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Gold Market Manipulation
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Tue, 2010-08-31 22:29Back in the late 1990s when I first began learning about gold, I found some conspiracy theorists who argued that the "true" price of gold should be much higher, and would be so if not for the actions of central bankers around the world. Some of these people were simply wackjobs; others dressed up in suits and testified before Congress about their theories. Since I believe that a conspiracy of any more than three people is doomed to failure, I assumed these nuts were just part of the package that comes with believing anything out of fashion. See also: libertarianism.
I also know that manipulating any liquid market is near impossible, and poses significant risks to the would be manipulator. If I tried to keep the DJIA low by selling, I would be the one that lost money when prices went up. Even if I had a billion dollars, there's simply no way I could control the DJIA. Heck, even a trillion wouldn't be enough. Trying to manipulate the market is a set up for severe long term losses.
Since then, I've seen more and more respectable people claiming that there is indeed manipulation in the gold market. It seems to be a given among people familiar with the market. The theoretical reasons why this is even possible have to do with the fact that the gold market is not transparent. Only in 1997 did the world find out the size of the gold market:
Deals involving about 30 million troy ounces, or 930 tonnes, of gold valued at more than $10 billion are cleared every working day in London, the international settlement centre for gold bullion.
This is the first authoritative indication of the size of the global gold market, and was revealed yesterday by the London Bullion Market Association.
With the blessing of the Bank of England, the association overturned years of tradition and secrecy to provide statistics illustrating the size and depth of the London market.
The volume of gold cleared every day in London represented nearly twice the production from South African mines in a year, Mr. Alan Baker, chairman of the association, pointed out.
That much gold was trading hands without the exchange rates being made public. That certainly suggests that the overt market could indeed be massaged a bit by the opaque market players.
Recently, an article was published on Zero Hedge detailing evidence of attempts at price manipulation. Essentially, there is a massive difference in the behavior of the price of gold between day and night. A liquid, free market should ideally trade the same general way at all times. But according to the data, one of the best performing investment strategies over the last decade would have been to short the intraday market and go long overnight. It would have returned a 20-bagger over the last decade, more than the just a shade under 4-bagger earned by being long gold all the time. That certainly sounds fishy to me. I could hypothesize various explanations for this phenomenon, but none of them would hold a candle to the most obvious: someone is trying to manipulate the market and keep the price of gold down.
If this indeed is the case, then the manipulation is simply gunpowder for an eventual future explosion in price.
What's the economic meaning of beer?
Submitted by Don Lloyd on Fri, 2010-08-27 12:56John is hosting George for lunch at his apartment.
The available lunch fixings are as follows:
2 plain hot dogs with buns
1 sealed foil pak of mustard, enough for only 1 hot dog
1 small, leaky keg of beer
1 empty 9 ounce plastic cup
Assumptions : As soon as John has drawn beer from the keg to the plastic cup, the rest of the beer in the keg will leak uselessly away down the drain. The cup cannot be shared.
John has no idea what George's food preferences are.
John and George have always been very competitive, and neither would willingly allow the other to get the better of any situation.
John sets two places at the table. Each place has a hot dog with bun.
One of the places has the foil pak of mustard and the other has the plastic cup of beer.
George is allowed to choose where to sit.
What economic fact(s) can be deduced from the outcome of this process? [ed]
Conservatism: fear writ large
Submitted by Randall McElroy iii on Fri, 2010-08-27 12:08I've had this idea in my mind for a couple weeks now, and now after spending several days with a very conservative family member, I'm convinced: the driving force behind American conservative foreign (and occasionally domestic) policy is the overwhelming fear that America is actually very weak.
A bunch of guys hiding in caves are really such a threat to America that the US military has to have a presence in the majority of countries, or we might be toppled. The "Ground Zero mosque" has to be defeated because if "the Muslims" get this foothold, they really might introduce Sharia law into America. This is not a joke.
To them, anyway.
