Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Who is the Real Fraud - Andrew Maguire or Jeffrey Christian?

  

Update October 29th, 2013

A Formal Response from Andrew Maguire

  And finally, we have the link to "The Cabal", now all pieces fall in place. We have the total "Conspiracy" and the same old faces Andrew Maguire is against in his fight. With the next two pieces, please, separate sales pitch from the real information, but they provide a lot of food for thought. The recent events are showing that a lot of former "Conspiracy" theories are closer to reality than CNBC or WSJ front page, but always think for yourself. Our take is that The System is getting closer to its limits now, at first in the Gold and Silver markets.

And in this one you have to separate a lot of pain from some actual information, which gives interesting brushes to CPM Group "family" portrait and its involvement in Silver leasing and complex derivatives schemes. We guess it will be on par with Mr Christian "sources":

Presented October 2013 by Charles Savoie

GATA:

Attacks on Maguire aim to defend 'paper charade' in gold market, Kaye says

MaxKeiser.com:

Rick Ackerman Responds to the Lame Slur Hurled At Andrew Maguire

Update:

Andrew Maguire’s Employer Responds to Jeffrey Christian’s Fraud Allegations

  The ongoing war between the corrupt financial system and people still standing for the real human values will include all form of deception and treachery, we will judge all the involved by their deeds and not just words.
   We know what Andrew Maguire is doing now - he is exposing the fraudulent Fractional Reserve Gold System at LBMA and ongoing manipulations in Gold and Silver markets.

Gold COMEX Claims Per Deliverable Ounce Rises Above 55 at These Prices GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

  Jesse reports about the ongoing Game of Musical Chairs in the Western Fractional Reserve Gold System with manipulated LBMA and COMEX Gold markets. With China taking now all physical delivery from the system the entire Western Gold market is under enormous pressure. 

  We found it very positive that with more unleashed attacks on Gold - in order to redeem physical Gold from GLD ETF holdings - it is more and more difficult for Gold market manipulators to keep it under $1300. Physical demand is pushing the price right back up. Goldman Sachs clients are not doing very well if they Sold their gold below $1300 following the House Gold Sell Call. This week we had a very impressive breakout in Gold, Silver and Gold & Silver mining stocks.

Gold Spikes to $1349.00 - Is Initial Claims Report Leaked Again? GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX, SLV

  We know what Jeffrey Christian is doing - he is attacking GATA and Andrew Maguire now in order to put all idea about Gold Market Manipulation under question mark.

  Our heart lies more with people like Matt Taibbi and Andrew Maguire here and we hope that baseless allegations will be met with facts by Andrew next week.

Jon Stewart And Matt Taibbi: Banksters, Presstitutes And Why Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase

"Matt Taibbi continues his brilliant work as one of the last real investigative journalists left at his best. Jon Stewart is on par translating the situation for those who has difficulties with concentration and reading. 

  We will ask our rhetorical question again: after LIBOR fraud, FOREX manipulations, Mortgage scam and Pension looting - Is The Gold Manipulation To Be Admitted Next?"

  Maybe it is just because Jeffrey Christian is part of the fraudulent system going as far back as to Goldman Sachs? Who are you really Jeffrey Christian? From CPM website:

"Jeffrey M. Christian is Managing Partner of CPM Group.

He has been a prominent analyst and advisor on precious metals and commodities markets since the 1970’s, with work spanning precious metals, energy markets, base metals, agricultural markets, and economic analysis in general. Mr. Christian is considered one of the most knowledgeable experts on precious metals markets, commodities in general, and financial engineering using options for hedging and investing purposes. He is the author of Commodities Rising, 2006.

He founded the company in 1986, spinning off the Commodities Research Group from Goldman, Sachs & Co and its commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Company.

He has advised many of the world’s largest corporations and institutional investors on managing their commodities price and market exposures, as well as providing advisory services to the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and numerous governments."  

