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Gold and Silver • Update to the Update: The Attack on Gold — Paul Craig Robert
Update to the Update: The Attack on Gold — Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/04 … g-roberts/
April 16, 2013 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: gold, | Print This Article
Tuesday, April 16. The orchestrated attack on bullion in the paper gold market took the spot prices of gold and silver down on Friday and Monday, but actual physical purchases rose during this period. The sales were of paper claims, not of real metal.
The demand for physical possession of bullion rose so strongly that large wholesalers such as www.tulving.com and large retailers such as Gainesville Coins reported sold out items. Also, dealers raised the premiums above the spot price that is charged for coins. From Friday to Monday the premium on Silver Eagles at the large online retailer, Gainesville Coins, rose from $3.75 to $5.99 above the spot price of silver. The percentage increase in premium was larger than the percentage decline in the silver price. Thus, the price of a silver one Troy ounce coin did not drop despite the drop in the spot price. Today (April 16) the price of a silver eagle purchased with a credit card from retailer Gainesville Coins is $30.36. You would never know that the market had fallen out.
Today (Tuesday, April 16) Tulving reported 29% of its bar and coin bullion categories sold out and had almost no silver coin stock. The premium over spot on new gold eagles was $63.95. At large online retailers the premium was $71. Gainesville Coins has no silver Buffalos and lists shipment of orders to commence when coins are available, estimated to be May 10.
What I am reporting are facts, not a theory. We have just had two days of massive sales of paper claims on bullion, but during these days when the price of gold and silver collapsed under short sales, it was difficult to get your hands on the metal itself. On telephone orders you wait in long queues to place an order and are told that delivery awaits availability.
Listening to the media and to academic economists such as Paul Krugman, you would think no one any longer wants gold and silver. But try getting your hands on some.
The physical bullion market, gold especially, is dominated by Asians. Americans are a minor player. Most Americans still believe in the almighty dollar, but few Asians do. The Chinese tomorrow would dump their two trillion of US dollar-denominated assets and purchase gold, except that the action would drive down the dollar and drive up the gold price. So, unlike the orchestrated attack on gold, China plays a slow hand, using the orchestrated attack on gold to acquire the metal at lower prices.
As I understand it, the open interest or future contracts on COMEX greatly exceed the bullion available for delivery. This is a paper market mainly settled in cash, not by taking delivery. If the contracts had to be settled in bullion instead of cash, the COMEX would fail.
One advantage of growing old is that one gains perspective. I remember when gold was $35 an ounce and silver $1 an ounce. If memory serves, until sometimes in the 1960s, a person could still take a paper dollar to a bank and be given a silver dollar. There were $1 dollar and $5 dollar silver certificates (paper money) that circulated along with Federal Reserve currency. At that time banks did not differentiate. A dollar was a dollar. Silver certificates today have collectors’s value, but the Federal Reserve currency does not.
If memory serves, sometimes after 1966 if a person presented a silver certificate to a Federal Reserve Bank, he received one or five ounces or raw silver in return depending on the denomination of the certificate, which looked like a Federal Reserve note except it said Silver Certificate. I have some of these envelopes of little pieces of silver.
When silver was taken out of US coins in the 1960s and copper was taken out of the US penny in the early 1980s, despite my opposition as Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy, all real constraints on fiat money were removed.
Today we see the Fed protecting its protection of “banks too big to fail” with low interest rates by creating enormous sums of money in order to purchase both Treasury bonds and mortgage backed derivatives.
These Fed purchasers are at the expense of savers and CD and bond purchasers who receive a negative real rate of interest.
Now, to protect its bank rescue policy, the Fed is attempting to drive down the price of bullion, thus depriving Americans of any way of protecting their life savings from the inflation that the Fed’s money printing will ultimately cause.
Save a handful of corrupt banks, screw the American public–that is the Fed’s policy.
Like almost every other American institution, the Fed represents the mega-rich.
