Author: admin

• currencies and metals have a mini rally on Wednesday
• Dollar traders get their toes out of the water quickly!

Good Day.. And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all!  Another  day of battle with the Iranians and their followers have the markets thinking that this is going to last a long time…. Just as I said yesterday! I had a fun game of dominoes last night with friends, Tim and Anita and Di… Gus couldn’t join us; I hope he’s doing OK This morning… Faces greet me this morning with their song: Ooh La La….   

There was a TV commercial a couple of years ago that featured that song by Faces… The 60’s and early 70’s music continues to be alive in today’s world!

The dollar’s brief time in rally mode was brought to an end yesterday, with the BBDXY closing the day at 1,999. After spending the day above 1,204… Apparently saner heads thought about the conflict in Iran taking much longer than originally thought and decided to sell dollars. But the selling was watered down, and that doesn’t lead to getting the dollar back in the underlying weak trend. 

Gold started the day kicking tail and taking names later, but the SPTs came in and made Gold’s day difficult… Gold ended the day up $53 and Silver was right behind Gold closing up $1.29….

The price of Oil rose on the day to end the day with a $77 handle… I wasn’t too concerned with Oil’s brief drop in price and knew in my heart of hearts that it would recover, and it did! 

The 10-year Treasury saw its yield rise to 4.11%, so apparently the Fed Heads weren’t in doing their yield control … 

In the overnight markets last night… the dollar traders bought dollars overnight and the BBDXY gained 2 index points to start our day at 1,201… So much for dollar traders dipping their respective toes in the water and seeing how far they could sell the dollar without invoking the PPT’s wrath… They sure gave up the ghost pretty easily, eh? This dollar strength is not going to last folks, so back up the truck and load up on currencies while you can… I, of course could be wrong on that but I doubt it… 

Gold and Silver are up to start our day today… Gold is up $29 and Silver is up $1.29…  If Gold & Silver ever get back to non-explosive days of gains they would be able to avoid the SPTs… That’s my opinion, on the whole shootin’ match!… 

The price of Oil remained trading with a $77 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury remained trading with a 4.11% yield…

The rise in bond yields has got Gold & Silver on watch as higher yields at times, switch fund flows to bonds and not metals… But the conflict in Iran has got Gold and Silver getting bought, which should be the mantra for the markets, but as we’ve seen in the past, sometimes things don’t go the way they historically go…  I really think the conflict, war, or whatever is going to last a long time, and will be drawn out for some time and put pressure on the price of Oil and inflation, as both will be rising, and then we have the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel scheduled to cut rates two more times this year… Doesn’t sound like a recipe for a strong economy does it to you?

And now we have the war widening… yesterday, it was reported by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that an American submarine had sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka — a development that significantly widened Washington’s naval pursuit of Iranian forces and sent fresh waves of anxiety through global markets…  See what I mean? This is getting very ugly… 

Circling the wagons on Gold & Silver, I mentioned the bond yields rising and keeping a watch on Gold & Silver…  This from kitco.com: “The change happened in 2022. Before that, if you looked at the real rate on the 10-year – that’s the 10-year minus inflation – it had a beautiful inverse correlation with gold, going right back to the end of Bretton Woods, when the gold came off the dollar exchange.”

Steel said that the relationship has broken down completely in recent years. “Gold is not as sensitive to real rates, particularly on the 10-year, as it used to be,” he said. “And that’s also when we got a lot of retail buying in the market, elevated geopolitical risks, and also central bank buying.”

“I’m not saying that relationship won’t go back,” he added. “But it is not as strong as it used to be, for sure.”

Chuck again… so, if the relationship isn’t as strong as it used to be, that means the geopolitical pressures will guide Gold & Silver higher… ANZ says that Gold will reach $5,800 in the 2^nd QTR of this year… They also said, ““Although recent volatility has raised questions about whether gold prices have peaked, we believe the rally is not yet mature enough to reverse anytime soon.” 

And the dollar? I really can’t see the dollar rallying amid the scenario of rising inflation and rate cuts…  I’m just saying..   The Petrol Currencies are the currencies I would look to right now… Norwegian krone, Brazilian real, Canadian dollar, and to stretch the meaning of Petrol Currency to Commodity Currency, you would look to the N.Z. Kiwi, and even the S. African rand….  You could also include the Mexican peso, but I shy away from that one personally… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the ADP Employment Report and showed that only 63,000 jobs were added to payrolls in Feb…  The BLS will blow this report out of the water on Friday, so get ready for their lies…  The ADP Employment Report showed 63,000 jobs added in Feb, and that was up from the Jan. Report of 48,000… But some pundits think that the increase was HUGE! C’mon folks, think… it was a rounding error of 15,000… That’s NOT HUGE! 

Today’s Cupboard has the 4^th QTR Productivity report and it should show a big drop from the 3^rd QTR of 4.9%…. I don’t like this repot because it simply shows how hard we as Americans worked…  And as usual the weekly Initial jobless Claims will print…   

To recap… The dollar’s brief rally didn’t last long and the selling of the dollar presumed yesterday… Gold & Sliver did gain on the day, but their gains were watered down by the SPTs… UGH! 

For What It’s Worth… Well above and yesterday, I talked about how I saw this conflict in Iran going on for a long time and causing Oil prices to rise and inflation to rise, and this in the face of future rate cuts.. Well, this article on Bloomberg.com talks about that very thing and it can be found here: Iran War, Oil Price Surge Put Global Economic Recovery at Risk – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “President Donald Trump’s war with Iran threatens to deal a severe blow to a global economy still grappling with the impact of his historic tariff hike.

For Europe, sustained higher energy prices would take the economy to the brink of recession. For the US, they would place the Federal Reserve in an impossible position — stuck between a war that pushes inflation higher and a president demanding that interest rates come down. For China, the end of discounted Iranian oil imports adds to strain from Trump’s tariffs and a real estate collapse.

In the first days of the fighting, the intensity is high and the endgame uncertain. Bloomberg Economics has modeled scenarios for what lies ahead, and what they mean for oil prices, major economies, and the future of Iran.

It is, of course, possible that Washington and Tehran find an off-ramp, oil settles back at its pre-escalation average of $65 a barrel, and the global economy dodges a blow.

The latest signs, though, suggest there’s worse to come. Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery is closed. Qatar has shuttered the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas facility. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively paralyzed. Oil and gas prices have already rocketed higher. Stocks have taken a hit. Treasury yields have risen as traders curb bets on Fed cuts.

In a severe scenario, Bloomberg Economics assumes that with Trump warning of a “big wave” of attacks, Israel aiming at the fall of the Islamic Republic and Tehran betting it can outlast its adversaries, the fighting grinds on. Intensified Iranian strikes set refineries and ports ablaze or knock out pipelines, bringing energy production to a halt.

The US could provide air defenses to help protect tankers transiting the Strait in addition to the naval escorts and insurance Trump promised on Wednesday but risks would remain high. A few well-timed swarm attacks by low-cost Iranian drones could be all it takes to keep the conduit effectively closed.

Middle East Energy Still Fuels the World

About 20% of global oil supply passes through the Strait. Drawing on academic studies and the experience of past supply outages, Bloomberg Economics estimates that a 1% drop in supply pushes prices up by about 4%.

That suggests a prolonged closure of the Strait would raise prices by 80% from pre-war levels — taking them to around $108 a barrel. In a severe scenario, Bloomberg Economics assumes prices would stay that high into the fourth quarter of the year.

The range of uncertainty is wide. Major damage to Persian Gulf energy infrastructure — more drone strikes on Saudi Aramco’s facilities for example, or an overshoot in the market reaction, could take prices significantly higher. More limited destruction or a shorter conflict would mean they rise less or spike more briefly.”

Chuck Again… Well, a few weeks ago I made a quick observance of the price of Oil and said that I was going to buy a new gas guzzler… I didn’t…  And now I won’t!

Market Prices 3/5/2026: American Style: A$ .7047, kiwi .5923, C$ .7333, euro 1.1610, sterling 1.3353, Swiss $1.2817, European Style: rand 16.5213, krone 9.6646, SEK 9.2063, forint 334.15, zloty 3.6868, koruna 20.0196, RUB 78.65, yen 157.51, sing 1.2772, HKD 7.8216, INR 91.60, China 6.8960, peso 17.63, BRL 5.2479, BBDXY 1,201, Dollar Index 98.99, Oil $77.09, 10-year 4.11%, Silver $84.79, Platinum $2,179.00, Palladium $1,690.00, Copper $ 5.83, and Gold…. $5,171

That’s it for today and this week…  A short week for yours truly and I love it! No game at Roger Dean today, but we return tomorrow… Our Blues played in Seattle last night, which meant the game started really late for me… I tried to stay up and watch it, but I only made 2 periods…  I checked the score this morning, and the Blues won on the road! Yahoo! The score was 3-2…  The Blues haven’t won too many games on the road this year, so that was good! And our St Louis U. Billikens won their last home court game of the regular season last night… I really like this team and hope they go far in the tournament!

Sly and the Family Stone take us to the finish line today with their great song: Hot Fun In The Summertime… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• The dollar rallies while Chuck is gone!
• Oil shippers are scratching their heads…

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Welcome to March, one of my favorite months, and I’m glad to be back…  I actually had a dear reader send me a note that said, “I haven’t gotten a Pfennig since 2/218″…  It does seem like a long time ago, but it isn’t in reality… I had a wonderful time with my spring training buddies here for a week to go to games and sit out on the balcony at night and talk… Weezer greets me this morning with their song: Island In The Sun… 

Well, I was all prepared to tell you in my first pfennig back, that Gold & Silver were well on their way to full recovery after the engineered takedown at the end of Jan.  BUT NOOOOOOOO! The SPTs had something up their sleeves and took Gold & Silver down by large amounts yesterday. And Gold & Silver weren’t the only metals taken down; Platinum, Palladium and Copper all lost major ground yesterday…  When I left, Gold was $4,922… And Silver was $75.65… So, even with the SPTs taking them down again yesterday, they are still of greater value now than when I left…. 

The PPT was out in force on Monday this week, and that the dollar hasn’t looked back since… With the U.S. joining Israel in bombing Iran, the dollar was on tenterhooks, and looking to fall. But then the PPT stepped in and bought dollars and the dollar hasn’t looked this healthy in a while… The BBDXY closed yesterday at 1,204 and it was 1,183 when I left, so the PPT put the fear of God into dollar traders and they decided that shorting the dollar was in their best interests as long as the PPT was there to stem the slide… 

The one commodity that we track, that has had a strong reaction to the new attack in Iran is the price of Oil… Oil ended the day yesterday at $75 and it was $64 when I left…  The price of Oil was up to $77 at one point yesterday, but I guess some profit taking took over at the close… 

And the 10-year Treasury ended the day with a 4.06% yield, after falling below 4% last week… a friendly reminder, yield up, means price of bond is down… 

In the overnight markets last night… Gold & Silver are back to doing what they were doing before being interrupted by the SPTs yesterday… Gold is up $97 to start our day, and Silver is up $3.90. This is absolutely ridiculous that the SPTs are allowed to do what they did yesterday…. And I’ll tell you that the selloffs in late January and yesterday are simply attempts to save the SPTS from major margin calls… In the event of the late January selloff, they SPTS HAD received their margin calls, and they would have gone bankrupt if they had to pay them… instead, they engineered a massive selloff and brought the prices back down to eliminate the margin calls…  The prices of Gold & Silver were close to generating margin calls again before yesterday’s sell off…  

I sent an email to Ed Steer and said that the selling was very ugly… He replied, “Let’s hope this is “da boyz” last swing at the fences”….  I thought, boy wouldn’t that be nice…. 

The dollar, overnight, has been sold, and the BBDXY starts today at 1,9999…  So, dollar traders are stepping their toes back in the water to test just how far they can take the dollar down before triggering a response from the PPT and the Exchange Stabilization Fund…  

The price of Oil has slipped back below the $75 handle to start our day… The Iranians have closed the strait of Hormuz, and so shipping of Oil around the world has been slowed greatly… The shippers have to rethink their routes and this will delay many countries from receiving Oil on time… Good thing that winter is over in the Northern hemisphere…. I could talk for hours about Oil but I reserve my thoughts here, for this is not the time or place… 

And the 10-year Treasury bumped higher in yield to start our day today trading with a 4.08% yield… I sure wish the Fed Heads would leave Treasuries alone and quit their “yield curve maintenance”…  But then everything in the world is manipulated these days… So, why not Treasuries?

