Author: admin

September 13, 2022

* Currencies & metals drift on Monday… 

* Chuck asks the question… Got Gold? 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, times sure have changed. I recall, for many years, I couldn’t wait for Monday Night Football to come on TV. And last night, meh… And then when I did turn it on to see what was happening, it couldn’t hold my attention… So, I got out my book and read! I know that fall is right around the corner, but the temps of fall arrived early the past two days, and it made it quite nippy outside once the sun went down. I’ve said this before, but… Around here, the best weather we get is in the fall… So, I look forward to the season, but with a weary eye toward the next season that I absolutely abhor! And this year, it looks like a lot of Americans and Europeans will be having to wear their winter coats inside to keep warm… In Sweden, if you turn your thermostat up past 66 f degrees, you can end up in Jail for 3 years! I’m very concerned about the folks “in the margin” this winter… George Harrison greets me this morning with his song: What Is Life?

Well, the dollar wrapped a tourniquet around its gaping wound yesterday, and stopped the bleeding for the day, that is… The BBDXY gained back 1 index point to close the day at 1,293. The euro, however, gained a tiny bit on the day, as it still is getting some love from the ECB’s rate hike, and hawkish stance. The Aussie dollar, and kiwi, have not been so lucky to receive some love after the respective Central Banks hiked rates a couple of times now. The A$ has lost 3% since May, when the commodities were hot, and soaring, but since that time, the mood in the Global economy has soured, and that will be a touch row to hoe for the rate hikes to overcome.

Speaking of commodities… The price of Copper is starting to rise again… Copper saw a huge run up in the spring, only to be knocked back down by the slowing economy, but now there seems to be a shortage brewing in Copper. The reason I single out Copper is that it’s a harbinger to higher inflation… And speaking of shortages… There simply seems to be a shortage brewing in Silver… Silver has outperformed Gold in recent trading, and is getting its ques from stories of shortage.

I had a reader send me a note and highlighted that his broker offered to buy his Silver… Hmmm… That sounds like the broker is short and can’t find an Silver to borrow…

Gold gained $7.40 yesterday, coming down from its early morning gain of $10, to close the day at $1,725.30, while Silver added to its early morning gain of 44-cents to end the day up 93-cents and close at $19.86… Hi Ho Silver! Now, where did Tonto go again? HA!

In the overnight markets last night… The dollar got sold again, and again it was some harsh selling, with the BBDXY down 6 index points to 1,287 this morning.  In looking at yesterday’s dollar activity, it appears to be a case of PPT spending some ESF money to defend the dollar, because once the U.S. session ended, the selling of the dollar returned in the overnight markets. 

The Petrol Currencies seem to have the upper hand on the dollar as we go through the currency roundup today. The ruble, real, krone, sterling, peso, and others are all outperforming the Big Dog euro, which in itself is not doing too badly VS the dollar right now.  The price of Oil has bumped higher again and trades this morning with a $89 handle… Traders are like me, right now, and questioning the thought of a lack of demand. 

Gold & Silver are on different tracks this morning in the early trading. Gold is up $4 and Silver is flat as a pancake (Head East), ahead of the stupid CPI print this morning…  Here’s the skinny on the thoughts in the markets right now concerning inflation…  If the stupid CPI shows a weakening of inflation, that will be bad for the dollar, because the mental giants will conclude that the Fed won’t have to be so aggressive hiking rates, and the aggressive rate hike thoughts are what had pushed the dollar to the heights it held last week. 

I’ve really been thinking about this, what I’m going to talk about now, for some time, and that should scare the living daylights out of you! HA! Seriously… I’m being stone cold serious here folks, so here we go!
I’m so upset with the IRA (inflation Reduction Act), for a couple of reasons… 1 it in no way is going to reduce inflation… 2. For the money, we don’t have, to spend on the green program… You know, it’s all fine and dandy if everyone who believes that Co2 emissions cause the globe to heat up, to do their part to reduce those emissions… But why on earth does the Gov’t need to get involved, with our tax payer funds? The Gov’t didn’t ask me if I wanted my tax dollars to go toward this boondoggle! Why on earth, does anyone, and I mean anyone, give the government one ounce of credit when they get involved in things? They will make an mountain out of an anthill, and spend so much money that they don’t have to do it! President Reagan said, “the most terrifying words are: “‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” And why would anyone think that the Gov’t can change the climate? They can’t even change a flat tire if they had one on their limo!

