Gold & Investment in Failure

Many observers to the wild gyrations, deep contortions, extreme measures, and other bizarre activity in the government and banking arenas are suffering from severe confusion. The public is alarmed, even frightened, by the sequence of events, without much benefit of a deeper comprehension of what is happening or which clans are in control. The degree of deception hit a peak during the TARP Fund creation and disbursement, done behind private closed doors for the replenishment of revered preferred stock, that bridge between corporate bonds and stock equity. The deception hit a very high pitch with the financial titan failures, the entire string of them, and has continued since. The economic data and promising forecasts (mere attempts to shape public opinion) featured Green Shoots, Jobless Recovery, and the totally vacant Second Half Recovery that is trumpeted every initial six months. Just what is happening is difficult to describe succinctly. But the main description reads like an obituary. The most recent and visible distortion is not of price inflation, which has zoomed at 7% annually for a couple years, but rather the Institute of Supply Mgmt. The ISM index has somehow registered a slight increase from July to August, despite almost every single regional index faltering badly. See the careening Philly Fed, from plus 5.1 to minus 7.7 in the latest month. See the Richmond Fed and Empire each down several points. They belie the weak components and present a distorted aggregate, much like common practice with retail sales.

The US banking sector died in September 2008. A corpse pumped with blood does not rise to walk. It has not acted like a credit distribution apparatus in two years. The US Federal Reserve has served almost the complete function, filling the gap like with the decaying commercial paper market and perhaps 90% of the entire mortgage market. Its several dozen liquidity facilities testify to its urgent need to act as banking system substitute, since the real portion long since passed through the morgue. The major 100 banks in the US are almost without exception insolvent, and thus do not lend. Sure, they boast a positive book value, but only after given permission to use phony FASB accounting rules. They can declare their assets at any value they wish. In fact, on many debt securities, they actually declare unrealized losses as gains. See the Credit Value Adjustment scheme, an utter travesty and shameful practice mocked by accounting professors. The FDIC came out this week to announce the Q2 list of problem banks went from 775 in number to 829, from Q1. Hardly evidence of a recovery. The USEconomy suffers from a credit strangulation since the banking system at the upper levels is dead, simply stated. The main thrust of the limp activity is monetary creation, banker welfare, absurd programs, and war spending. A brisk USTreasury carry trade has helped to replenish bank balance sheets, but the proceeds are locked at the USFed as excess reserves, hiding its gross insolvency. The USFed is thus the chief Zombie Bank. The more money the awkward struggling leaders throw at the problem, the more the Gold price will rise. Each quantum policy step lifts the potential Gold price another $1000 per ounce.

This article is an attempt to briefly describe what is happening to the United States, from an aerial perspective, regarding the foremost poorly told events, better description of critical event factors, the lost generation of industry, the official investment by the USGovt in profound failure, the confusion from broadening collectivism, the absence of a solution toward restructure and remedy, and what actual solution might include. The popular debate once centered on the banks too big to permit a failure, but that debate ended with passage of the Financial Regulation Bill. Only liquidation of the biggest banks can enable a recovery, period!! Of course, the process is complicated, especially politically. Actually, it is more than political, since the big banks share control of the USGovt. The response reaction from gold & silver will give loud messages to reflect systemic failure, as money is wasted, invested in failure, and directed to the elite troughs. One can argue that no remedy or restructure is even attempted!! It is only feigned to placate the masses.

REAL STORY BEHIND FOUR FAILURES

The Bear Stearns episode was the prelude to the failure story, the opening act, the clue for the death of the US banking sector. Its story was a mere partial truth, one that avoided all the inner circle rivalries and nasty relationships. The firm did not participate in the general rescue program for LongTerm Capital Mgmt in 1998. It was singled out for execution, a kill at a later date. The Bear Stearns failure was a bold execution for its long gold position and short USDollar position, if truth be told. Wall Street never benefits from straight talk, preferring deception as its calling card. The Gold price was prevented from finding a much higher legitimate value with continued control, when Bear Stearns was removed from the clique.

