tv Prime Interest RT August 8, 2013 11:30pm-12:01am EDT
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that afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm here and warning and i'm bob english and let's get to today's headline. your home is my home for the city of richmond california is saying to homeowners an effort to help those with underwater mortgages the city is using eminent domain to seize homes with homeowners consent then sell the home back to them at a lower price but as usual all such well intended efforts have unintended consequences and those consequences are being expressed and a scathing lawsuit by those who ended up owning the securitized mortgages that would include the pension funds which are no place in losses if the suit thrills and several other cities are considering a similar eminent domain scheme so the ultimate risk is banks will be less willing to grant loans that the government simply imposes losses m.d.s. investors will be less likely to buy any and freddie pre-birth mortgage rates will
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needlessly write. and apples on a roll after winning a presidential intervention against samsung recently a federal appeals court just ruled in their favor and a dispute with motorola ironically while the samsung suit would have prevented apple from importing its own products the motorola suit might have prevented them from importing android products with its technology it seems loading the company on board with the d.c. heavyweights has paid off those would be lisa jackson former head of the e.p.a. ronald sugar former chairman and c.e.o. of the fourth largest global defense contractor and al gore former internet inventor funny thing about that later all break down what the inventor of the freezer has been common with jeff bezos bob discusses missing gold at the central bank of england with and just steam charts goldman if you buy high frequency traders and here's what's in your prime interest.
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i . i i. i i. i now as we were just talking about recently there was a discrepancy in the amount of gold reported to be held by the bank of england one page of the official website reported that the bank held five hundred five thousand gold bars and another page featuring an interactive web app reported just over four hundred thousand bars so chris powell co-founder of the gold antitrust action committee e-mailed the bank of england and he questioned about the discrepancies the bank of england officially responded saying quote the number of bars mentioned in the ad cannot be used to and for
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a change in the amount of custodial gold held by the bank of england as a figure is deliberately nonspecific so basically the information provided cannot be relied on earlier i spoke with chris paul and here's what he had to say. and he transparency in central bank. gold activities like this would disclose an enormous effort by western central banks to rig the market this is a very sensitive figure if you know how much gold the central banks have in their custody in their vaults then you can tell whether they're intervening in the market that the bank of england refuses to account for itself so the bank of england can tell us in february how much gold they have in custody good for you fuses to tell us today that signifies that they've been doing something in the last three months that they don't want the public to know let me ask you about that because we saw a huge price drop in the in april is it possible that this gold market drop is related to this bank of england discrepancy of course since the. suspicion on our
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side could be a discrepancy of about twelve or thirteen hundred tons of gold and the enormous amount we have to assume that the smash in april on the trials on the fifteenth where an enormous amount of gold that had to be gold was not in private hands it had to be government and it was dumped on the market we have to assume that. the change in the figures of the bank of england and more importantly their refusal to account for themselves had something to do with this well you talk about central banks and gold leasing so i want to get into a little bit of history last december gather revealed a secret march in one thousand nine hundred port from the i.m.f. that's the international monetary fund which basically said that central banks concealed their gold swaps and leases to facilitate secret market intervention so can you describe her viewers what swaps are in gold leasing as. sure as a swap between central banks. is typically
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a mechanism by which share one central bank gets another to intervene in the gold market while keeping the first central banks of fingerprints off the transactions the united states for example might ask the bundesbank look we need to. dump one hundred tons in london next month keep the price down would you please do it from you or a reserve held at the bank of england and we will give you title to where gold held here in the united states that's an example of a of a swap elise's where physical custody is temporarily transferred from one party to another and the the party leasing the gold can do what he wants with it though often this gold may not leave of all to it all but it's a it's a mechanism for intervening in the gold market without having to report the the intervention on the books of a central bank it sounds
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a lot like. hypothecation which has been in the markets to getting back to the united states in the federal reserve after having talked about the bank of england do we have any kind of transparency or discrepancies you notice that the federal reserve. yes couple years ago while the gold and trust action committee was rain a freedom of information act action against the federal reserve the letter we got back from the board of governors of the fed signed by governor tom of them marsh disclosed to us that among the documents that the fed would not let us see were records of gold swap arrangements the fed has with foreign banks well there's no point in having gold swap arrangements and less you're contemplating intervening in the gold market this document like all our other documents are posted. at got his internet site in the documentation section but we have an admission from the federal reserve that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks and the only
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point is intervention in the gold market well the federal reserve has been reconsidering its relationship or the relationship that goldman sachs and morgan stanley have with the commodities markets their grandfathered in right now and actually j.p. morgan is thinking about exiting so what does this have in store for the commodities markets in the future this was a giveaway i think about the gold price suppressions. morgan chase and the other big come out of the trading banks were criticized in congress the other day for dominating the commodity markets and possibly manipulating prices driving them up exploiting the markets and in ways that violate and i trust after this criticism arose and congress j.p. morgan chase announced that it was contemplating getting out of the commodities business selling its commodities business to some other operation but morgan pointedly added that it did not plan to get out of
