"Off Main Street: The SpeakEasy/BackRoom"

i forgot..

Hope Xty is feeling better with each day. Please pass on this one to our pirate-in-arms :)

Yep, been glued to the Olympics myself and being a Brit, we have just gone orrrrrrffffffffffff this time around. Best performance by The Brits in the history of The Modern Olympics. The ladies have been especially impressive cycling, show jumping, dressage, sailing, boxing, rowing, taekwondo and others.

This one is for the ladies. If we are heading into a cyclical turn ala the 60's and 20's-30's (google Uranus/Pluto squares and all will be revealed), when the rise of the female sensibility, independent, rights, votes, workplace and so on came around full swing, then this would be a classic sign of this (not to mention these Olympics are the first in history where women have competed in exactly the same events as the men). This could get seriously groovy going forward :)

I'm sure the world doesn't need another chart fest but hey ho, here is another one http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/general/12064-gold-is-nearing-a-crucial-level.html

Dream chart songs (geddit?) for August 2012

Here's where it started. First released track from their debut album 2000 (formed in 96 though)

40% of UK's coal supply just went bye bye. This has to be some kind of a joke right ? Oh, don't worry, wind power will save us - yeah right.

http://news.sky.com/story/970941/uk-coal-to-close-mine-as-profit-collapses

and at the same time, the Foreign Office just announces 5 million quids worth of aid to the Syrian rebels. Am I missing something here ? Oh yeah.........oil.

Happy to see the USA finally leaving China behind in the medal count.  Apparently China doesn't have much (yet) in track and field, plus we are doing awesome of late in team events such as soccer, water polo, volleyball, etc.

And yes, Way to Go for the Brits!  After a slow start, they are kicking some serious butt out there.

The truth is that the silver investigation was a ruse from the start in that the CFTC could never have moved against JPMorgan or the CME in any circumstance. The proof of that is evident in the many other specific instances of price manipulation in silver that have occurred after the soon to be dropped investigation began. The most obvious instances were the two separate 30% and 35% price smashes in a matter of days that occurred in silver in 2011. There never were such blatant price declines in such a short time in any world commodity in history, to say nothing about there being no obvious supply/demand changes to account for the declines.

In other words, the CFTC started their third silver investigation four years ago as a way of avoiding having to explain how JPMorgan could be allowed to hold a clearly manipulative concentrated short position and then ignored the two greatest manipulative price events in commodity market history while the phony silver investigation was under way. Think of how devious and dishonest the CFTC has been; it announces a formal silver investigation to avoid having to answer bedrock regulatory questions, then ignores the two most manipulative prices events in history claiming it can’t comment on them because there is an active investigation under way. If government officials could ever be horse-whipped for malfeasance and for failing to protect the public interest, surely the CFTC’s performance in silver would permit it.

I realize that what I have written to this point paints a picture that is not optimistic for the resolution of the silver investigation that most would favor. I am sorry about that, but I try to be an analyst and not an entertainer. That said I’d like to spend some time explaining why the outcome of a dropped case may not matter much and that the net result is good for silver. More than anything, this FT leak was likely a trial balloon for the CFTC to gauge public reaction to it dropping the case. If so, the reaction couldn’t be clearer; even I was taken aback by the near universal condemnation of the agency for proposing to drop the case. I think what got to people the most was the suggestion that the agency would walk away without bothering to explain the concentration and the two historic price drops of 2011, to say nothing of the almost daily beatings in silver as a result of crooked High Frequency Trading. If anything, the FT article may have given legs to the silver manipulation allegations.

While it was a mainstream media publication that leaked the story, the silver manipulation is surely not a mainstream media issue. The silver story is an Internet and private publication issue that grew despite being ignored in the mainstream media. As such, any declaration that the matter is now closed will not close it anywhere outside the MSM, where it was never accepted to begin with. It’s not just that the silver manipulation was never accepted by the MSM, it was more a case of it never being allowed to be openly discussed. But legitimate questions of undue market concentration and historic and unjustified silver price movements are matters worthy of transparent examination that MSM censorship has been unable to stifle.

Not only is the matter not going away, the leak to drop the case may bring greater attention to it. Such attention could prove to be the death knell for the silver manipulation, as the last thing the silver manipulators want or need is a fully transparent examination of the facts. One of my longest held beliefs has been that as time rolls on more would become aware of the real silver story and once they did, more investment demand in silver would result. That has occurred and any new attention brought to silver as a result of a dropped investigation will likely accelerate the process. The truly amazing thing is in how slowly the real silver story has spread in the ranks of super big investors. Aside from Eric Sprott, very large investors have overlooked the silver story completely. I am as certain as I can be that these very large investors just haven’t taken the time to look objectively at silver. I think it’s a case of silver being such a universally known item that most people assume they already know all the facts because they know what silver is. This includes very large investors who, in addition, may actually be turned off that so many smaller investors have invested in silver. It’s a common human failing to dismiss something because others thought to be less knowledgeable got there first. In the long run, however, very large investors are more concerned with superior returns, so the key is getting them to look at silver objectively. The dropping of the silver manipulation may be that key.

http://m.silverseek.com/commentary/cftc-silver-investigation

@ Larry- good stuff on Main yesterday.

I couldn't lay out my theory any better today.

U.S. regulators directed five of the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/10/us-banks-recoveryplans-idUSBRE...

Treasury used secretive Exchange Stabilization Fund cash to insure money-market funds

Details about a secretive government program to bail out money-market mutual funds are finally coming to light.

Acting without any explicit congressional authority, the U.S. Treasury guaranteed in excess of $2.4 trillion of money market funds after the giant Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck" following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The program, which ended on Sept. 18, 2009, seems to have prevented a panicked run by money-market fund investors.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48578949