My friend Dan at Future Money Trends has just put together a fantastic micro-documentary on the rise of our food stamp nation and the far reaching consequences to society. From the art of selling excess food stamp dollars at the end of each month, to JP Morgan profiting from the program as a line of business, this video covers it all. I’ve written about food stamps on several occasions, and have highlighted how they are merely a way to boost corporate profits at the taxpayers expense. More corporate welfare and crony capitalism. My three most popular articles on food stamps are below:
McDonald’s Math: You Can’t Survive Working for Us
Where Food Stamps Go to Die
AMAZING. The USDA Has Partnered with the Mexican Government to Encourage Food Stamp Participation
Now check out the video.
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Beef Prices Set New Record Highs
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/beef-prices-set-new-record-highs.html
Ask the Expert – Ted Butler (September 2013)
SMN: So, Ted, we’ve got a few questions in from our listeners. And there’s a lot of talk lately about JP Morgan. And I know you’ve wrote about this recently as well. JP Morgan has been a prime manipulator in the precious metals market. Until recently, this manipulation has always been to the downside. It now appears that they have cornered the market to the upside. What do you believe JP Morgan’s incentive is for doing this?
Ted: Well, first of all, they have cornered the Comex gold futures market to the upside, to the long side. They still have a corner on the short side of the Comex silver market. But as far as their incentive for doing this, this is a for-profit organization. Their main motive in any line of their business is to make money. The problem is that they basically created a monopoly or a corner on the Comex gold and silver market, and they’re making those profits on what I consider an illegal basis. You’re not allowed to dominate and control markets, even if your incentive is to make money. You have to do it within the body of commodity law, and they’re clearly not doing that.
SMN: No, that’s right. Ted, do you believe they will stay there, or do you believe the pressure will be placed on them from Western central banks to move back to a short position on their gold position?
Ted: Well, I don’t know the connection with Western central banks. That’s a little bit above my pay grade. I can go as far as looking at the public published data from the US government, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and figure out who’s holding what by broad categories. It’s kind of easy in the case of JP Morgan, to single them out. But the data stops there. It’s like, why JP Morgan, if they’re operating under somebody else’s orders . . . as I said, that’s above my pay grade. I can’t know that.
They won’t stay here, though. I mean, the profit to JP Morgan, or any commodity trader, comes from movement. Comes from positioning and changing those positions. And just to give you a recount from the beginning of this year, they started out the year massively short in both gold and silver. Gold, to the point of maybe 75,000 net contract and in silver, they were short upwards of 35,000 contracted, 175 million ounces.
Well, the whole reason we had a decline in the first half of the year was basically JP Morgan rigging and manipulating prices through their monopoly control of the Comex, to the point where the prices came down and they were able to buy back many of their short positions in silver. All of their short positions in gold, and then some. And they made about $3 billion on the Comex alone, closing out the short positions. And they rigged the price so low that they were able to actually get long and keep buying gold. To the tune of the beginning of August, they were, like, 85,000 contracts, 8 1/2 million ounces long in the gold market. And recently, they started selling that off, on the $200, $250 rally we’ve had from the bottom, and they’ve made another $300, $350 million on the 30,000 contracts of gold that they did sell out.
http://www.sprottmoney.com/news/ask-the-expert-ted-butler-september-2013?
Yes there’s talk about wages at these large corporations being too low and being subsidized but SNAP, but there’s never a mention of the best answer to the problem: have the government increasing the minimum wage. Often the people complaining about SNAP want to eliminate minimum wage laws. Talk about cogitative dissidence!
I always find it fascinating that the Supreme Court rules Corporations are persons and have the same rights and duties as persons but no one shuts down a corporation when it is engaged in widespread criminality or put its leaders in jail if it is big enough and powerful enough. I know the argument is well ordinary innocent workers would lose their jobs. That is actually bogus since those jobs would open up somewhere else as the crooked corporation business would be picked up by someone else. Fining leads to layoff as well by the way. At some point the culture of a company gets so toxic that we probably need to shut it downs. That’s the logic we use with failing schools. At the very least we ought to fire the top management and put in a new slate but we never seem to do this. The existing management just pays a fine – which costs shareholders, employees and pension funds – and they go on their merry way. In the case of the banks that merry way results in serious threats to the stability of the financial system and the economy. What a joke. I have long ceased to respect a legal system that puts away single Mom drug mules for life but leaves hundred millionaire and billionaire crooked financial leaders in their jobs and in their fortunes.
yup…..
SEC Omitted Dimon Misinformed Investors on April 13, 2012 Earnings Call
The SEC filed a cease-and-desist order on September 19, 2013 in the matter of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s “London Whale” credit derivatives trading incident and misstatement of earnings. JPMorgan admitted it violated securities laws and agreed to pay a $920 million settlement.
The release mentioned that JPMorgan filed inaccurate reports with the SEC: Form 8-K filed April 13, 2012 and Form 10-Q filed May 10, 2012. The SEC also listed several failures by senior management defined as the JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer, the JPMorgan Chief financial Officer, the JPMorgan Chief Risk Officer, the JPMorgan controller, and the JPMorgan General Auditor. But the report doesn’t mention them by name, and in particular, it doesn’t mention Jamie Dimon by name, even though he is both the Chief Executive Officer and the Chairman of the Board.
Dimon’s widely reported earnings call on April 13, 2013 not only misinformed the public, Dimon was dismissive of credible news reports about huge credit derivatives positions and mounting losses in JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Investment Office unit that reported to Dimon. Not only did he dismiss the reports, he didn’t disclose the size of the losses he already knew about, and the numbers were whopping. Reported losses eventually mounted to $6.2 billion.
Senate Investigation Showed JPMorgan Executives Misinformed the Public
http://tinyurl.com/lcnah8t
nice short flick .. Welfare Bubble bursting like a pair of tight jeans after thanksgiving dinner! Boehner’s pal involved! JPM! WMT ! 7/11!
baaaaa baaaa