US Financial Television, a Crash Call, and Year-To-Date Stock Market Performance

Larry Kudlow was just ranting on Bubblevision that we should put tough economic sanctions on China to punish them for hacking our computer systems. The US certainly doesn't do anything like that.   And they cannot push back because they need to keep buying our debt, since they have no other choice.   Its remarkable.  Every time he opens his mouth.  He must have a lot of it stored up.

Speaking of shams, nonsense, and hypocrisy, here are the Year-To-Date stock market returns.

The Dow Industrials is for the tourists, the SP 500 for stock robots, the NDX for tech weenies, and the Russell 2000 tells the tale of the broad market.

Jim Rickards apparently made a 'crash call' yesterday, with quite a bit of timing wiggle room, fwiw.

I don't like to forecast financial crises, because the timing is often very difficult.  But I was able to forecast the tech crash and the housing crash, but not the exact timing.  And playing a rigged and robotized market is not easy, even when you have the trend right.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

As a reminder you should be able to 'right click' on any of my pictures and charts and select open in new tab or window to open them in a full screen original size.

Silver is still a bit weak historically in comparison to gold.

The PSLV premium is a bit enthusiastic as it is often wont to do. Their cash level is quite low at about .155% of assets suggesting that they will do a shelf offering of shares to raise cash levels once silver shows some market strength.  That shelf offering generally knocks the premium down about two or three hundred basis points.  I am surely not the only person with an eye to the spreads.

Sunday Evening: Pictures From the Appalachian Trail This Weekend

Here are some casual pictures taken while hiking the Appalachian Trail along the Kittatinny Ridge in New Jersey this weekend.    The leaves are just starting to turn, a bit late this year.  The ridges of the eastern Appalachians are the remnants of ancient mountains, deeply marked and scoured by glaciers. 

 

At some points on the trail the peak of this particular ridge is quite narrow, affording views in all directions.  At other points it broadens to encompass dense forest and glacial lakes.

 

I am particularly fond of the Trail as it passes along the Blue Ridge Mountains through the Shenandoah Valley National Park.  The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is headquartered in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.   The AT runs as a continuous hiking trail for about 2,180 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.  That is a hundred miles further than the walking distance from London to Istanbul.

Age has rounded the ridges of the eastern Appalachians as they pass through New Jersey into rolling lines of stone running parallel to the north northeast.  

 

It is from the escarpment of the first Watchung Ridge furthest east that Washington directed the movements of his troops as he cut off the retreat of General Howe to New York City in 1777.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur

Sunfish Pond on the Kittatinny Ridge

North West To the Delaware River

South to Blairstown, NJ

The One Percent's Plots to Overthrow Democracy

The Great Depression, the conflicts that tested the Republic to its foundations, and the struggle to maintain the commitment to freedom and democracy against powerful interests.

The highly decorated Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified in 1934 that he had been recruited by the representatives of powerful industrialists who asked him to bring the Bonus Army back to Washington and take the government over by force from then President Franklin Roosevelt.  This was a scheme that was known as The Business Plot.

The American Liberty League

These wealthy business people were not prosecuted and the incident was quietly swept aside in the interest of domestic confidence and peace.

 

 

If Not At Home, Then the Establishment of Oligarchy Abroad

 

After the failure to overturn democracy in the US, some in the American 'One Percent' became powerful supporters and business associates of Mussolini, and even of the German Third Reich.  This business relationship continued long after the criminal brutality of these regimes had become quite obvious to all civilized people.  

 

Their involvement in the rise and promotion of fascist ideology seems to have been largely forgotten.