THE HANGOVER

                            Hey Tracy? We Can’t Find Bruno Iksil

When you claim you walk on water, funny things always seem to happen.

I’m thinkin’ even the Central Planners couldn’t get in to talk to the JPM prop desk today. Not that they needed any help taking gold lower; economic stats over night in China and India were horrible. And any news out of Greece … well, it is Greece after all.

But here’s the million dollar question I have for Jamie & Blythe over at JPM: how much of what came out last night [prop trader Bruno Iksil’s $2 billion loss] did you know about in the last month, and did you relay that information to large hedge funds and the Central Planners so they could sell every rally in gold? And, just as importantly, did your metals prop desk use this info to short gold for your own account so you could capitalize on “Bruno’s disaster” when the news broke?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

“vegas ol’ buddy old pal it’s just your normal $100 / oz. drop in 9 days that happen all the time in gold. No story here; please move along everyone.”

What’s even more disturbing is the mentality these supposed “hedges” truly reveal. Last time I checked, hedging means one side goes up and the other side goes down thereby canceling out losses. Excuse me for asking, but how do you lose 2 large when hedging?

If you were an investor in my gold mine and I told you we mined 5,000 oz. of gold last quarter, and our cost of production was $400 / oz., but we lost $100 million as a company for the quarter, what would you think?

“Err yea, just a glitch in out hedging. No bigge.”

“Say what?”

Of course the real meaning of all this is that JPM will get to borrow 10 large at 0.01% from the Fed so they can sink it in some Treasuries at 1.75% and be guaranteed to make it all back thanks to the taxpayer via the spread. [Excuse me while I go puke. OK, I’m back]

Heads we win, tails you lose.

We will never know the full extent of the corruption and back room dealing behind the news of the $2 billion loss. But I know one thing for sure.

“Yea Tracy, we can’t find Bruno; we screwed up and there is no way he is gonna be available for comment on this.”

Meanwhile …….

Friday chuckle time.

 Have a good weekend everyone.

-vegas