77 responses so far ↓

• Don

  Jul 10, 2009 at 8:39 am

  

  The wrong hands? Who is the “right hands”? Manipulation is manipulation there is no good guys and bad guys. Just corrupt manipulators.
• Don

  Jul 10, 2009 at 8:45 am

  

  @Mother Earth

  The US gov. has commissioned 12 Lockheed Martin high altitude blimps that can “read the date on a time from 20K feet”! And stay aloft for up to 1 year.

  http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2005/TM-2005-213427.pdf

  http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/22/lockheed-martin-to-build-high-altitude-airship-for-homeland-secu/
• alister

  Jul 10, 2009 at 8:55 am

  

  though i know some here may not be interested in what is to them an alternative view of things at the moment (that is to say, a more mainstream view), i think the recent cr interview of roger altman, former deputy treasury secretary in the clinton admin, can at least be Slightly illuminating for the discerning alternative viewer vis-a-vis both the kind of bizarre, bafflingly perverted logic, employed, with full belief and sincerity, by certain not stupid establishment types, and also the sense that we are, currently, standing on a high wire with sanity on one side and a precipitous abyss on the other:

  in reference to the battle of gettysburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg) altman told cr that QUOTE “hopefully he [obama] is in a blue uniform, but who knows” !!

  and the guy spent the whole interview trying to be ‘impressive’ in a bid to get hooked up with some position in the admin…talk about kicking an own goal, haha…anyway if you compute who he is and the aforementioned statement he made to cr, you can’t help but feel a little perturbed…

  http://www.charlierose.com/view/clip/10463
• Mother Earth

  Jul 10, 2009 at 8:55 am

  

  @white hunter

  Yes, it is a small book called ‘Il principe’ or ‘The Prince’, which is also widely referenced. Machavelli talks a lot about oppotunity, so maybe the writer mixed it up..

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
• Don

  Jul 10, 2009 at 8:58 am

  

  @Mini US
  This link is about the first mandatory vaccinations in 1976 and the results as well as clips of the propaganda used to hype the disease, and the vaccination. I am sure ole Donny Rumsfeld made a killing!

  http://www.openureyes.org.nz/blog/?q=node/1782
• zmoore

  Jul 10, 2009 at 9:07 am

  

  Since America outsourced it’s IT domestic spying to foreign controlled companies a couple of years ago could GS be setting up its software for a double win?

  That is, domestic spying with stock market manipulation at the same time?

  Perfect for cyber war holding gathering both people info, economic info and banking/stock manipulation with this new software.

  Note that the fiber optic taps for the domestic spying are the ideal place for stock manipulation. The data aggregation points used by these companies are the ideal place to do microsecond trading.

  James Banford explains that Israeli companies are doing the US domestic spying work for the communications companies.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI_k9Xt00YE
• Dedo

  Jul 10, 2009 at 9:08 am

  

  @mother earth,……..prince was another of his books,…!
• Joe

  Jul 10, 2009 at 9:11 am

  

  This reminds me of the guy who called the police on his roommate because he stole his weed… but with government protection of course its goldman sachs
• Cervantes

  Jul 10, 2009 at 9:21 am

  

  Why not shut Goldman down until the investigations are completed? Why give them time to execute a cover-up?

  I am so sick of the filth. How much longer can all of us sit by and do nothing?
• Phil

  Jul 10, 2009 at 10:08 am

  

  @juergenwahl .. “Head and Shoulders BOTTOM formation,”

  So you mean a Reverse H&S I suppose ?

  If true and the SPX moves to 1250, then I can only assume it means a 50% US$ devaluation !
  
• alister

  Jul 10, 2009 at 10:34 am

  

  see the sheep only register whats given to them
• juergenwahl

  Jul 10, 2009 at 1:29 pm

  

  @Phil

  Yes, a reverse h&s. I don’t particularly like it, but that is what I’m seeing. A substantial rise in equities makes little sense in light of intrinsic value versus current price comparisons. I cannot see where robust corporate earnings support will come from in the forseeable future. But I suppose, uncertainty of participants is what makes markets possible.

  An appreciable rise in ordinary shares from here will be the result of some new bubble being blown from all of the liquidity being force-fed into financial institutions by the Fed. It would be best in the long-term to let all financial securities deflate to reasonable valuations. As von Mises inferred, postponing the inevitable crisis of a credit expansion only makes things worse.

  The US$ paradigm is in a truly frightful position. Too many anomalies have accumulated, which makes continuation of the dollar regime highly suspect. Its only salvation lies in the relatively worse management of competing currencies by Central Bankers – not exactly a nutty bunch of actors. I feel that the dollar’s obituary is presently being drafted.

