The income tax should be 0%, just as it was for the first 137 years of American history. So tax cuts across the board are always a welcome development. However, tax cuts are just part of the big picture. What we need is a total cut in government's size and scope. Unfortunately, President Trump is not going in that direction.
News reports this week indicated that the Bank of Nova Scotia (ScotiaBank), Canada’s third largest bank, had put its precious metals operation, ScotiaMocatta, up for sale. Various sources said the unit had been for sale for a year or so and it was thought or hoped that Chinese interests might buy the business. It was also reported that the Bank of Nova Scotia would shrink the unit if no buyer could be found. The impetus for the sale was said to be a scandal involving smuggled gold from South America to the US. Somewhat ironic, and interesting, was that the sale “listing” agent was none other than JPMorgan.
I believe there is more to this story than meets the eye and it involves the ongoing gold and silver price manipulation. About the only thing I find suspect in the news accounts is the motive for the sale. I was aware of the smuggling story, but ScotiaMocatta didn’t seem particularly exposed in this matter. I accept that the unit is up for sale, just not the motivation behind the sale. If my reasoning is correct, this could be a very significant development in the ongoing silver and gold price manipulation on the COMEX; on a par with JPMorgan taking over Bear Stearns in March 2008; which, in my opinion, was the most significant event in the silver market in decades.
Truth be told, I could never figure out why a leading Canadian bank would even want to buy and run a business not remotely in keeping with its core banking businesses – it was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. The Bank of Nova Scotia has roughly 90,000 employees, whereas the ScotiaMocatta unit has less than 200 employees and accounts for a tiny fraction of the bank’s $2 billion quarterly profits.
I think the Bank of Nova Scotia’s real motivation for seeking to offload its ScotiaMocatta precious metals unit after 20 years of ownership is liability. It’s the fear of what is to become of a major short seller in silver (and gold) on the COMEX. By every count, ScotiaMocatta is one of the 7 potential dead men walking who hold large concentrated short positions. It’s not some alleged smuggling ring that is motivating the bank to dump the unit. The only wonder is what took the bank so long to come to this conclusion.
When it comes to the 8 largest concentrated shorts in COMEX silver and gold, JPMorgan, alone, is protected against financial ruin whenever silver prices explode due to its massive physical silver position. I see no evidence that any other entity has accumulated enough physical silver. Because JPM was so far ahead of the pack in recognizing that silver will soar in the future and began buying as much as it could starting six and a half years ago, it’s too late for the 7 others to jump onto the buy side now. That’s because such buying would set off a price spiral – about the very last thing a big short would want. JPMorgan has played this masterfully.
The best thing the Bank of Nova Scotia could hope to achieve now is to unload the problem on someone else, say an unsuspecting Chinese entity. The problem is that you can’t go from being, most likely, the 2nd largest silver short on the COMEX for years running, to suddenly closing out your shorts or getting long in a flash. You can’t just blink your eyes or click your ruby slippers and have the short position closed out – you must buy back the position or deliver physical metal, no easy task when you are talking perhaps upwards of 75 million ounces they hold short in COMEX silver futures (15,000 contracts). And just in case anyone is wondering – there is also no way that the Bank of Nova Scotia could ever admit to this and hope to unload the unit on anyone else. Hence, the BS smuggling cover story.
As to what has finally awoken ScotiaBank to the potential liability inherent in being a large short seller in silver and gold, there a number of explanations. Back in the summer of 2016, the open and unrealized losses to the 8 largest shorts in COMEX gold and silver combined amounted to $4 billion. By the end of last year, the 8 big shorts had succeeded in rigging gold and silver prices lower and with the price decline, the $4 billion open loss was extinguished. Still, at the gold and silver price highs of 2016, the $4 billion open loss had to be dealt with by the 8 big shorts. This meant that the unrealized loss had to be deposited with the clearing house by all shorts who were underwater, including the 8 big shorts (of which ScotiaMocatta was a card-carrying member).
