• Category Archives Corruption

  • Protesters Interrupt Final Play Of Trump Assassination – “The Blood Of Steve Scalise Is On Your Hands”

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Despite the recent mass shooting in Alexandria, Va that nearly claimed the life a Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a shooting that looks to be attributable to a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome brought on by mass media hysteria over Trump’s presidency, “Shakespeare in the Park” carried on with their rendition of Julius Caesar which includes the assassination of President Trump. For those who have managed to avoid knowledge of this play, here is a short intro:
    ***
    But, courtesy of some conservative protesters, the last couple of assassinations of the season didn’t go as smoothly as planned. Here is video of the first interruption as a protester storms the stage yelling “Goebbels would be proud!” and “Liberal Hate Kills!”

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 19, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • “Someone’s Going To Jail” Gingrich Warns Mueller’s Russia ‘Witch Hunt’ Too Big To Fail Now

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    After the Washington Post-New York Times-CNN axis got the public worked into a lather by effectively trying President Donald Trump and his administration in the court of public opinion, Americans are desperate to see somebody held accountable for…wait…what is it again? Collusion? Obstruction? The narrative changes so quickly, it’s difficult keeping track.
    Enter Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Friday that the investigators who’ve been hired by Special Counsel Robert Mueller won’t quit until they’ve found their own Scooter Libby-type figure to play the role of political pariah.

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 17, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • Trump: “Zero Proof” Of Russian Collusion “So Now They Go For Obstruction Of Justice”

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice
    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

    Yesterday, when we summarized the latest WaPo article according to which Special Counsel Mueller is now probing Trump for obstruction of justice, we said “the intelligence community basically forced Trump’s hand by slowly leaking out damaging innuendos and accusations over the past several months, while refusing to confirm that he, himself, was never actually under investigation. In the end, those damaging leaks, combined with Comey’s refusal to confirm publicly that Trump was not under investigation, resulted in Comey’s sudden dismissal on May 9th. And now, even though he was never a target of any investigation, leaks from the intelligence community have forced a situation where Trump may be under investigation by the intelligence community, a rather confounding, if perhaps well-orchestrated, outcome.”

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 15, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • Bank Of America, Delta Pull Out Of “Shakespeare In The Park” Over Trump Assassination Scene

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Delta Air Lines and Bank of America pulled their sponsorship of New York City’s Public Theater, which hosts the popular “Shakespeare in the Park” series, after Donald Trump Jr. raised the question of whether its staging of Julius Caesar had crossed the line into political speech by depicting the violent assassination of Trump’s father, President Donald Trump.
    ‘I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers? Serious question, when does ‘art’ become political speech & does that change things?,” Trump said in a tweet.
    Unsurprisingly, The New York Times – another sponsor, and ostensibly a politically neutral media organization – is standing by the theater.
    As a reminder, CNN also called the play “a masterpiece,” and publicly recommended it to others…


    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 12, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • Trump Impeachment Odds Slide After Comey Testimony

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    So what is the verdict from Comey’s historic testimony?
    It depends on who you ask: turning to CNN, reading the NYT or WaPo, or any source of left-leaning news, and virtually every commentator will be certain that Trump’s political career has been terminally truncated as a result of today’s events. Alternatively, and inversely, the right will claim the opposite: Comey failed to do any damage to the president, the Russian collusion narrative is now over, and that it is Comey’s own actions that should be probed.
    Both are to be expected.
    But what about the reaction by an impartial arbiter such as the market? Conveiently, that’s what PredictIt is for, and as the chart below shows, Trump’s 2017 impeachment odds dropped by 4 points, from 21% to 17%, following Comey’s testimony.

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jun 8, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • Turkey Bans Short-Selling, Online-Trading As Nation’s Best-Performing Stock Crashes

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    After soaring over 100% in the last 3 weeks, Sasa Polyster Sanayi – Turkey’s best-performing stock of the year – crashed 19% at the open after regulators admitted investigations into potentially fraudulent transactions.
    The regulator cited trading irregularities between March 24 and May 23, when the stock more than doubled to become the top performer on the Borsa Istanbul 100 Index.

