Silver Manipulation Claims Spark Discord at US Watchdog

I have a lot of stories today, as I've been saving half a dozen for Saturday that I just didn't have room for during the week, so I hope you have the time to wade through them all.

The first is this finance.yahoo.com story that was sent to me by reader Scott Pluschau. The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama's February budget submission is enacted into law, it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years -- an average of almost $1 trillion a year. Obama's budget saw deficits totaling $7.2 trillion over the same period. A trillion here, a trillion there...soon we'll be talking about real money! I remember that quote when the number was only a billion dollars...and that wasn't too many years ago, either. The link is here.

Today's next offering comes from Roy Stephens...and is posted over at The Huffington Post. A Wall Street Journal editorial writer who has been closely involved with the paper's recent attacks on Elizabeth Warren, is a former Goldman Sachs banker. The same editorial writer, Mary Kissel, is readying another piece critical of Warren and the new consumer agency, according to a source familiar with the coming article.

Of course Elizabeth Warren is a real straight shooter...and someone like her in charge of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the last thing that Wall Street and the banking system want. The link to the story is here.

Here's a GATA release that contains a story from yesterday's edition of The New York Times about the computer programmer who got caught stealing Goldman's computer code for market-rigging operations. He just got sentenced to eight years in the Crowbar Hilton. Both the story...and Chris Powell's preamble...are well worth the read...and the link is here.

Here's a Bloomberg story that I found in the wee hours of Friday morning just after I'd hit the 'send' button on Friday's column. The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan's atomic power industry. This is certainly worth reading...and the link is here.

This next item was posted over at aljazeera.com early this morning...and was sent to me by Roy Stephens. The United States has accused Muammar Gaddafi of defying international demands for an immediate ceasefire, and France's UN envoy predicted military action within hours of an international meeting on Libya on Saturday. It will be interesting to see what develops over the weekend. The link is here.

Roy has two more international stories for us. The first one was posted over at the Asia Times website early on their Saturday morning. China [along with Russia and other countries] abstained in the U.N. vote over a 'no-fly' zone.

China's attitude is not so much a big surprise. History will probably vindicate China's mealy-mouthed and self-serving stance that the response to the serial crises in the Middle East should be guided by the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of nations.

And history may vindicate China sooner than most people expect. The most interesting and dangerous element in the no-fly-zone debate is the dawning awareness that ''Responsibility to Protect'' - R2P aka humanitarian intervention in do-gooder jargon - is not just a Western monopoly.

There's a real history lesson with regards to current African/Middle East politics that I absolutely guarantee that few people know much about...including this writer. It's a 3-page tome...and for any student of the new "Great Game"...it's a must read. The link is here.

Roy's last offering is this Reuters piece that was filed from Sana'a...Yemen's capital city. Gunmen on rooftops shot dead up to 42 protesters at an anti-government rally in Sanaa after Muslim prayers on Friday, enraging the opposition and prompting President Ali Abdullah Saleh to declare a state of emergency. Medical sources and witnesses told Reuters that Yemeni security forces and plainclothes snipers, who protesters said were government security men, had opened fire on the crowds. The link is here.

Here's another story from the 'You can't make this stuff up' file. Reader Ken Metcalfe sent it along...and it's a story posted over at msnbc.com yesterday that's filed from Sangin, Afghanistan. In a war where winning the hearts and minds of Afghans is the ultimate goal, damaging homes with powerful explosives and bulldozing a mosque and scores of other buildings may not sound like a wise idea.

"We are here to rebuild, but sometimes that takes destruction," said Capt. Matthew Peterson, a company commander whose Marines were tasked in late December with clearing a key part of southern Helmand province's Sangin district — the most dangerous place for coalition troops in Afghanistan last year. The link is here.

Here's a youtube.com video that was sent to me by reader Doug Beiers earlier this week. It's only 2:09 in length...but I guarantee that this video clip will be show in every geology and structural/civil engineering class for decades to come. It was taken by CNN iReporter Brent Kooi the day of the big earthquake in Japan.

