Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A Tribute to the Thoughts of Another and his Friend
"Everyone knows where we have been. Let's see where we are going!" -Another
Subscribe to the Speakeasy
$150.00 USD for 6 months
Paypal Account Is NOT Required - Just email me at fofoamail [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any problems
BullionStar.com (Singapore)
BullionStar.co.nz (NZ) BullionStar.com/?r=1025 (Shareable link)
Donate
Email Contact Info:
If you'd like to read more…
- It all starts here!
- Then here
- Here's more
- And more
- Some highlights
- Linkable ANOTHER (THOUGHTS!)
- Linkable Gold Trail
- Linkable regular forum 1998-2007
- Alternate regular forum archive
- Linkable Kitco forum 1997-1999
- Red Baron's LBMA EXPOSÉ
- AFTER (THOUGHTS!) 1-2 PDF
- AFTER (THOUGHTS!) 3-5 PDF
- My blog in portable PDFs
- Glossary of some acronyms I use
- POG for buyers and pot watchers
Total Pageviews
Evil gold hoarders, jerks, time misallocators and brainwashed cult members:
Disclaimer
The above is presented for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Under no circumstances should it be mistaken for professional investment advice, nor is it at all intended to be taken as such. The commentary and other contents simply reflect the opinion of the author alone on the current and future status of the markets and various economies. It is subject to error and change without notice. The presence of a link to a website does not indicate approval or endorsement of that web site or any services, products, or opinions that may be offered by them.
32 comments:
Let me be the first to say it FOFOA... you carry a message much stronger than a one-year old. ;)
Congratulations! It's a pleasure reading, educating, and becoming educated on your blog.
Congrats. Yours is an informed, thoughtful and educational blog. I have forwarded it to several friends and all of my family.
Keep up the good work. TL
ditto on the above. I think the gift for the one year anniversary is gold... :-)
Count me in - you have been very productive and very effective in your short time. I found you through ECONOMICROT and am grateful to both of you. I look forward to your take as this process (d)evolves.
My new favourite site for a different spin on economics and the gold market. Happy Birthday.
Congratulations from Sweden.
FOFOA,
Congratulations! Keep up the good work?
Side note: sometimes I do not understand Jim Sinclair:
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Green shoot in a consumer economy? No!
Banks Cut Credit for 58M Card Holders in 1 Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 20, 2009
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Credit card companies slashed limits for an estimated 58 million card holders in the 12 months ended in April, even though a high percentage had good credit scores when their limits were cut.
Isn't this the market at work? I would say this is a very positive development. However, according to Sinclair bailing out banks is negative, but banks taking measures to cut back the immense sum of credit money is also negative?
FOFOA,
Congratulations on the search for truth
Thank YOU, dearest FOFOA.
From Belgium.
B.
Congratulations!
Thanks for all you do here on this site. Congrats on one year.
Generally I hate ALL aniversaries and never give a damn on them, but this one being a very exceptional I even congratulate the genitor!
Keep growing and my hopes that the 18th would give us reasons to exult!
Fauvi
FOFOA,
Been watching the markets this am and it strikes me that as virtually everything rallies, the only thing not moving is gold. I keep thinking of operation twist! is the notion that G Brown struck a deal with the Scot free bomber to get access to oil a canary in the coal mine?
If you were the Fed/treasury, and you assessed the situation would you not want the equity markets to go up, bond rates to remian low and ggold to drift sideways in accumulation mode? Seems almost Golidlocks - how ironic. Indeed, the true deception is gold flows or so it would seem. To your point on consfiscation, would not the ideal situation be the Fed prints money which costs them 0 then uses that money to deploy into the super real: gold. But how to do it when such an operation would mean a catastrophic spike in price? Enter the paper bullion banks to sell the forward (re fekete).
I don;t think the world is fooled in the least as the demand fo physical grows ever stronger. The fantastic rise in risk assets and no corrresponding move down in gold says it all.
Operation twist was a failure.
Thank you all for the very kind words! It is truly my pleasure to write this blog and am blessed to have anyone who wants to read it. I can hardly believe it has been a year. I wonder if that is somehow significant. I started this blog at a time when I was facing a big decision about what to do with my remaining stocks. Luckily I decided to sell them all just days before the market crashed in September. Ever since that day I have had a sense of peace within my soul because of that decision. Before that day I was filled with an almost unbearable angst, for months on end. This blog has been a most useful outlet for my thoughts and observations since then. And I greatly appreciate all of the feedback I receive.
So thank you all for participating in my personal post-traumatic-stress therapy! :)
I can only hope that we have led others to a peaceful financial understanding as well!
