No Updates Tonight

Making preparations.

See you next week.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Gold vs Annual World GDP

This chart is from Nick Laird at goldchartsrus.com.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - No Substance

"The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them.”

George Carlin

There were no noteworthy deliveries of gold or silver on the Comex yesterday.

That is one thing that it has in common with the Fed's economic policy, and the two leading presidential candidates come to think of it:  a lack of substance.

There will be a stock option expiration tomorrow and a June gold option expiration on the Comex next week.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Appearance Vs. Reality

Stock option expiration tomorrow.

Just as we had rebounding stocks today, there may be more shenanigans abounding tomorrow.

There is no sustainable economic recovery.

Have a pleasant evening.

Some Charts at 2:45 PM - Noisy Fed

The big tickle today was the Fed minutes release at 2 PM.

Here is Confounded Interest's take on the minutes..

The minutes caused the markets to rethink their stance on interest rates after the very poor 1Q GDP number, and the weak employment numbers.

The Fed seems inclined to seriously consider raising rates by 25 bp at their June meeting.

This caused stocks to drop, the dollar to rally, and gold and silver to decline.

This is the Fed making noise for the most part.

I have places that I need to be and will most likely not post again today.

Have a pleasant evening.

Thomas Frank: What Happened To the 'Party of the People'

"Inequality is a euphemism, a kind of shorthand, for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious, year on year, for the last three decades.  And also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious in that same time.

This word inequality. It's visible in the ever rising costs of healthcare and college, in the coronation of Wall Street, and the slow blighting of wherever it is that you happen to live. And you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick, or you read about the lobbying industry that drives Washington DC, or the new political requirement, the new constitutional requirement that every presidential candidate has to be a billionaire's favorite, or a billionaire themselves.

Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street from you loses his house. Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer, or the hop content of a beer, while other people will never believe in anything again."

Thomas Frank

Change is coming. It must come, because the status quo is unsustainable, and has been so for some time.

How many times will our 'very serious people' with access to the public information channels continue to miss the obvious dissonance of the common reality from the official story that they tell each other about everything from the economy to politics?

At the root of this inequality, hidden as it is in the fog of fine sounding theories and economic models, is simple injustice.

The longer that change is delayed, the longer that the professional class continues to insulate itself, looking down on the broader public with smug contempt from privileged perches, blinding themselves with hypocritical arguments that deny what is happening all around them, the more disruptive that change will finally be.

And, as always, 'no one,' or at least no one who matters in their world, will have ever been able to see it coming.   Because by definition no one who is an insider can ever publicly admit that the insiders have blown it completely, once again.

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.  But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."

John Kenneth Galbraith

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Opera Buffa

Although there will be a stock option expiry on this Friday, which might call for some shenanigans in the mining stocks, the next big Comex precious metals expiration will be next Wednesday the 25th.

This is for the gold June contract which could be significant.

HSBC, also known as the custodian for GLD, delivered 101,200 ounces of gold yesterday from their house account.  The gold was taken up by the house accounts at Nova Scotia and JPM.

Nothing much happened with silver.

And a chunk of gold was moved, at least on the books, in the warehouses from HSBC to JPM as well.

Both the precious metals and equities are going to break up or down sometime in the next seven to ten days.   At least this seems to be the case judging by the 'tension on the tape.'

Have a pleasant evening.