Thomas Frank Explains the American Political Landscape To an Australian Gathering

Here is a fairly short, 25 minute overview of the American political landscape that Thomas Frank delivers in The Shaw Address in Australia.

He urges them not to go down a similar path in 'this low, dishonest age.'

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Home of the Bottomless Punchbowl - Jackson Hole

"At a late stage, speculation tends to detach itself from really valuable objects and turn to delusive ones.  A larger and larger group of people seeks to become rich without a real understanding of the processes involved.  Not surprisingly, swindlers and catchpenny schemes flourish."

Robert Z. Aliber and Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes


"Excess supply could be more readily absorbed if we increased demand through redistribution.  Unfortunately, with tax cuts and austerity, this is not the direction of travel!   Our political masters, our esteemed economic advisors and Central Banks have all forgotten about distribution effects of their fiscal and monetary policies. 

We have been victims of a long line of theorists and ideologists who utterly failed to address  the distribution effects of policies. Ruled by fools so long they conditioned us for more fools at many levels of government and society.  Idiocracy may indeed have become built in."

Dr. Harald Malmgren

Just charts tonight.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Trend Change In Central Bank Gold Reserves in 2008 That Few Have Noticed And Fewer Acted Upon

This excerpt below is from a blog which I published in 2013.   It is a theme that I have been striking since 2009 specifically.

The turn in central bank gold buying came in 2008, although the bullish case for gold for other reasons became pretty obvious in 2002.

The bottom in the gold price was marked when England sold its remaining physical gold, in the notorious 'Brown's Bottom.'

By 2009 the data made it completely clear that the world's central banks had turned from net sellers of gold bullion in order to control its price and had become net purchasers of physical gold for their own reserves. 

Demand has been led by 'the New Silk Road.'

I suspect this change was a reaction to the currency crisis in the emerging markets in the 1990s.   It was referred to as 'the Currency Wars' popularized in China and given little coverage here.

And of course there was the failure of the Washington Agreement, struck in 1999 to manage the gold price through planned central bank sales in order to support what some called Bretton Woods II and the exorbitant advantage of the perodollar.

Hardly anyone outside of a small community of analysts had noticed, and even fewer understood what it meant.

I include the older charts, and a recent tweet by analyst Luke Gromen that shows where the central banks are in their purchasing today.

Hint, they are still buying gold, physical gold, and in steady to increasing amounts such that the 'free float' of available physical gold for delivery is strikingly low compared to demand.

I suspect that silver will have a role to play, judging by the enormous silver hoard that JP Morgan has established, for customers unknown.

Nothing to see here. Just a bunch of conspiracy theories.  And dirty little secrets that we prefer to keep hidden.  Move along.

"Few people realize that around 2008 central banks turned from being net sellers of gold to net buyers, and began to accumulate gold reserves in a big way for the first time since the 1970's, when Nixon slammed shut the gold window.

This is based on what they report officially to the IMF. There is strong anecdotal evidence that the actual turn in buying occurred quite a few years earlier, and more in line with the rapid appreciation in price as selling declined.

First the selling slowed and the stealth buying began, particularly in Asia and the Mideast.

There was a sea change in the gold market as central banks scaled back on their strategy of supplying official gold to the bullion banks in order to keep the price down.

The bottom in the gold price occurred when Gordon Brown threw England's gold with a pre-announcement into the market in order to bail out any bullion banks that were caught flatfooted 'in the turn' in May of 1999. This was the first clear sign that change was in the wind.

The Big Turn occurred in 2007 when the western central banks capitulated, and realized that they must allow the price of gold to rise, or exhaust their own gold reserves in the process. The central bank change did not cause this, although it certainly reinforces the trend. It is a symptom of the great change and the first unmistakable manifestation of the currency war. Although astute observers could see this coming in the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis in the 1990's and the Russian default on the rouble.

Gold commentators who do not realize this significant dimension of what has occurred and account for it in their thinking have been simply left behind, lost in an outdated frame of reference. They do not see the forest for the trees."

"Gold is unique among assets, in that it is not issued by any government or central bank, which means that its value is not influenced by political decisions or the solvency of one institution or another."

