End Gold Manipulation: The Stunner From Today's Round Table Debate To "Fix" The London Gold Fix. $TNR.v $MUX $GLD $ABX

 

Jim Puplava: The Swiss Gold Initiative With Luzi Stamm, Member of the Swiss National Council $TNR.v $MUX $GLD $GDX

  "Jim Puplava discusses the groundbreaking developments in Switzerland where the real democracy can be in action now. Even debates about the Gold and Money Printing will be unprecedented on the national level and if this decision finds the support of the people Central Planers will be in horror."

Kirill Klip.:

End Gold Manipulation: The Stunner From Today's Round Table Debate To "Fix" The London Gold Fix.

 ZeroHedge reports on this very important topic, which I follow on my blog:

  "As those following the saga of the rigged for decades and soon to be history (in its current incarnation) London gold fix know, today was the date when the World Gold Council held its "Modernising the London Gold Fix: IOSCO and beyond" round table session.

  Specifically, as the WGC explained, "The World Gold Council will be holding a round table debate on the reform of the London Gold Fix and the modernisation of the London gold market. Many aspects of the existing price benchmark process are viewed favourably by market participants, however, other elements are in need of reform if IOSCO compliance is to be achieved. The World Gold Council is seeking views from both users and service providers on the optimal characteristics of any reformed system. We will also debate whether IOSCO compliance is enough or should the industry be seeking to modernise more than just the price benchmark?" ZeroHedge."

I Vote To End Gold Manipulation: FSA Fines Barclays For Manipulation Of Gold Price - Join Me.

 "Manipulation cannot lasts forever even if the very powerful forces are behind it. You already know that I am not talking here just about one trader, one bank or even one country. We are talking here about the highest levels of power involved in this masquerade.

   Why Gold is so important for everyone, not just for the super wealthy who can afford to put it aside for the rainy day? Gold is the most important indicator of the rate at which FIAT money are losing its value - its real purchasing power. If you can manipulate it - you can pretend that everything is fine and DOW and S&P 500 will beat All-Time-High every month as we have now. But just look below at your childhood McDonalds Menu - something is not so right, isn't it?  My personal vote is nothing, but if I am not alone it will be finished one day. Please donate your tweet for the good cause and share this post if you want to change it as well.

TNR Gold: Shotgun Gold Project - Why Do We Need New Gold Deposits?

  "This picture above is stronger than thousand words written by the FED's hired academics and even Austrian School of Economics - it cuts through the verbal mist to the bone of Inflation definition and what it really means. It means that your FIAT money are losing it purchasing power. It happens every day, day by the day. How much you can see from the McDonald's menu from 70s. 

  And below is the chart representing "Strong US Dollar Policy" in action implemented by FED from the day of its inception in 1913. Some people even think that Federal Reserve is as Federal as Federal Express, but we will not go that road today.

  Inflation is the dirty open secret of all Central Banks in the world. It creates the Inflation Tax by gradually stealing from the value of your savings and deflating the government's obligations on all social programs. It is the way for governments to finance wars and "Inflate away" their debts without taxing you "directly". Inflation follows currency debasement - organised by money printing or by QE in the iPad's century - and it is making its dirty work by itself.

  Why Gold is so important here? It is the real measure of the rate of Currency Debasement and Inflation: Gold is the Real Money, not dollars. That is why it is manipulated so heavily:

  I will address you to James Rickards' books: "Currency Wars" and "The Death of Money" to get more information in depth on these subjects and Gold Manipulation is widely discussed on the web today. Read more."

  

  This particular case is not more than a slap on the wrist for Barclays, but it is the beginning. Now Gold Manipulation will be more difficult. Will we ever have the real free market? I doubt it personally, but it is the very good start and Naked Short Selling could be the very good follow up:

Market Manipulations, NI 43-101 And How The Honest Person Can Survive In Junior Mining.

 "Manipulation is rampant in all markets: HFT Flash Boys, LIBOR, FOREX, Pensions, Energy ... Gold. Some of the former conspiracy theories are going in the court rooms now, others are still waiting for their time. But nothing could be compared with naked shorting and manipulations in the illiquid junior mining stocks. Dirty tactics are used all over the market like the banging the juniors into the close, suppressing the prices during the accumulation. You can get the idea from the reports made by Jim Puplava  on Financial Sense and the summary: Naked Short Selling: The Problem.  Not a lot of people are talking about it - not a lot of us have the voice. And that is the real problem. Read more."