This meant that ScotiaMocatta had to have deposited anywhere from $500 million to $750 million in unexpected margin calls in the summer of 2016, probably the most ever. Where did the margin money come from? In ScotiaMocatta’s case, from the parent bank. But since the demands for margin were so outside the bounds of what the parent bank was used to providing to its precious metals unit, it had to raise some eyebrows at the Bank of Nova Scotia. Large bank CFO’s and treasury officials tend to become concerned when they are pressed for sudden demands for many hundreds of millions of dollars. There is no way that the chief financial officer for ScotiaBank didn’t investigate why the ScotiaMocatta unit was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars. That person would have to ask what happens if prices continue to rise. Therefore, the bank came to realize what a potentially ruinous liability its precious metals unit was. Not only does the timeline fit regarding how long the unit has been up for sale, but I’m sure the parent bank came to appreciate the regulatory and general liability risk of being found to have manipulated the price of gold and silver for many years.
Only time will tell, but ScotiaBank trying to slip out the back wouldn’t seem to strengthen the dominant hand of the 8 big shorts in COMEX silver and gold. And it is upon the 8 big COMEX shorts that the price manipulation has always been based. I’ll make it simple – without the concentrated short position of the 4 and 8 largest traders in COMEX silver and gold, no manipulation would be possible. So any time a whiff of distress or disunity emerges from the big 8, it’s wise to sit up and take notice. Anything that might change how the real game has been played is, by definition, a potential game changer.
Hugo Salinas Price Interview, October 14, 2017, in Mexican TV Channel ADN40, speaking about his campaign to introduce the Libertad One Silver Ounce into circulation, as a vehicle for savings of the common folk.
In this video, Luke Rudkowski of "We Are Change" gives you the latest breaking news on the privatization of the U.S economic stock market, with the latest trends and analysis from Max Keiser. We also get into the wealth income gap, bitcoin, encryption and much more.
Dr. Ron Paul discusses his friend Murray Rothbard on liberty and honest money.
Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) was just one man with a typewriter, but he inspired a world-wide renewal in the scholarship of liberty.
He speaks about how the idea of liberty is rising once again and how people are experiencing a massive shift in ideologies. In the end, liberty will win, as it always has throughout history.
Civil society organizations in Catalonia call for a mass withdrawal of money from bank ATMs on Friday at 8am in order to pressure the Spanish government. Organizers don't especify how much money should be taken out nor what to do with it.
The action targets the five main banks in Catalonia: Caixa Bank, Sabadell, Bankia, BBVA and Santander. Organizers call on clients of Caixa Bank and Sabadell to show their disagreement with the banks' recent decision to move their headquarters out of Catalonia due to the escalating political crisis between governments in Barcelona and Madrid.
This is the first "direct and peaceful" action organized by Crida per la Democràcia (Call for Democracy). This is an umbrella group which includes among others the two main pro-independence organizations in Catalonia: the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural.
The mass withdrawal is also aimed at condemning the imprisonment of ANC and Òmnium presidents, Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart, held in custody on sedition charges since Monday.
In this episode of the Keiser Report from Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, Max and Stacy discuss artificial intelligence - aka AI - as the Iron Horse Apocalypse of the modern social media man. The two recall their recent experience interacting with a real self-driving car and the car's human operating system. They also discuss corruption, shakedowns and more financial news.
As the mainstream media continues to obsess over $100,000 worth Facebook ads allegedly purchased by Russian spies in 2016 seeking to throw the presidential election, we're almost certain they'll ignore the much larger Russian bombshell dropped today in the form of newly released FBI documents that reveal for the very first time that the Obama administration was well aware of illegal bribery, extortion and money laundering schemes being conducted by the Russians to get a foothold in the atomic energy business in the U.S. before approving a deal that handed them 20% of America's uranium reserves...and resulted in a windfall of donations to the Clinton Foundation.
As we pointed out last summer when Peter Schweizer first released his feature documentary Clinton Cash, the Uranium One deal, as approved by the Obama Administration, netted the Clintons and their Clinton Foundation millions of dollars in donations and 'speaking fees' from Uranium One shareholders and other Russian entities.
Russian Purchase of US Uranium Assets in Return for $145mm in Contributions to the Clinton Foundation - Bill and Hillary Clinton assisted a Canadian financier, Frank Giustra, and his company, Uranium One, in the acquisition of uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan and the United States. Subsequently, the Russian government sought to purchase Uranium One but required approval from the Obama administration given the strategic importance of the uranium assets. In the run-up to the approval of the deal by the State Department, nine shareholders of Uranium One just happened to make $145mm in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Moreover, the New Yorker confirmed that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, with ties to the Kremlin, around the same time. Needless to say, the State Department approved the deal giving Russia ownership of 20% of U.S. uranium assets
Now, thanks to newly released affidavits from a case that landed one of the Russian co-conspirators, Vadim Mikerin, in jail, we learn that not only was the Obama administration aware the Russians' illegal acts in the U.S. but it may have also been fully aware that "Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow." Per The Hill:
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
Of course, when Schweizer's book first made Uranium One a political hot topic in 2015, both the Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions and insisted there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for anyone to oppose the deal. That said, we now know that the FBI was aware of wrongdoing going back to at least April 2009 even though the deal wasn't approved until October 2010.