Anyone with open eyes can see that it is impossible for the US dollar to maintain its current exchange value and role as world money when its supply is being increased by $1,000 billion per year while the world is ceasing to use the dollar for international payments.
The attack on gold is a desperate attempt to protect the US dollar from the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing. But the attack on bullion has apparently failed. The price was driven down, but the demand for physical possession has hit new highs.
What is it that we really know? What have we learned since the Clinton regime?
We have learned that integrity is rare in the US government, in the justice system, and in the financial sector. Whatever integrity one can find in these arenas wouldn’t amount to one ounce of gold.
Americans live in a rigged system in which propaganda determines the public’s awareness and consciousness. Americans, or most of them, live in the Matrix.
Since the end of WWII, most foreign governments have been in the habit of going along with Washington. Only in the aftermath of Washington’s phony wars based on lies and phony economy based on rigged statistics is the rest of the world beginning to realize that Washington is a destabilizing force.
Chavez, the recently deceased leader of Venezuela made the point most powerfully when he spoke at the UN. Standing at the podium in the General Assembly, he said that “Satan himself stood here yesterday speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.” He was speaking of George W. Bush, and the entire assembly knew it.
The Russian leader, Putin, speaking of Washington, has declared that we know what comrade wolf is up to.
The Chinese can see the new military bases that stupid Washington is building in the Chinese area of influence.
A country whose currency is being abandoned as the means of international settlement, not only by the BRICS but also by puppet states such as Australia and Japan, has reached the point of absurdity when it tries to eliminate bullion as a refuge against the depreciating dollar.
The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury using their dependent bullion banks, every one of which would be busted if interest rates were not rigged by the Federal Reserve, have used leverage in the paper market to drive down the prices of gold and silver; yet, purchases of physical bullion are outrunning supplies.
What we are witnessing is the failure of a policy of financial corruption.
Integrity is a scarce commodity in the US government. Try to find much of it. Demonstrating a rare example of integrity, Brooksley Born resigned as head of the Federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, because the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasury secretary, and the SEC chairman prevented her from during her statutory duty and regulating over the counter derivatives. The three morons who prevented her from doing her duty caused the financial collapse.
Integrity is almost non-existent in the US justice system.
Integrity is totally non-existent in the US financial system. As Michael Hudson has proven, the financialization of the economy has destroyed the economy.
With dollars, and now with Washington’s demand Japanese yen and European euros being printed in profusion, where can people put their money, at least those who still have some?
Can they put it in bonds when the Federal Reserve is monetizing debt at $1,000 billion annually and real interest rates are negative?
Can they put it in stocks that are pumped up by banks speculating with the Fed’s money while retail sales, labor force participation, and consumer incomes fall?
Safety can only be found in gold and silver, traditional, historical money that cannot be inflated.This is why bullion is under attack by Washington.
Readers ask me what they can do to protect themselves and where can they go to make gold and silver purchases.
I am not a registered financial advisor. I do not provide financial advice.
Every person must make their own decision. All I can do is to provide information, which is not guaranteed to be correct.
There are various simple options in contrast with the more demanding options of the professional trader. A person can accumulate gold and silver coins and keep them in a home safe or bury them on the property. A person can purchase shares of the Central Fund of Canada which convey ownership in a company that owns gold and silver bullion in a vault in Canada. A person can put money under management with companies that have a strong component of gold, such as Golden Returns Capital LLC whose gold depository is in the US.
Or you can decide to go with William S. Kaye (wskaye@pacgrp.com) whose depository is in Hong Kong.
There is GoldMoney, a Channel Islands based depository firm with storage vaults in London, Switzerland and Asia, and there is GoldSwitzerland, a Swiss company with its storage vault in Switzerland.
If you want a reading on whether physical gold is being sold or merely paper shorts, subscribe to John Brimelow brimelowgoldjottings@gmail.com
This list is not exhaustive. Protecting wealth can be harder than acquiring wealth. This is especially true for the middle class. The super rich can lose hundreds of millions of dollars and still be rich.