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Jim Puplava And John Kaiser On Naked Short Selling In Junior Miners And The Future For The Sector

  Jim Puplava and John Kaiser are discussing in depth the phenomenon of the naked short selling and its applications for the junior miners market. It is the rare occasion when anybody  even talks about it and it is of the utmost importance for every investor in this sectors.

Jim Puplava’s Big Picture: An In-Depth Conversation on Gold with John Kaiser

The Reasons Behind the Bear Market in Gold Equities and What Comes Next

"Jim welcomes special guest and independent gold analyst John Kaiser of Kaiser Research Online and Kaiser Bottom-Fish Online. In a wide-ranging discussion on gold and gold equities (click here for charts), John and Jim look at the reasons behind the bear market in gold equities; the fundamentals of the mining business, the rise of the Robo-Traders, and the role (and complicity) of the regulators. They also discuss catalysts for why the gold market can recover and continue higher, and why it won’t take Armageddon. John and Jim also advise what to do as a gold stock investor, and how to not fall prey to the Robo-Traders. Also, Jim answers more of your Q-Calls in this segment."

LIBOR, Gold and Silver Market Manipulations: Please Meet The Next Headline - "Naked Short Selling"

The Price Of Gold Has Been Manipulated. This Is More Scandalous Than Libor - Is Naked Short Selling Next?

  "We continue our quest into the market manipulation universe, finally, mainstream is paying attention. LIBOR, Gold, Silver - what will be next now? Will it bring Naked Short Sellers into the hot place as well? Couple of whistle blowers can ignite now the huge rally in totally beaten into the dust mining juniors."

Business Insider: Everyone Is Passing Around This 'Whistleblower' Letter Claiming To Know About Market Manipulation At JPMorgan

"With today's news from JP Morgan the old article from Business Insider is taking the new context at least - what revelations will be next now? JP Morgan's name is all over the place with the recent scandals - we can not tell yet that it will become the "Next Lehman moment" which will unleash QE3 - but company's involvements in MF Global bankruptcy, PFG bankruptcy, Trading Loss Revelations and today's announcement about "cooking the books" are not leaving any room for "error".

Economist:

Short-selling litigation

An enlightening mistake

Crime of the Century

The Truth About Naked Short Selling in Juniors

Rolling Stone:


By Matt Taibbi


Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

I contacted Morgan Lewis, the firm that represents Goldman in this matter, earlier today, but they haven’t commented as of yet. I wonder if the poor lawyer who FUBARred this thing has already had his organs harvested; his panic is almost palpable in the air. It is both terrible and hilarious to contemplate. The bank has spent a fortune in legal fees trying to keep this material out of the public eye, and here one of their own lawyers goes and dumps it out on the street.

The lawsuit between Overstock and the banks concerned a phenomenon called naked short-selling, a kind of high-finance counterfeiting that, especially prior to the introduction of new regulations in 2008, short-sellers could use to artificially depress the value of the stocks they’ve bet against. The subject of naked short-selling is a) highly technical, and b) very controversial on Wall Street, with many pundits in the financial press for years treating the phenomenon as the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories.

Now, however, through the magic of this unredacted document, the public will be able to see for itself what the banks’ attitudes are not just toward the "mythical" practice of naked short selling (hint: they volubly confess to the activity, in writing), but toward regulations and laws in general.

"F**k the compliance area – procedures, schmecedures," chirps Peter Melz, former president of Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. (a.k.a. Merrill Pro), when a subordinate worries about the company failing to comply with the rules governing short sales.

We also find out here how Wall Street professionals manipulated public opinion by buying off and/or intimidating experts in their respective fields. In one email made public in this document, a lobbyist for SIFMA, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, tells a Goldman executive how to engage an expert who otherwise would go work for “our more powerful enemies,” i.e. would work with Overstock on the company’s lawsuit.

"He should be someone we can work with, especially if he sees that cooperation results in resources, both data and funding," the lobbyist writes, "while resistance results in isolation."

There are even more troubling passages, some of which should raise a few eyebrows, in light of former Goldman executive Greg Smith's recent public resignation, in which he complained that the firm routinely screwed its own clients and denigrated them (by calling them "Muppets," among other things). 

Here, the plaintiff’s motion refers to an "exhibit 96,” which refers to “an email from [Goldman executive] John Masterson that sends nonpublic data concerning customer short positions in Overstock and four other hard-to-borrow stocks to Maverick Capital, a large hedge fund that sells stocks short.”

