Performance of a Number of Global Stock Exchanges Year-To-Date

Except for a few Asian countries, and special situations not pictured perhaps, it looks like a global slump from here.

There are still a select few unbroken housing bubbles out there that may find some adjustment in a future capital crisis.  Canada and Australia come to mind, among others.

Despite the billions of taxpayer funds poured into them, some if not quite a few of the troubled multinational Banks are still in trouble, and a few may be teetering.

Does anyone who is well informed not recognize that the policy errors of the Central Banks and their political cronies have failed to foster a sustainable recovery after five long years of enormous bank subsidies and public misery?

And the fruits of this selfish foolishness may likely be another crisis that is even more decisive?

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.


Related:  The One Percent's Plots To Overthrow Democracy

GolemXIV: Trouble In Bankland

In the US:

• Home Equity Loans (HELOCs) are up 20% this year. 15% of all home loans originated are home equity extraction loans.
• People are taking equity out of their homes in the reigniting housing bubble, but adding to their bank debt.
• Student loans now total $1.2 Trillion.
• Nearly 35% of student loans [I believe David inadvertently says HELOC at one point] given to people under 30 are now 90 days delinquent.
• There are $924 Billion in auto loans, with nearly one third being subprime.
• It will not take much of a downturn for the HELOCs to go underwater.
• Jobs for those servicing new student loans are often low paid and hard to find and could become scarcer prompting more defaults.

In Europe:

• Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has now lost ALL of the £46 Billion bailout from taxpayers
• Espirito Santo recently went bankrupt AFTER recently passing the ECB stress test.
• Not only the bank, but the entire Espirito Santo group went bankrupt, after the bank sold their associated debt to unsuspecting clients.
• This certainly does not inspire confidence in any of the ECB testing of the Banks. We would have no confidence in an agency that tested cars with these kinds of results.
• There were fifteen other EU banks that passed in the weak manner of Espirito Santo.
• The Spanish/Italian/Greek Banks were allowed to count tax credits from the government as assets.
• What if China decides to support its domestic coal production by assessing a 3 to 6 percent surcharge on imported Australian coal? It would dampen exports and GDP.
• Australia's huge housing bubble is counting on 8 to 12 percent house increase NEXT year.

If things go south, the ECB,  Fed, and other Central Banks will have to engage in another enormous bailout.





Source: GolemXIV

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - A Little Flight to Safety

Gold caught a little 'flight to safety' today as stocks fell out of bed in the last hour of trading.

Silver cannot seem to get out of its own way, but managed to post a little gain in the aftermarket.

As a reminder, this Friday is a stock option expiration, so let's be on the lookout for the games Wall Street people play.

There was no real economic news in the US for Columbus Day holiday, but we have some news later this week, and as always earnings reports.

I don't know if it is the November elections effect or what, but the commentary on American television is going from silly to absurd. The Very Serious People in New York and Washington must be living in some alternate universe.

Let's see what happens when the adults come back to work tomorrow. We will probably see some follow on selling in overseas markets, although it was not quite clear what triggered the big selloff this afternoon. Just skittish, perhaps.  And some pre-option expiration hijinks.

As J. M. Keynes observed, it is not a good policy to allow your investment allocations and price discovery to be decided by a casino.  And that is exactly what is being done in the West.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - A Whiff of Panic - Option Expiration on Friday

Stocks were weak all day, but then turned decidedly south in the last hour of trading.

I posted the Year-To-Date stock market performance earlier today here. Jim Rickards also made a 'crash call' yesterday and I note it in this post. Marc Faber is pretty much there as well. His video is worth seeing.

I am a bit cynical, considering that there is a stock option expiration on Friday. We'll see more selling overnight most likely, and perhaps some follow through tomorrow. The NDX and SP500 futures charts don't have much room to go lower and stick a close without some technical damage. And the 200 DMA on the cash SP 500 is now shot to hell.

Let's see if the bots and the Fed can manage to turn things around later this week, and make for a happy options expiration having cleaned out the bulls, and then whipsaw the put buyers.

There will be more economic news later this week, and also earnings reports.

But as I said the markets are skittish.