Gold and silver investments are not my speciality. I am an economist. I am aware that the US media is a propaganda organization, not a purveyor of truth. Currently the US is creating 1,000 billion dollars annually, but the demand for dollars is not growing with the supply.
Therefore, the exchange value of the dollar is at risk. A high and rising dollar price of bullion is an indication that the exchange value of the dollar with regard to other currencies is too high.
To protect the dollar from its money printing practice, the Fed has used naked shorts, its bullion bank dependents, and the presstitute media to drive down the gold price in the paper market, essentially an unreal market not inhabited by purchasers of physical metal. If the dollar’s exchange value takes a visible hit, import prices will rise, and the Fed will lose control over interest rates.
Meanwhile the demand for bullion possession rises.
The latest disinformation being put out is that bullion dealers, faced with the collapse of bullion prices, are afraid of the risk of purchasing bullion to sell to the public. They are going out of business and not replenishing their stocks. Gold and silver bullion is not available, because bullion dealers are afraid to stock the metals.
Little doubt that Americans who believe every fairy tale “their” government tells them will believe this one too. But those who don’t will observe the long lines waiting to purchase physical metal, not paper claims, and continue to load up on bullion.
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Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:49 am
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Other • DHS Insider update: It has begun
Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design
DHS Insider update: It has begun
- Doug Hagmann Monday, March 18, 2013
Much like my high-level source within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined in a series of interviews beginning last year, the orchestrated collapse of the U.S. dollar and the entire world’s economic system has begun. The first shots in a global economic take-over were fired in Cyprus as my esteemed colleague and founding editor of Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod laid out in frank detail in her column yesterday and her follow up today.
Please read it and heed her advice, or suffer the consequences of your own normalcy bias that such an event will not happen in the United States, Canada, or from wherever you might be reading this. It will, and the plan appears to be on schedule for a shot across the bow later this spring here in the West, with a more aggressive take-over starting sometime this fall, according to my source.
The Plan
To those needing a quick refresher, the plan is quite simple and can be summarized by the Clinton-era quip attributed to political strategist James Carville, “the economy, stupid” and the June 9, 2010 statement by former Obama czar Van Jones, Socialist extraordinaire, “top down, bottom up, inside out.” It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the “middle class” will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus.
Based on the events in Cyprus, it should be quite clear to even the most vocal critic of the legitimacy of the information provided to me by my source within the DHS as published on this web site is no longer at issue. The U.S. dollar, the backbone of world currencies and the proverbial firewall preventing the erosion of our national sovereignty, is the ultimate target of a takedown by the global banking interests controlled by a handful of banks and families of the “royal elite.”
The plan for a global currency or a one world economic order is a matter that transcends political parties. Those who continue to argue in the Republican-Democrat meme are doing nothing more than providing entertainment to distract people from the real issue, that of the global elite versus the rest of us. The top of the pyramid in this Ponzi scheme is filled with members of both U.S. political parties who are systematically pillaging us and our future generations into financial debt, bondage and slavery. It is a plan that has been in the works for centuries. The problem, however, is that we have been conditioned not to think that big. Yet, the lie is that big.
The parties
Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design. The occupancy of Barack Hussein Obama as the putative President of the United States was a plan in the making long ago, to usher in this oppressive system where we will be left at the mercy of the global ruling class. It is not by accident that we have been prevented from knowing exactly who this man is, from the controversy of his birth records to his college transcripts and even his social security number. Contrary to what the state-controlled media wants you to believe, these questions have never been answered with any measure of authenticity.
For example, does anyone honestly believe that it is merely a coincidence that Obama’s alleged mother, Stanley Ann Dunham-Soetoro, just happened to work with Timothy Geithner’s father, Peter Geithner, at the Ford Foundation in Indonesia? Is it reasonable to believe that the Republican party had no knowledge of the background of Barack Hussein Obama? Yet not one word from the Republican establishment as they not only watched, but facilitated the takeover of the United States from within. As I’ve written before, our nation is a captured operation.
