DOJ, CFTC have Begun Investigation of 10 Major Banks for Rigging Metals Fixing

Need a job? Drop gold investigation

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Pat Heller

   

Late last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had begun investigations of 10 major banks over the process of setting prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium in the London market.

Look for the end result to pretty much
be a cover-up of the suppression of
gold and silver prices. – Pat Heller

The banks under scrutiny are Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Societe Generale SA, Standard Bank Group Ltd., and UBS AG. After this announcement, the Swiss competition commission, WEKO, said it was looking into possible manipulation by Swiss banks in the precious metals markets.

As reported in the Journal, the Department of Justice is looking into criminal activity, while the CFTC has opened a civil investigation.

Many researchers have written about the extensive history of central banks manipulating gold prices over the decades.  In the United States, for instance, declassified government documents released so far have all confirmed that the federal government has conspired with other governments and major banks to manipulate gold prices right from the 1930s up into the 1980s.

Historically, many government monetary systems were valued in relation to gold, so it should not surprise anyone that governments would try to influence the relative prices.  In the United States, for instance, the Treasury Department’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) was established as a provision of the January 31, 1934 Gold Reserve Act.  The ESF was explicitly authorized to use its funds to stabilize the exchange value of the dollar versus gold.  Changes over the years have never revoked the authority to manipulate gold prices.  In fact, a law enacted in 1970 directed the Secretary of the Treasury, with the approval of the President, to “deal in gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities.”

These new investigations follow similar reviews in Europe. Last year, the British government fined Barclays Bank more than $40 million for one incident of gold price manipulation.  Also, the Swiss regulator, FINMA, said it found “serious misconduct” among precious metals traders at UBS involving a silver-fix order of one client.

If you think that the researchers and writers claiming that central banks and major private banks were manipulating the precious metals markets by suppressing prices are finally going to be proven right, think again.

I am confident that the end result of the U.S. government investigations will be, after several years in the works, some fines collected from many of these banks for specific individual incidents. Further, there will be promises that whatever wrongdoing they had done will no longer occur.  And that will be all that happens.

Why do I think this is what will be the end result of such a bombshell development? The answer is simple. Ask yourself why the DOJ and CFTC are investigating trading in the London markets but not in the New York COMEX markets. While it is true that the London market handles more volume of precious metals trading than the COMEX, the U.S. markets are more relevant to Americans.

Also ask yourself why the investigations involve eight foreign owned banks and only two U.S. companies. The foreign banks would only be within the purview of American regulators if their actions in the London markets were perpetrated from the U.S.-based offices. Why aren’t other U.S. banks being investigated?

The reason these investigations will be pretty much whitewashed is that the Department of Justice is unwilling to go after Wall Street. New York Federal Reserve Bank president William C. Dudley (who worked at Goldman Sachs 1986-2007 as the chief U.S. economist, a partner, and as a managing director) confirmed not that long ago that the DOJ has no ongoing investigations of Wall Street firms. The DOJ is not conducting such investigations despite former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan’s public claim that there were massive illegal and criminal frauds committed by Wall Street firms.

The DOJ consistently stated that it will not prosecute these large institutions because the risk of damage to the economy, as they were told by outside experts.  However, could this DOJ policy could have more to do with the revolving doors where the DOJ and CFTC investigators largely have worked for the above named banks or hope to do so when the leave government employment?

After all, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced two years ago that no investigation of UBS’s fixing of LIBOR interest rates would be done. Holder claimed in a news conference that the lack of prosecution was based on a decision of how such an investigation would impact global financial markets. But, was the real reason that UBS was a client of the law firm where Holder worked before his current job?

Want to add some luck to your 
collection or your pocket?

In a previous decision not to investigate HSBC, a Congressional panel asked for the identity of outside parties who advised the DOJ to drop the investigation for global financial stability reasons.  Eventually, Justice officials had to admit that they did not consult any outside parties before canceling the HSBC review.

In sum, I expect the public to be lulled into thinking that the U.S. government is really finding and reporting the truth about the manipulation of precious metals prices. However, once you realize that the DOJ and CFTC are investigating the wrong market (London instead of the New York COMEX), not all of the appropriate American-based banks that should be investigated are being pursued because the government agencies have a “policy” to avoid investigations of firms where they used to work or hope to later be employed. Don’t expect any definitive revelations about the depth and breadth of the manipulation of precious metals trading in America.

