SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Complacency with a Side of Bravado

Someone reminded me that VIX stayed very low throughout the equity bubble from 2004 through 2007.

So, we'll see if Ben and the financiers are blowing another equity bubble, or not.

I tend to think not, but I have found it dangerous to underestimate the brazen venality of the pampered princes.

After hours NFLX is soaring, but the big kahuna AAPL is getting trounced.

PBS Frontline: The Untouchables

I can hardly wait for the specials about the silver market when that time comes.

The corruption will continue until the people of the Western world hold their politicians accountable, and are not so easily distracted by The Big Show, and emotional bread and circuses.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Silver Outperforming YTD - The System Is Fine, People Are the Problem

As you know, the old Wall St. saying is that 'so goes January, there goes the rest of the year' or words to that effect.

The last chart shows that assets are having a very nice start. Silver is leading they way with stocks not far behind. Gold is still recovering from its end of year smash, which lasted into the first week in January. I suspect that if things hold together it will do well.

VIX is very low and complacency about the economic picture is the word for the day.

The nation would be doing great, with corporations earnings good and financial assets doing fine, if it were not for all these people with their problems like underemployment, unemployment, outrageous healthcare costs,  unpayable student loans,  lax enforcement against usury and fraud, inconvenient disabilities, limited opportunities, neglected veterans, natural disasters, and stagnant median incomes in the face of steadily rising costs and record inequality.

Benny and the financial engineers at the Fed must find this human element very annoying.  After all, their specialists tell them that everything is fine. There must be something wrong with the people.

It reminds me of when I was a boy programmer, and the systems engineers would complain that they had finally gotten a big IBM mainframe operating at peak efficiency, with all the I/O and subsystems working fine. But if only they could keep the users off the system.  They can be very disruptive and annoying.

Surely Ben and the Treasury, not to mention the Congress, must realize that the people are their customers,  and the most important stakeholders without whom the system would look rather silly, and not Wall Street and the banks, and the upper crust of the financialized economy, right?

As Phil Gramm said in 2008, there are no real problems and no recession.  Rather, the US is just 'a nation of whiners.'     Well, maybe not everybody, just Mitt's infamous 47%. 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Wanna Take You Higher

The equity market continued to power higher on record low VIX to the point of complacency as earnings reports came in well after the bell.

Existing housing sales were a bit sluggish this morning.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Interesting that Sprott Silver has a lower premium than Sprott Gold.

I am struggling to relate this to any market fundamentals.

Perhaps it is the underwriters still digesting their take from the latest large shelf offering.

Inaugural Address: Some Quick Reflections, and What Obama Did Not Say

Like many others I listened to President Obama's second Inaugural Address today.

There were of some higher moments, broader themes, and an emphasis on the positive.  I struggled to find 'the memorable phrase' that would be repeated and quoted in the particular.   I have one or two candidates.

Perhaps time will sift one out of this speech, but over all this struck me as an address from a manager like a CEO, and not a political leader.  But that does sound a bit petty.  Not every Presidential inaugural address is memorable.

"We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.  For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. 

We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other - through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security - these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.  We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.  Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries - we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure - our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared."

There can be no denying that this speech was a strong defense of the progressive social agenda.

I thought that it was remarkable for some of the things it did not say.

The word 'reform' was mentioned only once, in reference to the need to 'reform our schools.'

The words 'banks, regulation, finance, financial, property, money, and fraud' were never mentioned.

The word 'crisis' was mentioned only once, in the phrase 'extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad.' Although there was a broader reference to 'crises' and an assertion of 'an economic recovery.'

"This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it - so long as we seize it together."

Perhaps that last sentence will be 'the memorable phrase.' But it is a bit thin.

President Obama laid out an aggressive social agenda.  It is the 'hard choices that we must make' that will determine history's view of his Presidency.  He outlines some higher principles in this speech, but the proof will be in action, and will put substance into the words.

Martin Luther King: I Have Been to the Moutaintop

Martin Luther King gave this speech on 3 April 1968 at the Church of God in Christ, in Memphis, Tennessee. The last part of this speech in particular seems eerily prophetic.

He was assassinated the next day on 4 April 1968.

Robert F. Kennedy On the Death of Martin Luther King, And His Own Last Words

This talk was given at the City Club of Cleveland, Ohio on April 5, 1968, the day after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Two months later Robert F. Kennedy himself was assassinated on June 6, 1968.