The plan was set into motion long ago, stemming back to the founding of the United States and the temporary resistance to the central banking system. In 1913, the creation of the Federal Reserve set the countdown clock in motion for the complete subjugation of the United States to the interests of the global bankers and the global elite. The secret supra-governmental cabals such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission worked behind the scenes, under the cover provided by the complicit media, to bring us to this point in history. Perpetual wars were induced to occupy the masses while the chess pieces were placed into their current positions. We are now about to pay the price for our inability or unwillingness to confront the establishment and incremental advancements leading to our own demise.
DHS source: Everything is not “coming up roses”
According to the most recent information provided to me from my source within the Department of Homeland Security known as “Rosebud,” the final preparations are being made to deploy heavily armed federalized forces onto the streets of America. They will be deployed under the pretext of “restoring and maintaining order from the chaos brought about by the economic collapse,” adding that “many will demand and embrace their deployment on the streets of America. They will get what they ask for, and more.”
Much like the security theater we have seen following the attacks of 9/11, we will be subjected to the jack-booted control of a federal army whose allegiance is not to the American people, but to the very architects of the chaos.
“This is the reason that drones are flying over U.S. cities and farmland, and gun control legislation is on the fast track for complete implementation,” stated this source. “How can people look at the situation in Cyprus and not think it won’t happen here? It will, and the blowback will be unlike this country has ever seen. Surveillance, disarming the public, and conditioning the people to believe it’s for their own safety is and has been part of the plan all along. Anyone owing a gun will be demonized and described as contributing to the problem.”
“What happens when the middle class loses much of their wealth, or it is confiscated, by the stroke of a pen or a keyboard? What will the stores look like when people, unprepared due to the damn lies of the corporate media and the shills for the ruling elite, run to empty out everything they can get their hands on as the world, as they know it, collapses around them?”
It was during my most recent contact with my source yesterday that he admitted that the situation will be blamed not on the bankers and the elected leaders who are raping us of our wealth and buying power, but on “right-wing, gun-toting Conservative ‘militia’ groups who believe that the situation is orchestrated.” And, of course, it is orchestrated.
“There is no Republican-Democrat argument to be made anymore. It’s all political theater to keep the majority of the masses occupied while the true enemy has already captured both parties,” he added. “They are all in on it, either knowingly or unwittingly, the takeover, that is. And it’s getting harder to believe that there are any who are unwitting accomplices at this point.”
“When the curtain is pulled back to reveal the true agenda of a single digital world currency, the people who have been yelling the loudest about such ‘conspiracy theories’ will be specifically singled out and demonized. They will be blamed for causing the panic we will see, and of course, dealt with by the army we asked for, accepted and even tolerated.”
Anyone who still believes that the information provided by this insider is “doom porn” or some self-created fantasy need to look at the events taking place in Cyprus. It’s coming to America. It has already begun.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53842
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Mar 18, 2013 12:43 pm
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The Obama Administration’s Illegal Health Care Taxes: an Update
Michael F. Cannon
There have been several developments with respect to the Obama administration’s attempt to impose the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s employer-mandate penalties and individual-mandate penalties where it has no authority to do so.
My coauthor Jonathan Adler and I have posted an updated and final draft of our forthcoming Health Matrix article, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA,” to the Social Sciences Research Network web site. This draft contains additional evidence that Congress did indeed intend to restrict the Act’s tax credits, cost-sharing subsidies, employer mandate penalties, and (to a certain extent) individual mandate penalties to states that establish their own health insurance Exchanges. It also shows how recent arguments advanced by defenders of the rule cannot be reconciled with the statute or the legislative history. If you’re interested in this issue, you’ll want to read this draft, even if you’ve already read previous versions.
In the Winter issue of Regulation magazine, University of Missouri law professor Thomas Lambert shows how this feature of the Act, combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius and other features, make the law so dangerously unstable that repeal remains a distinct possibility. I plan to blog more about this article soon.
