There's been a lot of chatter in the precious metals blogger community lately about how the big banks like JP Morgan have swung from a short position in COMEX gold futures to a long position in COMEX gold futures. One commentator, Turd Ferguson, has proved to himself that JP Morgan is *net* long gold and will actually lose money if the price of gold falls.

Strangely, though, Turd Ferguson, who prides himself on leading an "Army" of precious metals warriors against the corruption and manipulation enacted by an Evil Cartel, concludes that this means that JP Morgan will not let the price of gold fall further, so, surprise surprise, now (like every other time!) is a great time to buy gold. Turd's math suggests that if gold were to fall to the predicted-by-some level of $1050/oz, then JP Morgan would lose $1.5 Billion, and well, we all know that JP Morgan doesn't want to lose $1.5 Billion, so that cannot and will not happen.

To that, dear Precious Metals Minions, I say: BOLLOCKS. Back in the day, not so long ago, Gold and Silver Warriors were willing to fight for what they believed in. When we learned that JP Morgan had a huge short position in COMEX futures, we did what any logical group of like-minded stalwarts would do: we banded together to BUY SILVER - CRASH JP MORGAN. This brilliant campaign, originated by General Max Keiser, was a steadfast show of solidarity amongst the Silver Warriors, and a sign to the Morgue and the rest of the Evil Empire that we would not stand by and watch their outright manipulation of our markets. As General Keiser noted:

"This campaign has 100% chance of working; it falls into the category of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As more individuals buy silver and gold, all attempts to replenish the system with more paper money will only cause the purchasing power of the silver and gold to increase - thus prompting more people to buy more"

Well, dear readers and Precious Metals Patriots, it's time for you to do a service for your Army again. There is only one logical solution about what we must do in reaction to this "news" that JP Morgan has massive long exposure to the price of gold:

Another volatile day ended with the Dow is down around 5% in January - the worst start to a year since 2009 (and 2nd worst since 1990) and the worst month since May 2012 (a 3-sigma miss of the average +1.5% per month gain since 2009's lows). Japan, Brazil, and Russia suffered greatly on the month as gold miners, Egypt?, and US Biotech did well. There is a huge 380bps spread between the performance of the Industrials and the Transports YTD. Gold had its best month in the last 5; Treasuries rallied with 10Y yields dropping their most since May 2012; USD rallied the most in 8 months with JPY's biggest rally (and Nikkei's biggest loss) since April 2012.

Trader's Almanac - every down January on the S&P 500 since 1938, without exception, has preceded a new or extended bear market, a 10% correction, or a flat year. As we also noted here, The JAJO Effect

The violence on the streets of Ukraine is far more than an expression of popular anger against a government. Instead, it is merely the latest example of the rise of the most insidious form of fascism that Europe has seen since the fall of the Third Reich.

Recent months have seen regular protests by the Ukrainian political opposition and its supporters - protests ostensibly in response to Ukrainian President Yanukovich's refusal to sign a trade agreement with the European Union that was seen by many political observers as the first step towards European integration. The protests remained largely peaceful until January 17th when protesters armed with clubs, helmets, and improvised bombs unleashed brutal violence on the police, storming government buildings, beating anyone suspected of pro-government sympathies, and generally wreaking havoc on the streets of Kiev. But who are these violent extremists and what is their ideology?

Feel like Big Brother is watching you these days? You're not alone.

"This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario," wrote the late William Safire of The New York Times in 2002, in the panicky aftermath of 9/11. "Here is what will happen to you: Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive . . . will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' "

Russia's central bank shut down Moscow-based lenders My Bank and Priroda Bank as it accelerated an industry cleanup, according to statements on its website.

The regulator said it also revoked the licenses of two regional non-bank credit organizations, OOO RNKO Traditsiya and OAO NDKO MTSM.

My Bank, a top 200 lender by assets, had its license canceled because of "significant misreporting of data and inability to meet creditors' obligations," according to a central bank statement. Priroda Bank was cited for involvement in "suspicious transactions" and not providing sufficient reserves for possible loan losses, the central bank said in separate statement.

The central bank has accelerated its crackdown since Nov. 29 when it revoked the license of Master-Bank, Russia's 41st largest lender by assets, for money-laundering violations. Mid-size lenders Project Financing Bank and Smolensky Bank were also shut on Dec. 13, and Investbank was closed after failing capital-adequacy reviews.