The American Intl Group episode was disguised from its true nature as a Goldman Sachs bailout. In fact, the debate has been somewhat clear that the AIG nationalization enabled GSax to be first in line for credit default contract redemptions, at full price. They saved $11 billion in the nationalization and butting in line. There are advantages to acting as the USDept Treasury administrator. Many other big banks had favorable redemptions on similar insurance contracts. The wreckage of the entire US banking sector was thus covered up from the insurance perspective, preventing a credit derivative blowup. The Gold price did not react from a systemic failure motive, as much as a perceived systemic risk motive. The over $100 billion in covered losses to AIG so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. The USGovt is managing the credit derivatives from under its broken wing. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation dispersed through the system. That comes later.

The Fannie Mae episode was one best described as averting either a mortgage bond default or a severe jump in mortgage rates. The sewage treatment plant walls were contained. In pulling off the nationalization, the Wall Street controllers thus placated a crucial angry mortgage creditor. China had been selling all summer long in 2008 its Fannie Mae and other GSE bonds. China forced the USGovt hand on its guarantee as a result of nationalization. Rumors had been flying in late 2007 and early 2008 that China was accumulating USAgency Mortgage Bonds as part of some contract toward colonization. No more! China owns zero such mortgage bonds anymore. The USGovt guarantee was implicit but soon made more explicit. The $170 odd billion in covered Fannie Mae losses so far is just the beginning of investment in failure. But Gold does react to the waste of money, the debasement of money, and not so much from inflation dispersed through the system. That comes later.

Lehman Brothers was an unwilling sacrificial lamb for its prominence in the mortgage arena. They were a chess piece that got in the way. The Lehman killjob created a dustup distraction in which JPMorgan was funded $138 billion in a grand reload with USGovt money, to maintain its commodity stranglehold. That came during the Saturday morning bankruptcy hearing, where funds supposedly covered Lehman private accounts. JPMorgan was running low on funds to defend the shaky system. Also, Lehman owned a significant silver position that had gone out of control, in danger of being the object of a critical short covering event certain to render huge damage to JPMorgan. Therefore, JPMorgan took it over and assumed its responsibility. They drove the silver price down from $19 to $10 in the ensuing months, with no objection, criticism, or suspicion of impropriety from regulators, legal authorities, or anybody residing in South Manhattan. Hedge fund positions were targeted effectively. However, the Silver price returned to the same $20 level, which it will easily overcome and penetrate in the next few months. Smart investors bought the silver offered at discounted price for several consecutive months.

INVESTMENT IN FAILURE

For vivid indications of failure, notice the reversion slide into recession even after 20 months of near 0% official interest rate. The USFed has no more weapons except the Printing Pre$$, which it will reluctantly use, perhaps somewhat aware of the dire immediate consequences. Central bankers are dealing with bowel incontinence, in utter fear. For vivid indications of failure, notice that the housing sector and commercial property sector do not respond to record low mortgage rates. The average 30-year mortgage rate across the land stands at 4.40%, a uselessly low level. Refinance is not an option, given the valuation declines in loan collateral. New buyers lack funds or proper credit scores. The ultimate problem is insolvency laced like cancer throughout the entire system, from housing, to households, to banks, to government fiscal situation, even to industry (long gone). The USFed cannot treat insolvency. Only liquidation can. The human toll has been great, from chronic joblessness, to mortgage delinquencies, to home foreclosures, to lost pensions, to college cutbacks, to vanished financial security. For vivid indications of failure, notice the 2.5% to 2.6% long bond yield in USTreasurys, the last bubble. The US bankers in firm control at the helm for two decades have run out of asset bubbles to blow.Each growth period of 5 to 7 years has been driven by the next asset bubble in sequence, not industrial development or output. Money is being ruined at a rapid rate, and precious metals indicate the pace and severity. When the great bond bubble dissipates from whatever pinprick, the gold rally will move from quiet bullish to monster bullish, complete with a skyrocket event. In the next phase, do not be surprised to see the Gold price rise over $100 on a single day. The financial networks will be bug-eyed and speechless.