You can dig more into the history of his relationships with GATA here:

The Great Gold Debate Jeffrey Christian (CPM Group) against Bill Murphy (GATA) - Starting with an amazing quote

Andrew Maguire: Gold Smashdown, FED Defends The Dollar And How Goldman Sachs Operates. GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

"Andrew Maguire presents to us the chronicles of ongoing war behind the curtain with FED defending the US Dollar at the crucial level 80.00 and how the FED's #1 Gold Prime Dealer Goldman Sachs operates in the Gold market. Now we have more information on why Goldman Sachs has issued the Sell Call on Gold last Wednesday. 

   All these revelations will never lead to the higher Gold prices without Buyers and one can argue that this manipulation can go forever. According to the Andrew Maguire the key crucial difference now is that Central Banks are buying and, particularly, China is taking all available Gold for physical delivery now."

Max Keiser: CFTC Investigation And JPMorgan Whistleblowers on Gold And Silver Manipulation. GLD, SLV, GDX, GDXJ, MUX, TNR.v

   "The "results" of CFTC "investigation" in Gold and Silver manipulation stink to the high heaven. With JPMorgan being involved in manipulations in Libor, Energy and other markets and talking now about the 11 billion settlement on Mortgage market manipulations, the idea that CFTC can not find any evidence of Gold and Silver markets manipulations does not fit well with more and more facts coming to the surface."

King World News:

Maguire & Sprott Refute allegations & Discuss War In Gold

Silver Doctors:

WHO IS THE REAL FRAUD- ANDREW MAGUIRE OR JEFFREY CHRISTIAN?

There’s been quite a bit of talk about Andrew Maguire these past 24 hours. I’ve received a handful of emails asking me for my opinion so I thought I would make a public response.
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, this all started Thursday when Jeffrey Christian of the CPM Group, who was speaking at the Silver Summit in Spokane, Washington, concluded his presentation with some “revelations” about Maguire’s personal life and background- claiming Maguire is “a fraud”.  
Jeffrey Christian has had a bug up his rear for quite some time now regarding GATA, Bill Murphy and Andrew Maguire. I wonder why?
Could it be related to his company’s “expertise in financial engineering that utilizes derivatives…“?
It certainly appears that Jeffrey and his company have a vested interest in maintaining the current, leveraged, fractional reserve derivative system. I mean, it says so right there on the CPM Group’s home page.

Submitted by Turd Ferguson, TFMetalsReport:

The story was then picked up by Kitco:

http://www.kitco.com/news/2013-10-24/KitcoNews20131024DA-CPM-Group-Alleges-Whistleblower-Maguire-Has-No-Metals-History-Silver-Summit.html

Rather amazingly, just a little over an hour later, the story was picked up and repeated verbatim by Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kitconews/2013/10/24/cpm-group-alleges-whistleblower-maguire-has-no-metals-history-silver-summit/

Hmmmm. What, if anything, do we make of this?

Beats me but I do think some context is required. Below is a link to Jeffrey’s company website:

http://www.cpmgroup.com

There you’ll find all sorts of interesting tidbits such as Jeffrey’s scowling visage:

Also included is a bio that prominently mentions: “(Jeffrey) has advised many of the world’s largest corporations and institutional investors on managing their commodities price and market exposures, as well as providing advisory services to the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and numerous governments.”

Not sure that’s the type of endorsement most here would value but apparently Jeffrey thinks it’s important. Additionally, this is worth noting, right on the homepage:

“CPM Group is known for its research and analysis of the metals markets, its overall economic analysis of commodities markets, and its expertise in financial engineering, using derivatives to structure optimized positions for commercial hedgers, and for institutional and high net worth individual investors.”

So…in my humble interpretation…it certainly appears that Jeffrey and his company have a vested interest in maintaining the current, leveraged, fractional reserve derivative system. I mean, it says so right there on their home page, does it not?

Anyway, Jeffrey has had a bug up his rear for quite some time now regarding GATA, Bill Murphy and Andrew Maguire. Again, I wonder why? Just speculating here but could it be related to his company’s “expertise in financial engineering that utilizes derivatives…”? GATA has worked for years to end the blatant corruption of the manipulated paper (derivative) metals markets. If GATA was ultimately successful in ending paper metal derivative manipulation, would The CPM Group need to come up with a new business plan? Again, hmmmm.