Strange Encounters
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Thu, 2010-08-26 01:45I have the week off and was lounging at home when the doorbell to my apartment rang. I went to the door, looked through the peephole, and someone with a "US Government" jacket was standing with a bunch of papers. I figured the census workers finally got to me as I had thrown away everything I had received in the mail. It was too late to pretend I wasn't home since my TV was on and my footsteps were likely heard. So I opened the door. He--strangely, having a British accent--asked me, "Do you know if anyone lives in that apartment across the way?"
Hunh. I hadn't been expecting that. "I have no idea."
"Have you ever seen anyone walk in or out of that apartment."
"I don't remember."
"So you don't know if anyone lives there."
At this point I was getting pissed. This guy was asking me questions in a manner I'd expect from cops investigating a crime. Are census workers instructed to go to neighbors' residences and inquire about the whereabouts of people they can't find? He eventually gave up trying to ask me the same question in a dozen ways and left.
-----------------------------
I've been slowly accumulating physical gold over the past few months. Apparently, the bank has to notify the IRS of cash withdrawals of $10,000 or more. They'll even report you if they're suspicious you're making multiple withdrawals of less than $10,000 to avoid being reported. Gold dealers also have to fill out IRS paperwork for sales of more than $10,000.
Every few weeks, I go the bank in my scrubs so as to look like a respectable law-abiding citizen (not a drug dealer or terrorist), withdraw an amount of cash below the reportable limit, take it to the gold dealer, and get some coins. I'm up to about 25% of my total assets in gold coins. I have another 30% or so ready to be deployed as soon as I can make time for a trip overseas. This, unfortunately, will leave a paper trail, but there's no way around it, and at least the foreign bank account will be one extra obstacle in case gold is ever confiscated once again.
I've been switching all my everyday purchases to my bank debit card so that there's a lot of "noise" on the screen that presumably pops up when I ask for a large withdrawal. I have no idea if this is fruitful or not, but I figure it can't hurt. I also go to a different branch location every time. Yes, my paranoia runs deep. But it's an amazing liberating feeling to have a decent amount of wealth stored outside of the monitored financial system, especially for a physician.
(Aside: I found this "How to hide anything" pdf very helpful. I also heard a relatively ingenious way to hide gold: geocaching. The most powerful lock is the mind.)
So I was making one of these routine withdrawals when the teller called for "override assistance". Some manager-dude walked out and asked for my driver's license, something that had never happened before during one of these withdrawals. I presented it. As luck would have it, it had expired a couple of days prior. He told me I need a current driver's license to make the withdrawal.
"Why?" I ask.
"It's ... you know, federal law."
"Sure, but I don't see why my license, even though it's expired, can't be used for identification purposes. It's one thing to say I can't drive a car--that's the point of the expiration date. But it's still valid identification. It's got my name, my picture, my signature, and issued by a US state."
"Umm... yeah, you know...umm... there are federal regulations that say we need a current driver's license."
At this point, I gave up, again, not wanting to be put on a terrorist watch list. Does this sound fishy to anyone else? I'm reminded of an anecdote Bill O'Reilly told about his attempt to board a plane a bit after 9/11 after the Feds had nationalized airport security. When he presented his expired driver's license as id, the worker rejected it. O'Reilly's response was "I'm not planning to fly the plane."
The First Rule of Libertarianism is: You Must Not Question Libertarianism
Submitted by Micha Ghertner on Wed, 2010-08-25 20:27Speaking of political tribalism, Bob Murphy's previous co-blogger, Gene Callahan, finds this revolting excerpt from Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed, via Daniel McCarthy:
As soon as mature members of society habitually express acceptance or even advocate egalitarian sentiments, whether in the form of democracy (majority rule) or of communism, it becomes essential that other members, and in particular the natural social elites, be prepared to act decisively and, in the case of continued nonconformity, exclude and ultimately expel these members from society. In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society.
