No Recovery: Longest Sustained Fall In UK Real Wages In Recorded History

Why is there no sustainable recovery?

Because of the policy errors of the West to save the corrupt financial system, but abandon the people whom 'the system' is intended to serve.

You may read the story about why the Bank of England is likely to keep interest rates low, which accompanies this graph, in the Financial Times.

Domestic Democracy or Foreign Imperialism, But Not Both

"Once you go down the path of empire, you inevitably start a process of overstretch, of tendencies toward bankruptcy, and, in the rest of the world, a tendency toward the uniting of people who are opposed to your imperialism simply on grounds that it’s yours, but maybe also on the grounds that you’re incompetent at it.

Indeed, one wonders whether we have already crossed our Rubicon, whether we can go back. I don’t know.

The Department of Defense is not, today, a department of defense. It’s an alternative seat of government on the south bank of the Potomac River. And, typical of militarism, it’s expanding into many, many other areas in our life that we have, in our traditional political philosophy, reserved for civilians. Domestic policing: they’re slowly expanding into that.

So, what do I suggest probably will happen? I think we will stagger along under a façade of constitutional government, as we are now, until we’re overcome by bankruptcy."

Chalmers Johnson

That bankruptcy will not only be financial, but moral and spiritual.  It will be a fiat culture, that is, reality will be defined as whatever power says it will be.

 

Below is a talk given by Chalmers Johnson in April, 2007

This was before the financial crisis and bailouts.

And before the Reform President Obama largely ratified the abuses of his predecessor and given over the welfare of the people to the corporations and the moneyed interests, finance and militarism, the pen and the gun, the bullet and the bribe.

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Life During Wartime

There is a steady drain of silver from the warehouses. Not large enough to matter, but a million ounces here, a million ounces there.

Let's see if the precious metals can make that triple bottom stick, and break the downtrend.

Longer term it is all about the physical supply. That is what matters in a nutshell. Everything else is commentary.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Wild, Wild Week

The Fed's jawboning and some timely buying in the SP futures saved the US equity market, for this wild, wild week.

Follow through is essential, because technically stocks are not out of trouble.

Consumer sentiment is a lagging, not a leading indicator.

The notion that the US is exceptional and immune to problems overseas, especially Europe, is a canard.

What will they think of next?

Have a pleasant weekend.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Moral Hazard, Policy Errors, and History Repeating

"Financial repression is sometimes the effect of policy even if it is not the intent. It manifests itself, for example, when policy makers react more forcefully to declines in asset prices than to increases.

Price increases tend to be treated with benign indifference. But declines often lead policy makers to respond with force, deploying fiscal stimulus and monetary accommodation. Market participants then conclude that governments have their backs...

Efforts to manage and manipulate asset prices are not new. But history provides little comfort that these practices work. Interfering with market prices occasionally buys time, but rarely do policy makers seize the window of opportunity to enact structural reform.

Financial repression embeds the wrong incentives—obfuscation begets delay, and a robust recovery becomes unattainable."

Kevin Warsh, The Financial Repression Trap, 2011

This is also one definition of 'moral hazard.'   And the fingerprints of officialdom were all over the markets today, pushing favored prices higher, and other disfavored prices lower.

The Fed's Bullard came out with a laughable statement that the Fed might consider extending QE3, which is fairly meaningless given that we are nearly at the end of the taper.

But concerted buying in the futures, specifically in the SP, gave a little more 'oomph' to the jawboning, and the markets were able to turn it around, although weakly, but still well off the lows.

I enjoyed watching the closing ticks on the SP futures into the end of day trade, and the quick drop off in the time from when the cash market closed at 4 PM and the futures paused at 4:15.

This is going to be a long grind in the metals I'm afraid. It will take quite a while for the reckoning to come, but then it does it will happen much more quickly than most suspect.

 

That is the way these big changes always happen: slowly, then all in a rush.

There was nothing of interest in the Comex metals warehouses and delivery reports, except perhaps a drain of silver stored at Scotia Mocatta which has been quite heavy of late.  But the other warehouses are well supplied in Comex terms.

 

What is most objectionable perhaps is that the current crop of pampered princes are repeating the very errors that led to and prolonged the human misery of the Great Depression. 

 

While they feign ignorance, and when pressed on their failures in the case of Chairman Greenspan even hide behind the excuse of blind ideological incompetence, it is difficult to believe that we have learned nothing, and continue repeating folly in the name of reason.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Fed's Bullard and the PPT To the Rescue

Stocks were selling off this morning, but the Fed's Bullard jawboned them off the bottom with the speculation that the Fed might have to extend QE3.

That gave the signal to the market, although what he actually said especially about the price of oil was somewhat contradictory, and did not make all that much sense.

But the Plunge Protection Team, tapping any needed money from the Exchange Stabilization Fund, started buying the SP futures, and continued to do so at a couple of key points in the day, and particularly into the close, with some wild price swings. The SP futures dropped almost 10 into the close off that late day buying pump.

So what next. Really, it's out of the Fed's hands, since the weakness is global. While the Fed could do much more, in particular as a key regulator, I do not think that they will be able to do it, with the kind of craven, financially coddled pampered politicians that are in leadership positions in the West. London and Washington come to mind in particular.

Stocks are at key support here, and the powers that be would like to see a bottom made here quite badly. Tomorrow is key for no further sell off, to give investors doubts and time to think about it over the weekend.

So let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.