Report.

Richard Mills does not own shares of any companies mentioned in this report.