We the people are allowing the Gov’t to kill the golden goose… We’ve shut down oil pipelines, we’ve made it impossible to dig a well, and refineries are a thing of the past… Our country, our economy, our lives have thrived on the fact that we knew how to obtain Oil, refine Oil, and use it in nearly everything that we use in our lives… And we’re going to replace it with wind propellers, and solar panels? Don’t you think it would be wise for us as a country, to test the ability of these alternatives to Oil, to take over before you anoint them the crown? Yes, they work, but do they supply enough to run our economy, our lives, our energy grid, etc.? I don’t think so… not now… maybe in 50 years, but not now… And that’s all I’m going to say about this before I start yelling at the walls… I know, some of you out there that will disagree with me on this, and that’s fine, but keep your thoughts to yourself…

OK, now that was a long diatribe on energy wasn’t it? And you’re asking, how does that tie into the dollar? Ahhhhh grasshopper, sit back and find out! Deficit Spending means more currency printing, and more currency printing begets more currency printing, thus guaranteeing that not only will inflation continue to be here for months to come, but that the current dollars outstanding will be diluted even more, thus putting pressure on the value of the dollar…

And to blame Putin for this inflation, or to blame the supply line distortions, or to blame the sun for getting in your eyes, or to blame to stone you tripped on, is nothing more than an attempt to get you to look the other way, and not blame the Fed Heads… The conflict between Ukraine and Russia doesn’t help things, and neither do boats sitting in the harbor of Long Beach, but they aren’t the root of the inflation. Money Supply is the root, and will be until either the Fed Heads hike rates over the inflation rate, or the Gov’t stops deficit spending… What? You don’t see either of those happening? Neither do I that’s why I continue to say….. Got Gold?

OK, so I’ve taken issue with the Gov’t, Congress, Fed Heads, and everyone in the country that believes the Gov’t can fix all this, this morning… Man, he’s on a roll! Ahhh, the scene from Animal House just popped into my brain… I can see Bluto ranting: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” And when a frat brother tries to correct him, they say, “Don’t stop him, he’s on a roll”

I found this yesterday on the www.dollarcollapse.com site, and Charles Hugh Smith, of whom I’ve quote many times in the past for the Pfennig, talking about Social Security… Let’s listen in: “ Workforces in most nations are shrinking while the population of retirees’ soars.

This undermines the entire social contract established in the postwar era (1950s and 1960s) which are all “pay as you go” programs that were designed for 4 or 5 workers supporting one retiree.

Now that the ratio has fallen to two workers (or less) to each retiree, the programs are unsustainable.”

Chuck again… Can you say, bye, bye Gov’t programs like Social Security? Or will the Gov’t just choose to spend more money they don’t have and fund the program?

The U.S. Data Cupboard has the stupid CPI today for August… I’m sure the bean counters in the Gov’t will make sure that inflation begins to show it coming down… But as always I will check to see what John Williams at www.shadowstats.com has to show for real inflation! Tomorrow we’ll see the color of PPI for August, and the same holds true for this data to be ratcheted downward… Am I too jaded toward Gov’t economic reports? You bet I am, for good reason!

To recap… The dollar wrapped a tourniquet around the wound to stop the bleeding yesterday… So, it didn’t get sold further during the day. But overnight it got sold again, and this morning it looks to be in trouble again. Gold & Silver gained yesterday, and Chuck talks about a shortage in Silver brewing… Chuck also goes off on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) so you’re not going to want to have missed that!

For What It’s Worth… Much of what we live through these days is propaganda… The Gov’t, through the media, only tells you what they want you to know, not what you want to know, the news programs are nothing more than Gov’t lies, with the talking heads giving you their opinions, and not just telling us the news… Well, this article talks about the propaganda that’s going on in the U.S. and it can be found here: www.informationclearinghouse.info/57237.htm

Or, here’s your snippet: “In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.

She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. “Yes, especially them,” she said.

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies.

Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected.

