Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - FOMC Tomorrow - One Step Enough For Me

“That’s just the way: a person does a low down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace.”

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn


"Beware the fury of a patient man.”

John Dryden, Absalom and Achitopel

Janet and her Merry Pranksters at the Fed will be making their latest interest rates announcement from their two day September meeting tomorrow at 2 PM.

The SP 500 continues to dribble higher, while the tech heavy Nas 100 is now chopping sideways.

I don't have any short positions on at the moment.  There would be an event-driven drop no doubt, although the markets managed to shake off quite a bit of 'risky' news at the end of last week.

I watched part of Trump's speech to the UN.  It was cringeworthy.    I liked it better when I was in mourning, and not watching the news.  It beggars belief at times.

One wonders what has to happen so that Hillary Clinton will get the hint that the public as a whole has had enough of her crony capitalist political chicanery, and should cease her whining and blaming the progressive wing of her party, ie the real historical base.  She managed to lose to one of the worst candidates ever to run for President, and it was because of her aloof arrogance, despite many unfair advantages. Time to retire and do some real good for others in the world like Jimmy Carter.

Lets see how gold and silver do over the next few days.  They are at some key support levels and it would be nice to see them hold to them.

Dave Kranzler had an article out the other day discussing how BIS has swapped out a large amount of their gold bullion to the Banks.  I had the impression that this is how they are plugging the gap in the 'London float' which had been identified by those precious metals luminaries Ronan Manly and Koos Jansen at BullionStar.com, along with data wrangler Nick Laird from goldchartsrus.com.

Life goes on.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - On the Daedalian Wings of Paper Money and Corrupted Power

"The conventional wisdom seems to be that the problems of the euro zone are, as economist Martin Feldstein once put it, 'the inevitable consequence of imposing a single currency on a very heterogeneous group of countries.'

What this commentary gets wrong, however, is that single currencies are never the product of debates about optimal economic solutions. Instead, currencies like the U.S. dollar itself are the result of political battles, where motivated actors try to centralize power. 

This has most often occurred 'through iron and blood,' as Otto van Bismarck, the unifier of Germany put it, as a result of catastrophic wars. Smaller geographic units were brought together to build the modern nation state, with a unified fiscal system, a common national language that was often imposed by force, a unified legal system, and, a single currency. Put differently, war makes the state, and the state makes the currency....

European leaders weren’t stupid or self indulgent when they decided to move ahead with the euro, without fiscal union or strong Europe-level democracy. They just cared more about politics and international security than economics. They wanted to build a Europe that had transcended the divisions of the Cold War, and bind together Germany, which was reunited and much more powerful, with the rest of Europe."

Kathleen McNamara, This is what economists don’t understand about the euro crisis – or the U.S. dollar


"Another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation.

These are free of political controls and social responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital."

Professor Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series 3, 1976


"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


"The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of waggon-way through the air, enable the country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures, and corn fields, and thereby to increase, very considerably, the annual produce of its land and labour.

The commerce and industry of the country, however, it must be acknowledged,though they may be somewhat augmented, cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver.

Over and above the accidents to which they are exposed from the unskilfulness of the conductors of this paper money, they are liable to several others, from which no prudence or skill of those conductors can guard them."

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 262


Major commercial and investment banks—and the hedge funds that ran alongside them—were the big beneficiaries of the twin housing and equity-market bubbles of this decade, their profits fed by an ever-increasing volume of transactions founded on a relatively small base of actual physical assets.

Our future could be one in which continued tumult feeds the looting of the financial system, and we talk more and more about exactly how our oligarchs became bandits and how the economy just can’t seem to get into gear.

Recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009

Unsustainable social and economic arrangements promoted by an abusive minority are backed by force and fraud.   As the fraud loses its power to persuade and misdirect the public, over time, force must increase in the suppression of dissent and the increased control over all relevant news and public information.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stock Options Expiration Tomorrow

"Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.  You are my friends, if you do what I ask of you.  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not understand what his master is doing.  But I have called you friends... This I ask of you, that you love one another.

If the world despises you, know that it has despised Me before you. If you were of the world, the worldly would love you as one of their own. But you are not of this world, because I have chosen you out of it.  And so the world does not value you."

John 15:13-19

Tomorrow is a stock options expiration.

That may help to explain some of the shenanigans which we have seen this week so far.

Be of good cheer.

You are called by Him, whose hands have set the very foundations of the world, and who has breathed life into every thing that exists upon it.

What should you fear?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts For the Week Ending September 7th

Where Are We Going?

"My favorite poet is Aeschylus, who once said:   'And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, almost against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'

What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice to those who still suffer in our country."

Robert F. Kennedy

It is not so much where are you going Lord, but rather, where are we as a people choosing to go.  At the moment it appears to be on a darker path, led by fury and passions as old as Babylon and evil as sin.   It is an old story. Nevertheless, let us not despair.

Gold has broken out and is holding its level above the high set in the aftermath of the Trump election upset. Silver is holding its level on the 18 handle.

Now gold seems to be consolidating, most likely for the attempt to push higher to take on the intermediate highs and resistance around 1370-1380. More pullbacks to test the breakout are not unexpected.

As you know, myself and others who have done some impressive investigation suspect that the 'free float' of gold in NY and London has become dreadfully thin, thanks to the long campaign to suppress the gold price on the world markets using the paper leverage on the Comex. Physical gold has been flowing to Asia for some time now, in excess of new production.

Why would anyone wish to manipulate the price of gold and silver? On the simplest level it is a way for the financiers to make money. They worship only themselves and their god Mammon. How can anyone suggest that market manipulation is not pervasive in our financial markets across a wide range of instruments? How many scandals and wristslaps does it take to convince someone?

But secondarily, gold and silver stand as pillars of value, at a time when shaping policy and printing money to benefit a corrupt elite of cronies is the fashion. As a direct result the organic growth of the economy continues to falter thanks to policy errors and a rapacious moneyed class. The Fed and the Bank of England are creatures of the banking system, and have failed miserable in their roles of public servants and sound regulators, which has been a false and almost farcical claim for many years now. The Bankers and their politicians have done nothing to benefit anyone but themselves.

If and when this latest 'gold pool' breaks, as they all must do at some time, we can expect the price of gold to spike higher in a sustained rally as the market seeks to reassert a more realistic clearing price. The rally will be driven by those who realize that the jig is up, and they must scramble to deleverage and cover.

We may experience a severe price test, especially for silver, if the equity market suffers a major selloff. I would most likely sit back and wait for it to find its level, and then come in and buy some more metal in my trading account. Unless the government takes action against them, the metals look ready to perform their traditional roles as safe havens.

"I want to end with the idea that the [unregulated] market is capable of resolving all of our social conflict, fairly and justly. That is the great idea of the 1990's. And we all know now what a crock that is.   I think what we need in order to restore some kind of sense of fairness is not the final triumph of markets over the body and soul of humanity, but something that confronts markets, and that refuses to think of itself as a brand."

Thomas Frank

The moneyed class and financiers may yet embrace their traditional penchant for fascism. They have done so, even in our exceptional empire, many more times that we might care to admit. They will hold their privileges with increasing self-righteousness, even at the expense of their own downfall.

I am not yet myself as you might expect.   But I will be back more regularly in a few weeks.

Remember to pray for the people affected by the hurricanes.  And not only prayer, but actions as well.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Epub: Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero by Henryk Sienkiewicz