Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Ukraine Did It? and RIP Robin Williams: Vesti La Giubba

“La commedia è finite."  [The comedy is ended.]

Ruggero Leoncavallo

 

Gold and silver were pretty much capped today as stocks rallied on the hopes that nothing bad will happen in Iraq, Gaza, West Africa, and the Ukraine.  The miners seemed to gain a little lift, but really there is not much that happened that is worth wasting words.

As of Friday, approximately 418,800 ounces of gold have been claimed in the month of August.  But as you can see in the latest Comex warehouse report, they are just sitting tight where they were.  Comex is a sideshow now in the global precious metals markets.

The next Comex option expiry will be on August 26th.

 

Oops.  New Straits Times claims US analysts conclude that an air-to-air missile shot down Malaysian flight over the Ukraine.

KUALA LUMPUR:   INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it.

This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth.

In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts”, Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said “some US intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame”...

I missed that one on the US nightly news.  There is quite a bit of speculation in this piece above.  And Parry did not write this piece for the AP.  He is an investigative reporter who has written for AP in the past, helping to break the Iran-Contra story for example.

 

I wonder if the real truth of this sad incident will ever come out.  Perhaps we will have to file this one with Jimmy Hoffa, Jack the Ripper, the Lost City of Atlantis, and the freefall of WTC 7.

 

 

Speaking of sad incidents, RIP actor/comedian Robin Williams of an apparent suicide at age 63.   Williams had been battling severe depression.  

 

It has become almost a cliché that the exceptional minds of improvisational comedic geniuses, that allow them to see the odd associations and absurdities, hypersensitive to the ironies of life, can be both a gift and a curse. 

And when the comedy has gone out of life, only the tragedy remains.  For without those who can laugh at themselves and make us laugh at our vanities, what remains are grimly uncaring monsters, and their retinues of  oblivious banalities.

 

I wonder if the masters of the universe are aware, or even able to cry, while they put their makeup on, to fool rather than to be fools, and see what monstrosities they have become.

 

Artists, clowns, and lovers must attempt to divert the people as they approach the chasm of madness.

 

nanoo nanoo. 

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio, non so più quel che dico, e quel che faccio! Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati! Bah! Sei tu forse un uom? Tu se' Pagliaccio. Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina. La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. E se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina, ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà! Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto in una smorfia il singhiozzo e 'l dolor.     Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto! Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor!

Perform! While in this madness, I no longer know what I say, and what I do! And yet it is necessary... Try! Bah! Are you a man? You are a clown. Put on your costume and colour your face. People have paid, and they want to laugh. And if Harelquin shall steal your love Columbina, Laugh, Clown, and everyone will cheer! Turn your anxiety and tears into jest, your pain and sobbing into a funny face. Laugh, Clown, at your own broken love! Laugh at the very grief that poisons your heart!

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Pop Up

Stocks rallied up today on the good news that nothing blew up in the Mideast or in the Ukraine over the weekend.  Dare I suggest it was a technical bounce off the latest rinse to the bottom of the wash 'n rinse channel?

After that early exuberance, they tended to drift lower most of the day.

After the bell Caesar's offered some fairly awful results. No not Obama, who was speaking about Iraq after hours, but Caesar's the other gambling empire besides the Fed.

There will be more earnings, macroeconomics news, and geopolitical jitters this week.

Have a pleasant evening.

John Oliver on the US Payday Loans Industry

"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol


Usury is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans intended to unfairly enrich the lender on the desperation or misfortune of others. (cf. unethically high drug charges promoted by patent protection).  A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors.  Someone who charges usury can be called an usurer, but the more common term in English is loan shark.

This video by John Oliver below discusses the payday loan industry in the US, which is remarkable even by today's lax moral standards when it comes to financial matters.

If not for the corruption of big money, outlandish fees from banks and usurious rates of interest from private financial companies could be stopped, and quickly.

Part of the problem is the attraction that some in the US have with the romantic notion of naturally good 'free markets' unencumbered by the means of protecting the weak and desperate from the stronger and unscrupulous.

People are not naturally good nor perfectly rational in all their affairs. And just because someone wears a suit and carries a pen and a high powered law firm instead of a gun does not mean that they are not a criminal in the truest sense of the word.

And the manner in which we are continually given corporations higher regard, more privileges, and more and more power over the individual is a sickness of our souls.  It is a portion of the worship of money and power above all else.

But Jesse, who is to say what the appropriate level of interest should be?

We have appointed regulators to do so, and there are certainly people more qualified as subject matter experts to do it.

But I would certainly tend to favor a Federal law that stipulates that no loan can charge more than 20 percent in annualized interest and fees in any 365 day period, or 1000 basis points over the Fed funds rate, whichever is higher, for any loan for any consumer loan as defined by the Consumer Protection Bureau.

And as for "States Rights" to do whatever they please, one could justify the minimal protection provided to the people among the various states under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. If the corruption in a state authorized murder, slavery, child prostitution, drug addiction, mercy killings, sterilization, or torture, we would certainly not hesitate to assert the priority of the Bill of Rights for all citizens no matter where they lived.

Just because it is money that is involved does not mean that the injustice cannot be as serious an abuse to the public interest, to an individual or a family, even though one can assert that no one made them take the loan, or buy the drugs, or born handicapped, or fallen gravely ill. Public policy need to reflect the moral principles of a people at their most fundamental levels, or the government has no legitimate claim to be founded of, by, or for the people.

We Are Still In a Financial Crime Wave

In his recent column The Opposite of Stagflation Paul Krugman says that:

"One of the truly amazing (and disheartening) things about the Great Recession and its aftermath has been the continuing insistence of many economists that it’s somehow a supply-side slump, driven by the evils of Obamacare or something. This tends to come from people who view stagflation in the 1970s as having permanently refuted all things Keynes.

