Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And the Beat Goes On

 

"As millions of struggling Americans face eviction this fall; as children are dying in hospitals from a raging pandemic; as his political party is facing a brutal fight in the upcoming midterms — what does former President Barack Obama do?   He throws himself a lavish, celebrity-studded birthday bash at his $12 million waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard with a sprawling dining tent potentially creating a super-spreader event.

Obama had one key job to do as President: Reform Wall Street. He punted. Instead of breaking up the mega Wall Street banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, Obama signed into law the toothless Dodd-Frank financial 'reform' legislation that has allowed all of the worst abuses of Wall Street to continue. At the time the legislation was signed into law in 2010, Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Oval Office. 

The brutal truth is that the Obamas have been in tacky, let-them-eat-cake mode for a long time now." 

Pam Martens, Barack Obama's Fall From Grace

 

"The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery."

Jesse, May 2009

 

It was painfully evident even in the first 100 days that Obama's candidacy was a marketing meme backed by billionaires and the Wall Street money crowd.   His economic appointments made that very clear, and the legislation that the corporate Democrats enacted to 'reform' the financial system was a means of deflecting the public outcry for genuine reform of a corrupt financial system..

The GOP is worse, and even more servile to corporate and moneyed interests given their turn.  But that is just another chapter in the story of how we got to where we are now.

Stocks managed to 'recover' from a fairly significant selloff and closed green for the day.

One wonders if the markets will be soothed by barrels of money poured on them into the lead up to Jackson Hole.

Gold and silver both gained, continuing to rebound off the sharp and most likely illegal price manipulation of last week, which we have labeled 'Dr Evil' on the charts.

The dollar was up ten cents.

The VIX is rebounding off its lows.   The markets continue to be edgy, and vulnerable to a shock.

I think the likelihood of an 'event' in the markets is rather elevated here because of the reckless lack of management by the Fed and the regulators to rein in their cronies in the Banks and hedge funds.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Slouching Towards Jackson Hole

 

“They (economists) must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.” 

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century 

 

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.” 

Laurence J. Peter

 

“Some student asked if he [Larry Summers] didn’t have essentially the same relationship with Bob Rubin. Wasn’t Summer’s opposition to capital controls just a sop to Wall Street banks, which wanted to recoup their risky investments regardless of how doing so affected the country in which they had invested?

'Summers just lost it,' said one audience member, a business school student. “He looked at the person and said, 'you don’t know what you’re talking about and how dare you ask this question of the president of Harvard?'” 

Richard Bradley 

 

"When the economy was very obviously building towards the financial crisis of 2008, how many economists were ignoring the bubble conditions, preferring to keep their noses in their statistics, a willful condition that I call data blindness. 

It is not safe to see too much, and even less safe for the career minded to speak out against the actions of powerful insiders who control the benefactions of position, and the perks of the privileged class.  It is much more judicious to hide one's nose in a selective book of statistics, ignoring the reality, and relying instead on being data blind or ideologically blind to what is really happening. 

It is easier to say 'I didn't know of this injustice' and afterwards, 'who could see such a thing approaching?'

And then let it happen all over again."

Jesse 21 August 2014

 

And so here we are.

Stocks managed to move higher, with the SP 500 reaching another new all time high.

The tech heavy NDX and the broader Russell 2000 continue to lag.

Gold and silver continued to rebound sharply from the painfully obvious price manipulation of last week. 

The Dollar dropped quite a bit, back down to the mid 92 area.

The equity market is on shaky underpinnings.

Something is going to knock it over, probably by about 10%, or more, most likely  in September, maybe October.

In the end it could be something even relatively trivial in retrospect, as trigger events go. 

A stiff market decline is no sure thing, if never is.  

But if current behavior holds, the probabilities will increasingly favor such an outcome.

The Fed symposium at Jackson Hole starts on August 26^th.

Chairman Powell speaks on the morning of the 27^th.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Conflict Entrepreneurs and Con Men

 

"You want to distance yourself to the degree possible from conflict entrepreneurs.  These are people or pundits or platforms that intentionally exploit conflict for their own ends.  People who really delight in every twist and turn of the conflict.  And right now we tend to amplify those voices.  On social media and other places."

Amanda Ripley

 

"Dividers speak evil about things that are different, 'the other,' or which they do not understand.  Like instinctive animals, they follow wherever their passions lead them, and so they bring about their destruction. 

People like this are detractors and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They are loudly boastful and arrogant, bragging loudly about themselves, and flattering others to get what they want." 

Jude 1:10-13,16 

 

"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to be wary of those who cause divisions and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned. Avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites and desires. And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of many of the innocent and easily led." 

Romans 16:17-18

 

"But avoid fruitless controversies, dissensions, and foolish quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.  After a first and second warning, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes division and disputes,  since you know that such a person has been warped into sin,  and will condemn themselves." 

Titus 3:9-11

 

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.  Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. 

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."

Simone Weil

 

Why do conflict entrepreneurs, and deceivers, and con men seem to flourish in times like these?

They offer simplicity, the fantasy of a cartoon like picture of the world, relieving their listeners of the burden of thinking and caring and loving.

They nurture feelings of powerlessness and confusion by portraying those on the edge of darkness as victims of 'the other.'

They fill the dull emptiness of hardened hearts with strong emotions like fear, hate and rage.

Those who cultivate hate and pride for their own purposes, and those who spread their hate and lies to others,  will see a reckoning of sorrows, no matter how carelessly they approach their actions and their consequences now.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will reap.

Stocks managed to drift higher in the afternoon, going out near the highs.

Gold and silver were largely unchanged, with gold a little higher.

The dollar move to just below the 93 handle.

This market is edgy.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Deal with the Devil - Precious Metals Rebound From Obvious Manipulation

 

"I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis.  Concepts including 'rational expectations,' 'market discipline,' and the 'efficient markets hypothesis' led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur.  Not all economists believed this – but most did. 

Control frauds always fail in the end. But the failure of the firm does not mean the fraud fails: the perpetrators often walk away rich.  At some point, this requires subverting, suborning or defeating the law. This is where crime and politics intersect.  At its heart, therefore, the financial crisis was a breakdown in the rule of law in America.   In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat.  Either the legal system must do its work.  Or the market system cannot be restored." 

James K. Galbraith, May 16, 2010

 

"They [moneyed interests] are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.  The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital." 

Carroll Quigley, The State of the Individual

 

“The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions.   Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?”

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

 

Stocks were mixed again, with the SP500 moving higher, and the tech heavy NDX continuing to move lower.

The Dollar fell slightly, giving back the 93 handle.  

Gold and silver rebounded sharply from the recent overnight assault on the integrity of the precious metals futures markets.  

The stock market is in an obvious bubble, to be followed once again by a crisis and collapse.

If it not so much if but when.

And no one could have seen it coming. 

Have a pleasant evening.