Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Lies, Damn Lies, and an Option Expiration

“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

The action for the precious metals did not bode well, when late last night as gold drifted higher and crept over 1300 it was smacked down by some heavy dumping of contracts in quiet trade in the Globex market.

And we saw that classic back and forth sea saw today around the level targeted by that late night selling at 1290. Its a little thing after all, but it is discouraging to those who watch these daily antics too closely.

As a reminder, there is an option expiration on the Comex this week, on Thurday the 24th. Since May is an 'off month' I would not expect it to be all that significant.

More notable is the interesting delivery month we are seeing, with plenty of warrants for the April contracts changing hands, but little to no gold showing any visible movement in the warehouses.

As you may have read, China has opened Beijing as a third point of imports of gold, in addition to Shanghai and Hong Kong.  One might suspect that the numbers so closely watched by some in Hong Kong will continue to become increasingly less relevant to that actual world trade in gold.  Much like the Comex.

Big things are happening behind the scenes.  But you will see only traces of their footprints in the news of the day. 

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Wash, Rinse, Repeat

"Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all.

In His hands are the deep places of the earth, the heights and strength of the hills. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship respectfully, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Now, if you will but hear His voice."

Psalm 95

Neflix 'beat' after the bell.

There was little economic news this morning.

It appears that Pfizer is wooing AstroZeneca, and Barrick has been schmoozing with Newmont. Neither of these lusty pairings has been bearing fruit we hear.

The public interest is not even an afterthought in most things, but particularly in matters financial like the stock market which is, as they say, rigged.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Ukraine: The Global Corporate Annexation

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell


"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

There is certainly a long established difference between a just war, a defensive war, and a war of adventure or aggression. No one understand this better than those who suffer loss in fighting them.

Like quite a few people I found myself asking, 'Why the Ukraine? Why the sudden push there, risking conflict with Russia on their own doorstep?' Why are we suddenly risking all to support what was clearly an extra-legal coup d'état?'

It is telling perhaps that one of the first things that happened after the coup d'état is that all of the Ukraine's gold was on a flight to New York, for the safekeeping by those same people who have managed to misplace a good portion of the German people's gold. It is the most transportable and fungible store of wealth, where the transfer of less portable assets by computerized digits may lag.

Follow the money...

GlobalResearch
Ukraine: The Corporate Annexation
'For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It’s a Gold Mine of Profits'
by JP Sottile

As the US and EU apply sanctions on Russia over its annexation’ of Crimea, JP Sottile reveals the corporate annexation of Ukraine. For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, there’s a gold mine of profits to be made from agri-business and energy exploitation.

The potential here for agriculture / agribusiness is amazing … production here could double … Ukraine’s agriculture could be a real gold mine.

On 12th January 2014, a reported 50,000 “pro-Western” Ukrainians descended upon Kiev’s Independence Square to protest against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Stoked in part by an attack on opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko, the protest marked the beginning of the end of Yanukovych’s four year-long government.

That same day, the Financial Times reported a major deal for US agribusiness titan Cargill.

Business confidence never faltered

Despite the turmoil within Ukrainian politics after Yanukovych rejected a major trade deal with the European Union just seven weeks earlier, Cargill was confident enough about the future to fork over $200 million to buy a stake in Ukraine’s UkrLandFarming...

Read the entire report here.

Anti-Gold Scare Tactics Seem To Be Largely Ineffective

I have seen the most recent surveys in Asia that show the appeal of gold as a store of wealth, but I had not known of similar results elsewhere.   I also think that physical silver is enjoying some strong interest that is barely mentioned.

The propaganda of the Western banks and their friends at Shill & Troll seems to be almost as heavy handed and fairly obvious as their trading tactics of dumping large numbers of contracts to see at market in quiet periods. 

They are free have their way in their phony, rigged markets, but perhaps the old saying from Abraham Lincoln really holds true:  You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Press’ anti-gold scare tactics largely ineffective
by Michael J. Kosares

Gallup poll ranks gold second best long term investment after real estate

Under normal circumstances, I might let a rutty headline about gold in the Financial Times pass without much notice. I say “rutty” because the Financial Times has long been stuck in a rut as one of the principle apologists for Keynesian economics — big banks, big deficits, big governments and powerful central banks. It doesn’t think much of gold enthusiasts and gold enthusiasts do not think much of it. (Although I still read it every morning.)

