Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow - Shopping

Stocks took a big dip lower today, but managed to recover quite a bit of that this afternoon.

There may have been some relief from the lack of screaming headlines from the first day of the US-China trade talks.

Gold and silver gained a bit as the US Dollar gave up some of that short term overbought condition as Noted yesterday.

Tomorrow will be the Non-Farm Payrolls report. The economic calendar with the specific forecasts is included below.

Costco is now delivering groceries for free in my area. I gave it a spin and it worked out remarkably well. All the items were placed on my porch, but in true Costco tradition they were not in a bag or a box. This is going to be handy going forward when I need heavy or very bulky items that I do not feel like dragging from the store to the car, like the 40 lb bag of Audubon bird seed or the six carton pack of organic chicken bullion that I use to moisten the Health Extensions Little Bites Dolly food.  Or the massive cube of paper towels, or the clumsy case of bottled water.

They have opened a new Whole Foods near here in the past month or so.  I have never been to one of these before.  I must say they have an interesting collection of modernistic urban rangers shopping there, at least during the week when I go. What do they call Yuppies these days? I just don't know. Their prices are on the whole ridiculous and the quality does not justify it.

I typically hit the local Shoprite which is fairly day-to-day pedestrian, and a lot of specialty shops for things like meat and prepared foods. And Costco of course for bulk items and Aldi's for low cost value and some specialized German products. But if I am a more upscale, exotic mood I can go to Wegman's and get the same higher quality and selection at much more realistic prices than WF, if I am so inclined, at least on the items I would buy.  Whole Foods selections of sushi and Asian items are rather thin.

For non-food items, non-guy stuff, I buy online from places like Amazon. The queen and I decided long ago that it would be good for our marriage if I never went into Kohls or Bed Bath & Beyond or Marshalls with her. She was a professional, a connoisseur of the selection process (and returning things from a floating inventory of purchases). I would generally hang out in a nearby Lowe's or Home Depot until she called.

I do miss cruising stores with the queen. She knew more about shopping and prices than most Wall St analysts, which is probably why I know so little. She liked to keep me in my place as designated driver and sherpa. We always had fun doing the simplest things.  We had  a collection of favorite stores and little restaurants.

We respected our boundaries. and appreciated our individual areas of expertise.  We always seemed so different but yet so complementary.  My weaknesses were her strengths, and vice versa although she rarely admitted any weaknesses except mice, spiders, yard work, machinery, organized sports, and tools.

And maybe that kind of mutual respect and caring is one element for a long life of happiness and contentment.

Have a pleasant evening.

Collusion: How Central Banks Rigged the World For the Next Financial Crisis

"A crash could prove to be President Trump’s worst legacy. Not only is he -- and the Fed he’s helping to create -- not paying attention to the alarm bells (ignored by the last iteration of the Fed as well), but he’s ensured that none of his appointees will either.

After campaigning hard against the ills of global finance in the 2016 election campaign and promising a modern era Glass-Steagall Act to separate bank deposits from the more speculative activities on Wall Street, Trump's policy reversals and appointees leave our economy more exposed than ever.

When politicians and regulators are asleep at the wheel, it’s the rest of us who will suffer sooner or later. Because of the collusion that’s gone on and continues to go on among the world’s main central banks, that problem is now an international one."

Nomi Prins

One can assume many motivations for the munificent treatment that the Big Banks have received in the US.

The fig leaf is that this was done for 'the sake of the system' wrapped in dollops of fear and uncertainty mixed well with jargon and complexity.   This is the art of the fraud.

We do have the historical example, from a much worse banking crisis in the US during the 1930s, that a thorough reform of the banking system is possible, and significantly less expensive than bailing them and their elite holders out, legally and financially.

The major difference in the handling of each crisis is how the resolution prioritizes the distribution of  financial and legal consequences.

In the 1930s the public and the depositors of the banks were given the highest priority for resolution and future protection.

In the most recent banking crisis it was clearly the banks and their creditors and management who were given the greatest amount of consideration by far.  Indeed, what set this up was a decades long campaign to overturn the last of the safeguards that had been passed in that 1930s crisis, a notably bi-partisan effort greased by hundreds of millions of dollars.

One might take into account the prevailing cultural climate, at the forefront of which is the current political campaign financing system that provides enormous amounts of money for the politicians from the financial class and moneyed interests.

There is also the phenomenon of the emergence of a discrete and significantly more influential and wealthy professional elite as a coherent class, many of whom know each other,  have gone to the same schools, and move back and forth between diverse economic sectors and public office.  And they have significant personal financial entanglements.

This is of more than historical importance. Why?  Because it is all going to happen again, most likely during Trump's term of office.   It makes little difference who is sitting in that White House chair, since Hillary would have certainly would have served the same purposes.  There were other choices that would have been more favorable, but the established two party system would not have any of that.  Nothing personal, but reform would be bad for business.