Instead, look for the end result to pretty much be a cover-up of the suppression of gold and silver prices.

via numismaticnews

Must Listen! Silver Coins as Money - Ask The Expert – Hugo Salinas Price!

Hugo Salinas Price shares his views on precious metals, provides some historical background on gold and silver money, the manipulation of the precious metals markets, the inevitable collapse of the fiat money, and more…  

Click here for transcript and original posting

What is junk silver?

The idea is to first get started. Save four silver quarters a month dated before 1964.

Feb202015

Do you have a coin jug at home? Perhaps it isn’t a jug, per se, but a coffee can, glass jar, or maybe even an old fashioned piggy bank? It might be holding far more money than you realize!

If you spend much time surfing various survival/prepper message boards and other forums, you’ll no doubt run across the term “junk silver.” People want to know, “What is junk silver? And, should I buy it?”

The term refers to coins containing a high amount of actual silver, unlike most common coins minted today.

Here’s the cool part. If you have a coin jug at home, odds are you probably have at least a few junk silver coins in there. While you won’t see them every day, they do still crop up regularly.

What is junk silver?

Here in the United States, junk silver coins are basically any coin (except pennies and nickels) minted in 1964 or earlier. 

Given that half-dollars and other larger coins are somewhat rare in most of our daily lives, we’re basically talking about dimes and quarters. If a coin is categorized as junk silver, it does not have any numismatic value to collectors.

The value in junk silver is the silver itself, not the coin’s appearance.

The only silver nickels in recent history are the “wartime” ones produced in 1942-1945. Even then, they only contain about 30% silver, whereas most junk silver coins contain 90% silver.

If after looking at the mint date you still aren’t sure if the coin is silver, a silver coin sounds very different from a non-silver one when dropped on a table. The sound is hard to describe but once you’ve heard it, you’ll recognize it pretty quickly going forward.

Why do preppers focus on junk silver?

Why is it important to know about junk silver? Well, for starters, junk silver is a very easy way to get started with collecting precious metals for possible use as alternative currency, should there come some sort of economic collapse. It takes just a few seconds at the end of the day to examine the coins in your pocket before you dump them into your coin jug.

On top of that, junk silver coins are worth far more than their face value. Generally speaking, if you have $1.40 in face value of junk silver coins, you have one troy ounce of actual silver. As of this writing, an ounce of silver is going for about $18.00 or so. I use Kitco to check prices when I’m getting ready to buy.

Now, honestly, that’s not a completely true comparison as junk silver coins aren’t actually worth the full silver spot price. But, those dimes and quarters are worth a ton more than what you’d get from a candy vending machine.

At my house, we have two separate jars, one for pennies and one for all other coins. I’ll usually glance through my spare change, checking mint dates, before tossing the coins into the appropriate jar. But, because I’m human and might miss seeing a junk silver coin, we’ll have one of our children dump out the jar and check each coin before we cash in the change. Often, they’ll find one or two coins we missed. The junk silver coins are stored away under lock and key, just in case we need them someday. If nothing else, they’ll be nice for the kids to have someday.

Resources for junk silver

A Guidebook of United States Coins 2015

The Beginner’s Guide to Gold and Silver Scrap

How to Buy Gold and Silver Bullion Without Getting Scammed

Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst Case Scenarios  (I include an interview with a precious metals dealer and information about buying junk silver.)

Wartime silver nickels

via survivalmom

A New Way to Hold Gold (2015 Update)

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Chris Martenson

What if you could carry and exchange gold in the exact same manner as you do with the dollar bills in your wallet?

Last year, we introduced the precious metals community to a company called Valaurum, which has developed a technology that’s making this possible.

Here’s the write-up from last year:

Democratizing Gold

In short, a fractional gram’s worth of gold is affixed to layers of polyester, creating a note – called an “Aurum” – similar in dimension and thickness to a U.S. dollar bill. This gold (usually 1/10th or 1/20th of a gram) is commercially recoverable. So an Aurum offers similar potential as a coin or bar, in terms of providing a vehicle for storing and exchanging known, dependable increments of precious metals – just in much smaller (and more affordable) amounts than commercially available to date.

