Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Abide

Gold and silver had the usual hit today, that was almost perfunctory in its routineness.  That did not make it any less obvious. I am sure that they can rattle off a hundred rationales to support their actions for the good of others. That they happen to benefit is merely incidental.

There is quiet panic in the banks and the boardrooms, make no mistake of that.  Russia has them perplexed.  China has them confused.  The rest of the world holds them in contempt.  Most with eyes open can see their falsehoods. 

Their fabrications grow increasingly transparent.  Force is extended to make up for the weakness of the fraud.  Their empire of deceits are pervasive and fearsome in their shamelessness. 

How and when this will end, no one can say.

For now we must be waitful and watchful.

'At this moment we are the anvil, rather than the hammer.'

There was intraday commentary that may be worth reading.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Age of the Thing

"Greetings citizens.
We are living in the age,
in which the pursuit of all values
other than
money, success, fame, glamour
have either been discredited or destroyed.

money, success, fame, glamour,
for we are living in the age of the thing.

money, success, fame, glamour..."

Macaulay Culkin et al., Party Monster


"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.

The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps.

The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small."

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin

The banality of evil is alive and well in our culture of death, that measures everything in dollars, and values nothing that is human for its own sake, whether it be truth, or beauty, or goodness.

That it is banal does not mean it cannot be noisy.  That it wears a hand tailored suit instead of a uniform does not make it any less vulgar,  capable of causing great misery and destruction.  That it speaks with sophistication or cleverness does not makes its words any less poisonous.  That it will eventually destroy itself in the future does not detract from its power to taint and corrupt in the present.  That it reaches out remotely, by force and fraud, to throttle and kill its victims does not make its hands any less bloody.

Even that consummate anti-human evil on earth did not begin by writing off 47 percent of the people as less than human, as life unworthy of life.  As if any number of human lives could be justified by the godlike delusions of these narcissistic sociopaths.

Markets moved sideways today, with the SP down a bit and the tech heavy NDX up a bit.

Wall Street is rolling out the barrel for the Alibaba IPO.

Consumer Credit growth came in greater than expected.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Bottoming, Perhaps

The currency war continues. 

My sense is that we *might* see a double bottom echo of the last double bottom. The impedance of seasonality factors and supply issues will continue to degrade the paper market price swing in this rinse cycle of the latest wash and rinse.

Am I calling bottom?  I do suspect we are at or near that point.  But the trend is the trend until it is not.  I have learned to be keenly aware of the brazen stupidity of our pampered princes when frightened.  And this is no 'natural' market.  Few are these days.

 

CFTC warns DOJ of 'criminal rate-rigging' in the ISDAfix.

The Corporate Media In America: Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave

"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

Henry A. Wallace

"Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Don't imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore."

George Orwell

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - No My Jobs, Man

"I don't know if the people on Wall Street are not really getting out and seeing what's really going on.

When you go to small towns, like I do, and talk to people - people don't have much confidence in the numbers you hear."

Ronnie Squires, Winner of CNBC's Guess the Jobs Number Contest

The Non-Farm Payrolls number sucked out loud with a fairly stupendous miss.  If you back out the imaginary jobs from the Birth Death report, the economy added about 40,000 real jobs, of a generally low quality.  Chief Strategists and economists took delight in the tenth of a percent decrease in unemployment, a generally misleading statistic.  And of course, stocks rallied.

Given the need for the central banks to keep printing money, and the ECB's endorsement of that approach, the hit on the metals this week makes quite a bit of sense from a perception management standpoint of the porcine persuasion.

Here is my most probable forecast for the future. Be sure to make a note of it.

The next time there is a financial crisis, which is likely to be in the not too distant future, almost to a person the economists and talking heads of the status quo will express shock and bewilderment saying, 'who could have seen this coming?'  Unless of course there is some foreign scapegoat who can be conveniently blamed for the collapse of a house of cards.

And then, from their Olympian heights of privilege, the overpaid pundits will quickly fall back into their most comfortable, ideologically blind slogans. There is too much government, or there is not enough stimulus or the unfortunate many are just lazy and stupid.

