Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Silver premiums remain remarkably low when compared to gold.

Taibbi: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

For a related story read The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney also from Rolling Stone.

Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
By Matt Taibbi
August 29, 2012

The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected.

The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal. Romney has a vision, and he's trying for something big: We've just been too slow to sort out what it is, just as we've been slow to grasp the roots of the radical economic changes that have swept the country in the last generation.

The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. And the drama of this rhetorical high-wire act was ratcheted up even further when Romney chose his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – like himself, a self-righteously anal, thin-lipped, Whitest Kids U Know penny pincher who'd be honored to tell Oliver Twist there's no more soup left. By selecting Ryan, Romney, the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street, officially succeeded in moving the battle lines in the 2012 presidential race...

Read the rest here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Pausing, Pausing...

The pause at resistance continues. I have added a chart line to gold to help make it more visible.

I added some hedges to my bullion position today on the if/come of Bernanke and Draghi.

There was some intraday commentary on economics and the markets here.

Obama needs to do something to show he is serious about reform, even if he isn't. Geithner and Holder and a few of his key regulators are a significant impediment to his credibility as a leader of change and reform, but it is not likely that they will be replaced before the election. Obama is often careful to the point of timidity, caught in a web of indecision and conflicting priorities.

By the way, Obama's advisors are terrible, but Romney's are a cabal of neocons and neoliberals, in case you were looking for any comfort there. Comfort is an illusion without significant reform.

Will Le Charlatan Obama perform some grand gesture to rouse his long-suffering base now that the Wall Street donations well has been booked in this cycle? If he is going to do it, the time is at the end of the week, to take the edge off the other guy's convention rhetoric.

Let's see what happens.