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Metals & Markets: Cartel Rings In New Silver Fix With Massive Raid!

Sunday, August 17, 2014 21:59

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(Before It's News)

With gold & silver raided by the cartel coincidentally on the day the new Silver Fix was launched, The Doc & Eric Dubin break down the markets, discussing:

Cartel raid on the metals: Is the worst over, or is another smash coming on the thinly traded Sunday night Globex session?
On the brink: Ukraine/Russia escalation as the US continues to push Russia towards war while Putin works to DUMP THE DOLLAR
Retail physical gold & silver explodes on price smash/end of London Fix: SDBullion sees heaviest sales volume in 2014 Friday
Ferguson riots/ Martial Law- a sign of of most of American could look like in the wake of a financial collapse?

Stream SD Weekly Metals & Markets With The Doc & Eric Dubin via YouTube or click here and “save as” or equivalent if you want an mp3 file.

“When all else fails, they will take us to war…” – Gerald Celente

# # # # #

Early Friday, the Western world media (including the “alternative media”) was uncritically reporting the Ukrainian government’s claim that it had destroyed a significant percentage of Russian military assets that Ukraine claimed had crossed the border into her territory. Sadly, it also appears that I was the only person in the media, alternative or otherwise, to draw a link to a similar claim made days before, involving a totally different incident. Ironically enough, the blatant propaganda about the earlier phantom event originating from one faction of the Ukrainian establishment was debunked by Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov. Reality is stranger than fiction. To their credit, the ZeroHedge team caught up with the lion’s share of the fishy details late Friday, but they still haven’t made the connection to the documented propaganda salvo that took place earlier in the week.

In any event, the most important story this week concerns the big picture regarding Ukraine and Russia, and how some Western interests are pushing for a war they mistakenly believe can be contained. Many would consider that statement total rubbish. But blind patriotism can easily trump critical thinking and open-minded investigation of well documented Western agitation largely responsible for the crisis in the Ukraine.

Western interests have been behind an epic tidal wave of propaganda intent on painting Russia as a grand aggressor responsible for the conflict in the Ukraine. Putin is no saint, and Russian imperial objectives do exist as a minority voice within the overall Russian political establishment. But Russian interests seeking imperial aggrandizement are muted by more dominant Russian political interests content to attend to the defense of Russia’s existing sphere of influence. Russia has its hands full just managing its existing sphere of influence — which has included the Crimea for decades per treaty relationships that were not violated by Russia, and despite western prestitute parroting, Russia did not invade Eastern Ukraine nor the Crimea.

There’s only one exception to this general reality: Russia is now aggressively working to circumvent the dominance of the US dollar based financial system. But even on that front, it’s not hard to make the case that Russia was pushed into the corner given the Anglo-American financial empire’s abuse of the dollar-based system. For context, click here to read thought provoking analysis by F. William Engdahl. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has also discussed this dynamic in many of his articles this year.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO has aggressively expanded its military alliance ring-fencing Russia’s western and southern borders, despite making pledges to the contrary in the early 1990s. The U.S. has also formally reneged on its former rejection of first strike nuclear war fighting doctrine. Formal “first strike capability” as a military doctrine was a component of American military strategic thinking during the late 1940s through the early 1980s, but it took a back-seat following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

However, with the rise of the Neocon faction within the American foreign policy establishment and their “Project For A New American Century” vision, American military doctrine has evolved back towards and embrace of “usable” nuclear weapons (mostly “tactical” in nature) and even a vision for first strike fighting capability. The US even reneged on assurances against the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems in former Soviet-controlled countries now part of NATO, justifying the move on bogus claims that these ABM systems were required to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles; systems placed in Poland are hardly geographically appropriate for such a threat, but that detail didn’t mater much to Pentagon spinmeisters. Click here to read an in-depth article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on these topics.

The current situation in Ukraine is largely the product of a Western-facilitated “color revolution” that has gone awry; some would argue chaos was in fact the objective all along. Regardless, there can be no mistaking the well documented history of Western agitation in Ukraine.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland’s notorious “F–k the EU” telephone call reveals high level US coordination concerning colored revolution machinations. Last December, Nuland openly bragged about the United States spending about $5 billion dollars to shape Ukrainian political developments. The incident involving snipers shooting Ukrainian police and protestors that served as a catalyst for still further unrest, leading to the toppling of the Ukrainian government, was blamed on forces supposedly aligned with Russia. But evidence surfaced pointing the finger towards Western-aligned Maidan agitators — a false flag operation. Click here and here and here for background.

Believe me, I hate having to write these words. I’m a patriotic American and I would love to live in a world where the myths propagated about America always standing for truth and justice were indeed true! But the sad fact is, the American foreign policy establishment has been entirelyhijacked by interests that do not serve the interests of average Americans, nor the propagation worldwide of democratic Western values and economic relations free of crony capitalism and outright financial imperialism.

Obviously, this is not a new dynamic. But the thrashing of an empire under stress — particularly financial stress — has largely dissolved the “moral authority” United States foreign policy engendered following WW-II and the dissolution of European colonialism through the 1970s. That period was marked by contradictions, to be sure. But at least there was some basis for true “moral authority.”

