Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Wages of Plutocracy Are Stagflation

 

"The good news for everyone is that nothing seems inevitable here, that there is almost always a choice, but it is often wrapped up in a nice looking rationale, with all the compulsion of a necessity, for the good of the people.  Us versus them in a battle for survival and all that.  And clever leaders on the extremes provide the 'them' to be dehumanized and objectified.  The leftist wishes to murder the bankers, and the fascist the lower classes and outsiders.  The extremes of both end up making life miserable for almost everybody except for a privileged few.

And so I reiterate that in a purely fiat currency, the money supply is indeed fiat, by command.

People like to make arguments about this or that, about how so and so has proved that the Fed does not or cannot do this or that, that banks really create money only by borrowing, that borrowing must precede this or that.  It's mostly based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what money is all about, with a laser beam focus on hair-splitting technical definitions and loquacious arguments more confusing than illuminating, lost in details.  In a simple word, rubbish.

Absent some external standard or compulsion, the only limiting factor on the creation of a fiat currency is the value at exchange of the issuers bonds and notes, and currency which is nothing more than a note of zero duration without coupon.

If I had control of the Fed, unless someone stopped me, I could deliver to you hyperinflation or deflation without all that much difficulty from a technical standpoint. The policy reaction of those who might be in a position to fire or lynch me is another matter. The Fed not only has the power to influence money creation in the private banking system. It has the ability to expand its balance sheet and take on existing debt of almost any type at will and at any price it chooses.

But that is the case as long as the Fed has at least one willing partner in the primary dealers, and the Treasury is in agreement. And even that requirement for a primary dealer is not all that much of an issue given the amounts of existing sovereign and private debts of which the Fed might avail itself for the forseeable future.

So at the end of the day, a thinking deflationist is almost reduced to the argument that 'the authorities will not allow it' or 'will choose deflation rather than inflation' And this is technically correct. However, let us consider my earlier statement about those who might fire or lynch one for making a highly unpopular choice.

It is economic suicide for a net debtor to willingly engage in deflation when they have other options at their disposal, and especially when those decisions involve people outside the system.

So it is really about making the best choice amongst bad choices. This is why governments choose to devalue their currency, either with quantitative easing, or explicitly against some external standard as the US did in 1933. Because when the debt is unpayable, it must be liquidated, and the pain will be distributed in a way that best preserves the status quo. 

Hyperinflation and a protracted deflation are both very destructive choices.  No rational government will choose either option.  They 'could' have those choices imposed upon them, either by military force, political force, or by economic force.  Economic force is almost always the cause of hyperinflation.  So you can see why a 'managed inflation' is the most likely outcome at least in the US.  The mechanism has been in place and performing this function for the last 100 years.

The problem or twist this time around comes when the monetary stimulus does not increase jobs and the median wages, because of some inherent and unreformed tendency in the economy to focus money creation and its benefits to a narrow portion of the populace.  The result of this is stagflation which although not indefinitely sustainable can be maintained for decades.

Most third world countries are like this.  A vibrant and resilient middle class is sine qua non for a successful democratic republic, and this has strong implications for the median wage.  The benefits and the risks of growth and productivity must be spread widely amongst the participants.  Oligarchies tend to spread only the risks, keeping most of the benefits to themselves.

This is essentially the reasoning that occurred to me when I looked at the US economy and monetary system in the year 2000.

The one point I remain a little unclear on is how 'hard' the law is regarding the direct monetization of debt issued by the Treasury. I am not an attorney, but I am informed by those familiar with federal statutes that this is a gray area in the existing law but currently prohibited.  But it is easily overcome as I said with the inclusion of one or two amiable primary dealers who will allow the debt issued by Treasury to 'pass through' their hands in the market, on its way to the Fed at a subsidized rate.  For this reason, and for purposes of policy matters, and occasional economic warfare, countries may tolerate TBTF financial institutions with whom they have 'an understanding.' 

Absent new data the dollar will continue to depreciate, and gold and silver and harder currencies appreciate, until the fundamental situation changes and the US economic system is reformed, with or without benefit of soft bankruptcy.