A private employer has petitioned a federal court in Oklahoma to be added as a plaintiff in that state’s lawsuit against the IRS rule.
The December 2012 Harvard Law Review notes that the IRS rule “may provide a useful opportunity for a reviewing court to clarify the major questions exception to Chevron. In several cases since 2000, the Supreme Court has refused to defer to an agency interpretation on politically or economically significant questions.” The rule certainly seems to be economically significant. Given that 32 states accounting for two-thirds of the U.S. population have refused to establish Exchanges, the rule would result in more than a half-trillion dollars in unauthorized tax credits, subsidies, and penalties against employers and individuals.
On December 6, the Congressional Budget Office issued a letter that devastates the Obama administration’s defense of the IRS rule. Most media outlets misinterpreted the letter’s significance. I clarified the matter in this oped for Reuters.
On December 13, the chairmen of the House committees on Ways & Means and Oversight & Government Reform, who have held hearings on the IRS rule, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner requesting unredacted versions of documents relating to the development of the rule. The House Oversight committee has previously threatened to subpoena the documents if the agency is not forthcoming.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Your Thanksgiving TSA Update
By Jim Harper
On this, the storied biggest travel day of the year, it’s worth reviewing the latest TSA news.
Will your checkpoint pat-down soon be administered by a TSA agent in short pants? That’s one of the employment conditions the TSA employees’ newly elected union might push for. TSA’s unionized workers will now pay about $16 million a year to the American Federation of Government Employees, which will push for comfortable uniforms and other felicitous policies for TSA agents—and for politicians felicitous to government employees. Oh, and the AFGE will defend weak links in the TSA cadre against termination. Conscientious TSA workers—and there are many: they touch my sensitive areas with the backs of their hands regularly—will go unremembered while their loud, rude, and occassionally kleptic colleagues make their imprint on public opinion.
Did you opt to drive instead of fly this year? You put yourself in a great deal more peril than you would have been aloft, whether the TSA existed or not. Read Matt Yglesias’ recent piece, “The TSA Is Killing Us“. More people die each year because of the TSA than would if security were handled in a way that didn’t discourage air travel.
Those airport strip-search machines are continuing their long, slow, expensive decline. News emerged in a hearing last week of glitchiness in software intended—finally—to respond to privacy concerns around exposing naked images of people to TSA agents. Because processing people using these machines is slow, they’ve been moved out of high-volume airports. Because they are large and unwieldy, they haven’t been installed in the smaller airports where they were headed. End result, the machines have been warehoused.
This latter story inspired a conversation between Caleb Brown and me, one that Caleb thoughtfully recorded and put in a podcast just for you! Early in 2013, the TSA will have to begin a formal rulemaking in which these machines must be justified. The agency will have a hard time doing so. And you were wondering what to give thanks for this year…
You can also give thanks that this TSA-related Twitter account is a spoof.
Your Thanksgiving TSA Update is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Cops on Camera Update
By Caleb O. Brown
A Maryland judge has thrown out the first of three assault charges against two police officers who were caught on tape beating student John McKenna after a 2010 University of Maryland basketball game. The judge said “there was not enough evidence” to show the officers were engaged in first-degree assault. Second-degree assault and official misconduct charges remain.
We might argue about whether dropping those charges was the right call. What we know for certain is that before the tape surfaced, McKenna was the one charged with assaulting officers and a police horse. A good samaritan’s cell phone video was the only thing standing between justice and the student being branded a criminal and thrown in jail.
The lesson should be clear. Citizens recording police encounters can reveal truths the police might prefer to hide. Evan Banks and I made a short video detailing the incident (among others) and the importance of protecting the right of bystanders to record the police.
Cops on Camera Update is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Gold and Silver • Daily Update from Peter Grandich
Daily Update from Peter Grandich
Gold – Once again we’ve risen close to a key level for gold but I must remind some “yet again” we’re not in a new up-leg until if and when (more like when)we get two consecutive closes above $1,650. Gold’s technical picture is quite bullish but rest assured the “bums” shall attempt one of their raids as sure as Canuck fans are already getting their Stanley Cup -2013 hats ready.