When I took-in the headline — Bumpy ride in store for gold with price forecast to fall 15% — with my morning coffee, my first reaction was to disregard it, as I do most of the day-to-day, routinely negative Financial Times’ reports on gold. Scanning the article (with the hope some nugget of important information might be gleaned), something tugged at the back of my mind with respect to the entities referenced — Gold Fields Mineral Services (GFMS), Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. All three obviously were predicting 2014 would be a bad year for gold. What was nagging was their near-term record in the art of gold forecasting...

Read the entire article here.

Retiring SEC Attorney Proposes a Market That Puts the Public Interest First

I am not sure what the particular solutions might be, but I think an historically large number of people might agree that the government no longer has their best interests at heart.

The public interest has been sold to the special interests and their ideologues. 

I cannot think of any other reason why the government supports that obscene tax loophole of carried interest that so heavily subsidizes the financialization of the real economy.

I cannot think of any other reason why the government continually refuses, on principle and as a matter of policy,  to prosecute the individuals responsible for monumental financial crimes and abuses of the public trust, handing out wrist slap fines to the wealthy perpetrators and campaign contributors who are engaged in a serial white collar crime spree.

And I cannot think of any other reason why so many state governments would deny medical coverage to the most vulnerable of their own people by refusing the offer of Medicaid expansion on principle. What principle?  That people who are not as fortunate as others should suffer and die, even when adequate medical treatment is available and has been shown to work even better in other countries?

It is an historic feat of propaganda, that the American people think themselves to be the finest people on earth, the paragon of civilization, bringing freedom to the oppressed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,  Libya, and the Ukraine from their presence in over seven hundred foreign military bases. while their own infrastructure and living standards crumble at home, and their own people become increasingly alienated from a self-serving power structure that governs by and for itself. 

Asking Capitalism to Cure Capitalist Woes:
The US Exchange, a Market for the Rest of Us
By James A. Kidney

High-speed trading, synthetic credit derivatives and other risky Wall Street products are described as refinements of our capitalist system — or lamented as the inevitable product of emerging technology. But the system benefits traders more than real capitalists – those who seek investors on the basis of the merit of their products and services to customers.

The response to the many problems posed by these new technologies, products and delivery systems is predictable: New statutes and rules, inevitably chewed into mush by politicians and lobbyists, and long delays in implementation by regulators. By the time these new rules are in place, Wall Street has found ways to circumvent them, requiring a new cycle of debate, lobbying and minimally effective rule-making in response to the next resulting crisis.

One possible solution seems to have been overlooked: Bringing capitalism to the capital markets. It is not that the trading markets have lacked opportunistic capitalists. Entire new trading platforms have been created to supplement or replace the traditional New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ and the old American Stock Exchange. Certainly, many new trading products have been invented. But few of these developments address any real need except trading itself.

 Let me post an example, simple and naïve as it may be, of how capitalism genuinely could improve the market beyond meeting the needs of traders themselves. The notion can at least be the start of something. But first, some background...

Read the entire article here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Counting Blessings and Tender Mercies

The markets were quiet today for a stock option expiration ahead of a three day weekend.

Next Thursday there will be an option expiration on the Comex for precious metals on Thursday the 24th. I would expect it to be relatively quiet since May is not a major contract month.

There were more deliveries on the April contract declared, but little activity has been reflected in the Comex warehouses.

Every person must have a purpose that takes them outside of themselves.  And so I thank God for the opportunity to maintain this quiet corner of the internet for us, that He provides the time and the energy it takes to put it together, and the pull that brings people here to read and join in.

Every person must feel the warmth of human compansionship, and so I thank God for the readers' emails and the many friends with whom I share news, and comforts, and the occasional smile every day. 

Every person must come to understand themselves in context, and so I thank God for the good teachers and the business travel, the knowledge and the seasoning that can permit one to look at the troubles of our own time in the light of history, and know that these too shall pass.  There is nothing which we are called to face that has not been encountered by people just like us, with the same weaknesses and failings.   It is not only books but experience that teaches this to us, the commonality of all that is human.

As a very wise friend of mine recently said, 'the nature of my rebellion, is to rebuff the quiet overtures from heaven.'  There can be a certain sick sweetness in wallowing and worrying over not only what is real but is also imagined, and to try and bear the troubles of the world by ourselves.  But it is a sickness, unto death.

"Let us feel what we really are-  sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God’s will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Contemplate then yourself, not as yourself, but as you are in the Eternal God. Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around you and in you, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that you are dissolved into the Kingdom of God.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

So let us pray for a serene vision of things as they really are, and that strength, which used to be called the virtue of fortitude, to never give in to the allure of falsehoods and the emptiness of despair.  The tomb is empty, and death is overthrown.

We are an Easter people, and hallelujah is our song.

Have a pleasant weekend.  See you Sunday evening.