Today legendary trader Jim Sinclair told King World News that all hell is breaking loose after the Cyprus catastrophe. Sinclair, whos father was business partners with another legendary trader, Jesse Livermore, had this to say in this extraordinary and exclusive KWN interview: Eric King: Jim, your comments over the weekend on King World News regarding the Cyprus disaster have electrified the world. But it also seems to have frightened a great many people.
Sinclair: Well, it should have frightened many of the players involved, and served as a wake-up call. There was a great miscalculation made with regards to Cyprus, and the situation has quickly turned into a catastrophe. There was no real understanding of the entities that were behind the Russian corporations which have money in Cyprus, and the effect of what is in reality the confiscation of Russian ex-KGB money.
The people at the IMF, which have spearheaded this disaster, never expected the Cyprus Solution to blow up in their face the way it has....
This has quickly turned into a PR nightmare because it is not a tax, but instead a confiscation. They have stolen KGB money in order to meet the liabilities of the banks. Up to this point, bank depositors have been held whole in this most serious Western, and by consequence international financial meltdown.
Up to now the psychology has been that if you have money in the bank you really dont have to worry too much. This represents a complete change in the strategy that has existed up to the present time, which has been crucial in holding together the financial world after the meltdown of the over-the-counter derivative has done so much damage.
Eric King: The aftermath of this debacle and some of the chess moves that are going on here, your thoughts?
Sinclair: Taking Russian money is very foolish. You have to understand the culture of the people you are dealing with. The government leaders in Cyprus have no ability to protect themselves from the retribution of the former Russian KGB agents, including Putin himself.
The government leaders in Cyprus are trying to back-pedal right now in order to save their lives. Let me say it again, they are trying to save their own lives. Remember, revenge is best served cold. This means the revenge never comes at the moment of the miscreant act. But it will come in time.
To take money from the leading economic entities in Russia, is to take money from the former KGB officers, and taking money from them is extremely dangerous. I think the reality has quickly set in for the leaders of Cyprus that they have aided in the confiscation of the most serious and dangerous money you could possibly touch. It has these leaders more afraid for their lives than their bank accounts.
I would also add that this was the biggest mistake made by the IMF and the ECB in their history. Every time you do business with a Russian company, you do business with a bank in Cyprus. Money goes in, it goes out, but it all funnels through Cyprus.
Coming down on Cyprus as a test case for the new Bail-In rather than Bailout, the utilization of the depositors money to pay for the losses, could very well derail the entire efforts so far to maintain the appearance of solvency in the West.
Trillions upon trillions of dollars have been put into the system in order to maintain this appearance of solvency, and so this Cyprus miscalculation is extremely serious. This was a test case and the IMF firmly believed the Cyprus Solution wouldnt mean anything.
The real catastrophe here was the misidentification of the capital present in the banks, which, in fact, turns out to be KGB money they are confiscating. And as I said earlier, taking money from them is extremely dangerous.
Eric King: As you predicted over the weekend, gold has pierced the $1,600 level on the upside, and it looks as though the physical buyers, the central banks and others, have begun to raise their bids and pressure the shorts.
Sinclair: The thesis upon which the hedge funds have gone short of gold has now been destroyed. This is the birth of a transition of the gold market to a cash market. The paper markets will now be moving towards becoming cash markets. It is the birth of an entire new era of trading in what, up until now, has been a paper dominated market for gold when it comes to setting price.
Ultimately, this will mean the end of the manipulation of the gold market because it will become 100% cash. Paper, in gold, is about to exit as a business as the physical market retakes its rightful position once again, and the physical market makes the market price in gold.
This will be the beginning of a minimum $1,900 advance in gold. This will represent more than a doubling of the current price of gold as all hell breaks loose, and this Cyprus catastrophe has a ripple effect around the world.