Plain language works best at this point. The USGovt, as demonstrated by its nationalizations, big bank rescues, grand aid packages (car industry), and support of extreme measures (liquidity facilities), has invested heavily in failure, fraud, and banker elite welfare. They also have invested in sacred wars at great cost but syndicate benefit. The USGovt has not invested much at all in business, new technology, jobs, family, and life. The Gulf of Mexico expenses are more devoted to coverup than cleanup (see the EPA and Coast Guard). The shallow vacant home loan programs exemplify the lack of support and aid for the public. Contempt for the People is evident from high offices. The current administration features a return of failed policy makers, as seen in Robert Rubin, the modern day Rasputin in control of puppet strings. His past failures qualified him for near total banking policy control. As a result, the public harbors growing resentment from the inequality of bailouts, the benign neglect to households, and the blizzard of interference with small businesses. The impact on individuals is stark with pink slips and job loss. As long as weekly jobless claims exceed 450 to 470 thousand, nobody will give much credence to any USGovt verbage about a recovery. Failure is in the wind.

GOLDEN RESPONSE TO FAILURE

The failure pertains to the US financial sector in its entirety, from banking system to credit market to stock market (see high frequency trading dominance). The failure is exacerbated by wasted expenditures toward what are called rescues and stimulus, but are actually banker welfare payouts, massive toxic bond redemption, and nationalization of failed entities as well as fraud centers. In the wake of failure has come round after round of badly spent funds. It is hard to call it money when it pours off the Printing Pre$$ without basis, without disclosure, and without accountability. Naked bond shorting, failures to deliver bond sales, and extreme interest rate swap enforcement made for a witch's brew of grand market interference, ruin, and fraud. A prevailing sentiment persists. The consensus misguided notion is that when the volume of stimulus and rescues is sufficiently higher than a certain threshold level, that recovery follows, after a certain period of time (like a kitchen cooking timer). The leaders are simply throwing money at the problem and crisis, responding to the next critical focal points. Never has policy been so absent, misguided, and bereft of the thought process. We are witnessing the syndicate in survival mode.

In response, the Gold price potential rises as USGovt funds are wasted without any path to remedy or recovery. The extreme usage of the Printing Pre$$ in the next round of Quantitative Easing, dubbed QE2, will set up crippling explosions. Each round of stimulus or bank rescue or Dollar Swap Facility setup actually puts the potential Gold price another $1000 higher. The future years will see at least $3000 Gold price, all in time. The 1980 peak Gold price, adjusted by an accurate price inflation accounting, like the Shadow Govt Statistics series, is more like $7000 per ounce. My $3000 forecast figure is a conservative number. Anyone who disputes and challenges this forecast, must provide evidence that remedy, restructure, and reform are anywhere present in the current landscape. They are not. Money is being created and wasted at a colossal pace, and while it is wasted, the Gold price rises in increasingly debased US$ terms.

Favorable upcoming months for the Gold price are finally upon us, especially September. We are at its doorstep of a strong season. A major upward thrust is likely as a holiday present before January. The pattern is even stronger with silver. The month of September is especially strong, almost twice as much gusto packed into it as any other month, the next being December and January. In a five-month stretch, three of the 12 best months are lined up, directly ahead. Last year, the 2009 gold price jumped from $950 to $1200 between late August and end December. Expect something similar this year. Also, institutions like JPMorgan might face some bloodletting over their silver trading desks. If the ultra-strong seasonality for silver does not catapult its price past $20 and higher by January, it will be a big surprise.

SUPERIORITY OF GOLD AMONG COMMODITIES

Prepare for a breakout in the Gold price, fully forecasted, fully forewarned. A tremendous upleg move comes. The consolidation between the $1065 and $1250 prices has taken nine months. The range between $1175 and $1250 has been tighter in the last two months. A big move is indicated, as the seasons offer a firm favorable tailwind. Notice the MACD crossover, as moving averages are aligned nicely, but calmly, certainly forcefully. A global recognition of monetary system breakdown is in progress. The QE2 launch, complete with further ruinous debasement of money, is imminent. The unexpected effect that will take alarmed myopic central bankers off guard is the powerful rise in the Gold price. It foretells of the next powerful phase of the financial crisis that has been covered in detail in the Hat Trick Letter, gory detail. Dan Norcini, the gold, currency, and commodity analyst, put it so well. He said, "What we are witnessing is the death throes of a debt based monetary system, of which those presiding over it apparently have come to believe their own delusions. The US public is learning what our grandfathers learned as a result of the Great Depression. Debt is something to be avoided, not heaped up and accumulated... Yet, all of this is lost upon the monetary lords who have their noses so close to the ground sniffing out the scent that they cannot see that the path ahead leads off the edge of an abyss, from which there is no escape."

