The other head scratcher is the revelation JP Morgan has cornered the commodity markets http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-2 ... have-proof . Before starting on this one, let me say there are many moving parts and unknowns (probably designed this way). I have queried my mentor and spoken with Jim, I have spoken to several others whom I respect and value their opinions. Though the takeaway was by no means unanimous, the following is my personal opinion.

To set the stage, it must be understood the U.S. is at WAR, a financial war where the survival the dollar is at stake. We watched late last year and early this year where huge pressure was put on the price of oil. This I believe was done to pressure Russia as energy is their biggest export. Oddly enough, Russia and our "ally" Saudi Arabia just signed six deals last week. We do not even know what these deals were but a good speculation is Saudi Arabia is moving toward Russia and away from the U.S.. Remember, the Saudis are the cornerstone underlying the petrodollar. Gold and silver have also been pressured at every turn over the last four years and in particular the last 12 months.

I assume JP Morgan and the Fed are one and the same. There have been stories JPM has amassed 350 million or more ounces of silver. We also know China/Russia/India have been huge buyers of gold. We now know JPM has increased their derivatives by over $3 trillion in just one quarter. It is obvious to me, they are the ones sitting on the paper prices of gold and silver. This would make sense for the Fed to attack the metals and thus support the dollar. In fact, standard procedure in any war is to strengthen your currency while weakening your opponents. I believe the neocons know the bottom of our "gold barrel" is close at hand, they have decided to go all in on price suppression knowing full well "contracts were made to be broken" (defaulted on).

The flip side is this, silver is too cheap in relation to gold. It is also "the stuff" which will have massive future demand for medicine, technology and green energy (think solar). What if the price of silver were to equal gold or even surpass it in the future? I ask this because I think not listening to Jamie Dimon may be a mistake. He has clearly told us a panic is coming, he has told us to take our GOLD out of safety deposit boxes …and he is buying silver. Could the plan be to mark up silver to unbelievable (today) levels that rival gold? Is JP Morgan short or long gold or silver? We don’t know for sure but would appear they have been all over the suppression business. One last question, could a "confiscation" of gold be in the offing …but not silver? Do you see the connection?

I know, a lot of speculation but remember this, there are FAR more uses for silver than gold. Wouldn’t COMEX be forced to "force majeure" gold contracts in the event of a re-signing of the 1933 executive gold confiscation order? If Morgan has wording in their OTC contracts similar, wouldn’t that close out their gold side …and leave them holding physical silver? Please also remember, it was the big banks who made the huge money from $200 to $875 in the late 1970′s, NOT the goldbugs who were largely shaken out (sound familiar to current times?). The banks as Jim has always said "trade both sides all the time". I believe they have been in the process of extricating themselves from their dilemma for quite a while, physical silver may just be the key!

I know this is much in the way of speculation but thought has to start somewhere and I have not seen any theories with hard facts or answers. Maybe this is off the mark, or, maybe close to the target in some fashion. All I know is JP Morgan is not manned by crazy maniacal fools. On the contrary, they may be greedy and evil amongst other poor traits but "stupid" is not one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the price of gold will go down. No, I believe China will unveil a gold backed yuan later this year and the U.S. will be found not to have any gold

We have explained on a number of occasions how the Federal Reserves’ agents, the bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia) sell uncovered shorts (“naked shorts”) on the Comex (gold futures market) in order to drive down an otherwise rising price of gold. By dumping so many uncovered short contracts into the futures market, an artificial increase in “paper gold” is created, and this increase in supply drives down the price.

This manipulation works because the hedge funds, the main purchasers of the short contracts, do not intend to take delivery of the gold represented by the contracts, settling instead in cash. This means that the banks who sold the uncovered contracts are never at risk from their inability to cover contracts in gold. At any given time, the amount of gold represented by the paper gold contracts (“open interest’) can exceed the actual amount of physical gold available for delivery, a situation that does not occur in other futures markets.

In other words, the gold and silver futures markets are not a place where people buy and sell gold and silver. These markets are places where people speculate on price direction and where hedge funds use gold futures to hedge other bets according to the various mathematical formulas that they use. The fact that bullion prices are determined in this paper, speculative market, and not in real physical markets where people sell and acquire physical bullion, is the reason the bullion banks can drive down the price of gold and silver even though the demand for the physical metal is rising.

For example last Tuesday the US Mint announced that it was sold out of the American Eagle one ounce silver coin. It is a contradiction of the law of supply and demand that demand is high, supply is low, and the price is falling. Such an economic anomaly can only be explained by manipulation of prices in a market where supply can be created by printing paper contracts.

