NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Enthusiasm seems somewhat subdued based on the negative premiums of these trusts and funds.

Remembering the 47th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's Last Public Words

"We ask for peace and freedom for the many men and women subject to old and new forms of enslavement on the part of criminal individuals and groups. Peace and liberty for the victims of drug dealers, who are often allied with the powers who ought to defend peace and harmony in the human family. And we ask peace for this world subjected to arms dealers.

May the marginalized, the imprisoned, the poor and the migrants who are so often rejected, maltreated and discarded, the sick and the suffering, children, especially those who are victims of violence; all who today are in mourning, and all men and women of goodwill, hear the consoling voice of the Lord Jesus: "Peace to you! Fear not, for I am risen and I shall always be with you."

Francis I, Urbi et Orbi, 2015

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over;  the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

Søren Kierkegaard

Martin Luther King gave this speech on 3 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

 

On 4 April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and abuse those whom God has sent as messengers to you.

How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you would not let me.

As you willed, your house is now yours— but is made desolate.’”

Chart Updates of the Stock Futures For the Day

'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Matt 25:45

“Unless the world learns the lessons these pictures teach, night will fall.  But, by God’s grace, we who live will learn.”

Richard Crossman, Night Will Fall, 2014

The Jobs Number was very disappointing, but will most likely be attributed to the weather.

Stocks futures had sold off on light volumes.

Regular trading and markets are closed for Good Friday.

I will see you on Sunday evening.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Sitting On Top Of the World

"They were always complaining then, as they are always complaining now, that the poor do not understand political economy. But what was the political economy that they did not understand? It was not only paradox, but a piece of mysticism, almost like the mysteries of religion.

It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness."

G. K. Chesterton

"Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want.

But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule:  they don’t criticize other insiders."

Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance

 

Gold and silver held their levels today despite some early weakness. 

 

Looking at the delivery report for gold in this active month of April, it was interesting to see a number of contracts let by customers, and for these to be stopped at $1208 by the house accounts at  HSBC and JP Morgan. 

 

Let's see how this month progresses.  It seems now that gold is more active and silver less so, a distinct change from month.

 

Speaking of things that never seem to change, tomorrow we will see the Non-Farm Payrolls report for March.  It would not be unusual to see it accompanied by the usual shenanigans, that are often a favored choice for the insiders and plutocrats. 

 

A favorite trick of perception management is to put out a good number, and revise it lower, even sharply so, in the next couple of months, thereby rolling over the material obtained to the more current month, whether it be jobs, or factory orders, or whatever is on display.  We saw an example of this today with the Factory Orders.

 

They do it so regularly that is only remarkable that the mainstream commentators seem to fall for it every time.   Thereby we obtain a rolling enthusiasm of improvement, while in the midst of a secular stagnation.

 

Yes there are certainly more jobs.  We are coming off a calamitous decline in economic activity brought on by an asset bubble founded in regulatory capture and widespread financial fraud.  

 

Unfortunately all the abundant monetary stimulus that has flowed from the Fed's Balance Sheet into the financial economy to create these 'jobs' is finding it almost impossible to reach sustainability through a revival in aggregate demand.  Instead, it is being used to prop up the balance sheets of the zombie Banks. 

 

This is shown in the unadorned GDP numbers year over year and the flagging velocity of money.  Another enormous headwind is globalization that is creating unmanageable social and financial units, and the rise of corporate monopolies that span national borders.

 

The US may already have slipped into recession.  There will most likely be no alarm raised, because the looting of the ship into the first class lifeboats continues, and it is easier if the lower decks remain unaware of the risk.

 

The rigging of the gold and silver markets is founded in this desire to manage perception.  Oh, it is based on a more 'noble' desire to inspire confidence and not make people panic. 

 

But at the same time, it has become an enduring illusion, while the disparities in economic health become increasingly pronounced.  

 

And so the looting by the nationless few continues, and justice is led down a hallway and strangled, draped in the national colors, to the sound of patriotic tunes.  Such are times of currency war. 

 

The self-serving policy errors of the Federal Reserve Bank are matched only by the horrendously destructive policy errors in political judgement by a Congress and an Executive that has been captured by the moneyed interests.

 

Who will dare even tell the truth, much less act on it, when the surrender of the truth for 'the story' is one's passport to the more favored classes, the insiders, with all that this implies in terms of comfort and security?  The only resignation is to accept a permanent exile, to be without influence, without a voice, ignored.

 

One must go along to get along, to pay one's dues, extend and pretend, and never, ever, speak ill of the insiders and their schemes.   Freedom, who needs it, when you can have security, comfort, and prestige.

So here we are, at peak illusion, just sitting on top of the world.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Natural Born Killers

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness.

What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

There are no facts, only interpretations."

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Lady Yellen wishes to have the Fed study inequality, so that they can understand the causes of it.

This is a euphemism for getting ahead of the subject, and taking an uncomfortable set of facts and dragging them back into the fog of economic obfuscation and the credibility trap.

The best way to manage a problem you caused is to offer to fix it. You have to control the solutions, and even better, the very definition of the problems.

We will have the Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow. I will expand a bit more on this in the gold and silver commentary, but I would not be surprised to see the usual Washington two-step, where they revise past months lower to make the headline look better, essentially 'rolling' jobs forward from the past. No one really cares about the past.

And when things get bad enough, you can go back years and revise the numbers, essentially wiping the board clean and setting the numbers up as you like.

There is no sustainable recovery, and the US is most likely already fallen back into recession. But this is not the time to let that little fact be known.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Q1 GDP and Our Humanity at the Zero Bound

Gold had quite a 'pop' during the early trade which looked very much like a classic 'flight to safety.' 

 

The cause of the rally was not clear, but it looked like a bad case of economic data jitters and geopolitical heebie jeebies.  Was it Iran or Greece, or both?

 

The emphasis was very much on gold with the gold/silver ratio soaring to 71.  That made me want to pick up just a little silver, but not much ahead of the usual nonsense at the end of the week. 

 

Let's see if the metals can make a decent showing of holding these levels for the next week before our enthusiasm burns brightly.

 

There was intraday commentary on the metals here.

 

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.   They may move the metals without regard to their validity or real significance.

 

There was negligible activity in the bucket shop's warehouses.

 

Tony Sanders asks how the Fed could consider raising rates with GDP threatening to contract in Q1.

Yep, the latest Atlanta Fed estimate of Q1 GDP is now.... wait for it.... zero.  As in one bip from contraction.

 

I know that is a rhetorical question, because Tony is well schooled in the real world, smarter than the average hare-brained economist staring uncritically at their dopey models.

 

Has something changed?  Does the Fed care about the real economy now, at long last?

Why did they blow asset bubbles leading to financial crises three times in the past twenty years?  It's not like they care about what happens to the public or anything like that.  They are all about the Banks, and let the devil take the middle class.

 

WWJD - What Will Jamie Demand?

 

The economy probably did show a real negative GDP in Q1, as if they would ever dare to print it in a leading number except with a screaming warning label of 'The Weather Did It.'  More likely we will see it in some little noted future revision when no one cares anymore.

 

Global warming is one serious problem, of course, but the global bullshit storms emanating from the world's financial centers are becoming even more deeply discouraging.

 

Have a pleasant evening.