I think there are other outcomes that involve world government and a currency war, and this also is playing out pretty much as I expected.  Fiat currency can take on the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme, whose survival is only possible by continuing growth until all resistance is overcome.

This is the conclusion I came to in 2000. I admit I was surprised by the Fed's willingness to create a massive housing bubble, and the willingness of the US government to whore out the middle class in their deals with mercantilist nations — their hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Jesse, Deflation, Hyperinflation and Stagflation, 19 April 2011 

 

The political structure of society is shaping a number of economic results, and has a profound effect on the relationship of real growth and the value of the currency. 

The Fed is only faux-independent, since it is a creature of the Banks and Wall Street.  

This is why Greenspan's theory that the Fed can simulate the rigor of an external standard like gold is nonsensical economic theology.  And he knew this. 

Stocks were off a bit today.

There is going to be a correction.  Once it gets rolling it could gain some serious downside momentum.

Gold and silver took the usual post Comex option expiration hit. 

Why?  When you hold a call option that is 'in the money' you are rewarded with new long futures contracts.

And typically based on the numbers those new holders of contracts get a serious gut check before the market normalizes.

VIX is low again, and is certainly mispricing risk in my judgement.

The Dollar is still doing the sideways chop.  The DXY is heavily weighted to the euro, and the European leadership is hapless.

Speaking of which, have you noticed how so many Western leaders have abysmal approval ratings?

I have included a chart of this below.

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Rape of the Mind

 

"Easy as lying!  Do as now you do.
   Turn every question to a public stew.
A blood-shot voice, low breeding, huckster's tricks—
   What more can man require for politics?"

Aristophanes, The Knights, 424 BC

"It is sometimes said that since everything is for sale under the rule of The Market, nothing is sacred.  The Market is not omnipotent — yet.  But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum.  The Market is becoming more like the Yahweh of the Old Testament — the Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals."

Harvey Cox, The Market as God, March 1999

“He said they were afraid, and that fear makes stupid people do wicked things.  As long as there are crazed or crafty leaders to play on old fears, a mob will turn cruel.”

Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow, 1955

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stolen forth of Holy Writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil."

William Shakespeare, Richard III, November 1633

"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.  You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing).  You remember everything now, and your heart breaks."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, 1955

“He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind.  Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition.  This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.  The big lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason.

The eternal demagogue will arise anew.  He will accuse others of conspiracy in order to prove his own importance.  He will try to intimidate those who are neither so iron-fisted nor so hotheaded as he, and temporarily he will drag some people into the web of his delusions.  Perhaps he will even wear a mantle of martyrdom to arouse the tears of the weak-hearted.  With his emotionalism and suspicion, he will shatter the trust of citizens in one another."

Joost Meerloo, Thought Control: The Rape of the Mind, 1956

As you know today was an option expiration for the May futures contracts in gold and silver.  The May contract is important to silver, gold not so much.  I think the metals were pre-pounded last week, so today was not so dramatic.

Stocks were wobbly since an attempt to make it seem as though Iran was suing for peace, spread by a mouthpiece in the 'digital media' that was uncritically picked up by understaffed wire services, was found to be yet another dose of meth for the markets.

I don't know where things stand now, the fog of war and all that.  I have a few sources I follow that have proven to be more reliable than official media.  The US and Israel are playing it close to the chest on one hand, and posturing for renewed conflict on the other.  Iran has been much more straightforward, agree with them or not.  

VIX is acting like 'meh.'   

On the economy, Wall Street is acting as enablers in hiding the risks of recession and worse, pretending this is all 'normal'.  We are probably already entering a recession, the stock pricing notwithstanding.

In watching this all unfold in Washington and NY I was reminded of an interview between Bill Moyers and Neil Barofsky. He said of the 2008 bailouts and lack of meaningful reform:

"It creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions.  And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of the one percent or the .1 percent — to the detriment of everyone else."

He also said with the lack of reform that another financial meltdown like 2008 was not only likely, but inevitable.  The economist Simon Johnson said pretty much the same thing.