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 29, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption and tagged

  • Barclays chief apologises to shareholders for trying to identify whistleblower

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Jes Staley has apologised to Barclays shareholders for the ‘error’ that the bank’s chief executive admitted he had made in trying to uncover the identity of a whistleblower.
    Seeking to take the sting out of the bank’s annual meeting on Wednesday, Mr Staley said: ‘I feel it is important that I acknowledge to you – our shareholders – that I made a mistake in becoming involved in an issue which I should have left to the business to deal with.’
    ‘I have apologised to the board, and I would today like to apologise to you as well, for that error,’ said the 60-year-old American who was hired to run Barclays in December 2015.
    The Barclays board has given Mr Staley a formal reprimand and promised to cut his pay by a ‘very significant’ amount for ordering the bank’s security team to try to identify a whistleblower who had made allegations about a recently recruited colleague.

    This post was published at Financial Times

    This entry was posted in Corruption

  • Another Fraudulent Jobs Report

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    ‘Willing suspension of disbelief’ is defined as a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment. First off, I want to state upfront that there’s nothing enjoyable about the monthly non-farm payroll report unless you enjoy being subjected to brain damage.
    Each month the Government asks us to suspend our critical faculties and accept the headline-reported number of new jobs created by the economy as well as the unemployment rate. Once again the Government did not disappoint, as it headline-flashed the alleged creation of 211,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.4%.
    Unfortunately, for the mindless masses who consume fast-food style news from mainstream news sources, once the headline numbers are absorbed and the ‘experts’ reaffirm them with their idiotic psycho-babble, the numbers as reported miraculously become The Numbers.
    To say that the latest non-farm payroll report stretches the ability to suspend one’s disbelief is an understatement. The Government wants us to believe that 211,000 new jobs were created in April – ‘seasonally adjusted,’ of course. A cursory glance reveals that 162,000 working age civilians decided to just leave the labor force, which explains the alleged decline in the unemployment rate. Either those folks who walked away were bequeathed with Social Security disability, took out a big student loan and enrolled for an online degree program at one of the many online universities or, most likely, their jobless benefits expired and they simply gave up looking for a job that pays more than minimum wage (Note: the latter explanation is supported by the recent spike up in auto loan, credit card and mortgage delinquency rates).

    This post was published at Investment Research Dynamics on May 5, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Corruption Economy Education Government Market Commentary Real Estate Socialism and tagged

  • Gold-Futures Shorting Attacks

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Gold has suffered a sharp pullback over the past couple weeks, stoking much bearish sentiment. While a variety of factors fed this selloff, the precipitating catalyst was a gold-futures shorting attack. These are relatively-rare episodes of extreme selling specifically timed and executed to manipulate gold prices lower rapidly. Traders need to understand these events, which are inherently self-limiting and soon bullish.
    Gold-futures shorting attacks are very real, with telltale volume and price signatures unlike anything else. I’ve studied them for many years now, and have written extensively about them in our newsletters as they occur. But it’s critical to realize these rare events are only responsible for a tiny fraction of all gold selling. The vast majority of the time gold selloffs are driven by other far-more-normal factors, not shorting attacks.
    These isolated anomalous episodes are often cited as proof the gold price is actively manipulated. But whether that’s true or not, gold-futures shorting attacks can only explain tiny sporadic swaths of gold-price behavior. When they occur their impacts can definitely be outsized, but these are always short-lived. That’s because the huge selling necessary to execute a shorting attack is far too extreme to be sustained.
    Gold-futures shorting attacks are naturally a subset of gold-futures trading, which dominates short-term gold prices. Gold-futures speculators enjoy a wildly-disproportional impact on gold levels for a couple of key reasons. The American-gold-futures-derived gold price is the world’s reference price. So whatever the futures speculators as a herd are doing greatly affects popular psychology among gold traders globally.

    This post was published at ZEAL LLC on May 5, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Blogosphere Corruption Economy Fiscal Policies Gold Precious Metals Science and tagged

  • Ted Butler Quote of the Day 05-05-17

    Posted on by Jon 1 Comment

    My letter to the CFTC included this passage – “Almost without fail, on every past occasion where the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures reached extreme levels, it was only a matter of time before the price of silver gets rigged lower by these big shorts to induce speculative selling from traders operating on technical price signals. In fact, COT report data indicate that JPMorgan has never taken a loss, only profits on every silver short position it has added over the past nine years. Such results would not be possible in a market that wasn’t manipulated in price. In essence, speculators have taken over the price discovery process in silver because there are so few real hedgers trading on the COMEX, only speculating banks betting against other speculative traders.”

