Perhaps you’ve been to a website that displayed the GDCA accreditation logo pictured here at the the left. The GDCA accredited logo, which is meant to assure consumers that the site they are doing business with has been issued this logo because of satisfactory business practices. Although the issuer of these accreditation logos has no ties to any world governmental agencies. They have no “official” status in the financial community, the gold markets or any other affiliation of merit to lend validity to these accreditation logos they distribute except their own “self-proclaimed” authority. Many of you may also be familiar with the organization known as GDCA aka Gold Digital Currrency Association (http://www.gdcaonline.org) and the fact that they have recently issued a warning to E-Bullion users in July 2007, calling upon E-Bullion customers to abandon the processor in lieu of allegations that E-Bullion has frozen accounts . Exerpt below…

Exerpted from : http://www.gdcaonline.org/content/news.html

While many people find the reputation of GDCA to be an authority in the industry, a controversy has recently been unveiled by Mark Herpel at Digital Money World. In an very diplomatic, open letter to GDCA published on his blog Open Letter To The GDCA Regarding e-Bullion, Mark asks the GDCA for factual proof to the allegations regarding E-Bullion freezing accounts. If there is one person in this industry I truly have respect for and enjoy his take on prominent issues, it’s Mark and DMW. In the past I’ve exchanged opinions with him on a variety of topics and I’ve always found his approach to be based on intelligent research and facts before fiction.

The reason this blog post has the “Strang Bedfellows” tacked on at the end of the title is due to the discovery, on Mark’s blog, that the President of GDCA is none other than Robert, the owner of C-Gold, and owner of Cyfro Associates who is an anonymous web-hosting company based out of Malaysia that has harboured numerous scammer’s websites in the past and currently hosts Andy from XLO’s fraud CyberSpaceAtm payment processor. Although I have heard a complaint regarding E-Bullion freezing an account that was making a big out-exchange to GoldEx, it turned out the complaintant had been operating a frudulent HYIP program and was trying to get his hand on his ill gotten gains when E-Bullion froze the account, requesting identification information from the fraudster. Otherwise, I have not heard any allegations regarding E-Bullion from honest people who were accessing funds that were not obtained through fraudulent measures.

The fact that GDCA, and their President who is owner of C-Gold (see my C-Gold article here C-Gold : New Gold Based E-Currency or Hoax ?), especially take note of the comments section where “Robert” claims to not know how an autosurf program works, yet he is the President of GDCA, owns C-Gold and has been the domain registrar of both of scammer Andy’s XLO autosurf programs. You may also have seen Andy openly stating on ASAMonitor.com forums that his new program XLOTwo *is* a ponzi and his choice of hosting in Malaysia is to avoid any closure by the US Department of Justice.

Call it coincedence, call it what you will, but I call it Strange Bedfellows, and now that it’s been exposed, I must fully warn any of my blog readers from relying on GDCA information and/or from using C-Gold. It’s more than a conflict of interest, it’s a vested interest of the worst kind.

Editors note: At time of writing this article it appears C-Gold.com website has disappeared.

History Lesson
Today we’ll go back a little further in history than yesterday’s post and look at the history of Gold in the United States. Let’s go back to 1849 and discovery of Gold in California which led to the Gold Rush. By 1856 the United States government had acquired 174 million acres of Native American lands through 52 treaties all of which were subsequently broken by US Government in their lustful pursuit of the precious metal. Along the way, countless Native Americans fell victim to numerous smallpox epidemics that decimated the western tribes. Though it is fact or fiction, there has been much debate over the US Government giving smallpox infected blankets to the Native American tribes which allowed US Department of Indian Affairs Act to redefine the Indian Territory and granted the US Army the right to quarantine Native Americans infected with the disease, essentially putting them into death camps.

By 1863 the Bozeman Trail is blazed to gold mines in Montana and Wyoming which was once Native American land and war breaks out between the US Army and the Teton Sioux led by Red Cloud. In 1868 the US Army abandons forts all along Bozeman Trail and the Treaty of Fort Laramie defining the Great Sioux Reservation is signed. That doesn’t stop the spread of the gold lust when rumors of gold being found in the Black Hills of South Dakota, considered Indian Territory, starts yet another encroachment by the US Government into Native American territory belonging to the Lakota, Santee and Yankton tribes. In 1876 General George A. Custer is defeated and killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn by Crazy Horse and his band of freedom fighters.

sidenote:,

What did Custer really die for? Perhaps it might be the plundering of over $18 Billion of Sioux gold, silver and other natural resources from the Black Hills of South Dakota. As a final epitath to the Native American people, the US Congress authorized the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission on March 3, 1925 on land that once was part of the sacred route that Lakota leader Black Elk took in a spiritual journeyn. The Lakota Sioux had known Mount Rushmore as Six Grandfathers until it was renamed by a New York lawyer, Charles E. Rushmore (how quaint).