But very important people, who coincidentally appear quite frequent in the Epstein files among other cesspits of elite corruption, have assured us that this is just foolishness, and uninformed worry.

Have you noticed how most of the Western leaders have awful public approval ratings?  I need to look that up to see how widespread it may be.  How are they getting away with this in nominal democracies? 

Rough seas ahead, mateys.  Clouds gathering on the horizon. Perhaps its finally time to head into harbor.  I'll figuratively be at The Roundhouse Bar, a place where I sat out many a storm in happier days gone by.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ah! Bright Wings

 

"All sins are attempts to fill voids. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void."

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce, 1947

"Present day society resembles an immense machine which is constantly swallowing up people, and whose controls nobody really understands.  And those who sacrifice themselves for social progress are like people who would cling to cogs and transmission belts in an attempt to stop the machine, and in turn get crushed.  But the helplessness one feels at a given moment, an impotence which must never be regarded as definitive, cannot dispense with remaining faithful to oneself, nor excuse surrender to the enemy, whatever mask he may assume. 

And, no matter what name it may take — fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat — the principal enemy remains the Apparatus; not the enemy across the border, who is our enemy only to the extent that they are our brothers and sisters’ enemy, but the one who claims to be our defender while making us its slaves. In any circumstance, the worst betrayal possible always consists in agreeing to subordinate oneself to this apparatus and trample underfoot, in order to serve it, all human values in oneself and others."

Simone Weil, Réflexions sur la guerre, La Critique Sociale, 10 November 1933

"Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur, 1877

And so we go into the weekend. 

I must have missed some good news, sending the tech stocks to stratospheric highs.

Or the kleptocrats are having a final bash.  It's not only the Fed that can print money.

So, gold and silver were hammered, but managed to come back off their lows to nearly unchanged.

There will be a Comex futures option expiration on Monday, and an FOMC meeting on Wednesday.

The Dollar slid.   

Bitcoin held its ground at the very top of its trading range.   

VIX is at relatively complacent levels.

The only real issue at hand worth considering from a risk standpoint is where the US and Israel are going with their war of aggression against Iran.

I am afraid I cannot penetrate the fog of war with any certainty.   The pieces are certainly lined up on the chessboard.  

I didn't track the news today.  I spent literal hours trying to track down some precise citations for a couple of quotes by Simone Weil.

ChatGPT is wonderfully befuddled at times.  It points first at one of the many 'quotation' sites on the web that post mostly slope, without attribution.  They are a disappointment for the most part.  

And then it will describe the quote in more detail, painting useless words on top of the plain meaning like some sophomore's English essay.  Is this what the kids are handing in these days?  Those poor teachers. No wonder literature in the US is dead.

And then finally is will throw out some desperate attempt after 'deep thinking,' tossing out a reference to one of the author's more popular works, or some anthology of their writings, without any real sourcing.

When you download and examine their purported source, it is just not there.  And so you ask again, and it throws out something else.  And one begins battling paywalls over works who have been in the public domain for generations.

As a benefit I read a good chunk of Simone Weil's Penguin Books anthology, and a number of academic papers which gave me some new sources and insights.

It reminds me of my corporate career.  Management was always thinking up dumb things to consider that didn't address any product of customer concerns, but sometimes they would inadvertently open up a field of effort that become fruitful.

Even the business trips, many of them overseas, were a delight.  I did visit Newman's Birmingham Oratory, and saw where the young JRR Tolkien had lived.   I visited Gerard Manley Hopkins rooms as well during his short stint as a teacher there.  These are precious memories.

Oh well, all in all, with a quick trip out in beautiful weather to the store, and some tending of Daisy, I could not imagine a better day.  

So let's see what happens, what fresh madness the vain and the rapidly decaying will unleash, before they pass on to well-deserved obscurity.  That which has no love scatters quickly into nothingness and dust, unmourned and ill-remembered.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Wages of Sin

 

"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole.  If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."

