Free Republic

In 1919 the major London gold dealers decided to get together in the offices of N.M. Rothschild to “fix” the price of gold each day. While this was notionally to find the clearing price at which all buying interest and all selling interest balanced the possibility for market manipulation and self-dealing is inherently systemic in such a cozy arrangement. This quaint anti-competitive procedure continues to this day..... The inescapable conclusion is that some entity or entities are deliberately suppressing the gold price between the AM Fix and the PM Fix and that this suppression is calculated to proportionately counter the...

Wal-Mart Stores backed away from steep grocery discounts in July, signaling that consumers' reprieve from food inflation since the recession may soon end. In the United States, Wal-Mart sells more groceries than any other retailer. A move away from discounts to drive sales would help other supermarkets -- such as Kroger, Supervalu and Safeway -- raise prices as costs for staples like beef, dairy and fresh produce increase.

A World Of Phony Prices And Twisted Numbers By Bill Bonner 08/04/10 Ouzilly, France – Remember our discussion of prices yesterday? Here at The Daily Reckoning, we have nothing against higher prices…and nothing against lower prices. It’s dishonest, misleading, and treacherously false prices that we don’t like. They send the wrong information. They may tell us that an item is plentiful, for example, when it is actually in short supply. They may cause us to invest our money in the belief that profit margins are increasing when they are actually shrinking. They may also induce us to expand production, when...

CNBC Guest Says Absent Plunge Protection Team Stepping In, Market Would Fall; Wien, Kernan Disgusted Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/08/2010 08:44 -0500 A highly amusing exchange occurred earlier on CNBC when guest Damon Vickers of Nine Points Capital had an unexpected moment of truthiness and turned some heads when he said that "unless the plunge protection team comes in over the next couple of days, the markets are looking very dicey here." When a disgusted Joe Kernan asks if Vickers was making a joke about the PPT, the response is "absolutely not - it's common knowledge that the government...

Market Manipulation On Display "Rarely does it get this blatant..... this ...goes on every day, but once in a while it's just "in your face." Tonight was one of those examples."

WASHINGTON — The Tea Party movement is energizing elements of the Republican Party and fanning an anti-Washington fervor, but the biggest beneficiaries in the midterm elections, pollsters and political analysts say, could be the main target of their anger: Democrats. From North Carolina and Kentucky to Colorado and Nevada, candidates backed by Tea Party activists are making strong showings in primaries and opinion polls. Some of their campaigns, however, threaten to undercut GOP efforts to attract independents and moderates, prized voting factions in the general election. “Republicans are definitely doing Democrats a favor if they nominate these Tea Party candidates,’’...

WHOA: NYP Says Federal Agents Have Launched Civil And Criminal Probes Into JPMorgan For Silver Manipulation Joe Weisenthal May. 9, 2010, 4:43 PM The New York Post has an explosive exclusive, if true: Federal agents have launched parallel criminal and civil probes of JPMorgan Chase and its trading activity in the precious metals market, The Post has learned. The probes are centering on whether or not JPMorgan, a top derivatives holder in precious metals, acted improperly to depress the price of silver, sources said. The Commodities Futures Trade Commission is looking into civil charges, and the Department of Justice's Antitrust...

Someone had to do it. So we applaud Jason Hommel of Silver Stock Report for submitting the first official complaint to the United States Department of Justice over the recent revalations of unprecedented manipulation and fraud in the silver (and gold) market. Citizen Complaint CenterAntitrust Division950 Pennsylvania Ave., NWRoom 3322Washington, DC 20530Re: Reporting Antitrust Concernshttp://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm#submitStep 1: Fully Describe Your Concern 1.  What are the names of companies, individuals, or organizations that are involved? The CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is withholding the names, with the excuse given that they cannot reveal the names, because of statute. But, a statute,...