Was Goldman really disclosing “nonpublic data concerning customer short positions” to its big hedge fund clients? That would be something its smaller, “Muppet” customers would probably want to hear about.

When I contacted Goldman and asked if it was true that Masterson had shared nonpublic customer information with a big hedge fund client, their spokesperson Michael Duvally offered this explanation:

Among other services it provides, Securities Lending at Goldman provides market color information to clients regarding various activity in the securities lending marketplace on a security specific or sector specific basis.  In accordance with the group's guidelines concerning the provision of market color, Mr. Masterson provided a client with certain aggregate information regarding short balances in certain securities.  The information did not contain reference to any particular clients' short positions.

You can draw your own conclusions from that answer, but it's safe to say we'd like to hear more about these practices.

Anyway, the document is full of other interesting disclosures. Among the more compelling is the specter of executives from numerous companies admitting openly to engaging in naked short selling, a practice that, again, was often dismissed as mythical or unimportant.

A quick primer on what naked short selling is. First of all, short selling, which is a completely legal and often beneficial activity, is when an investor bets that the value of a stock will decline. You do this by first borrowing and then selling the stock at its current price; then, after the price drops, you go out, buy the same number of shares at the reduced price, and return the shares to your original lender. You then earn a profit on the difference between the original price and the new, lower price.

What matters here is the technical issue of how you borrow the stock. Typically, if you’re a hedge fund and you want to short a company, you go to some big-shot investment bank like Goldman or Morgan Stanley and place the order. They then go out into the world, find the shares of the stock you want to short, borrow them for you, then physically settle the trade later.

But sometimes it’s not easy to find those shares to borrow. Sometimes the shares are controlled by investors who might have no interest in lending them out. Sometimes there’s such scarcity of borrowable shares that banks/brokers like Goldman have to pay a fee just to borrow the stock.

These hard-to-borrow stocks, stocks that cost money to borrow, are called negative rebate stocks. In some cases, these negative rebate stocks cost so much just to borrow that a short-seller would need to see a real price drop of 35 percent in the stock just to break even. So how do you short a stock when you can’t find shares to borrow? Well, one solution is, you don’t even bother to borrow them. And then, when the trade is done, you don’t bother to deliver them. You just do the trade anyway without physically locating the stock.

Thus in this document we have another former Merrill Pro president, Thomas Tranfaglia, saying in a 2005 email: “We are NOT borrowing negatives… I have made that clear from the beginning. Why would we want to borrow them? We want to fail them.”

Trafaglia, in other words, didn’t want to bother paying the high cost of borrowing “negative rebate” stocks. Instead, he preferred to just sell stock he didn’t actually possess. That is what is meant by, “We want to fail them.” Trafaglia was talking about creating “fails” or “failed trades,” which is what happens when you don’t actually locate and borrow the stock within the time the law allows for trades to be settled.

If this sounds complicated, just focus on this: naked short selling, in essence, is selling stock you do not have. If you don’t have to actually locate and borrow stock before you short it, you’re creating an artificial supply of stock shares.

In this case, that resulted in absurdities like the following disclosure in this document, in which a Goldman executive admits in a 2006 email that just a little bit too much trading in Overstock was going on: “Two months ago 107% of the floating was short!”

In other words, 107% of all Overstock shares available for trade were short – a physical impossibility, unless someone was somehow creating artificial supply in the stock.

Goldman clearly knew there was a discrepancy between what it was telling regulators, and what it was actually doing. “We have to be careful not to link locates to fails [because] we have told the regulators we can’t,” one executive is quoted as saying, in the document.

One of the companies Goldman used to facilitate these trades was called SBA Trading, whose chief, Scott Arenstein, was fined $3.6 million in 2007 by the former American Stock Exchange for naked short selling.

The process of how banks circumvented federal clearing regulations is highly technical and incredibly difficult to follow. These companies were using obscure loopholes in regulations that allowed them to short companies by trading in shadows, or echoes, of real shares in their stock. They manipulated rules to avoid having to disclose these “failed” trades to regulators.

The import of this is that it made it cheaper and easier to bet down the value of a stock, while simultaneously devaluing the same stock by adding fake supply. This makes it easier to make money by destroying value, and is another example of how the over-financialization of the economy makes real, job-creating growth more difficult.

