The on going Silver Certificate default story

I’ve had a number of requests to revisit the plight of our fellow investor who has an unredeemable Silver Certificate from the TD bank. I’ve received two updates and it would appear the stupidity continues.

The OSC says it’s not their problem, but did provide other contacts

RCMP says the same thing, apparently investigating allegations of bank fraud is someone else’s jurisdiction or just not worth their effort. Perhaps contacting the OPP instead?

Papers and news services are not interested in picking up the story; I have contacted various new organizations as has the holder of this worthless certificate and no one seems to care. If you are in Canada perhaps you could relate the issue to your local papers or help out by nagging the larger outlets to investigate the issue. If you have certificates raise the concerns about them being legitimacy with your local MP/MPP and nag your bank Manager, we need to turn up the heat on this issue.

TD securities got involved and were no more responsive than TD was. You’d think they’d just order some 100 oz bars from NWT mint and settle the certificate, but no they don’t have to, the certificate says so and they are not accountable to anyone.

A complain to IIROC (Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada) is being written but once again I don’t know if this is their responsibility and since this is a SELF regulatory body for investment dealers and they just formed in 2008 I can’t see them shitting on one of their members. Organizations that self regulate are often just fronts to make industry appear to be responsible but do little.

Our friend is still trying to get satisfaction from TD and suing has not been taken off the table. In fact I think the longer this drags out the more it becomes a point of honour over money.

I should look into one of those online petition generators, I’ll get back to you once I get something set up.

End of year business, Post Mortem on Predictions

So I held out till the very last hopping a final run would sort out the rancid state of my yearly predictions for 2008, alas it did not happen.

My gold and silver predictions were abysmal well off the 1200/25 mark I had envisioned. The instability of the financial markets should have driven people to real assets but too many hedge funds and personal investors had to cover margins and the sorry legitimacy of the Comex both crushed metals. On the good side private investors are still accumulating and no glut of product is flooding the market, this bodes well that the bull is resting not dead. I wonder how much supply small investors would absorb if the mints could supply the small products people are demanding?

In the currency pit I was pitiful. While I called the Canadian dollar high I did not call it’s subsequent slump as I did not expect commodities to get nuked the way they did, neither can I rationalize the U.S. dollar strength, WTF?
A country that is borrowing, printing and defrauding the way the U.S. has been doing should have zero credibility, this mock strength will be shown as a blip and a great opportunity to short the dollar for the next collapse, but how long before the wake up is obviously hidden to my apparently blurry vision.

I also did not see the wide spread dropping of the dollar peg I expected but with its recent strength that is simply postponed not cancelled. The talk of a Arab common currency (possibly linked to gold) is a plus as well there has been some movement towards a basket of currencies vs just the U.S. dollar in the Gulf.

In the correct column I did call the massive slide in interest rates yet even I (one of the most bearish people I know) did not see nil rates in 2008. I was calling for a reduction of to at least 2% which when I made it was considered ludicrous.

I did call the bank failures but expected many more small failures before now.

No war in Iran

$140 oil was a good pick yet the subsequent slump makes no sense with my low being $90 yikes, was not seen and has more to due with deleveraging of funds than the bogus “demand destruction” argument. World demand is not going to shrink massively, new wells will not be brought on at today’s price, depletion is accelerating and this is going to blow up in our faces making this years highs pale in comparison. At today’s prices Oil and NG may well have more upside than metals in 2009.

Recession, uneployment up, housing defaults up, credit lines/ credit cards being called, reduced or cancelled were all good general calls for the year.

I will attempt a new set of predictions within the next 2 weeks