Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Though the Heavens May Fall

"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth. We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.

If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our tormented conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from falling apart."

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev

There was intraday commentary titled The Epicenter of the Next Financial Crisis and overnight commentary on the precious metals, Free Markets at Work.

I get the feeling sometimes that we have become a nation of conmen and their servants, who plague the great mass of people who are preoccupied with raising families and just getting by.

As we have seen, in the latter part of the 20th century, people had forgotten, or more properly had been persuaded to disregard, the lessons of history and the reforms put in place in the 1930's.   And to our regret the conmen and their enablers were able to get their hands in our pockets, and grab hold of our wallets.  And we have not been able to get their slimy hands out of pockets yet. 

How fitting that in the next election we can once again consider voting for a Bush or a Clinton.  Some choice.

When the time comes, and it is coming as it always does, we should forgive, but not forget. 

And we should let justice be done, though the heavens may fall. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Reavers: Time To Go

Simon: I don't understand.

Zoe: You've never heard of Reavers?

Simon: Well, campfire stories of men gone savage on the edge of space, killing and—

Zoe: They're not stories.

Simon: What happens if they board us?

Zoe: If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

Joss Whedon, Serenity

It looks like equities are getting set up for another 'big short.' 

It is not quite clear whether we are at full apogee or not yet.  If the international situation clears up, there is always plenty of paper left to take it higher.

This market is now an artificial construct.  It is a wealth extraction machine, more poorly regulated than the average casino.

It is hard to tell where safety may lie.   The usual suspects have most of the usual places covered.

But fortunately the abusers of civil society among us these days are not archcriminals, are not like the mythical hordes of the past. and most are not even extraordinarily intelligent, enough to hold and be successful in a legitimate profession.

They do not allow most of the normal prohibitions of conscience or human empathy to give them pause.  They tend to be verbally acute, emotionally shallow, and mildly delusional.  They may dress well and have admirers amongst the media and the public.

On the positive side, they are not too lazy to steal.  Madoff may have worked very hard, but at the end of the day he was just a gangster.    Most are just sociopaths who have chosen to hold a pen instead of a gun.

And it is not just Wall Street.  People are great imitators,  And when illicit behaviour and monopoly business tactics become tolerated they can soon enough become commonplace.   The corruption and lack of moral principle and judicious moderation in Big Pharma and other 'service sectors' are appallingly fashionable.

If we can ever find enough honorable people to uphold the law, and give them the support that they deserve, we may find that a fear of physical punishment will have most of these modern day crooks cutting deals and turning state's evidence, or running for other places in their jets, like vermin scattering when a light shines upon them. 

And that will be a good day.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Epicenter of the Next Global Financial Crisis - Financial Dreadnoughts

The 'trigger event' for the next crisis could be elsewhere, someplace distant, and out of the way.  The first World War was ignited by a political assassination over a fractious disagreement in Sarajevo that engaged an international web of interconnections.

 

Granted that hubris was on a high note, particularly in Germany, and the system itself was fragile and deeply interwoven.

In the current global financial scenario, if the ripple of global interconnectedness reaches the New York (and European NationalBank Holding Companies), then the real crisis can take root and begin to knock down banks and national economies around the world.

12 Systemic Importance Indicators For US Bank Holding Companies

At that point the only rational response by the government would be to nationalize these Banks, and begin their orderly restructuring with losses ringfenced to investors and principals and creditors.

 

Of course that might not happen, since that was also the only rational response in 2008, and political power and influence and soft bribery prevailed.    And there has been very little reform, with the Too Big To Fail Banks becoming Too Big To Jail, and the real lords of the land.

 

Why do democratically organized nations allow such behemoths to grow even larger, and act with virtual impunity over the laws, and imperil their national health and welfare.   Because these outlandish financial monstrosities are the new battleships in a financial landscape in which political will controls money and wealth in ways never before seen, but far too often for the private gains of commercial moneyed interests.  War never changes.

And like the dreadnoughts from the last wars of the 20th century, they are already anachronisms, costing much more than they are worth.  The generals always seek to employ the old methods of warfare, even on unfamiliar landscapes.

 

Next time it looks like not only a 'bailout' but a 'bail-in' as well.   And the destruction of a free and honest financial system in the US will be complete.

