SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Walking Dead

The PPI (Producer Price Index) this morning was shockingly negative. 

And so stocks rallied, on the basis that since we are seeing so many deflationary indications the Fed would not be raising rates anytime soon, and might even crack open the QE cookie jar again for a little more top down rainbow sprinkles of public money for the Banks and their speculations.

Again I would like to reiterate the Le Café view that the Fed never had any economically based intentions of raising rates at any time in the recent past.  

They would like to add a few basis points of upside for their own policy purposes, to get off ZIRP so that they can cut rates again in the future when The Recovery™ they and the government have been touting is exposed as a fraud.

And so our standing forecast of a symbolic raise of maybe fifty points, in two steps, is still in place unless we see some genuine signs of recovery, which we have certainly not seen yet.   And that will be the extent of their action until the next financial crisis comes, probably as a result of the collapse of this current financial asset bubble in stocks and bonds and Dollars.

It was almost funny to see a price manipulation hoax perpetrated on the stock of Avon today using the SEC website to propagate a phony takeover offer from a fake private equity firm.   Well, that is how things are in bubble land.  Our major exports are misery and fraud.  Buy first and ask valuation questions never if you can keep the momentum going.  Just look at Shake Shack.

Bloomberg TV has been slavering all over Kim Kardashian and her new phone app games all day.  I think the whole thing is emblematic of the banality of our culture and the one percent.  

 

Someone asked if I have nothing good to say about Bloomberg TV these days.   I do think Alix Steel's new haircut is really cute.   It frames her million dollar smile really well.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Comex Gold Rises To A Near Record 107.7 Claims Per Registered Ounce

Well, here we are again.

As you may have noticed from my postings of the Comex Warehouse Gold inventories, lately there has been a significant drop in the level of 'registered' or deliverable gold held there.  And since the open interest or number of contract held by punters and investors is not dropping commensurately, the number of claims per deliverable ounce has risen.  Quite a bit actually.

As a snarky observer pointed out, somewhat presumptuously I thought, there is quite a bit of other gold stored in these warehouses.   It is called 'eligible' gold meaning that it is in the proper format for Comex trading. 

But, I retort, that which is not marked registered is not available for delivery at these prices, unless the owners change their minds.  Or the Comex starts confiscating private gold in storage. And I sincerely doubt they  follow the MF Global method of customer metals inventory management.  Although no on has yet to  pay the price for that one. 

Then again, ownership is a flexible concept in The Grift, which is what the US financial system has become.   And the exchanges are its Bucket Shops.

This can very well resolve itself neatly as it did last time, especially if a friendly possessor of physical gold, let's say a bullion bank or an official non-profit seeking agency like the IMF or the odd money printing central bank decided to lease or deliver some of their physical holdings into the market without regard to price and profit.

Then again, the players might decide to just roll over their contracts and claim checks and just keep the game rolling, taking the rigging skim from related markets and the vig.  This is perfectly acceptable behavior for The Bucket Shop.  It seems to be the new thing for stocks and even bonds as well.   Its a derivative universe.

Or, God forbid, the price of gold could rise to increase the available supply.  But that is very retro economics, certainly not modern, and so yesterday.

Musical chairs with only a limited number of seats is not a problem, if the music never stops and no one tries to sit down.  It's all just a game in The Grift.  And if they ever go cashless and purely electronic, it will be a brave new world of modern money.  Whoops, another bailout, and there went half your savings!   You won't even have to play to pay. 

So let's see what tune the carnival plays on this go round.  And a pleasant time is guaranteed for few, just a few.

These charts are from Nick Laird at sharelynx.com.

A More Ominous Note May Be Heard in the Global Bond Rout

I was only tangentially aware that there was anything that could be called a 'global bond rout' since I do not follow the bond markets much these days.

But I found this theory below to be an interesting hypothesis, because the state of global growth, and the slide into a secular stagnation in the developed Western economies in particular, is of keen interest to me. If a major market like bonds is seeing the same thing then this would indeed be noteworthy.

