Over the past month there has been a statistically improbable concurrence of events that can only be explained as a conspiracy to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Quantitative Easing is the term given to the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing 1,000 billion new dollars annually in order to finance the US budget deficit by purchasing US Treasury bonds and to keep the prices high of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big to fail” (BTBF) balance sheets by purchasing mortgage-backed derivatives. Without QE, interest rates would be much higher, and values on the banks’ balance sheets would be much lower.

Quantitative Easing has been underway since December 2008. During these 54 months, the Federal Reserve has created several trillion new dollars with which the Fed has monetized the same amount of debt.

One result of this policy is that most real US interest rates are negative. Another result is that the supply of dollars has outstripped the world’s demand for dollars.

These two results are the reason that the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money with which to purchase Treasury bonds and mortgage backed derivatives threatens the dollar’s exchange value and, thus, the dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

To be the world reserve currency means that the dollar can be used to pay any and every country’s oil bills and trade deficit. The dollar is the medium of international payment.

This is very helpful to the US and is the main source of US power. Because the dollar is the reserve currency, the US can cover its import costs and pay for its cost of operation simply by creating its own paper money.

If the dollar were not the reserve currency, Washington would not be able to finance its wars or continue to run large trade and budget deficits. Therefore, protecting the exchange value of the dollar is Washington’s prime concern if it is to remain a superpower.

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We now have a new lined shed with all the tools and machines moved in.  A roof in my part of the new shed and a veggie garden being planted for winter.

We also have a painted container and the old shed becoming a horse stable. We’re ahead about three months of what I thought we could achieve thanks to these guys and galls!

But and that is a big but they do need a lot of guidance so not a lot of time to write.

So here is some stuff from people who do this for a job!

From Matt Taibbi:

We’re going to get into this more at a later date, but there was some interesting late-breaking news yesterday.

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a “huge impact” on the price of petrol at the pumps “potentially harming final consumers”.

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

The inquiry also involves Platts, the world’s largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month’s Rolling Stone article, “Everything is Rigged.” In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.

“In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.

That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it.

One analyst I spoke to for that piece talked specifically about Platts (and another, similar price assessment company), noting that they “do benchmarks for the entire oil market, the entire refined products market” and “you name it” – any of these benchmarks that rely on voluntary reporting could be manipulated.

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Here are some terms you might want to read up on before you read this post and added to that here are some added banking terms you need to know before you can understand what the hell Dr, Paul Graig Roberts is talking about:

• Paper Gold Market= Other than the bullion Gold market the paper gold market does not deal in real gold. Institutions such as pension funds and Hedge funds who want to own gold more often than not do not want the responsibility and costs of storing real gold and so they  buy Shares and or Derivatives in gold stocks. They do this under the assumption that the bullion they buy is a real asset and that if they want to they can take delivery of the bullion as and when it suits them.
• Margin Call= A margin call is the request for added funds if the underlying security you hold devalues beyond a certain point. For example: You buy Gold securities in Gold when the price per ounce is $ 1600. You hope and or expect the price of gold to rise over the next year or so after which you will sell it off at a profit. If the price of gold sinks below that $ 1600 marker you have to compensate for the loss of value in order to be able to hold on to your claim. If you can’t you have to sell the securities you hold representing that gold at the lower price incurring a loss. (This is a very simple representation but for the intends and purposes here it will suffice)
• Stop loss order= If you buy shares for a certain price in the hopes of making a profit when the prices go up you want to protect yourself against the chance that you loose tons of money in case the prices drop. In order to do this you instruct your broker to sell the shares if the price drops below a certain point. Quite common is a percentage of 10% for example.

It goes without saying I hope that these three terms put together with the terms I explain in the article behind the link above represent a situation which if they can be manipulated will be able to cause considerable financial mayhem and loss for the people who are not in on the manipulation and untold riches for those who are.

For example: If an institution would be able to sell a huge amount of paper gold while not really owning it as in a “Naked short” trade it could manipulate the price of gld to the point of forcing people to respond to Margin calls from their brokers and lose a lot of money or it would force a lot of paper gold shares to be sold due to the stop loss orders given to brokers and the price of gold bullion could be greatly influenced to go down while the demand for the real stuff goes up allowing those with real money to buy up real gold for very cheap while the rest of us are forced to give up any claim to it. (No, I don’t own any gold, I invest in heirloom seed to grow food, the stuff you want to buy with real gold when there is no more money)

Well that is exactly what happened over the last month or so and here is what Dr Paul Graig Roberts has to say about it:

There are many signs of gangster state America. One is the collusion between federal authorities and banksters in a criminal conspiracy to rig the markets for gold and silver.