And meanwhile, given the lack of reform of the financial and political system, the average American family, which they will all claim to uphold and revere, is being led down a blind alley of officially tolerated corruption, and strangled.

Alibaba was announced after the bell.  See the stock posting for commentary about that and its likely influence on the markets.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - BABA - Here Comes the Big Daddy IPO of All Time

"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater.

I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from those who believe it's just a joke.”

Søren Kierkegaard

The hills are alive, with the sounds of music.....

Alibaba announced that it will kick off its IPO in New York City on Monday, September 8.  Represent!

The company is considered an advertising company performing a middleman function more similar to eBay than Amazon in the ecommerce space in China. 

The IPO will value the company at a mind-boggling 162.7 Billion dollars.  That is about 60 to 66 dollars per share.  The stock symbol will be BABA.   Big Daddy!

 

It is a real company with real revenues and profits.  It's competitive longevity and growth prospects being worth a few hundred billion, or not, is the question.  The company does not have a buying and delivery infrastructure like Amazon or Walmart.

Yahoo will own a 16.3% share of the company after the IPO.  Given their own business performance they might do well to sell the shares and invest the proceeds--  in Treasuries.

Players will be able to buy just a portion of the company, however, about 21 billions worth.  About 20 percent is slated for retail.  Start begging your broker now.

Goldman will have the job of batting cleanup, making sure that the IPO goes well after it begins trading.  This includes stabilizing the price and order flow, by buying and selling shares.  Mr. Fixit is on the job.

Morgan Stanley is leading the 'friends and family' stock allocations.  Deja vu!  Is that the Friends of Frank Quattrone?

New York is getting the IPO rather than Hong Kong because the Yanks are allowing Alibaba to maintain its current management structure whereas Hong Kong leaned towards voting shares, allowing Jack Ma to maintain a more private control.

There is a lot of juice behind this one, people.  Barring any exogenous incident, there are a lot of VSPs (Very Serious People) with a vested interest in a calm market between now and the actual IPO date. There will be more professional, highly skilled beauticians slapping lipstick and makeup on this IPO than there are on the recent troubles in the Ukraine.

And I like it when you Call Me Big Papa.  Throw your hands in the air, if you a true player, try to snag some pre-IPO share.  Here comes what might be a notorious P.I.G.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Moyers: Fighting Back Against the Wall Street Giants

One has to be concerned that America's first female president will be as great a disappointment and failure as America's first African-American president.

Unlike Obama or Hillary, I think Elizabeth Warren may be the real progressive deal. She has political street smarts and leadership skills that make her more than just a hectoring voice from the sidelines.

Yes, she has some concerning views on the foreign policy front that grate on liberals. And yes, when you listen to her, she is no doubt a politician, and remarkably partisan, excusing the sins of her own party and railing against those of the opposition.  And Moyers calls her on it, beautifully. 

But, unlike Obama before he became President (and some might say after), on the whole she has actually accomplished some things for Main Street, and against terrible opposition. And unlike Barry and the Clintons she did it without selling out to Wall Street money. 

Perhaps she has a miraculous cattle trade in her past that we do not know about. If there is anything shaky in her past, it will certainly be used against her in a politically motivated hit as was done on Eliot Spitzer when he crossed the vested interests.  Or just a big media smear campaign, like Ross Perot and Howard Dean.

I doubt that she can run successfully however. The moneyed interests will never vet her, and it is impossible to run for high office from either party without their approval. 

The 'bullet or the bribe' is a powerful disincentive for political change.  And if any progressive agent for change ever does run, and is elected, they will not be able to stand up for change alone, unless the people stir themselves and show some serious support for reform.  At least as much concern as they are willing to show for nude selfies of movie stars, and the latest twists and turns of staged reality shows.

I am hopeful, but not optimistic.  And this interview does not make me moreso.  There seems to be little that Washington cannot spoil with its taint.  This is the age of the narcissist and sociopath. I think the hardships will increase dramatically before adversity makes human beings of us once again.