    Considering that several hundred individuals took the time to contact the CFTC on this matter, it is not possible for the agency to have failed to notice that silver prices were deliberately rigged lower just as advertised beforehand. The Commission’s own data confirm and will confirm that technical fund traders were the big sellers and the bank shorts, led by JP Morgan, were the big buyers on the recent price rout. The necessary ingredients for manipulation were all present and accounted for – means, motive and opportunity.

    Another undeniable conclusion is that JP Morgan has done it once again, namely, teamed up with the other big COMEX commercial shorts to rig silver prices lower and has begun to buy back recently added short positions with profits. Thus, a nine year perfect trading record has been extended and preserved. Nine years after taking over Bear Stearns, JP Morgan has established the perfect record in only buying back any added short positions in COMEX silver at a profit and never, ever at a loss

      More precious metals news & information available at
    Ed Steer’s Gold & Silver Digest.

    This entry was posted in Corruption Market Commentary Precious Metals Silver and tagged

  • Brad Birkenfeld: Lucifer’s Banker…a whistle-blower’s account of exposing massive fraud at UBS

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Just how bad is the ongoing fraud in the banking system? Get ready for a mind-bowing expos by a former insider at UBS.
    Brad Birkenfield, author of Lucifer’s Banker: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy, recounts the efforts he uncovered by his employer to help its clients cheat the U.S. government out of tens of billions in taxes.
    But despite his working with the government closely to expose the gigantic conspiracy between U.S.-based tax cheats and the giant Swiss bank, UBS, the so-called Justice Department went after Mr. Birkenfeld for abetting tax evasion by one of his clients. After spending thirty months in Federal prison, he was released and three weeks later, received a whistle-blower check for $104 million, the largest such check ever from the IRS Whistle-blower Office.

    This post was published at Peak Prosperity

    This entry was posted in Banking Corruption Economy Government Market Commentary and tagged

  • DOJ Probing Goldman For Rigging Treasury Auctions

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    While we doubt anything material will emerge for various obvious reasons, the NY Post reports that the DOJ is probing Goldman Sachs for alleged Treasury auction rigging: the charge is that Goldman, one of the 23 US primary dealers, won almost all Treasury bond auctions from 2007 to about 2011 even after the Treasury department established safeguards to maintain competitiveness. The case is said to center on chats and emails showing Goldman traders sharing price information with traders at other banks:
    Chats and emails believed to show Goldman traders sharing sensitive price information with traders at other banks are at the center of the case, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
    ‘They didn’t lose many bids,’ one person who has seen the bid data told The Post. The prices Goldman offered for Treasury bonds ‘would be very close’ but just above offers from other banks, and typically arrived ‘at the end of the auction.’
    While not the first time we have had news of a DOJ probe into Treasury market rigging – the Post itself reported last March virtually the same story, namely that “Goldman Sachs probed in alleged Treasury rigging“, and prior that in June of 2015 – the details are new, and suggest that collusion between the banks reaches far beyond merely FX. Also notable is the deference to Goldman by other banks, raising questions what was the quid pro quo. The timing is also notable, coming at a time when at least half a dozen Goldman Sachs alumni are in high levels of the executive branch. Which is perhaps why Goldman feels compelled to clarify that “No one has accused any bank, or Mnuchin or Cohn, of any wrongdoing.”

    This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 3, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Alternative Media Blogosphere Corruption Economy and tagged

  • Key Economic Data Continue To Show A Recession

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Goldman Sachs’ net income declined 42% from 2009 to 2016. How many of you reading this were aware of that fact? Yet GS’ stock price closed today 36% above its 2009 year-end closing price. See below for details.
    Auto sales in April declined again, with the Big Three domestic OEMs (GM, F and Chrysler) missing Wall St estimates by a country mile. The manipulated SAAR (seasonally adjusted annualize rate) metric put a thin layer of lipstick on the pig by showing a small gain in sales from March to April. But this is statistical sleight of hand. The year over year actuals for April don’t lie: GM -5.7%, F -7% and Chrysler -7.1%. What is unknown is to what extent the numbers reported as ‘sales’ were nothing more than cars being shipped from OEM factory floors to dealer inventory, where it will sit waiting for an end-user to take down a big subprime loan in order to use the car until it gets repossessed.
    The growth in loan origination to the key areas of the economy – real estate, general commercial business and the consumer – is plunging. This is due to lack of demand for new loans, not banks tightening credit. If anything, credit is getting ‘looser,’ especially for mortgages. Since the Fed’s quantitative easing and near-zero interest rate policy took hold of yields, bank interest income – the spread on loans earned by banks (net interest margin) – has been historically low. Loan origination fees have been one of the primary drivers of bank cash flow and income generation. Those four graphs above show that the loan origination ‘punch bowl’ is becoming empty.
    HOWEVER, the Fed’s tiny interest rate hikes are not the culprit. Loan origination growth is dropping like rock off a cliff because consumers largely are ‘tapped out’ of their capacity to assume more debt and, with corporate debt at all-time highs, business demand for loans is falling off quickly. The latter issue is being driven by a lack of new business expansion opportunities caused by a fall-off in consumer spending. If loan origination continues to fall off like this, and it likely will, bank earnings will plunge.