S, good observations. Jesse has a great line in a post today: "At what point does the confidence game become a con game? I would submit that it is when the Fed and Treasury purposely intervene in markets, beyond their normal interest rate targeting, and statistics and spread disinformation to manage perception."
It is a good read.
Martijn,
Jim's comment is a little tongue in cheek. If you are the MSM looking for "green shoots" in a consumer-credit-driven economy, the disappearance of 58 million people's credit limit is certainly not one.
Of course we (and Jim) know this is a step in the right direction toward healing the economic state of affairs. But that still doesn't make it a "green shoot".
Jim is not being critical of the banks for cutting credit. He is making fun of the hunt for "green shoots", and he is making the point that the consumer economy is still collapsing... there are no "green shoots"! Hope this clears up your confusion.
Sincerely,
FOFOA
" unbearable angst " :
It is thanks to the hyper sophisticated program-trading-system that the real market forces can't do their normal/natural job,...and that the absolute majority of FI participants remain hopefull for an impossibele recovery from the Systemic Crisis.
(crescendo systemic global imbalances)
They will unfortunately panic when it is too late. And we are marginalized for simply trying to evidence this.
B.
Hello Belgian,
There are a lot of people who thought they were millionaires and have come to find out they are not. Right now they are confused by this discovery, and hoping it will reverse. But as confusion turns to panic for a second time during the next market disruption, this particular demographic group will have a catastrophic and permantent impact on the notion of structured paper wealth. In my humble opinion.
But there is still a miracle vaccine availiable to them, only for a limited time. And that is why we are here. We are like the WHO for the financial pandemic. Well, maybe not quite like the WHO.
Sincerely,
FOFOA
"There was a very unusual PM market action today. We are 2 days away from the SEP Options expiry which occurs on 8/26. Option expiry always has the corrupt Cartel hammering down the metals to try to take Call options out of the money. But today’s action was bizarre in that it happened 30 minutes before the COMEX close instead of the usual bashing on the COMEX open. On a casual look this appears to be the same old market manipulation but there is something brewing. The London fixes came in strong indicating high physical take-off (AM Fix $953.75 PM Fix $951.50). On Friday I brought to your attention that AUG and SEP gold closed at exactly $953.2. In other words ZERO contango! There was only 40 cents of contango between AUG and OCT gold. Today AUG and SEP gold closed at exactly $942.3 which again is ZERO contango. The contango between AUG and OCT gold narrowed to just 10 cents from an amazingly thin 40 cents contango on Friday. Gold is again within a gnat’s whisker of going into backwardation. This is a very significant development and flies in the face of today’s take down of the price. The two consecutive closes of zero contango show that Friday’s close was not an aberration. On the contrary, this is indicating there is a growing physical shortage. It looks to me that today’s bizarre attack (even by Cartel standards) smacks of real desperation.
A disappearing contango in gold is no trivial matter. Stay tuned, this could take many pundits by surprise.
Cheers
Adrian"
Must (absolutely) read - SDR
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KH25Dj05.html
B.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/08/25/68491/the-great-commodity-etf-unwind/
Is it chnce that the commodity ETF route is being shut down?
@FOFOA,
May you have many Happy Anniversaries!
It is interesting to see how your blog has grown. It has always been that when the truth is spoken a solid foundation of strength forms. Your blog has strength.
Keep up the good work and reports it as you understand the truth. What resonates with you will do the same with more readers.
Good day.
Congratulations BRO!!! It's been great getting to know you.
Sincerely,
Justin_n_IL
Congratulations on your 1st year!
I'm a newbie to your neighborhood but look forward to making a few friends. I sure wish I had the money to invest in some gold. Crap.
Got a beer?
Just kidding.
I believe I have met a few of your friends from years past.RI ring a bell anyone?
Ender led me here via Silver Bear.
Justin and I go way back... Hi Justin!!
but that is a story for another time.
Ummmmm.
Oh, and forgive me for being forward as a new guest but I have to ask Ender in the current economic/political/religious climate of the last 10 years if he really believe the US Government (aka: The Fed) who owns the most advanced military and strategic placements of arsenals in the world would give three hoots for being...logical?
Lately I've been feeling I'm in a 'B' rated horror flick with Groucho Marx.
Maybe that's why a cold beer tastes so good lately in front of people like Justin_in_IL.
Long time no see Kevin. I'll be up in your old home town on the 12th and 13th. Got tix for U2 on the 13th.
Justin_n_IL
You know Kevin, not all people who read the scriptures are fakes or dillusional. I'm level headed and I do not attend any church do to there blatantly religiosity. I don't go dance around the modern day golden calf on Sunday's.
Speaking of drinking beer I do myself from time to time. It's not what a man consumes that defiles him, rather it's what comes out of his heart. It's all about the heart Kev. But enough about all of that.
