23 January 2013

PBS Frontline: The Untouchables



I can hardly wait for the specials about the silver market when that time comes.

The corruption will continue until the people of the Western world hold their politicians accountable, and are not so easily distracted by The Big Show, and emotional bread and circuses.


Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

22 January 2013

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Silver Outperforming YTD - The System Is Fine, People Are the Problem



As you know, the old Wall St. saying is that 'so goes January, there goes the rest of the year' or words to that effect.

The last chart shows that assets are having a very nice start. Silver is leading they way with stocks not far behind. Gold is still recovering from its end of year smash, which lasted into the first week in January. I suspect that if things hold together it will do well.

VIX is very low and complacency about the economic picture is the word for the day.

The nation would be doing great, with corporations earnings good and financial assets doing fine, if it were not for all these people with their problems like underemployment, unemployment, outrageous healthcare costs,  unpayable student loans,  lax enforcement against usury and fraud, inconvenient disabilities, limited opportunities, neglected veterans, natural disasters, and stagnant median incomes in the face of steadily rising costs and record inequality.

Benny and the financial engineers at the Fed must find this human element very annoying.  After all, their specialists tell them that everything is fine. There must be something wrong with the people.

It reminds me of when I was a boy programmer, and the systems engineers would complain that they had finally gotten a big IBM mainframe operating at peak efficiency, with all the I/O and subsystems working fine. But if only they could keep the users off the system.  They can be very disruptive and annoying.

Surely Ben and the Treasury, not to mention the Congress, must realize that the people are their customers,  and the most important stakeholders without whom the system would look rather silly, and not Wall Street and the banks, and the upper crust of the financialized economy, right?

As Phil Gramm said in 2008, there are no real problems and no recession.  Rather, the US is just 'a nation of whiners.'     Well, maybe not everybody, just Mitt's infamous 47%. 








SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Wanna Take You Higher


The equity market continued to power higher on record low VIX to the point of complacency as earnings reports came in well after the bell.

Existing housing sales were a bit sluggish this morning.







Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds


Interesting that Sprott Silver has a lower premium than Sprott Gold.

I am struggling to relate this to any market fundamentals.

Perhaps it is the underwriters still digesting their take from the latest large shelf offering.