Or do we in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?

The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top 10 media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

The news from the war in Ukraine is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission. I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda.

In February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass on their border.

Airbrushing, once associated with Stalin’s purges, has become a tool of mainstream journalism.

In less than a decade, a “good” China has been airbrushed and a “bad” China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.” 

Chuck Again… And the article goes on and on and on… it’s a long one folks, so my suggestion would be to stick with the snippet and call it a day!

Market Prices 9/13/2022: American Style: A$ .6910,  kiwi .6156, C$ .7717, euro 1.0184, sterling 1.1732, Swiss $10539, European Style: rand 17.0135, krone 9.8332, SEK 10.4256,  forint 389.86,  zloty 4.6198, koruna 24.1197, RUB 60.19, yen 141.94, sing 1.3942, HKD 7.8487, INR 79.14, China 6.9265, peso 19.80, BRL 5.0942,  BBDXY 1,287.61,  Dollar Index 107.70, Oil $89.02, 10-year 3.30%, Silver $19.87, Platinum 915.00, Palladium $2,211.00. Copper $3.67, and Gold… $1,729.46

That’s it for today… I’ve been holding back on talking about the IRA for sometime now, and finally thought, what the heck! Cardinals and Brewers for the first of two at Busch starting tonight.. The Brewers are in second place 8 games behind the Cardinals, so take both of these games and you have 10 game lead! Go Cards! Ok, here’s where you need to pay attention… I will be out of town next week, and am not taking my laptop, so that means no Pfennig next week! Got it? OK… So, how’d you like that video from Frank Trotter yesterday? Isn’t he something? Couldn’t stay retired, and instead is starting another brand new spanking bank! I see that he’s recruited some of his old cohorts at EverBank, and some going back to Mark Twain Bank! And no, I’m not coming out of retirement to join him this time… (Besides, he didn’t ask me to! HA!) Chris Isaac takes us to the finish line today with his great song: Wicked Game I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

September 12, 2022

* Currencies & metals rally on Friday, last week

* What’s Frank Trotter up to these days? 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Wow! 2 consecutive days of 9^th inning rallies gave my beloved Cardinals a 2-1 edge in their weekend series against the Pirates. Last Thursday, I went to the day game, and watched Yadier Molina hit two home runs!  I’ve seen some things in my days at the ballpark, things like a no-hitter (Bob Forsch), 2 game 7 World Series winning games, and countless clutch hits, stolen bases (Lou Brock), and most of the time through the years, I’ve been at a game with my friends… Sometimes family, and other times with clients… But the point is that I always had someone to share the event with! I HAVE A SPECIAL TREAT FOR YOU IN THE FWIW SECTION TODAY! Scott McKenzie greets me this morning with his song: San Francisco…  You know… “If your’re going to San Francisco remember to wear some flowers in your hair” … That song…

After setting record highs for the dollar earlier last week, the dollar succumbed to some pressure as traders began to look around and see that it’s not just the Fed Heads raising rates…  On Thursday last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) did hike rates 75 Basis Points, to lift the Eurozone deposit rates out of negative territory. The ECB also made noise about further rate hikes being just as aggressive. This rat hike news stopped the dollar rally in its tracks… By Friday afternoon, when the markets closed for the weekend, the BBDXY had fallen over 1%, and ended the week at 1,298.63…   Here’s Bloomberg with their take on the dollar’s moves Friday:

“The tide turned against the greenback on Friday as sentiment toward the euro recovered after the ECB’s jumbo-sized hike left the door open to another big move in October. The dollar’s losses may also have been compounded by expectations that a report due next week could show US inflation eased in August, according to Kengo Suzuki, chief market strategist at Mizuho Bank in Tokyo.”

Gold, on Friday, won back the $9 that was taken from its value on Thursday. Gold finally found a bid last week and was able to build some momentum. Gold ended the week at $1,718.10, and Silver, as usual outperformed Gold on a percentage basis, ended the week at $18.94, after it added 31-cents to its value on Friday.

Friday was a good day for the euro, as the markets digested the ECB rate hike and hawkish words. The euro closed the week at 1.0080. The rest of the currencies fell in place behind the Big Dog euro.