It would be a monumental mistake to assume that the powers that be will have 'learned anything' from what they have done during the last two financial crises since 1999.  They were not 'asleep at the wheel' then and are not so now.  That is a myth, like the CEO of the failed business who can claim to have little or no involvement in the company which he served for enormous amounts of compensation, as in the case of Enron for example.  Or MF Global.

The thought that this time will be different assumes something very fundamental about their priorities and purposes and how they have changed.

And by all recent accounts and current observations, you are stilll not one of them.   Not the other guy, not 'those people,' but you.  You do not matter to the powerful  And if you think you do, then I am sorry but you are seriously deluded.   And you have a lot of company on both sides of the red-blue divide.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Take It To the Limit, One More Time - Said the Joker to the Thief

"But there is a sort of  'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."

Robert Johnson, Audacious Oligarchy

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. Or a game, without personal consequences.

The Fed did what was expected with interest rates today which was to stay their course and have a plan to keep raising rates as the economy continues to improve.

Their words were carefully sifted, and after an initial push higher stocks slumped.

The Dollar was interesting as it initially dumped, and then spiked higher into the close.

The bottom line is that nothing has changed.

The 'recovery' continues weakly, with its results and benefits skewed very unevenly towards the top of the income stack.

Today on twitter Ron Insana said that we are not experiencing stagflation, but just the normal economic conditions that appear in a 'late stage recovery.'

What recovery?   And for whom?   When did that happen?   Oh The Recovery™.    Riiiight.

The Fed is starting to declare 'mission accomplished' with regard to stimulating inflation to justify their raising rates far enough above the zero bound to give themselves some room for policy actions when their latest asset bubble starts to implode.

The geo-political risks are 'concerning.'

At the end of the day the unresolved corruption and frauds that have become embedded in the system, such that not much would tend to surprise me. We have had a market break earlier this year. And now we are vacillating in a range with lower highs and rising lows, coiling into a wedge.

Scenarios like this will often resolve with some violence, triggered by some trivial-seeming event if it goes on long enough.  I am not sure which way, but it does not feel good given the non-economic risks and the utter lack of organic growth in the real median wage.

I have a very open mind for a market dislocation in the second half of this year.  And the reaction it may trigger could be rather disconcerting even to hardened corporatist cynics.  There is some precedent for this in history.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Elites of the World and Their Enablers

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.  Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy.  These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, [corporate media], and lobbying industry."

Charles Ferguson

The establishment media loves to play the red-blue game that has been set up by the corporate oligarchs.   The left has their watering holes, and the right has their testosterone pits.  And those who find comfort in black and white red-blue treatments of political and social issues will tend to migrate to one or the other, to find comfort among liars and hypocrites who 'say for pay.'

At the highest levels it is really not a red-blue game at all, except when it manifests as a power struggle between what may seem like competing crime families.

We are in a period of historically extreme economic inequality. And it is not some accident, or some act of God, or innocent mistake in economic theories by well intentioned philosopher kings.

Society has been divided into the have-little-or-nothings and the have-most-and-want-all-the-rests.  This is both a side effect and a feature of a kleptocracy.

The leading figures of both sides of the aisle and their enablers in the press and the universities are also very aware of their positions in this great divide, where they wish to be, and whom they serve.  And they guard their positions quite jealously.   We are in a virtualized society managed around positions, connections, and credentials—  it's all about access and license.

I get it.  One can be led, slowly but surely, to the top of a very high mountain.  And from there you are shown the vast material splendours of the world.   And you are flattered, and congratulated on having 'made it.'  You are special, and not like all the rest.

And you are subtly instructed on what you must do going forward to maintain your special status, your access to power, and your collection of toys, and hosts of flatterers and admirers.  I am not speaking figuratively here, but in some cases literally.  This happens.

And if you go forward they entangle you, and you come to believe that you deserve it, all of it.  And they teach you to secretly despise the good and the innocent and the weak as being naive or bitter, and a drain on your resources—  and you are theirs.

Each of us in our own way will have experience some such encounter between good and evil.  Some moreso than others. But in every case, the presence of good and evil in this world are not imaginary, or the result of some stomach upset or poor choice in base case economic assumptions.

And the choice of whom to serve, generally made over time, is also real.  Most of the time people make it but don't think about it.   They find their comfort in illusions and distractions.

 Only by the grace of God are we saved from the lion's mouth.  I can work for free for the rest of my life, always falling in fear and trembling as a poor servant but always rising, to repay that tender mercy and never really be worthy, but obligated nonetheless. 

We know what we must do.  His yoke is easy and his burden light.  Need little, want less, love more.