Well, we stuck our necks out again… This time in the Gulf Coast, with Iran… This conflict had been brewing for some time now, and finally came to a head over the weekend… I’m not a fan of war… So, I’ll come right out and say that now, but I also believe that any war that the U.S. gets involved with I’ll support the troops to the end.  So there’s that!

There have been many articles that came across my email box while I was gone… I didn’t read them because I was on vacation from the markets and chaos in the markets every day…  So, yesterday, I decided I would get caught up with them and I got lost in the words… There are a lot of theories out there that talk about how the world will be caught up in the Iran conflict, so there’s that!

The Swiss franc was the lone survivor of the currencies during this dollar rally… The Petrol currencies, minus the Russian ruble, have also held their ground vs the dollar, currencies like the Norwegian Krone, and Brazilian real seem to have fended off the dollar…  Now, if the dollar goes back to getting sold again, then the Petrol currencies will really have the wind in their sails!  I’m just saying… 

I don’t have much for you today as I’m still trying to get “back in the saddle”… So, we’ll go on to the BIG FINISH and start anew tomorrow. 

The U.S. Data Cupboard while I was gone, wasn’t kind to the U.S. economy… Only the ISM Manufacturing Index showed a gain. Factory Orders were negative, and everything else while I was gone was in bad shape… Today we’ll see the Feb ADP Employment Report…  This is an important report but the markets dont’ see it that way, but they will… One day in the future….  And the Fed/Cabal/ Cartel’s Beige book will print, which is a review by the local Fed Offices of how the economy is doing in their region.  Not really an important piece for the markets… 

To recap… Everything for Gold & Silver was going well, until it wasn’t yesterday… The SPTs came in and took all the metals down… It was very ugly as Gold was down $275 at one point, and Silver was down over $9… They came back a little as the day went on, and that was that… Chuck is back and that means he full of you know what and vinegar as he hasn’t kept up with the chaos in the markets while gone… 

For What It’s Worth… this came to me from the good folks at GATA and it’s about Gold & Sliver and it can be found here:Chris Powell: Canada, you’re a rich country, so stop insisting on being poor | Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee | Exposing the long-term manipulation of the gold market

Or, here’s your snippet: ” Please forgive the lack of a French translation for my remarks. I took four years of French in high school and still don’t know merde.

But since we met here a year ago things have changed dramatically for the monetary metals. For much of the last year gold and silver have been more or less soaring. I think I know why.

The violence of the recent rise in the monetary metals — gold up more than 70% and silver more than 150% in a year — typifies either the apocalypse or a short squeeze — and massive naked short positions in gold and silver, short positions long encouraged and underwritten by Western central banks, are exactly what GATA has been complaining about for many years. Those shorts started to be called for delivery after February 2022 when the United States froze Russia’s international foreign exchange assets.

Whereupon other governments and central banks as well as industrial companies began to realize that their assets in the Western financial system would no longer be secure unless they capitulated to ever more aggressive U.S. foreign policy. People outside the United States began to realize that their claims on gold and other assets in the Western financial system could not be relied upon. So they started to shift their assets into gold, which was to be kept in their own vaults, prompting the short squeeze, because most of the gold they thought they held at Western bullion banks was merely paper. That is, the gold didn’t exist.

The long-awaited scramble out of over-rehypothecated paper and into real metal had begun.

The naked short position in gold and other commodity markets may have been first identified in 2001 by the British economist Peter Warburton with his essay “The Debasement of World Currency: It Is Inflation But Not As We Know It”:

https://www.gata.org/node/8303

Warburton wrote: “How much capital would it take to control the combined gold, oil, and commodity markets? Probably, no more than $200 billion, using derivatives. Moreover, it is not necessary for the central banks to fight the battle themselves, although central bank gold sales and gold leasing have certainly contributed to the cause.”

Warburton saw that the major investment banks, often the enthusiastic tools of Western central banks, would help central banks suppress commodity prices with derivatives.

The British businessman and gold mining entrepreneur Peter Hambro confirmed Warburton’s assertion from his own experience in the gold banking business. In an essay written in 2022, “Don’t Forget the Golden Rule: Whoever Has the Gold Makes the Rules” —

Chuck again…  Good stuff from Gata’s Treasurer, and well worth the time to go through the entire thing…

Market Prices 3/4/2026: American Style: A$.7058, kiwi .5918, C$ .7323, euro 1.1644, sterling 1.3385, Swiss $1.2817, European Style: rand 16.3582, krone 9.6417, SEK 9.1820, forint 330.95, zloty 3.6600, koruna 20.9370, RUB 77.93, yen 157.07, sing 1.2744, HKD 7.8169, INR 92.14, China 20.6943, peso 17.59, BRL 5.2315, BBDXY 1,999, Dollar Index 98.81, Oil $74.72, 10-year 4.08%, Silver $86.08, Platinum $2,174.00, Palladium $1,721.00, Copper $5.93, and Gold…. $5,187

That’s it for today… Did you miss me? I missed getting up near dawn to write, that’s for sure! Well, my beloved Cardinals can’t hit; it’s that simple. They are very young and inexperienced and will be taken advantage of by Major League Pitchers this year… it’s going to be a loooooonnnngggg year for my beloved Cardinals… Maybe they’ll surprise me with spirited play… I sure hope so!   I finally ate a hot dog at the DUNE DOG restaurant yesterday. I had gone there for years, and always ordered something else other than a hot dog… It was good, with lots of chili and shredded cheese and onions… I think I’ll order it again the next time I go! The Steve Miler Band takes us to the finish line today with their song: Living in the U.S.A… I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself…

Chuck Butler

• the dollar drifts overnight

• reissuing bonds at higher rates..

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well, this is it, for a while… I start my traditional Spring Training Vacation next week, and since I’ll be at the hospital for my infusion tomorrow morning, that means no Pfennig on Thursday, and then we’re into next week, so this is it…  I need this vacation, as the markets have been chaotic to say the least, and driving me crazy!  I have a quote from Grant Williams that you’ll want to see, later so I have that today… Lee Michaels greets me this morning with his great 70’s song: Do You Know What I Mean?

It’s also what the Catholics call, Ash Wednesday, with marks the beginning of lent, and in addition, it’s also the Chinese New Year!  The Chinese will be on holiday all week, so no help from them with regards to keeping the SPT’s in line…  Which is why the SPTs have decided to take a few lbs of flesh from the metals this week… 

The dollar finished the day weakening yesterday after adding 2 index points to its figure earlier in the day… The BBDXY ended the day at 1,183…  Gold & Silver were subjected to more short selling yesterday, as Gold lost $126 and Silver lost $1.43…  The currencies, not named the Chinese renminbi and Singapore dollar, lost some ground to the dollar yesterday… But they are still looking better than they were for the first half of 2025!   The Chinese renminbi and Singapore dollar are joined at the hip, not really, but it sure seems that way!  One can’t get out of line with the other one, as they compete for exports… 

The price of Oil remained trading with a $63 handle yesterday, and the 10-year Treasury saw some selling and the yield on the bond rose to 4.06%… 

Speaking of Gold… here’s the quote from my favorite read, Grant Willams, and his Things That Make You Go Hmmmm… “I step back from the noise surrounding gold’s recent surge to examine what’s really driving it—and why focusing on the price alone risks missing the far bigger story. Gold itself hasn’t changed. It remains what it has always been: an inert, apolitical store of value that has endured for thousands of years. What has changed—dramatically—is the monetary system in which gold is measured, as unprecedented debt accumulation, relentless monetary expansion, and repeated episodes of crisis intervention have begun to undermine faith in fiat currencies.”

Chuck again… if you don’t subscribe to Grant’s letter, shame on you! It does cost you a subscription rate that is more than worth it in my opinion!  You can subscribe here: Things That Make You Go Hmmm… Newsletter – Grant Williams

In the overnight markets last night….  the dollar drifted around the 1,183 figure in the BBDXY, with little movement up or down.  The currencies look like a horse in the starting gate, all ready to take off at breakneck speed, but being held back by the gate… There’s a lot of talk going around about how the Countries are going to debase their currencies going forward… I’m not buying it, but then I look at the U.S. and the U.K. And they certainly are getting all lined up to debase their respective currencies, but I’m not see other countries lining up to debase their currencies…  So, your diversification of your investment portfolio still is good… 

Gold & Silver are attempting to get back on the rally tracks this morning. Gold is up $44 and Silver is up .99-cents to start our day… I wanted Gold and Silver to rally today, my last day writing for a while, to go out on a good note…  So, hopefully the rinse and repeat cycle of short selling is over, for now… It certainly looks that way, but you never know with the dastardly SPTs… 

The price of Oil bumped higher to trade with a $64 handle overnight… Range bound for sure… Waiting for the next shoe to drop regard the U.S. and Iran… Apparently, they have some agreement with heir negotiations, but I doubt they’ve discussed the Ballistic Missiles that Israel want wiped out… Iran isn’t going to give them up, so the negotiators will have to find another avenue to go down… 

The 10-year stayed at 4.07% yield all night and starts this morning at that level.  I have something for you on the 10-year a bit later this morning.  We, as a country, are really pushing the envelope here with the issuance of bonds to finance our debt…  It really scares the bejeebers out of me, and it should scare you too! This has gotten out of control, and the debt servicing (interest rate paid) is causing all kinds of problems with regard to how do we pay it?  Print dollars and buy bonds, that’s the recipe that the Fed Heads and Treasury are thinking is in their back pocket and ready to deplore at any time…  And that’s the thing that scares the bejeebers out of me… 

Ok, moving on… I read a report yesterday on the Japanese yen… Same ol’ problems that have plagued them for 3 decades now, but in this report the former head of the currency in Japan was quoted as saying that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) had missed their opportunity to hike rates to bring inflation in check and bring about a more robust economy…  Yes, I truly thought that the BOJ would opt to hike rates not long after they did their first-rate hike in 30 years!  But then the BOJ has left the markets disappointed many times previously, so nothing new here!  

Recall when I told you the U.S. would be refinancing their debt as previously sold bond are now coming due? Well, the results are in…  The U.S. sold $54 billion of 10-Year Treasury notes at 4.18% to replace $25B of maturing 1.73% 10-year notes, pushing up amount outstanding by $29 billion.

This week, the $54 Billion of 10-year notes sold at auction replaced the $25 billion in notes sold at auction 10 years ago… And at a higher rate of interest! That bond, issued 10 years ago, was issued with a yield of 1.625%…   So, if any holder of those bonds sold before maturity, they took a hefty loss…  Remember, yield down= Price up… Yield up = price down…  Those poor souls…  the losses had to be quite hefty!

The U.S. is adding to its debt an additional $1 Trillion every 71 days…  That has got to stop, or we as a country go down like other countries that ran their debts too high for too long…  Or go away like the Dodo bird… 

The U.S. U.K, Japan and Eurozone have all run their respective country’s debts too high… Japan is he worst, followed by the U.K. And then the eurozone… The eurozone is at least addressing their debt problem and taking baby steps to correct it.. .At the pace they’re moving now, it would take a lifetime! But aren’t we really only concerned about our country’s finances? Of course we are! It’s the knuckleheads in Congress, the Treasury, and the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel that are not worried about the debt…  I on the other hand have been shouting from the rooftops about our increasing debt since I began writing the Pfennig in 1992…   

Yes, that’s the year that I began writing the first form of the Pfennig… Then it was quick notes about what was going on in the foreign markets for our salesmen, who when they arrived,  turned on their phones, and had to be ready to talk intelligently to the customers…  The salesmen began faxing the letter to their customers… It was a very small list back then… But then our Boss, Frank Trotter, had just designed and coded the website for Mark Twain Bank and he needed content…  Well, the Pfennig hit the nail on the head and so it began to be distributed on a wide basis!

