Europe is being torn apart from the inside. In Paris, the metro station is turning into a slum and war zone. School gyms in Germany have been turned into dorms for migrants and many kids have lost sports as a result. This has turned everything just completely nuts. I have been told that many people see more on this subject on this site than they do in their local media. It is becoming increasingly disturbing as governments try to suppress the truth and endanger their own citizens.

COMMENT: Marty; This is really going to be interesting now that banks are existing proprietary trading and the organizations who have spun this tale that the metals are not substantially higher because they are manipulated will have nobody to blame. What will they say if the metals collapse? They are really ignorant since they see the entire world only looking at metals. This will be very interesting.

HL

REPLY: Yes. They know absolutely nothing about trading and ignore the fact that the banks have been clipping all markets. They forgot about the LIBOR scandal involving clipping currencies. They were all bullish during the Buffet silver rally. It is a matter of fact that I warned our clients they would double silver, take it to $7 by January, and then crash it again. How many people lost money on that one after listening to their nonsense? They have no respect for people when they preach just one side. They have cheered ever rally, which has been a manipulation, and people have lost their shirts because they never say sell. I even spoke directly with some of these people and they KNEW it was Buffet in 1993 and in 1997. Did they come out and warn people not to buy because it was a manipulation? NO! They are silent on manipulations that go up. Why? Were they getting paid? Why are manipulations only down?

Here is a phone conversation with a dealer back in 1998 concerning the silver “manipulation.” Just ask any of these guys if they EVER warned people about that manipulation when it was so obvious. If they did not, then why? Were they assisting the manipulation? They only report one side when their followers lose money  and blame the banks while pretending they are never wrong. You are supposed to tell people the truth. Why censor it to only one side? Show HOW they warned people that was a fake rally. If they cannot, then they cannot be trusted. I spoke to the people at GATA back then. If they knew, so did everyone else. Why were they silent? Silver rallied when gold declined. I am warning you, those who were silent may have been paid to remain silent. I always provide the Bullish and Bearish Reversals, define a rally and where a decline begins. This is NEVER personal opinion. They hate that. They hate me because I have no problem saying buy or sell. These are markets and they always move in both directions.

It will be very interesting to see who they blame after decades of being wrong. What will be the excuse next time? Perhaps aliens? They are clueless about deflation and negative interest rates. All they ever do is preach one direction and that is not analysis; it is propaganda no different than central bankers saying the economy is still sound in the middle of a panic. They only see the world through the eyes of the metals and since they are not up they must be manipulated. Running stops and goosing closings to elect stops are not systemic manipulation of the trend. But they are like politicians – incapable of admitting error. This is about forecasting the trend – not selling propaganda. This blog will always say up or down – never one direction. We are not selling bullion and we do not even sell advertising and a computer cannot be paid off under the table.

Those who purchased this year’s 2016 Gold Report will receive the second video next week. This video will include gold and silver. Those interested in purchasing the 2016 Gold Report may do so now.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I think I am starting to see the light you have been shining. Negative interest rates really are “completely insane”. I also now see that months after you wrote about central banks were trapped, others are now just starting to entertain the idea. Is this distinct difference in your views that eventually become adopted with time because you were a hedge fund manager?

Just curious;

Bob

ANSWER: I believe the answer is rather simple. How can anyone pretend to be an analyst if they have never traded? It would be like a man writing a book explaining how it feels to give birth. You cannot analyze what you have never done. It is just impossible. There are those who teach and those who can just do. Negative interest rates are fueling deflation. People have less income to spend, so how is this beneficial? The Fed always needed 2% inflation. The father of negative interest rates is Larry Summers. He teaches or has been in government. He is not a trader and is clueless about how markets function. I warned that this idea of negative interest rates was very dangerous.

Yes, I have warned that the central banks are trapped. Their QE policies have totally failed. There were numerous “analysts” without experience calling for hyperinflation, the collapse of the dollar, and were yelling that the Fed was increasing the money supply so buy gold. The inflation never appeared and gold declined. Their reasoning, exactly as Larry Summers’, was so far off the mark. These people become trapped in their own logic and it becomes irrational gibberish. They only see one side of the coin and ignore the rest.

Central banks have lost all ability to manage the economy, even in theory, thanks to this failed reasoning. They have bought-in the bonds and are unable to ever resell them again. If they reverse their policy of QE and negative interest rates, government debt explodes with insufficient buyers. If the central banks refuse to reverse this crazy policy of QE and negative interest rates, they will see a massive capital flight from government to the private sector once the MAJORITY realizes the central banks are incapable of any control.

