Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Some Group Is Sitting On These Markets

"Gold is looking like the dog that just did not bark -- but not uniquely so. Most safe-haven assets are looking distinctly lackluster, including the VIX index. Either 5,000 years of safe-haven buying has just become bunk, or there is a desire to portray what is evidently a financial and economic crisis as nothing to be concerned about."

Ross Norman, Sharps Pixley


“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

At least in my judgement, the precious metal markets are being consistently rigged.

I believe the reason that they are being rigged is that the financiers have convinced the political class that this is a necessary action in order to prevent a panic, a run on the dollar and the bonds, and a seepage of critical funds into an unproductive investment as compared to equities for example.

We are just defending what is ours, right? And what is ours is the global dollar hegemony.

This is really just another excuse for looting, picking both the global public pockets and the Treasury's.

This sort of thing seems to happen periodically, at least once per generation, and the system generally has to get washed out badly, and then reform may come. You can see a clear trend back to the early Reagan years for this particular dalliance with the overreach and madness of the moneyed interests.

Protracted market rigging tend to distort supply profoundly. And there should be no doubt that the distortions and excesses of our current round of economic quackery have caused an historic imbalance of wealth and power.  And the rigging of the gold and silver markets have badly affected the ability of supply to meet demand.

Oh well. Interesting times.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Taking Profits, Holding More Cash

 

As I mentioned the other day, this is now the kind of market where it makes sense to take profits if you have them, and hold more cash until the mispriced risks resolve themselves.  I am holding mostly cash and precious metals for myself, and am looking carefully at a couple equity plays along the lines of the precious metals, but not with any particular conviction.  This market crisis needs to resolve.

 

The biggest drivers of global risk are the collapsing China asset bubble and the inherently unstable governance of the Eurozone, manifesting as it is now in Greece, and all the uncertainty that this brings.

 

But Spain, Portugal and Italy face similar challenges.   German hubris is destroying the Eurozone which itself is not a particularly durable model of organization economically and politically. 

 

One of most difficult issues is the unreliability of the media and the political and economic class to tell the truth, particularly as the quadrennial power struggle called the Presidential elections approaches.   Spin and deception are flying hot and heavy.   And unfortunately most of the captains and crew of the ship are busy packing goods into their personal lifeboats.

 

Speaking of unsustainable, take a look at the spike in new unemployment claims and the high continuing claims number in the US economic data.   And the Fed is still biased towards raising rates, and continuing to pump the top down stimulus into a broken system.  Madness.

 

As for the Congress and the Administration, politically the US has not been this badly led for quite some time, and I vividly remember the Nixon years.  

 

So, let us protect ourselves, both financially and spiritually, with an eye towards the things that really matter.  This is really all one can do for now.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Taibbi: Eric Holder, Wall Street's Double Agent

"Holder doubtless seriously believed at first that in a time of financial crisis, he was doing the right thing in constructing new forms of justice for banks, where nobody but the shareholders actually had to pay for crime. You've heard of victimless crimes; Holder created the victimless punishment.

But in the end, it was pretty convenient, wasn't it, that "the right thing" also happened to be the strategy that preserved Democratic Party relationships with big-dollar donors, kept the client base at Holder's old firm nice and fat, made the influential rich immeasurably richer and allowed Eric Holder himself to crash-land into a giant pile of money upon resignation.

What a coincidence! In any civilized country, it'd be a scandal. In America, though, he's just another guy selling whatever he can to get by. It was just too bad that what Holder had to sell was the criminal justice system."

Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes In From the Cold

 

Holder was no rogue political appointee.  He was very much in the mainstream of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, founded by the Clintons.  Obama did nothing to reform it and added Big Healthcare and Big Pharma into the corporatist money mix.

 

And so these reformers, throwing their constituency under the bus, have become the facilitators of the deep capture of our regulatory and political system in a bipartisan effort to get rich.

 

This is not to say that these are malevolently evil people by nature.  Although a few are. Most are just people, being carried along by an unsustainable tide of cynicism and personal greed that has imprinted itself on the minds of our privileged elites.  

 

They choose to commit criminal acts through a wonderful power of rationalization, in a downward spiral of moral decline.   One day they wake up and see the monstrous things they may have done, not in one grand moment in the dramatic rejection of the good, but in a thousand small choices and personal exceptions of self-indulgence. 