Someone sent me a message last week with a link to some stock advisor who dismissed my cautions about an exceptionally edgy stock market, telling his followers to stay fully invested. After all, I am just a 'metalhead.'  Well, how did you like that VIX today? As Dr. Phil says, how's that working out for you?

I am keeping an open mind for now.   This is still a very technical market.  No crash calls here, yet.

But I own no stocks, just gold exposure. I am laying off silver until it figures out how to get out of its own way. As always, none of these comments touch upon my long term investments which are just 'there.'

Protect yourselves. 

Have a pleasant evening.

US Financial Television, a Crash Call, and Year-To-Date Stock Market Performance

Larry Kudlow was just ranting on Bubblevision that we should put tough economic sanctions on China to punish them for hacking our computer systems. The US certainly doesn't do anything like that.   And they cannot push back because they need to keep buying our debt, since they have no other choice.   Its remarkable.  Every time he opens his mouth.  He must have a lot of it stored up.

Speaking of shams, nonsense, and hypocrisy, here are the Year-To-Date stock market returns.

The Dow Industrials is for the tourists, the SP 500 for stock robots, the NDX for tech weenies, and the Russell 2000 tells the tale of the broad market.

Jim Rickards apparently made a 'crash call' yesterday, with quite a bit of timing wiggle room, fwiw.

I don't like to forecast financial crises, because the timing is often very difficult.  But I was able to forecast the tech crash and the housing crash, but not the exact timing.  And playing a rigged and robotized market is not easy, even when you have the trend right.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

As a reminder you should be able to 'right click' on any of my pictures and charts and select open in new tab or window to open them in a full screen original size.

Silver is still a bit weak historically in comparison to gold.

The PSLV premium is a bit enthusiastic as it is often wont to do. Their cash level is quite low at about .155% of assets suggesting that they will do a shelf offering of shares to raise cash levels once silver shows some market strength.  That shelf offering generally knocks the premium down about two or three hundred basis points.  I am surely not the only person with an eye to the spreads.

Sunday Evening: Pictures From the Appalachian Trail This Weekend

Here are some casual pictures taken while hiking the Appalachian Trail along the Kittatinny Ridge in New Jersey this weekend.    The leaves are just starting to turn, a bit late this year.  The ridges of the eastern Appalachians are the remnants of ancient mountains, deeply marked and scoured by glaciers. 

 

At some points on the trail the peak of this particular ridge is quite narrow, affording views in all directions.  At other points it broadens to encompass dense forest and glacial lakes.

 

I am particularly fond of the Trail as it passes along the Blue Ridge Mountains through the Shenandoah Valley National Park.  The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is headquartered in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.   The AT runs as a continuous hiking trail for about 2,180 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.  That is a hundred miles further than the walking distance from London to Istanbul.

Age has rounded the ridges of the eastern Appalachians as they pass through New Jersey into rolling lines of stone running parallel to the north northeast.  

 

It is from the escarpment of the first Watchung Ridge furthest east that Washington directed the movements of his troops as he cut off the retreat of General Howe to New York City in 1777.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
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

Sunfish Pond on the Kittatinny Ridge

North West To the Delaware River

South to Blairstown, NJ

The One Percent's Plots to Overthrow Democracy

The Great Depression, the conflicts that tested the Republic to its foundations, and the struggle to maintain the commitment to freedom and democracy against powerful interests.

The highly decorated Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified in 1934 that he had been recruited by the representatives of powerful industrialists who asked him to bring the Bonus Army back to Washington and take the government over by force from then President Franklin Roosevelt.  This was a scheme that was known as The Business Plot.

The American Liberty League

These wealthy business people were not prosecuted and the incident was quietly swept aside in the interest of domestic confidence and peace.

 

 

If Not At Home, Then the Establishment of Oligarchy Abroad

 

After the failure to overturn democracy in the US, some in the American 'One Percent' became powerful supporters and business associates of Mussolini, and even of the German Third Reich.  This business relationship continued long after the criminal brutality of these regimes had become quite obvious to all civilized people.  

 

Their involvement in the rise and promotion of fascist ideology seems to have been largely forgotten.