The price of Oil bumped higher from its low point on Thursday morning of $81.49, and ended the week trading with a $85 handle. I would like to think that traders are finally coming to grips with the lack of supply that far outweighs the lack of demand…  Whenever I do get out, and drive around, there are so many cars on the road, and very few of them are electric, so to me, I don’t see a lack of demand for gas, but then that’s just me!

Bond went up, down, up, down all last week, but ended the week with the 10-year Treasury at a 3.30% yield… Strange trading in bonds, folks, and like I said last week, there had to be a Central Bank buying the 10-year last week, after we saw the yield on the bond fall from 3.32% in yield down to 3.10%, and then back up again… That major downward blip had to be a large chunk of bonds being bought… And we have chronicled the fact that the Chinese and Russians have backed away from the Treasury auctions… India has been rumored to have backed away too, that leaves the U.S….  I’m just saying…

In The overnight markets last night… the dollar continued to get sold and suddenly the dollar strength is vanishing quickly. The BBDXY lost over 6 index points last night and trades this morning at 1,292…  The euro has made its biggest intra trading day move since last March, and Gold & Silver are getting bought in the early trading today. 

The price of Oil has risen $2 more dollars overnight and trades this morning with a $87 handle…  

Things can change in a NY Minute, folks, and it does appear to be changing before my eye…  As far as Gold & Silver go, let’s hope this newfound bid is something that sticks like glue…  For I did not like the way Gold & Silver got treated lately with their respective prices falling like pennies thrown in a fountain… 

Well, I sure stirred up the hornet’s nest last week with my FWIW article on the Fourth Turning. I had a couple of readers take great offense that I included it in my letter, and one even told me that I had lost my mind!  Here’s the deal, or skinny, folks… The article was there to make you think… If it caused you to fire off a stinging email to me about it, I made you think!  And remember, The FWIW articles are not written by me! If I truly agree with something, I’ll say so at the end in the Chuck Again section.  I can’t believe how nasty people are when you say something that upsets their way of thinking… Any way, I apologize if I upset your day….

Last week was a very busy week for events… The Queen died, The ECB hiked rates 75 Basis Points,  Gold finally found a bid, former Fed Head, Clarida, told reporters that come “hell or high water interest rates are going to 4%”, A hurricane in the Gulf finally brought some rain to So. California, and Chuck went to a day game!

Of all that stuff, I wanted to take the time to talk about Fed Head Clarida’s comment about interest rates going to 4%, is quite interesting, since inflation is more than double that 4% rate. So, Big Deal, right? Well, to me, and maybe you, this is just a drop in the bucket of where interest rates need to be to squash inflation. And yes, I’m aware that the higher interest rates go, the greater the chance of the US. Economy coming to it knees… But you HAVE to have one to have the other…  Either inflation runs away and ruins the economy for good, or…  A weak economy for a year, that wipes out the excesses of the previous boom, so that we can begin to pick up the pieces and move forward.

It’s like taking a medicine you don’t like for all the side effects it causes, but you know in your heart of hearts that by taking this medicine in 10 days or so, you’ll be better, and ready to take on the world again.

There are problems in the world, folks… And with those problems come opportunities…  And the biggest opportunity you have before you right now is to buy Gold & Silver at much cheaper prices before they take off for higher ground again.   You know… that all this dollar buying that’s been goin on for the last month, is being bought on false pretenses…  It’s being bought because people seem to believe that the Fed Heads have their backs, and they will deliver us from evil… Once the Fed Heads fall flat on their collective faces, these people buying dollars hand over fist, will drop the dollar like a bad habit!   

I told an audience in Orlando Florida, in February 2011, that the dollar would be replaced as the reserve currency by the end of the current decade…. The statement was evident in that all the debt the U.S. was amassing, would eventually bring the dollar down, but that statement wasn’t imminent…  I was wrong, and I’m not ashamed to admit that, because, if you think back to 2011, this was before the debts of Europe were discovered, (remember the Piigs?), and the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel began to warm up the printing presses… Of course the Fed Heads’ mass printing of dollars, would push the dollar closer to the edge of the reserve currency cliff… But, at the time, everyone, not of their right mind, have you, thought that what the Central Bank was doing was kosher, so no danger to the dollar, as far they could see…

I’m still thinking that the dollar will eventually lose it’s reserve currency status, and to me this is why you buy Gold… In addition to that, Gold is also a store of wealth… not something you buy and sell like cakes at a PTA Bake Sale!  And one more thought here…  All these gyrations in the price of Gold is nothing but “short term noise”, and has nothing to do with your long-term strategy of preserving wealth!