So I decided to check to see if this was taken out of context, or preceded by any qualifiers indicating Hoppe was merely stating the fact that such a society could exist and still be described in some way as libertarian, rather than the much more troublesome interpretation that this is the kind of libertarian society Hoppe personally advocates. And what I found was even more astonishing: This is not only the view Hoppe personally advocates, but the view he believes is "obvious" all libertarians must share:
It should be obvious then that and why libertarians must be moral and cultural conservatives of the most uncompromising kind. The current state of moral degeneration, social disintegration and cultural rot is precisely the result of too much--and above all erroneous and misconceived--tolerance. Rather than having all habitual democrats, communists, and alternative lifestylists [read: gay - Micha] quickly isolated, excluded and expelled from civilization in accordance with the principles of the covenant, they were tolerated by society.
I invite any additional context that would show this interpretation to be mistaken.
Mosquare Tactics
Submitted by Micha Ghertner on Wed, 2010-08-25 17:27| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Mosque-Erade | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition | ||||
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On the second video, Catholic, Pacifist, Anarcho-Capitalist, Austrian Economist with a Ph.D. in Economics from NYU, and all around Cool Dude Bob Murphy writes, in a post titled, "The Mosque Controversy: I Am in Awe of Jon Stewart,"
Wow, look at what Jon Stewart and his writers did with this piece. Besides blowing up Fox News (and oh man the first clip is embarrassing), he actually admits his own participation in political tribalism in the past. Then he closes with an actually moving homage to Charlton Heston…and then a joke. Perfect.
Geithner's Chutzpah
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Tue, 2010-08-24 23:17Treasury Secretary Tim Gheitner believes that extending the Bush tax cuts would be a "$700 billion mistake". Mr. Gheithner supports raising taxes in middle of a recession because "future growth depends on confidence in Americans in bringing [the deficit] down".
I have to chuckle at the boldness of Geithner's argument. It is a mirror image of the case brought by the right wing against the stimulus bill, when tea parties, some republican politicians, and free market economists argued that heaping on new spending to America's massive deficit would shake investor confidence and harm future growth, thereby undermining the already oversold stimulative affects of the bill. Left wing bloggers condescendingly mocked the "tea baggers" and their quaint concerns about deficits at the time. And now one of theirs trots out the same argument.
Coincidentally, the stimulus bill has about the same price tag as the tax cuts, weighing in at a bit under $900 billion. What is going on here is really an ideological battle between two factions. Both sides are concerned about the size of government debt but are willing to tack on about $800 billion to the bill. One side believes that resources are more efficiently used by the private market, and one believes that federal government projects are a better use of those resources.
Liber(al)tarian Labor Myths
Submitted by Jacob Lyles on Tue, 2010-08-24 19:04Open border libertarians like to pretend that the supply of immigrant laborers has no effect on the welfare of existing United States workers. But this is not the case.
Broadly speaking, the welfare of an average Joe who trades his labor for a living depends on two factors. The first is labor productivity which determines how much employers are willing to bid for workers. The second is the supply of labor of similar quality. Increasing the supply of labor with a particular skill set will bid down the wages of workers with substitutable skills.
If we were to follow proposed libertarian policy to throw open the borders and offer amnesty to illegal immigrants, then broad swaths of the lower-middle class dependent on low-skilled jobs will see their incomes decline. At the same time libertarians also propose to cut down government transfer payments, sharpening the blow. And we wonder why we have a hard time proselytizing such an attractive policy package! I doubt the most impassioned and rigorous moral arguments from first principles will ever convince vast hordes of the lower-middle class to support policies against their economic interest.
There is no a priori reason to think that labor markets are immune to economic incentives. Since I have been engrossed by the excellent History of Rome podcast, let's take an example from Roman history. The Republican period of Rome was marked by the era of the freeholding citizen farmer. Most Romans had their own land and lived a good life. But by the time the empire got settled in around 100 A.D., population growth and an influx of slave laborers from the wars of empire had decimated the labor market. Less than 10% of the free citizens of the city of Rome were able to survive without some form of handout, either public welfare or private charity. The average citizen was a squalid beggar and the Gini coefficient approached 1.