 

The worldview of the self-appointed elite is that now that I have gone to the right schools, said the right words, protected the right people, taken the right jobs and done the right things, now I get to cash in and get in filthy rich on easy money and the looting of the real economy.  I am finally gettin' paid.  This perverse mindset, which used to be a denizen of rural enclaves and big city bosses is becoming pervasive in Washington and New York.

 

It has all the hallmarks of the kind of dual class system that is specifically prohibited by the framers of the Bill of Rights.  But who will watch the watchers when 'everyone is doing it.'

 

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

 

COMEX Silver 'Owners Per Ounce' and the Great JPM Silver Hoard

The 'owners per ounce' for silver is trending a bit higher, thanks to the enormous open interest.

 

The most impressive hoard accumulated in recent times is the silver bullion held in the JP Morgan warehouse for 'someone.'

CNT is the big dealer in silver, using the COMEX warehouses to stage is silver wholesale business to the US government mint among others. 

 

Look at the mass of registered (deliverable) silver which they hold.  They are almost an anomaly in the paper markets of New York.  And it is CNT that is boosting the deliverable silver that keeps the 'owners per ounce' down in the face of the increasing open interest.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Fearful Odds

WESTMORELAND

Of fighting men they have full three score thousand.

EXETER

There's five to one; besides, they all are fresh.

SALISBURY

God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4 Sc 3

As I am sure you have heard the NY Stock Exchange was closed for technical problems from 11:32 AM to 3:10 PM today.  There was a problem with their 'FIX' system.  This was localized to the NYSE, but there were failures also at the Wall Street Journal site and at popular blog spot Zerohedge.

 

As you know there are about 11 stock exchanges here in the US now.   And they are wrapped within a web of conscious complexity sparked by high frequency trading, which is an abuse of honest markets.

Over 70+% of the stocks on the Shanghai Composite have halted trading for a more fundamental reason: no buyers, at least not at these lofty prices.

Gold and silver continues to be capped.

At this point it seems to my taste that cash, gold, and silver are the preferred investments. But that is just my opinion and I could be wrong.

I would not listen for one minute to stock touts and analysts at this point. They are accomplished liars, but liars nonetheless.

It is quite entertaining to traffic in rumours and fears, and to drink deeply of the sick cup of despair. But this is not for us.

 

Security is a practical issue of course.  But the only real tragedy is to trade our souls for the illusion of it.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Brood of Vipers, Farcical Fed

 

If you have stock gains, now might be a good time to consider raising some cash on any rallies, and sitting on it for a while, until this global equities situation sorts itself out.

 

As you can see below, stocks are finding a footing near the lower bound of the 'trading range' I suggested that might try to establish.   If they slip this range, barring intervention from the Fed and the Exchange Stabilization Fund, it could be a rough ride here, following China and Europe.

 

China *might* be finding a footing here.  I am watching the Shanhai composite.  This is not unknown in the pattern by which a bubble breaks.  And have no doubt, China stocks were in a bubble.

 

I have heard that approximately 70+% of China stocks are no longer trading, having been halted to stem their losses.  I am also seeing the usual abuses of any bubble, wherein people have leveraged up, pledging hypothecated real estate to buy stocks, and companies using their own stocks to secure loans.  

 

The US kicks off earnings season tonight with Alcoa.  I am told that the rules prohibit US companies from buying their own stocks during the earnings quiet period.  If this is so, then this will remove one of the bigger bullish factors from this distorted market.

 

The Fed minutes released this afternoon were 'hawkish.'   As if.  

 

The Fed wants to raise rates off zero by about 50 bp just for their own purposes.  They stopped caring about the real economy quite some time ago.  They make noises to the contrary, but at the end of the day they are the servants and creatures of the Banks first, and the government second.  And the devil take the rest.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

NYSE Suspends All Stock Trading... Reopens at 3:10 PM EDT

 

NYSE suspends trading on all issues because of 'technical issues' according to Bloomberg as of 11:32 AM EDT.

All open orders have been cancelled.

Other exchanges remain open, such as Nasdaq and BATS, and stocks continue to trade there.  NYSE ARCA and options are still open for trading.

There are eleven stock exchanges in the US.

It is not yet known whether the stock market indices which obtain data from the NYSE are being calculated correctly.

Federal officials have found no evidence of a cyber attack. 

NYSE has disclosed 'gateway connectivity' issues at the open.  The problem may be centered around the FIX (Financial Information Exchange) software engine.

Bloomberg reports that the Wall Street Journal website is also down.

More news as it becomes available will be listed here.