Ok, back to the markets, sorry about going off on that tangent…  I saw that Alasdair Macleod had in his letter yesterday his thoughts on GDP… (the letter is behind a paywall, and I don’t subscribe!)  And I thought that later this week we’ll see an initial print of 3^rd QTR GDP, and that got me thinking about how GDP is calculated… First of all, it’s a backward-looking data point…  and one that has so many inputs that they get all meshed up with each other… But one component of GDP is Gov. Spending… Right! As if Gov’t spending helped the economy grow… but it’s there, and with the U.S. adding to its debt every day, GDP gets pumped up on Gov’t Spending…  So, when you see that GDP prints at 3.8%, you can be assured that a majority of that increase came from Gov’t Spending…   Just wanted to get that off my chest…

I sure left you with a pile of bad numbers for the U.S. economy yesterday, that one would have thought that the dollar would be getting sold like funnel cakes at a State Fair… But Noooooooo!  But not to worry, I truly believe that the dollar will return to its underlying weak trend, soon enough…  I’m picturing the cover of MAD Magazine and Alfred E. Neuman saying, “What Me Worry?” 

The U.S. Data Cupboard today has the delayed Dec Durable Goods, which I think will be negative…  We’ll also see the Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization prints for Jan… Which I don’t believe will give the dollar bugs anything to write home about…  So, we’ll see how the dollar reacts to this wave of bad economic data today…  There will also be the release of the Fed’s Meeting Minutes from their last meeting when they left rates unchanged…  We know of 2 Fed Heads that went against the chairman’s view that rates didn’t need to be cut at this time…  

To recap… Well, the SPTs continued to take a couple of lbs of flesh from the metals… Geez, I sure hope this rinse and repeat cycle ends today…  Bond losses for early sellers… Chuck explains…  And we just reissued $ 59 Billion of 10-year bonds with a yield of 4.18%, which is way over the previous 10-year bond’s yield was at issuance, which was 1.625%…  Do the math, we can’t continue to go on like this, folks….  And Grant Williams visits the Pfennig today… what a treat!

For What It’s Worth… OK, yesterday, I called the BLS liars when they said that the STUPID CPI had risen in Dec only 2.4%, down from the previous STUPID CPI print of 2.8%…  Someone at the Fed NY must have read the Pfennig (AS IF) and decided to print their own calculation of inflation and that can be found here: Has inflation really slowed? Not according to this new Fed study. – MarketWatch

Or, here’s your snippet: “An apparent slowdown in inflation since last fall has eased worries on Wall Street, but skeptics are yet to be convinced price pressures have largely evaporated. A new Federal Reserve study might add to the doubts.

The consumer-price index showed the annual rate of inflation decelerating to a nearly five-year low of 2.5% in January from 2.6% at the end of 2025, using the so-called core rate that omits food and energy. The core rate is considered by the Fed to be a better predictor of future inflation.

What troubles the skeptics are the lasting effects of the record 43-day government shutdown last fall. Government economists were unable to collect nationwide data on price changes in October, and they also got off to a late start in November.

By the time they started collecting prices in November, holiday discounts were in full bloom. Many prices were temporarily lower than usual.

As a result, the Bureau of Labor Statistics might have underestimated inflation in October and November, critics say. And that partly accounts for the lower inflation reading in January.

A new study by the New York Federal Reserve doesn’t directly weigh in on the hawk-versus-dove debate. But researchers at the bank use a proprietary price measure to try to pinpoint the underlying rate of inflation by stripping out any temporary factors, including the effects of the shutdown and limited data collection.

What did New York Fed researchers Martin Almuzara and Geert Mesters find? The rate of inflation in the U.S. stood frozen at 2.83% at the end of 2025 — still well above the Fed’s 2% target.

What’s more, the recent slowdown as suggested by gauges such as the CPI could be ”largely transitory,” they said.”

Chuck Again… I really, feel vindicated regarding the STUPID CPI…  And then, I doubt the Fed NY’s numbers too!  I truly believe that everyone’s inflation is different, but for the most part, I can’t see inflation below 10%

Market Prices 2/18/2026: American Style: A$ .7075, kiwi .6009, C$ .7331, euro 1.1840, sterling 1.3579, Swiss $1.2976, European Style: rand 15.9981, krone 9.4709, SEK 8.9741, forint 319.40, zloty 3.5612, koruna 20.4876, RUB 76.44, yen 153.69, sing 1.2679, HKD 7.8148, INR 90.68, China 6.9048, peso 17.11, BRL 5.2252, BBDXY 1,183, Dollar Index 97.22, Oil $64.06, 10-year 4.07%, Silver $75.65, Platinum $2,036.00, Palladium $1,735.00, Copper $5.77, and Gold… $4,922

That’s it for today and until March 3.  How will you function without me each day? HA! As always, you can go to www.dailypfennig.com  and read archived Pfennigs to hold you over until I return… Our StL U Billikens’ 18-game win streak came to an end on the road in Rhode Island last night… Ok, time to start a new win streak! I’ll be traveling back to my winter home alone on Saturday. This will be the first time I’ve traveled by myself since 2007… Kathy has accompanied me on all the trips I’ve made since then… 2007 is the year I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cell Carcinoma… In June it will be 19 years! According to the American Cancer Soc. I should be long gone by now…  I proved them wrong! The Rev. Al Green takes us to the finish line today with his song: You Ought To Be…  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and will Be Good To Yourself, while I’m not here to remind you every day! 

Chuck Butler

• Currencies and metals get sold on the no more rate cuts idea
• The list of things going the wrong way in the U.S. is growing

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Yesterday, was a holiday in the U.S. for President’s Day… When I was a kid, we celebrated Lincoln’ birthday on Feb 12, and Washington’s birthday on the 22nd… But then some knucklehead in Gov’t thought it was wise to lump them together… I still don’t like it, didn’t like it then, and don’t like it now! These two presidents were icons at their time, and still are in my mind… Van Morrison greets me this morning with his great/ mega hit song: Moondance…

Well, the metals had to go through yet another takedown by the SPTs on Thursday, last week. Gold was sold by $100 and Silver by $8.47… It was a real ugly day for the metals, as they headed toward the weekend on a sour note. 

The news around the metals selling was a stupid so-called letter that Bloomberg got a hold of from Russia to the U.S. that called for Russia to come crawling back to the U.S.   Really? People believed this? I shake my head at this idea that Russia is ready to concede, to the U.S. 

The prompt from the SPTs in reality was the STUPID CPI showed that consumer inflation had dropped to 2.4% from 2.9%…  The reason for the drop was cheaper gas prices….  Really, they hung their hats on that?  The report showed that food and shelter had gained in costs… I don’t know where the propeller heads that calculate CPI found their gas cheaper, but I haven’t seen gas prices dropping enough to warrant a .5% drop in inflation… 

Gold & Silver fought back on Friday, and Gold gained $120 to end the week at $5,043, and Silver gained $2.13 to end the week at $77.57… Silver has definitely been the whipping boy these days… 

A quick look at Ed Steer’s Saturday letter where he posts the days of production needed to cover the short trades in each metal, tells me that the short position in Silver is falling… I mentioned last week that it was down considerably from the days when it would have taken 185 days of production to cover the short positions. Well, the number of days fell another 7 days last week, in Silver and 17 in Gold…  They are heading in the right direction, just slow as molasses… 

The price of Oil dropped on a Friday for the fist time in the last 3 weeks, as the Oil traders have given up the ghost on the U.S. attacking Iran after the markets close on Friday.  Oil ended the week trading with a $63 handle….

But the bond traders didn’t get the message about the U.S. not attacking Iran, for they bought bonds hand over fist, moving the yield on the 10—year to drop to 4.05%… I’m sure the Fed Heads were in buying the bond doing their “yield control” And they were left off the memo list of those who got the note about inflation falling… Either that, or, they are jaded like me, and didn’t pay any attention to the lower Stupid CPI print!

The dollar ended the week at 1,181, so it was basically flat on the day…  The data that day had a lot to do with the dollar not getting sold, as the rate cut bugs were sent back to the woodwork, and now the markets think that there will be no more rate cuts this year…  I guess, the bond boys didn’t see that report either, as they bought bonds as if there was going to be another rate cut… 

Yesterday, with the U.S. markets closed, the dollar got bought some more and really is getting on my nerves, as the dollar bugs are really celebrating the idea of no more rate cuts… The BBDXY gained 2 index points yesterday and finished the day at 1,182…  Gold & Silver were subjected to short selling yesterday and with the thought of no more rate cuts, the metals were in trouble all day even with the U.S. closed… Gold lost $49 and ended the day at $4,992, and Silver lost 74-cents to close at $76.58. The day had all the markings of an engineered takedown under the cover of no more rate cuts… I shake my head in disgust at these guys… They are dastardly dudes, doing dastardly things… 

In the overnight markets last night…  The dollar was bought some more, and the BBDXY starts today at 1,184… This buying because of the idea of no more rate cuts, has got to come to an end, soon… In my opinion, because the data this week from the U.S. is going to be awful, and will point to more rate cuts again…  Gold &Silver are getting sold short again this morning, as long as the dollar is rallying on the no rate cuts idea, the short sellers will take that as a carte blanche to sell short some more, and they are doing just that!  Gold is down $52 and Silver is down $1.75 to start our day today…  SERENITY NOW!

The price of Oil is seeing the other side of “attack” and is getting sold. Oil starts today trading with a $63 handle…  The bond boys are really jumping on the no rate cuts bandwagon… You take their buying, and the buying of all the stock jockeys that are fleeing stocks like rats on a sinking ship, and you have the 10-year trading with a 4.03% yield this morning… 

Circling the wagons regarding the dollar… it too also saw some buying from the made-up BLS Jobs report…  There’s no way that the ADP reports 22,000 jobs created, and the BLS reports 130,000, that’s too big of a discrepancy, don’t you think? So, either the ADP is cutting jobs from their initial report, or the BLS is adding jobs to their initial report…  I know what flag I’m pinning my colors to!  And with that, I’ll confidently say that the dollar will return to its underlying weak trend and get sold…. soon,  Of course, I could be wrong, but I doubt it… 

And circling the wagons again on metals this from yahoo.com/ finance  : “The sudden sell-off has prompted analysts and investors to question whether a broader repricing of hard assets is unfolding.

The metals’ retreat comes amid intensifying economic stress. Over the past three weeks, 18 US companies with liabilities exceeding $50 million have filed for bankruptcy.

Notably, this is the fastest pace since the pandemic and approaches levels last seen during the 2009 financial crisis.

Meanwhile, the New York Fed said in a press release that household debt has reached a record $18.8 trillion, with mortgages, auto loans, credit card balances, and student loan balances all at historic highs.

Serious credit card delinquencies climbed to 12.7% in Q4 2025, the highest since 2011, with younger households under particular strain.

Such conditions typically emerge late in the economic cycle, often preceding policy interventions like rate cuts or liquidity injections.

Bitcoin has also remained under pressure, falling to the $65,000 range as the pioneer crypto lags both equities and traditional safe-haven assets over the past few months.

While digital assets often present as a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty, recent trends suggest they are not yet playing that role effectively in this cycle.”

Chuck again… Another nail in the coffin for the STPs, eh? Things look pretty awful in the U.S. right now, don’t you agree? And therefore, Gold should be ratcheting higher in my opinion…  

Silver has really been quite volatile in the recent months… This has a lot to do with Silver’s lack of liquidity… There’s just not enough physical Silver out there, and unless the authorities want to raid the ETFs, Silver will remain short…  So, you have the SPTs and their short positions that come due, well, the rules say that they need to deliver what they sold short… But, the rules people look the other way, and allow the SPTs to just roll them over and prolong the misery…  My friend, Dennis Miller, and I talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago, regarding what could knock Silver down…  Well, this liquidity has been really weighing on Silver… the demand for physical Silver is still there, but the actual Siver isn’t…  

This should mean that the price of Silver goes to the moon, but with all the short paper trades outstanding, and more to come, Silver will have to work very diligently to get back to $100…   I don’t doubt that it will, I’m just saying that along the way there will be times when you, as an owner of Silver, might feel that this is it… Time to sell…  But what do you want to sell for? Do you need it as an emergency?  This is the time when you should look to buy more…. I’m just saying…

Ed Steer tells me in his letter that the open interest in Silver isn’t keeping up…  That’s usually time to get out, but I think that the lack of Open Interest is because of Silver’s volatility; investors are scared to make a real investment in such a volatile asset…  Their fear will subside, in my humble opinion, and when it does, then Silver can finally move forward again…   

I’ve carried on much too long this morning… So, let’ go to the Big Finish…

The U.S. Data Cupboard last week had some doozy reports, some lies, some cooking of the books and so on, and this week’s Data Cupboard has little in the way of real market moving data… We will see the Dec (delayed) print of Durable Goods Orders, which should show a negative for the month (factory Orders for the month were awful)  So, the dollar is on its own this week to work through the problems it has weighing on it… 

To recap… The metals saw yet another takedown on Thursday last week, but on Friday they hitched up their boots and came back strongly…  There was some news about a letter that Bloomberg got ahold of from Russia, but to Chuck it was not real….  But it played havoc with the metals on Thursday…  The Stupid CPI showed that inflation had grown 2.4%, down from 2.9% the previous month… Chuck doesn’t believe the report… Everything he buys is more expensive!  And Chuck gives us his thoughts on Silver… 

For What It’s Worth…  I see a trend here… the article’s writer didn’t see it, but then he was just trying to be kind and fair…  This is about the foreclosures in the U.S. and it can be found here: U.S. Foreclosure Filings Jump 32% From a Year Ago

Or, here’s your snippet: “Foreclosure filings remain elevated across the country, up 32% from a year ago. This includes default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions. There were a total of 40,534 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings—with Delaware, Nevada, and Florida topping the list.