This is only an excerpt. This article outlines six aspects of "supersuasion." 1. Simplicity ("Yes we can.") 2. Perceived self-interest (Convince 'em you care about 'em.) 3. Incongruity (not what you expect, where you expect it) 4. CONFIDENCE (You know more than they do; and everyone must know it.) 5. Empathy ("Ah feel yer pain.") 6. Humor (Disarming)

A week ago we presented the observations of TrimTabs' Charles Biderman, who laid out a logical case for why there is significant circumstantial evidence that the Fed is manipulating markets by purchasing index futures in the aftermarket: "One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy $20 billion, plus or minus, of S&P 500 stock futures each month for a year. Depending on margin levels, $20 billion per month would translate into at least $100 billion in notional buying power...This type of intervention could explain some of the unusual market action in...

Over a hundred years ago the homosexual act was considered Sodomy and it was identified as an act. It still is Sodomy. IT WAS REFERRED TO AS THE HOMOSEXUAL ACT. BUT IN THE 1960’S IT WAS THEN CONDITIONED. The condition of homosexuality was redefined as a condition rather than an act. It did not change, it was just redefined. What really happened here was while you can criticize an act and you can even say it is a criminal act, how do you criticize a condition that someone suffers with? How can you criticize the act that one commits who...

London Trader challenges CFTC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://truthingold.blogspot.com/2009...spotlight.html SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2009 A London Silver Trader Challenges The CFTC The following letter is from a London-based silver trader to CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton. I wanted to post this letter, which appeared in Friday's Midas report, for those who do not subscribe to http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/. Anyone who follows the gold and silver markets knows about the severe imbalance which has occurred for several years between the size of the short interest in gold and silver futures vs. the amount of physical gold and silver sitting in Comex warehouses. As an example, JP Morgan and...

After six years working in the laundry of a Miami hotel, Julia Rivera was thrilled when her union tapped her to become a full-time union organizer. But her excitement soon turned to outrage. Ms. Rivera said her supervisors at Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, repeatedly pressed her to reveal highly personal information, getting her to divulge that her father had sexually abused her. Later, she said, her supervisors ordered her to recount her tale of abuse again and again to workers they were trying to unionize at Tampa International Airport, convinced that Ms. Rivera’s story would move...

Check this out ... the SEIU is the sympathetic, comforting, understanding shoulder on which the oppressed bank employees (the ones with jobs!) can lean.

Zero Hedge has recently presented several declassified documents from the pre-1971 "Nixon Shock" days, that endorse the case for gold as a major historical factor in US monetary and foreign policy, as demonstrated by State Department and CIA disclosure. Gold's special status in policy and administrative decision-making was a direct factor in Nixon's choice to abolish the gold reserve at a time of an exploding budget deficit. Yet what about the days after 1971, and specifically, how did that critical "behind the scenes" organization, the Federal Reserve, perceive and manipulate gold in the post Bretton-Woods world? Was gold, freed from...

I am on the email list of a dear black friend of 20 years. He is a minister, writer and professor. He has mentored and advised me with great wisdom on numerous occasions. With me being a black conservative Republican and he a Democrat, we avoid talking politics. Since the election of Obama, my friend will talk about nothing else. He is in Baltimore. I'm in Florida. Every time he calls me, he turns the conversation into trashing all who oppose Obama's agenda. Thank God for caller ID. I received a mass email from my friend in which he vilifies...

In July, the number of unemployed persons was 14.5 million. The unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, little changed for the second consecutive month...The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million...2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in July, 709,000 more than a year earlier...Among the marginally attached, there were 796,000 discouraged workers in July, up by 335,000 over the past 12 months.

Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed,...

In June alone, the official inflation-rate was an annualized 8.4%. While there will be no U.S. “economic recovery”, I have also conceded that I fully expect the U.S. government to report positive GDP later this year. The reason for this is that the U.S. government will do the same thing it has done all this decade: lie about inflation, and thus pump-up the GDP reading. A legitimate GDP reading must be deflated for inflation, precisely to avoid confusing inflation with actual economic growth. The only reason the U.S. government couldn't engage in those lies for the two previous quarters was...

Officials accused Aleynikov of stealing codes that are used for sophisticated automated stock and commodities trading.