The central banks have played a very dangerous game and lost. It appears we are facing the collapse of Social Security which began August 14, 1935 (1935.619) because they stuffed it with government debt and robbed the money for other things. Anyone else would go to prison for what the politicians have done and prosecutors would never defend the people because they want to become famous politicians. We will probably see the end of this Social Security program by 2021.772 (October 9, 2021) or about 89 weeks into the next business cycle. These people are completely incompetent to manage the economy and we are delusional to think people with no trading experience can run things. If you have never traded, you have no business trying to “manipulate” society with your half-baked theories. So yes, the central banks are trapped. They have lost ALL power. It becomes just a matter of time as the clock ticks and everyone wakes up and says OMG!

We have government addicted to borrowing and if rates rise everything will explode in their face. Western civilization is finished as we know it just as communism collapsed because we too subscribe to the theory of Marx that government is capable of managing the economy. Just listen to the candidates running for president; they are all preaching Marx. Vote for me and I will force the economy to do this. IMPOSSIBLE! We have debt that is unsustainable the further you move away from the United States, which is the core economy such as emerging markets. Unfunded pensions destroyed the Roman empire. We are collapsing in the very same manner and for the very same reason. We are finishing a very important report on the whole pension crisis issue worldwide.

Saudi Arabia has threatened the Obama administration and congressional leaders that it will sell billions of dollars in U.S. financial assets if Congress passes a bill to make the Saudi government legally responsible for any role in the 9/11 attacks. That bill would allow claims to freeze their assets in the USA by a judge pending the litigation. Obama has tried to stop Congress from passing the legislation, but this is a bipartisan Senate bill. Obviously, Saudi Arabia is worried that there are viable claims that are not frivolous. The typical dollar haters are championing this as a death knell, but Saudi Arabia’s assets of $750 billion are not exclusively government bonds. Saudi Arabia does not even make the top 10 list of holders of U.S. Treasury notes. Most of their “investments” are other assets which would be crazy for them to try to sell for the price would crash.

As far as Treasury notes, the Saudi holdings would be soaked up in minutes. Sorry, no big deal. I have warned that the whole Syria mess has involved a pipeline to deliver gas to Europe. They did threaten Putin that terrorism would hit Russia for the Olympics if they did not yield to Saudi Arabia. Then there are those pointing to the connection of terrorism in Brussels linked to Brussels’ largest mosque that is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, a Salafist regime, which has tried to separate itself from the terror attacks. However, some say they are not revealing everything. There are more and more people pointing at Saudi Arabia so they are obviously trying to stop any lawsuits that might embarrass them even more. If people could file suits, either they just hand them default judgments or they defend, and to defend they have to provide a discovery of many things they do not wish to reveal.

Welcome to the other side of 2015.75 – the decline and fall of governments. This is a worldwide trend for their attempt to manipulate society is coming to an end. OPEC has been unable to control the price of oil. Governments have been unable to manage the economy. This is all coming to a shocking end. They will kick and scream all the way, but will not change the course of destiny.

Our criminal justice system is the worst in the world. America has only 4.4% of the world population but 22% of the world’s prison population. We have the worst system in the world because you stand very little chance of having a fair trial. The time it takes to even overturn wrongful convictions is outrageous. Prosecutors are cold-blooded. They will never admit to a mistake because that impacts their ability to get big-paying jobs. Judges have crafted so many rules intended to prevent reviews of cases because they too do not wish to expose the corrupt criminal justice system. We have a 93% conviction rate nationally. The government could never achieve that level of success in anything else.

Now, the government has finally conceded that a 76-year-old man was wrongly convicted in the 1957 killing of an Illinois schoolgirl who was 7-years-old. He was finally released Friday after a judge vacated his conviction. The real killer remains free. Jack McCullough was sentenced to life in prison and is one of the oldest cold cases to be tried in U.S. history. In a review of documents last year, it was found that the evidence that supported his long-held alibi that he had been 40 miles away in Rockford at the time of the girl’s disappearance was correct.

The only possible way to clean up the justice system is (1) any prosecutor who wrongly convicts a person should serve the sentence he demanded; (2) prosecutors may never run for office or become a judge; and (3) prosecutors cannot take a job with any law firm for five years after leaving his position. Do this and we will see justice return.

COMMENT: Marty, the goldbugs are out in force saying that the banks have admitted they manipulated silver. It is interesting how these people lack any understanding of the markets. Just give up. They deserve their own fate.

BD

REPLY: Yes, I know. It is rather pathetic. It demonstrates how ignorant they are about trading and the marketplace. The banks have been clipping people for decades (“manipulation”). The big institutional traders have been slow to realize that you cannot trade with someone who takes the other side of that trade and expect them to do this on an altruistic endeavor. This type of “manipulation” is by no means systemic to justify that they have been so dead wrong in their forecasting for decades. This “manipulation” has always been present in every market. The dealers know where the stops are, and if they are within striking distance, they “manipulate” the market to execute them. The floor brokers routinely used to tell you where the stops were. Sometimes they were too close and could be taken out so the brokers went for them. Other times they could not reach them. Sure, you can call this “manipulation.” However, that manipulation does not alter a trend. That is completely different from “manipulating” a bull market into a bear market. But hey, I agree. They deserve what they get. They act as if the metals are unique and only they have been suppressed. NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES = DEFLATION. The disposable income of the elderly has collapsed. Sorry, where is the inflation coming from except in their dreams. The world is imploding.