The big idea here? In a world where a 1oz coin of gold costs over $1,200, an Aurum will let you hold a few dollars’ worth of gold in a single note. If you’ve got pocket change, you can be a precious metals owner.

And you don’t have to change your behavior. You can store and transport an Aurum in your billfold along with your dollars.

Understanding the Aurum

As the saying goes, a picture’s worth a thousand words. Here’s a picture of an Aurum designed for Peak Prosperity that the Valaurum team produced for us:

You’ll see that with even just 1/20th of a gram of gold involved, it’s enough to make the Aurum appear to be “made of” gold. 

The characteristic luster, color, and shine of the 24-karat gold used is immediately apparent.

The Aurum is designed to be handled in the same manner as we do with our “paper” money. And, despite having a more ‘plastic’ feel to it (resulting from the polyester backing), it’s as flexible, lightweight, and familiar-feeling as paper currency.

The big difference, of course, is that instead of being a claim on something else, it simply is what it is: a fractional gram of gold. It can be stored, traded, or melted down – just like a coin or bar.

Here’s a brief video that gives an overview of the production process:

Implications

Being able to hold gold in this form is significant for several reasons.

First, it makes gold ownership available to all budgets. Many of the world’s households have been priced out of gold to date. This changes that completely.

Second, it enables the potential for everyday transactions should we ever return to a precious metal-backed monetary standard. It answers the challenge: How will you pay for your groceries with gold? With an Aurum, it’s now easy.

Whether Valaurum’s product emerges as the winning horse or not, the world definitely needs this type of solution (i.e., convenient fractional physical metal) to go mainstream.

I’m very excited by this new innovation in the bullion industry, and I explore the matter in depth in this podcast [14]. If you’re similarly intrigued, it’s worth the listen.

The response to last year’s podcast was tremendous. It quickly became one of the most popular in Peak Prosperity’s history. If the description above interests you, and you haven’t listened to it already, you can do so by clicking here [14].

Big News

So, what’s happened with the aurum over the past year? Has the concept caught on with precious metals investors?

We’ve invited Adam Trexler back to the program to find out. In this week’s podcast, he shares with us a number of positive updates about adoption of the aurum, demand by the bullion dealer community, and product enhancement to the gold note itself.

But most exciting is this: a (small) sovereign central bank is deep in negotiations with Valaurum to replace its existing national currency with aurum notes, creating a true precious-metals backed monetary system. As best we know, this would make it the only one in existence in the world today.

If this indeed occurs, it could be a game-changer. Changes in trust and perception always begin with a non-conformist having the courage to depart from the herd’s consensus. Even a small country rejecting fiat money in favor of a gold standard will catch the attention of others. And as the current currency wars exacerbate, as they inevitably will, more countries will increasingly look to adopt monetary regimes that work better. 

Perhaps that will be a return to gold, in this new form.

More Big News

The Peak Prosperity aurum notes we printed up last year quickly sold out. Demand was much higher than we had expected.

For those who did not have the chance to purchase any — or for those who did, and are interested in collecting each new series that gets produced — we have good news: the new 2015 Peak Prosperity aurum (1/10th gram) is now available for purchase [15]. Those interested in doing so can learn more by clicking here [15].

And for those interested in the latest on Valaurum,  click the play button below to listen to my latest interview with Adam Trexler (31m:20s)

via washingtonsblog

Bitcoin: What It Is, Why It Matters - and What the Critics Say - Mises.org

February 14, 2015

Thomas E. Woods | Thomas E. Woods a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is the creator of Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom and author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestsellers Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and other titles.

via libertycrier

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Pat Heller

I have written a number of times that I expect the U.S. government will eventually take or somehow get control of all assets in private retirement accounts, including precious metals individual retirement accounts. The basic reason for this expectation is that the U.S. government is running up tens of trillions of dollars of debts and unfunded liabilities. The trillions of dollars of private retirement account assets are just too big a target for the politicians and bureaucrats to leave alone.

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

Will Uncle Sam get your IRA?