 

Special thanks to Wall Street On Parade For this chart and the report link.

 

 

Free Markets At Work - Gold and Silver 'Owners Per Ounce'

"The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

To declare that the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes -- would bring terrible retribution."

Louis D. Brandeis

I was curious to see what the big price smackdown had done at The Bucket Shop relative to the 'claims per ounce' in the precious metals.

I will be checking again tomorrow to see what the little extra kick we saw this morning might have accomplished.

In summary in silver the 'claims per ounce' actually rose a bit. This is not surprising so much because this is an active month for silver, and it clings stubbornly, almost as if by its fingertips, to the $15 handle.

Gold was as you know hit harder, being smacked down by an avalanche of futures contract selling into one of the quietest periods of the overnight trade.

The open interest actually declined a bit, but significant amount of new gold for delivery appeared, so the 'claims per ounce' as I prefer to call it dropped only to about 97:1.

They did, however, break the uptrend which had been driving towards 100:1.

Have you ever heard the rarely told story from the great bull market of the 1920's, about an unremembered  'publicist,' which is a five dollar word for a simple 'bagman,' named A. Newton Plummer?

'An investigation later discovered that business journalists for at least eight papers promoted stocks in their writing in return for bribes. The most embarrassing were at the Wall Street Journal, where reporters who wrote “Broad Street Gossip” and “Abreast of the Market” took payoffs for stock tips in the 1920s.

The revelations about the Journal reporters came out during hearings by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in 1932, more than three years later, when Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia produced cancelled checks written to the Journal reporters from publicist A. Newton Plummer. The stories based on the bribes had gone as far back as 1923. The Journal ran the story about the testimony before the committee on page 11 the next day.

University of North Carolina, History of Business Journalism

We are very fortunate that such a thing could not happen today.  Can you imagine any self respecting analyst or media type or politician accepting physical checks?  In our modern era it would be much more likely to be hot tips on which way the HFT wind will be turning, or some drinks and dinner, maybe even hookers and blow. The only risks there might be some nasal cartilage or some extra time at the gym.

A. Newton Plummer apparently presented a whole suitcase full of cancelled checks to the Congress in 1932, and wrote a book about it titled The Great American Swindle Incorporated.   There were only 2,000 copies printed.   There is one in my library.

"I would say that practically all the financial journals were on the take. This includes reporters for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Herald-Tribune, you name it. So if you were a pool operator, you’d call your friend at The Times and say, “Look, Charlie, there’s an envelope waiting for you here and we think that perhaps you should write something nice about RCA.” And Charlie would write something nice about RCA. A publicity man called A. Newton Plummer had canceled checks from practically every major journalist in New York City."

Robert Sobel in PBS, The Great Crash of 1929

Of course with so many other innovations in finance, the information sharing culture of privilege has moved from the inkstained cubicles of 'journalists' to the hallowed halls of the Congress.  This was the most read story of all time at Le Café when first published.   

And since then you will be happy to know that the Congress has officially told the SEC to go take a hike, that they are immune to any laws against insider trading and dealing in dodgy information, apparently even for 'pay.'  There is even a cottage industry of lobbyists who share information with the Congress on behalf of hedge funds.  Nice to see entrepreneurship at the lower levels who can never expect to bring in the big bucks making 'appearances' and giving 'speeches' for fabulous fees.

The precious metal pool operators can surely make some nice profits on their short bets on related items after their latest escapades, and then acquire quality mining assets on the cheap for the next trip up when you know what hits the twirling blades, thanks to their servants' gross mismanagement and policy errors.

Well done.

So many assume that the 'rig' in the metals is similar to the London Gold Pool and past operations that were undertaken in order to support some otherwise unsustainable policy and persuasion initiative.  

 

What if something like this started out that way, but then found its momentum in some mutually lucrative private profiteering that proved too easy and tempting and perhaps inconvenient to stop?  It certainly has been hard of late to overestimate the self-serving venality and audacious excesses of these jokers.

When you don't know, you don't know.  And that is how they seem to like it, what 'it' is.  In a society not of reason and laws but of secrecy and privilege, knowledge, like the ability to print and distribute money, is power.

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