Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Silver closes higher in New York trading


Silver and Gold traded higher in New York trading overnight, with Silver hitting a 2012 high of over $37/oz. This level represents an approx 40% increase in the US$ price year to date.

Reasons sighted for the overnight rise were a weaker US$, which is ironic, a piece of paper that represents nothing is somehow suddenly weaker against a substance that has been money for 6,000 years, but I digress. Also S&P's relization that Greece should be rated as D, as in Duh!

In reality it doesn't matter what the group think media says, we know the truth, Silver is rarer than paper, rarer than government lies and rarer than politicians' promises, and thousands of more people are discovering this everyday.

MF Global: Crime, Comedy and the Cover-Up

Thanks to Jesse for the article

Huffington Post
MF Global: Crime, Comedy and the Cover-Up
By Janet Tavakoli
2/28/2012 5:37 am

MF Global's October 2011 bankruptcy was the eighth largest bankruptcy by assets in the United States. James Giddens, the bankruptcy trustee, issued a press release on February 6 stating that his investigation found that money from customer accounts that was supposed to be segregated was improperly used to fund MF Global's daily activities. Improper transfers of customer money occurred regularly in amounts under $50 million before MF Global's bankruptcy. MF Global wasn't caught, because it put the money back before customers knew it was missing.

On January 30, 2012 the Wall Street Journal did a hilariously bad job of reporting when its front page article stated that a "person close to the investigation" said that as a result of chaotic trading in the week before MF Global's October 31 bankruptcy, customers' money "vaporized." Money doesn't vaporize. It's true that tracing money transfers can be tedious, but that's why we call it work.

As for the Wall Street Journal's article, the editor should have made it vaporize. I was having breakfast with several traders at Chicago's East Bank Club. One trader read the passage aloud. The entire table burst out laughing. Then he got up and ceremoniously threw the paper in the trash. The entire table applauded.

Fox Business News had people in stitches when it reported that federal investigators are saying that this wasn't criminal, it's just a matter of sloppy bookkeeping.

The habitual filching of customers' funds -- even if the funds are later replaced -- goes way beyond sloppy bookkeeping. It goes way beyond bad judgment. Just because MF Global got away with it for a long time before it blew up in its face doesn't mean one can call it sloppy bookkeeping and have any reasonable person believe it. If federal investigators and law enforcement people want to make public statements like this, one should investigate corruption in their ranks. They seem to be providing undeserved excuses as a trial balloon to see if it will fly. Nice try, but it's not working.

According to the bankruptcy trustee, money was repeatedly filched from customers' accounts. That goes way beyond sloppy bookkeeping.

Senior officials of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and of MF Global's regulator, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), have already testified to Congress their belief that MF Global violated regulations -- it broke the law -- because using customers funds, money that was supposed to be in segregated accounts, to pay off MF Global's creditors or to use that money to fund MF Global's day-to-day operations is not permitted.

MF Global CEO Jon Corzine, a former head of Goldman Sachs, signed off on statements that said his internal controls were adequate. After Enron, the Sarbanes Oxley Act was meant to assure Americans that officers that signed such statements would be held accountable for their accuracy....

Read the rest here.

Iran really is going to accept payment in gold for oil

As first mentioned on this blog on 25 Jan Iran will accept Gold as payment for Oil, they are just admitting it now. Actually with the dramatic downturn in the Iranian economy they would probably trade your mother-in-law for oil if she still has all her own teeth.

From Reuters

TEHRAN, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Iran will take payment from its trading partners in gold instead of dollars, the Iranian state news agency IRNA quoted the central bank governor as saying on Tuesday. Iranian financial institutions have been hit by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union in an effort to force Tehran to halt its nuclear programme.  Significant difficulties in making dollar payments to Iranian banks have forced Iran's trading partners to look for alternative ways to settle transactions, including direct barter deals.

"In its trade transactions with other countries, Iran does not limit itself to the U.S. dollar, and the country can pay using its own currency," central bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani was quoted as saying. "If a country should so choose, it can pay in gold and we would accept that without any reservation." The sanctions include a phased ban on importing oil from Iran, which EU member states are to implement by July.

China and India, two of the largest consumers of Iranian oil, have said they will continue imports, but Japan and Korea have announced cuts to quotas following pressure from the United States.

Read more

Keiser Report: Weed Out Wall St. Crooks!

RussiaToday on Feb 28, 2012 Follow Max Keiser on Twitter: http://twitter.com/maxkeiser

In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss 'no wrongdoing' settlements, defrauding school children and a morbidly obese, bedridden Volcker Rule. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Karl Denninger of the Market-Ticker.org about rigging Libor, ruining Volcker and shorting Facebook.