"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong. It's the system...
The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean."
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
"The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect.”
Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow
The US dollar took a trip downtown today, and silver and gold were on the move higher still.
Tomorrow we will get the Non-Farm Payrolls report, classified 813 in the Dewey Decimal system, 'Modern American Fiction.'
The Fed is looking for cover to raise rates, because they need some room beneath their wings so that they can maneuver deftly when the next financial crisis follows their latest financial asset bubble, as night follows day.
Negative interest is the policy choice of brain dead bureaucrats, in much the same way that fiscal austerity in a balance sheet recession sounds appealing if you are at least several steps removed from any serious approximation of reality. That does not mean that the Fed would not follow the ECB and go there under the duress of tarnishing their reputations, such as they are. The problem is that the American people are far too heavily armed to tolerate that sort of blatant confiscation, without quite a bit more preparation.
Gold is at a very key juncture. It needs to break out through 1270 and stick a weekly close there, hard, and hang on to it. The 'handle' has formed oddly, with hardly the kind of test of the lower bound of the chart formation support that we would like to see under our belts by now. A second drop down to the 1200 level that held would have much more conventional.
But we *might* be in a bit of a special situation now, bullion-wise, with the float of gold having dried up badly in London and New York, as the seemingly inexhaustible buyers of Asia are spending their paper dolleros on hard goods, rather than cheap consumables. They clearly are not following the globalist script.
Ray Dalio was talking up gold among other things on Bloomberg bubble vision today, prescribing the usual 5 to 10% allocation for it in your portfolio.
I do not think we will reach the denouement for this until June, if ever, but the data wrangler from the barrier reef was estimating right about now when we were discussing this last year. So let's keep an open mind and let the market tell us what it knows, and the things that we may not be able to see from our place in the cheaper seats.
It does not look like there are many good choices, much less heroes, in our future. But history has a way of surprising us when we least expect it. And that is not always a good thing.
The little waif from the mean streets of the city is doing well in our household, starting to lighten up a bit, relax, and fit in. She is a snuggler for sure, and a little treasure. It feels good to do good for the less unfortunate. It is the kind of reward that does not break or tarnish; it endures.
I think it has to do with love, simple unselfish love. It has always surprised me that more people don't get that, don't get on board with it. Perhaps they are not equipped for it. It takes a human being to love and to be loved in return.
Perhaps there are few seeds that could thrive in such hard, dry ground as some peoples' hearts. It is easy to be hard; all the finest and most powerful seem to be doing it. They live life large, in order to make up for the lack of true vitality, just the imitation of life. But as Dostoevsky said, 'hell is the suffering of being unable to love.'
That is too bad, because the best, the most enduring parts of life are easily overlooked and missed. A baby's laugh, the surprised smile of a spouse, unexpected help, a houseful of grandchildren, a kind word, a good night's sleep, the satisfaction of a job well done: God's tender mercies.
So let's see what happens.
Have a pleasant evening.