I found this on zerohedge.com, and it’s a famous financial analyst by the name of Charles Nenner, and here’s a snippet of what he had to say about the dollar. “” People don’t trust what is going on in the United States. . . . We have seen this happen to other countries.  We saw this happen to the British.   They are going to go to another major currency.  The BRIC countries and China are preparing to have an anti-dollar.  I have told you for years that the dollar is not going to crash, but now it is time.

In a year or so, they will really be getting into trouble with the dollar.  If the dollar goes down, of course, the inflation goes even higher.  So, actually, there is no way out anymore.  Every Federal Reserve President has said let’s keep it going.  The dollar is going to collapse, but not in my lifetime, and now there is almost nothing left to do anymore…”

Chuck Again…  Yeah, this plays into what I was saying above about how I just don’t see how the dollar can maintain its reserve currency status…  And then there’s the Student Loan Bribe…  Yes, I call it a bribe, because who do you think these debtor students are going to vote for in the next election other than the guy that paid off their debt!  But it goes further than that folks… besides it being morally wrong, it’s going to become fighting words between those that got to go to college, and then get their debts wiped out, and those that couldn’t go to college, because they didn’t know their debt would be wiped out.  Social Unrest is the name of that game, and it won’t be fun to play.

And in my opinion, on a side bar here, I would estimate that over ½ of those citizens that went to college, shouldn’t have gone to college, but should have gone to trade school instead, and not amassed such huge debts, and learned a trade that would provide them a career and earnings, and not have them waiting tables with their degrees.

Boy that was quite jaded there Chuck, are you sure you don’t want to take some of that back, before some readers take you to the woodshed again?  Nah… Let the chips fall where they will… 

OK, I got off the subject there, of debt accumulation, not only by our Gov’t, but Corporations, and Individuals…  Do yourself a BIG favor, folks… Get Out of Debt!  About 10 years ago I wrote a Sunday Pfennig where I said that Debt was Slavery…  I meant it then, and I mean it now!

I was reading my longtime friend, John Mauldin’s letter the other day, and he quoted Mish Shedlock, who, like me, believes the BLS’s jobs report is trash!  But here’s something else that we agree on, and that is the thought that with inflation so strong, people are having to take on a 2^nd or maybe even a 3^rd job, and each time that gets factored in as a new job created… Knock, knock, ahem, BLS… IT’s THE SAME PERSON Not 3 people getting jobs!

The U.S. Data Cupboard is chock-full-of-data this week, starting tomorrow, when the stupid CPI will print for August… The feeling in the markets is that inflation may have weakened in August…  Wednesday we’ll see PPI for August, and Thursday we’ll see Retail Sales, along with Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization.  There’s enough there for traders to get the picture that they shouldn’t be amassing dollars going forward… 

To recap… Maybe the light bulb over Traders’ collective heads finally came on, last Friday… I guess we’ll have to see, eh? The dollar got sold on Friday, after the ECB hiked rates 75 Basis Points on Thursday, and then talked hawkishly… Hey Joe, is it true that other countries have been hiking rates and not just the U.S. as we were led to believe?… Gold finally found a bid, and Silver outperformed Gold, as usual on Friday. Chuck goes into some long discussions about stuff this morning, I hope you didn’t skip over it!