Which brings us to my friend, Andrew. It’s been almost four years but do you recall just whom and which organization brought Andrew to the forefront at the CFTC “hearing”? Oh yah…it was GATA! How about that?

And now here is something to be seized upon. Early in the clip above, Bill Murphy states “Mr. Maguire, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is a metals trader in London…” It is this supposed Goldman Sachs lineage that Jeffrey is claiming to be false. Apparently, by extension, if Andrew didn’t actually work for Goldman Sachs, then everything else he has claimed or demonstrated must then be false, up to and including the JPM whistleblowers.

First of all, regarding Goldman Sachs, I challenge anyone reading this to scour the internet and find one, single incidence of Andrew Maguire stating that he worked for Goldman Sachs. This initial claim by Bill Murphy has been repeated and reported over and over but, as far as I know, never stated by Andrew. I suppose he could have refuted it somewhere along the way but, as I know from personal experience, once you start down the path of refuting everything that gets said about you on the internet, it leaves little time for anything else.

In the end, I guess I’m confused about what this has to do with anything, anyway. Is Jeffrey claiming that unless you’ve worked for Goldman Sachs like him, you are not qualified to offer an expert opinion on the metals? If that’s the case, how come this site is so successful? I’ve been a stockbroker, a mutual fund wholesaler and a failed internet entrepreneur. Does that make all of my CoT, BPR, Comex and chart analysis worthless? Apparently not. And what about Andy? All of his trades are documented on the Coghlan Capital site and the only complaint I ever heard from anyone in “Turd’s Army” was that the hours were too early for the average, U.S.-based trader. If the guy consistently makes money and, as you can see on the TFMR homepage, Andy is up considerably since April of 2012, why would a Goldman Sachs background matter?

Look….Andy’s been awful busy lately. We haven’t even spoken for over a month. By email exchange, though, I know he was very frustrated by the sudden ending of the 5-year CFTC silver investigation and he’s been working behind the scenes to get the two JPM whistleblowers a fair hearing. Knowing this, the timing and scurrilous nature of Kitco’s and Forbes’ reporting seems rather convenient.

I feel fortunate to consider Andrew Maguire my friend. He is a good and decent gentleman who, like me, has found himself thrust into the limelight, fighting against the central bankers, the bullion bankers and their abettor media. Though we’ve never met in person, I can assure you that he is an accomplished trader, wise to the ways of the international metals markets. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience, which he has unselfishly shared with me and all of us here at TFMR, in order to increase our understanding of the markets. At great personal expense, he continues to forge ahead in his quest to end the price suppression scheme that has bankrupted companies and brought great harm to their workers, particularly in underdeveloped nations. For his effort, he is subject to all sorts of personal attacks, yesterday being just the latest example.

He has my friendship and support. He should have yours, too.

TF"

Jon Stewart And Matt Taibbi: Banksters, Presstitutes And Why Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase

  Matt Taibbi continues his brilliant work as one of the last real investigative journalists left at his best. Jon Stewart is on par translating the situation for those who has difficulties with concentration and reading. 

  We will ask our rhetorical question again: after LIBOR fraud, FOREX manipulations, Mortgage scam and Pension looting - Is The Gold Manipulation To Be Admitted Next?

Matt Taibbi on JPMorgan and "Why Is This Firm Under Such Heat From Regulators." GLD, SLV

"Jamie Dimon is taken to the cleaners in this video. What should happen with his bank next in order to jail at least somebody? Matt Taibbi is providing more information for the interested regulators adding to the list of criminal activity. Gold and Silver manipulation will take its place there as well one day."

Doing The God's Work - Looting the Pension Funds by Matt Taibbi.

 Matt Taibbi continues his brilliant investigative journalism at its prime and brings us another facet of the  rotted to the core pyramid of financial system.

Max Keiser: CFTC Investigation And JPMorgan Whistleblowers on Gold And Silver Manipulation. GLD, SLV, GDX, GDXJ, MUX, TNR.v

  The "results" of CFTC "investigation" in Gold and Silver manipulation stink to the high heaven. With JPMorgan being involved in manipulations in Libor, Energy and other markets and talking now about the 11 billion settlement on Mortgage market manipulations, the idea that CFTC can not find any evidence of Gold and Silver markets manipulations does not fit well with more and more facts coming to the surface.

