You Certainly Can't Eat a Credit Default Swap

Correlation does not equal causation. However... It is a fact that the vast majority of our world's gold reserves are owned by governments, central banks, and the ultra-rich. The price of gold over the past 40 years coincides with some very interesting events. You've heard the term "you can't eat gold", implying that its practical value to the everyday man is low? Well... For about 40 years after the Great Depression, the price of gold was pinned to the price of the dollar. Gold cost $35 per ounce. About 40 years ago, the Bretton Woods Agreement was dismantled, and the price of gold was "unpinned" from the dollar. Shortly after Reagan took office, the price of gold rose to $600 per ounce. That's a 1700% increase in a commodity that sat stable for the previous 40 years. 

If you haven't heard the term "profit-taking", that's when people sell commodities because their margins are ridiculously good and they're about to become seriously rich. Gold sat stable at $400 per ounce with some small fluctuations until the latter years of the Clinton administration. Since 2001, its trend has mimicked the same general behavior as it did about 40 years prior. And now it appears to be more or less stabilizing at $1,200 per ounce. Only a 300% increase in the average price this time, and it took longer to unfold. But this is based off of a previous 1700% increase just 40 years prior... So in about a 40 year span, we're talking about close to 4000% increase in the price of an actual physical measurable substance that is owned mostly by governments and banks. 

This below goes from 1800 through 2013. For some perspective. The Y scale is represented logarithmically so that you can actually see the few changes between 1800 and 1970, and you don't have to spend too much time scrolling from the top to the bottom like you might if it were linear like the graph above. The correlation here is between the inequality of wealth and the price of gold. Specific events have occurred which, through profit-taking, allowed a very few people and a very few nations to acquire previously unimaginably vast sums of wealth. This new wealth has been used to fuel a derivatives market that has ballooned to about $600 trillion in total "worth". Control of and benefit from that money is concentrated in the hands of a very few investment firms, banks, and governments. The actual inequality of wealth between the "powers that be" and "you and me" has grown exponentially and really unfathomably... 

The manipulation that has allowed this was first of the gold market, and now of the derivatives market. Here's the best part... the value of the derivatives market is called its "notional value". That it has any value at all is only a notion (it's literally imaginary). Since 2007 there has been $300 TRILLION imagined into existence by people buying insurance policies against other people's loans or some such bullshit. The "credit exposure" is the amount of this imaginary $600T that has been extended to a borrower by a lender. So there's about $30 trillion worth of money that people have imagined into existence and then loaned to someone else. As you can see, most of the notional value is tied up in interest rates... 

It's still true that correlation doesn't equal causation and one possibility is that all of this has come to be due to coincidence and mismanagement. But I think we can all agree that there is a lot of truth to the saying "money makes the world go round". So... the important question is... what makes the money go around? And it would be damned interesting to know who made out in profit-taking on Gold in 1980 and 2011...

Consume Misinformation in the Wake of Violence

[was written in April of 2013 but not published]

I'm sure that at least some of us watching the news on the seemingly senseless and as of yet completely unsolved Boston Marathon bombing atrocity and the supposedly unrelated simultaneous JFK Library fire knew that something was fishy... Hours after a public bombing... and no organization has claimed responsibility and no one has been caught. And the bombing--no wait--fire--no... bombing--no it was just a fire, we're sure--... yeah that is unrelated.

UNRELATED? Seriously?? I mean I know fires sometime do just happen... But this was a few minutes apart. And the fire was officially caused by a bomb or incendiary device, so it was no accident. My first job out of audio engineering school happened to be at the Presidential Archives in the JFK Library. I showed them how to use Cool Edit Pro to apply noise reduction and other audio forensics on classified presidential audio recordings. The fire was located in the aforementioned archives, which are quite large and contain many classified documents and other media from various federal agencies.  But this is unrelated? I'm sorry but I call bullshit.

The FBI is there running the show, MA State Police, Boston, Revere, Malden, and other local cops are there, even the Secret Service is already on the scene. Trust me this is not just the local cops (who, in Boston, are no joke) that got fooled here. Security for this event had been planned for months by people who know what they are doing...

Are you telling me that the surveillance cameras already in Boston got nothing from the area? And the security at the JFK Library got nothing? And that the aforementioned law enforcement agencies don't each have teams of analysts and interns pouring through footage? And they haven't found a thing...

Given the variables involved here... the devices may have been crude but my gut tells me this was not just some emotionally fucked up lone-perpetrator operation. This having been said, please view the following piece of misinformation:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bionicdanb

Dan Bidondi is probably correct that this was a false flag operation. But he didn't do anyone any justice by asking the question like that. He comes off as combative and ridiculous. The presentation is simply awful. Deval Patrick waited for him to finish his incoherent question and then said "No. Next question." Perfect answer, by the way. And Bidondi presents himself (and by extension anyone who thinks there could be such a thing as a false flag attack on American citizens) as unreasonable, nonsensical, and daft. In fact, there is long documented history showing that False Flag attacks and tactics have been practices by American law-enforcement agencies for hundreds of years, and more recently it has become increasingly commonplace.


What I wished had been asked, with a calm and even tone no matter how awesome the local Boston dialectic accent: "What exactly happened at the JFK Library? What caused the fire? What is in the library archives that the fire was near? Was anything damaged? Do we know who did it, and what they may have been targeting?"

Whether or not you believe in any sort or conspiracy about anything--the facts are that many classified documents related to the JFK assassination are located in the those archives. These documents (if they have not been destroyed or meddled with) are due to be declassified on Dec 31 of this year, it being 50 years after these documents were classified, pursuant to Executive Order 13526.

Connecting the dots is something people are too afraid to do for fear of the most simple and rational explanation being correct. They'd rather wait for an "official" story and believe it no matter how implausible it may seem. So Bostonians are simply waiting. Our local new is fixated on describing the violence in as much brutal detail as possible, and have little to no actual information on what happened. We found ourselves in the same situation 12 years ago when building 7 caught fire. Who cares about building 7 when dozens of people are dying at this instant, and my sister is probably stuck on the subway without power? And seriously, who cares about the library when an 8 year old boy has died, much less when he's one of three and dozens of people (some of who were friends of close friends of mine) lost limbs and almost 200 people injured? No one.

FOIA request against private Kennedy docs held at JFK Library in Feb 2013 goes to court.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/judicial-watch-files-foia-lawsuit-185152255.html

JFK Library reports a few "artifact storage rooms" had water damage.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/About-Us/News-and-Press/Press-Releases/Statement-on-Fire-at-the-John-F-Kennedy-Presidential-Library-and-Museum.aspx