“Foreclosure activity in January rose year over year for the 11th straight month, continuing a trend that has now carried into early 2026,” says Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data.

Foreclosure starts were up 26% from a year ago, while completed foreclosures increased 59%.

Nationwide, 1 in every 3,547 housing units had a foreclosure filing in January 2026, according to the firm’s latest report.

“Although foreclosure activity has been rising steadily, overall levels remain well below historic peaks, suggesting that most homeowners are still on stable footing even as higher housing costs and broader economic pressures create stress in certain pockets of the market,” adds Barber.

ATTOM’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: default and notice of default; notice of foreclosure; and real estate–owned or REO properties, defined as properties that have been foreclosed on and repurchased by a bank.”

Chuck again… yeah, like I said above, I see a trend here… just like the trend I saw in 2003, when I wrote in a white paper that the housing market was heading in the wrong direction…  4 years later, Armageddon, in housing… I’m just saying… 

Market Prices 2/17/2026: American Style: A$ .7062, kiwi .6035, C$ .7328, euro 1.1829, sterling 1.35569, Swiss $1.2975, European Style: rand 16.0413, krone 9.5237, SEK 8.9958, forint 319.45, zloty 3.5612, koruna 20.4695, RUB 76.82, yen 153.11, sing 1.2632, HKD 7.8154, INR 90.67, China 6.9048, peso 17.18, BRL 5.2231, BBDXY 1.184, Dollar Index 97.24, Oil $63.89, 10-year 4.03%, Silver $75.04, Platinum $2.2010.00, Palladium $1,692, Copper $5.75, and Gold… $4,942

That’s it for today… Did you miss me yesterday?  OK, something’s happening at home and we had to come back early… We came back on Saturday, so I’ll be writing as usual but from home this week, with no Pfennig on Thursday, as it’ll be an infusion day…  Someone asked the other day how I was feeling, and I replied, “I haven’t been subjected to an infusion for over a month now, so if I were feeling any better, I wouldn’t know what to do!” Chicago takes us to the finish line today with their song, and my fave Chicago song: Hard Habit To Break… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• Are The markets finally “onto” the BLS?
• China keeps allowing the renminbi to gain VS the dollar

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Well, about 2 o’clock yesterday, the sun went behind a cloud and stayed there the rest of the day… which was fine with me, as I went inside and watched the men’s team curling game, which they won! The sun is due back out today… Good!  The U.S. seems to be doing better at this winter Olympics, I recall a year when they won 13 total medals!  The winter sports had to be reorganized and restructured to compete with the rest of the world after that 1998 debacle… Yes greets me this morning with their great 70’s song: Long Distance Runaround

Well, the dollar drifted through yesterday’s trading session, and ended the day wearing the same clothes it wore to start the day… The euro, however, did lose the 1.19 handle, but is still within’ Spitting distance of the 1.19 figure. The rest of the currencies traded in neutral yesterday, waiting for the Big Dog, euro, to get off the porch and chase the dollar down the street.  No worries, the dollar is still in its weak trend, yesterday was just a pause for the cause… 

The Chinese allowed the renminbi to gain VS the dollar again, and this morning it trades with a 6.90 handle… this is HUGE folks… The Chinese are allowing the renminbi to gain so that investors around the world see it as an alternative to the dollar… The Chinese have been doing this financial business thing much longer than anyone else, so you see what they’re up to, eh?

I told you yesterday that Gold & Silver were firmly back on the rally tracks after getting sold short on Tuesday… Well, Gold ended the day up $58 to close at $5,584, and Silver ended up $3.46 to close at $84.41… Getting close to that line in the sand again… it will be interesting to see what happens from here with Silver… 

The price of Oil fell back to the $64 handle yesterday, as observers think that the POTUS is not on board with the Israeli Prime Minister’s demand that Iran shut down their Ballistic Missiles, and for Iran that’s a hard no… Therefore, observers thought that the Israeli PM would sway our POTUS to attack Iran…  But that didn’t happen, and I don’t think it will… 

And the 10-year Treasury found some sellers yesterday and saw its yield climb to 4.17%…  No sign of buyers aka the Fed Heads or their proxy… 

In the overnight markets last night… The dollar drifted lower again to the tune of 1 index point in the BBDXY… Gold & Silver are starting the day getting sold short… Gold is down $22, and Silver is down $1.24 to start our day… These could be easily turned around with physical buying, so what are you waiting for? 

Last week the newswires were filled with articles about how Gold & Silver had reached their peaks and were in for a major correction… I told you then that these writers are so wishy-washy, with their calls… Gold & Silver are forming a new base, and will take off from here, in my humble opinion, and I’ve note waivered one iota from that thought! 

The BLS had something up their sleeve yesterday… They say that job creation in January was 130,000…  At the same time, they said that Based on the February 11, 2026, BLS Employment Situation Summary, the total nonfarm employment level for March 2025 was revised downward by 585,000 (seasonally adjusted). This significant annual benchmark revision indicates that 2025 job growth was much weaker than initially reported, down to 181,000 for the year!

But did anyone get a pink slip? I mean, c’mon these guys are worthless with their numbers every month… Last year they revised downward the number of jobs they had said were created by nearly 900,000, and 585,000 for this year! Let’s see… So, once again the BLS reported good jobs numbers that have to be revised downward, by large amounts! I just don’t get it, why the BLS can’t get the numbers right… 

And…. You have to ask yourself this question… If job creation was so great, then why were Retail Sales flat with zero growth?  And the ADP Employment Report, which I consider to be the authority when it comes to jobs created, showed that only 22,000 jobs were created in January… So, who’re going to believe, the crooked BLS or ADP?    

For those of you new to class, ADP is the system that just about everyone in this country uses as their payroll systems… Granted they may not have all the really small companies, but that would only account for 10-20 thousand jobs, if that many!  So, ADP would know the number of jobs created by the corporations in the month from their payrolls…  I’ll say no more as the BLS is giving me a rash! 

The U.S. Data Cupboard had the Jobs Jamboree lies and videotape yesterday, but we also saw that Consumer Confidence fell hard…  the data set hasn’t been this low since 1984, and was lower than even during the plandemic… I have something on the numbers in the FWIW section today, so keep reading, you’ll get there…  

And today’s Cupboard had the usual Initial weekly Jobless claims, and they already printed at 231,000 up significantly from last week’s 212,000… This data set is quite volatile, so don’t get all lathered up about the 231,000 jobless claims last week… when the trend becomes something we can depend on being higher each week, then we’ll have something… 

To recap… The dollar drifted yesterday, as traders attempt to figure out if they are safe taking the dollar lower, or will the PPT be there to stop them out…   A real conundrum… The jobs report from the BLS was a bunch of baloney…. I think the markets are figuring this out finally! Gold & Silver didn’t react negatively to the Jobs report and that’s what has me thinking that the markets are finally on to the BLS’s bag of tricks and lies… 

For What It’s Worth… I came across this article and knew right away that it was FWIW worthy… This is about a loss of confidence in the U.S. for many reasons, and it can be found here: The economy isn’t K-shaped. For 87 million, people, it’s desperate and for another 46 million it’s elite

Or, here’s your snippet: “The most dangerous economic divergence isn’t in wealth. It’s in confidence.

U.S. consumer confidence collapsed to 84.5—its lowest level since 2014, below even pandemic-era lows, the Conference Board recently reported. The Expectations Index fell to 65.1, well under the 80 threshold that historically signals recession. Across income levels, Americans earning under $15,000 remain the least optimistic of any group.

Some look at the U.S. economy today and see resilience: markets near highs, unemployment steady, spending holding up. Others see something darker: affordability pressure, a stagnant labor market, and a growing sense that the system is rigged.

Both interpretations can be true – because the U.S. isn’t living in a single economy right now. That is because 87 million people live in the Desperation Economy – or 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. Another  46 million people live in the Elite Economy earning $100,000 or more.

The country is living in a K-shaped economy: two diverging roads, where outcomes for one group accelerate upward while outcomes for another flatten – or quietly deteriorate. The top half is compounding: stable employment, rising asset values, and the confidence that comes from having options. The bottom half is exposed: high sensitivity to inflation, fragile cash flow, rising credit stress, and a feeling that even doing everything “right” isn’t enough.

Today, the bottom half of the K-shaped economy is entering a new era. Call it the Quiet Riot.

This is the threshold where financial strain becomes a behavioral exit—when people stop optimizing and start opting out. It is not through public unrest, but through millions of small, rational decisions that add up to something destabilizing: staying stuck instead of moving up, abandoning long-term planning, choosing short-term survival over long-term compounding.”

Chuck again… the article goes on further, so if you want the whole hog, you’ll have to click on the link above…

Market Prices 2/12/2026: American Style: A$ .7130, kiwi .6075, C$ .7375, euro 1.1888, sterling 1.3650, Swiss $1.3050, European Style: rand 15.8698, krone 8.8690, SEK 9.4663, forint 319.62, zloty 3.5456, koruna 20.4009, RUB 77.24, yen 153.20, sing 1.2608, HKD 7.8156, INR 90.59, China 6.9007, peso 17.15, BRL 5.1761, BBDXY 1,180, Dollar Index 96.79, Oil $64.51, 10-year 4.17%, Silver $83.17, Platinum $2,113.00, Palladium $1,726.00, Copper $5.99, and Gold… $5,062

That’s it for today…  Tomorrow is the birthday of my good friend, Duane aka Dewey… Happy Birthday Dewey, I hope you have a grand day! A BIG win for my beloved Mizzou Tigers at Texas A&M last night… I watched that game instead of some figure skating from the Olympics… That’s just not my cup-o-tea… I don’t like sports that require judges to determine the winner… OK, that said… I did watch the U.S. men’s team pull an iron from the fire and win their curling match… I’m hooked on curling… OK, we got a bunch of hokey data yesterday, so let’s let the markets get through it and then move on…  The Stories take us to the finish line today with their song: Brother Louie… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!  

Chuck Butler

• currencies, metals, dollar, bonds all see manipulation on Tuesday
• Who or What’s going to save the power grid?

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Another beautiful day down here in the south… I hear that it was 60 degrees in St. Louis yesterday… The January Thaw is in play there…  As I always remind them when they tell me it was warm back home… “But there’s no ocean, no baseball, no fresh seafood, should I go on? I didn’t think so… I’m hooked on curling at the winter Olympics… The U.S. doubles team lost the Gold yesterday, and they had a real chance to win it! UGH!  Lee Michaels greets me this morning with his great 70’s song: Do You Know What I Mean? 

Well, the selling of the dollar stopped, for one day, even though it did show a 1 index point loss in the BBDXY, it was down 3 index points to start the day, so a brief rally there… The euro held onto the 1.19 handle yesterday, and the Chinese renminbi was allowed to gain another figure VS the dollar and ended yesterday with a 6.91 handle…  On  side note, did you hear that the Peoples Bank of China has been telling its downstream banks to back off of Treasury bond buying?   Well, it was only a matter of time before the PBOC laid down the law… 

The price of Oil remained trading with $64 handle yesterday…  There were reports that U.S. Oilfields have backed off their drilling… Interesting right? I mean didn’t I tell you weeks ago that the breakeven price for drillers with Oil was much higher than the price was trading at now?  Well, I read a piece of the price of Oil that said that industry observers say that the price of Oil could rally to $74 in 2026… So, keep that in mind before you go out and buy a gas guzzler! 

