Two new guest columns:
Ron Unz wonders if economic theory is a tool of the rich.
And Dave Kranzler explains the latest gold market manipulation.
Is Economic Theory a Tool of the Rich?
Guest Column by Ron Unz
Is Economic Theory A Tool Of The Rich?
Ron Unz created momentum for raising the minimum wage. One consequence of Unz leading this fight was to smoke out free market economists and show that their economics serves as a justification for enormous earnings for the rich who are in control and minimal earnings for everyone else.
Unz shows that one of the tricks used is to measure the productivity of labor by wages paid. Janitors and waitresses have low productivity because they are paid low wages. In contrast a member of the Oligarch Class, a hedge-fund manager pays himself $50 from the hedge fund’s profits, qualifying himself as high productivity. Compared to the Sultan of Brunei, even this hedge-fund manager has low productivity.
Unz emphasizes that he has no professional qualifications as an economist. I would put it differently. Not blinded by economic doctrines that economists such as Michael Hudson, Herman Daly, and myself have shown to be false, Unz is capable of clear-headed thought and hits the nail on the head.
Unz stimulates thinking, something most economists no longer do.
Read more:
The Huge Economic Productivity of Divine Monarchs
http://www.unz.com/runz/the-huge-economic-productivity-of-divine-monarchs/
http://www.unz.com/runz/the-huge-economic-productivity-of-divine-monarchs/
Dave Kranzler reports on the latest manipulation of the gold price
Dave Kranzler reports on the latest manipulation of the gold price
Shortly after the Shanghai gold market closed last night, the market manipulators went to work on the gold price. Gold was taken down another $20 during the morning trading in London, primarily in three HFT trading induced “mini flash crashes.” There were not any related news reports or events that would have triggered the relentless selling of paper gold (Comex futures via the Globex system and LBMA forward contracts).
As soon as the Comex floor trading opened at 8:20 a.m. EST, nearly 4,000 contracts were dropped instantaneously onto the floor and into the Globex system. This is over a half a billion dollars worth of gold – over 10 tonnes of paper gold – in a nano-second. This amount represents 47% of the amount of actual physical gold that was reported to be available for delivery by the Comex yesterday. The sudden burst in volume halted the Comex computer system for 10 seconds. The contract bomb caused an immediate $16 plunge in the price of gold. Over a period of 7 minutes from the time the Comex opened, over 14,000 contracts traded. This represented over 18% of the total volume in Comex contracts that had traded in the previous 14 hours of trading starting at 6 p.m. EST the night before.
Obviously this is was intentional and determined selling of paper gold for the purposes of driving the price a lot lower. The news reported over the last 24 hours, if anything, should have caused the price of gold to move higher. This includes the re-escalation of the events in Ukraine, an inflation report released this morning which showed that the rate of inflation in March was double the rate that was expected by Wall Street forecasters and a report of manufacturing activity in the northeast which was significantly lower than expected.
It is no coincidence that today is the anniversary date of last year’s $200 price plunge in gold. In fact, about a week prior to last year’s intervention operation, a series of bearish articles and Wall Street analyst reports started hitting the newswires, similar to the flurry of news reports that were released last night. It is painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that there is a serious effort being conducted by the Fed, the U.S. Government and the big banks to hold down the price of gold.
The reason for this is that the U.S. Government is growing more desperate by the day to prop up the stock market and the U.S. dollar. Russia and China have been announcing a series of deals between each other and with several other large trading partners to begin conducting oil and gas trade using their respective currencies, thereby completely bypassing the use of the U.S. dollar. It is clear that far and middle eastern countries are working to systematically scale down and phase out the world’s reliance on the U.S. dollar and the catastrophic political and economic policies it represents.
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