Rolling Stone:

By Matt Taibbi

Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase

A lot of people all over the world are having opinions now about the ostensibly gigantic $13 billion settlement Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase have entered into with the government.

The general consensus from most observers in the finance sector is that this superficially high-dollar settlement – worth about half a year's profits for Chase – is an unconscionable Marxist appropriation. It's been called a "robbery" and a "shakedown," in which red Obama and his evil henchman Eric Holder confiscated cash from a successful bank, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, "for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies."

Look, there's no denying that this is a lot of money. It's the biggest settlement in the history of government settlements, and it's just one company to boot. But this has been in the works for a long time, and it's been in the works for a reason. This whole thing, lest anyone forget, has its genesis in a couple of state Attorneys General (including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Delaware's Beau Biden) not wanting to sign off on any deal with the banks that didn't also address the root causes of the crisis, in particular the mass fraud surrounding the sale and production of subprime mortgage securities.

Those holdouts essentially forced the federal government's hand, leading Barack Obama to create a federal working group on residential mortgage-backed securities (widely seen as the AGs' price for okaying the $25 billion robosigning deal), headed up by Schneiderman, whose investigation of Chase and its affiliates led to the deal that's about to be struck. Minus all of that, minus those state holdouts in those foreclosure negotiations, this settlement probably would never even take place: The federal government seemed more than willing previously to settle with the banks without even addressing the root-cause issues that are at the heart of this new Chase deal.

So let's not forget that – that even this $13 billion settlement, which is actually a $9 billion settlement (see below), came very close to never happening. But now it is happening, and the business press is going nuts about how unfair it all is.

In fact, this deal is actually quite a gift to Chase. It sounds like a lot of money, but there are myriad deceptions behind the sensational headline.

Read Matt Taibbi's Feature on the Gangster Bankers Who Are Too Big to Jail

First of all, the settlement, as the folks at Better Markets have pointed out, may wipe out between $100 billion and $200 billion in potential liability – meaning that the bank might just have settled "for ten cents or so on the dollar." The Federal Housing Finance Agency alone was suing Chase and its affiliates for $33 billion. The trustee in the ongoing Bernie Madoff Ponzi scandal was suing Chase for upwards of $19 billion.

Obviously, those plaintiffs may never have gotten that kind of money out of Chase. But just settling the mere potential of so much liability has huge value for the bank. It's part of the reason the company's share price hasn't exactly cratered since the settlement was announced.

Moreover, the settlement is only $9 billion in cash, with $4 billion earmarked for "mortgage relief." Again, as Better Markets noted, we've seen settlements with orders of mortgage relief before, and banks seem to have many canny ways of getting out of the spirit of these requirements.

In the foreclosure settlement, most of the ordered "relief" eventually came in the form of short sales, with banks letting people sell their underwater houses and move out without paying for the loss in home value. That's better than nothing, but it's something very different than a bank working to help families stay in their homes.

There's also the matter of the remaining $9 billion in fines being tax deductible (meaning we're subsidizing the settlement), and the fact that Chase is reportedly trying to get the FDIC to assume some of Washington Mutual's liability.

But overall, the key to this whole thing is that the punishment is just money, and not a crippling amount, and not from any individual's pocket, either. In fact, the deal that has just been completed between Chase and the state represents the end, or near the end, of a long process by which people who committed essentially the same crimes as Bernie Madoff will walk away without paying any individual penalty.

What Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns (Chase's guilty acquisitions) were doing in the mortgage markets was little more than an elaborate take on a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. Actually, most of the industry was guilty of the same thing, but in the cases of these two banks in particular the concrete evidence of fraud is extensive, and the comparison to a Madoff-style caper isn't a fanciful metaphor but more like evidentiary fact.

Madoff's operational fiction was his own personality. He used his charm and his lifestyle and his social status to con rich individuals into ponying up money into an essentially nonexistent investment scheme.

