SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Although it was heavily promoted as a 'goldilocks' jobs report by some of the financial infomercial channels, today's Non-Farm Payrolls Report showed the weakness in the underpinnings and the core of the economy.

I really do not have anything good to say about this.  So I won't say anything,

The US bond markets will be closed on Monday for Columbus Day, but the equity market will be open.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Thomas Frank: How the Democratic Party Betrayed and Abandoned the Middle Class

"The Democratic Party has turned its back on working people and now pursues policies that actually increase inequality.

The first piece of evidence is what’s happened since the financial crisis. This is the great story of our time. Inequality has actually gotten worse since then, which is a remarkable thing. This is under a Democratic president who we were assured (or warned) was the most liberal or radical president we would ever see. Yet inequality has gotten worse, and the gains since the financial crisis, since the recovery began, have gone entirely to the top 10 percent of the income distribution.

This is not only because of those 'evil Republicans,' but because Obama played it the way he wanted to. Even when he had a majority in both houses of Congress and could choose whoever he wanted to be in his administration, he consistently made policies that favored the top 10 percent over everybody else. He helped out Wall Street in an enormous way when they were entirely at his mercy.

He could have done anything he wanted with them, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt did in the ’30s. But he chose not to.

Why is that?


Thomas Frank

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - A Financial System Based On Fraud

"Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods?"

Jack London, The Iron Heel

Gold was pressed down to support at 1250 this morning.

This is a support level that goes back to the day before the Brexit announcement.

Gold and silver both bounced back a bit from the lows of the day. But the slamming of the metals has been particularly relentless ahead of this NFP.

The dollar rallied strongly today on European weakness and the notion that the Fed will be increasing rates aggressively in response to a stronger economy.

You know what I think about this, and I still do. I think they will do a 'one and done' probably in December, and that there is no sustainable recovery except that which is created by smoke and mirrors.

There was intraday commentary from Thomas Frank about the Presidential election and the hypocrisy of our political class here.

Jim Rickards is floating the theory that the Western banks are conspiring to drive down the price of gold to allow China to 'catch up' to their gold reserves levels before the big reveal of a new global currency regime and gold at much higher prices.

I would not give this a lot of credit, even though Jim is a very smart guy, unless he has insider knowledge that lends credibility to this. And if he does, he would be a fool to be openly selling the information.

So I will stick with the simpler theory that gold is under steady accumulation by a lot of strong hands, including the central banks as a group from around 2006, and that the available supply of unemcumbered gold is greatly strained by this buying.

The price ascent has been fought every step of the way by central bank leasing of gold reserves to bullion banks who use it to smack the price down for their own profits. Silver had been in a somewhat similar position except the central banks have no stores of it to lease.

And now we are nearing the denouement.

Why would they do this? Because they know that fiat currencies are a confidence game, where the valuation must be sustained against abuses by force or fraud. And it should be fairly obvious that the Banks have been abusing the currency like a rented mule for their own benefits.

So let's see what happens tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Winning

Stocks tried to rally today on expectations of more winning.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.

Markets seem to be at a bit of a crossroads here.

Have a pleasant evening.

Thomas Frank on the Irony of This Presidential Election

“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.”

Here is an interesting take on the election, trade policies, economic policy issues, political hypocrisy, and the usual suspects from Thomas Frank.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that the improbable Donald Trump is a 'molotov cocktail' that a fairly large segment of the voting public is throwing at a system they view as non-responsive and corrupt, on both sides of the aisle.

Nothing else explains the Sanders-Trump impulse for outsiders and genuine change.

Unfortunately for Sanders' supporters, the Democratic machine was better at suppressing dissent with the complicity of the establishment 'for the good of the system' that serves their narrow interests so well.

The people are clearly demanding change, meaningful reform, justice, and equal enforcement of the laws.

This year the Democrat's allure has changed from hope to fear.

And the established elite don't seem to really care, really be aware of the things happening around them.  They are too busy winning.

Fearful people are a dangerous, two-edged sword— especially when they lose hope.

Some of Clinton's pledges sound great. Until you remember who's president.
Thomas Frank

...Where this contradiction gets particularly toxic is on the issue of trade. This is the locomotive of dissatisfaction that Trump means to ride into the White House, and Clinton has tried desperately to neutralize the issue by announcing that she, too, opposes the hated TPP and that she, too, deplores the unfortunate effects certain trade deals have had. And then you open the newspaper and find that her presidential patron and protector, Barack Obama, is still pushing the TPP in order to secure his legacy.

The reform impulse just keeps short-circuiting every time the Democrats try to switch it on. They talk about healthcare – and immediately have to say things like this about Obamacare: 'It’s a heck of a lot better than starting from scratch.' They talk about getting college tuition under control – and everyone remembers that the problem is decades old and that the Dems have done virtually nothing about it all those years. What was without a doubt the worst moment of them all came at the Democratic convention back in July, when Senator Elizabeth Warren pronounced on the current state of middle America as follows:

Look around. Americans bust their tails, some working two or three jobs, but wages stay flat. Meanwhile, the basic costs of making it from month to month keep going up. Housing, healthcare, child care – costs are out of sight. Young people are getting crushed by student loans. Working people are in debt. Seniors can’t stretch a social security check to cover the basics.

It was a powerful indictment of what Warren called a 'rigged' system – except for one thing: that system is presided over by Barack Obama, a man that same Democratic convention was determined to apotheosize as one of the greatest politicians of all times..."

Read the entire article by Thomas Frank at The Guardian.

The London Gold Float Estimates Updated

Tracking the gold held in London: An update on ETF and BoE holdings

"Just over a year ago, gold researchers Nick Laird, Bron Suchecki, Koos Jansen and myself took a shot at estimating how much physical gold was accounted for in London within the gold-backed ETFs and under Bank of England custody. The results of that exercise are highlighted in September 2015 articles “How many Good Delivery gold bars are in all the London Vaults?….including the Bank of England vaults”, and “Central Bank Gold at the Bank of England”, and also on Nick Laird’s website in a post titled “The London Float” which contains some very impressive charts that visualize the data. Some of the latest updated versions of these charts from www.goldchartsrus.com are featured below.

Given that its now just over a year since that last set of calculations, it made sense at this point to update the data so as to grasp how many Good Delivery golds bars held in London is spoken for in terms of ownership, versus how much may be unaccounted for. Estimating gold held in London vaults is by definition a tricky exercise, since it must rely on whatever data and statements are made available in what is a notoriously secret market, and there will usually be timing mismatches between the various data points. However, using a combination of published sources from the Bank of England, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the Exchange Traded Fund websites, and UK gold import/export data, it is possible to produce some factual numbers."

Read the entire update by Ronan Manly here.

You should also have a look at The London Gold Float.