The Gold & Silver charts are both bullish, but in different ways. Gold is lifting off a base and in the process of breakout, while silver has surged upward out of a pause pattern, as described last week. Distrust for the monetary system has gone global. Gold & Silver are accepted as reserve assets, the best safe haven not tied to counter-party debt risk. Watch the Gold/Oil Ratio, which is poised to rise noticeably. Gold is the commodity king, namely it is money. The worldwide recession will keep the crude oil price subdued until the USTreasury bubble pops. Then, at that time, several major commodity hedges will jump in price, rendering a cost shock to the USEconomy. It is broken at the foundation with core insolvencies, broken within industry from grotesque imbalances, broken within arteries from disconnected credit channels, broken from fostered governmental dependence. An inflationary depression lies dead ahead! Notice the recognition of Gold, its distinction as the king of commodities. The usual accepted hedge against the USDollar in Wall Street and London accounts has traditionally been crude oil.

The severe damage from the sovereign debt crisis in Europe changed the global landscape and perceptions. In its wake a wave comes steeped in crisis. Governments erroneously believe that they can inflate their way out of the crisis that has roots firmly connected to debt inflation. This is folly, as they will learn or probably already know. Notice the King Gold, which is out-performing crude oil. The Gold/Oil Ratio has turned up strongly since the spring months. Deflation Knuckleheads will find they made serious analytic errors, when they grouped King Gold with the commodities. What folly. Gold is money, and money is becoming scarce, even re-evaluated. The current monetary system is debt in dangerously disguised denominated form. The ratio will rise toward 20:1 in the coming months. The USEconomy in struggle, clear deterioration, on the verge of possible collapse, will keep the energy prices down generally. The global monetary virus outbreak will lift the Gold price to the heavens.

FROZEN REACTION FROM POLICY

Much of the business sector is frozen. Executives and managers are frozen in inaction from inability to anticipate what comes next in rules change. The landscape of regulations and official programs is too unstable, unpredictable, and illogical. We see stupid stuff like Clunker Car Programs. We see unpredictable stuff like the Home Purchase Credit Program. We see disruptive stuff like the Health Care Program. We see uncertainty, like with the home tax credit return. The biggest obstacle to business seems to be the Health Program imposition. It forces higher costs upon businesses while officials claim the exact opposite. Nowhere is the damage, confusion, and disruption greater than the housing and mortgage finance markets. In the credit market, investors are front running the bond trade, with anticipation of USGovt monetization of more USTreasury Bonds and more USAgency Mortgage Bonds. The prospect of QE2 has brought about a perception that lower mortgage rates could come, and continue to come, despite monstrous bond supply. The business sector cannot readily hire in this uncertain illogical environment in flux, where leadership is constantly being questioned. Backsliding is rampant. The home buyer demand was been drawn forward in volume, leaving a late summer and autumn vacuum. See the 27% decline in existing July home sales. Investment in business equipment and capital formation is nearly non-existent. The USEconomy is frozen by erratic policy. In fact, the Gross Domestic Product is negative, once 3% is subtracted from the official downward revised 1.6% growth in 2Q2010. The subtraction is required for entrance into the world of reality, where hedonic and other productivity fudges have no meaning.

