[Originally posted on iTulip.com]

On the other hand, if you're in a conspiratorial mood, check out Jim Willie CB's latest GoldenJackass.com piece "WALL STREET MONSTERS & MEAT (YOU)" over at http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials...lie101608.html .

By his reckoning, we should have Nuremberg trials for Hank Paulson and Jamie Dimon, and we can expect the dollar collapse, and other spectacular fireworks this year, perhaps even this month, maybe even this week.

One interesting theory he raises is suggesting that the continuing lowering of Treasury rates is a JPMorgan & Associates manipulation, to starve other banks of the capital they need to survive. Recall, as I noted in a post above, that continuously declining interest rates harms existing capitalized firms, just as it benefits those lending to or investing in them.

JPMorgan is able to survive in this rarefied air by periodically feasting on the butchered carcasses of other banks, herded their way by the compliant FDIC, after stripping the carcass of any toxics, to be covered by us generous American taxpayers. Jim Willie further suggests that over the last few years JPMorgan entered into massive quantities of Interest Rate Swaps with other banks, allowing the other banks to offload their rate risk some. This further fattened up the victim banks, kept them alive as their capital structure further deteriorated and made it easier for JPMorgan to control when to pull their plug and harvest their bankrupt carcass.

It is difficult to read a Jim Willie piece with stopping after every third paragraph to log into ones accounts and press the Buy Now button on yet more gold.