Obviously fraud and price manipulation is at work, but no heads roll. The Federal Reserve and US Treasury support this fraud and manipulation, because the suppression of precious metal prices protects the value and status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency and prevents gold and silver from fulfilling their role as the transmission mechanism that warns of developing financial and economic troubles. The suppression of the rising gold price suppresses the warning signal and permits the continuation of financial market bubbles and Washington’s ability to impose sanctions on other world powers that are disadvantaged by not being a reserve currency.

It has come to our attention that over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives also play a role in price suppression and simultaneously serve to provide long positions for the bullion banks that disguise their manipulation of prices in the futures market.

OTC derivatives are privately structured contracts created by the secretive large banks. They are a paper, or derivative, form of an underlying financial instrument or commodity. Little is known about them. Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC) during the Clinton regime said, correctly, that the derivatives needed to be regulated. However, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary and Deputy Secretary Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Arthur Levitt, all de facto agents of the big banks, convinced Congress to prevent the CFTC from regulating OTC derivatives.

The absence of regulation means that information is not available that would indicate the purposes for which the banks use these derivatives. When JPMorgan was investigated for its short silver position on Comex, the bank convinced the CFTC that its short position on Comex was a hedge against a long position via OTC derivatives. In other words, JPMorgan used its OTC derivatives to shield its attack on the silver price in the futures market.

During 2015 the attack on bullion prices has intensified, driving the prices lower than they have been for years. During the first quarter of this year there was a huge upward spike in the quantity of precious metal derivatives.

If these were long positions hedging the banks’ Comex shorts, why did the price of gold and silver decline?

More evidence of manipulation comes from the continuing fall in the prices of gold and silver as set in paper future markets, although demand for the physical metals continues to rise even to the point that the US Mint has run out of silver coins to sell. Uncertainties arising from the Greek No vote increase systemic uncertainty. The normal response would be rising, not falling, bullion prices.

The circumstantial evidence is that the unregulated OTC derivatives in gold and silver are not really hedges to short positions in Comex but are themselves structured as an additional attack on precious metal prices.

If this supposition is correct, it indicates that seven years of bailing out the big banks that control the Federal Reserve and US Treasury at the expense of the US economy has threatened the US dollar to the extent that the dollar must be protected at all cost, including US regulatory tolerance of illegal activity to suppress gold and silver prices.

At any given time, the amount of gold represented by the paper gold contracts (“open interest’) can exceed the actual amount of physical gold available for delivery, a situation that does not occur in other futures markets.

La place de l’or dans les placements

Pour près d’un Français sur deux, l’or est un bon placement.
Un sondage réalisé en mars 2015 indique que 13 % des Français détiennent de l’or, sous forme physique (pièces ou lingots), d’ETF, de certificat ou d’actions de mines aurifères.
Interrogés sur les « meilleurs placements pour leurs économies », les Français pensent avant tout à l’immobilier (71 %), à l’assurance vie (64 %), à leur compte bancaire (59 %) ou à un livret d’épargne (54 %). Ils sont moins nombreux (41 %)
à considérer que l’achat d’or est une bonne solution (46 % en 2012).

Source : IFOP pour Au Gouffre.com, échantillon de 1002 personnes représentatif de la population française âgée de plus de 18 ans, mai 2015.

L'astéroïde UW-158 avec un noyau de 90 millions de tonnes de platine passe très près de la planète Terre dimanche 19 juillet.
Cet astéroïde qui vaut 5.400 milliards de dollars, avec l'importante quantité de platine qui forme son noyau, sera à une distance estimée à environ 2,4 millions de kilomètres.

Le cours du platine risque de s'effondrer

Goldman Gets More Bearish on Metals, Cuts Copper Outlook
[...]Currie said Tuesday that the worst is yet to come for gold, which the next day capped its longest losing streak since 1996 in New York. He said that prices could fall below $1,000 an ounce by the end of the year. Futures for August delivery in New York settled at $1,091.50 on Wednesday, and touched $1,080 this week, the lowest since February 2010.
[...]

The U.S. Mint - which ran out of Silver Eagles earlier in the month due to unexpectedly high demand - has sold 110,000 Gold Eagle one ounce coins so far this month according to Reuters. This compares with a mere 21,500 ounces sold in May and 76,000 in June. It represents the highest level of monthly demand in over two years - with more than a week to go till the end of the month.