Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present.

And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the Street believes that the world will always be the same, and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever."

Federico Garcia Lorca


"There have been tyrannical gods, and there is the God who makes us free. Tyrant gods, nowadays, do not, as a rule, assume the names of gods. They prefer pseudonyms. But their tyranny remains the same."

Henri de Lubac


"And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and the name of him that sat on it was Death, and Hell followed with it."

Rev 6:8

Gold and silver have been resilient in the face of the traditional bear raids ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls number.

Perhaps they are saving their ammunition for Obama economic announcement next week.

The NFP number tomorrow might provoke a counter-intuitive reaction.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Markets sputtered on light volumes and largely technical trade ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.

Consensus of economists is +110,000 jobs for non-farm private payrolls, and +70,000 overall including government.

I am of an open mind to see the equity market react perversely to a low number tomorrow. It would be one of this reactions that says, 'since the number is bad, then the Fed will ease and so stocks can rally.'

Or not. This is an iffy one especially because it comes in front of a three day holiday weekend.

Greenberger: Secret Exemptions Allow Futures Price Manipulation - RealNews

Michael Greenberger is one of my lights into these types of issues. He is a nice remedy to the mistaken theories of many, including alas Paul Krugman, who does not believe that speculators can influence prices, even in the short term. But there are far, far worse, who know better but sell themselves for pay.

Greenberger highlights the speculative pools activity of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. But there are far worse excesses being done by other actors through their own trading desks, among these JPM and HSBC it appears at least from government records, in the derivatives markets.

Anyone who watches the markets closely knows full well how derivatives and leverage can be used to manipulate the physical markets with paper in a fiat regime, especially where the "delivery" of goods can be financialized, leveraged, and nakedly shorted, behind the cover of opaqueness and complexity.

Thus the use of such financial tools allows some participants to essentially defer the equilibrium of supply and demand for unusually long periods of time, until some event or accident triggers an exposure, a sudden reckoning, and a subsequent collapse.

I think the extreme fractional reserve nature of the current metals markets is an accident waiting to happen, awaiting only the right mix of margin calls and short term demand. And then everyone will be surprised that such a grand theft went on for so many years, unnoticed, except that is by a stalwart few, much in the manner of the Madoff fund and Harry Markopolos.

The remedy for much that is wrong in the markets today can be remedied by transparency and limitations on things like positions, and a return to laws passed after the last financial crisis of this magnitude that had served the nation well for over sixty years.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

Garrison Keillor