An early attempt by the government to take control of such assets came soon after President Clinton took office. As now structured, income taxes are not paid on most retirement accounts until the assets are withdrawn. This event to collect income taxes usually occurs years down the road.

In the early 1990s, that concept was turned around. The proposal was to impose a 15 percent tax on all existing private retirement accounts, then tax new contributions also at the 15 percent rate.  The payoff for taxpayers was that any future withdrawals would be tax free.

A new plan was presented to the House Committee on Education and Labor in hearings on Oct. 7, 2008, by Professor Teresa Ghilarducci. This proposal was for the U.S. government to seize all private retirement assets and replace them with Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration. The only assets that would be allowed into these new Accounts would be U.S. Treasury bonds paying 3 percent interest (indexed for subsequent Consumer Price Index changes).

Further, the plan called for 5 percent of payrolls to be withheld, on top of existing Social Security and Medicare tax withholdings, for deposit into these GRAs.  The last feature of this proposal is that upon the death of the account holder, part of the remaining assets would be forfeited to the U.S. government. That was a huge change where all private retirement account assets, up to now, go to the heirs.

The one bonus to bribe Americans to go along with the nationalization of private retirement accounts was that the assets would be converted to government bonds as of their value at a designated earlier date when most paper assets such as stocks, bonds and currencies were mostly at a higher value than they were in October 2008. Given the opportunity to recoup some of the losses that retirement accounts had suffered in 2007 and 2008, this was a definite enticement.

In September 2010, the Departments of Labor and Treasury held joint hearings to advocate that, upon retirement, the assets in private retirement accounts would be converted into annuities, where the residual assets upon death would ultimately all be retained by the U.S. government.

In January 2014, during his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed the establishment of the MyRA. This is initially a voluntary program for lower-income Americans to set aside some after-tax dollars to earn income that can later be withdrawn tax-free. However, there are several limitations. First, these accounts can only own U.S. Treasury debt that pays the same interest rate as the Thrift Savings Plan’s Government Securities Investment Fund. This fund was paying less than 2 percent at the time of the President’s proposal. A second major limitation is that accounts could not exceed $15,000 in total value. Further, these accounts cannot exist longer than 30 years.

Starting two months ago, a small number of these MyRA accounts have been established.
 

Investment writer Doug Fabian has described an all-too-plausible scenario that he expects to happen before the end of President Obama’s term. He anticipates that there will be some major financial crisis in the United States, greater than the Great Recession of last decade, where investors will see the values of their stocks, bonds and other assets mostly plummet.

This could be triggered by any number of incidents. As some examples, Greece could leave the European Monetary Union, which would force many major American and foreign banks to write down tens of billions of dollars of bonds that they are now carrying at face value.  The developing fall in demand for upper-end U.S. housing could expand to all housing nationwide, leaving U.S. banks with massive bad debts that risk their survival. Or local, school district, regional, and state governments all across America could be forced into bankruptcy after the Governmental Accounting Standards Board issues their pronouncements in June requiring these entities to more fully report the extent of their tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for employee pensions and retiree health care benefits. There are many other possible crises, but this gives you an idea of how massive a financial crisis could occur.

At the time when such a financial crisis hits, private retirement account assets will almost all drop in value – by a lot.  If, or when, this occurs, there will be a huge groundswell from people who no longer have enough wealth to retire. Mr. Fabian theorizes that this will be the perfect time for the federal government to modify MyRA accounts to accept unlimited asset transfers from existing private retirement accounts. By the federal government offering people the opportunity to get credit for the value of their assets before the financial crisis was triggered, Fabian expects that a high percentage of Americans would voluntarily be eager to turn their retirement assets into loans to the U.S. Treasury.

Such a scenario would be a power-grabbing politician’s dream. Instead of being thought of as a President who stole people’s retirement assets, the person in charge in such circumstances were be hailed as a savior. Unfortunately, I think the risk of such events coming to pass by the end of 2016 are high enough that Americans need to prepare their finances sooner rather than later.

Should any huge financial crisis come to pass, expect to see a surge in demand for precious metals, especially gold and silver. Other portable tangible assets such as rare coins and paper money will also likely experience stronger demand.  However, the increased demand for such assets will not be for placement in retirement accounts.  Instead, look for the surge in demand to be for assets that can be owned and possessed directly.