It shows compression waves as they propagate through the earth...and how it affects ground liquefaction...one of the big problems associated with the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake of last month. As the compression waves pass through the earth every few seconds, it shows not only the ground movement...but the water and mud shooting out of the ground like one would squeeze a sponge...which is essentially what this ground is.

As the reporter notes, the lawn he's photographing used to be part of Tokyo Bay...and has now been 'reclaimed'. It's not as dramatic as the other tsunami videos...but it's still a sight to see...and the link is here.

This is an unedited version of Jeremy Paxman's interview with Professor in linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), philosopher, cognitive scientist and political activist, Noam Chomsky. The discussion is about the uprising in the North African nations...and other places. It's a posting over at news.bb.co.uk...and was sent to me by British reader Tariq Khan. Tariq made the comment that "Times are indeed changing when the BBC interviews the likes of Noam Chomsky." The interview runs about 21 minutes...and it's well worth watching. The link is here.

Here's a very interesting article from NASA Science that I picked up over at spaceweather.com earlier this week. Every hundred years or so, a solar storm comes along so potent it fills the skies of Earth with blood-red auroras, makes compass needles point in the wrong direction, and sends electric currents coursing through the planet's topsoil. The most famous such storm, the Carrington Event of 1859, actually shocked telegraph operators and set some of their offices on fire. A 2008 report by the National Academy of Sciences warns that if such a storm occurred today, we could experience widespread power blackouts with permanent damage to many key transformers.

With the increased sunspot activity as we approach the next sunspot maximum, there are all kinds of wild stories out there about the disasters associated with it...but here's the straight bill of goods from the folks over at NASA. The link is here.

This longish piece was sent to me by reader Jason Hall earlier this week...and I've been saving it for this column. It's a must read from one end to the other...and don't let the title fool you.

The author, Seth Lipsky is the founding editor of the New York Sun. A graduate of Harvard College, he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam as a combat correspondent for Pacific Stars and Stripes. A former senior editor and member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, he has also served as editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal/Europe, managing editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, and assistant editor of Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2009, he published The Citizen’s Constitution: An Annotated Guide.

This essay is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. So top up your coffee, then click here.

My last four stories are all precious metals-related...and the first one came from a GATA release yesterday. Liberty Dollar founder Bernard von NotHaus was convicted yesterday on federal charges in Statesville, N.C. The case has local implications, because Asheville Liberty Dollar head Kevin Innes also faces trial. Innes has asserted that he is innocent of any wrongdoing, and sought local support.

This whole thing was a show trial from beginning to end, of course...especially considering the fact the many States of the Union...lead by Utah...are bringing back gold and silver as competing currencies for the U.S. dollar within their own states.

I suggest that you read this story...and the link to the GATA release is here.

Here's a story from mineweb.com filed from Istanbul that was sent to me by reader 'David in California' yesterday. Gold imports into Turkey, the world's fourth-biggest gold consumer, are expected to rise by around 50 percent in 2011 and jewellery exports by 15-20 percent, a Turkish gold banker said. Turkey's gold imports rose to 42.49 tonnes in 2010, up 13 percent from the previous year. Jewellery exports reached a value of $1.2 billion. The link is here.

I stole this headline...and the preamble...from Chris Powell's GATA release on this. Pervasive government intervention in the economy has distorted markets and prices and even caused people to forget what money is, Hinde Capital CEO Ben Davies writes this week at CNBC. But, he adds, the Internet is helping people remember, and what they remember is yellow and shiny. Davies' commentary is linked here.

Reader George Findlay has our last item of the day. It's a posting over at citywire.co.uk that's datelined yesterday. New claims that the silver price is being manipulated have prompted a senior US regulator Gary Gensler to criticise the agency regulating commodity markets –the very agency that he oversees.

Silver analyst Ted Butler's name figures prominently in this article as well. This is also an absolute must read...and the link is here.