Silver Sitrep
Revisiting the silver market today... not in a charting exercise, but from a "big picture" situational perspective on "markets" and where they are going... that's not "short term" in focus... and not ignorant of the complexity of the world and its history. I'm not planning on delving into details... so will use some "assumptions" dropped as "facts" as the basis for a speculative bit in conjecture...
I've already beat to death the "charting" of gold, silver, and M2... versus the banks Basel III driven trading...
I should start, then, by advancing conclusions of my other recent efforts in reading the tea leaves... as a basis for developing expectations for the future based on that speculative view of "where we've been... and where we are"...
In 2020... shit happened... after which gold and silver spiked higher into August. And then.... in February of 2021... there was the "silver squeeze"... which, at the time, was pooh-poohed by the big banks. But, in reality, it caused a MAJOR ripple in the market... aggravated by market realities that weren't able to be avoided. Retail demand for investment grew... at the same time that the banks were trying to close out the long term cup and handle acquisition pattern with a hard "handle"... in both the ten year and twenty year patterns. Very inconvenient... that it didn't work out. Rather than decline, silver entered a sideways channel pattern... which it has sustained since then... and it has twice tried to break out to the upside... in February/March... and again in April/June... until the June 7th bloodletting. The aggravating factors, then, were explained away, early on, as "transitory" disruptions of the supply chain due to Covid. "It's just that we can't move things around, now"... they said... Yada, yada... but, "trust us"...[lips moving] mine output is not down...
The June 7th bloodletting... and the "sideways continuation" trade in metals paired with the "crash" trade in mining shares [aborted bull market breakout] since then... was the culmination of a coordinated response to the [supposed non-event] of the "silver squeeze"...
They shut down the mint... and re-allocated all of that metal to the wholesale market... in the form of 1000 ounce bars [the standard used in industry] and... new in this cycle... a large mass of 100 ounce bars... that almost no one wants... [as the point of fostering price suppression in physical in context of a "gap filler" in an illiquid "retail" market segment].
And, it took them from February until June to accomplish that ? Metal in storage had to be moved... melted down... re-fabricated into bars. But, then... on June 7th... they began the dump of the mass of "new" metal into the physical markets... [although having no viable "source" for that mass of "new" metal] and another cycle of suppression began...
The coordination between COMEX and LBMA... et al...shouldn't be ignored in the timing of the trade ?
But, seeing all that occurring... my first question was... "how much" ? The volume taken away from mint production... and that in the COMEX trade as physical delivered... not nearly enough, by itself, to explain the impact in volumes versus the steep rise in demand in the retail trade ? It had to be a "shock and awe" campaign based on a dump of all the physical metal they could scrape together... paired along with newly fictionalized "paper as physical" in the conversion of COMEX "contracts for delivery" into LBMA paper without real metal backing... intending to make it look like physical supply was faar more robust than it was..
There's likely only one source that could make that amount of metal available... with "the mint" holdings for coin issuance in that mix being only a small corner of that same supply...
At the time (last fall... maybe August/September)... I computed that the impact they needed... would require a complete unwind of all the "progress" made in silver under the Basel III trade since 2011... that entire mass of physical extracted from the market in that time, that was needed in order to counter the weight of the derivative risk in the paper shorts [ risk secretly "realized" ? in 2008... bankrupt banks short metal being the reason for Basel III and QE "filling holes in balance sheets"... ] So, "the end of the Basel III trade" in January... had to be a fraud... left floating out there to impact expectations... while the can was [silently] kicked down the road yet again... leaving some in the market believing "manipulation has now ended"... because Basel III... ? While... in silver, at least... it clearly continues...
At the same time... noting the antics of Goldman's Jeff Curry going stupid in February... with the flagrantly manipulated trade in early 2021 being exposed and made obvious to everyone... and the "dump" beginning in June... there's the parallel issue of JP Morgan... long reviled as the source of the paper shorts used in manipulating the trade... which "role" they had "inherited" from the failure of Bear Stearns in 2008 ...
JPM was not the only bank forced to "take one for the team" in 2008 ?
So, a first question in "how much"... but, a second in addressing... what "role" was that, actually... in that BS trade that JPM took over ?
A third question emerges... since it appears that after the sudden plunge in February / March of 2020... JP Morgan was no longer seen acting in the role of the market's nemesis... was no longer net short of silver... and was in fact net long... and speaking as an advocate for the metals ? [Granted... "because you can see their lips moving".] Also seeing that, of course... as ample enough evidence of "let's sponsor a market crash in order to get out of our failed short positions"...
April 2020: JP Morgan Now Bullish On Silver With 1 Billion Ounces and Gold With 25 Million Ounces
May 2020: JPMorgan Believes Stimulus Will Debase The US Dollar
The third question... if it's not JPM running that trade any more... who is it ?
So, who are the most vocal advocates [~ Bill Ackman] of "shcok and awe" policies the impact of which is generating a market crash... and what are their banking affiliations ? [And, what bets did they lose last Thursday... ???]
But, in answering those questions... the order of operations should be... 2, 3, 1....
(2) What role was that... in the BS trade that JPM took over... (3) who is running it now... and (1) "how much" are they into it for...
The Role...
The trade is / was a contract with the U.S. government... intended to "launder" the entire mass of silver in Fort Knox... and return it to storage... after cycling it through the market...
This link explains it... but, with two important lies: Silver Crucial For WWII Bomb
The least important of the lies... typical for government... is hidden by minimizing it as "only about four-hundredths of one percent"... to mask that the Army "borrowing" it somehow "lost" (at $22/oz) only $4,224,000 of the Treasury's silver... in "shavings" left to sound like it means "necessary industrial processes"... and not Army "brass" getting "silver service"...