The central bank has revoked about 35 banking licenses since July 1 when Elvira Nabiullina succeeded Sergey Ignatiev as governor, compared with three in the first half of 2013. Nabiullina is striving to tighten regulation of banks and curtail net capital outflow that was forecast at about $55 billion last year.

Today a former US Treasury official told King World News that the United States government is purposefully creating financial chaos all over the world in order to destabilize enemy countries and create a flight into the US dollar. This is an incredibly important interview, where the former US Treasury official lays out exactly what Washington and the US Fed are intentionally doing to the world.

Eric King: "This emerging markets mess, your thoughts here because there is (so much) turmoil around the world at this point."

Dr. Roberts: "Eric, there are different ways you can look at the emerging markets mess. One is that all the liquidity that the Fed created, some of it flowed into emerging markets, and now that the Fed is indicating an end to quantitative easing the money is flowing out. As it does it causes the sale of those currencies in those countries and they plummet, and this causes all kinds of financial chaos. That's one way to look at it (the way the mainstream media propaganda is leading people to believe).

The prime minister of crisis-torn Ukraine has submitted his resignation.

In a statement Tuesday on the government website, Mykola Azarov offered his resignation in order to encourage what he called "social-political compromise."

Terry Burnham, former Harvard economics professor, author of Mean Genes and Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, provocative poster on this page and long-time critic of the Federal Reserve, argues that the Fed's efforts to strengthen America's banks have perversely weakened them.

Last week I had over $1,000,000 in a checking account at Bank of America. Next week, I will have $10,000.

Why am I getting in line to take my money out of Bank of America? Because of Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, who officially begins her term as chairwoman on Feb. 1.

Before I explain, let me disclose that I have been a stopped clock of criticism of the Federal Reserve for half a decade. That's because I believe that when the Fed intervenes in markets, it has two effects - both negative. First, it decreases overall wealth by distorting markets and causing bad investment decisions. Second, the members of the Fed become reverse Robin Hoods as they take from the poor (and unsophisticated) investors and give to the rich (and politically connected). These effects have been noticed; a Gallup poll taken in the last few days reports that only the richest Americans support the Fed. (See the table.)

Britain's royal household needs to get a little more entrepreneurial, eye possible staff cuts and replace an ancient palace boiler, lawmakers say in a new report.

The report published Tuesday on the finances of Queen Elizabeth II has exposed crumbling palaces and depleted coffers, and discovered that a royal reserve fund for emergencies is down to its last million pounds ($1.6 million).

Legislators on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee urged royal officials to adopt a more commercial approach and suggested opening up Buckingham Palace to visitors more often.

The panel said the royal household needed more cash to address a serious maintenance backlog on crumbling palaces. It said at least 39 percent of royal buildings - and probably more - were in an unacceptable state, "with some properties in a dangerous or deteriorating condition."

"The boiler in Buckingham Palace is 60 years old," committee chair Margaret Hodge told the BBC. "The household must get a much firmer grip on how it plans to address its maintenance backlog."

"Big Brother is Watching You," George Orwell wrote in his disturbing book 1984. But, as Mikko Hypponen points out, Orwell "was an optimist." Orwell never could have imagined that the National Security Agency (NSA) would amass metadata on billions of our phone calls and 200 million of our text messages every day. Orwell could not have foreseen that our government would read the content of our emails, file transfers, and live chats from the social media we use.

In his recent speech on NSA reforms, President Obama cited as precedent Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty, who patrolled the streets at night, "reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America's early Patriots."

This was a weak effort to find historical support for the NSA spying program. After all, Paul Revere and his associates were patrolling the streets, not sorting through people's private communications.

To get a more accurate historical perspective, Obama should have considered how our founding fathers reacted to searches conducted by the British before the revolution. The British used "general warrants," which authorized blanket searches without any individualized suspicion or specificity of what the colonial authorities were seeking.

At the American Continental Congress in 1774, in a petition to King George III, Congress protested against the colonial officers' unlimited power of search and seizure. The petition charged that power had been used "to break open and enter houses, without the authority of any civil magistrate founded on legal information."