SP 500 and NDX Futurs Daily Charts - No Recovery

It is hard to believe, but Alan Greenspan actually said something of value today.

Greenspan noted the stock market valuations, and said that corporate profits may be reaching some diminishing returns as a percentage of GDP.

I have not done the math or looked up the figures, but he made the point I think that the artificiality of the recovery is notable, and cannot be sustained without some sort of organic growth from the real economy.

The one percent won't understand any of this, what is really going on, because they have lost all perspective, and so have their hangers-on who only say for pay.   Sometimes it almost gets funny if it were not so sad.  I thought JPM Jim Glassman's comments on Pope Francis were hysterical. 

They speak with one another, and get all sorts of confirmation bias from their 'winning,' but really the divergence between the real economy and the financial system as it is currently constructed is one of the more dangerous conditions we can see in a nation's history.

The chart of population employed as a percentage of total population below is rather telling.

Let's see how this all goes.  Generally it does not go well.

Shanghai Gold Exchange Cumulative Deliveries Of 8,655 Tonnes Since 2009

“In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.”

Czesław Miłosz

Since the beginning of 2009, the Shanghai Gold Exchange has delivered about 8,655 Tonnes of gold bullion. That is about 278,264,715 troy ounces.

Comex is the tail wagging the dog of Asia and the Mideast.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange competitive differentiation is in their motto: Integrity Leads to Prosperity.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Deliverables from Scotia - Kozlowski Redux

Scotia added 60,000 ounces to the deliverable category yesterday from their vaults. Brinks threw in about 4,635 ounces as well.

This brings the deliverable (registered) bullion inventory back up to 655,556 ounces, a bit more respectable for the December delivery month.

As far as deliverable inventory goes,  Scotia and JPM hold the bulk of it.  As a percentage of total holdings, HSBC is remarkably light on deliverables.   Must be an Asian thing.

For now the Comex is setting price, the tail wagging the dog.  But at some point that will change, and the Comex will become a price follower, and then we may see some real market clearing.  The longer these antics go on, the more violent the market correction coming from a blind side will be.

But until then it is the usual games, and the usual suspects.

Speaking of financial antics and the usual suspects, after the bell it was announced that ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who famously used fraud to take $134 million from his company, is being granted parole from prison.

He and the CFO Mark Swartz had been sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison for grand larceny, conspiracy, falsifying records and violating business law. They were found guilty of giving themselves illegal bonuses and forgiving loans to themselves from 1999 to 2002.

In many ways Kozlowski and Swartz were pioneers for American financial innovations that were not fully realized until the 2007-8 financial crisis.

"Back when I was running Tyco, I was living in a CEO-type bubble. I had a strong sense of entitlement at that time," Kozlowski told the board.

Kozlowski was clearly a trend-setter.

Is it time to go long high-end umbrella stands and wastebaskets, or custom-tailored Italian silk burnt orange prison jumpsuits and Presidential handcuff links? Once an outlier, massive financial fraud now seems to be in season in both NY and London, if not de rigueur.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Permanent Prosperity, Prêt-à-Porter

Stocks are tottering into the end of year, near to bubble levels.

With the Fed kicking in $85 billion per month as walking around money for the one percent, things have never looked better.

Equity price is way over its skis, and needs some organic earnings and revenue growth to justify even current levels. But that reckoning is for another day.