Patrick A. Heller was the American Numismatic Association 2012 Harry Forman Numismatic Dealer of the Year Award winner. He is the owner emeritus and communications officer of Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., and writes “Liberty’s Outlook,” a monthly newsletter on rare coins and precious metals subjects. Past newsletter issues can be viewed at http://www.libertycoinservice.com. Other commentaries are available at Coin Week (http://www.coinweek.com and http://www.coininfo.com). He also writes a bi-monthly column on collectibles for “The Greater Lansing Business Monthly” (http://www.lansingbusinessmonthly.com/articles/department-columns). His Numismatic Literary Guild award-winning radio show “Things You ‘Know’ That Just Aren’t So, And Important News You Need To Know” can be heard at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday and Friday mornings on 1320-AM WILS in Lansing (which streams live and becomes part of the audio and text archives posted at http://www.1320wils.com).  

via numismaticnews

Let's Secede from the American Monetary Union

January 21, 2015 Ryan McMaken

The Swiss central bank’s recent move to de-peg the Swiss franc from the euro reminds us of the importance of choice in currency. 

By pegging the Swiss franc to the euro, the Swiss central bank was in effect subsidizing the euro by refusing to compete with it. If carried into the long term, this would have meant a de facto monetary union between the euro and the franc. Fortunately for most people however, the Swiss central bank maintained its legal independence from the euro and the peg was eventually ended, thus freeing the holders of Swiss francs from the new round of money-supply inflation that is expected from the European Central Bank.

Those who have their savings in euros are not so lucky. Those in the Eurozone who work hard to save and invest will have the value of their euros reduced to further subsidize and bail out politically-connected investors who have financed southern European governments. All the while, the government of the European Union will enrich itself and its friends through the money-creation mechanism. Such are the expected results of the expansion of government’s money monopoly in the Eurozone.

The Government’s Money Monopoly

The European monetary experiment illustrates anew for us how a monetary monopoly is an indispensable component of an effort to achieve political unity and more powerful government. As Philipp Bagus has noted, the currency known as the euro is just as much a political instrument as it is an economic one. It greatly enhances the monopoly power enjoyed by the nascent state known as the European Union without having to first achieve true de jure political union. The central bankers of a unified Europe are far more powerful than the central bankers of any one European state could ever hope to be.

Although much further down the road in this respect, the United States is subject to a monetary union similar in many ways to that of the European Union. In the eighteenth century, state currencies were abolished with the victory of the new American Constitution in 1788, and the First Bank of the United States was created shortly thereafter. At that point, the central government’s control of the money supply was far from complete, however. A true functioning monopoly over the money supply did not arrive until the twentieth century with the Federal Reserve System, which through its regulatory power was able to impose a de facto money monopoly on the United States.

Today, it is nearly impossible to conduct business in the United States without using US dollars, and the federal government, which tightly regulates the financial system, greatly discourages to the point of utter impracticality the use of privately-produced or foreign currency for daily business in the US.

Why Currency Competition Is Important

From a central planner’s perspective, the ideal monetary situation is a single global currency controlled by a single central bank. With only one currency, a government could inflate at will without threat from any competing currency save a black market trade in commodity monies, which would of course be outlawed. In other words, the less competition a central bank has from other currencies, the better.

Toward the other end of this spectrum is a global economy with at least dozens of competing currencies. Some currencies would be more stable and respectable than others, but all would be at least somewhat restrained by the knowledge that every currency, if devalued too much, will at some point be abandoned in favor of a more reliable and stable currency.

Thus, if one wishes to restrict the power of states, and to enhance personal and economic freedom, one of the most meaningful first steps must be to oppose state control over the money supply, and failing that, to weaken the state’s monopoly through competition and secession.

Baby Steps Toward Currency Freedom

Interestingly, in spite of a century of a totally centralized money supply, and a constitutional prohibition on state-issued currency, some American states still imagine themselves as having a role in the monetary system. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, for example, lawmakers from thirteen states suggested their home states take advantage of a loophole in the Constitution (of sorts) and make gold and silver coins legal tender in their states as a hedge against economic disaster. Utah went slightly further:

Utah became the first state to introduce its own alternative currency when Governor Gary Herbert signed a bill into law [in 2011] that recognized gold and silver coins issued by the U.S. Mint as an acceptable form of payment. Under the law, the coins — which include American Gold and Silver Eagles — are treated the same as U.S. dollars for tax purposes, eliminating capital gains taxes.

