Pigs Get Eaten…Hogs–and Errant Bulls–Get Slaughtered…

Every once in awhile, a blow is struck for the Good Guys–those law abiding, honorable souls who spend their lives trying to live by the rules and conduct honorable business.

Apropos of what has transpired on Wall Street–and, consequently, in our country–I came across the piece below, written by the Chairman and CEO of the famed Overstock.com, who has done a noble job of fighting tirelessly to cage the cretins who nearly ruined his business through illegal and heinously nefarious stock manipulation.  The Dame has watched this kind of criminality permeate the Market and began working more than ten years ago to alert media and the American Public to these nefarious and dangerous practices, designed to enrich the perpetrators by beggaring legitimate businesses.  No big surprise there–lo and behold, none of the media, not even financial reporters from WSJ, WaPo and the NY Times would deign to investigate the proof we had…fast forward to 2011, read yesterday’s post, and today’s news of GM stock devaluation and you have the whole story in a nutshell: criminals have been running amok with impunity for years, beggaring businesses and their shareholders and laughing all the way to the banks…until now.

Patrick Byrne, Overstock’s CEO has been fighting these despicable creatures for years now, and winning.   Lehman is gone, BS [Bear Stearns] and Merrill Lynch–you remember them, going Bullsh*t  Bullish on America–sold at fire sale prices and Goldman Sachs and Merrill, and parent company Bank of America will be in court this December, continuing the fight.

O.co aka Overstock.com vs. Goldman Sachs: A True David & Goliath Story
Patrick M. Byrne
Chairman and CEO
For six years Overstock.com has waged a war to expose Wall Street mischief. We did not go looking for a fight, but our company wasattacked, and we learned we were not alone: the same manipulation-for-profit tools that Wall Street had deployed against us had also been deployed against many American companies, harming job creation, innovation, and economic growth. We knew that if left unchecked and unexposed, Wall Street’s games could ultimately damage U.S. capital markets.
So in 2005 and 2007 we filed two lawsuits. The first case was against a hedge fund (Rocker Partners) and hatchet-job-for-hire research team (Gradient Analytics), both with ties to Jim Cramer. The second case was against a group of eleven Wall Street prime brokers, culminating in Goldman Sachs. The hedge fund in question (Rocker Partners) hired famed lawyer David Boies, and the prime brokers showed up with an army of the most prestigious law firms in America. Our lawyers were Dore Griffinger, Ellen Cirangle, Jonathan Sommer and Catherine Jackson of Stein & Lubin, a small but excellent San Francisco law firm.
We won the hedge fund case against Gradient and Rocker, extracting an apology, a retraction and over $5 million in cash (it felt good to beat David Boies’ firm). In our prime broker case, one of the Wall Street banks (Lehman Brothers) has gone under (two, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch were sold at fire sale prices), and another seven paid us millions to let them out.
That leads us to the main event this coming December, when Overstock.com will square off against Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch (and Merrill’s parent, Bank of America) in a San Francisco courtroom. Recently, in the prosecution of this case, we uncovered evidence of collusive action between Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other Wall Street bad guys, in a scheme designed to fool regulators and profit illegally at the expense of Overstock.com. As a result of this discovery, in December 2010, we added a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act claim and requested treble damages under this RICO claim. We firmly believe the conduct of Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were “racketeering” and “corrupt.” We are moving forward: trial is scheduled to commence this year, on December 5, 2011. At trial we will hold Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch accountable and expose a slew of illegal Wall Street practices to the public.

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BRAVO, Patrick Byrne, and godspeed in your fight against Wall Street crime!  You’re striking blows against the criminal empire, not only for your company, but for all those millions of investors, both large and small, who have been defrauded and robbed by the criminal element.

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Ooooopsie…and…caveat emptor…

…and THAT’S not even the half of it, folks.  It is indeed looking more and more like there’s no gold in that pot at the end of the rainbow–just a pile of worthless paper.  The Swedes no longer accept the American dollar and [H/T to Bones for bringing to light Seeking Alpha’s “Seems Like Mexico’s Purchased 110 Tons of Gold That Didn’t Exist, by Avery Goodman] apparently, Mexico’s attempt to bolster their position with the purchase of 110 tons of gold purchased from a British bullion bank have failed disimally, leaving them with only a faint promise of any hope to collect their purchase. The problem is that they did not take physical delivery, and thus subjected themselves to one of the oldest scams in the history of humankind:

They now own nothing more than a gold “bond” issued by a commercial bank. They have been tricked into buying a debt instrument that will never pay one penny in interest. They’ve been sold a “pig in a poke”.