In the cases of both WaMu and especially Bear, the operating fictions were broad, carefully-crafted infrastructures of bogus guarantees, flatlined due diligence mechanisms, corrupted ratings agencies and other types of legal chicanery. These fake guarantees and assurances misled investors about they were buying. Most thought they were investing in home mortgages. What they were actually investing in was a flow of cash from new investors that banks like Bear and WaMu were pushing into a rapidly-overheating speculative bubble.

These banks created huge masses of mortgage securities they knew to be highly risky and/or fraudulent. At Bear, one deal manager jokingly nicknamed one pool of mortgages, SACO-2006-08, the "SACK OF SHIT" deal. In another case, Bear's securitization company, EMC, obtained a pool of mortgages from a sketchy mortgage originator called AHM, and found out that as much as 60 percent of the batch was delinquent.

Yet they continued to buy these mortgages and throw them into the great hamburger-machine, turning them into securities that would in turn be bought by everyone from pension funds to Fannie and Freddie. And then they pushed sales even harder, relying upon the influx of new buyers of these securities to keep the value of the old securities stable.

This is exactly what Bernie Madoff did, it's what Charles Ponzi did, and it's what Allen Stanford did – using cash from new investors to pay off the old investors. The supermarket-bank version of this game was just more elaborate, involved more moving parts and threatened indescribably greater damage.

Bernie Madoff ultimately caused about $18 billion in losses. When he got caught, the state threw the book at him, giving him a 150-year jail sentence.

Meanwhile, just the subset of Bear Stearns defendants, according to a complaint against Chase filed last year by Eric Schneiderman, caused $22.5 billion in losses in just two years, 2006 and 2007.

And while it is true that the federal government in this latest $13 billion settlement is ostensibly reserving the right to continue to pursue criminal charges, don't hold your breath. The arc of this story suggests that the whole purpose of this agreement has been to find the highest price Chase is willing to pay to a) stay in business b) keep employees out of jail.

So again, $13 billion sounds like a lot of money. But Bernie Madoff is doing 150 years, and nobody in this cast of characters will personally pay a dollar in fines. Nobody will do one day in jail. That's a huge, huge discrepancy.

Of course, Bernie Madoff today is reviled on Wall Street, even by papers like the Wall Street Journal. This is mainly because he ripped off other finance-sector hotshots, but also because he gave Wall Street a bad name.

Post-2009 coverage of Madoff from the financial press has focused intently on the failure of the government (and in particular the SEC) to aggressively investigate the scandal in a timely fashion. This has followed a rhetorical line that frequently emanates from the finance sector, in which white-collar crime is somehow less the fault of criminals than of the police who failed to stop it.

These "Where were the regulators?" cries generally never show up in financial-press coverage of Wall Street scandals until those same pundits have first exhausted all attempts to argue that no crime was ever committed by the bank/broker/hedge fund in question.

Remember, for instance, that there was a time when papers like the Journal thought Bernie Madoff was one of their own, didn't want to make trouble for him, and bluntly refused to investigate him. The Journal was infamously given the whole seedy Madoff story by investigator Harry Markopolos in 2005 (see p. 16 of this devastating testimony), and though reporter John Wilke wanted to follow up on the piece, it appeared his superiors at the paper never gave him the go-ahead.

But after Madoff came forward weeping and confessing in late 2008, and there was no longer any possibility of denying his monstrous guilt, suddenly the Journal turned into an ardent critic of soft government enforcement, ragefully denouncing everyone from Eliot Spitzer to the SEC for failing to catch Madoff. In its December 17th, 2009 editorial, To Catch a Thief, for instance, the paper blasted the financial cops of the world for failing to protect Madoff's investors and the good name of honest Wall Street business:

The real lesson is that financial enforcement nearly always fails to protect investors, and this Ponzi scheme is merely typical . . . In 1999, trader Harry Markopolos wrote that "Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme," in a letter to the SEC. More recently, multiple SEC inquiries and exams in 2005 and 2007 found only minor infractions… Neither current AG Andrew Cuomo nor Mr. Spitzer appears to have had a clue about Mr. Madoff's conduct.

