Are There No Workhouses? Are There No Prisons?

Don't bother sending news of the cruel propaganda stunt by Peter Schiff saying that if Walmart pays its employees a living wage, then the price of goods at Walmart will have to rise substantially.  That canard has been used to justify every abuse of human beings and their labour since the days of Pharaoh.

Read this instead: Walton Family Earns $29 Billion In Six Months

"Income inequality is continuing to set records, and the Waltons are emblematic of this trend. Just last week it was reported that the top 1% of U.S. earners took home 19.3% of household income last year.

This is the highest proportion in a century; we have officially surpassed Great Depression-era levels of income concentration at the top. For the other 99% of Americans, household income went up a whopping 1% in 2012."

“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

Franklin Roosevelt

Obama's disapproval rating is 53%. The only thing that saves him is that the Congress' disapproval rating is around 74%.

If Obama is a socialist lefty, then Herbert Hoover was Mao Tse Tung. The only thing that Obama has in common with a real progressive politician like Franklin Roosevelt is that they are both 'traitors to their class.' Obama is corporate product, a brand.

Comex Claims Per Deliverable Ounce at 79 to 1

Not to worry, JP Morgan has the situation well in hand.

They are just recycling the deliverable for the next go round in the next active month, February. 

What could go wrong?

Bubble-nomics: The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet and the SP 500

"How could I have done this? I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. Am I a flawed character?

I realized from a very early stage that the financial market is a wholly rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market....It’s unbelievable. Goldman-- no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke."

Bernie Madoff


"Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives, until it finally consumes itself."

Chris Hedges


"I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others: might makes right."

Carl Panzram, psychopath, serial killer

Not much is going to the real economy and the 99 percent, so it has to be going somewhere.

The creation of financial asset bubbles using the power of selective monetary inflation is 'trickle down' at its finest.

But certain assets may blurt out unpleasant truths, if they are allowed to speak.

This is not sustainable. What are they thinking?

Entitlement, indeed.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Imbalances Abounding

"Evil is like a shadow, it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance.

In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it."

Shakti Gawain

There was intraday commentary on the metals here and here.

Commentary on Bloomberg TV included the rather shocking observation that the gold vaults in London that were so full not long ago now stand 'virtually empty.'

And JP Morgan finally took delivery of some of the bulk of the gold contracts they have been 'stopping' this month, and plunged the level of registered gold on the Comex down to a new multiyear low.

The decline of physical gold in the ETFs of the West continues apace.

What are we to do?

Just like there are too many real people for The Recovery™, compared to just the right amount of virtual corporate people, so there does not seem to be enough physical gold, relative to paper claims on gold.

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew informed us this afternoon that the 'budget deal' did not address the budget ceiling.  He expects the US to be bumping its political head against it no later than early March, unless another deal is reached, and more hostages are taken.

Damned useless eaters.  Order must be restored.

Not to worry. The Masters of the Universe are working on a fix. 

And having squandered the wealth of the west, and virtually destroyed the real economy of the developed nations in their reckless greed and unrestrained selfishness, the financial class and their scholar-gentry are highly motivated (to do right by themselves.)  

And that is what might well concern us the most.

Have a pleasant evening.