For What It’s Worth….   I told you at the outset this morning that I had a special treat for you today in the FWIW section… That special treat is the link to an interview with my longtime friend, and former boss, Frank Trotter, where he discusses his new banking project: Battle Bank… The Bank is not open as of yet, but if you visit the website: www.battlebank.com, you can sign up to receive a notice as to when they will go live…  Until then here’s the link to the video… it’s 38 minutes long, so make sure you carve out enough time to watch and listen to my good friend, Frank Trotter…   Battle Financial Interview – Frank Trotter – YouTube

Chuck again…  Frank and I used to give presentations together, and I would always say that he and I had worked together for so long, the Dead Sea wasn’t even sick when we began!  He has always been an excellent writer, and speaker, and I can’t wait for his new bank to begin…  

Market Prices 9/12/2022: American Style: A$ .6867,  kiwi .6138, C$ .7691, euro 1.0130, sterling 1.1674, Swiss $1.0471, European Style: rand 17.0883, krone 9.8393, SEK 10.4959,  forint 399.78,  zloty 4.6468,  koruna 24.2371, RUB 60.33, yen 142.71, sing 1.3968, HKD 7.8489, INR 79.53, China 6.9265, peso 19.80, BRL 5.1487,  BBDXY 1,292.20,  Dollar Index 108.25, Oil $87.28, 10-year 3.29%, Silver $19.38, Platinum $894.00, Palladium $2,197.00, Copper $3.64, and Gold… $1,728.66

That’s it for today…. Yesterday, was our remembrance of the 9/11 terror attacks on our country, on our soil… We Shall Not Forget!   I remember trying to write the Pfennig the next day, and I just couldn’t find the words to write, and I said so, and a dear reader that had been with me for years, wrote to me and told me to “write, and act normal, that will really get under the terrorists’ skin” …  No baseball tonight, what’s a boy to do?  Albert Pujols is now only 3 home runs from becoming only the 4^th baseball player to reach 700 Home Runs… The season and at bats are dwindling, I hope he can get it done before he hangs up the spikes at the end the season. I really didn’t have high hopes for Albert, this last spring when it was announced that he would return to the Cardinals… I thought it to be nothing more than a “seat filler”… But he had proved me wrong! And I’m glad he has! The NFL started its season last week… I’m still not all-in on NFL football, but at least now I can watch some teams play…  Like the Chiefs…  The Gin Blossoms takes us to the finish line today with their song: Until I Fall Away…  I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and will remember to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

 

 

 

September 8, 2022

* Currencies & metals gain VS the dollar on Wednesday

* Waiting on the ECB and Bank of Canada today… 

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! WOW! What a comeback by my beloved Cardinals last night, in the bottom of the 9th inning, they scored 5 runs to win 6-5, and now enjoy a 9.5 lead in the division over the Brewers. I’m heading downtown today for the day game where pitcher Adam Wainwright and catcher Yadier Molina will tie the record for the most games started by a battery of pitcher and catcher! This will be number 325..  That’s a record, that I doubt will ever be broken, for baseball is a different game these days… Neil Young greets me this morning with his song: Southern Man…   This is the song that brought about the Lynyrd Skynyrd song: Sweet Home Alabama… 

Well, all that cold wind blowing from the hill that the dollar is the king of, stopped blowing yesterday, as we saw the dollar get sold, for once in a blue moon. The BBDXY lost 5 index points in yesterday’s trading, and most of the currencies recovered some lost ground on the day. the euro climbed back to 1.0 and the yen was pulled back from the cliff…  I have to think this was nothing more than a brief correction to the dollar, as it has become very overbought. 

Gold & Silver finally found a bid yesterday, with Gold rising $15.70, and Silver rising 44-cents… Gold ended the day yesterday, at $1,718.90, and Silver at $18.55… It has been over a week since Gold & Silver were allowed to gain VS the dollar… Of course, the other way to look at this is that Gold & Silver didn’t rise VS the dollar, but the dollar lost VS Gold & Silver…  It’s 6 of one and a half dozen of the other to me… 

That’s a phrase that my dad used all the time, and one that I hadn’t pulled out from up my sleeve for a long time! 

OPEC’s announced production cuts for Oil, hasn’t done anything to stop the slide in the price of Oil. A brief bump upward in the price of Oil was expected after the announcement, but none has come as of yet… The price of Oil slid to an $87 handle yesterday… I guess it’s time to go get gas for my car! 

