Squeeze Play

All the pundits continue to try to find rays of sunshine in the convoluted decision Roberts presented in the Obamacare case.  First, his decisions in both Arizona and Stolen Valor contradict the very statements that he made in Obamacare about trying to find a way to preserve legislation that has been passed into law.  Beyond that, everything that the optimists claim is a benefit in the decision could have been accomplished without joining with the liberal contingent (who have no intention of even looking at the law or its arguments but who vote strictly on ideology), overturning the legislation, and forcing the Congress to redo it along more reasonable and well thought out lines.  Neither Roberts nor anyone else even needs to have a law degree if they are going to make all their decisions based on politics rather than the law.  What was left of our nation died a little more with the Roberts decision.

I thought he was a stand-up guy.  So much for that idea.  His decision did not enhance the reputation of the Court but caused it to fall further in the eyes of the citizenry as a source of justice and legal interpretation.  Too bad, so sad - just keep stacking.

I wrongly posted earlier that the cheif executive of ulsterbank was giving up his bonus for the year. It was in fact Stephen Hester, leader of RBS group of which ulsterbank is a subsidiary. This even though the RBS and Natwest banks are largely sorted.

Ulsterbank, (nowhere near sorted) is refusing to clarify if Jim Brown, chief executive of Ulsterbank, will be giving up his.

This in the thick of ongoing chaos in his bank, really. The P.R. campaign from Ulsterbank is causing more outrage than the original problem.

Still no money forthcoming, still no deadline for said money. Child benefit, (a universal payment) is paid in a few days, if this is not recieved then a lot of families are going to be in serious strife.

The longer this goes on, the more paper transactions will have to be entered to the system when it is up and running. This is now all over the radio and local news. Epic fail Ulsterbank.

This 'glitch' is fast becoming a crisis for the 4th largest bank here in Ireland.

Seems quite coincidental that they agree to these fine just now and there is trouble with depositors money. I said it two weeks ago... they needed a bridge loan.

Another one bites the dust. The Royal Bank of Scotland is about to be fined $233 million (£150 million pounds) for its role in the Libor-rigging scandal. It joins Barclays as the first banks to walk the plank in what should be, but so far is not, the most sensational financial corruption story since the crash of 2008.

On Wednesday, Barclays won the race to reach a deal with U.S. and British regulators, beating UBS, which was reportedly the first bank to begin cooperating with international antitrust authorities. Barclays agreed to pay at least $450 million to resolve government investigations of manipulation of Libor and the Euro interbank offered rate (or Euribor): $200 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, $160 million tothe criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice and $92.8 million to Britain's Financial Services Authority.

I just heard from  Xty and she wanted to let everyone know that she's doing ok and taking a little time off due to a  core family situation that needs her full attention for now.

I'm sure all of TFMR's well wishes will be felt by her and her family and be appreciated.

I have a feeling if the PM's go beserk we'll see a shout out from our favorite Pirate Lady  

Ulster Bank has said it cannot quantify the proportion of its customers' salary and mortgage payments that have been processed.

Payments into and out of Ulster Bank accounts have been affected by technical issues

IT problems have continued for a tenth day at Ulster Bank, Ireland's third largest retail bank.

Today the bank says that "the bulk" of salary payments are up-to-date, but that some customers might still experience a delay in receiving their pay.

That is a bare faced lie! Nobody has received salaries. They only pay them out if you have a payslip with you, they have no record of salaries in accounts. Why isn't the regulator all over this? Why is the media giving them so much slack and publishing their lies? This is the national broadcaster for gods sake!

Read the comments. How can RTE persist with this crap contrary to all the evidence on their own page? Unbelievable.

I honestly wonder how long it will take for this to get out of hand.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0629/ulster-bank-payment.html#article

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0629/ulster-bank-payment.html#comments

A must read!

Thanks for your reply. 

   I  have  never  known what  to  make of the COT   numbers for silver. Or Gold for that matter, ...I think  they pull these numbers out of a cocked hat as part of the artful rig that has worked so incredibly well for them. One might note that i do not greatly like these people, in fact i thoroughly  revile them, but stupid they are not.

    TF   tells  us  that  this  JPM   short position (as reported)  has  now been taken down by  85  percent,  which is  pretty  astonishing if  true.  but  i  only  have  to  look at that foul  ferret  Genslers horrid  face, or  listen to that  epically  duplicitous Chilton  crowing his  latest  ersatz triumph  to  remind  myself  that  CFTC  is  bought.paid for.  and  banked.