So What Does This Have to Do With Today?
Unfortunately, in the year 2007, the US government is still in the act of seizing gold that belongs to other people. Once again, a pack of lies, myths, misconceptions and misleading allegations are being levied to excuse this territorial possessive act. By now, any regular reader of my blog should know I’m talking about the US DOJ seizing the E-Gold accounts of the larger exchangers and Omnipay’s own account. Now, if you read my post yesterday about the historical price of gold as related to significant turbulence in world affairs and are watching events transpire in Iraq and now Iran coming into the scene, you might be piecing the puzzle together and asking yourself, “What was actually seized?” as far as assets of those indicted DGC exchangers? Was it USD equivalent of the amount of gold held in those accounts at that particular moment at the time of seizure or was it the actual grams of gold themselves, subject to rise and fall accordingly to the gold futures market ? A market that can be jolted by foreign affairs as we’ve already seen in yesterdays post.

To get the approval of the American public for their actions carried out against the Native Americans in pursuit of gold, the US government used the media of the time to create “widespread panic” that the Native Americans were savages who scalped white people, that the Native Americans were disease carrying (smallpox) and other propaganda. Similar propaganda that stirs the American public today might be “child pornography”, “credit card fraud”, and such. Do you get my point ? Considering Paypal is probably the most widely used money transmitter on the Internet and almost certainly similar accusations could be levied against the founders of Paypal, the cold, hard truth is that Paypal is not backed by squat. Paypal is not even FDIC insured, they use third party FDIC insurance and/or pass-through. Additionally, Paypal is only licensed as a “money transmitter” in eight US states (go look it up on BBB.org). Your money in Paypal is not even worth numbers on a piece of paper. If there were to be some sort of economic collapse, any funds in Paypal would be insecure while any funds held in a DGC, that are backed by gold would more than likely increase in value.

There’s no gold in thar there hills of Paypal but the Great Gold Rush of 2007 has just begun. All Digital Gold account holders, just remember, don’t take any “free blankets” from the US Government.

The sharp decline in the US Stock Market and the steep drop in oil prices last week seem to have impacted the price of gold futures and silver futures with both precious metals closing modestly down once again on Monday. The gold market’s retreat extends the losses that occurred last week with many gold traders reluctant to take long term positions for fear of a wave of panic selling if there is additional bad news regarding the subprime lending market and or from the hegde fund market. The weakness in oil prices more than likely contributed to gold’s slight decline and the silver market following suit. Conversely, the platinum and palladium futures markets have been gaining ground while the other precious metals drop indicating a possible shift amongst larger portfolio holders from less to more precious metals.

Mark O’Byrne, director of Gold & Silver Investments Ltd. stated in emailed comments “Given the clear and present danger in the global financial system, we believe that some 10% to 15% of a portfolio should be allocated to precious metals and to precious metal related investments”. However, given the historical data on gold from the period of 1995 until present, the market has seen the price of gold fluctuate between a low of $250 per troy ounce in December 2000 all the way up to $700 per ounce in December 2006 (as evidenced by the Kitco chart below).

If you follow the chart from December 2002 until present, it’s apparent that large scale gold investors have doubled their initial investment in five short years despite other economic trends and the impact of oil prices escalating to record highs. For comparison sake, the average price of a barrel of crude oil in 1995 was USD $14.62 and in 2006, the average price per barrel was USD $58.30. By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Index (^DJI) has seen a historical rise from 5,074.49 in December 1995 up to a high of 13,756.69 in June 2007 ². Comparing all three would make a reasonable assumption that investing across the precious metals market, “blue chip” stocks found on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 and Crude Oil Futures would strike a well balanced portfolio capable of handling various economic and or political financial destabalizers. A more interesting chart to view is the historical gold prices from 1975 until present (once again courtesy of Kitco³).

Notice the spike in the value of gold starting in 1979 and then hitting an all-time high of $850 per troy ounce in 1980 and then plummeting back down to $350 per ounce by 1982. What happened to cause such a spike in the price of gold in 1979? Many economists conclude that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began around Christmas 1979, was a terrible global shock and a huge slap in the face to a cold war America who was already economically weakened by high inflation, high unemployment and high energy prices. Gold, often seen as a safe haven in times of panic and strife, simply reflected that fear. This marked the beginning of a 22 year bear market in gold futures that ended in 2002 when gold began to rise steadily again. Quite obviously, based on the events triggering 1980’s gold spike, it is quite easy to figure out what world events triggered gold’s steady bull market rise in 2002. The question is, if and when will the current bull market run it’s course and at what price will gold stabalize at if and when it enters another bear market?