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a goal. overtrading this to us was was a giveaway that morgan chase is once again here the agent of the us government and the regulating manipulate in the gold and silver markets the united states government needs morgan chase as its broker in the gold market to provide cover for the us government because the us government could not intervene openly in the gold market without giving the whole rig and game away some morgan so that it would get out of commodities but it would stay in gold i think you have to assume that that's because the u.s. government is using morgan chase is the agent goldmark is it possible that j.p. morgan is just going to spin off part of its operation or these other banks are going to spin off whatever they're doing and crude to some other entertain or are we just going to see a fundamental change in the commodities markets themselves because of this. it's a good it's a good question bob i i don't know i think. morgan was spinning off are planning to spend off its commodities business in large part to prevent
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a congressional investigation of the issue that very well might have exposed the gold price suppression scheme i think morgan hopes to prevent such an investigation and and hopes that if it simply stays in the gold market in the solar market people will understand implicitly that they're doing this the u.s. government's request and and there will be no investigation isn't manipulation kind of just baked into the cake paid to built into the system what would a sign be if any of that manipulation is bating or becomes less is that even possible. now i think it's possible bob back in one nine hundred sixty eight the question cycle banks suppress the gold price openly through something called the london gold pool which is a coordinated scheme of distorting the western central bank gold reserves in order to hold the price of thirty five dollars an ounce and in early one nine hundred sixty eight the gold offtake. from the pool was so rapid that the united
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states that it would be out of gold reserves within a few weeks and so for many years the official gold price maintained through the gold pool in london was thirty five dollars an ounce when the us called reserve boys was drained to a critical point it was drained from about twenty five thousand tons to about eighty five hundred tons when that threshold was crossed the united states realized it had only a few weeks left of gold reserves called up the british government and asked that the london gold pool be be closed and this was after weeks of the bank of england advancing its own gold into the market to control the price of thirty five dollars per ounce of pot a pledge by the united states to fly gold bars over to replace that pledge gold but the gold drained away too fast finally the central banks decided they couldn't afford to lose anymore they closed the london gold will the fixed price was was
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given up for years thirty five dollars was the price and then the next day there was no market at all eventually and a freer more private market opened up in the gold price began to rise. that was my interview with chris paul co-founder and treasurer of gatto now continuing our conversation on gold and gold price manipulation we know take a look at gold price manipulation by high frequency trading for more of this we turn to prime interest producer justin underhill justin can you tell us a little bit about this gold manipulation sure well right now we have a graph of december two thousand and thirteen gold futures specifically over time a few milliseconds before and just a few milliseconds after ten am and this is the i have found non-manufacturing index which was released on august fifth now we have also on this and we have thirteen the range of gold prices from thirteen zero six to thirteen
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zero nine and that's the price of these gold futures now this report was released at ten am the i have some report on the fifth and what we can notice is that this report is an economic indicator it tracks economic output of over four hundred u.s. firms and we see right here that in the just a few seconds or excuse me milliseconds before the report was relieved there were massive fluctuations in the gold futures price we can attribute this to the use of high frequency trading algorithms the i asked them does not release its reports to anyone before ten am so in this case there might have actually been a leak on monday sounds like a lot of money is being made here in a very short amount of time so why has this happened before yes actually in june thomson reuters released i have manufacturing data about fifteen milliseconds earlier now in high frequency trading world that's a lot of times they were actually able to use that data beforehand and i have some
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said that they were trying to fix that mistake and we're working with thomson reuters ok and there are other firms who are actually selling their data as i understand is that the case so while i have some doesn't sell it releases that they . actually at ten am other places like the university of michigan with their consumer sentiment index they actually sell their information to clients out of time so if you want to pay a certain amount of money you can buy it and you can buy it two seconds before it's released to the public in two seconds again is an upturn in d.c. or high frequency trading right now this is actually more of a more ality issue i mean there's nothing illegal about doing it right whereas i assume when i talk to them on the phone today they said they felt uncomfortable releasing this data sure and which is potentially market moving information they thought it was wrong to do that. on a tear right here basis unfortunately we're out of time and we know that the government itself has been leaking data so it's an unfortunate situation so thank
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you justin coming up we have perry yan who is going to break down the washington post buyout of jeff bezos there's a surprising historical precedent that lesbos left us a bit chilly then i doall ramon going on those live from our l.a. studio about that domain that is so minutely being played out in california courts right now. wealthy british study done. on time. on. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report on our.
