Matières à Réflexion For Tuesday 9 October

Google has repaired the problem with the sidebar, so its back to the usual format.

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson


“Truly, this earth is a trophy cup for the industrious man. And this rightly so, in the service of natural selection. He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world, and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by.”

Adolf Hitler

For Wednesday, 9 October

Fiscal Talks Set; Republican Approval Rating Falls To Lowest In History

Twitter's Shady Accounting (Anything else would have made them the oddball in the crowd.)

The Default Deniers (In fairness there is a lot of goofiness being tossed around by people with no sense of what 'full faith and credit' means, especially to those not under their control.)

Single Payer Prescription For What Ails Obamacare - Amy Goodman (I think Obama et al understand this. I think the chances of getting it into law and accepted was about zero. Notice the grief the country is getting for a compromise that was previously generated by a conservative think tank Heritage House.)

Chicago Trader Mosley Enters Plea Deal For Ten Years In Prison

Grayson Says Fed Should Simply Monetize US Debt By Cancelling It (Gee, now why didn't anyone else ever think of such a clever solution, John Law edition)

Imports from US and Switzerland to Hong Kong 300 tonnes In August

India Gold Refineries Shutting Bulk Operations Due to Lack of Supply

Hank Greenberg: Notes from the Fully Entitled Pigosphere

Who Might Benefit From a US Credit Default? - Tavakoli

Stevie Cohen Weighs Plea Deal in Insider Trading Case

Goldman Buys Gold After Panicking Speculators - TFerguson

Ecuador May Take Assange Case to World Court

Experiment Puts Auditing Model Under Scrutiny - MIT (What a surprise. And how about those Ratings Agencies.)

Why the War On Poor People? (Why do self-entitled sociopaths and narcissists pick on the weak?)

Hedge Funds Dumping Mispriced Credit Risks and Dodgy Debt on Small Investors

Republican Crazy Talk About the Debt Ceiling - Reich (I include this not because I think it likely or even agree, but it does point out that this *could* end in a Constitutional crisis that few anticipate. But few anticipated WW I or the mass murder of 'unworthy lives' even as it unfolded. Part of the problem is that in times of stress, people retreat into the self-defining worlds of Fox News and MSNBC in order to stop the pain of thinking.)

Cameron Backs MI5 Chief That Snowden Aids Terrorists (Be afraid, be very afraid)

Greenwald: Canada's Spying 'Aggressive and Insidious'

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - G20 Central Bank/Finance Meeting in Washington Tomorrow

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

As a reminder, the G20 finance ministers and central bankers will be meeting in Washington DC starting tomorrow 10 October for a two day meeting.  They will be continuing the discussions of changes to the international financial architecture and banking system.

There was a 31,000 oz. deposit made to customer storage at HSBC yesterday, and one bar of bullion was moved from customer to deliverable status at JPM.

Today was the usual slap and cap, wherein gold is hit early and then held down for the rest of the NY trading day, rebounding a bit in the afternoon.

It turns out that in August there were 300 tonnes of gold bullion shipped to Hong Kong from the US and Switzerland. The game is afoot.

Let's see how the debt ceiling discussion fares as it seems to be the big market driver now. Expect the lies and hysteria to get thicker as the date grows closer. There is a slim chance that this amounts to a serious crisis other than the usual deterioration of nearly everything from systemic corruption, but there is a chance.  

People offer their fears to all the wrong things, to their false gods.  They live in constant fear of phantoms, in service to their pettiest vanities.  If we only knew.  But we don't, we don't open our minds and hearts, even though God has sent Moses and the prophets to warn us.

How terrible it would be, to hear those awful words.

Weighed, and found wanting.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Edgy Trade, Light Volume, As Usual

I think the slogan for the US might become 'we reject your reality and substitute our own.'

At least I heard that expressed about twenty or thirty times on Bloomberg television today, and too often from the mouths of guest economists.

Is there something in the water, or the phases of the moon? While driving to and from the hospital today I saw more foolishly aggressive driving from people than I have seen in some time. And I am not fussy or unused to busy roads. This was almost gratuitous aggression, speeding up to cut other people off and gain nothing, and I am not even counting those who were obviously texting.

Have a pleasant evening.

COMEX Gold Inventories Steady Overall With 40,000 Ounces Moved Out of Deliverable Category

It was announced this evening that President Obama will nominate Janet Yellen as the new Fed Chairman tomorrow, having been denied his first choice of Larry Summers by popular outrage.

There were big adjustments in the registered (dealer) gold inventories at JPM and HSBC yesterday as a total of  over 40,000 ounces of gold bullion moved back to the customer storage category.

In Scotia Mocatta 4,572 ounce of customer gold moved into the deliverable category.

Brinks received about 1,700 ounces of gold into its registered category which will be offered for delivery and Scotia also received 1,618 ounces into storage.  These were the only external transactions.

So as of yesterday there was a total of 731,226 ounces of deliverable gold, and a total of 6,888,160 ounces of gold in all the COMEX warehouses. 

And there are 48 times more claims for the deliverable gold than there is gold to deliver, at least at these prices.   They may dodge, bluff and finesse their way for some time,  the audaciously clever ones that they are, but at last there will come a reckoning, as it comes for all.

Weighed, and found wanting.

Stand and deliver.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Cap, Cap, Cap...

There was some movement in to the COMEX warehouses yesterday, and quite a bit of recategorization of registered gold back to customer storage. I will discuss this later this evening.

The capping of gold and silver is fairly obvious here. They are quite afraid that it might break and run, and that they will lose control of it in what could be an unfolding currency crisis precipitated by Washington's dysfunctional politics.

So let's see what happens as the great credit debate continues to unfold.

Here is an essay by Janet Tavakoli titled Sovereign Debt, Banks, and Gold Part Three which you may find to be of interest.

As a reminder, the Google 'widget' that contains the links to articles is broken and presumably will be fixed in a day or two as I have reported it.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Edginess on the Edge as VIX Moves Higher

Light volumes on light economic news that was dominated by he said - he said on the US debt ceiling and budget discussions, which are taking place not face to face but through media outlets.

We will get the FOMC minutes on Wednesday, and a few more juicier news items after, but really it is all about the political antics in Washington.

Have a pleasant evening.