Salvatore Rossi, Chief of the Central Bank of Italy, 30 Sept 2013

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - For Whom the Bell Tolls - New Global Financial System That Excludes the US

"I think I'm signaling something a little bit shocking to Americans, and to myself, actually. Which is the situation we find ourselves in at this moment, this week, is very strongly reminiscent of the situations we've seen many times in other places.

But they're places we don't like to think of ourselves as being similar to. They're emerging markets. It's Russia or Indonesia or a Thailand type situation, or Korea. That's not comfortable. America is different. America is special. America is rich. And, yet, we've somehow find ourselves in the grip of the same sort of crisis and the same sort of oligarchs."

Bill Moyer's Journal, Interview with Simon Johnson, February, 2009


“National Socialism brought dream and conformism together into something satanic. Hitlerism was a mass flight to dogma, to the barbaric dogma of the tribe, the dogma that gave every man importance only in so far as the tribe was important and he was a member of the tribe.

I fooled myself.  I had to.  Everybody has to.  If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have seen it.  But I didn't want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent.  I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free


"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.  Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.  Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich.  Plunder, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

Gold put in a fourth day of gains, taking the $1200 handle in the futures, from the low last week at $1159.

Silver managed to put in a gain on the dollar weakness as well, just hovering below $12.

There is a Comex option expiration coming up that is significant to the silver contract, but for gold not so much.

There is an interesting discrepancy between the price of gold being quoted as 'spot' by Kitco and that in the continuous futures contract of about five or six dollars. 

This is because Kitco is keying off the September contract and discounting it in time, while the continuous futures and futures markets in general are looking at the big December contract, which is where all the action is.


It doesn't really matter all that much, but if you see a price discrepancy as there was when Bloomberg quoted the closing price of gold today at 1200, that is the reason for this.

Stocks went for the highs today, with SP 500 leading the way.  The futures came within a cat's whisker of the prior high, and then joined in with tech and gave up a big part of the intraday gain into the close.

It appears that the sanctioned and the marginalized may be getting together.   Germany is proposing a European and Asia financial transaction system that excludes the US.

After the bell it was announced that the jury in the Manafort trial has reached a verdict on eight of the eighteen counts, and declared a mistrial on ten of them.

It also appears that Michael Cohen is copping a plea and entering a guilty to some charge of campaign finance violation, and that he has named Trumpolini as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide  in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Round Up Time - The Fed Returns to Jackson Hole

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

John Maynard Keynes


“The job of the Federal Reserve is 'to know when to remove the punch bowl at the party.'   Under Alan Greenspan’s leadership its motto became let’s all get drunk and see what happens."

Said Elias Dawlabani

Truly, we are haunted by policy errors past and present.

And bubble up to the bar, the boom and bust hits just keep on coming.

Yes folks, hide your wealth, your emerging markets, and what remains of your living wage jobs, it's that time of year again, when the great herd of economists and financial news readers follow Cowboy Jay and his hole in their model gang to Jackson Hole.

The inscrutable in pursuit of the unsustainable.

Stocks were largely unchanged today. Tech was the weak link in the chain. Since it is the heart of the latest 'new era' style bubble that bodes ill for this latest pile of paper assets.

Gold rallied again from the deep low it set last week at $1159. It is so deeply oversold for the short term that a rally here is to be expected. We'll have to see what happens next to determine if this is a true trend change or not.

Silver is facing the headwinds of a meaningful option expiration coming on the 28^th. Gold's contract is now further out so it will most likely just be hanging around on the corner for this latest scrap between paper and physical.

It seems to be the fashion for Hollywood celebrities to be 'shaming the voters' for the latest failures of the corporate Democrats in the voting booths.   Of course they are just following the lead of the Democratic leadership and what passes for thought leaders in the liberal establishment.

It's a sure sign of complacency and rot in the management ranks when you start blaming the customers for your own massive failures to construct a workable strategy that appeals to and addresses their needs. 

Of course this is because the DNC has come to consider wealthy donors as their foremost constituency, in the mistaken belief that winning office is just a matter of turning the money crank enough times, buying the right talent, and spinning the reality to fit your own agenda. 

And so 'the most qualified candidate' to be beaten by a vulgar reality star and philandering flimflam man flamed out, spectacularly.  Who could have seen it coming?

Need little, want less, love more.  For if you have no love in your hearts, you will fail to withstand the winds that will be blowing across the lands in the days to come.

Have a pleasant evening.