Since the face value of some U.S.-minted gold and silver coins — like the one-ounce, $50 American Gold Eagle coin — is so much less than the metal value ... the new law allows the coins to be exchanged at their market value, based on weight and fineness.

Finish reading @Mises.org

Silver Eagles Not Best Way to Own Silver

Posted on December 18, 2014 by Pat Heller

The U.S. Mint charges $2 above the spot price when it sells regular silver American Eagle one-ounce coins to its handful of Authorized Purchasers. These APs are then responsible for the costs and logistics of picking up the coins at the West Point or San Francisco Mints. By the time most coin dealers get in a smaller supply of these coins from the larger wholesalers, retail customers could easily be paying $3-$4 per coin above the silver spot price to purchase a 500-coin box of silver Eagles.

The silver Eagle may not be the

 best way to own bulk silver

At those premiums, retail buyers would now be paying 15-20 percent or more above the intrinsic metal value of silver Eagles.


These coins have been hugely popular, with combined mintages since the series debuted in 1986 of more than 200 million coins. In absolute terms, even the lowest-mintage 1996-dated coins cannot be called rare.

It is possible to buy the old U.S. 90 percent silver dimes and quarters (and often half dollars) struck up to 1964 at a lower cost per ounce of silver content.  Privately manufactured silver rounds and ingots in sizes of 1, 10, and 100 ounces can also be acquired for a lower premium than silver Eagles.

So, are silver Eagles a good way to purchase bullion-priced silver?
There are a number of hard money writers who consider the silver Eagles to be the best option for buyers. Others, including me, consider their premiums to be too much higher than other options to recommend them. You can’t have it both ways, so whose advice is sounder?

The silver Eagles have multiple advantages where it is an exact one troy ounce of pure silver issued by a reliable entity.  It has legal tender status by having a $1 face value, which means that they can cross international borders almost everywhere around the globe without having to pay import taxes.

Do these advantages outweigh other options, where U.S. 90 percent silver coins do not come to an even ounce weight of silver per $1 of face value, or where the privately struck silver rounds and ingots are normally subject to import duties if they cross borders?

I place more emphasis on the cost per ounce of silver content, which is the main reason why I am not in favor of purchasing large quantities of silver Eagles as a way to own bulk silver. However, I realize that silver Eagles are beautiful works of art. Therefore, I don’t knock the idea of purchasing individual coins or even a roll or two to be part of a collection or to be given as gifts.

Instead, I favor lower-premium alternatives despite the popularity of silver Eagles, where my company alone has sold as many as 300,000 of these coins in a single year.

Many buyers of silver Eagles realize they are paying a higher price to acquire silver in this form versus lower premium options. A number of them have told me that they expect to be able to liquidate these coins at prices higher than what they would be paid for the rounds and ingots or U.S. 90 silver coins. If that is what really happens, then it is not such a downside risk purchasing silver Eagles today.

But – don’t count on being able to receive a payment per ounce of silver content any higher than you would be paid for the 90 percent silver Coins or rounds and ingots. Here is one example why I say this.

In late 1996, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased 129.7 million ounces of silver futures contracts due in March 1997. As the maturity date neared, Berkshire Hathaway stated that they intended to take physical delivery of all the contracts rather than simply rolling the contracts over into new paper contracts with maturity dates farther in the future.

This quantity of physical silver demand severely strained existing supplies. Before Berkshire Hathaway announced that they wanted physical delivery, the spot price of silver was about $6. At that level, we were paying the public 50 cents under spot for the private one-ounce silver rounds and ingots and 50 cents over spot for silver Eagles.

Demand for low premium silver that the refiners could melt and form into deliverable 1,000-ounce bars to fulfill Berkshire Hathaway’s contracts pushed up the silver spot price.