So I guess it’s worth pointing out repeatedly that the recent slump shows all the hallmarks of a demand-side shock; in particular, rising unemployment has been associated with falling inflation — the opposite of stagflation."

So I guess its also worth pointing out that the opposite of stagflation is not economic stagnation with declining inflation, but steady growth with very modest inflation. But given it is Paul K. we'll grant that he is assuming inflation as a reference point in this.   And in focusing in on the model battles, he is saying that we are indeed seeing stagnation, but there is deflation as his form of the Keynes model would predict.  Huzzah!

 

I will put aside for now his assertion that we are seeing declining inflation.  I think it might be said we are seeing little inflation growth overall, but with inflation appearing in certain product segments and assets.  But this is, I believe, an artifact of the way in which the Fed is pursuing very significant, top down monetary stimulus in a system that is still distorted and corrupted by the financial sector and its moneyed interests.  A few at the top are taking the greatest part of the monetary growth, and their demand is not for common goods but for luxuries, and monopolies, and more financial assets.

And so Paul Krugman is triumphant, because he would then go on to say, as he often does, that all we have to do is pour massive stimulation in to the economy from the fiscal side, and the demand side of the economy would recover as consumers could use their wages to purchase more goods.  Problem solved. 

 

And its a good piece of intellectual land to stake out, because no matter what the actual outcome in the real world, Paul will be able to argue that he was right if there is a favorable outcome.  Or if not, then it would have been favorable except that the government did not provide enough stimulus.  I would be inclined to believe that even if stagflation does eventually show up, he will argue that it was some other anomaly that does not affect his model.  A model that is too narrowly focused, and yet with too many degrees of freedom, to be useful.  

 

This works for Paul because his focus is sufficiently narrow and circumscribed, which is the failure of most economic models to provide any actual benefit for the real world, and are unsuited for the purposes of making policy decisions except at the most advisory level.  It allows him to almost completely ignore the facts on the ground, what really happened to cause the financial crisis, and what forces exist to keep it stubbornly at work despite massive top down monetary stimulus by the Fed.  

 

But like the housing bubble, when reality throws an economist a curveball, I have no doubt he will search his many hundreds of columns and find that he mentioned it, once.  And I suppose he may have mentioned reform once or twice as well.

 

His heart may be closer to the solution than the Austerians, but his mind is still carrying water for a system of learning, a method of distributing the benefits of productivity, and a political mindset that is more of an impediment to progress that an aid to it.. This is what happens when a vibrant set of theories from an original mind like John Maynard Keynes suffer from the arteriosclerosis of political dogmatism.  And after all, economics is a disgraced profession.

 

It is the hallmark of what Chris Hedges has called 'the death of the liberal class,' and along with it, the death of its conscience and sacrifice of moral principles to expediency in the service of power.  Few better representatives of this than the Clintons and Obama, and their acolytes in the status quo.  But they are presented as the alternative to an opposing political point of view so base as to almost redefine hypocrisy and greed.

 

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

h/t Yves Smith, et al.

Mission Accomplished

"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. 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.  Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

 

The Atlantic, The War Photo No One Would Publish

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Argentina Chastised By Judge Griesa For Speaking Out

Gold has popped to over 1320 in the late hours, but found little footing there and succumbed to capping pressure that held it to the 1311 area for most of the day.

Silver managed to plant a foot over the 20 handle and keep it there into the close.

The gold contacts that have been stopped on the Comex represents a very healthy 490,000 ounces month-to-date. But as you can see from the warehouse report, the metals never seem to leave the warehouse of late. Which is a good thing, because almost half of the total gold available at these prices has been claimed. Those who want delivery of real gold go to Asia it appears.

After the bell a story broke that the New York US District Judge Griesa dressed down the Argentine government in their debt hearing today, and threatened to hold them in contempt of court.  The judge was appointed to the Court by Richard Nixon in 1972.

"The judge in Argentina's long-running debt battle with hedge funds threatened a contempt-of-court order on Friday if the nation does not stop issuing false statements about having made required debt payments.

At a hearing, U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa told lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb, which represents Argentina, that the country has made several false, misleading statements after he ordered the nation to stop doing so last week...

Jonathan Blackman, an attorney for Argentina, said his firm was not involved with the drafting of legal notices that appeared in newspapers.

'Argentina is a state. The state takes positions and makes decisions. They are not necessarily legal positions. This is a statement of their position, for better or worse,' he said."

Reuters, US judge threatens contempt ruling in Argentina case

Argentina has taken their case to the World Court at the Hague as a issue of national sovereignty. The Hague has sought permission from the US to hear the case, asking if the US would accept their jurisdiction as a pre-requisite.

Joe Stiglitz has said that with Griesa's decision "America is throwing a bomb into the global economic system".

I seem to recall that during the Bush Administration the Executive Office sent a note to the Judiciary that they had overstepped their bounds in a sovereign bankruptcy case involving the seizure of assets and other actions that impinged on another nation's sovereignty.  The Presidency asserted that the setting and management of foreign policy rightfully belongs to the Executive Branch, and that the Judiciary had overstepped its bounds.

I doubt Obama, whom for better or worse can be seen as modern management type not strongly driven or bound by personal principles but rather by situational expediencies, would take any position that inconvenienced the moneyed interests.

But by having his DOJ signal their willingness to abide by the decision in the Hague, Obama and AG Holder might be able to accomplish the relief of this sticky international situation without overtly disrespecting the global aspirations of Wall Street. 

But the Obama doctrine for asserting Executive Office prerogatives seem to be directed at decreasing transparency and persecuting whistleblowers rather than annoying even the most egregious get-richer schemes of billionaires.

Have a pleasant weekend.