    This post was published at Investment Research Dynamics on May 3, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Banking Corruption Economy Fiscal Policies Government Market Commentary Real Estate and tagged

  • 11 Reasons Why U.S. Economic Growth Is The Worst That It Has Been In 3 Years

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Those that were predicting that the U. S. economy would be flying high by now have been proven wrong. U. S. GDP grew at the worst rate in three years during the first quarter of 2017, and many are wondering if this is the beginning of a major economic slowdown. Of course when we are dealing with the official numbers that the federal government puts out, it is important to acknowledge that they are highly manipulated. There are many that have correctly pointed out to me that if the numbers were not being doctored that they would show that we are still in a recession. In fact, John Williams of shadowstats.com has shown that if honest numbers were being used that U. S. GDP growth would have been consistently negative going all the way back to 2005. So I definitely don’t have any argument with those that claim that we are actually in a recession right now. But even if we take the official numbers that the federal government puts out at face value, they are definitely very ugly…
    Economic growth slowed in the first quarter to its slowest pace in three years as sluggish consumer spending and business stockpiling offset solid business investment. Many economists write off the weak performance as a byproduct of temporary blips and expect healthy growth in 2017.
    The nation’s gross domestic product – the value of all goods and services produced in the USA – increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.7%, the Commerce Department said Friday, below the tepid 2.1% pace clocked both in the fourth quarter and as an average throughout the nearly 8-year-old recovery. Economists expected a 1% increase in output, according to a Bloomberg survey.

    This post was published at The Economic Collapse Blog on April 28th, 2017.

    This entry was posted in Blogosphere Corruption Economy Government Market Commentary and tagged

  • Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Sell the News – Qu’est-ce Que C’est

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    “Psychopaths [and sociopaths] have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people.”
    Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience
    ‘The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.’
    John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
    ‘In a nation run by swine, all the pigs are upwardly mobile, and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.’
    Hunter S. Thompson
    “And where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
    Tacitus, Agricola
    Donald and His Merry Pranksters were rolling out the greatest tax cut in history today.
    It was interesting to watch the stock and precious metals futures fluctuate, as Messrs Cohn and Mnuchin were speaking. I did have a chance to do that today, since the daily hospital visits are in the morning, and I seem to be getting caught up with the household chores as the queen finds herself increasingly fatigued. Alas, the mispricing in these markets was so apparent that I could not resist making a few trades during the ebb and flow of expectations and short term trends that reversed somewhat sharply into the close. Even an old dog can hear the call to the chase now and again.

    This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 26 APRIL 2017.

    This entry was posted in Blogosphere Corruption Economy Market Commentary Precious Metals Science and tagged

  • Snakes In Suits – Predators Among Us

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    ‘They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered.
    A confident, aggressive delivery style – often larded with jargon, clichs, and flowery phrases – makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others … they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial – but convincing – verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.
    They are known for their ability to don many masks, change ‘who they are’ depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim.
    Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other. The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.
    Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits
    “I may have made an error in judgement – but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million. His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him.”
    Adolf Eichmann
    A psychopath according to the latest research is both genetically and physically predisposed, through a cluster of characteristics, to being unable to form bonds with other people, even on the most basic level. In addition, certain aspects of their upbringing and environment seem to contribute to their deficiency or predisposition, to turn it towards what would be considered as malignant ends.
    Most simply, a full blown psychopath is someone who is ‘born without a conscience.’

    This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 26 APRIL 2017.