My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers.

The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed’s bullion banks, one of the entities “too big to fail.”

Bill Kaye of the Greater Asian Hedge Fund in Hong Kong and Dave Kranzler of Golden Returns Capital have filled in the details of how the manipulation worked. Being sophisticated investors of many years of experience, both Kaye and Kranzler understand that the financial press runs with the authorized story planted to serve the agenda that has been put into play.

Institutional investors who have bullion in their portfolio do not want the expense associated with storing it securely. Instead, they buy into Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) and hold their bullion in the form of a paper claim. The largest, the SPDR Gold Trust or GLD, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The trustee and custodian is a bankster, and only other banksters are able to turn investments into delivery of physical bullion. Only shares in the amount of 100,000 can be redeemed in gold.

The price of bullion is not set in the physical market where individuals take delivery of bullion purchases. It is set in the paper futures market where short selling can drive down the price even if the demand for physical possession is rising. The paper gold market is also the market in which people speculate and leverage their positions, place stop-loss orders, and are subject to margin calls.

When the enormous naked shorts hit the COMEX, stop-loss orders were triggered adding to the sales, and margin calls forced more sales. Investors who were not in on the manipulation lost a lot of money.

The sales of GLD shares are accumulated by the banksters in 100,000 lots and presented to GLD for redemption in gold acquired at the driven down price.

The short sale is leveraged by the stop-loss triggers and margin calls, and results in a profit for the banksters who placed the short sell order. The banksters then profit again as they sell the released gold into the physical market, especially in Asia, where demand has been stimulated by the sharp drop in bullion price and by the loss of confidence in fiat currency. Asian prices are usually at a higher premium above the spot prices in New York-London.

Some readers have said “don’t bet against the Federal Reserve; the manipulation can go on forever.” But can it? As the ETFs such as GLD are drained of gold, their ability to cover any of their obligations to investors diminishes. In my opinion, these ETFs are like a fractional reserve banking system. The claims on gold exceed the amount of gold in the trusts. When the ETFs are looted of their gold by the banksters, the gold price will explode, as the claims on gold will greatly exceed the supply.

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While there have been no new military attacks on Syria since Sunday morning, something more peculiar happened in the past few hours, when according to Akamai and various other Internet traffic trackers, Syria has literally gone “dark“, or, as Umbrella Security Labs describes it, as if “Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet.”

Some more from Umbrella’s blog:

At around 18:45 UTC OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet.

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The question at the time struck me as odd. What is where you live to the bank after all? If your income and the value of the property justifies  an extension on your loan that should be enough I would have thought.

Yesterday John Key once again stuck his foot in it when he announced that Wellington was a dying city. Last time I was there it struck me as pretty alive but I’m sure that the ongoing decimation of small businesses and Corporations acting in favor of outsourcing to third world countries leaving only a fragile consumer cum service economy will have it’s detrimental effect on any city in New Zealand and not just Wellington.

In Hamilton the turn around for business premises and businesses coming and going is terrifying and there to people have less and less to spend and it will only be a matter of time for the hideous debt run up in “better”times will catch up with the city but apparently the only city to come out of this with a booming economy is Auckland.

According to John Key Auckland will grow with a MILLION new residents over the next 20-30 years!

It seems that big Corporate offices have moved to Auckland from Wellington already and Auckland is planning for the expansion already.

Which begs a few questions:

• Where are these million people coming from?
• Are they coming from abroad?
• Are they coming from New Zealand?
• How does this expansion fit in the global predictions of peak oil, recession and the breakdown of the unsustainable current system which can only continue to exist as long as it grows?
• With a thousand New Zealanders leaving the country every week due to a collapsing economy how does he expect the city to grow?

With an economy based on cheap fossil fuel enabling people to survive happily within fairly long distances from cities which provide the necessities on farms etc. collapsing under the stress of rising fuel prices sooner or later people will either go back to fairly subsistence existences eking out a living locally but a lot of them will move to cities when they can’t service their mortgages anymore in the hopes of finding jobs and as the economy will keep on collapsing those people will become more and more forced into small apartments based on low income wages in marginal jobs.

I put it to you that John Key is planning for exactly that and that is why they want to build higher not wider in Auckland and that is why our bank asked how far we lived from the nearest city. If you want to learn more about the agenda behind this here is

• a link to an agenda 21 video
• a link to the Agenda 21 Wikipedia page
• a link more information on the club of Rome who came up with the Agenda 21 paper and here is the website to Hamilton city announcing with pride that it actually is implementing the Agenda 21 (except that due to the constant pressure of people worried about Agenda 21 the page has been disappeared it seems)
  However here is a link to a PDF explaining how Hamilton is going to implement all these sustainable targets.