By March 1997, the spot price topped $7. When silver reached that level, we were still paying 50 cents per ounce under spot to purchase one-ounce silver rounds and ingots from the public. However, since the refiners had no interest in purchasing any product even at spot price (the price at which they were being paid for the 1,000-ounce bars), silver Eagles did not appreciate at all during this run-up in the spot price. When silver reached $7 per ounce, we were then paying 50 cents per ounce below the spot price to purchase silver Eagles.

In this instance, the spot price of silver rose about 14 percent. The price we were paying the public to purchase one-ounce rounds and ingots rose 18 percent. Yet, the price we were paying for silver Eagles was unchanged.
As demonstrated by this example, I don’t recommend the purchase of silver Eagles as a way to acquire a quantity of bullion-priced bulk physical silver.

Incidentally, the rumor that circulated afterwards was that Berkshire Hathaway granted an extra six months to the short-sellers of the silver contracts, but the sellers had to pay the company 50 cents per ounce for the additional time.

Patrick A. Heller was the American Numismatic Association 2012 Harry Forman Numismatic Dealer of the Year Award winner. He owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., and writes “Liberty’s Outlook,” a monthly newsletter on rare coins and precious metals subjects. Past newsletter issues can be viewed at http://www.libertycoinservice.com. Other commentaries are available at Coin Week (http://www.coinweek.com and http://www.coininfo.com). He also writes a bi-monthly column on collectibles for “The Greater Lansing Business Monthly” (http://www.lansingbusinessmonthly.com/articles/department-columns).His radio show “Things You ‘Know’ That Just Aren’t So, And Important News You Need To Know” can be heard at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday and Friday mornings on 1320-AM WILS in Lansing (which streams live and becomes part of the audio and text archives posted at http://www.1320wils.com).  

via numismaticnews

Banks Keep Billions of Taxpayer Bailout $$ For Forex Probe Fines

Why is it we just know that no senior executive will do any meaningful jail time? And, commensurately the defense of “I was only following orders” will be the appeal of their underlings. When a government supervises the ‘oversight’ of itself the people never win. Not only do the guilty skate, but they’ll use our own money for their escape! Without any political party warranting our trust, ‘lamppost justice’ is beginning to come into focus.

Remember, loyalty and obedience to any political party should not be confused as misplaced patriotism for your country. The German people learned that lesson (for a while) with their adored leader of national socialism, didn’t they.

WIN-WIN suggestion: Small business owners begin offering their products and services for physical silver coins. Offer to redeem for a 1% higher premium than larger dealers of your prospective customer’s choice! This not only gives you a method to accumulate honest money, but deprive the banking crooks of your sweat and reward. 

Give pause a moment to ponder what if this method of doing business began to take hold!? It’ll start right here, with you. Don't create a woulda-coulda-shoulda experience for yourself and find your nose pressed to the window looking in.

If this makes sense to you, please share this post with anyone you know who would benefit - buyer or seller.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linette Lopez Nov. 7, 2014, 10:18 AM

Wall Street has been bracing for a billion-dollar currency manipulation investigation that will be over in a few weeks, says The Wall Street Journal.
In the past few weeks, it seems banks have been scrambling to prepare for whatever regulators on both sides of the pond may find after a fairly boring earnings season. Performance was average to slightly below, and the total trading rout banks expected didn't turn out to be that bad.

But then the disclosures started coming.

First Citigroup revised its earnings down to $0.88 per share from $1.07 per share to add $600 million to its legal reserves.

Then JPMorgan Chase also disclosed that US and UK regulators were conducting criminal (the Department of Justice is in there) and civil probes into its Forex trading operations. Of course, it's cooperating, but it has no idea how much it could lose in such a settlement — maybe nothing, maybe $6 billion.

Finally, on Thursday after the closing bell, Bank of America followed Citi and revised its earnings down by $400 million, adding that to its legal reserves to deal with whatever comes of the probe.

So here's what we know about the investigation: Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, UBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Bank of America are all involved.

Regulators will be charging these banks with failing to stop their employees from manipulating a specific currency exchange benchmark rate. There will be transcripts of their activity (always the most interesting part).

The UK banks will take about $1.8 billion of fines for this, but regulators in the US haven't finished negotiating. The DOJ hasn't finished its civil and criminal investigations either, and those may not be done until next year.
So in the meantime, save up.

via businessinsider