Munk Debate On State Surveillance: Hayden-Dershowitz vs. Ohanian-Greenwald

Alan Dershowitz and Michael Hayden versus Alexis Ohanian and Glenn Greenwald, with a video appearance by Edward Snowden.

The actual debate starts around minute 27 on the video. You may use your cursor to click ahead to it.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - More of the Same

If not for the manipulative efforts, there appears to be little legitimate trading volume left to the Comex metals.

The usual games overnight, and a bounce back to the magic 1300 level for gold.

The Jobs Report sucked out loud, despite the 'better than expected' headline jobs number which in my estimation was largely a contrivance, based on a skew in the seasonality and a rather large Birth-Death model addition. 

The unemployment percentage is largely irrelevant now, given all the tinkering they have done with the long term unemployed who are no longer counted among job-seekers.   The hourly wage remains stagnant, not keeping pace with prices.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, But Alas, Few Wages

Job growth continues at its aenemic pace despite the better than expected headline monthly number, which was largely due to a seasonality adjustment and an outsized Birth-Death model addition.

Wage growth was stagnant, and labor force participation continues to drop.

There is a pig under all that lipstick and mascara, and its name is insatiable greed and the folly of selfishness.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow

"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it...

God alone knows the day and the hour when that will at length be, which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto, not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion."

John Henry Newman

As Newman said so well, every century is like every other, but seems to be the worst to those who live in it. I had a little chuckle the other day when I was reading essentially the same sentiment from Augustine of Hippo, who was writing about the beginning of the fifth century.

I had the opportunity some years ago to visit Newman's personal living quarters, and look through his amazing private library, at The Oratory on Hagley Road in Birmingham, England. His sense of history is profound.  And it was moving to sit at his very desk, to see some of his personal notes still there, his glasses, and to see the little bedroom and private chapel off his study where the notes and pictures of those for whom he prayed are still there on the wall.

I always get a thrill when I see the actual places and things of historical figures, because it reminds one that they were people just like us, with our own weaknesses and strengths, anxieties and trials, and our own hopes and misgivings.

Nothing really happened in the metals today, except for some withdrawals shown in the Comex gold warehouses, and some brave souls standing for 'delivery' in May.

Tomorrow is non-Farm Payrolls, and if the wiseguys have anything more to say, that is probably when they will say it.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Treading Water Ahead of Non-Farm Payrolls

The new unemployment claims came in much higher than expected, but punters managed to hold their own with the Dow at new record highs.  

But only tourists watch the price weighted DJIA.

Tomorrow is the non-farm payrolls report.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Follow the Money: The Failure of Corporately Owned Journalism in a Crony Capitalist System

"I have been told by multiple members of the media that JP Morgan Chase has called them and stated that if their media outlet has me on television again, that JP Morgan Chase will pull their advertising from the offending network."

James Koutoulas, Founder of Commodity Customer Coalition and advocate for victims of MF Global

"The crisis blew into public view last November when The New York Times, followed by the Financial Times and others, reported that a big, new enterprise project from Bloomberg, said to have documented an extensive web of corrupt ties between one of China’s wealthiest businessmen and elite politicians, had been spiked at an unusually late stage in the editing process.

The reported spike came after an extensively footnoted version of the story had been fact-checked and pored over by company lawyers, and after members of the reporting team had been praised internally for yet more stellar work. The Times reported that Winkler, in a conference call with reporters, defended the decision not to publish the story by likening the situation to the need for self-censorship by foreign bureaus in Nazi Germany to preserve their ability to continue reporting there.

That reasoning was controversial enough, but a Bloomberg executive would later let slip a motive that was even more problematic...The defining moment, however, the one that has dealt the deepest shock to Bloomberg and may affect it for years, was a widely reported speech by the company’s chairman, Peter T. Grauer, who in March said, in effect, that Bloomberg had gotten carried away with its investigative journalism in China to the detriment of its true vocation: selling computerized terminals that provide financial information.

“We have about 50 journalists in the market, primarily writing stories about the local business and economic environment,” Grauer said in answer to a questioner after a speech at the Asia Society in Hong Kong. “You’re all aware that every once in a while we wander a little bit away from that and write stories that we probably may have kind of rethought—should have rethought.”

Howard W. French, Bloomberg's Folly, Columbia Journalism Review, May 1, 2014

Read the entire story here.

India Gold Premiums 20% With Effective Price of $1,554

The premium includes a 10% gold import duty being imposed by the government, which is twice what it had been in 2012.

Gold demand in India remains strong despite the efforts of the sahibs to dampen access to imports to please the Western banking cartel at the expense of their own people. 

When market forces are restrained by artificial pricing and market gaming for long periods of time the resolution of the divergence between supply and demand can be impressively 'energetic.'

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Light Hit in the After Hours On an FOMC Day

"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice, that does not live by secrecy."

Joseph Pulitzer


"The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States...It is one of the serious evils of our present system of banking that it enables one class of society, and that by no means a numerous one, by its control over the currency, to act injuriously upon the interests of all the others and to exercise more than its just proportion of influence in political affairs. The agricultural, the mechanical, and the laboring classes have little or no share in the direction of the great moneyed corporations."

Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address

The price of gold and silver were hit in the after hours taking gold down a bit from largely unchanged.

I have included a chart below that shows the two moving averages of 100 and 200 days, so you can see how 'channeled' gold has become just under 1300.

So we say goodby to April delivery. The big contract now is June.

Have a pleasant evening.