And the 10-year saw its yield drop to 4.14%, as the bond boys got on board with the idea that new Fed/Cabal/ Cartel chairman to be, Warsh, will cut rates…. 

In the overnight markets last night… the dollar drifted lower by one index point in the BBDXY… The euro remains above the 1.19 level, and the Swiss franc is really pushing the envelope VS the dollar these days, as safe havens are en vogue… 

Gold & Silver are back on the rally tracks after being subjected to the SPTs yesterday… Gold is up $33 to start the day, and Silver is back at attempting to wipe out the losing futures in the $85-90 range, as it is up $2.91 to start the day and sits right below the range that I told you would be difficult for Silver to take out. Gold was sold short yesterday and ended up down, as did Silver, but they are right back at rallying this morning… I guess we’ll see what the Jobs report does for these two…

Copper is kicking tail and taking names later this morning, and is back above $6 to start our day… The shortage of Copper is still there, and the industrial metal needs a price adjustment for sure!  And I’ll repeat what my dad taught me about shortages… There’s no such thing as a shortage; it’s in need of a price adjustment…  Man, he was a smart man… I guess that’s where I get my penchant for looking for answers to things… Thanks Dad! 

The price of Oil has bumped higher to the $65 handle this morning… Apparently, the Israeli Prime Minister is scheduled to meet with the POTUS today… And that has the Oil traders on edge… 

And the 10-year saw buying yesterday that was quite strong… Which leads me to believe that the Fed Heads were in or having some other entity do their dirty deeds. So, the 10-year starts today with a 4.13% yield.  Forgive me if I seem jaded toward these price adjustments in the metals, dollar and Treasuries… They are all manipulated and free price discovery is non-existent… UGH! 

Well, my friend, and editor of the daily letter 5 Bullets, Dave Gonigam, reminded everyone yesterday that he first talked about the strains on the power grid from the demands for power from AI in 2022…   And I thought that I had done that too… But in case I didn’t, here’s a piece I got off the Oilprice.com site: “International Energy Agency says global electricity demand is growing at its fastest pace in 15 years, set to rise more than 3.5% annually through 2030.

While renewables, nuclear, and natural gas are expanding rapidly, grid infrastructure is becoming the key bottleneck, with over 2,500 GW of power and load projects stuck in connection queues worldwide.

Grid investment must rise about 50% above current levels to keep pace, to keep up with  grid constraints

In fact one power grid had to resort to using 20% from Coal… Without Coal, the grid would have had black outs.. So AI might end up saving us time and money, but will put so much strain on the power grid, that the savings might not be worth it…  I’m just saying..

Also on Oilprice.com they talked about how China continues to use Coal, petrol, and natural gas to fues their electric grid…  I think they have their priorities straight… But then, that’s just me thinking out loud…

OK, onto other things… OK, in a case of “Who are you going to believe?” The talking heads from the Gov’t tell us that the tariffs aren’t hurting the U.S. consumer…  and then a different report tells us that the tariffs added $1,000 to the average consumer last year…. YIKES!  I’ll tell you this and you probably won’t believe it, but through the years, the Gov’t talking heads have lied to you about just about everything.. And this is no different… 

Today is the Jobs Jamboree… And the revision of their Birth/Death model that adds jobs out of thin air each month… Zerohedge.com thinks that a revision of 1 Million jobs will be on the table…  That would be disastrous for the dollar, but then that’s just me…  See? Even the jobs data is manipulated… And then revised much later so that the markets can’t really react to the revision…  But this time it could be a different reaction… I guess we’ll have to wait-n-see, eh?

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the delayed print of Dec. Retail Sales…  And it wasn’t good…   U.S. retail sales for December came in flat at 0.0%, and consumer delinquency rates climbed to 4.8%—the highest level in nearly a decade. This consumer delinquency rate is a new feature of the Retail Sales report and is quite telling don’t you think?  This soft data was probably most responsible for the selling that took place in Gold & Silver yesterday…  

I really think that the markets need to get together and make a call…  The bond boys bought bonds with the thought that interest rates will be going lower, while Gold & Silver got sold because the markets think that the rate cuts will be on hold because of the soft data… UGH! 

Today we’ll see the Jobs Jamboree for January…  Right now, the forecasts are for 55,000 jobs created in January.  I can’t see the BLS allowing a report of 55,000 jobs created in January to be printed without their messaging and cooking the books… 

To recap… The selling of the dollar stopped for a day, and there was some profit taking in Gold & Silver played a part in their performance on Tuesday. Soft data (Retail Sales) played a part in the weakness in the metals too. Chuck talks about the power grid this morning… it’s really on his mind these days!  And all markets are manipulated and the examples of each were illustrated yesterday…. 

For What It’s Worth: Well, the well was dry this morning, so I turned to Ed Steer’s letter and in it he had highlighted a report from Zerohedge.com that goes into those delinquencies I talked about above and it can be found here:  US Consumer Debt Delinquencies Soar To Highest Since 2017 While Office Delinquencies Hit Record High | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “It will come as a surprise to exactly nobody that the Fed’s latest quarterly Household Debt and Credit report (for Q4 2025) reported total household debt balances increased by $191 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 1% rise from 2025 Q3, to a new all-time high. Balances now stand at $18.8 trillion and have increased by $4.6 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession.

Mortgage balances shown on consumer credit reports grew by $98 billion during the fourth quarter of 2025 and totaled $13.17 trillion at the end of December.

Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) rose by $12 billion, the 15th consecutive quarterly increase. There is now $433 billion in outstanding HELOC balances, $116 billion above the low reached in 2022Q1. In total, non-housing balances increased by $81 billion, a 1.6% increase from 2025Q3.

Credit card balances rose by $44 billion during the fourth quarter and now total $1.28 trillion outstanding, up 5.5% since last year.

Student loan balances increased by $11 billion and now stand at $1.66 trillion.

Auto loan balances edged up by $12 billion to $1.66 trillion.

Other balances, which include retail cards and consumer finance loans, rose by $14 billion and now total $564 billion.

New debt originations were also solid in the quarter:

The volume of mortgage originations, which includes both refinance and purchase originations, increased with $524 billion newly originated in 2025 Q4, an uptick from the $512 billion seen in the previous quarter. It was the highest since 2022 when rates were far lower.

There were $181 billion in new auto loans and leases appearing on credit reports during the fourth quarter, a small dip from the $184 billion observed in 2025 Q3.

Aggregate limits on credit cards continued to rise, with a $95 billion (1.6%) uptick in the fourth quarter.

Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) limits rose by $25 billion (2.5%), continuing an expansion in HELOC limits that began in 2022.”

Chuck again… It sounds like all hell is about to break loose… This is not good for the U.S. consumer’s financial situation… I’m just saying….   Got Gold?

Market Prices 2/11/2026: American Style: A$ .7112, kiwi .6062, C$ .7383, euro 1.1996, sterling 1.3689, Swiss $1.3063, European Style: rand 15.887, krone 9.4642, SEK 8.8669, forint 318.93, zloty 35899, koruna 20.3047, RUB 77.27, yen 153.56, sing 1.2624, HKD 7.8168, INR 90.70, China 6.9104, peso 17.20, BRL 5.1791, BBDXY 1,180, Dollar Index 96.69, Oil $65.39, 10-year 4.13%, Silver $83.86, Platinum $2,181.00, Palladium $1.725.00, Copper $6.06, and Gold… $5,059

That’s it for today… One week to go before I go home for an infusion and to see my darling granddaughter, Delaney Grace perform in the musical Mama Mia, as the lead… I’ll return, on my own, on Saturday in time for the first Spring Training game 2/21…  I’ll be at the game by myself, but no worries I’ve done that before! And then a couple of days later my buddies from home come down to spend a week with me and go to games… That’s when I’ll be on my traditional spring vacation… So, it’s coming soon! I’m really not into figure skating, but that kid from the U.S. Malinin, is better than anyone else so just go ahead and give him the Gold now…. The Blues Magoos take us to the finish line today with their song: (We Ain’t Got) Nothing Yet… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• the dollar gets sold on Friday and overnight
• Gold & Silver are back on the rally tracks

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! What a beautiful weekend, weather wise we had down here in the South this past weekend. The Super Bowl was last night… We hosted some friends that are down here over to watch the game, which turned into a game of defense of which Seattle had the better of the two and won the NFL Championship…  The Kinks greet me this morning with their great song: All Day And All Night… 

Well, the dollar ended last week getting sold, and Gold & Silver ended the week getting bought… It was like old/recent times, eh? The BBDXY saw its previous figure of 1,195 fall to 1,190 as it returned to its underlying weak trend. The euro climbed back above the 1.18 figure, and the rest of the currencies looked a little healthier going into the weekend. 

Gold gained $ 189 to close the week at $4,966, while Silver gained $6.68 to close the week at $77.99… I have to say that reading that explanation that I had given you the link to last week, really opened my eye to better understand the market a little better with all their options & puts, and deltas and gammas, etc. The collapse of Silver on 1/30 wasn’t just about the POTUS naming Keven Warsh as his Fed chairman nominee, nor was it about the raising of margin requirements on Silver…   You’d have to read the article to find out what was behind the selling that took Silver from $121 to $73 in one trading session.. 

Well, did anyone take up my invitation to read the article I featured regarding the Silver crash? Yes, it was a very long and detailed article, but… one that really explained the “real reason” Silver crashed on 1/30… Towards the end of the article, the writer, explained that Silver’s level of heavy resistance will be between $85 and $90, as there are a ton of dealers still awaiting on those levels to get out of their losing Silver options…  So, don’t expect Silver to have a super ball bounce back to $100 right away… First, it’s going to have to fight through the resistance levels, which means every time Silver rallies close to those levels it will meet with heavy selling…   Until…. all the losing positions are taken care of…  I know this is not solace to investors that bought Silver above $75 with the idea that it would reach $100 quickly… But, for those of us who bought Silver to hold and keep for a rainy day, Silver in this area of $75 is great, for we bought it long ago!

The Good News? Well, the number of shorts in Silver have been reduced by a large amount after the debacle of 1/30… Ed Steer tells us that the short paper traders have 116 days of Silver production short, which is down significantly from the days when the days to cover were over 180… Those 116 days short in production represent 3.9 Months of production… That’s still gross, in my mind, but it is lower and we can thank the debacle on 1/30 for that! 

The price of Oil ended the week trading with a $63 handle… This price has jockeyed back and forth between $63 and $64 for the last two weeks, and usually that signals that an asset is getting ready to go on a rally streak to higher ground….  I’m not saying that the price of Oil is going higher, I’m just pointing out what this usually leads to…  It can also lead to traders giving up trying to take it higher and then seeing the price fall…  So, we’re at that point where something has to break… 

The 10-year Treasury ended the week with a 4.21% yield… There had to be a ton of buying of the bond late last week, as the tried-and-true trading of safe havens came into play…  The 10-year lost 4 basis points of yield last week, and that was brought about by the Fed Heads’ yield control, buying of the bond.. 

All market are manipulated these days folks… I know I’ve pointed that out before, but it bears repeating, as there are no free trading markets out there, which means we will continue to be subjected the sentiment of traders… (and Gov’ts) 

In the overnight markets last night…  the dollar got sold overnight, and it as it has definitely returned to its underlying weak trend. The BBDXY lost 3 index points overnight, and the currencies all look more representative this morning… The Chinese renminbi was allowed to gain another point VS the dollar and starts today trading with a 6.92 handle… The dollar’s brief rally was all the makings of intervention by the PPT…  

We have two Central Bank meeting this week… The Canadian National Bank and the Bank of England will meet to discuss rates… I don’t see any movement here from either of those two, but you never know… eh?

The price of Oil remained trading with a $63 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury starts this week trading with a 4.23% yield. 

Remember when I had a FWIW article last week about AI taking over all those jobs starting now? Well, this came across the wire on Friday, “global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that U.S.-based employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, an increase of 118% from the 49,795 cuts announced in the same month last year.”

And guess what’s getting the finger of blame pointed at it for these losses? You guessed it…  AI!

And signaling the end of the 40-year bond rally, that occurred a couple of years ago. There was more proof of the end in that it was reported that The US Bond Market has now been in a drawdown for 66 months, by far the longest in history. YIKES!  You know that long bond yields remain below the inflation rate… (real inflation not the stuff that the Gov’t prints) and as long as that exists, the lack of buyers will continue to mount… Who wants to buy something that is at a loss before you even take possession?  I’m just saying.. 