Sorry for hijacking your b-day party FOFOA:)
Good to see you again too Justin, and tempting the patience of our host I would absolutely agree with the words you have spoken.
However, as in all spoken language there are many divergances from what the speakers might say and their many ultimate points of that reality which can lead to myopic and dangerous non-rational precepts based on fear and control.
Have you ever watched "The Village"?
Have fun @ the U2 Concert!
TY and always fun at the U2 concerts:)
Justin_n_IL
I don't remember how I found your blog, but it is excellent in it's original thought process.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
Mike in AZ
FOFOA,
Stumled across this conspiracy piece and peake dmy interest, namely the note about barricks hedge position which is a rolling hedge that is priced int he $280/oz range dorf soemthing like 9-10m oz. This author suggests they just created that gold. Lots of interesting speculation - at least footnioted - but what stikes me as odd is the discussion of the black horde of gold - per this high end 280K tonnes would equate to approx 100 yrs of production at current rates. Just seems outlandishly high even if there were truth to the Marcos stories.
Would be curious about your take on the Project Hammer scenarios, to the extend you have heard them.
The fact that the Us govt is increasing its deficit knowing that the RoW has to know that it is bad debt just seems to obvious.
As for gold: could it be that simple and logicical knowing this? What we don;t know is what the other central bank cards are? we can only guess, but the paper maeks for interesting readi9ng if nothign more. (disclosure googled something and it popped up).
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9421535/Collateral-Damage-Part-2-The-Subprime-Crisis-and-the-Terrorist-Attacks-on-September-11-200126122008
Hello S,
While I know that there are plenty of monetary and financial shenanigans that go on, the fundamental premise AND conclusion to be drawn from these types of stories just doesn't pass the sniff test with me. There are several iterations of this story of massive stockpiles of gold and complex hidden underworld treaties with commonly known historical villains that play out just under the surface of our visible world without ever being exposed to the light of day throughout all of history. And while I have specific problems with the embedded bias in the details of each story, I just can't even get past the "black" gold. I think your's is the 5th one that has been posted on this blog for me to comment on. And I'll tell you, none of them are short and simple!
I view these kinds of anti-Ockham stories as intellectual Cheez-Its. They are delicious in the sense that they explain a very messy chain of events perfectly, but they make you intellectually fat and lazy. More importantly, you can't believe in just one. They all require belief in one level of hidden conspiracy after another, spanning generations, and greatly lowering the probability that they represent a healthy and true description of reality.
Here are a couple snips from Randy on USAGold that I agree with:
"it remains my objective view that such tall tales must have long bodies and necks because they certainly have no evolutionary (historical) legs to support them."
"FOA,
In days past, when I finally chose to weigh in on the fanciful debate over the (un)likelihood of copious amounts of stockpiled "black gold" in existence in bunkers somewhere, I tried to put forth a focus on two elements that would satisfy any farmer regarding the veracity of such claims. (Why a farmer? It has been my experience that the majority of farmers are endowed with common sense, and more importantly, they do not hesitate to use it!). I talked against the presence of massive black gold stockpiles due to 1) the many technical/logistical obstacles which do not support such levels of production in human history, and 2) the socio-political-economic realities of our ancestors which would not be conducive to the permanent suppression of any such easily and secretly mined wealth against exposure to the light of day--implying that the ancient chain of owners ALL denied themselves the improved life that would have come from spending what it was they held..."money". Not likely.
In conjunction with your #56, I hope that readers of your latest message come away with a clearer sense of the realities of point #2....that gold would not sit idle or hidden in those days if it could (and it COULD!) be used to purchase a better lifestyle. Truly, while human motivations remain similar through time, the socio-economic environment that we shape for ourselves has evolved, and with it, so too has evolved changes in our behaviors as guided by our unchanged human-creature motivations."
It is certainly tempting in this upside-down world to turn to complex theories and stories that seem to tie everything neatly together while totally ignoring the common recorded history. But there is a problematic, probabilistic difference, by orders of magnitude, between theories that explain megatrends driven by human traits and known motivations, and those theories which derive from many levels of assumptions taken from outside of the visible, common world.
In the case of your article, note that the first two footnotes refer to the Seagraves. The "poor" reviews of the Seagraves on Amazon.com are enlightening as to the solidity of this foundation it is built upon.
Sincerely,
FOFOA
FOFOA,
Agree it is a stretch to belive the "string theory" - however, the link on zerohedge disucssing the Fed washing to capital accountmof agency and swappiong for treasury is perfectly consisitent with the Fed's intent to both protect the auction priocess and their funding window. Are you shocked that the Fed has appealed the FOIA disclosure and is seeking a stay?
Post a Comment
Comments are set on moderate, so they may or may not get through.