As noted by multiple media outlets at the time, the paper conveniently left out of these thundering denunciations the damning fact that the Journal itself had been contacted by Markopolous years before, and had blown him off even more completely than the SEC.

So now we, and they, are talking about the Chase scandal. This is Madoff all over again, only on a much huger scale. Ten years from now, bet on it, the Wall Street Journal will be denouncing everyone from Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer to the SEC and DOJ officials in the Bush administration for failing to protect investors from predatory companies like Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and their parent, JP Morgan Chase.

Right now, however, these papers are still stuck in the denial phase, which is to be expected, I suppose. But it doesn't mean we have to take these ridiculous editorials about Chase's victimhood seriously.

A few more notes on the deal. This latest settlement reportedly came about when CEO Jamie Dimon picked up the phone and called a high-ranking lieutenant of Attorney General Holder, who was about to hold a press conference announcing civil charges against the bank. The Justice Department meekly took the call, canceled the presser, and worked out this hideous deal, instead of doing the right thing and blowing off the self-important Wall Street hotshot long used to resolving meddlesome issues with the gift of his personal attention.

Only on Wall Street does the target of a massive federal investigation pick up the telephone and call up the prosecutor expecting to make the thing go away – and only in recent American history would such a tactic actually work.

Considering the scale of the offenses involved (one could make the argument that Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual by themselves did enough damage and cranked out enough toxic loans to cause the 2008 crash) the state could have taken the hardest of hard lines. Instead, they once again took a big fat check to walk away.

Papers like the Journal have particularly complained that Chase should not be held responsible for the offenses committed by companies long before Chase acquired them. What they forget is that Chase has made a fortune off its acquisitions of Bear and Washington Mutual, two purchases which were massively subsidized by the state. Nobody complained about potential liability back when all those two deals were doing for Chase was helping its executives buy overpriced art and summer homes.

And remember, this sort of liability was basically the only risk Chase took in these deals. The government took on most of the rest, in order to make the acquisitions happen.

Chase got to buy Bear Stearns with $29 billion in Fed guarantees, with the state setting up a special bailout facility, Maiden Lane, to unwind all of the phony-baloney loans created through Bear's Ponzi-mortgage-mechanism described above. So Chase got to acquire one of the world's biggest investment banks for pennies on the dollar, and then got the Fed to buy up all the toxic parts of the bank's portfolio, essentially making the public the involuntary customer of Bear's criminal inventory.

Later on, Chase took $25 billion in TARP money, bought Washington Mutual and its $33 billion in assets for the fire-sale price of $1.9 billion, and then repeated the Bear scenario, getting another Maiden Lane facility to take on the deadliest parts of Washington Mutual's portfolio (including, for instance, a pool of mortgages in which 94 percent of the loans had limited documentation).

Incidentally, the notion that Chase was somehow dragged kicking and screaming by the government and forced to buy these two massive companies essentially for free is almost as laughable and ridiculous as the oft-cited explanation for the financial crisis, that the government forced banks to lend to the poor.

Chase, as has been reported by multiple outlets, had already tried on its own to buy both companies before the state arranged its infamous shotgun weddings. Only after both firms collapsed, the economy was in crisis, and Chase was able to get the Fed to eat the toxic portfolios of both companies did these already-longed-for acquisitions take place.

Chase was too big to fail before the crash, but it's even Too-Bigger-To-Failier now, thanks to the expanded market share afforded by these two Fed-sterilized acquisitions. Bloomberg reported that Bear's book value has soared by $36 billion since it swallowed up those two firms with the public's help. Its retail banking earnings have soared nearly 1000 percent. It has more than doubled the size of its banking deposits. Chase didn't have a single branch in Florida or California before this deal: It's now a top-5 banking presence in both states.

So nobody should be crying for poor Chase now, just because it's no longer able to simply sit back and collect gobs and gobs of essentially free cash from the ill-gotten market share "won" by its two crooked acquisitions.

Incidentally, I don't remember hearing anything from Jamie Dimon at the time Chase was acquiring these banks about any reluctance to buy up two firms that had just spent years helping to blow up the world economic system with phony loans. As one friend of mine on Wall Street noted earlier this week, if there was a single document anywhere with Dimon's name on it expressing reluctance about these new bedfellows, it would have been produced ages ago and "that dickhead Sorkin would have put it in his movie."