The bigger lie... is that the silver WAS NOT returned to the Treasury... at least, not physically. It sat there in Oak Ridge for much longer... and was not actually "released" to the full control of Treasury until the 1980's... when it was deemed it was no longer needed... for whatever reasons being not relevant here... and still wasn't physically removed until... ???
So, that's what Bear Stearns was doing... recycling that metal... through the market... in a trade... as a part of the effort to return it (physically) to the Treasury's vaults. As part of that effort... they were authorized to USE the metal they'd "borrowed" from the Treasury... and to engage in trading using the metal in the market... to cover the costs of the re-fabrication and re-location of the mass... while turning a profit on the trades (split with Treasury under the contract... how ? ) . That the engagement in doing that trade in a "borrow" of the entire mass of metal the Treasury held... would both cover the costs of the effort and also "suppress the price"... and thus perception of inflation... AND turn a profit... was not unwelcome side effects ? Re-visit the Hunt Brothers (insider ?) trades in this context... and perhaps see them in a new light ?
In any case... that awareness also sets a marker in the discussion of "how much"... at 480 million ounces (minus the 192,000 ounces that "went missing").... or 15,000 tons... or 13,600 metric tons. That last number is for context... as here is Apparent silver consumption in the United States from 2010 to 2020 (in metric tons) showing that to be around two years worth of domestic consumption in the U.S... in "off" years... leaving me wondering, still... why, [with the economy cratering] and HOW given "supply chain issues" there was MORE consumption in 2020 than in 2019 ? Guess that's the "silver squeeze" numbers showing up ? But, also, that's clearly setting some hard limits in a cap on the "how much" number in the physical trade... without fully subscribing to the Yap doctrine in the ownership moving without the pet rocks ever having to move... which, of course, would really only work... as SLV pretends that it does... in a market based on good faith... where bankers weren't liars and cheats ?
Bear Stearns certainly were liars and cheats... and, in 2008, that's why JP Morgan "inherited" the trade.
Not that it makes them "good guys" rather than "bankers"... but JPM appears to have conducted the trade they inherited will sufficient skill to not go belly up while doing it... as the links above note... completing the trade and ending up owning as much physical as they'd "been short" at the start of the trade ? Nothing I see in that suggests any reason to respect them... while clearly suggesting... an exploit of the situation. But, don't know that we can ever parse "what really happened" in that trade... without knowing full well what the steaming pile that Bear Strearns turned over to them looked like at the point when they failed ?
So... the final leg in this ramble... if its not JP Morgan... who is it now... and what else can we learn about "how much" from finding out about that ?
I'll end the ramble here... having provided some context in which to consider***:
Video I'm watching shows it is Bank of America... who "recently" shorted 300 million ounces... and then, after that... shorted another 500 million... ?
The vid references a (locked) posting from silverseek.com... which says BoA was down $2.5 billion at year end... last year... then shorted another 500 million ounces since then... which has them now, on paper, at current prices... "even" on the trade... "The first 300 million oz tranche was leased/sold at roughly $18/oz. At last year's close of $26.50, BoA ws out (in the hole) for $2.5 billion. By borrowing an additional 500 million oz at, say, $26 (slightly above the average silver price for 2021), at $23 (close to the current price) the total combined 800 million oz short position is roughly now even on a strict market to market basis - much better than the $2.5 billion open loss at yearend 2020. I wouldn't be surprised if the head honco;s at BoA rewarded themselves big bonuses for this performance."
That might also cause one to pause and re-consider the DRIVERS BEHIND and the point and purpose of the "silver squeeze" effort cooperating with BoA in running the price up for them in early 2021... to let them short it back down... in a rinse and repeat operation ?
"The real problem is that BoA may now be short 800 million oz physical silver without a chance of ever being able to pay that silver back, except at much higher prices - as it must do someday. At least that's how I see it - based on public data from the US Treasury Department and my knowledge of how"...
But, JPM now a "long"... and BoA now "the short"... Ted Butler saying... BoA borrowed the 800 million ounces from JPM ? BoA's ttm net profit was $30.56 billion... so the $2.5 billion loss would have been survivable... but, if silver spikes hard... to $50... that might prove more of a problem...
But, that trade... is twice the size of Treasury's trade with Bear Stearns ? The "recycling" story won't work to explain why the Treasury / Fed / CFTC are allowing the banks taking those massive... clearly manipulative... ILLEGAL... and massively risky positions... ?
***Intended to post a video link here... I'm WATCHING the vid on Youtube... But, a search for it on Youtube... using the exact title in quotes... returns no result... but pushes me into a series of links to WEF videos...
Maybe others can find it... "THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE THIS! THE NEXT STEP OF GREAT RESET IS UNDERWAY... TO STEAL THIS FROM YOU!" SaleDaddy1 58K views Published on Jan 26, 2022
The vid is a pirated rebroadcast, I think, in a compilation of vids made by Tony Woodcock of VR.NET or NOAHVR.net / JILgames.com... His Youtube channel is " Godrules"... as also on Bitchute... but the vid in question isn't there... Apparently he has his own website where a lot of vids are posted for subscribers only... GRVideos.com... So, probably a pirated vid... being ALLOWED by Youtube to target specific audiences who will watch it anyway, no matter what they try to feed you instead... while preventing their thefts being discovered by a simple search... ?
That Youtube is being far more aggressive suddenly... in DIRECTING content flows... of crap like the WEF garbage... is itself worth noting...
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