The Government Communications and Security Bureau will be able to spy on New Zealanders under proposed law changes unveiled today. But it will need the prime minister’s permission.

New legislation to overhaul the rules governing the GCSB was released this afternoon by Prime Minister John Key.

The GCSB has been under scrutiny since it was revealed the intelligence agency illegally spied on internet millionaire Kim Dotcom.

The agency was meant to assist with international intelligence and cyber security, but was not supposed to spy on New Zealanders, that was the role of the Security Intelligence Service.

However, under proposed changes the GCSB would be able to monitor New Zealand citizens and residents with the permission of the responsible minister – usually the prime minister.

“The GCSB will require an authorisation from the responsible minister and the commissioner of security warrants when its cyber security and information assurance functions are being performed in relation to the communications of New Zealanders,” Key said.

He said the operating environment of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies had changed and it was vital the rules kept pace.

The legislative changes would allow the GCSB to provide support to police, the Defence Force, and the SIS.

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Israel today bombed the Syrian Capital for the second time this week. Israel says it was targeting Iran made Missiles on their way to Hezbollah. I am at a loss as to what a chicken farm could possibly have to do with Iranian Missiles. In the mean time it appears that while the Western mainstream media was propagandizing the use of Sarin Nerve gas as being used by the regular Syrian army, it was actually used by the CIA paid “Rebels”. Here is a link to a video in which they announce they will be doing so.

Added to that the West is denying an investigation into the alleged use of Sarin Nerve gas by the Syrian Army which was requested by the Syrian Government!

Here is Webster Tarpley’s Take on what is happening in Syria:

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Bulldozers are clearing away rubble from buildings razed to the ground by Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, as Syria pledges retaliation for the ‘declaration of war’.

Pictures have emerged from Syria showing the damage caused to buildings, including some forming part of a chicken farm, by an attack in Al-Hama – close to Jamraya where a research centre was targeted.

Senior government ministers in Syria warned its neighbour it risked engulfing the Middle East in conflict after carrying out airstrikes twice in the past three days.

Scroll down to view videos

Aftermath: Bulldozers work to remove rubble after the Israeli airstrike in the Al-Hama area near Damascus

Destruction: The damage left at a chicken farm building following the attack by Israel on SyriaRead more

The new king Willem Alexander and his wife Maxima Zorreguieta the daughter of a former member of the Argentinian Junta who stands accused of being co-responsible for the disappearing of thousands of political opponents were crowned in the Nieuwe Kerk with only a smidgen of republican opposition which was quickly removed from the Dam square next to the Kerk (Church).

The population of Holland supports the new King and his wife and daughters for more than 75% and while I despair I concede defeat in the face of so much stupidity and well let’s face it Presidents and Prime ministers are not much better on the whole.

One thing which seems to have escaped the populus of my birth country is the following:

According to our “constitution” the King/Queen is not crowned and no formal foreign political leaders are allowed as quests in what still is called the crowning event. This is to emphasize that the Royal head of state has no function other than a symbolical one and visiting heads of state from the political realm would confuse the issue.

So when I looked at the big photo of all the official attendees surrounding the new king and queen I expected to see only royalty.

So I hope you will agree with me that while they are not politicians from what I might loosely call the democratic political realm I found three people listed on the photo which I would clearly call if not elected still incredibly powerful figures in the geo-political firmament. I dare say they are among the most powerful in the world not so much because they are so as individuals but because they represent some of the most powerful groups on the this planet.

Here they are:

1. José Manuel Barroso- the unelected (well he is elected but not by us the people) president of the European Commission

2. Herman van Rompuy- another unelected (and here again we have an official elected by the hoipeloi of the European union about which we have nothing to say as the riff raff that we apparently are to them) official in the European union. In fact he is the first President of the European Council which funnily enough is the organization which is comprised exclusively from the same heads of states which are specifically excluded from the crowning of the Dutch king so you might say that in a round about way every fucking head of state in Europe was represented by van Rompuy at the crowning they were not supposed to attend.But… and this was the most baffling of persons attending the Dutch Crowning was the attendance of the ex prime mister of the country I now live in New Zealand:
3. Mrs Helen Clark who professed to being a staunch socialistic republican while residing over New Zealand!
   Helen Clark is the current head of the United Nations Development Program which means she is the third most powerful person in the United Nations which in itself of course represents the geopolitical elite and is considered the 61th most powerful woman in the world so you might say that she too represents in a round about way the geopolitical class which for very important reasons was not supposed to be present at the crowning of the Dutch King!