In any case, this document all by itself shows numerous executives from companies like Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing (GSEC) and Merrill Pro talking about a conscious strategy of “failing” trades – in other words, not bothering to locate, borrow, and deliver stock within the time alotted for legal settlement. For instance, in one email, GSEC tells a client, Wolverine Trading, “We will let you fail.”

More damning is an email from a Goldman, Sachs hedge fund client, who remarked that when wanting to “short an impossible name and fully expecting not to receive it” he would then be “shocked to learn that [Goldman’s representative] could get it for us.”

Meaning: when an experienced hedge funder wanted to trade a very hard-to-find stock, he was continually surprised to find that Goldman, magically, could locate the stock. Obviously, it is not hard to locate a stock if you’re just saying you located it, without really doing it.

As a hilarious side-note: when I contacted Goldman about this story, they couldn't resist using their usual P.R. playbook. In this case, Goldman hastened to point out that Overstock lost this lawsuit (it was dismissed because of a jurisdictional issue), and then had this to say about Overstock:

Overstock pursued the lawsuit as part of its longstanding self-described "Jihad" designed to distract attention from its own failure to meet its projected growth and profitability goals and the resulting sharp drop in its stock price during the 2005-2006 period. 

Good old Goldman -- they can't answer any criticism without describing their critics as losers, conspiracy theorists, or, most frequently, both. Incidentally, Overstock rebounded from the  2005-2006 short attack to become a profitable company again, during the same period when Goldman was needing hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency Fed lending and federal bailouts to stave off extinction.

Anyway, this galactic screwup by usually-slick banker lawyers gives us a rare peek into the internal mindset of these companies, and their attitude toward regulations, the markets, even their own clients. The fact that they wanted to keep all of this information sealed is not surprising, since it’s incredibly embarrassing stuff, if you understand the context.

More to come: until then, here’s the motion, and pay particular attention to pages 14-19.

UPDATE: Well, I guess I shouldn't feel too badly for the lawyer who stepped on this land mine. For Morgan Lewis counsel Joe Floren, karma, it seems, really is a bitch."           

Will Canada shut down illegal Naked Short Selling?

Should Canada join the fight for protecting markets from illegal Naked Short Selling CDNX Venture Stock Exchange index will go at least 50% overnight. Markets are so illiquid that the shorts will be evaporated.

From Jim Sinclair.

"Securities Regulators and State Attorney Generals Crack Down On Naked and Manipulative Short Selling

Dear Friends,
Let’s review the highlights of this important day:
Securities Regulators and State Attorney Generals came down hard on the practice of naked and/or manipulative short selling.
There was emphasis made on legal and illegal shorts that have had a habit of speaking poorly about situations they are short to others.
London followed suit to a reasonable but hopeful degree.
The Toronto Senior Exchange remains silent on the subject. If the TSX does not declare its participation by next week many companies who are suffering from these malicious actions, particularly those with dual Canadian and US exchange listings, will delist. Toronto listings will move to the London Stock Exchange while remaining with their AMEX, soon to be NYSE, listing facility. That strategy would maintain dual nationality listings.
A form of Resurrection Trust much touted today has no application to a derivative meltdown. Simply stated, it will not work. Those that favor this idea demonstrate their total lack of knowledge concerning what OTC derivatives are.
The stock market was impressed by the worthless concept of a Resurrection Trust plus the probability of naked short covering.
If the SEC really has zero tolerance for naked and/or manipulative short selling it is too late to borrow shares.
Gold did its usual major round number dance today. The dollar got a boost from the actions of US equities.
Respectfully yours, Jim"

SEC moves on short sellers. Juniors will benefit.

Time is for serious accumulation in Juniors. Criminals are out of favor, nobody wants to leave a footprint in the market when investigation will come. First SEC and financials, then hopefully Canada will wake up to the scam.

SEC moves on short sellers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission will issue an emergency rule later on Tuesday to stop "naked" short selling in major financial firms, including Fannie Mae (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the SEC said.
Short sellers borrow shares they consider overvalued and sell them. If the price drops, they repurchase the shares, return them and pocket the difference.
In a naked short sale, the investor sells stock that has not yet been borrowed. Sellers sometimes deliberately fail to deliver securities as part of a scheme to manipulate the stock price.
The emergency rule would require any person making a short sale in the listed securities to borrow the securities before the short sale is effected and deliver the securities on the settlement date.
The SEC has already proposed rules to curb naked short selling abuses and prevent market price manipulation.
(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Naked short sellers wanted!