And that leads to the idea that I floated a few weeks ago, that I truly believe that we as a country will be forced to buy our own bonds, print the money to buy them, and throw gas on the inflation fire…  

And speaking of inflation… last week the PCE (personal consumption expenditures) the Fed Heads’ preferred calc on inflation, printed at 3% YTD…  In case you didn’t notice, this is going the wrong way and now is 1 full percentage point away from the Fed’s 2% target rate. I think investors should be asking if the Fed’s rates are really addressing inflation… To me, they are not… But then that’s just me and my jaded way of thinking about the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel.   The Fed Heads are in a pickle, as they can’t raise rates because of the all the new issues would have higher yields, and thus more debt would be printed in the form of bond servicing (interest), and they can’t cut them any further without all the markets going bananas that they are inviting inflation to go higher… 

On Thursday last week, the FWIW was a discussion of inflation and hyperinflation… I don’t think that people are concerned enough about the possibilities of hyperinflation… I mean, you should be aware of it, and keep an eye on it, not worry about it just yet, but be aware of the possibility…  I’m just saying…

The U.S. Data Cupboard on Friday last week showed that Consumer Sentiment had risen from 55 to 57, why? I have no idea, with all the problems going on, but there were reports that the U.S. and Iran would start talks…  That’s a far cry from what was going on the week earlier when it was thought that the U.S. would attack Iran… So, maybe, that’s the reason for the rise in sentiment… 

This week will be chock-full-o-data as the delayed report on Retail Sales for Dec. will print along with the delayed report for Jobs for January… There are a lot of other prints coming this week too, but these two are the biggest prints… 

We did see the color of the latest Consumer Credit (read debt) report… This was a real doozy folks… And credit cards were the main culprit behind a $22.7 Billion in debt taken on by consumers in December… Apparently it was a very nice Christmas for most as the credit card debt exploded higher at $13.8 Billion! And to top it all off… The latest report on Credit Card interest showed that Banks are charging 22% for Credit Card balances…  How does one pay off a huge debt with interest rates like that?  

And I came across this tidbit the other day, that I think is important to know…  First of all, our stupid GDP, is like 70% consumer spending…  well, 50% of the spending is done by 10% of the population…  So, it is concentrated among the wealthy 10%…   So, there you go Retail Sales! 

To recap… The dollar is heading back to its underlying weak trend, and Gold & Silver were back on the rally tracks on Friday. Chuck goes through a long explanation of Silver’s road to recovery… And the Data Cupboard is going to be full of stuff this week.  Consumer Debt is exploding higher with Credit Cards leading the way with 22% interest on the debt…  And 50% of consumer spending is done by 10% of the population…  Important to know when the stupid GDP prints…  I’m just saying… 

For What It’s Worth… This article was highlighted in Ed Steer’s letter last Thursday, and I saved it for today’s FWIW…  This is about Gold price manipulation and it can be found here: Gold bugs were right about the price hitting US$5,000 | Financial Post

Or, here’s your snippet: “Gold bugs spent years predicting bullion would hit its present value of around US$5,000 per ounce, but now that their predictions have borne out, some are airing a long-held grievance that it should be trading even higher, but for unlawful manipulation by big banks and western governments.

Others write this off as a nonsense conspiracy theory. But with gold prices swinging wildly — to their highest ever price in January of US$5,600 per ounce, only to crash 16 per cent in the waning days of the month and then recover back above US$5,000 on Tuesday — the decades-old debate about what makes the yellow metal rise or fall is rearing its head again.

“Here’s what I say,” Eric Sprott, a multibillionaire in Toronto and a longtime gold bug, said. “I’m going to call them ‘The cartel’ — the major American banks and Canadian ones, too, by the way — thought gold was kind of their whipping boy; that they could sell it and knock it down.”

Chuck again… this is a very good article that spells out the manipulation of the price of Gold and its rebuttals…  But again, all the “regular responses to the selling” are somewhat right, but the options explosion was the main reason… 

Market Prices 2/9/2026: American Style: A$ .7042, kiwi .6027, C$ .7342, euro 1.1876, sterling 1.3588, Swiss $1.2975, European Style: rand 16.0003, krone 9.6336, SEK 8.9806, forint 317.50, zloty 3.5488, koruna 20.3925, RUB 77.42, yen 156.50, sing 1.2685, HKD 7.8152, INR 90.77, China 6.9236, peso 17.23, BRL 5.1991, BBDXY 1,187, Dollar Index 97.23, Oil $63.82, 10-year 4.23%, Silver $80.52, Platinum $2,068.00, Palladium $1.701.00, Copper $5.89, and Gold… $5,013

That’s it for today…  Well, that was fun last night with a few folks over, and we ended up with so much food that everyone brought, that I’ll be eating the leftovers all week! Well, things are back to normal now, with regards to the dollar and metals… And that’s a good thing! A normal size Pfennig today, I’m still a little groggy from last night… But ready to take on full sun and 75 today! Now, where are the cookies from last night? HA Football is over and now Baseball takes over, with the Cardinals pitchers and catchers reporting later this week…. YAHOO! Baseball is back! 

Chuck Butler

• The dollar rallies on Wednesday
• An explanation of 1/30/2025, if you want to hear it…

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Man, I tell you this, and I mean it… There’s nothing like a sunny day, warm temps (not hot), and a good book… That was my day yesterday, after returning from having breakfast with friends that are also down here… I didn’t even check on the metals, even though I had a eerie feeling that something was going on… I was afraid to check them out… The Easybeats greet me this morning with their 60’s song: Friday On My Mind…

Well, Gold & Silver are NOT out of the woods just yet…  Yes, they were up big in the overnight markets Tuesday to Wednesday, and we began Wednesday morning with Gold up $126 to $5,055, and Silver up $4.78 to $90.05…  But that was the highlight for those two on Wednesday…   Gold ended the day up $36 to close at $4,965, and Silver up 2.01 to $88.35…  Their lofty levels of early morning had been pared down, and that was just the start…

It seems to me that the $90 level for Silver is a BIG resistance level, as the $5,000 level for Gold is a resistance level…  The SPTs have drawn a line in the sand, at those levels and are daring for anyone to cross them… And Kitco.com said that “Gold and Silver lose most of their early gains on “profit taking”….  They missed that the “profit taking” was really SPTs trading, but then they don’t go down that rabbit hole like I do…

I read a report on Paradigm Press from Dave Gonigam’s 5 Bullets, that was the writer’s explanation of what pulled the plug and sent Gold & Silver circling the drain…  Here’s a snippet of a very long explanation: but first, here’s the link to the whole report that if you really have the time, click on it and read it, again, I warn you it’s very long: How The Machine Ate Itself | The Rude Awakening

Here’s the a brief snippet of this report as just a sample of what you will read if you click on the link: “The matching engine – the exchange’s computer system that pairs buy orders with sell orders – was overwhelmed. It wasn’t designed to handle this kind of concentrated velocity. Trades were executing at prices that made no mathematical sense, options changing hands for values that violated basic arbitrage relationships, but there was no time to arbitrage anything because by the time you saw the price, it had already moved.

The market had ceased to be a mechanism for price discovery and had become a liquidation engine. Machines selling to machines, with humans reduced to spectators watching their account balances crater in real time.”

Chuck again… And oh, he says that the announcement of Kevin Warsh as the nominee for new Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel chairman was just the Catalyst to all this mayhem…  

The dollar rallied yesterday, for some reason that I haven’t quite figured out yet (but will, I’m a little slow sometimes!) The BBDXY gained 3 index points on the day, and the currencies all, except the Chinese renminbi, look a little under the weather this morning. 

The price of Oil ended the day on Wednesday trading with a $63 handle, and the 10-year’s yield dropped another basis point to end the day at 4.26%

In the overnight markets last night…  well, more selling in Gold & Silver showed that these two are not out of the woods just yet, as the STPs defend their line in the sand…  Before I retired last night, I did a quick check of the metals and they were getting taken to the woodshed… Gold is down $109 to start the day today, and Silver if down $`12… Yes, I said down $12..  I saw a report on kitco.com this morning that had a headline of ” After parabolic run Gold could trade down to $4,000…  

So, after all this time of Gold rallying, and all the pundits saying this, that, and the other thing about how gold would reach for the stars, now they are writing about how low Gold could go… And they say traders are fickle….  Well, at least they take an asset as far as it can go, and don’t switch horses in the middle of the stream like writers do… 

The buying of the dollar continued through the night and the BBDXY starts the day at 1,193… I 

The price of Oil has bumped up again to the $64 handle to start the day, and the 10-year’s yield is at 4.26% to star the day… I’m reading that with the winter storms going through the U.S. that Oil supplies are at risk, and that’s the push behind the Oil price right now… 

In yesterday’s FWIW I featured a guy that talked about the effects that AI will have on jobs…  And then Bill Bonner had this to say in his daily letter. “CNN:

Even though the US economy is growing — not everyone is prospering. Millennials are on track to be the first generation not to exceed their parents in terms of job status or income, studies show. Among Americans born in the late 1980s, only 44% were in jobs with higher socioeconomic status than their parents when both were age 30, while 49% had positions of lower status…”

Chuck again… Oh no! Say it ain’t so Joe! 

I told you yesterday that China’s Premier, XI had come out and said that his country was in strong pursuit of obtaining the reserve currency status for the renminbi… And here’s a reason why he wants to diversify out of the dollar: “U.S. Trade Deficit SOARS 94.6% In a MONTH!”  So, no debt reduction is going on in this country, that’s for sure… 

The dollar’s rally is a classic case of “buying the safe havens”… There are just too many “unknowns” in the markets right now, and traders do not like “unknowns”… I think I’ve explained this in the past; In fact I know I have! And when that happens, traders flock to what their tried-and-true go-to is, and that is dollars and Treasuries… 

A Dear Reader sent me this long note yesterday, and there was something in it that I wanted to point out. Here it is: “Consider the dollar as a contract, backed only by good faith/credit of the United States.

Neither exist any more—and all the world knows it.”

Chuck again, that, my friends, was the reason Gold & Silver were in such high demand, and not the paper version of the metals, but the physical version, ask any coin and metals dealer; they’ll tell you that demand was off the charts!  If only Gold & Silver can get past this recent bout of selling…  UGH! 

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the ADP Employment Report, and it showed that Companies only hired 22,000 people in January…  Now, that’s the kind of report that should have sent the dollar bugs to the hiding behind the wall boards… But NOOOOOOOOOO!  Remember that the ADP’s Employment Report’s other function is to be the harbinger of what the BLS will print in the Jobs Jamboree…  But with the BLS performing so many magic tricks with the job surveys that this no longer is true… I can’t wait to see what the BLS has up its sleeve when they get around to printing the report. 

And here’s something else… The Jobs Jamboree has been postponed to next Wednesday, when it was supposed to print tomorrow.  The BLS blames the Gov’t’s brief shutdown, but in my mind, they just needed a couple of extra days to pad the report and make it look good….  I guess we’ll see next Wed.

To recap… The metals started Wednesday on the right foot but ended the day on the wrong foot.. There are lines in the sand that the SPTs are daring for anyone to cross, right now…  The dollar is getting bought, because of “unknowns”…  of which there are tons of in the markets these days…  And there’s a very long explanation of what happened to Silver (Gold) last Friday if you have the time to read it. 

For What It’s Worth…  Well, folks, I’ve told you about how years ago, we used to have the Economics professor at St. Louis University, come in and give us a talk about the current economic conditions… At one meeting, I stood up and said, “money supply is equal to inflation”… She didn’t like that explanation of inflation, and proceeded to tell us some gobbledygook…. Well, this is an article that talks about inflation and hyperinflation and it can be found here: From Inflation to Hyperinflation: The Gathering Monetary Hurricane – Doug Casey’s International Man

Or, here’s your very long snippet: “Inflation is an elusive term. In 1983, Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defined Inflation as:

“An increase in the amount of currency in circulation, resulting in a relatively sharp and sudden fall in its value and rise in prices: it may be caused by an increase in the volume of paper money issued or of gold mined, or a relative increase in expenditures as when the supply of goods fails to meet the demand.”

However, Investopedia states:

“Inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services over time.”

