SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - It Rubs the Lotion On Its Skin

"It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again."

Buffalo Bill, The Silence of the Lambs

"Fed officials want to start raising the cost of your borrowing because they worry they’ve been giving you a free ride for too long with zero interest rates. We listen to Fed officials all of the time here at The Wall Street Journal, and they just can’t figure you out."

Jon Hilsenrath, The Wall Street Journal

I see where Ben Bernanke is worried that the US is losing economic control of the world, and is dismayed at the prospect of 'competing systems' with the rise of an alternative development bank and currency regime led by the BRICS.

And the Fed's friendly financial journalist mouthpiece Jon Hilsenrath asks why you are being so stubborn and stingy, and not out there spending.   Are you being awkward or something? 

 

You see, the Fed looks at the aggregate numbers, and from what they can tell from their models, people are saving just too darn much.

 

Perhaps if they paid more attention to median numbers and the broader public, they would see the skew in the distribution of income gains that have gained even greater momentum under their top down monetary regimes.  And then they would know that the one percent has plenty of excess income and capital gains from the bubble in paper assets.  And why Jamie Dimon just joined the ranks of the billionaires, while the median income continues to stagnate.

 

That is how good the financial kleptocrats are doing seven years after the financial crisis that they helped to cause with their serial frauds and blatant deceptions.  And of course, the serial felonies that they have committed but remain largely unreformed and unindicted since.

 

And as for the politicians, Billary gets a cool half million just for showing up, and talking.  Why don't the rest of you all get busy and do that?  Then you too can be rich.  I am sure you have a lot to say too.

 

Or you can write a column about things of which you seem to know very little, like Paul Krugman.  He is high-fiving the recovery caused by Fed money printing, that has not caused inflation.   He is so happy that his model predicted this!   Take a look at the velocity of money, Paul, and you will see why there is 'no inflation' if you look at the right government statistics. 

 

Perhaps it is because all the 'stimulus' went into inflating yet another financial asset bubble, and has trickled down to the servants of the privileged few, such as yourself perhaps, but not too many others.  There is inflation driven by the rentiers and their growing monopolies in healthcare and communications for example, but not much else.

 

So the moneyed class asks their servants to ask you, Why aren't you out there, recovering?   Are you trying to make the Fed and the Congress and the Mighty Reformer himself look bad?

 

But, alas, the rest of the American public, that broad base of consumption, is living pretty much hand to mouth, with little savings to cushion any sort of shock like a sickness or major car repair, and is facing very dire prospects for their non-retirement.  There are plenty of shit jobs for poverty wages if you live near a gated community of the wealthy, but that is about it.

 

Is it the credibility trap, that causes the pampered princes of New York and Washington to so totally misread the public, and the actual conditions they manage and forecast for their own country?   Is their blindness willful, an artifact of the credibility trap, or do they just live such sequestered, privileged lives that they have lost all contact with reality?

 

So get out there and buy, and work harder, and quit your whining you stupid sods.

 

Dangerous times, my friends, when the ruling class has lost even their meager sense of the public mood.  And yet they always seem to be so surprised, each time they steer the economy into the ditch.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - JPM Saves the Golden Day on the Comex

 

We are certainly in an 'active' month now for gold.

As is shown in the delivery report below, 251,000 ounces of gold have been 'claimed' or stopped month-to-date.

Good new though on the supply front.  someone changed the status of 177, 409 ounces of gold to registered, or 'for delivery' in the JPM warehouse, bringing the total available 547,860.  

 

And it was JPM that put up 246,800 ounces of gold contract up to be stopped in that delivery report out of its house account. 

 

There was intraday commentary on the gold being redeemed out of the Sprott Physical Gold Trust here.   I find the situation to be a bit puzzling, but interesting.  Yes there are 'explanations' but none good enough to quiet my curiosity as of yet.

And there was some very sad news about more dying Wall Street analysts and bankers, people with bright minds and good character, who are being destroyed by the culture of greed and anti-human management on Wall Street as discussed here.

 

This is a sickness that infects our society in many of our key institutions.  There is nothing 'cool' about it.   These people who run these institutions are beasts, attempting to escape the pain of being beasts by losing themselves in the acquisition of things, people and power, and then abusing them. 

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Willful Policy Errors

The factory orders number this morning showed an unexpected contraction.

The US is in a bond and stock bubble.

The Fed is at the heart of the policy errors, but the Congress and the President are not far behind.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

NAV Premiums of Precious Metal Trust and Funds - 15,230 Ounces Gold Redeemed From Sprott

Since the last time this was posted on May 29, about 15,230 ounces of gold were redeemed from the Sprott Physical Gold Trust.  That represents a bit less than half a tonne, and $18,276,000 at $1200 per ounce.