So yes, bad things can happen. Conditions can get worse. And bad conditions can last a long time.
The modern world is a very different place than ancient Rome. Capital accumulation and technological progress are much faster and these two forces drive labor productivity ever upwards. Also, globalization of the economy has made capital more mobile. This means the declining wages suffered by workers in a particular country because of an increase in the labor supply will be mitigated by capital moving to take advantage of the lower wages which in turn bids wages back up.
But we are foolish if we believe the price of labor is immune to supply and demand. Open border libertarians preach policies that will worsen the lives of large numbers of people that aren't well off to begin with. In any political system, but especially democracy, large groups command power, and the 74% of poll respondents that support Arizona's aggressive approach to stemming the flow of illegal immigration command a lot of power. This is why neither party is particularly friendly to immigration right now including, unfortunately, the highly-skilled immigration which is most likely to create and attract international capital investment.
The Bad Taste of Collective Guilt
Submitted by Micha Ghertner on Mon, 2010-08-23 23:25If Nazi sympathizers and members of the Ku Klux Klan are guilty of anything, they are at the very least guilty of bad taste.
Many Americans apparently believe that building a mosque at Ground 2.0 would be in poor taste. This belief is itself in poor taste. To disapprove of Muslims building a mosque within an arbitrary, undefined distance from Ground Zero, simply on the grounds that they are Muslim, entails the implicit assumption that all Muslims should feel personally guilty and responsible for all of the actions of all other Muslims, even Muslims they may strongly disagree with. The bad taste here is the concept of collective guilt, a concept at the very core of intolerance and bigotry.
Much Christian anti-Semitism over the last two millennia arose from the belief that Jews killed Christ, or were at the very least indirectly responsible for his death at the hands of the Romans. Many Orthodox Jews believe this, as do some branches of Christianity, including Mel Gibson's denomination, for which his film The Passion of the Christ was wrongfully criticized as anti-Semitic.
It is not anti-Semitic to believe that Jews killed Christ. To the extent that I believe that Jesus Christ existed, I believe that Jewish people killed him, either directly or indirectly. It is, however, anti-Semitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for his death, just as it is intolerant and bigoted for Jews to hold Germans collectively responsible for the Holocaust. Not all Jews killed Christ. I certainly didn't, if only for lack of opportunity. Not all Germans are responsible for the Holocaust, and certainly no German born after the Holocaust happened could be held responsible for a crime committed prior to that same German's birth. So too, not all Muslims flew airliners into the World Trade Center, nor do all Muslims support the flying of airliners into buildings.
And it is in bad taste to claim otherwise.
I have no problem concluding that this means 70% of Americans and 63% of New Yorkers are intolerant bigots. So they are. Intolerance and bigotry are common intellectual and moral mistakes. The concept of collective guilt - though riddled with bigotry, intolerance, and incoherence - satisfies a natural human impulse, for we evolved as tribal creatures, and treating people as individuals worthy of respect in their own right and not merely as members of collectives - the outgroup, the other - is counterintuitive.
Can you think of any other time in history when 70% or more of Americans were intolerant bigots? I sure can. Is there any good reason to think that this collectivist impulse was just a passing phase in human history? Or is it more likely that we still have many of the same impulses our human ancestors had before us, including the intellectual ease with which we (including myself) fall into us-versus-them tribal thinking?
This is not an issue of free speech. Intolerant bigots have the right to protest the building of a mosque anywhere they like, just as intolerant bigots have the right to declare - seemingly at random - that God Hates Fags, just as intolerant bigots have the right dress up in Nazi regalia and march through Skokie, Illinois, a largely Jewish community with many Holocaust survivors. But all of these activities are in bad taste.
