Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/07/2014 13:28 -0500
For some reason, the Council of Foreign Relations, where ex-Fed-Chief Alan Greenspan spoke last week, decided the following discussion should be left out of the official transcript. We can perhaps understand why… as Gillian Tett concludes, “comments like that will be turning you into a rock star amongst the gold bug community.”
Greenspan (Uncut):
TETT: Do you think that gold is currently a good investment?
GREENSPAN: Yes… Remember what we’re looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can macth it.
Which is missing from the official CFR transcript…
GREENSPAN: …remember, we had that first tapering discussion, we got a very strong market response. And then we reassured everybody to have no — remember, tapering is still (audio gap) of an agreement that the central banks have made — European central banks, I believe — about allocating their gold sales which occurred when gold prices were falling down (audio gap) has been renewed this year with a statement that gold serves a very important place in monetary reserves.
And the question is, why do central banks put money into an asset which has no rate of return, but cost of storage and insurance and everything else like that, why are they doing that? If you look at the data with a very few exceptions, all of the developed countries have gold reserves. Why?
TETT: I imagine right now, it’s because of a question mark hanging over the value of fiat currency, the credibility going forward.
GREENSPAN: Well, that’s what I’m getting at. Every time you get some really serious questions, the 50 percent of the gold price determination begins to move.
TETT: Right.
GREENSPAN: And I think it is fascinating and — I don’t know, is Benn Steil in the audience?
TETT: Yes.
GREENSPAN: There he is, OK. Before you read my book, go read Benn’s book. The reason is, you’ll find it fascinating on exactly this issue, because here you have the ultimate test at the Mount Washington Hotel in 1944 of the real intellectual debate between the — those who wanted to an international fiat currency which was embodied in John Maynard Keynes’ construct of a banker, and he was there in 1944, holding forth with all of his prestige, but couldn’t counter the fact that the United States dollar was convertible into gold and that was the major draw. Everyone wanted America’s gold. And I think that Benn really described that in extraordinarily useful terms, as far as I can see. Anyway, thank you.
TETT: Right. Well, I’m sure with comments like that, that will be turning you into a rock star amongst the gold bug community.
* * *
As a reminder, here is Ben Bernanke putting people straight on Gold…
Ron Paul asks the Bernanke if he thought gold was money. Bernanke almost swallows his tongue, stares blankly for a few seconds and then says, “no.”
Paul then asks why banks hold gold on their balance sheet? Why not diamonds? Bernanke says, “tradition, I suppose.”
So let me get this straight, banks hold billions of dollars of an asset that pays no interest or dividends on their balance sheet for reasons of “tradition”. nothing to do with anything else, just tradition. uh, yea. That must be it.
Gold up 30 bucks as I write.
Oh Treasure of the Inca’s “LIGHT THE WORLD WITH YOUR HEAVENLY GLOW”
[img
[/img]
He is a traitor. Period. He was for gold before he was against it and now he is back to for it.
He acts like a fickle virgin. He needs a dick in his ass. Hey bubba!!!!
My old boss referred to a man’s nuggets as ‘conquistadors’.
My grandpa used to tell a story of the conquistador’s insatiable hunger for gold. He said the Indians poured molten gold down their throats.
Up to a few years ago, bartenders in Tijuana observed this tradition by pouring firewater down the throat of thirsty Americans.
Like the gangsters of old in Las Vegas, the conquistadors have been replaced by the corporations –
they are still raping the natives around the world.
[img
[/img]
Short Squeeze – Gold Bulls Go Uneasy Rider
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi, Stanza 17
Watching the trade in gold and silver last night was interesting.
Around midnight gold was smacked down seven dollars to about $1132 in the matter of a few seconds. That is customary since traders have to reset their stops after midnight, and there was a bit of the usual inexplicable ‘gamesmanship’ one sees in bucket shops, rigged card games, and for some reason the Comex.
But about an hour later the price rebounded back up sharply to the 1144 area and seemed to stick there for most of the trade, with a slight upward bias, until the US announced its Non-Farm Payrolls Report for October, which sucked out loud.