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the frozen water trade at once was a thriving industry hundreds of millions of dollars of ice used to be cut from glaciers and frozen lakes and shipped around the world once employing ninety thousand people at its peak and nationally only the upper class could afford such luxuries of a cold beverage but eventually expanded into new markets as ice of rival ice innovations revolutionized the food and beverage industry innovations soon drove the frozen water trade to the ground after john gorrie discovered a way to make artificial i use now into the twenty first century we're witnessing the death of the newspaper industry this week marked a turning point for print news when the graham family sold the washington post one
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of the oldest and most prestigious papers of all time. the reason we started to think about it brooke is the point of our family's ownership we were brought up to understand this was always supposed to be that it was good for the post. catherine and i started to look at the numbers realized that this year two thousand and thirteen would be the seventh straight year of significant declining revenues. in an age of digital media news is becoming obsolete the post try to keep up with technology by launching post t.v. jumping into the social media scene and offering a paid online subscription model however they still face sharp declining revenues. innovated a lot. and if i look back all those years i'm amazed and impressed by how successful are going to be asians have been an audience quality but the revenues we've got from those innovations haven't offset the continued pounding decline we knew we
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could keep the post alive we knew it could survive but our wish our aspirations for the postboys but hired by that so we went to see if we could find a buyer. surprising to some that buyer was jeff bezos the founder of the world's largest online retailer amazon purchasing the post for two hundred thirty million dollars less than one percent of his net worth apparently billionaires purchasing newspapers is all the new craze john henry the owner of the red sox purchased the boston globe for seventy million dollars just last week warren buffett's firm berkshire hathaway bought the roanoke virginia times in may and there are rumors charles koch is pursuing the chicago times or the chicago tribune some speculate these billionaires each have their own political agenda to push but others are saying this is about developing a new age of media yet to be seen cathy merrill williams publisher of washingtonian
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magazine said there is a play of people with money who want to see if they can reinvent an industry and they're looking at it as an opportunity to remake the future of journalism and media yes bay those has been politically active he gave the largest donation to defend gay marriage in the state of washington he contributed to libertarian publications and democratic candidates his company amazon even has its own political action committee but it seems as though he is on a mission to change the course of media and a letter to employees at the post he wrote we will need to invent which means we will need to experiment i'm excited an opportunity optimistic about the opportunity for invention. gos is known for taking the relatively unknown and history of e-commerce and to a giant the riving frontier has an innate ability to recognize opportunity for growth and what customers need here's him speaking about how he develops the amazon
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business model. very frequently get the question. what's going to change in the next ten years and it is an interesting question very probably one i almost never get to question what's going to change in the next ten years and i submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. his most recent investment newspapers however is not a stable industry print advertising rise revenues are falling newspaper stock prices are all time lows and circulation continues to decline across all papers is interesting to see a savvy entrepreneur enter into a dying dying industry and was intentions for the future of the post might be well it looks like the days of newspaper in getting all over your hands and clothes and chopping down trees just to read the news is coming to an end similar to the ice
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industry new innovations in this space will raise the standard of living for all john gorrie a medical doctor in florida and invented a machine to make artificial eye for malaria patients who often suffer from high fevers as you can imagine importing ice from the northern legs to the sunshine state was and efficient process his invention might have put tens of thousands of people out of business but now we can all enjoy the luxury of frozen libations in our homes social media sites like twitter facebook and reddit give us a peek and so what the future of journalism might be what using history as our guide better days of news are to come and speaking of twitter you can follow me at perry on our team. now let's get to that a little. all
