October 30, 1938 - Mercury Theater Presents The War of the Worlds

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

Edward R. Murrow, talk to his staff at CBS before See It Now, 7 March 1954 on Senator Joseph McCarthy

And 'The Night America Trembled' 1957

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Currency Wars

 

"The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition: there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create.

What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world’s surrender: the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world."

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 12 Oct 2010

I think this time it is Putin and the rest of the world who have said, 'nuts' to the demand for surrender.   And more dramatically, China and a few others are playing 'Go' and skipping the trash talk, while stacking their pieces where they will on the table. 

I spent part of the day musing on the philosophical dimensions of money and debt.  Perhaps that will bear fruit in a posting some day. 

But this whole notion of the 'limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create' is intimately tied to the disagreement among nations I among others have chosen to call 'the currency wars.'   The more theoretical that discussion becomes, the existential, the more Thomistic of a character it takes on with essence and accidents and all those things we sat through at university. 

At some point in time, an Alexander will come forth and slice through that Gordian knot; and in that most real of acts make all Platonic tolerance vain, and vain all Doric discipline, with my apologies to Yeats and the sangre de Cristo.

This is no academic exercise however.   The wise and unwise use, and the limits, of power are the lines on the pages of history's copybook.  Those who do not understand them are lost in the leaves, no matter how hard they may plough on against the turn of events.

So today could be viewed as an extensive bit of PR, and the management of perceptions.  And they did a job of it.  Shorter term the Fed has an impressive array of tools at its disposal.  Mostly they are good at destruction and illusion and not very good at justice and sustainability.  But they are very afraid of losing control, because when you rule something by fiat, control and perception of power is paramount.

Today was a rough day for the precious metals, with the financial powers-that-be trying to prove that the end of QE III need have no negative effects on their financial engineering of The Recovery™.

The greater the leverage or beta with regard to precious metals today the worse the decline.  That seems obvious, but some disregard that when structuring their portfolios.

For example, gold bullion is performing better than silver, which is more variable, or lively, to the up and downside.  And the miners and other leveraged means of owning precious metals have been taken out and beaten today.

PHYS has lost about .75%  and PSLV about 2.8% since yesterday.   But if one holds the miners, it could be much more. 

I am not in silver in the short term here and now,  but I did make one injudicious mining purchase yesterday, alas.

Let's see what happens.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Let It Be Written, and Let It Be So

"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable..."

George Orwell

This is the underlying message in the  young adult three book series The Hunger Games.

Stocks were able to rally higher today, back almost to levels of a few weeks ago,  on the better than expected estimate of GDP for the 3Q.     That GDP number was dependent on a few one offs like government spending, largely of the military kind, and on a more favorable trade balance.

Excelsior.

The exercise today was very much about proving that the Fed did the right thing in ending QE III, and that there need be no large decline in equities.  There is no coincidence in any of this.

There is a natural tendency to be optimistic and to wish for good things to happen.  The difficulty is when those steering the ship keep making poor decisions and following policies that are not productive.  And this unfortunately is the case today.

What will it take to change my mind?  A real media wage that is growing commensurate with GDP, so that domestic consumption can also grow and fuel the real economy without artificial stimulant and welfare spending on corporations and the military-industrial complex.

Fair enough?  Until then in my personal judgement the economy is neither self-sustaining nor stable. Yes I understand about lags.  And six years is one hell of a lag for those not receiving the beneficence of a trickle down corporatist welfare state.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

I did not have the opportunity yet to update the metals holdings or cash levels in the below.