These guys at Chase knew exactly what they were buying when they took on these companies. They just thought they were getting the deal of the century, by taking on the still-functioning businesses of two finance giants for a song, giving Chase a state-subsidized push into the pole position of American banking. And they figured, very nearly correctly, that they would never have to pay any serious freight for all the offenses committed by their new acquisitions.

Now they'll have to write a big check, which sucks for them, but what about the victims? To those critics crying about a "shakedown": Would you prefer that Chase merely be required to pay back every dollar to those investors wiped out by these schemes? Because that would be a hell of a lot more than $13 billion.

It would be great if everyone covering Wall Street could sign a pact, and agree: No more crying, please, about no-jail, no-individual-penalty settlements in which companies use shareholder money to pay fines at huge discounts relative to the actual damage they caused. And again, wake me up when even one of these guys goes to jail. There are only about a million Americans doing time for less."

Gold catalyst: China aiming for 'de-Americanised world’ with renminbi replacing dollar GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

  

  The Telegraph reports about the implementation of the China's long-term plan to diversify out of US Dollar denominated assets. UK trade delegation was recently visiting China and making a lot of deals with the message that "we would like to be the part of The Growing China Story". 

  It is interesting that Alasdair Macleod is quoted by the mainstream UK paper now. The mega trend and major geopolitical shift is making it to the surface now, US Dollar is losing its status of Reserve Currency Of Choice. With this perspective in mind China's appetite for Gold, Copper, Lithium and other commodities is making a lot of sense.

Max Keiser: Alasdair Macleod Investigates The $640 Million Sell Order Of Gold. GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

"We continue to follow The Crime Of The Century - Gold market manipulations. Today we have Max Keiser who investigates with Alasdair Macleod the 640 million Sell order of Gold which disrupted the trading session on Friday 11th and was supposed to Kill the rest of the confidence in Gold safe heaven status. Chinese are not buying into it any more and moving fast now with their state level long term plan of diversification its Reserves out of US Dollar denominated assets."

Eric Sprott: "Gold And China To Dominate The World." GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

 "Eric Sprott is very bold with his call for Gold at $2400 next year. He stands his ground and continues to talk about overwhelming demand for physical Gold from China. According to Eric, investing in the right Gold and Silver equities provides the opportunity of a life time for wealth creation now.

  Now after the Debt Ceiling can is kicked down the road for a few weeks without resolving anything, investors will be back to the analysis of the real economic situation. We can forget about Taper until the next year at least with the looming circus entertainment Debt Ceiling Increase 2.0. Default is avoided, but the damage is done. We are very positively surprised by the amount of US Dollar negative articles in the mass media these days. The story about the End of the Reserve Currency of Choice - US Dollar is making its way to the surface now.

  Last week US Dollar has printed the closing below the all important 80.00 level and is now below the 200MA. Gold on its part is in the break out mode, finally and has painted the set of very interesting charts."

McEwen Mining & TNR Gold: Las Bambas Copper Bidding From China Heats Up TNR.v, MUX, LCC.v, GDX, CU

“It is a good choice to invest in mining assets, which is a much better choice than investing in one government’s bonds – especially when this country cannot guarantee to pay even its own employees”

 Gu Liangmin, head of copper at Minmetals.

The Telegraph:

China aiming for 'de-Americanised world’ with renminbi replacing dollar

Given the scale of China’s consumption of fossil fuels and raw materials, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary currency for trading commodities and resources

China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest oil importer and goods trading nation. 

By Andrew Critchlow

China has overtaken the US as the world’s largest oil importer and goods trading nation. Over the next five years, it will surpass the rest of the world combined in its consumption of base metals.

Given the scale of the country’s consumption of fossil fuels and raw materials, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary currency for trading commodities and resources such as crude oil and iron ore.

The debt ceiling farce in Washington and China’s growing reluctance to continue underwriting the US economy by buying up its bonds and adding to America’s near $17 trillion (£10.5 trillion) debt mountain suggests that this tectonic shift in the global trade system could be just around the corner.