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right joining me is our team correspondent ramon galindo ramon i just want to say i'm sorry for mispronouncing your name a few minutes ago i have the utmost respect for you now these are the side for mel it is a side listen to our story we've been covering the saga of eminent domain as a tool to help underwater homeowners this is in richmond california but those holding the mortgage paper just filed a lawsuit so before we get to that could you explain how the eminent domain plan works or does your of course and just so people know eminent domain law here in the u.s. allows the government to seize private property for a public purpose and it's been used to expand freeways and even to build baseball stadiums but here in the city of richmond california the public purpose would be to reduce blight in the community so how does richard program work in itself though what russia wants to do is to negotiate with trustees and holders of these underwater mortgages and offer to buy these underwater loans at
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a much reduced price where they might all describe as well yeah kind of the robot i mean and who's if you're a mortgage issuer and if you're a bank if you're somebody who buys all this m.b.'s paper i mean why are you going to buy paper that might be discounted in the future or might be i mean if you're going to take a loss why do that well exactly and that's when eminent domain comes in it pretty much sounds like the city and the investors that it's partnering with are really counting on these services interest seized to negotiate and that's when the city is hoping to use eminent domain to seize these properties and really this is almost like a last resort that these local governments are going. really from frustration that they see in washington i watched that isn't doing enough definitely a lot of frustration but this could set a dangerous precedent i mean there are a lot of other cities in california are already looking like looking at this this has tremendous implications for the national mortgage markets right you know you're
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exactly right and there have been other municipalities such as hamburger deano here in california who were considering this eminent domain plan and then they backed off once wall street and other financial histories came in and explained to them kind of give them the rundown saying threatening them almost saying that we're not going to loan to your city rates are going to be exorbitantly high but at the end they've even filed a lawsuit tried to kill hold the efforts that are happening in richmond you know it was talk about that lawsuit i mean what's going on with the lawsuit that was filed just recently that's right yeah i mean it was filed in federal court yesterday this complaint trying to put a stop to richmond's eminent domain plan they say that investors could lose up to two hundred million dollars and even more of richmond goes ahead with this plan because they're not going to get those payments back that they invested in but at the same time housing advocates there richmond say that the city itself has lost way more than two hundred million dollars in just in just home values lost last
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task revenues increased spending and public safety and social services and guess what who's on you know who are some of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are pension funds at the end of the day unfortunately it's the average people whose pensions which are already underfunded could suffer from this right no no you're absolutely right i mean there are pension funds even universities who have invested in these secure you securitized mortgages and that's really. a lot a lot of the problem in modifying these loans is you can't you don't know who to go to and so many investors do rely on this loan on these loan payments and interest that are they have to be paid off by home. mourners the problem is that these homeowners just can't afford them and and so this really is their last resorts of five well let's let's say that the suit is dismissed or whatever so who exactly does richmond california plan to help with the use of these minute domain plans
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sure well it actually they've already offered to buy more than six hundred homes and most of these mortgages are underwater mortgages that the residents have been current on so these people have continued to pay a few of them are delinquent but for the most part these are people who have even though their homes are. you know no longer worth what the bottom for these people are still somehow making their payments yeah unfortunately it seems like they're trying to help the wrong people which at the end of the day you know you've got to question the motives on there unfortunately we're out of time thank you so much for joining me if you want to weigh in on today's show be sure to like us on facebook at facebook dot com slash prime interest you can follow ramon at ramon galindo underscore r.t. and you can of course follow me it includes p.r.i. thank you so much for joining me on today's daily duel.
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and it was an eminently proactive day on prime interest those richmond california bondholders didn't pull any punches when they filed suit to block a mortgage market meltdown precedents and it seems an apple when a day keeps the plaintiff away or at least off their backs for a while four hundred thousand missing times of gold is no mystery there says the jolly old bank of england and it seems a ton of money can be made and gold and h. at teen and i was second finally what could be more. newsworthy that a news giants are bought out by a tech giant hopefully he doesn't put us out of business until that day comes thanks for tuning into was in your prime interest and carry on boring have a great. old
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