Silver Fix Fixed? That’s Not The Key Question!

Other than Kitco.com, where a significant portion of their internet traffic is based mostly on simple price quote seeking visitors, SilverDoctors.com ranks right at the top of the precious metals internet world. But that doesn’t mean much when sexy ideas draw pundits like moths-to-flame. For months we’ve been arguing that the eminent demise of the silver fix will largely prove to be a non-event, and most certainly not the beginning of the end of precious metals market manipulation.

Part of the problem with this ongoing confusion has been reactions to the very word “fix,” which should actually be understood to mean “setting a price representative of trading during the course of the day that would clear large, end-of-day settlement needs of large market participants,” so to speak, and not the word “fix” equating to outright manipulation by definition. Now, don’t misunderstand, there’s ample evidence that the fixing process was used to manipulation around the edges of the market, just like LIBOR fixing. But in general what was seen was mere pennies on the dollar – small change skimming over a large market, just like LIBOR manipulation. That activity had minor impact over the years to silver and gold pricing. The real impacts came as large amounts of paper contracts were dumped going into and following the London PM Fix, NOT the fix itself.

We discussed this during the show. No more needs to be written here. But it certainly is ironic to have seen the cartel bomb precious metalsFriday morning just as some expected a “liberated” silver fix to help restore upside to the price of silver.

There could easily have been some consideration by the powers that be to whack precious metals in advance of the story coming out of the Ukraine. Dave Kranzler explores that question in an article published Friday. Certainly, whenever major geopolitical events occur, the cartel has a well established pattern of whacking gold and silver and successfully keeping upside action contained during the first 24 to 48 hours of any given crisis that would normally send precious metals shooting higher in a non-bizzaro “MOPE” world. But I lean toward the conclusion thatFriday’s downside blast wasn’t executed so much in preparation for the news out of the Ukraine that had yet to hit the wires, but more so just a generic cartel hissy fit suppression effort related to overall, big picture fears of a global financial system increasingly under strain. Both explanations are probably correct to one extent or another.

Financial Market Signals Speak To Rising Risk Of Deflationary Crash Or “Mini Crash”

Mid last month, it became clear that money was starting to price in rising probability of a deflationary crash or “mini-crash,” a term I described on Dr. Dave Janda’s “Operation Freedom” show last Sunday. We covered this subject on a few SD Metals & Markets shows in July and August. Part of our discussion with David Morgan back on August 1st was lost on account of my phone line going dead (I keep telling the NSA to help themselves to freshly brewed coffee as they listen in, but maybe they’re pissed because I forgot to provide cream and sugar). But our conversation with David is still highly relevant. Give a listen if you missed that episode. You can also click here and here for follow-up posts under “Flying Wombat,” my “handle” on SD.

Analyst and precious metals fund manager Dave Kranzler has also been keeping an eye on these developments and he published an important article today: click here.

It’s a bit surprising that hardly anyone else are openly talking about this shift in sentiment. Again, I must reiterate that over the longer-term, we’ll most assuredly see inflation carry the day given the fact that central bankers theoretically have no limit to the creation of keyboard credit creation. But just as the example of 2007 through 2009 demonstrated, we can have a nasty deflationary bust precede efforts to counter deflation with central bank hyper-liquidity.

We’re living in an interesting point in financial history. There are outright contradictory forces all around us. Actual price inflation manifesting in the real economy is far above government reported rates of inflation, but price impacts are still somewhat muted by what happened with the deflationary implosion within the shadow banking system sending paper wealth to “money heaven,” while some of the central bank liquidity creation since 2008 has simply been sequestered on bank reserves held within the Federal Reserve system. And now, with even government reports on economic activity pointing towards a significant slowdown, it really isn’t a surprise to see tumbling long bond interest rates, declining oil prices, etc. Dave Kranzler makes the important point that an economic slump would mostly impact the short end of the yield curve, whereas this latest round of long bond purchases smacks of safe haven buying in the face of a far deeper systemic problem and a possible deflationary bust triggered by continued banking sector insolvency.

Riot police in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, Aug. 11, 2014. (Source: @FOX2now / Twitter, hat tip to PoliceStateUSA.com)

Police State: Ferguson, Missouri

Some argue rioters deserve the disproportionate force of the state currently on display in Ferguson, Missouri. The roots of social unrest are multifaceted and beyond the scope of this write-up — which is lengthy by traditional SD Weekly Metals & Markets posts. Suffice it to say, while the breakdown of law and order certainly is problematic, there’s a dimension to this situation that should be disturbing to even law and order advocates. We’re witnessing a nascent police state flex its muscles in our post Hurricane Katrina, Boston bombing and now Ferguson, Missouri nation. What’s happening goes far beyond the law and order response to the riots of the 1960s.

Per usual, John W. Whitehead offers food for thought. For still more weekend reading, check out his latest article: “From Boston To Ferguson: Have We Reached A Tipping Point In The Police State?”

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s show! — Eric Dubin, global macro analyst and managing editor, The News Doctors