   Frankly i am  with you  foursquare, i do  not remotely  understand Silver at 27, ...as we all know ... if we take the 50 dollar high in the Hunt Corner of 1980,  and adjust this admittedly ramped number for 32 years of rampant  money creation , factor in the 92 percent drop in above ground inventories in the same period, observe the burgeoning industrial  usages for Silver which  literally grow weekly,   mix and shake  it all up,  and i come to  300 dollars ,  not 27.

   For several months as this reported COT number has been sharply dropping,  I have begun to wonder if ,  in fact, JPM might be LONG, in fact  long up to the gunwales. In the invisible OTC Market  which makes Comex look downright honest by comparison.

  My thought has been,  that yes,  they are unwinding that Short all right, picking off 8 bucks here and six bucks there , which  when  added up,  comes to a rather daunting number. Deep triple digits, nice work if you can get it, so,  if you were building the mother of all LONG POSITIONS , mixing the metaphor with  endless confusing crosscurrents . would seem to  be consistent with the manner in which these thieves operate. I respect my enemy, and of course its not JPM per se,  though they  get to  keep their profits, its Uncle,

   This is too long,  but here are two reasons for my guess that we are in a  Policy shift,  ie get the Christ off that Silver price  and ram it into the hundreds so fast jack and elsie will find it just as dauntingly expensive as gold. . And ditto Gold.

   If , as it appears, Gold is managed by pricing it out of reach of Joe Average 99 percent,  then  blow silver into the hundreds so  fast that it too  is  "too expensive".

   The primary reason of course is China  who have in mind being the world's new Reserve  Currency, and ,  for them  , notoriously patient  and incredibly smart, they are hell bent on getting there BUT FAST.

   Every second day another bilateral  trade agreement materializes, more and more countries say shove it to Swift and simply  bypass the dollar ,  and every second day a freighter of price suppressed   PMs  pulls into Macau harbor. Swift this is not for Uncle, its witlessly stupid. Criminally stupid, if not downright suicidal.

    And when the stevedores regain their feet after laughing their skinny asses off at the rank  stupidity of the United States they  unload that freighter , refuel and send it back  across the Pacific  to  reload. Backed up, but  boats,    There are many such freighters.

   So perhaps it would behoove Uncle to  reprice these PMs and make China at least PAY, perhaps ten thousand for Gold and several  hundred for silver, it might slow down the inevitable slightly. Quit playing Chinese roulette on all six chambers,

   Second, and admittedly  less importantly,  its getting more hazardous to blatantly manipulate markets,  the banking events in the UK  this past week  suggest their Regulators might even be somewhat honest,  or perhaps the cheques bounced, but if your name is Dimon or Diamond  you are not too chipper lately,  the winds of change are marshalling.

   We are all going to  be very very rich, :), the supermarkets will be looted empty, but the pyhrric  victory is ours:)

   Thats about enough.

Trust me, they are bust.  The reason no media is covering it is because it is old news - they've been bust for at least 2 weeks now.  It's sounding like some of these abused housewives who refuse to leave their abusive spouses.  I don't mean to sound rude or curt, but these people aren't messing with your family or your friends - they are messing with your money, and it doesn't get any more important than that.  The government won't take over because they don't want to step into the shoes of the people who have already screwed it up beyond repair, plus they are thinking they can hold the parent's feet to the fire and maybe cause them to do something.  I'm sure the parent has already written them off (assuming a June 30 reporting period) and is looking to limit their own losses.  It's time to just start from ground zero with a new bank and hope that eventually something besides a past due notice might come out of the old one.  Keep posting, the reports are very interesting.  When the management finally gets to the point whether they have to admit the truth or to plead to incompetence, then we will know that the end is near.

Being a government funded news outlet, I could believe they were told to keep quiet.

But the Irish Independent. One of the biggest selling newspapers.

Nothing, not a mention of this on the website.

http://www.independent.ie/

All i can think about is this.

An ongoing hack affecting at least 100 banks, with 2 billion + stolen. (unconfirmed by any official media outlet but sky news)

Downgrades of several banks in Europe which caused margin calls (RBS was amongst them for 9 million, confirmed)

Makes you wonder how much of the "IT failure" is actually a solvency failure.

@Number 47:

The lack of media coverage does not surprise me at all. Modern news/media organizations are really nothing other than self-censoring propaganda machines owned and operated by TPTB.

in a crisis options have counterparty risk to deal with.

More important, you need a strong good trend  to make money in being long options --if flat-you are better off selling options.

Also, if everybody expects something to be volatile, such as silver, the cost of the option is high. Right now silver equity options are about twice as expensive as gold options. SLV GLD.

If you do not really  understand how options work you better be lucky.

I do not think that was the Friday close, maybe Thursdays?