  Please see:

  http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=UUP&p=D&yr=1&mn=6&dy=0&id=p42039676465

  For UUP, important support points for the high at 27.008 are: 23.687; 22.061; 20.493; 17.614 (-35% @ 180*); 14.953; 13.667 (-49% @ 270*); 12.439; and 10.220 (-62% @ 0*). The dollar could well cut in half by 50%, or worse. Can anyone who put full faith and credit upon the word of the US financial authorities not believe that the US is presently operating as a criminal conspiracy against the savers of the world?
• Phil

  Jul 10, 2009 at 1:40 pm

  

  @juergenwahl … “Can anyone who put full faith and credit upon the word of the US financial authorities not believe that the US is presently operating as a criminal conspiracy against the savers of the world?”

  Well said … you sound like Catherine A-F !
  

  BTW …. do you come from Germany by any chance ?
• Phil

  Jul 10, 2009 at 1:42 pm

  

  @juergenwahl … “UUP”

  I noticed they’ve “reset” the leveraged ETFs FAS and FAZ back up .. to avoid them getting too close to ZERO !
  
• Youri Carma

  Jul 10, 2009 at 3:03 pm

  

  China risks overcooking the economy http://tinyurl.com/lqf4ue
• Youri Carma

  Jul 10, 2009 at 3:16 pm

  

  @Mother Earth

  I’ve red Sun-Tzu in a complete translation of Professor Roger T. Ames, very good and Machiavelli. In fact the whole American foreign politics is based on Maxhiavelli and Hobbes principle of countries react to each other like Homo Homini Lupus.

  Sun-Tzu together with the whole Chinese thinking is largely misunderstood and misintreperted unfortunately.
• Mini US

  Jul 10, 2009 at 3:58 pm

  

  @ Don
  Hey man,
  Thanks for that 1976 Swine Flu Vaccination video from 60 minutes.
  Just goes to show how little we learn and how quickly history is forgotten.
  Drug companies colluding with politicians……
  I am growing weary of all these jerks.
• Mini US

  Jul 10, 2009 at 4:06 pm

  

  @ Max and Stacy
  Re: Gold.
  My question is do we buy gold now in anticipation of the $US crash or do we wait for the crash and buy it in our non $US currencies?
  ie, decoupling or complete fiat annihilation?
  I guess thats not just my question, that would be everyone’s question.
  What would the oracle say?
• Youri Carma

  Jul 10, 2009 at 4:32 pm

  

  Hyperinflation Will begin In China And It Will Destroy The Dollar http://tinyurl.com/cuz57g
• Gregman2

  Jul 10, 2009 at 5:57 pm

  

  Does this really come as any surprise, inasmuch as GS has been an incubator for U.S. Treasury for so many MANY moons?;-)
• Youri Carma

  Jul 10, 2009 at 6:15 pm

  

  A tiny minority of a new breed of electronic trading firm is driving almost three quarters of all US equities trading volume and generating $21bn in annual profits doing so, Tabb Group, a consultancy, said on Friday.

  The disclosure is one of the first attempts to quantify the impact of so-called “high frequency” trading firms that have quietly grabbed a huge slice of trading in the world’s equity markets.

  Some of the trading firms – such as Getco, Peak6, RGM Advisers and Hudson Bay Trading – are far from household names in the markets. Many are based in Chicago and grew out of the city’s options trading pits.

  However, they appear to have built up such a significant presence in the markets that they look set to eclipse familiar Wall Street names in their collective influence. Such firms have grown especially quickly as they filled a gap in the markets left by hedge funds.

  They typically employ trading strategies that are based not on company earnings prospects and other fundamentals, but on arbitraging minute differences in share prices and trading speeds – known as latency – between exchanges and other trading venues.

  Robert Iati, partner at Tabb, said: “They are, as a rule, secretive, stealthy, smart, and relatively unknown.

  “The incredible capabilities offered by technology have given meteoric rise to a relatively few high frequency proprietary trading firms that now wield far greater influence on the markets today than most people recognize,” he added.

  Tabb estimated that such firms, which include the new breed also known as “electronic liquidity providers”, represent about 2 per cent of the 20,000 or so trading firms operating in the US markets. But they accounted for 73 per cent of all US equity trading volume.

  Trading venues have altered their fees structures to attract such firms, which often look for platforms to offer monetary incentives to encourage firms to post liquidity with them in so-called “maker-taker” fee models. The London Stock Exchange this month abandoned a maker-taker fee model introduced only in September last year, a move that its smaller rivals such as BATS Europe are likely to welcome as it could drive more high-frequency traders to them.

  The firms included proprietary trading desks for a small number of major investment banks, less than 100 of the most sophisticated hedge funds and hundreds of “the most secretive prop shops, all of which operate with one thing in mind: capture profit opportunities by being smarter and faster than the closest competition”, Tabb said.

  Firms engaged in high frequency trading (HFT) use complex computer algorithms to drive their trading strategies, and guard them jealously. The value of such algorithms was exposed this week when US federal prosecutors charged Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer, with stealing computer code from the bank’s HFT business.

