Democrat Leadership Caught In Credibility Trap While Party Continues to Implode

This came out in June. And you have noticed the big change in their tactics and messaging, right?

Oh yeah, then there is Hillary's book, and its bold attempt to admit the party's problems and take personal responsibility with a commitment to change.

And then there is the most visible leader of the party, ex-President Obama, who has very comfortably slipped on the Big Money speech-making feedbag, shortly after leaving office.


Caution on language

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Big Banks Cometh

"While the largest banks can correctly claim that they have offloaded risky assets and bolstered the amount of cash on their balance sheets over the last decade, their business model has become fundamentally disconnected from the very people and entities it was designed to serve. Small community banks, which make up only 13 percent of all banking assets, do nearly half of all lending to small businesses.

Big banks are about deal making. They serve mostly themselves, existing as the middle of the hourglass that is our economy, charging whatever rent they like for others to pass through. (Finance is one of the few industries in which fees have gone up as the sector as a whole has grown.) The financial industry, dominated by the biggest banks, provides only 4 percent of all jobs in the country, yet takes about a quarter of the corporate profit pie."

Rana Foroohar, How Big Banks Became Our Masters, NYT

Why doesn't Washington reign in the obvious excesses and blatant frauds and abuses of the Big Banks?  I will let you answer that one for yourself.

The Dollar rally and a 'risk on' attitude continued to pressure the precious metals today.

Trump and crew have unveiled their tax 'reform' plan's framework.  It will be interesting to see how their latest legislative effort actually unfolds.  The special interests and Big Money are preparing to storm the swamp.

Is post-hurricane Puerto Rico going to be another Katrina?  Yet another failure in domestic humanitarian leadership?  Perhaps we can redirect some of our global nation building efforts towards something a little closer to home, to someplace where we do not covet their natural resources.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Another Option Expiration Opera Buffa

"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

Today was another Comex options expiration for the precious metals. And it went as expected.

In a bit of good news, the GOP has pulled the plug on their pig of a healthcare plan, because that is what it what, despite all the obfuscating lipstick that they attempted to smear on it. It takes real talent to craft a plan that is worse than Obamacare, which was itself a recycled piece of flotsam from the Heritage Foundation.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus

There will be a precious metals option expiration tomorrow on the Comex. It may be more significant for gold rather than silver.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - A Late Summer's Afternoon

Bertramka Villa, Prague

"Listen, and I will tell you a mystery:  we will not all fall sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the call of the last trumpet. For that trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we, we will be changed.  

For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.   And when the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then shall come to pass the words which have been written:  ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’"

1 Corinthians 15:51-54

There will be an options expiration on the Comex for precious metals next week on Tuesday the 26th. Given that it is for the October contracts it could be more important for gold than silver.

Late this afternoon Senator McCain indicated he cannot vote for the latest form of GOP healthcare repeal.

Pictured to the right is the Bertramka Villa in Prague. I visited it with Mary when I was attending business school classes in Prague in 1991.  It is associated with Mozart and I believe he wrote his 'Prague Symphony' there as well.  They had a small Mozart exhibition and I still have a small bust of the composer as a young boy in my study that I purchased there.

The day is absolutely beautiful outside, and so I will be leaving a bit early today.

Have a pleasant weekend.