A quick check will reveal that Investopedia is not alone in their current definition. The definition has moved away, in large part, from the previous definition of the root cause to now describing a symptom.

But are we splitting hairs here? Does it really matter whether people understand the root cause? Yes, it does, if we wish to understand that inflation sometimes serves a political purpose. As stated by John Maynard Keynes in Economic Consequences of the Peace,

“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

If we understand the 1983 Webster’s definition of inflation, it becomes clear that Keynes does not merely imply that governments can benefit from an inflationary situation, should it occur. Governments can actually create the situation through the issuance of currency.

Keynes wrote his book in 1919 and, to say it was a hit with legislators, would be an understatement. For the better part of one hundred years, his concepts have been at the center of the economic policies of governments the world over. (US President Richard Nixon famously stated publicly, when he took the US dollar off the gold standard in 1971, “We’re all Keynesians now.”)

Hyperinflation Defined

So, the reader may take his pick as to which definition of inflation sits best with him, but, fortunately, there is less confusion over the definition of hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is typically defined as:

Ruinously high increase (50 percent or more per month) in prices due to the near total collapse of a country’s monetary system, rendering its currency almost worthless as a medium of exchange.

Not much room for confusion there. Armed with a definition of this condition, we may examine the likelihood of being faced with hyperinflation in the near to not-too-distant future. Certainly, readers of this publication will be aware of the extreme monetary condition most First World countries are presently facing as a result of excessive debt, resulting in considerable inflation (by the1983 definition).

Governments, when queried about the possibility of hyperinflation, are inclined to toss off the possibility, saying, in effect, “We won’t let that happen.” However, the history of hyperinflation indicates otherwise. Whilst governments often do induce inflation (even dramatic inflation) consciously, it is safe to say that they are unlikely to create hyperinflation consciously. Quite the opposite, in fact. What generally occurs is that they keep inflating until, unintentionally, the dam breaks. Hyperinflation, typically, is like a hurricane – an unstoppable and destructive force that, once begun, takes on a life of its own.”

Chuck again… Yes, this is a doom and gloom article, but one that should inform you to be alert to higher inflation…. I’m just saying…

Market Prices 2/5/2026: American Style: A$ .6965, kiwi .5989, C$ .7305, euro 1.1794, sterling 1.3562, Swiss $1.2871, European Style: rand 16.1780, krone 9.7119, SEK 9.0191, forint 322.02, koruna 20.6190, RUB 79.58, yen 157.09, sing 1.2739, HKD 7.8127, INR 90.35, China 6.9413, peso 17.40, BRL 5.2676, BBDXY 1,193, Dollar Index 97.97, Oil $64.11, 10-year 4.26%, Silver $76.49, Platinum $2.045.00, Palladium $1,702.00, Copper $5.80, and Gold… $4,858

That’s it for today and this week… No Jobs report tomorrow, so I’m taking the day off! HA! Of course, I take every Friday off…  Baseball has been on TV the last couple of nights with the Latin American countries playing each other… Hey! It’s baseball! I had been alone for a couple of days, but that ended late last night… It sure was quiet around here for a couple of days.. I’m just saying!  My beloved Cardinals are going to have growing pains this year, as they’ve rebuilt the team with young players…  And their attendance figures from last year were the worst since 1984. I can’t imagine what they will be this year if the team doesn’t get off on a good foot… Simple Minds take us to the finish line today with their 80’s song: Don’t You (forget about me)  I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• currencies and metals both rally on Tuesday
• Is The U.S. coming out of the woods?

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Today was the “day that music died” and no it wasn’t because of the Grammys…(although in my mind it would do the trick)  It marked the day that Buddy Holley, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens died in a plane crash… They were all too young to die… I almost forgot about it when I was writing the Pfennig this morning… I’m watching the ocean still coming from the north, which means it’s still chilly outside, in the 60’s today so winter is over here… It was nasty for here for a couple of days for sure! John Lennon greets me this morning with his song: #9 Dream… (some of John’s best work, in my opinion) 

The selling of the dollar continued yesterday, with the BBDXY losing 4 index points to 1,1887 , and the euro recovered to trade over the 1.18 handle again, and the rest of the currencies all looking much better at the end of the day.  Gold continued its advance from the overnight session during the day yesterday, gaining $269 to close at $4,969, and Silver gained $5.92 to close at $85.22…  Both were higher during the day, but the SPTs had to put their short paper trades in to keep Gold below $5000…  Silver was up over $8 at one point yesterday, only to see short sales whittle it down…  

The price of Oil rallied after seeing 3 days of selling, and end the day trading with a $64 handle, and the reason behind the rally was the winter storms that most of the country suffered through last week, really put a damper on supplies…  And the 10-year Treasury saw a bit of buying and its yield inched downward to 4.27%… 

I’m trying  desperately to not slap myself on the back, but C’mon folks, give it up for me here, I did tell you that Gold’s (Silver) drop would only last a short time… Some of you believed me, and I’m betting that some of you panicked and sold and said, “he’s full of B……”  Oh well, we move along…

Speaking of Gold…  my friend, Rich Checkan, had this to say in his daily work at Asset Strategies Inc.  “With gold trading near all‑time highs, investors who stay on the sidelines risk missing the bigger story.

Today’s record prices are not a reason to avoid gold—they’re a signal of deep, structural stress in the global financial system. Persistent inflation, rising geopolitical risk, ballooning government debt, and ongoing concerns around global currencies are all driving investors toward tangible stores of value.

In other words, gold isn’t just going up. It’s repricing the risk in the system.”

Chuck again…  You tell ’em Rich! 

And this from kitco.com…”After their biggest collapse in recent history, gold and silver are finding their way back into the light, posting their biggest one-day gains on record.

Spot gold last traded at $4,916 an ounce, up more than 5% on the day; meanwhile, spot silver last traded at $87.82 an ounce, up 11%.

Some analysts note that the recovery in the precious metals confirms a growing consensus that the recent selling pressure is related to short-term speculative positioning and momentum rather than a fundamental shift in the marketplace.”

Chuck again, do you get the picture that I’ve been painting for 3 days now?  These last two snippets should do the trick if you still didn’t see that nothing has changed about the reason we bought Gold (Silver)…

In the overnight markets last night… The dollar drifted and didn’t move too much, so we start today with the BBDXY at 1,189..  Gold & Silver have put the engineered takedown combined with a correction, and short timers jumping ship like rats, behind them as they continue yesterday’s recovery.. Gold is up $126 to start our day today, and Silver is up $4.78..  I don’t know about you, but I sure did a sigh of relief when there two metals recovered yesterday… The SPTs could have really put the kyboshes on these two, by going after them every day, but they backed off for now and that’s a good thing. 

The price of Oil dipped to traded with a $63 handle overnight, and the 10-year’s yield is 4.27% to start the day today… I had my days mixed up again yesterday, and said the Treasury’s refunding was yesterday, when in fact, it is today… I still believe that the Treasury will opt for refunding with shorter term bills and notes… I guess we’ll see, eh?

Well, recall when I told you of the POTUS’s plan to open Federal lands previously off limits to miners, and get the mining companies to go for it, to take over our dependency of raw earth materials from China?  And I said that I would have to be shown this whole process before I believed it? Well, the POTUS has now opened up what’s going to be called the “project vault” which won’t be just for the Gov’t’s holdings of rare earth materials, but also the public’s holdings.. So, it does appear that it’s on its way to becoming a real benefit to the U.S. economy…   

James Rickards says that the size of this project will be worth Trillions…  Pay down our debt, to more reasonable levels, and make America Great Again….   Well, there’s still a lot to be played out here, and as the Gov’t has shown, when they get involved things get wonky…  So, we’ve got that going for us.. 

Shoot Rudy, last week, I even bought US rare eaths… So, I’m somewhat a believer at this point…  This would be the end of all the doom and gloom that has hung over our economy like a dark storm cloud for so long now, and all my thoughts about a failing financial system, and our problems financing out debt and so on and so forth…  Now, this will not be an overnight sensation, it will take a few years to all play out, until then the dark clouds will remain over the U.S. economy…. I’m just saying…

And just when it appears that armeggedon will arrive on our shores, things will change… that is if everything works out in the POTUS’s favor…  

Ok, enough of that talk! Let’s talk about the labor market, which the Fed Heads have pointed toward to give them a reason for cutting rates recently…  Fed Gov. Waller had this to say: “Waller argued in a statement on Friday that the labor market is still in rough shape.

He pointed out that the economy only added 600,000 new jobs in 2025, down from the prior 10-year average of 1.9 million. And even that 600,000 gain last year could prove illusory once the government updates the data to be more accurate.

“Last year’s data will be revised downward soon to likely show that there was virtually no growth in payroll employment in 2025. Zero. Zip. Nada,” Waller said.”

Chuck again…  Yes, Waller and Miren were the two Fed Governors that voted against leaving the rates unchanged at the last FOMC meeting. These two instead, vote for a 50 Basis Points rate cut…   But I did like that he said out loud that referred that the BLS’s numbers aren’t trustworthy, and will be revised lower in the future… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard, I messed up yesterday, saying that the ADP Employment Report would print, knowing all too well that it prints on Wednesdays… Geesh, sometimes I’m just a dolt!  So, the ADP Employment Report will print this morning…  And that’s it for data today and tomorrow and will the Data Cupboard will be empty until Friday’s Jobs Jamboree…  

To recap… The selling of Gold & Silver ended in the overnight markets the previous night, and then continued through the day on Tuesday, until late in the trading session, when the SPTs sold Gold & Silver short, and pared down their daily gains… Their daily gains were still very good, and strong, but well off their highs for the day.  The dollar got sold and has returned to the underlying weak trend…  And Chuck talks about rate earths, mining and what it will do for us ….

For What It’s Worth… This is a very sobering article folks… only read it if you’ve put away all the sharp objects… I’m serious here… This is an article that goes through the job losses of AI and asks the question what will we do? And it can be found here: AI Revolution: The Case for Universal Basic Income

Or, here’s your very long snippet: “Something fundamental has shifted, and pretending otherwise is nothing short of denial. The AI revolution is here, and it’s gutting entire sectors with hurricane force. This isn’t an industrial transition, nor a replay of mechanization or globalization. It is a technological rupture of a different magnitude. Machines replacing not only muscle but cognition itself: judgment, pattern recognition, reasoning. And it’s advancing at a pace that outstrips legislation, labor markets, and political capacity, moving faster than most in government are willing to admit.

The most sobering warning comes from Geoffrey Hinton, one of the architects of modern AI. Hinton hasn’t joined the hype merchants. Instead, he has joined the alarmists. His claim is troubling: AI capability is effectively doubling every seven months. Not every decade. Not every few years. Every seven months.

At that pace, change doesn’t arrive gradually but in overwhelming waves. First, it replaces what we dismiss as “menial” cognitive work — call centers, customer service, scheduling, transcription. That phase is already underway. Then it moves into clerical roles, basic accounting, paralegal research, routine journalism, marketing copy, and compliance work. Those jobs are next. After that, no profession is spared, not even software engineering itself.

Hinton insists that within a few years, AI systems will complete monthlong programming projects in hours. When that happens, junior developers will be removed rather than retrained. Teams will shrink. Entire layers will vanish. If the people who build the systems can be replaced by the systems, then no white-collar profession should feel insulated.

Lay out the timeline honestly, and it becomes terrifying. In 2026, AI replaces support roles. In 2027, it consumes administrative and clerical work. By 2028, it’s performing serious professional tasks at scale. By the early 2030s, much of white-collar America may no longer be necessary to the current economic structure.

This brings us to the politically radioactive part: The United States has no plan. None. No labor transition strategy. No reskilling conveyor belt capable of operating at this speed. No serious public conversation about income decoupled from employment. Just vague chatter about “innovation,” paired with the familiar promise that new jobs will somehow appear, as they always have.

We must dispense with the dangerous fiction and start facing the brutal reality.

A society where tens of millions are unemployable is not a sign of free-market success but a powder keg. You can’t preach personal responsibility to a population for whom responsibility has been rendered economically irrelevant.

You can’t defend social order while ignoring the conditions that make order possible.”

Chuck again…  This guy goes on to talk about Universal Income… Something I’m not in favor of, but when you read this you might come around to his way of thinking… This is our future, folks…What will the U.S. finances look like in 2030? No jobs, no taxes paid to the Gov’t…. AYE, AYE, AYE…  I’m at this point so glad that I was born and worked and retired long before this hits, but my kids and grandkids will have to deal with it… Sorry…. I wasn’t a programmer, so don’t blame me! 