With the discount to NAV so slim at about 0.32%, or around $58,000, less fees and storage costs, there might be another reason to do something like this other than a pure arbitrage.  I can see someone doing it to take the gold as a long term physical holding, and to essentially avoid the Sprott management fee.  But again, why take it out of the ETF and not the Comex?  Is the Comex somehow more difficult than usual in obtaining physical delivery out of the system?

 

Yes, Sprott has an offer out to acquire some gold and silver assets at GTU and SBT, but an arbitrage on acquisition could be carried out in the conventional way buying and selling the units in size with leverage, not taking delivery of a relatively small amount of gold.

If one were to take that gold and move it into a Far Eastern market where physical commands a premium it might make more sense.

 

Before you ask, the Trust did not 'sell it' because their cash level has not increased commensurately with such an action.  And if an individual holder of the units wanted to raise cash for some purpose, the sale of the units themselves on an exchange is much more cost effective.  No it seems more likely that someone wanted gold bullion for some reason.

Funny way to take your delivery, isn't it?  Out of the ETFs.  Rather than buying futures contracts and standing for delivery on the Comex, for example, or in the so-called wholesale market in London.

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Who or What Is Killing the Bankers of Wall Street?

 

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.

A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules ... In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

Francis I

"He was a murderer from the beginning, not standing with the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of lies."

John 8:44

It feeds on whatever is fragile, vulnerable, whether it be the environment, the public peace, the weak, the marginalized, the poor, the disabled, or the hearts and minds of children. 

Peace and love are weakness;  conquest and plunder are our calling.

 

There are a number of possible explanations for this recent cluster of untimely deaths on Wall Street.

They may be suicides. The culture of pressure and high stakes on Wall Street is notorious. Young bankers can literally work themselves to death for managers and institutions who have little or no value or appreciation for normal human life, except for the most cynical of public masquerades.

It is a culture made for the emotionally stunted and sociopaths, for crippled human minds maintaining their existence with insensate obsessions and mindless acquisition.  It takes otherwise good people and slowly turns them inside out.

It has become anti-human.

 

The Banks have set money and personal power above all other values, whether they involve customers or employees or the public. The gods they worship are as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.

In addition to a physical death, which is tragic enough, there are also so many more moral and emotional deaths, the long, slow strangulation and eradication of all that makes us human, which I fear claims many more souls than we might appreciate or even imagine.  It hollows out people and public institutions, extending the reach of the great emptiness.

Wall Street has become the wellspring of a modern culture of death.   

 

Related:  Oliver Stone Says Wall St Culture Worse Now Than Under Gordon Gekko

               Goldman Sachs Analyst, age 22, found dead hours after complaining to father of '100 hour weeks'

               Wall Street Still Blames Everyone Else for the Crisis

Wall Street On Parade

Wall Street Banker Deaths Continue; Where Are the Serious Investigations?

By Pam and Russ Martens

2 June 2015

Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas J. Hughes, later described by his brother as 'one of the happiest people I know,' allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street in Manhattan. Before any serious investigation had taken place, the New York tabloids had dismissed the matter as a suicide. Hughes was an investment banker on Wall Street.

...for the first time in two centuries, iconic Wall Street banks are being serially charged with committing felonies. These banks have known for the same 18 months that bankers have been dying under suspicious circumstances that felony charges were coming. After a series of deferred prosecution agreements, two weeks ago on May 20, five global banks pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to rig markets. Two of those were U.S. banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, where recent unusual deaths have occurred.

In any serious investigation, law enforcement is required to look at any potential motive for foul play. But when it comes to serial deaths among Wall Street bankers and technology personnel, occurring repeatedly over the last 18 months in highly unusual circumstances, the deaths are almost instantaneously labeled non-suspicious by the police. But there are two glaring motives for foul-play in almost all of these deaths involving Wall Street or global banks...

This is a brief excerpt. Read the rest of the article here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Active Month and Non-Farm Payroll Shenanigans

There is little risk of an actual default on the Comex in the precious metals. I just wanted to make this clear.  If any default does come, it will be from outside the system in.

Although I emphasize the 'deliverable' component of the warehouses in many of my discussions, it is good to remember that there is quite a bit of gold kicking around the warehouses that *could* be delivered easily enough to fulfill any unusual demand.

The missing ingredient is a 'higher price.' A higher price will shake that additional supply loose.

And we must recall that The Bucket Shop does not do much with the gold they do have, except play liar's poker with it, and mostly shove it around the playing table.

But the fact remains that Open Interest for this active month of June we have just entered is rather high, relative to the amount of gold that is readily deliverable at these prices.

So playing some games like squashing any rallies, or rallying the price up to knock it down, is not a bad play with shaking some of the weaker hands amongst the gold longs loose of their positions. 

 

Letting a rally gain some traction and break out at this point is a dangerous situation for those who are tasked with managing gold's paper price.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.