    This entry was posted in Blogosphere Corruption Market Commentary Science

  • The Trump Is A Fraud On Taxes

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    You cannot deficit spend your way to prosperity, nor can you print growth.
    You can print money. Deficit spending is printing money.
    You cannot print value.
    The premise that you will get 3% growth if you deficit spend is the same premise that Obama ran after 2008. He and his advisers believed that if the government spent trillions that it did not have that we would see higher economic growth and over the space of a decade or so this would pay for the deficit through increased tax revenues.
    It didn’t happen.
    It didn’t happen because it can’t happen; it was nothing more than a scheme to “print value”, which is always and forever a fraud.

    This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-04-26.

    This entry was posted in Corruption Economy Government Market Commentary and tagged

  • Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Dear Mr. Fantasy – Precious Metals Option Expiration

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Dear Mr. Fantasy – Precious Metals Option Expiration
    Another ‘risk on’ day after the French have seemingly chosen a populist neo-liberal businessman with little policy experience for their front runner.
    And our own US version of this new breed, with considerably more panache, has signaled as intention to cut the US corporate tax rate to 15%.
    If that 15% was like an Alternative Minimum Tax for corporations it might be a good idea, since so many of the big multinational corporations game the system and pay little to nothing in taxes almost every year.
    Somehow, I don’t think it is going to work out that way.
    Rumor has it that the wealthy will also be enjoying a personal tax cut.
    Trickle down tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations do not produce broader growth and consumption. Spending huge sums on projects designed to benefit a wealthy few, while shifting the burdens of bloated monopolies like healthcare and control frauds like TBTF banking to the middle and working class, in the face of record income inequality, is a policy recipe for disaster.
    The ridiculous proposition is going to meet the unbelievable farce.

    This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 25 APRIL 2017.

    This entry was posted in Blogosphere Civil Unrest Corporate Corruption Economy Fiscal Policies Health Care Market Commentary Precious Metals and tagged

  • Ted Butler: A Secret and Illegal Agreement

    Posted on by Jon Comment

    There has to be a good reason why the CFTC won’t openly address the clear evidence of a COMEX silver manipulation, as well as why JP Morgan and the CME Group would turn away from direct accusations of wrongdoing that would constitute slander and libel if such allegations weren’t true. Something has to be holding the CFTC back from addressing that which should and must be addressed. Actually, I think there are two reasons.
    One, as I’ve long held concerns the agency rejecting any thought of a COMEX silver manipulation early on, more than 30 years ago when I first alleged such a manipulation. Basically, it’s nothing more than a continued doubling down of manipulation denial because how does a government agency openly admit to failing in its prime mission for decades despite increasingly clear evidence of such failure? This denial doubling down is reflected in the unusual circumstance of the agency being forced to argue with every single point I ever raised about silver. But it’s simply not possible that everything I say about silver to be 100% incorrect. At a minimum, that would be insulting to those who find value in what I write. Besides, I rely, almost exclusively, on the agency’s own data to make the case and it almost ends up with the agency arguing against its own data.
    But there’s an even more compelling reason for the CFTC to deny allegations of a silver manipulation that burst onto the scene nine years ago – the takeover of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan in March 2008. As the public record indicates, this was at the start of the financial crisis and came about with the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve requesting JP Morgan’s assistance in rescuing Bear Stearns. You can be sure that since JP Morgan was being asked by the U.S. Government to, in effect, do it and the country a favor in taking over Bear that the bank would, in return, solicit and arrange for as many protections for JPM as possible. JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has since lamented that he ever agreed to the takeover, but when it came to subsequent dealings in COMEX silver over the next nine years, it’s hard for me to see how it could have turned out any better than it did for the bank.
    What no one knows is what private guarantees and assurances were granted to JP Morgan that have left it immune from the CFTC moving against JPM’s clearly illegal activities in silver over the past nine years. There’s no other way to explain how the crooks at JP Morgan continue to manipulate and fraudulently abuse the silver market for its own gain. Undoubtedly, JP Morgan was given a free get-out-of-jail card from future violations of commodity law when it came to it agreeing to acquire Bear Stearns. But after nine years of JP Morgan dominating the silver market in every way possible, was JPM’s immunity from having to behave legally in silver granted in perpetuity?

    This post was published at Silverseek

    This entry was posted in Corruption Economy Fiscal Policies Government Market Commentary Precious Metals Silver and tagged