London Banker, Lies, Damn Lies, and Libor, 10 July 2012

"What is most offensive is not their lying — one can always forgive lying — lying can be a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.  What is offensive is that they lie, and they worship their own lying."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 1866

"They often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts — self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky.  They love to have power and control over others, and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs.  What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.  The majority of people and workplaces are easy prey, because we still want to believe that people are inherently good. We don't really want to believe that such people exist. Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them. We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer."

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience, November 1993

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce, 1947

"Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God.  He makes a guess here, or does a bold act there, but all in the dark.  If even devils, sagacious as they are, spirits by nature and experienced in evil, cannot detect His hand while He works, how can we hope to see it except by that way which the devils cannot take, by loving faith."

John Henry Newman, Christ Manifested in Remembrance, 7 May 1837

"When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus had been condemned to death, he was seized with regret, and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the ruling priests and the elders, saying, ‘I have sinned. I have betrayed innocent blood.’  But they said, ‘What is that to us? That’s your responsibility.’  So he threw the money into the temple, and went and hanged himself."

Matthew 27:3-5

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.  Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, New Year's Day 1943


The stock futures had a serious plunge down to their lows at about 3:50 PM today, but then recovered to come back to their gradual lift off the lows.  After the bell the futures fell back down again sharply. 

Certainly interesting and worth noting.

Silver was just hammered today, ahead of the option expiration for the silver May contract option expiration on the Comex on the 27th.  I posted this chart regularly for the last few days.

 VIX did its usual bipolar boogie woogie.

The Dollar has been chopping sideways in a trading range for quite some time.  

As you may recall I have highlighted the antiquated composition of the DXY index many, many times in the past going back to my old site in 2003.   It is heavily weighted to the world after the Bretton Woods agreement, with the appropriate alterations for the introduction of the euro.  

Although there are better, more up to date trade weighted indices, this is the one that Wall Street trades.

We are heading into what may turn out to be a significant weekend.   Israel wants to resume their military operations against Iran/Lebanon quite badly.   

Trump sees himself falling into a snare that is likely to cost his party quite a bit, given the lack of any benefit to the US for this.

Let's see what the competing forces of evil and lesser evil come up with for us.  For now righteousness is a shining light in the dark, guiding the faithful, but not yet come into its ascendancy in the world.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Waiting for the Hand of God

 

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.  Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but was wrong in thinking that we can get them for ourselves, without grace.

The beautiful is the experiential proof that the incarnation is possible.  We must have faith that the universe is beautiful, and that it has a fullness of beauty in relation to each of the thinking beings that actually exist and of all those that are possible.  It is this very agreement of an infinity of perfect beauties that gives a transcendent character to the beauty of the world.

He is really present in this universal beauty.  The love of this beauty proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and goes out to God present in the universe.  The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through the material."

Simone Weil, Attente de Dieu, 1950

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding.  It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial,  1915

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare."

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 1941

"Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, 'What else is the world interested in?'   What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. 

God is Love.  Love casts out fear.  Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love.  We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved."

Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, The Catholic Worker, April 1948

"Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness.  Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding. 

The revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life.  Error never shows itself in its naked reality.  It dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Iraneus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, 180 AD

"A church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?  Very nice, pious considerations that don't bother anyone, that's the way many would like preaching to be.  Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world that they live in.”

Oscar Romero, Radio Sermon, 1 July 1979

Stocks rallied today on Trump's unilateral extension of the ceasefire with Iran until Sunday evening.

Coincidentally enough this is in time for a third carrier group to join the two already in place.

And so it was the usual post-Trump announcement, preceded by large bets hitting the oil futures markets I might add.

Gold and silver were pushed lower, and the Dollar rallied.

Stocks, at risk levels of historic imbalance, rallied to new highs.

This is confirmation for the waning of wretchedness, with their failing bodies and minds — faithless to the last.

I think we all know what is what.  We may be tempted to distract and even blind ourselves, but there is it.

Remember who you are, and what it will mean to remain standing until the end.

This is what is important, what this drama is all about. 

And not the raging of those dwindling into dust, with the fury of the fallen. 

Have a pleasant evening.