But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI in fact had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.
The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.
In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.
And guess who ran the FBI's investigation into this particular Russian plot? As The Hill notes, the Mikerin probe began in 2009 under Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, and ended in late 2015 under the controversial, former FBI Director James Comey who was relieved of his duties by President Trump...
Economist Michael Pento says even though the stock market has made huge gains in 2017, don’t expect this to continue. Pento contends, “Year-over-year growth for the third quarter (Q3) is just 2.9%. . . . So, you have no more earnings growth. It’s very miniscule. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) according to the New York Fed for Q3, it’s 1.8%. If you look at the Atlanta Fed, it’s just a little bit above 2%. So, you are still stuck in that 2% range.
There’s no real growth in GDP and no real growth in earnings. The only thing you have left (holding up the markets) is central banks, and that game is ending. You have central banks selling when there is a high risk of nuclear war, WWIII, stocks are trading at all-time record highs and 138% total market cap to GDP when the average is 50%. This is crazy. There is no way you can justify the level of stock prices without massive and unrelenting money printing, which is coming to an end.”
On gold, Pento says, “You’ve got to have 10% physical gold in your liquid net worth. It has to be physical gold that you possess directly. I cannot stress that enough. . . . I like all precious metals. They are going to be in a massive and unprecedented bull market sometime in 2018.”
Though Comex metal "delivery" remains a sham and circle jerk where The Banks simply shuffle paper warehouse receipts and warrants, we thought the latest totals for September were noteworthy enough to bring them to your attention.
Again, we've written about this on countless occasions and this post is not meant to imply that "the Comex is about to break" or that "there is a run on The Banks". Instead, September saw the continuation of two trends of which you need to be aware. Comex "deliveries" are up dramatically in 2017 and JPM continues to stand down.
First, take a look at the historical pattern of "deliveries" during the so-called "delivery months" of March, May, July, September and December. Below is a summary of the "delivery" activity for 2015:
The one way we've always quantified "deliveries" here at TFMR is to consider the total amount of stated "deliveries" at the end of each month versus the total number of contracts that had been left open and allegedly "standing for delivery" at the beginning of the process. For 2015, it looked like this:
As you can see, the only outlier in 2015 was the month of July where nearly 1,000 additional contracts materialized requesting immediate "delivery". Other than that, it was a rather orderly process.
Now, let's look at the summaries for 2016.
Again, a rather mundane year of silver "deliveries" with one exception. This time, the month of December saw an "oversubscription". Where Jul15 had seen "deliveries" exceed standing by 938 contracts, Dec16 saw the same exception to the tune of 924 contracts. Other than that, it was another somewhat orderly year.
So let's move on to consider the "delivery" action in 2017 to see if anything unusual is taking place:
Well now. This is beginning to look a bit different, isn't it? Go back up and review the data for 2015 and 2016. Note that only one month in five ever shows a "delivery" total in excess of the amount of contracts still open before First Notice Day. And now, if we include last December, we've seen this occur in four of the past five months with the most recent "delivery month" of September seeing the largest percentage "oversubscription" yet at 160.2%
And when we look at it in absolute terms, the "deliveries" for last month get even more interesting. Note that there were 4,103 contracts still open when the contract went off the board on August 30. At 5,000 ounces per contract, that's a total potential "delivery" obligation of 20,515,000 ounces of silver or about 638 metric tonnes. By the end of the month, the Comex had actually "delivered" 6,575 contracts for 32,875,000 ounces of silver or about 1023 metric tonnes.
So, what's the deal here? Why the sudden rush in 2017 to jump the queue and take immediate "delivery" instead of simply waiting until the next "delivery month"? Could it indicate wholesale physical tightness? Could it indicate a lack of trust amongst The Banks? Could it indicate absolutely nothing?