Market Prices 2/5/2026: American Style: A$ .7027, kiwi .6024, C$ .7323, euro 1.1815, sterling 1.3719, Swiss $1.2888, European Style: rand 15.9555, krone 9.6512, SEK 8.9476, forint 322.13, zloty 3.5750, koruna 20.6135, RUB 76.72, yen 156.67, sing 1.2715, HKD 7.8123, INR 90.42, China 6.9325, peso 17.24, BRL 5.2284, BBDXY 1,189, Dollar Index 97.50, Oil $63.33, 10-year 4.27%, Silver $90.05, Platinum $2303.00, Palladium $1,846.00. Copper $6.06, and Gold… $5,055

That’s it for today…  Well, winter is over down here, as I sat outside yesterday, read and soaked in some Vitamin D…  We had a couple of days there that were not Florida like… But that’s over now… Thank goodness! Well, at least for me in S. Florida it’s over…  200 miles north of here, are still quite chilly..  I received a text yesterday from my friend, and former colleague, Ty Keough, who informed me that he’s in Puerto Vallarta and he didn’t have to turn on his heat!  Always good to hear from Ty!  Pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks… And our Stl U. Billikens got down 13 points last night and then stormed back in the 2^nd half to win and keep their win streak alive! They are fun to watch, as it’s a different player taking he scoring lead each game!  Procol Harum takes us to the finish line today with their mega hit song: Whiter Shade of Pale….  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler   

• currencies and metals rally overnight
• Oil price retreats with no war…

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Friday this week is the circus that surrounds the Jobs Jamboree… That should hole the market’s attention for a few minutes on Friday! They are such a fickle group, so who knows? The SPTs and short timers were still selling Gold & Silver yesterday, so no healing in those two just yet, but I do believe it will come… Again, I’m going to shout this from the roof tops… “Nothing has changed” except the selling now holds court over the metals. 10cc greets me this morning with their song: the Things We Do For Love.. 

The dollar continued its brief rally based on the thought in the markets of “no more rate cuts”, with the b

BBDXY gaining 3 index points on the day. Do I need to remind you that the dollar’s weak trend is not a ONE-WAY Street? I didn’t think so, but I did any way…. But in the meantime, what’s a poor boy to do? Well, I suggest that you do either of two things…. 1. Batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to blow over or 2. Back up the truck and buy currencies at cheaper prices… 

Gold lost $230 yesterday, and Silver lost $6.03…  The SPTs and short timers are trying to show you that what goes up big, must come down big…   I found this on kitco.com “Although gold and silver have seen extreme selling pressure, the fundamental outlook for the precious metals has not changed.

“Metal prices didn’t just correct on Friday – they deleveraged. Gold fell 10%, exceeding the largest intraday drop since the 2008 global financial crisis and the biggest daily decline since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, silver collapsed 30%,” the analysts said. “These extreme moves tells you this was not fundamentally driven; it was about positioning.”

Chuck again… I highlighted the statement above because that’s what I keep saying over and over again with no luck in turning Gold & Silver’s selling around.. 

In the overnight markets last night…  The selling of Gold & Silver ended last night, thank goodness! Gold is up $262 to start our day today, and Silver is up $8.  The turnaround has brought the “risk” back into the markets, and that is basically here because of Gold & Silver…  The overnight markets said, “enough is enough and bought physical metals at the cheaper prices, which you should have been doing!   But we procrastinate, and say, “I’ll do that tomorrow”, and then tomorrow comes, and we forget what we were supposed to do… I get it… So, that’s why I continue to harp on you to diversify your investment portfolio currencies and metals…. 

The dollar buying stopped overnight too and the BBDXY is down 2 index points to start our day today, with he currencies recovering a bit… The Chinese renminbi was allowed take another step in the right direction and starts today trading with a 6.93 handle… that’s quite a bit lower than a couple of months ago…  Longtime reader, Bob, sent me a note that he found that says something that I used to tell audiences in my presentations, and that is that “China’s Xi wants to move the renminbi to achieve reserve status for the currency”…   Yes, a wider distribution of not only the currency but the bond market is required fundamentals of a reserve currency, which the dollar holds tentatively now… 

I’ve explained this before, but it bears repeating now… China is not interested in short term moves, they look into the future and have long term visions of how things will be… So, don’t expect China to be rapidly making the renminbi widely distributed, and open up their bond markets… They will take their time and come about their mission on their timetable… 

I also used to tell audiences that I thought to achieve the reserve status for the renminbi, they would need to attach gold conversion in some percentage to the renminbi … Well, I told you months ago that the Chinese were doing just that in some form… So, it’s all coming into focus now…  

The price of Oil remained in trading in the $62 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury is inching higher with its yield again.. This morning’s yield is 4.28%

Yesterday, I told you that the price of Oil had remained at $62, but failed to mention that on Friday it dropped $3 because the U.S. held off attacking Iran… Apparently, the Oil guys had thought that the U.S. would attack Iran, thus slowing the Oil flow out of the country…  

More from Oilprice.com… “Winter Storm Fern exposed deep structural fragility in the U.S. power grid, with outages affecting up to a million customers despite years of warnings from reliability watchdogs.”

Chuck again… I know, I switched from Oil to electric on a dime there, but it’s still energy.. And the cold weather really put the grid guys on high alert…  I’ve been pointing out the problem with all the AI… strain on the electrical grid… And now this polar vortex that has taken control of 1/3rd of the country…. Shoot Rudy, the polar vortex, even touched us down in South Florida! I actually had to turn on the heat in our place for the first time since we’ve owned it…  The overnight lows hadn’t been seen here in over 15 years, far before I came south…  Back to the high 60’s today, and 70’s tomorrow, should at least put a smile on most S. Floridians faces… I know it will mine, for I’ll be able to go outside and read in the sun! 

The game of tug-o-war between the SPTs and China is going to play out a few more times as this plays out, in my humble opinion, but sooner or later the SPTs will give up the ship rather than but heads with China every time they try to take the metals down… 

On Friday this week, we’ll see the Jobs Jamboree… I wonder if the BLS will add thousands of jobs out of thin air, or will they leave the surveys alone?  I would bet a shiny quarter on the former of the two options here…  The BLS gets chastised by the POTUS, it gets its chief el jefe fired, but they still play games with the surveys from companies that tell what they did with labor during the previous month.  There’s no way, that the BLS will allow a bad report at this point.. 

I’ve said this previously, but it bears repeating… The U.S. economy is working in some parts and not working in other parts… The observers call this a “K economy” Well in my humble opinion, the spikes in the K will flatten out as the year goes on…  that is as long as the POTUS’s plan to mine the heck out of Federal land and turn our economy’s dire straits into happy days are here again….. I told you about it a few months ago, as James Rickards reported it, but like I said then, I’m from Missouri, they are going to have to show me”…. 

The other thing that will go on and happen later today, is the refinancing announcement by the Treasury…  They have a large refinancing today, and it will be interesting to see if the Treasury opts for a spread-out issuance, or will he bulk up the T-Bills and other short bonds?  I think with all the questions going around the merry-go-round these days regarding rate cuts (yes or no?) The Treasury will not want to go out too long…. Yes, interest rates are much lower this year than in the past few years, but the debt servicing costs will continue to take a HUGE bite of our finances, given that the size of the issuance continues to grow… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard doesn’t have much on the docket today and only has the ADP Employment Report for our viewing tomorrow morning, it is NOT forecast to show a recovery in jobs during December…  I read a report on the hill.com   that talked about how AI is going to cause major job losses going forward… I think that call centers are already going in the automated direction, along with clerical staff, and others… It’s already started in my humble opinion…  I’ll have that for you in tomorrow’s FWIW, so make sure you come back to read it!

To recap… The selling of Gold & Silver continued on Monday… Chuck is waiting for the Chinese to step in from of this selling bus and say no mas!  Chuck repeats his thought that everyone that owns Gold & Silver should take to heart and that is: that nothing has changed in the fundamentals as to why you bought Gold…. the U.S. didn’t attack Iran and so the price of Oil drops… And what Chuck has been waiting for started last night… 

For What It’s Worth… I found this on Kitco.com and it’s about the recent pull-back of the metals and then goes about talking about how it should be short-lived…  This is a very long article but I carved out the piece I wanted you to read… if you have the time to read it all, then you can find the article here: Gold and silver prices set to consolidate after a parabolic spike | Kitco News

Or, here’s your very long snippet: “Roughly $9–10 trillion of U.S. Treasury debt will mature in 2026, forcing markets, not policymakers, to decide what long-dated capital is worth in a country running persistent primary deficits with no political appetite for restraint from either side of the aisle.

Inflation will rise even further when the money supply expands beyond productive output. Politicians have lost all discipline because government continually votes to raise budgets and prolong a problem the Fed is powerless to stop.

The debt crisis has been rapidly snowballing in magnitude, with those in power having zero intention of stopping it from destroying the dollar’s purchasing power further.

Following the U.S. government shutdown in Q4 2025, what began to shift is not the existence of debt but how it is considered. Capital is no longer free, duration is no longer ignored, and credibility is no longer assumed. None of this is sudden, or even radical. It is simply arithmetic reasserting itself after decades of being deferred.

After deciding to research how the financial system functions over twenty years ago, I discovered that the system was living on borrowed time – financially, politically, and institutionally.

The sharply rising gold price could be telling us that 2026 may be the year when the bill comes due, while global investors simultaneously decide they need hard assets as a hedge against an obvious dollar destructive policy choice.

A weaker dollar drives more gold and silver buying, as more gold and silver buying validates the dollar diversification trade. Therefore, central banks are set to continue piling in with record purchases, and now private investors are following with Wall Street’s blessing.

After spending years of mostly telling clients silver was too industrial to be considered “precious,” and holding gold “paid no interest,” Bank of America has a $170 silver price target, while Citi just upgraded their short-term forecast to $150 from $100. In October, BofA raised its gold forecast to $5000, then raised it to $6000 coming into the new year.

The explosive moves in the precious metals complex we are experiencing is not merely just another bull market rally. Gold blowing through $5000/oz and silver clearing $100/oz so quickly represents a fundamental breakdown in confidence in the world monetary system that has been building since the 2008 financial crisis.

The extraordinary rise in both precious metals is the marketplace screaming that the global sovereign debt spiral has reached terminal velocity intermixed with increasing geopolitical turmoil, while generalist investment institutions and retail investors have only recently returned the precious metals mining space after leaving en masse in 2012.

Their recent return to this tiny sector is evidenced by several important benchmark precious metals sector ratio trades set to break out above significant 12-year resistance levels from long-term accumulative bases.”

Chuck again… yes, it was like he was writing about the pull-back in metals and then thought, “but the dollar is in trouble and that means the metals will rally”…   I find that sometimes I’m writing about something and then I think of something else, and I lose all conscientiousness with what I was doing!  I’m such a dolt sometimes! HA! 

Market Prices 2/3/2026: American Style: A$ .7011, kiwi .6039, C$ .7320, euro 1.1796, sterling 1.3689, Swiss $1.2863, European Style: rand 15.9808, krone 9.6816, SEK 8.9429, forint 322.67, zloty 3.5820, koruna 20.6150, RUB 76.88, yen 155.88, sing 1.2707, HKD 7.8127, INR 90.26, China 6.9379, peso 17.31, BRL 5.2316, BBDXY 1,189, Dollar Index 97.56, Oil $62.55, 10-year 4.28%, Silver $87.50, Platinum $2,245.00, Palladium $1,828.00, Copper $6.06, and Gold… $4,923

That’s it for today…  Man, that was frustrating to watch last night, as our Blues blew a 5-1 lead and lost to the Predators 6-5… For a period there, I thought that the Blues were playing their best hockey of the year, and then suddenly they weren’t! The Billikens play tonight and put their 14-game win streak on the line…  On Groundhog day, Phil saw his shadow, so 6 more weeks of winter…  (Don’t get too upset, he’s only right 35% of the time!) Only 2 weeks until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training… I bet they are hoping for warmer weather for their start! It looks like on the weather calendar that “sunny and 80” won’t be in the cards this early spring, but sunny and 70’s will be in its place… Bob Dylan takes us to the finish line today with his song: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today