A GENERATION OF LOST INDUSTRY

This is not a lost decade upcoming. The United States has suffered an entire generation of lost industry from its systematic dismantling, forfeit, and abandonment. The migration of industry began with Japan and the Pacific Rim in the 1980 decade. It continued in the 1990 decade, along with the NAFTA experiment with Mexico. Those border factories were removed with the advent of China. It culminated in the 2000 decade, with the death blow from the Chinese industrial expansion, often dubbed the Low Cost Solution. The entire generation, especially since the Chinese climax, replaced US factory income with service sector income, which included the finance sector from mortgage processing, credit derivatives, leveraged structured finance, and other financial engineering vehicles & structures. The emphasis on clean industry and sophisticated economic development was nothing more than a deceptive billboard to conceal the near total devotion to and dependence upon inflation for economic growth. It backfired and killed the system. The financial engineering offered no legitimate advancement to the society, and certainly not to the USEconomy, except the automatic teller machine, an observation made by former USFed Chairman Paul Volcker. His tenure was ended by the way, as a result of vicious rumors of a cancer debilitation, completely false stories spread by proponents of Alan Greenspan, a syndicate priest of high order. Volcker lacked tribal pedigree. The Greenspan Era justified the virtues of risk offloaded in credit securities, hailed the sophistication of their handiwork, and vastly elevated compensation for the priesthood of bankers, right before the system collapsed from a fraudulent foundation, flimsy paper support beams, leveraged inflation engines, and absent industry. All asset bubbles retreat. In the case of Greenspan, the entire USEconomy was a macrocosm type of asset bubble.

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

The secret to a legitimate solution is easy. The big banks must write down their credit portfolios, and accept deep losses. If that results in liquidation, so be it!! Accounting fraud is not a substitute for restructure. Nor is dispatching badly impaired assets to the USFed, who by all accounts is a Bad Bank Repository facing extinction. Debate continues on the need to create a bad bank for dead assets, when the USFed is precisely that bank. Toxic assets held by the big banks must be liquidated. The phony propped credit markets must be permitted to fail, and to find proper value via equilibrium processes. Nowhere is equilibrium sought, as everywhere it is avoided. The USGovt should exit and quit the game of stimulus, intervention, and market distortion. The USGovt is delaying the inevitable. The financial markets should seek their bottoms for clearing supply. The bank leaders must be liquidated, removed from power, and face some prosecution. The Too Big To Fail premise must be rejected. The Zombie Big Banks threaten the entire system. If truth be told, they control the leadership of the USGovt itself. Dead entities control the USGovt, lodged in a stranglehold!! Then turn to constructive methods like tax credits for job creation, immediate expensing of business equipment, forgiveness of first year of income tax for new corporations, and major incentives for industrial plant return home to US shores. As long as Fannie Mae is a USGovt controlled toxic bond & loan center, fund it with $1 trillion to reduce home loan balances. Then repeat the process when it needs another $1 trillion. Focus on big programs to address the neglected US infrastructure of bridges, tunnels, pipelines, port facilities, even water and sewer lines. Bush talked about it, but funded war more. Obama talked about it but gave empty words.

CONSTIPATION WHEN NO LIQUIDATION

This is remarkably simple economics analysis. Without substantial liquidation of the badly impaired assets held in tremendous volume within the big banks, further credit constipation will be the mainstay fixture. That asset clog includes the vast bank owned properties from home foreclosures. The seized REO count rises about 50 thousand homes per month, a figure roughly double from the January level. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued demands from Zombie Big Banks for large tracts of money. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect continued $trillion demands for the Fannie Mae and AIG black holes. Without major liquidation initiatives, expect escalated growth of the USTreasury Bond bubble. In plain terms, the economic landscape and credit system cannot recover without the plowing under of the Big Banks. However, they control the USGovt, its finance ministry in the USDept Treasury, and the USDollar Printing Pre$$ itself. The big banks will NOT order their own death warrant, and volunteer a march to the financial gallows. To think otherwise, even for the national good, is folly. The credit engines of the USEconomy will not fire much at all unless the big banks liquidate large tranches of their balance sheets. That would expose their deep insolvency and potentially lead to their failure. A run on those banks by depositors, and a ruinous sale of their corporate bonds by investors, could ensure the big banks death. Capitalism demands their plowing under to unleash hidden potential. That is what capitalism calls for. The United States does not practice capitalism, but rather fascism.

The ball & chain dragging down and keeping down the big banks is the housing market. The downward force of gravity is visible in the falling home prices. The deteriorating USEconomy still pulls down the monetary platform, as the credit portfolios are directly attached to the ball & chain. The USEconomy was given the appearance of growth from the housing bubble between years 2002 and 2006. Its asset bubble formed a foundation for the majority of the USEconomy, and whose accompanying mortgage finance bubble provided the liquidity to the system. The foundation was shifting sands. In fact, the entire boom & bust served as vivid indisputable evidence that the home is not a tangible asset, but rather a financial asset, an abused asset. The mortgage foreclosure process is the final proof. The true tangible assets are crude oil and precious metals. Other commodities will be sacrificed in wholesale form in order to purchase energy and precious metals. Energy is needed for commercial survival, while gold is needed as bonafide safe haven for money.