U.S. Dollar – I said the bullish camp was overrun with almost 100% bulls and it was nothing more than a dead-cat bounce in a secular bear market for the terminally ill U.S. Dollar. Watch for a dramatic short covering rally if the Euro can close above $1.25 (I think its when).
U.S. Stock Market – The least resistance continues to be up but a pullback as it nears all-time highs is likely.
Bonds – The worse investment for the next decade remains just that and look for some more switching from bonds to stocks when 10-year goes above 2%
Oil and Natural Gas – $100+ oil near and I’m near certain Israel is close to attacking Iran in next 60 days. Natural gas remains an avoid.
Junior Resource Market indeed saw an exhaustion of selling and is bouncing but any thought of one getting even this year is foolish (except if gold runs to new highs). But the bottom has been put in.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Thu Aug 23, 2012 12:40 am
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An Update on Different Pentagon Spending Plans
By Christopher Preble
On Monday, I posted a lengthy entry here comparing the different plans for military spending: the current Obama administration/OMB baseline, CBO’s latest estimate for sequestration, Mitt Romney’s plan to spend four percent of GDP on the Pentagon’s base budget, and Paul Ryan’s plan.
I should have taken a bit more time checking my numbers, because I ended up comparing apples to oranges (or 050 to 051, in budget-wonk-speak).
Thankfully, the ever-watchful Carl Conetta at the Project on Defense Alternatives spied the error, and set me straight. The gap between the Ryan plan and the current baseline (President Obama’s plan) is less than I had previously reported. The gap between the Ryan plan and the Romney plan is larger. The new numbers, and a revised chart are enclosed below.
I have had to make some inferences, so Governor Romney has some wiggle room. Romney’s surrogates have clarified other aspects of his plans for military spending, most recently here, but I still don’t know what is included when he says he will have a “goal of setting core defense spending—meaning funds devoted to the fundamental military components of personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development—at a floor of 4 percent of GDP.” And no one seems to know how soon he intends to achieve that goal.
He could claim that the four percent goal should be applied to the entire “national defense” category (aka 050), which includes nuclear weapons spending within the Department of Energy, for example. This amounts to about a $25 billion difference annually. He could also include mandatory spending within the Pentagon’s budget, another $9 billion a year, on average.
The bottom line remains unchanged, however: Paul Ryan would spend more than President Obama on the military; Mitt Romney would spend much more. To his credit, Ryan has specified other spending cuts in domestic programs to ensure that his plan doesn’t add to the deficit or require higher taxes. Romney has not.
As before, I anxiously await additional clarification on how Romney plans to make up the difference.
Details, in constant 2012 dollars, for the period 2013-2022:
- Obama/OMB Baseline (051, discretionary): Total $5.163 trillion
- Sequestration per CBO (051, discretionary): Total $4.659 trillion; $504 billion in savings
- Ryan plan (051, discretionary): Total $5.321 trillion; $158 billion in additional spending
- Romney 4 percent in four years: Total $7.015 trillion; $1.852 trillion in additional spending
- Romney 4 percent in eight years: Total $6.868 trillion; average $687 billion/year; $1.704 trillion in additional spending
An Update on Different Pentagon Spending Plans is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Gold and Silver • Re: MELTDOWN UPDATE: The JP Morgan Derivatives Book is Blowi
Some pundits have been saying that the whole derivatives game was planned with the purpose of bringing the current system down.
IOW this is not something that is ‘happening’ to JPM. It was planned to be.
The charade just goes on…
Statistics: Posted by Deo Vindice — Mon May 21, 2012 12:04 am
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Gold and Silver • MELTDOWN UPDATE: The JP Morgan Derivatives Book is BlowingUP
MELTDOWN UPDATE: The JP Morgan Derivatives Book is Blowing Up
http://www.roadtoroota.com/public/899.c … fOosZAZ85B
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Sun May 20, 2012 11:41 am
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