I do agree. These people have been wrong and they want to blame everyone else in the world but themselves. They alone are right and the world is wrong. They do deserve what they get for if they cannot learn the lesson that the FREE MARKET is everything connected, then they will be separated from their money every time. They are the fuel that drives the markets because the MAJORITY must always be wrong. They do not want to admit that, so they lie to themselves and say that the world is wrong and they alone are right. They are ignorant to the fact that we are in a commodity deflationary trend because China turned down and sharply reduced their buying. India put on all kinds of regulation to stop gold purchases. They ignore that as well. So yes, they deserve what they get if they cannot see the light.

Those who immediately claim the goldbugs are correct lack any trading experience whatsoever. Why are they even pretending to comment on the markets when they do not understand how they work? That would be no different than me trying to critique a brain surgeon. Come on. If you have never traded size, you are not qualified to comment. You obviously have never seen how banks move spreads to clip clients ALL THE TIME. Why do you think many banks are ending their proprietary trading like TD Bank in Canada and Deutsche Bank? All banks who trade on a proprietary basis “manipulate” the market in this way by moving the spreads to clip clients. How do you think they made money? The goldbugs forget the fact that the banks were fined for putting out fake research in 2003 for the DOT.COM bubble. The SEC announced:

The “global settlement” concludes a joint investigation begun in April by regulators into the undue influence of investment banking interestson securities research at brokerage firms. The settlement will bring about balanced reform in the industry and bolster confidence in the integrity of equity research.

www.sec.gov_news_digest_12-20-2002 Research Plea

I absolutely know for a fact that some pretend analysts have been paid by the bankers to mislead people into buying so they could take the other side. Plain and simple. But as long as they tell people to “buy” the metals, they walk on water, even when WRONG, and people lose money. So let’s get real here. You are not an “analyst” if you ONLY forecast to buy. Sorry, that is a promoter, not an independent analyst.

If you have never traded size, then you cannot possibly understand how this type of “manipulation” has always existed, and to convert this into proof why the metals are not 30x higher is consumer fraud in my book. Where’s the proof? This is like a guy writing a book on how it “feels” to give birth. If you have not traded size, you cannot understand how this type of “manipulation” does not alter trend; it simply functions with the noise zone of a market (any market, since they do it to them all).

The Bundesbank (German Central Bank) has come out to oppose eliminating cash. During the pre-euro years, the Bundesbank was providing us with inside info on the euro preparations because they were outright against it. Those who always hate central banks do not realize that they are not always what it seems. The Bundesbank is now clearly positioning itself against the drive to eliminate cash. This past week at an event in Berlin, Carl-Ludwig Thiele said that the attempt to abolish and criminalize cash is out of line with freedom. He said that citizens should continue to decide how and in what form they want to use their money.

Thiele’s main arguments were:

• Every citizen has the right, with his money, to proceed as he wants. If action is taken that impacts the rights to freedom of the citizen, it must be well-grounded. And so the question arises: how does a cash limit restrict crime in other countries? Thiele said he was not aware of any support where a cash limit, such as Italy or France, prevents crime. Crime should be correspondingly lower than in countries with no upper limit on cash, but that is simply not the case.
• The arguments that are made against cash and cash payments are unconvincing. He went on to argue that cash protects the privacy of the population. That benefit is not a reason to twist it into a benefit for criminals while ignoring the majority of honest citizens. The right to informational self-determination and respect for private life is a valuable asset that should not be watered down or abandoned. “Cash is coined liberty” – this modified Dostoevsky quote has not lost any of its validity.

General view of the buildings of the Court of Justice of the European Communities

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has stated that banking secrecy established in Austria cannot be relied upon by German bank branches in Austria to defeat tax authorities. Branches of German credit institutions in Austria must, therefore, provide information on accounts and assets to German tax authorities if a German customer is deceased to allow Germany to collect inheritance taxes. The highest German tax court, the Bundesfinanzhof in Munich, had gone to the ECJ after the Sparkasse Allgäu refused to reveal to the tax office all account balances of their deceased clients. The hunt for money is endless. Whatever may have been the rule of law is peeled away when they are desperate for money.

Meanwhile, the United States also wants to place an inheritance tax on Canadians who simply own property in the United States. This entire turn of events of going after inheritance taxes of non-citizens and the ECJ ruling that the laws of one country cannot block inheritance taxes in another continues to reveal the desperate increase in taxation.