It would eventually result in a stagflation, as persistent money printing and competitive devaluations with no resulting organic economic growth might eventually find some inflationary traction, even if it was a break in international monetary confidence, despite the ongoing stagnation in real growth caused by policy errors.

Whatever the cause of this global bond rout, or any other trouble approaching in the gathering storm, I am sure the public will be the last to find out.

"There is a growing concern that the extreme levels of wealth and income inequality here and abroad are creating a permanent, rather than temporary, rate of tepid economic growth worldwide.  This translates into a future where governments are forced to issue ever more debt to plow into fiscal spending to prevent their economies from lapsing into deflation and, potentially, a depression.

Markets trade on anticipation of where economic data will stand three to six months down the road. The big selloff in sovereign debt is telling us that global investors see major economies mired in the hangover of the 2008 crash indefinitely with deficit spending on infrastructure soon to replace Quantitative Easing (QE) as the new monetary tool to ward off deflation...

The global rout in sovereign debt markets is a collective epiphany that we’re six years and counting from the 2008 crash and we’re still on central bank life support."

Read the rest of this at Wall Street On Parade.

Stiglitz: Why Western Capitalism Has Been Failing Since 1980

As I had written some time ago in the The Fall of the American Republic: The Quiet Coup:

"I am not so optimistic that this reform is possible, because there has in fact been a soft coup d'etat in the US, which now exists in a state of crony corporatism that wields enormous influence over the media and within the government.

To be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price. And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

 

The article which I wrote was based on the insightful and largely ignored work by renowned economist Simon Johnson called The Quiet Coup.

 

This lecture by Stiglitz below is a little 'wonky' and uses some terminology which may be unfamiliar.

Nevertheless if you listen to it and just try to capture the main points of his discussion it will be worthwhile.

 

His basic premise is to ask why capitalism has shown a tendency to stagnation since 1980 in the United States and other parts of the West.

 

I am, as you know, an adherent to the belief that there has been a soft coup d'état in the US.  One can always quibble about the exact dates, but that is of less importance.   I have said it was shortly after Greenspan's 'irrational exuberance' speech, although the stage was certainly set for this during the 1980's with the rise of the efficient markets hypothesis, the assumption of rational wealth optimizers in the markets, and of course, the laughable supply side economics which are the old trickle down canard in drag.

 

The point, rather, is to understand what has happened, to continue to shine a light on it, and to hope that Simon Johnson is correct, that the overreach of the 'winners' will eventually provoke a reaction. 

 

Quite frankly I had thought it would have come by now.  One can rarely go wrong betting on the power of apathy and momentum, and the persistent greed of the sociopaths and their enablers.

 

After all, in the aftermath of a tragic derailment of the flagship train line in the US from Washington to Boston that could have been prevented by continuing investments in fundamental railroad infrastructure, the House of Republicans have voted to further slash Amtrak funding by $260 million. 

They are instructed to hate anything that benefits the public without putting an abundant stream of income into the pockets of their corporate money masters.  This explains their virulent animosity to Social Security, public transportation, public healthcare, public education, public infrastructure, consumer protections, environmental laws, safety regulations, product safety measures, and any sort of financial regulation that inhibits the greed and power of the Banks.

And we should be ashamed for continually standing quiet in the face of such pathological incivility.

 

But I can almost guarantee that if this crash had been the result of some sort of despicable act of terrorism for example, the public coffers would already be wide open, flowing with a Niagara of funds for homeland security and the militarization of domestic law enforcement.   Millions for the corporatized state, but little or nothing for the people.

 

I am increasingly concerned that, as has happened so many times in the past, the status quo will greet this eventual reaction for reform, justice, and equality with repression and even draconian measures to maintain what they perceive as their rightful place and power. 

 

Like apathy and momentum, it is also difficult to underestimate the self-delusion and overreach of sociopaths who would be as gods, even if they are gods of the damned.

History is replete with examples.