There is no recovery. And as that fantasy wavered, so did the dollar and both gold and silver traded higher throughout the day, as the spec who came for the usual NFP Day smackdown ate their shorts.
So what next. Gold and silver are still in bear markets. This is counterintuitive of course since in the case of gold especially there is a yawning mismatch between actually supply and real demand.
I took a look at the Sprott Physical Gold Trust and there it was, another redemption. I have not yet looked but I suspect we will see more sizable redemptions from the ETFs.
I have offerend some intraday commentary that may shed some light on this phenomenon. I encourage you to read it here.
That there is manipulation in the gold market is, in my mind and in accordance with the evidence at hand, strictly a rhetorical question now, argued by the bully boys and shills of the Banks, and those pit crawlers of the financial demimonde.
That is not to say that ‘it is over.’ These things never end when you think they will end, but when the end comes, it tends to come with a vengeance. So I don’t think we will even have to ask the question when the answer is there.
A good start would be for gold and silver to break these awful, grinding short sales and bear raids lower, and that means breaking the pattern of lower highs and lower lows. That means taking out $1270 gold and sticking it to the bears, hard.
For now this is a big bounce off a grossly oversold condition. So it is too soon to break out the balloons. Even if you are a legend of the legendary legends. Mere mortals must wait for a more solid confirmation of a sustained change in trend. The powers that be never give up any shred of power easily, and that is what we are seeing: a shifting landscape of historic proportions.
Jesse
Screw Greenspan with a Hyundai
12 biggest gold vaults in the world
Two belong to the FED.
http://www.listmonde.com/lifestyle/travel/12-protected-vaults-world/
Oopsy
Greenspan is just coming clean before he bites the dust.
True gold bugs know that Sir Alan was always a gold bug. He is a disciple of Ayn Rand and even attended her funeral.
He became a whore and caved in to the establishment, he is begging now for forgiveness and cleansing his soul.
Many will beg Gold, the God of the financial universe, for forgiveness for their blasphemy as Sir Alan is now repenting for his sins.
Pray, buy Gold, and beg the lord for forgiveness.
Confucius say, “A FOOL AND HIS GOLD ARE SOON PARTED”
[img
[/img]
Whatever….I don’t believe shit these guys say. It could very well mean they are setting fools up to buy before a nice smack down. Gold is suppressed in comparison to the fundamentals of the world and broad economy but buy only if you wanna hold for a GOOD while, as a hedge, in case of a zombie apocalypse or whatever. It is crystal clear that they can control the price however they want to. I see it as any other stock that they can make fly or sink depending on what they want. So in other words, think of it as money you won’t need anytime soon or you stand to lose some money. Yes, it has real value, especially in the long run, but in the short or medium run you can get screwed. Then again, it’s just paper, right?
Spinolator, people need to stop viewing the precious metals price suppression scheme as a curse. Think of it as something you know has value being put on a clearance sale. Back up the truck and wait for this Ponzi to collapse.
Will it happen tomorrow or next month? Probably not. It gives us more time to prepare for the implosion.
Hi Steve Hogan,
Exactly what Noah used to say to himself when he was being taunted by the fools for preparing for the Great Flood.
” Thank You Lord For Giving Me More Time To Prepare”
Holding PM’S into a currency collapse is no guarantee of hedge or safety. By controlling price down to the bottom TPTB could limit pain and resistence to national requisition/confiscation. What will you do with your gold if made illega to hold,l besides hide it?
“Spinolator, people need to stop viewing the precious metals price suppression scheme as a curse. Think of it as something you know has value being put on a clearance sale. Back up the truck and wait for this Ponzi to collapse.
Will it happen tomorrow or next month? Probably not. It gives us more time to prepare for the implosion. ”
I don’t disagree. Just stating my opinion that I don’t believe anything these guys say. I don’t believe they are incompetent, just full of shit.
What will you do with your gold if made illega to hold,l besides hide it?
And you will automatically become a criminal for holding or hiding the gold. You will become a social pariah as well, like ‘food hoarders’ during the war.
http://youtu.be/3vwxGxmDOZk
“Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.”
Murray N. Rothbard