SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight

Facebook announced 'better than expected' numbers after the bell. The stock sold off a bit because apparently the 'whisper numbers' were higher.

AT&T posted a miss.  Facebook delights the tourists.

Unemployment claims out tomorrow, as if anyone cares.

The IMF has lowered its US growth estimates and suggests Fed easing could extend beyond 2015.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Capping The Recovery™ By Distributing Paper Wealth

"It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country.

This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war."

James A. Garfield,  on a resolution offered by the Greenback Party that the government should issue all money, 1880

The number of ounces of silver that were 'stopped' is well over 15 million now for the month.

Next month the emphasis may shift back to gold. Today silver was the stalwart but most metals were capped.

Other than that, not much of consequence is happening in the Comex metals market these days. Bullion gets pushed around the plate in a daisy chain of short term speculation.

The real metals markets are already moved to EurAsia and the Mideast.

When the real markets reconverge with the paper markets, the resulting adjustment may be quite noticeable.

There was some related intraday commentary:  Green Slime: The Return of Franken-Money 

The lack of a recovery in the real economy, coupled with the background growth in artificial and short term focused money is setting up a particularly nasty set of scenarios for the US.  Stagnant wages will not support aggregate demand and generate organic growth, no matter how much money the Fed can create and shovel into the Wall Street Banks and the one percent.  Most despots would fear those numbers.

The Fed and the government have tried to cobble together a whole economy out of the corrupt and rotting pieces of a failed system and the dead bones of false economic theories, and sought to bring life to it with the lightning bolts of huge money infusions into the Wall Street Banks.  And what they have created is a monster, inimical to real growth and organic life.

How broken and dysfunctional is this system?   The US Congress has a record low approval rating of seven percent, and they simply do not care, and are inclined to change nothing.

The 'trickle down approach' does keep down the growth of wages and 'inflation,' as well as productive economic activity versus financializing activity,  but it sets up an absolutely deadly reckoning that may stretch the moral fabric of the Republic in ways not seen in our lifetimes certainly.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

"If you follow issues like Too-Big-To-Fail or Wall Street corruption long enough, you realize that the reason things don't get done about them by our government has very little to do with ideology or even politics, in the way most of us understand politics.

Instead, it's a bizarre, almost tribal mentality that rules our capital city – a kind of groupthink that makes extreme myopia and a willingness to ignore the tribe's ostensible connection to the people who elected them a condition for social advancement within."

Matt Taibbi, Neil Barofsky's Adventure in Groupthink

The market can keep drifting higher on low volume and easy money.

I believe that the Holy Grail of IPO's, Alibaba, is going to be pushed back further into August from its lucky number 8-8 date.

APPL after the bell.

Have a pleasant evening.

Green Slime: The Return of Franken-Money

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country.

When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin!

Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out."

Andrew Jackson

The reason that there is a 'currency war' underway globally, and why there is increasing civil and political tension domestically, is not because of an envy for the Anglo-American one percent's way of life.

The reason is that the monetary system and the Western economies have gone off the rails with financialization and speculation, and there is a commensurate revulsion from it from those who are in a position to seek alternatives wherever they may. Those who cannot will be victims.

This system is fragile, and will not cohere.

This is why the precious metals have spiked, and will contain to struggle against the very obvious financial repression that is being driven by the Banks.  It is an exercise in the abuse of power and the corruption of governance.

This does not mean that austerity or repression are the solution, anymore than mindless stimulus in pursuit of a top-down recovery of a corrupt, wealth transfer system is either. 

The nature of the cure is in equal justice and significant reform, the protection of the weak from the overreach and encroachments of the powerful and the wealthy, whether they are allied in a foul bargain with the state or not.

We may try scheme after scheme, from clever gimmicks to 'new' theories, until we will stand exhausted on a wreckage of our own devices. There is no substitute for transparency, justice, and reform.

Related: Money Supply, A Primer