Moyers: Citizens United the Sequel

I found Heather Gerken to be remarkably articulate, well-informed, and intelligent in this interview.

Enjoy.



Recommended Reading: McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Blow the Man Down

After the bell, the newly restored US government announced that we would have the delayed Non-Farm Payrolls report next Tuesday.

And Forbes says No, JPM Is Not Instituting Capital Controls.

Ted Butler has a very insightful piece on how he thinks JPM is managing the silver market.  I suggest that you read it when you can.  I read it on his subscription site the other day, and I am glad he has made this one public.

Gold and silver had a nice rally higher today. It would have been much more enjoyable if it was not in the wake of a heavy handed and totally obvious price takedown.

But it appears that the takedown did its work for the wiseguys. GLD has disgorged over four tonnes of gold bullion this week, and voila, HSBC, the GLD custodian, was able to post 83,000 ounces of gold bullion to storage yesterday. 

There was also an adjustment of 12,000 ounces of gold from the eligible to the deliverable category.  So, crisis averted with the total gold in the Comex warehouses back within spitting distance of 7 million again. 

Or is it. 

I think we are seeing a very obvious endgame strategy here.  The drawdowns in GLD stick out like a sore thumb, with no other ETF bullion category matching it. 

When the time comes, you may have some trouble if you want to get your bullion out of those warehouses, as they start putting up the yellow police tape around them. 

Until then its smooth sailing for the Bankster, right?

But give us some time and we'll blow the man down.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Daily Charts - Around Kap Hoorn, and Into Uncharted Seas

Huzzah!

The SP 500 hit a new all time high today, driven by exuberance over the pushing of the debt ceiling and budget debate into the future.

The Dow did not fare as well, being weighed down by IBM that showed rather poor earnings results. It is a 'real economy thing.'

We don't have much in the way of dependable economic data yet, since the government has just come back to work, and the ranks of the unemployed might be swelled by those impacted by the shutdown, so we will have to watch this carefully.

I am not so rosy in my outlook for the economy, and think that the SP 500 is rather richly priced at a trailing PE of over 16, but it really is a QE thing.

The Fed is pumping money for all it is worth, expanding its purchased assets at a steady $80+ billion per month. The economic data will most likely be rather poor for 4Q, but that will be dismissed because of the shutdown.

So it looks like it is onwards and upwards. Let's sail round the Horn and into the blue Pacific.  But be forewarned, I see some rough seas across the next horizon.

I have not been short stocks for quite some time, occupying my leisure time playing the wiggles in gold and silver. But I am now getting an itch to start looking for a short entry point, but slowly. There is a notorious tendency for suckers to short new highs, and especially new all-time highs. And that does not often prove advantageous.

So let's make haste slowly, as the old Romans used to say, and enjoy this brief respite in our sea of troubles.

Have a pleasant evening.

Matières à Réflexion for Thursday, 17 October - Larry Summers Flinches At Gold Question

Alas, Google has repeated its error of the other week. It must be tinkering with a library of code, fixing some things and breaking others. The lowly system test process is always underrated and under-appreciated, but crucial to large scale software development.

I have notified them and expect they will correct this, but for now, here is the news. I will update during the day.

The Extraordinary Promise of the Greenwald-Omidyar Venture - CJR

Fed Could Begin to Taper From December - FT (Yes and the Banks could begin to act with moral goodness and honor.)

What To Expect During the Budget/Debt Cease Fire - Reich

China Ratings Agency Downgrades US Debt

GEAB N°78 The de-Americanisation of the World Has Begun

Thirty Million People Are Slaves - Half In India

Dollar Status In Doubt After Washington Antics

Why Regulators and Clients Can't Break Audit Oligopoly

Nobel Foundation Seeks Donations As Hedge Funds Are Not Sufficient

Mario Draghi Comments On Central Banks and Gold To Le Café friend Tekoa Da Silva

Or perhaps more apropos, Mario Draghi on why you should own gold.

Tekoa Da Silva: “Dr. Draghi, what are your thoughts on gold as a reserve asset? You have central banks like China, Russia, increasing their reserves, especially over the last ten years. Germany for example asking for some of their holdings back from New York. It [gold] doesn’t produce any income unless it’s leased. So why do you think they would want that, and what value does it offer in your opinion?”

Dr. Mario Draghi: “Well you’re also asking this to the former Governor of the Bank of Italy, and the Bank of Italy is the fourth largest owner of gold reserves in the world, which is out of all proportion to the size of the country.

But I never thought it wise to sell it, because for central banks this is a reserve of safety, it’s viewed by the country as such. In the case of non-dollar countries it gives you a value-protection against fluctuations against the dollar, so there are several reasons, risk diversification and so on.

So that’s why central banks which have started a program for selling gold a few years ago, substantially I think stopped…most of the experiences of central banks that have leased or sold the stock of gold about ten years ago, were not considered to be terribly successful from a purely money viewpoint.”