It is, on one hand, unbelievable that this kind of major fraud continues to be perpetrated in this day and age, when people–and governments, one would think–should be more circumspect.  But, sadly, fraud and corruption have become the operative words in the current world, where, now more than ever,  criminality with impunity apparently rules supreme.

Avery’s article is most notable because it has a silver lining–one of illumination, and of another truth telling hero in the army for transparency:  one

Guillermo Barba…[who] posed a number of questions to the Mexican Central Bank about the gold purchases… Mr. Barba is apparently very persistent and, finally…they gave him the answers he sought.

In essence,

the Bank of Mexico has become an unsecured creditor of the bullion bank that sold them on the deal. Like so many other institutional and private investors, Banxico has made the mistake of trusting the London bullion bankers. It was duped into buying what is essentially an unsecured “bond” giving a claim not on gold, but rather, merely upon the general assets of the selling bank.

Selling imaginary gold to an emerging market central bank in a quasi-fraudulent unallocated storage scheme is a gutsy move. By doing so, the bullion bank defeated the very purpose for which the Bank of Mexico was buying the bullion. Instead of owning a valuable asset (gold), free of counter-party risk, Mexico owns nothing. It appears to merely be an unsecured secured creditor of a London mega-bank that is probably insolvent like most of them.

Many of the LBMA banks were kept alive solely by the grace of bailouts from their headquarters’ national government. If one of these banks eventually does officially go belly-up, they will all go belly-up, and Mexico’s gold will be lost forever.

The only way to be sure of ownership is to take physical delivery, and as a central bank, Banxico should certainly do that. Mexico should tolerate nothing less. Once it is clear that someone has misled you, you don’t give them a second chance if you’re smart.

Clearly, Mexico–as well as many, many others who sought solvency through the purchase of precious metals–fell victim to the ultimate fraud by not insisting upon physical delivery.  Make sure you do not do the same.  And, do not make yourself a victim of the pernicious plethora of *gold buyers and sellers* out there.  Do NOT send your metals to someone who advertises on television by promising to send you a check if you send them your gold; do NOT purchase any metals from any entity that does not guarantee physical delivery.  If you’re in doubt about whom to trust, Colorado Gold is, IMO, the best company with which to deal.  Discreet, personal service, guaranteed physical delivery and the utmost of integrity are their bywords.  Their site also has real time price and currency updates.  www.coloradogold.comThe President, Don Stott, has been in the precious metal business for nearly 40 years, and writes a twice weekly column, the most recent of which is the Sept. 27 piece–a good commentary on what COMEX*  is up to,  how metal brokerage works, and what has been happening recently in the precious metals market.   http://www.coloradogold.com/archive/The_COMEX_Did_It_Again-1094.html

So, take heed, Mexico–caveat emptor!  (You should have gone with Colorado Gold;)

Stay awake, pay attention, listen and learn, do your own Due Diligence and only deal with REPUTABLE businesses–in ANY sector!

Yrs in liberty,

The Dame

P.S.  Go for the Gold,

but C# or you will Bɓ ;))

* a gold trust owned by iShares

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Is *It* About To Hit The Fan?

Not a pretty visual, folks…but the majority of informed opinion indicates that not only is *it* hitting the proverbial fan, but that it is deep and getting deeper.  Lamestream media shills’ pathetic efforts to convince us that we are *now* in a “Double Dip” are no less than shameful; EVERYONE knows that we are in a BAD Depression and have been for a few years now, despite all efforts to cover it up, placate the masses with loud, inane television projects designed to distract, confuse, obfuscate and totally misinform the viewing public.  All reliable sources–from brilliant  Gerald Celente to Logistics Monster to Warren Bonesteel–have been telling us the same thing for awhile now, and we ignore them at our peril.

I implore you all to plan for whatever future there might be; give the moment your full attention; live your lives as well as you can; and listen to the wisdom instead of the wizards of wile.  AND take a look at Blacklisted News: Nervous Breakdown? 21 Signs That Something Big Is About To Happen…and read everything you can find that has been researched and written by the Big Three abovementioned.

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Ten Years After

          

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