  FROM: ‘Secretive’ firms dominate US share trading by Jeremy Grant in London, July 10 2009 (The Financial Times) http://tinyurl.com/ndh8vl
• Youri Carma

  Jul 10, 2009 at 6:36 pm

  

  Web manager won’t say if others saw Goldman code http://r.reuters.com/pes58c
• juergenwahl

  Jul 10, 2009 at 7:21 pm

  

  @Phil

  Somewhat Germany. My ancestors emigrated from Bavaria to Switzerland (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft) around 900 years ago and their descendants have resided there ever since.

  I have lived in Switzerland, the UK (Oxford, and later Kensington [Holland Park] – and will be visiting in Sept/Oct for an alumni function), the USA, and Brazil.

  My main language is Swiss German. I speak pretty good French, and passable Italian and English. I fear that my foreign language attempts are often garbled – for which I apologise.

  And regards.
• Phil

  Jul 11, 2009 at 12:52 am

  

  @juergenwahl … “apologize” ?
  What for , your English is excellent.

  Do you have a feeling for what the Swiss public are thinking right now concerning the attack on their bank-secrecy laws ? .. and in effect , an attack on their sovereignty ( IMO ) ?
• juergenwahl

  Jul 12, 2009 at 10:07 am

  

  @Phil

  Swiss banking independence and secrecy dates back to the 1700s, and has generally been accepted by all nations. Many savers from the world over have found in this country an attractive means of safeguarding wealth from oft confiscatory taxing authorities. For the really rich, making money is not so much an issue as is keeping a respectable portion of what one has already accumulated.

  Presently, around one-third of global offshore funds reside in Switzerland. We currently manage portfolios amounting to around US$ six trillions. Our clients include the rich, famous, infamous, well-connected, and the most powerful individuals ever scratching the surface of this planet.

  While we believe that the right to privacy is a fundamental right for free peoples, we do have numerous ethical restrictions upon folks with whom we will do business. For example, we will not accept funds from Americans who are not able to certify that they are in full compliance with IRS regulations. Also, “lifting orders” are frequently granted to foreign taxation authorities to facilitate resolution of criminal investigations. It should be noted that tax evasion is not considered a crime in Switzerland, although tax fraud is not tolerated and is severely punished.

  Our “Banking Law of 1934, Article 47(b)” makes violation of our banking secrecy guidlines a criminal offence. Any person operating in the banking sector who violates the dictates of secrecy is sure to do some hard time in some quite unpleasant gaol.

  At the London G20 Summit, in April, blacklisting guidelines were promulgated for international tax havens. Tier I countries, those substantially in compliance with standards included the UK and US. Tier III countries, those agreeing with the standards but not yet fully implementing them included Switzerland and Austria. Switzerland has aleays attempted to be a good, but neutral, world citizen.

  The US has long been seeking to dominate other nations by means of a Pax Americana. The “one worlders” movement spearheaded by the US and UK are naked attempts to harmonise all commercial and tax laws to the US standard, to the advantage of their resident financial elites (not necessarily to the advantage of their respective common folk). The US no longer respects the sovereignty of any other nation and is increasingly acting like some third world, rogue state.

  Earlier this year, UBS was convicted, rightfully or wrongfully, of defrauding US tax law by concealing US$ billions of American investors’ funds in secret, offshore accounts. UBS paid $780 million in fines for this infraction.

  Now the IRS are demanding that UBS reveal transactions for 52,000 American customers under suspicion of tax evasion. Such a disclosure would constitute an egregious violation of Swiss sovereignty and banking law. Last Wednesday, the Swiss government advised that it would block any movement of UBS to surrender the details in question. Once formally broken, these secrecy laws would not be able to ever function again.

  Alan S. Gold, of the Federal District Court in Miami, has ordered prosecutors and the IRS to determine with the Obama administration and the State Department, by today, the full prosecutorial intent of this case. Will the case against UBS be moderated, UBS’ assets seized, or will UBS be forced into heavily supervised receivership? Monday will be an interesting day.

  In the personal view of a former private banker who has previously dealt with more than a few of the world’s truly wealthy, and somewhat understands the workings of “the system”, should the IRS prevail in their attempts to vacate international banking secrecy laws: Swiss banking will be kaput; Switzerland, as a nation, will be kaput; many of the world’s most powerful citizens will be under indictment; major governments will fall; global financial instability will increase; and the world’s security markets will have a collapse, the magnitude of which will be equivalent to the fall of the Roman Empire and the ushering in of a New Dark Age.
• Option Maestro

  Jul 12, 2009 at 2:03 pm

  

  Wow stock market manipulation. Who really thinks it doesn’t take place now? Nice find.
• Dominik

  Jul 16, 2009 at 3:43 pm

  

  Totally blown out of proportion.