NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Good Morning Fiat Nam!

Good morning, Fiat Nam!

Thanks to Dave and Denali Guide for suggesting that greeting.

In case you were wondering what happened overnight, Kuroda and the Central Bank of Japan decided to significantly increase their Quantitative Easing.

As you may recall, the Fed and the Japanese Central Bank did a tag team of money printing in the 'recovery' in the 2000's as the US pumped up a housing bubble.

The Japanese said that in addition to buying more official debt, almost as much as the government can issue which is an overt money printing machine, the government has also indicated that they will use their substantial pension funds to buy more equities and REITs, including those of other countries.

I think Japan may eventually provide a good test of the theory that a sovereign that prints its own money can never default.   Japan's problems involve significant demographics, but a great portion is some of the worst crony capitalism and opaque government by insiders in the OECD nations.  It is this kereitsu corporatism that put the FU in Fukushima.

One thing that works in the people's favor is a favorable attitude towards the group backed by peer pressure, rather than a dog eat dog economy based on serial fraud, and commensurately a decent public safety net.  Or at least there has been.

Stock futures soared in the US and the Nikkei futures were limit up.  

Overnight the Russia central bank had to raise its interest rates to 9.5% to defend the ruble which was under pressure on the forex markets.  

And in what appears to be a somewhat counterintuitive move despite Dollar strength on Yen weakness, gold and silver were slammed down hard in thinly traded markets.

The pressure from the US and its client states is now shifting heavily to Europe and especially to Germany, to permit a similar move to quantitative easing in Europe.

China remains remarkably quiet for now. Eurasia is large enough I think to break away from the threat of financial repression. One wonders how far they can be pushed before they make that choice. Or perhaps it is already being made.

Interesting times.

 

October 30, 1938 - Mercury Theater Presents The War of the Worlds

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

Edward R. Murrow, talk to his staff at CBS before See It Now, 7 March 1954 on Senator Joseph McCarthy

And 'The Night America Trembled' 1957

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Currency Wars

 

"The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition: there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create.

What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world’s surrender: the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world."

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 12 Oct 2010

I think this time it is Putin and the rest of the world who have said, 'nuts' to the demand for surrender.   And more dramatically, China and a few others are playing 'Go' and skipping the trash talk, while stacking their pieces where they will on the table. 

I spent part of the day musing on the philosophical dimensions of money and debt.  Perhaps that will bear fruit in a posting some day. 

But this whole notion of the 'limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create' is intimately tied to the disagreement among nations I among others have chosen to call 'the currency wars.'   The more theoretical that discussion becomes, the existential, the more Thomistic of a character it takes on with essence and accidents and all those things we sat through at university. 

At some point in time, an Alexander will come forth and slice through that Gordian knot; and in that most real of acts make all Platonic tolerance vain, and vain all Doric discipline, with my apologies to Yeats and the sangre de Cristo.

This is no academic exercise however.   The wise and unwise use, and the limits, of power are the lines on the pages of history's copybook.  Those who do not understand them are lost in the leaves, no matter how hard they may plough on against the turn of events.

So today could be viewed as an extensive bit of PR, and the management of perceptions.  And they did a job of it.  Shorter term the Fed has an impressive array of tools at its disposal.  Mostly they are good at destruction and illusion and not very good at justice and sustainability.  But they are very afraid of losing control, because when you rule something by fiat, control and perception of power is paramount.

Today was a rough day for the precious metals, with the financial powers-that-be trying to prove that the end of QE III need have no negative effects on their financial engineering of The Recovery™.

The greater the leverage or beta with regard to precious metals today the worse the decline.  That seems obvious, but some disregard that when structuring their portfolios.

For example, gold bullion is performing better than silver, which is more variable, or lively, to the up and downside.  And the miners and other leveraged means of owning precious metals have been taken out and beaten today.

PHYS has lost about .75%  and PSLV about 2.8% since yesterday.   But if one holds the miners, it could be much more. 

I am not in silver in the short term here and now,  but I did make one injudicious mining purchase yesterday, alas.

Let's see what happens.