In March 2010, Andrew Maguire came forth as the first – and to date, only – whistle blower from the London bullion trading community, where the hideous collusion’s to suppress prices we learned of last week – in both gold and silver, for at least the past decade – are more the rule than the exception. Which I cannot emphasize enough, were only able to occur –still, to this day – do to the implicit; and in some cases, explicit; government “backing” of such manipulations.
If you continue to succeed with the same strategy each day – like, for instance, naked shorting paper gold and silver at the “2:15 AM” open of the illiquid London “pre-market” session; and it subsequently declines on 753 of the next 868 trading days (the current “streak,” as depicted below); nearly always, via the Cartel’s prototypical “Cartel Herald” algorithm; and of course, with no one so much as chastising you (that is, until the recent Deutsche Bank lawsuits – which I assure you, are just getting started); why not continue doing so every day?
At the time, Maguire’s shocking CFTC testimony regarding blatant gold and silver price manipulation (read: suppression) was mocked, particularly given the “fake news” propaganda that attempted to portray him as having an alternative agenda. However, it turns out he was 100% correct; and after meeting him at GATA’s 2011 London Conference, I could not be more confident about his background, knowledge, or motivation. To that end, I wrote “demystifying Andrew Maguire” on the flight home, describing my expectation that he would become a great asset to the Precious Metal community in the coming years.
Lo and behold, whether by coincidence or otherwise, gold and silver parabolically surged in late 2010 and early 2011, hitting new all-time highs in U.S. dollar terms in May and September 2011, respectively – before being viciously attacked in the May 1st “Sunday night paper silver massacre”; September 6th, 2011’s “Operation PM Annihilation I”; and countless other “named storm” attacks when the Powers That Be passed their respective “points of no return”; after which, financial markets became permanently manipulated, on a 24/7 basis.
Since then, Maguire’s commentary, posted via periodic interviews with King World News, has been invaluable – in continuing to be the lone voice describing real-time changes in global physical bullion trading, and issues affecting investors of all time frames. No more pertinently than this weekend – when in this interview, he helped “demystify” the belief that Indian gold buying has slowed due to the insane, soon-to-miserably-fail “cash ban” that may well provide a major catalyst for the global monetary crisis that must inevitably arrive. Of course, such buying now occurs primarily on the black markets, which were inadvertently created by the historically hubristic 10-plus percent gold and silver tariffs India’s prior government enacted three years ago – under the comically flawed logic that it would improve the second, bordering on third world nation’s “trade deficit”; which it decidedly hasn’t, as evidenced by the fact that the Rupee, as we speak, sits right around the same all-time low level as the day said tariffs were instituted. Not only that, care of the cash ban, the Indian economy is likely headed into a major recession in 2017, at a time when essentially all emerging market currencies are already in free-fall mode.
If you truly want to “demystify” the Indian situation – or as I deemed it in my June 2013 article, “Indian Implosion”; as well as December 2013’s “upcoming Indian catastrophe” and April 2015 “world’s worst government”; “financial Apartheid,” there’s no better person to pay attention to than Jayant Bhandari, whose most recent interview describes the rapidly devolving Indian economic situation, and evolving police state.
Clearly, many people are terrified of buying gold due to the “implicit” capital controls that have been instated; and potentially, explicit ones to follow. However, as roughly 1.0 billion of the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens are effectively impoverished, living on perhaps a dollar or two per day, only a small portion of Indians actually purchase Precious Metals to start with. And after the short-term disruption caused by the initial cash ban chaos – during which, Andrew Maguire says Indian import demand has, contrary to anti-gold propaganda, been enormous – it’s highly likely the 300 million Indians with the financial means to protect themselves will rapidly learn how to utilize the burgeoning black markets. Nearly 100% physical premiums should tell you all you need to know about how desperate Indians are to acquire gold – and if you see such premiums start to weaken, you can bet it’s because the black markets are more efficiently operating.
The giant pink elephant in the room – of silver – which is not even on the government’s radar; and, as described in last week’s “silver demand about to explode”; likely never will be, given how scarce it is to start with; and vitally necessary to so many industrial processes. To that end, even many of Indian’s poor can afford silver at its current, historically suppressed price. And thus, yet again, the Cartel’s “Achilles Heel” – silver – is ripe to wreak havoc on its increasingly desperate attempts to maintain the dying fiat status quo by suppressing it with paper naked shorts.
In today’s “demystification” exercise, this interview with Egon von Greyerz – a long-time gold advocate, who was one of the key architects and supporters of the 2014 “Save our Swiss Gold” referendum movement. In it, he discusses how Swiss gold refinery demand is as strong as ever – to the point that in some cases, they are actually paying atypical premiums over the fraudulent paper “spot price” to get dore, given how strong demand for refined product is in China and other parts of the world.
Maguire also notes that it’s very likely that rumors of Chinese gold “import quota restrictions” are overblown, given how many ways gold can be imported into the country; and, of course, how strong demand continues to be – not just from private citizens, but the government itself, which continues to overtly buy hand over fist. Frankly, in light of the utter explosion of Chinese foreign exchange outflows, resulting from the 13% Yuan devaluation that may well push its value below the key psychological level of 7.0/dollar any day now; and the coincident paper gold crash, care of the Cartel; the odds of Chinese demand NOT surging in 2017 are slim to none. Let alone, as worldwide production is starting to cliff-dive – as connoted in last week’s “most important, and gold-bullish, chart you’ll ever see.”
Look, there’s no question the “war on gold” has been launched; as has the war on cash; and the “final currency wars” – against both sovereign nations and you. Not to mention, on personal civil rights – both here and overseas; which are violently being fought back against, both at the polls and otherwise.
Unquestionably, 2017 will yield a whole new set of challenges – in what I believe will be the year of money printing and draconian government decrees. However, as noted in last week’s “how to win the war on gold,” if you just sit tight holding physical metal – and use the opportunity the “post-Trump destruction” Cartel raids have given to buy at prices at or below the cost of production, the odds of surviving and thriving what’s coming could not be higher.
