SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Need Little, Want Less, Love More

"What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before?"

Henry Miller

The economic news this morning was a bit to the grim side.

There is no recovery.

 

To call it the result of policy errors is probably overly-generous.  It is the result of a careless selfishness and greed that have found deep roots in our hearts. 

 

We do have a generous surplus of well-crafted lies, spun with great effort by shills and sociopaths.  They are never more loud or more evident than around the watering holes of money and power.

We are a ship of fools. And a generation of madder and even more self-deceiving Ahabs are in the wheelhouse, hell bent on their own destruction, heading full speed in the night through uncharted waters.

 

It would be better for them if they had never been born.

 

Lord have mercy on us.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Currency Wars and Credibility Traps

The Fed not only blinked today. They were twitching like someone afflicted with Tourette's syndrome.

The reasons are pretty clear.

The Fed had to take out the word patient today, or lose all credibility, and risk scaring the markets back into reality.

As I pointed out earlier today, in the assessment of an agency in the Treasury, the markets are at a two sigma level of potential volatility, ie like 'quicksilver.'

And of course, as is apparent to anyone who actually reads anything with a critical eye, the real economy is wallowing all over the place.

Finally, the recent moves by most of the rest of the world's central Banks have been to fully engage in the currency war by cheapening their currencies. The Fed would have looked like flaming idiots if they had raised rates today, given all the weak economic factors, the exceptionally low interest rates because of inbound capital flows from abroad in search of yield and safety, and the subsequent undue strength of the dollar that was already stifling exports and manufacturing.

So the Fed did the only thing it could do. It took out patient, and gave plenty of signals that they would not be raising rates anytime soon.

They also took metrics like the unemployment figure off the table. They have bought into Stanley Fischer's proposal that the Fed must resume the cloak of 'mystery' in its policy actions in order to be able to more effectively manipulate markets to achieve its policy ends.

I will say that I think this mystery is going to extend mostly to the public. I believe that they will be keeping the biggest insiders very informed through a variety of side and back channels. The better to eat you with, my dear. Pity the small players and investors in these markets.

Gold and silver took off like a scalded cat as the dollar dumped. The only surprise I had was that we did not test resistance around 1185. But who can predict the movements in these paper markets?

Nevertheless, the Fed has just tipped its cap, and bent its knee, and acknowledged that they too are in the currency war. Like so many other things they have screwed up they cannot fully admit it. They are caught, like most of the world's bankers and financiers, in a credibility trap.

Gold and silver will ultimately prove to be the last resort in a global game of 'beggar thy neighbor,' no matter how much fog and mystery the money masters care to distribute to better mask their intentions.

 

So as I have done for so long, I get right, sit tight, and hunker down while the great currency game plays itself out on the global stage.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - More Policy Mystery, But the Yellen Put Intact

The Fed took out the word 'patient' as almost everyone had expected.

You can see the intraday commentary on this here and here.

With an agency of the Treasury itself saying that they see a heightened risk of a 'quicksilver market' in equities, you can bet that the Fed is going to be treading lightly on their raising of interest rates to satisfy their policy needs.

Their conundrum is how to control the asset bubble which they have caused without crashing the markets, again.

What is most significant is that, especially in light of the Yellen post statement press conference, the Fed is moving back to the pre-crisis guessing game, where they will have much more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances without tying their policy changes to external measures.

This is an acknowledgement that the economy has grown much weaker, and that the Fed finds themselves at a bit of a loss in trying to determine just exactly where we are, and where they need to be.

And with that nod to 'exports' in their statement, they are certainly signaling that they are aware of what Japan and the ECB are doing with regard to their currencies.

Have a pleasant evening.