Sources:

¹ Exerpted from : Historical Crude Oil Prices Table at InflationData.com
² Exerpted from : ^DJI: Historical Prices for DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE IN - Yahoo! Finance
³ Historical Gold charts courtesy of : Kitco - Gold Precious Metals

Now is it any wonder amidst the volatile stock market, excessive scandals involving the current administration, the conviction and pardoning of Scooter Libby that Republican spin doctor and strategist Karl Rove has followed Donald Rumsfeld into the ranks of Bush defectors. Karl “the architect” and “boy genius” Rove announced his resignation today to an apathetic United States who are more concerned with their plummeting 401K’s, the trouble brewing in the Middle East and the importing of tainted goods from China. There was no fanfare, there was no big celebration, there was just one man who was quietly trying to slink off into obscurity and out of the public eye that had already grown tired of the continual controversies and scandals surrounding Rove that he managed to squirm out of due to his close friendship with the administrations leaders. While the infamous gangster John Gotti was known as “The Teflon Don”, Rove could equally be tagged as “The Teflon Con” because nothing ever seemed to stick to him.

Karl Christian Rove was on board from the beginning of Bush’s political career, first helping Bush when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978. Rove was instrumental in engineering George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns. His expertise at polarizing issues to draw Christian Fundamentalist voters from the pulpits using the fear of “gay marriage” made Rove one of the President’s most valuable players. Rove’s usage of the “I-4″ corridor in Florida to bring out voters who are not normally a faction to be dealt with and his panhandling to the Cuban voters in South Florida who were still enraged over the Elian Gonzalez controversy served to execute a “saving grace” that helped the Bush administration cling to a narrow victory.

From his biography, it’s intersting to note a young Karl Rove in 1960, at the age of nine, decided to support Richard Nixon. It seems that nine year old never grew up or learned any lessons from the impeachment of Richard Nixon in one of the the United states biggest disgraces ever by a President. Instead it would seem Rove decided to get behind and support somebody with similar qualities, values and practices as his childhood hero Richard Nixon.

Rove’s educational status is also quite interesting to analyze. In addition to attending the University of Utah and the University of Maryland, Rove attended George Mason University from 1973 to 1975, and the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. Rove didn’t earn a degree from any of the institutions he attended and in July 1999, the Washington Post quoted Rove as stating “I lack at this point one math class, which I can take by exam, and my foreign language requirements”. Ironically, Rove’s first honorary degree was from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University in 2004. Is it any wonder?

On Rove’s way out the door today, he was quoted as saying “I’m Moby Dick and we’ve got three or four members of Congress who are trying to cast themselves in the part of Captain Ahab, So they’re going to keep coming”. This was in response to Rove’s ties to former White House aide Scooter Libby who was convicted on charges of lying and obstructing justice, only to be pardoned of his prison sentence by President Bush. The Libby trial involved allegations that Rove was one of the administrative officials who leaked the name of the CIA officer Valerie Plame in an attempt to exact revenge on her husband Joseph Wilson, for his statements that the White House manipulated intelligence to make a case for invasion of Iraq. In a more recent controversy, Rove refused to testify before Congress about the firing of US attorneys, citing executive privilege. Rove was also quoted as stating his resignation would not stop lawmakers from investigating him.

As Karl Rove journeys off into the great unknown, he can catch up on the paradoxical poetry of one of his fellow Bush camp defectors, Donald Rumsfeld…

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Exerpted from : http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/

I’ve finally figured out where all the scammers go to create those fake names you see in their whois domain registration details. Here’s a site that will generate fake name and address in a variety of countries, languages and in male or female gender (great for all those cross dressing scammers like Jack Cobb and Lee Smith). Not only that, it will generate fake social security number for US residents, or Visa number for Non-US, it even generates a mother’s maiden name !!! Check it out, it’s pretty funny…

Fake Name Generator

I chose to be a male, of Slovenian heritage living in Denmark and this is what it gave me…

I’ve always dreamed of being a French female living in Switzerland, don’t ask me why, it’s just a little fantasy but the amazing Fake Name Generator gave me the identity I’ve always imagined.

Too cool !!!! Have fun with it !!!