Hey JR

[hardnox]

Probably saw this. Someone is keeping count, anyway.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jpm-trader-in-hong-kong-jumped-from-hq-2014-2

Banker # 5 or 6, depending on how you're counting. This time via a double salchow off the 30th floor.

Presented mostly without comment other than as far as the coinkidinker theories go, each additional one stretches credibiility by considerably more than just a proportionate degree.

[hardnox]

http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/02/alert-at-least-20-bankers-now-dead/

Ya know in the movie Men in Black where the agents go over to the news stand to pick up tabloids and get the real skinny on what's going on?

Same thing here- got my tinfoil hat on and went over to check it out. But actually I'd submit that among Celente, Max, Jones there are considerably different degrees of authority there, in my opinion listed in declining order.

I'm guessing that they also don't really have a good idea what, if anything, it might be about. Probably just backfitting the events into a pre-existing narrative that suits them. Like we all are inclined to do when there's something very strange that we're trying to explain.

[hardnox]

One thing I think it is fair to say if you test the hypothesis that there might be links between all or some of the events.

That is that there are easier and cleaner ways to dispose of somebody other than throwing them out a window or staging their suicide with a nail gun.

Which leads to the conclusion that part of the purpose is intimidation of others.

[hardnox]

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/01/david-bird-wall-street-journal-reporter-goes-missing-after-rep...

Pam Martens is also out there a bit but does know financial markets and deserves some credibility. The facts of the story are what they are, her subtext aside.

I do think that the ability of the crude oil market to somehow hang above the cost of production of high cost new generation producers, despite abundant supply, is curious.

throw that in with the other guys' fit to narrative about FX manipulation, into which investigation is just beginning (or the appearance thereof is being intiated).

Crude and currency relationships are the strategic financial fulcrums of the planet. Stock markets and whatnot are just second order derivatives.

For those of us (me) who aren't hard to convince that it is a phoney baloney world it isn't too big of a stretch of the imagination.

But alas, nothing to offer on what a plain 'ol farmer's to do.

[hardnox]

Final post.

As far as "what's a plain 'ol farmer to do" the answer is nuthin.'

If you're not immune to any story that isn't read to you by some pretty boy or girl on the TV, you're not crazy to suspect that there is something behind all this.

But whatever it is, the people behind it are immensely powerful and vitually immune from challenge by the legal system or the press.

And actually, US farmers are accidentally very well positioned under the umbrella of their protection if it is all part of a global energy/currency/financial strategic play.

Kinda makes you feel yucky, though, as opposed to being a Son of the Pioneers. Can't have everything.

[hardnox]

Sorry, one more thing, in case anyone didn't read Martens' piece to the end:

"The U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, is currently investigating the role played by large Wall Street firms in owning tankers, terminals, and pipelines that store or transport oil while simultaneously speculating on the price of oil in the futures market. The investigation is broad in scope and includes Wall Street’s ownership of other commodities. It is understood that the investigation will also look at allegations by beer and soda manufacturers that Wall Street has gained control of the London Metal Exchange and metal warehouses where they have created bottlenecks in the supply of aluminum, raising prices to both the manufacturers and consumers for canned beer and soda."

[4wd]

What about this "contrived" propane shortage?

All the reasons given from excessive corn dryer usage this past fall, the weekly polar vortex, pipelines being used for other products, and of course the biggie we all have to knuckle under to "EXPORTS", seem hollow to me. When prices skyrocket from $1.46/gal to over $5.00/gal, I feel there is collusion by big propane co's that it is time for their gouge of the consumer, and what a perfect news media cover with weather, handling wet corn, and massive exports to blame, instead of someone finding them squeezing down the spigots on their giant underground storage caverns in Kansas and S TX. What a perfect time for a nation wide gouge by big propane without getting caught  manipulating the market

[hardnox]

Go get 'em.

Leave no stone unturned.

[hardnox]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553964/CEO-commits-suicide-nail-gun-company-investigation.h...

In the course of parsing through the list, do have to say that the nail gun suicide seems a bot of an outlier- a domestic title insurance executive versus international bankers and subdidiary characters.

Not that it makes the story an less interesting in its own right.

[4wd]

What do you want to bet that the government comes up with a special program to provide no interest, free loans to big propane to expand their truck load-out fascilities in TX and KS? After all, we simply cannot have people freezing waiting for a smidgeon of propane to light their pilots in MN, while 5 axel semi tankers wait up to 24 hours at these fascilities to load. Probably would also include free gov monies for another burried pipeline to assist carrying propane North where it is needed and in short supply----Oh but wait--O hates pipelines, and would rather have Buffett's railroads haul it. So, lets offer free gov monies to big propane to build load out rail tankerfascilities along with the 5 axel trucks. Oh yeah! Isn't it great to create a petroleum product shortage when JQ public needs it most. Let the US taxpayer pay for their corporate expansion needs.