GOVT DILEMMA

The USGovt finds itself managing a mangled menagerie of frozen fixtures, most of which are totally broken. It is the great investor in failure and fraud. Its stock is the USDollar, whose value will reflect the ill-advised investment. The US leadership faces a dilemma. Should the leaders give orders that result in formal suicide ceremony of the big banks, a US version of harikari? Should the props be removed, thus encouraging a return of USTreasury vigilantes, risking a default? A default will occur anyway in my view, since it is only delayed. The USTreasury default will come as a result of trade war isolation, USDollar vicious cycles in USGovt deficit monetization, a massive sudden USDollar devaluation, or the USFed resignation from its Congressional contract amidst $1 trillion losses. Expect all the above in combination, each linked. The USFed already has compiled close to half a $1 trillion loss on its balance sheet. With QE2, their losses will grow.

A grand game of chicken by the USGovt and Wall Street control panel is taking place. All official plans are predicated upon an economic recovery in the United States. A great fan blows tainted money into the bankers trough, but the monetary system erodes at its pillars. The new debt, delivered as fresh paper, acts like acid on the capital base of the entire USEconomy. As described in previous articles, the United States possesses the worst economists in the world. They have no concept of capital formation, no concept of what constitutes money, no concept of legitimate income, and no willingness to liquidate the toxic assets that prevent a restructure and recovery. Big hairball lie within the credit system, clogging it.

HEIGHTENED RISK OF USTREASURY BUBBLE

A growing risk is palpable of migration away from USTBonds. It could come very soon. After the housing & mortgage twin bubbles and consequent bust, the last bond asset bubble has a little more ways to go. The last asset bubble is the USTreasury Bond, the entire complex. Calling the Gold market a bubble has been a failed attempt to distract attention from the multi-$trillion bond bubble. In fact, the bubble extends to the Fannie Mae bonds as well, since under USGovt guarantee. Perhaps a 2.0% long bond yield will be the sentinel signal to abandon and sell, setting up a bond bust. An extreme risk is present for the next important event to frighten the horses that prop USTBonds. What will be the rattlesnake in the sand? Foreign creditor sales in volume? A ramped up trade war? Harsh criticism for improper USDollar printing in monetization schemes, finally in the open? Recognition of a $1 trillion tab in war spending? A river of hyper-inflation is lodged in the USTBond dam, whose walls are nothing more than paper reeds held together by bad verbal glue, uttered by bank leaders who increasingly lack credibility.

Witness the failed central bank franchise system, and USFed Chairman Bernanke operating with an empty toolbag accompanied by a frantic look. Witness the systemic failure of the USEconomy (and Mexico too). All USFed recovery scenarios depend upon a USEconomic recovery, which itself is completely dependent upon a US housing market recovery and a US banking system recovery. No recovery will come, since no Big Bank liquidation will be permitted. Therefore the Gold price will rise and rise and rise in the current phase, from wasted expenditures. The USFed risks a walk on the pirate plank into the insolvent seas of ruin. That would spawn a USTreasury default, my forecast made two years ago. It is more certain than ever before. The safe haven is gold & silver. In the next phase, the USTreasury Bond grand dissipation, the long bust process, will catapult the Gold price toward $3000, and suddenly. The gold community will find great amusement in watching the reaction to the naysayers and critics, except the world will change into something hardly recognizable. It will be marred by shortages and chaos. It will feel like a heavy darkness, especially if communication channels are inhibited.

THE HAT TRICK LETTER PROFITS IN THE CURRENT CRISIS.

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Jim Willie CB is a statistical analyst in marketing research and retail forecasting. He holds a PhD in Statistics. His career has stretched over 25 years. He aspires to thrive in the financial editor world, unencumbered by the limitations of economic credentials. Visit his free website to find articles from topflight authors at www.GoldenJackass.com . For personal questions about subscriptions, contact him at [email protected]