From Jim Sinclair:

Dear Friends,
Today is proof that these people are running scared. Their target today is a message that their time has come to an end. Add to that the arrest of the Bear Stearns Hedge Fund managers for not correctly marking down their holdings and informing their investors. These events have to put these people that are committing bullying, illegal and unethical activities in the crosshairs of investors, management and the law.
Soon there will be no place to hide, no place to run and the name Anonymous has done them no good at all. The name Anonymous may well be their eventual undoing as illegal activities using such a means confirms their devious undertakings.
The major underestimation by these hedge fund operators is the nature of the old-line junior mineral management. When you push them hard they will push back harder and make it personal. They should study the history of past PDACs and how old timers can act when attacked.
Where I am concerned, today they made this personal.
There is a great deal of information available to the management of any company listed on an exchange.
The first step in determining what is happening in the short term is broker identification. Every transaction shows a broker on it with one curious twist on the TSX which allows trades to be noted as broker “Anonymous.”
That is not the stumbling block itself because you can see all the daily trades almost as they happen and the total volume of buys and sells on each trade for broker Anonymous, therein determining if this legal camouflage has been a seller on balance for that day.
This information can be obtained from www.tsx.com for companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Other exchanges have similar setups. It will have to be obtained by your company on www.tsx.com as info/short interest data is password protected.
When you are on the TSX homepage, click on “Market Activity” and select “Current Market.” There will be a 15-minute delay on information but you can see the broker’s activity and name including that famous broker, Anonymous.
This type of information can be obtained for all exchanges and the NASDAQ. Looking historically will be more informative as you can be assured that as the heat is turned up, procedures will change.
Knowing the broker who represents the greatest on balance selling daily or from period to period is quite easy as they will not use Anonymous often enough to camouflage that they are or have been the largest seller.
The next three documents companies need to obtain are:
The Participation List that shows all street name securities held and by whom. This document should be reviewed, as all documents should, from period to period.
The non-objecting shareholders list will show the changes in the positions of those investors. This is again reviewed from period to period. Even the major shareholders who object to their name being listed are available for the company from the same source to the shock of the hedge funds. These two items are key to knowing exactly what is occurring in your particular share.
The brokers who bought and sold list shows both percentage purchases and percentage sales.
By the comparison of all the above you are able to determine if the selling is long selling, legal short selling or unreported short selling.
It is an exercise that is common to forensic accounting, probably better done for many companies by their auditor rather than by non-accountant management such as geologists.
The next step is to retain a reputable Internet investigator as it is all out there in one form or another.
Anonymous is a nice cover name probably used by the naked short seller, but after the trade and into the statistics it loses its effective cover capacity.
We will keep that proprietary for the time being.
We live in an information world, complex of course, but not to those that specialize.
As this practice continues, your dedication to stopping the rape of shareholders must increase.
Complaining to exchanges, regulators and hiring attorneys at this point is a useless effort. Bringing the culprits out into the light is the most effective first step. Making their identity known is the goal.
The effort is to out those who are both pool raiding and those naked short selling your issue. One is conspiracy and the other is simply a crime. Identification is the first step. They will be identified and then they will be dealt with. We will come at them at every angle from rewards for information to cyber investigators and forensic accounting. Click here to read more about our efforts.
The incoming company interest in this is simply overwhelming. I would venture to say that the companies now interested in ousting these criminals represents at least 200,000 investors.
They can hide as all cowards do, but out they will come as many in the mineral industry have now dedicated their existence to this effort.
Remember, the threats you face you can overcome. The threats you run away from for any reason win.
To the management of the juniors: Never run, no matter what the message they try to communicate to you via your market is. Stockholders will support you because aggressive, dedicated and well-financed action is the only way to remove this vermin permanently. The more they speak via your market, the more you act. This is the only strategy that will protect shareholders from their reprehensible and illegal activities permanently.

Common Sense against naked short selling. CS

We are joining the fight for the investors' rights for fair play.

Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling

Good summary http://www.stockhouse.com/Community-News/2008/June/2/Naked-short-selling-gets-investors-motivated

Financial Sense http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html Crime of the century.

Stockhouse http://www.stockhouse.com/Groups/GroupInfo.aspx?g=50176

Where it will count we will deploy our knowledge and resources to burn couple of dirty hands in the market.