Full disclosure, I have pneumonia; and thus, am seeing my monitor through the haze of DayQuil; cough suppressant; and generally speaking, a lack of mental and physical balance. Thus, I’m not sure how this will turn out. Or, for that matter, how I’ll sound on the two podcasts I have scheduled for today – and tomorrow – if I attempt to record them. That said, one thing I know, is that unlike last year, when I also contracted pneumonia, is that I will not be going to the doctor. The reason being, that last time around, I spent a lot of money for nothing – so this time, I’ll simply use over-the-counter remedies, and “suck it up” until it passes over.
As for today’s topic, I’m keeping it simple – as while my goal is always to speak truth, sometimes I need to overemphasize it. As today, the financial world has morphed into a 24/7 manipulation-fest, both from a “trading” perspective, and how markets are “analyzed” and “reported.” In other words, fake earnings, fake prices, and even fake catalysts. All for the singular purpose of sustaining, for just a wee bit more, the unsustainable.
I mean, just how many more times do I need to speak of the “dead ringer” algorithm utilized on the “Dow Jones Propaganda Average” each day by the Fed/PPT to maintain “confidence” in a dying regime – per the below charts of the past five days’ “trading?” Quite obviously, amidst this crazy snapshot in history, it matters not what “news” is out, given the relentless market “support” provided to stocks.
For that matter, how much more ridiculous can it be to see Precious Metals higher every night in Asia – where the vast majority of physical demand resides; only to decline every time the fraudulent paper London and U.S. markets open?
Better yet, people pretend government-published economic data is “true”; and that financial markets are “freely-traded”; even when official sources admitted otherwise. It’s a tribute to human psychology that market participants actually ignore such reality – like inflation being “low” when the cost of living is surging; or the economy at “full employment” when the labor market hasn’t been this weak in generations. To wit, per David Stockman’s latest must read article…
“Had the BLS used last year’s seasonal adjustment factors, for instance, the gain for April would have been a more tepid 99,000 jobs,and March would have actually registered a 9,000-job loss. Likewise, had it used the 2015 seasonal adjustment factors, the April gain would have been 104,000, and there would have been a similar loss of 9,000jobs in March.”
In other words, as I have espoused forever, “jobs” and “inflation” numbers are flat out lies. Heck, Stockman didn’t even mention the fact that of the 211,000 “jobs” supposedly created in April – which the government readily admits were mostly in part-time, minimum-wage-paying, unproductive service sectors – like government, retail, education, and healthcare; 255,000 were the fabricated out of thin air by the “birth-death model” – which incredibly, continues to assume hundreds of thousands of unreported jobs are created each year by small businesses, despite the reality that, since the 2008 Financial Crisis, more small businesses have died than been birthed.
And then there’s the painful reality of declining global trade, credit, GDP growth, and commodity prices – alongside surging debt, delinquencies, layoffs, and inventories; particularly in China, which quantitatively has been the largest contributor, via the unadulterated printing press, to global “growth” since said Crisis. I mean, what part of Chinese stocks, bonds, commodities, and the Yuan itself plunging – whilst Western markets like the Dow Jones Propaganda Average hit all-time highs (amidst multi-year low GDP and corporate earnings growth) doesn’t ring an alarm bell? Or the lowest market “volatility” in 30 years, despite the aforementioned, global economic weakness; and the most powerful political and geopolitical tensions in generations?
Is it me, or did North Korea tell Donald Trump yesterday that they will be conducting a sixth nuclear test shortly – and that any attempt to stop them will result in U.S. assets being “turned to ashes?” And how about James Comey being fired as the FBI Director – which of course, should have occurred on Day One of Trump’s Presidency? Unquestionably, this will only ignite already boiling-over political partisanship in the Dysfunctional States of America; atop the upcoming drama of a Senate vote to repeal Obamacare (with something equally bad), and the “debt ceiling” right behind it. These, being only a handful of PiMBEEB topics that must be addressed in the coming weeks and months, in the U.S. political realm alone.
That said, NOTHING I have witnessed in the “fake news” war against reality compares to what history’s most trusted safe-haven assets have been subjected to in recent months; as evidenced by the Cartel – er, COMEX “commercials” – taking an all-time high silver short position, to offset all-time high speculative demand amidst the most violently PiMBEEB environment in generations.
Thankfully, they’ve started to cover these positions – which makes perfect sense, now that the French election (that sealed Europe’s hyper-inflationary fate) is over, with silver as “oversold” as at any time in the past five years. And yet, as I discussed yesterday, global physical demand remains as strong as ever, given the litany of fiat currencies trading near, at, or below previous all-time lows. Heck, following one of the most violent, three-week-long, Precious Metal paper raids to date, gold is still just $16/oz from its 200-week moving average of $1,239/oz. Which, given the Cartel’s necessity to cover their historic short positions, may well be recouped in short order – as the “appetizer” for the explosive PM rally that must ultimately occur, when “history’s most overdue financial crisis inevitably arrives.
