SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Great Debate - Panem et Circenses

“Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.”

Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion


“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”

Czesław Miłosz

Like so many of our public moments and instruments, such as the financial markets and public figures, the First Republican Primary Debate last night can best be described as 'a spectacle.'  But that was clearly its design and intent, from start to finish.

There was never any mention of the risks in the financial markets and reform, except to repeat the hollow slogans of deregulation and the gods of the markets. There was posturing and personal gossip galore. There is less phony pandering to the crowd in a singles bar on a Friday night.

The closing chorus of the Pharisees was almost too much to bear.

I know this is 'politics.'  And there has always been exceptional bad behaviour among the rich and powerful.

But at least in my lifetime we are setting the bar lower and lower, in so many ways.  I remember Nixon and McCarthy.  While we may have feared them for a time, we always knew what they were, and so did they.

Last night was awkwardly boorish, self-consciously shallow, garishly hypocritical, and embarrassing.

Have a pleasant weekend.

David Cay Johnston: Is There a Pension Crisis?

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Decline and Fall of the Gold Trade on the Comex

Not at the Comex.  Look up the area code for Shanghai.

Bloomberg, the print news and not The View division, had an article this morning noting that the stiff decline in trading and volatility in gold shows a lack of interest in it.

The flaw in their reasoning is that they consider the Comex to be 'the gold market.'

I had a little fun with that with an intraday commentary which you may read here.

I know. Be kind and understanding. No one can expect a global news organization that generally reports all of the world's markets to bother to look at a simple chart of the Shanghai gold trading volume which continues to climb every month.

Or any of the other reports about the volume of bullion going into India, and the swelling river of bullion flowing through the refineries of Switzerland from West to East.

We are all aboard the gold negativity express here, doing our part for the cause. Of whom and for whom, let's allow time to answer that one conclusively as I am sure that it will.  Maybe.

As they like to say, 'who could have seen it coming?!'

JP Morgan's stick save 276,000 ounce supply of bullion yesterday took the paper to gold ratio down to 62 to 1 or thereabouts. I told you that expecting anything market-like from The Bucket Shop was probably a vain desire. LOL.

But it can be diverting, even a little fun, to watch.  But I would not trade it, not on a bet.  Anyone who looks at the intraday activity with volumes closely would not touch it unless they were fans of grifting.

Silver is a little different, because CNT is obviously using it to manage their wholesale deliveries to the US government.  But it is also waning in relevancy on the Comex.

This is nothing new.  I have said this for the past couple of years.  But since it has not blown up yet, why worry about tomorrow, right?  Keep on keeping on.  Winning....

And on the political front, you can almost hear, if you listen for it, the people sharpening their pitchforks and cleaning their torches.  The next scripted presidential election may be subject to a rewrite and some plot twists.

They never see it coming.   Because they don't care and aren't looking.

Speaking of not looking the Atlanta Fed is now projecting 3Q GDP at 1%.  And their president Lockhart just came out and said he will push for a September rate increase unless he sees 'significant deterioration.'

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.  That could be another knee-slapper.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow

The market is expecting about 229,000 new jobs tomorrow in the July Non-Farm Payrolls report.

A number below 200,000 will probably shake the Street up a bit, and get them thinking about the Fed holding off on raising rates, as the Bank of England's Mark Carney today did, deferring to 2016 because of the weak economy. But since the Fed is not particularly interested in the real economy these days, except as an impediment to their model driven ride, I think it will have to be a lot worse than that to keep them from their appointed rounds.

It was like a waking nightmare on Bloomberg TV today. They first had John Thain, the CEO who presided over the meltdown of Merrill Lynch and now the head at CIT, giving forth economic wisdom. And not to be outdone, in the afternoon we saw none other than Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs giving advice to grads on how to get a good job in a lousy economy.

Holy cow. I could almost see the images of Jack Grubman, Henry Blodget, and Mary Meeker hovering behind the scenery like some torturish flashback, the ghosts of bubbles past.

Let's see how the jobs report comes out of the Washington statistics extruder tomorrow morning.

Have a pleasant evening.