Chinese state media are already calling for a “de-Americanised world”. Some experts say that China is plotting to usurp the greenback’s place in global commodities trade. Beijing’s strategy hinges on quietly encouraging traders to bypass New York through the creation of a network of interlinked commodity markets based in the global financial hubs of Hong Kong and London.

“There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing herself for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world’s reserve currency,” writes Alastair Macleod, head of research at GoldMoney. A further signal that policymakers are beginning to warm to the renminbi playing a greater role in the global economy came last week when Chancellor George Osborne unveiled a historic deal to allow British investors direct access to China’s markets and allow Chinese banks to expand operations in the UK.

The historic pact will also place the City, already the centre for global metals and foreign exchange trading, at the forefront of the race to capture more business denominated in the yuan.

In the world’s major mining hubs such as Australia, resource companies are already taking advantage of new legislation that allows invoicing and trade settlement directly in renminbi, a process which completely cuts the US dollar out of the equation.

HSBC predicts that the Chinese currency will be the third-largest unit used for trade by 2015 and fully convertible within the next five years as the People’s Bank of China gradually liberalises policy.

“The flow of transactions conducted in RMB [renminbi] will only continue to grow,” said Frederic Vilsboe, head of commodity and structures trade finance for Europe, Middle East and Africa at HSBC in London.

Among the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls a third of the world’s supply of crude, members such as Iran – constrained by sanctions – are already agitating for a shift away from pricing in US dollars. China’s oil imports set a record last month, with official figures showing that 6.47m barrels a day of crude flowed into the country.

The scale of China’s existing and forecast demand for resources almost makes any attempt by the US to maintain the dollar’s status as the world’s primary trading currency for resources entirely nugatory. Wood Mackenzie estimates that China will account for 52pc of base metals demand by 2017, compared with 46pc of the 96m-tonne global market this year.

The Edinburgh-based company forecasts that the world’s second-largest economy, will be consuming more base metals than the rest of the world combined by 2017 as the process of urbanisation that started at the beginning of the last decade continues. Of course, there are risks, not least China’s ability to sustain the rapid rates of growth achieved since the country opened its economy after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Politically, too, Beijing faces suspicion on the world stage but, if authorities in Beijing can continue to grow the economy, it is almost inevitable that traders will soon be quoting commodity prices in yuan not dollars.

Iranian energy: International oil companies prepare for lifting of sanctions

Iran is edging closer to restoring itself within the fold of the international community and behind the scenes a new regime in Tehran is turning to some old and trusted figures to revive the fortunes of its oil and gas industry.

Crucially, for the holder of the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and second-largest stores of natural gas, the old guard, now fully restored, was a decade ago at the forefront of dealing with international oil companies (IOCs), who are already quietly making overtures about a return should sanctions be lifted.

The restoration of Bijan Zanganeh to the post of oil minister and Mehdi Hosseini as his deputy has sent a clear signal to the likes of Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Eni and Statoil that Iran is once again open to discussions about international help to tap its resources.

Both men, sidelined under the hardline regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were central to the creation of buy-back contracts whereby Tehran agreed to pay IOCs an agreed price for oil they produced.

Zanganeh has wasted no time laying the groundwork for a possible return of the IOCs. The oil ministry in Tehran is currently reviewing the terms of the controversial buy-back deals potentially to make them more attractive to foreign companies.

Pending a decision on sanctions, the race is now on among IOCs to reopen mothballed Tehran offices.

Iron Ore

Iron ore prices, a barometer for global trade, have held up well over recent months shaking off concerns over China’s economy and the impact of the US government shutdown. Despite major producers bringing more supply onstream, the price for ore used to smelt steel has remained firm above $130 (£80) a tonne.

Macquarie sees demand for iron ore remaining robust and Chinese mills building inventories. Moving into January and over the first quarter, the bank sees supplies of ore tightening as southern hemisphere producers struggle with the weather and mines in China shut down for Chinese New Year. Explosive supplies are also restricted around Chinese government events in March."