And just when I thought that bond traders had finally gotten their collective heads screwed on right, bonds got bought yesterday and the 10-year Treasury’s yield dropped to 3.24%, from the 3.32% it held yesterday morning. What, did the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel step in to buy a large chunk of bonds yesterday? Well, somebody did… I’m just saying… 

In The overnight markets last night, the dollar selling didn’t continue, but then there wasn’t much dollar buying either. The BBDXY gained 1 index point overnight, so in reality the dollar was flat overnight, with the selling abated.  I’m at wits end over all this dollar buying folks…  Don’t these buyers know that the U.S. Empire is crumbling and I expect it to come crashing down in the next decade, and probably way before that!   So, I guess the mental geniuses are thinking, why not buy now while the getting’s good?   

Alrighty then…  well, did you hear this one? The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2022 is 1.4 percent on September 7, down from 2.6 percent on September 1.?

I would say that’s quite a reduction in just 7 days… By the time the actual GDP for the 3rd QTR gets printed in Oct, I would think it will be negative again, and that would mark 3 consecutive quarters with negative GDP… Would the gov’t THEN say it was a recession?  I doubt it… Because at that time it will be mid-terms election season…  

Yesterday, Fed Head Brainard talked and told everyone to hold on to your hats, because this is going to be a difficult road to hoe!  No, actually, she said this: ““We are in this for as long as it takes to get inflation down,” the central bank official said, just two weeks before the Fed’s next policy meeting. “So far, we have expeditiously raised the policy rate to the peak of the previous cycle, and the policy rate will need to rise further.” 

See how I’m so good at deciphering what the Fed Heads are really saying? I got a lot of practice during the Greenspan years, deciphering his Greenspeak! 

Well, the European Central Bank (ECB) is meeting and discussing whether they will hike rates 50 or 75 Basis Points this morning… They might have a decision by the time I hit send this morning, so if that happens, I’ll be sure to add it at the end.  I told you yesterday that the Bank of Canada will also meet later today, and they are expected to deliver a 75 Basis Points rate hike… 

Japan has to feel like that shows up at the dance wearing overalls, when everyone else is dressed to the nines… For Japan is the only major or even mid major that hasn’t hike rates… No wonder they keep seeing their currency edge closer to the cliff.  Now I hear that the President of the Bank of Japan is trying once more to jawbone the currency higher by saying there are plans to have a currency intervention…   

You would have to have a gun at my temple to make me buy Japanese yen, and I would think the major countries of the world, think the say way! 

I had some time the other day, and decided I would sit down and watch the Bill Bonner video where he makes his “Final Prediction”…  As usual, Bill does a great job of explaining his ideas, and gets to a point that he says the U.S. will encounter ” A Dark Winter”…  I won’t give away his final prediction, so, if you want to know what it is, just Google: Bill Bonner 4th and final prediction… Make sure you put away the sharp objects first though…  I’m just saying!

The U.S. Data Cupboard has the July print of Consumer Credit (read debt) for us this morning… You may recall that in the June report Consumer Credit exploded higher to $40 Billion…  Hopefully, that won’t see a gain…  We will also get to hear what Fed Head Jerome Powell has to say, two weeks before the Fed Heads next FOMC Meeting. 

To recap… The dollar buying stopped for a rest yesterday, before it takes off again. Gold & Silver finally saw a bid yesterday, and the currencies, for the most part, all gained on the day. In the overnight markets the dollar was basically flat, so no more selling of the dollar occurred…  The ECB meets this morning, no decision yet… 

For What It’s Worth….  Ok, a couple of weeks ago I told you about the 4th Turning, right? Well, this article brings us to date where we are in the 4th turning, don’t touch that dial! You can find it here: You’ve Entered the”Say Nothing” Phase of the Fourth Turning – DollarCollapse.com

Or, here’s your snippet: “It has become clear to me, since the installation of dementia patient Biden as the illegitimate figurehead president by his globalist Deep State handlers, their agenda is to tear down our modern civilization and replace it with a totalitarian techno-gulag where you will be electronically monitored, disarmed, own nothing, be judged by social credit score, live in fear, and be happy – or else.

I’ve been pondering in which direction this Fourth Turning will flow, while observing the words and actions of our pedophile president and the other World Economic Forum puppets like Trudeau, Macron, and a myriad of other EU lackeys. I intellectually understand all Fourth Turnings reach their climax after immense bloodshed, climactic battles which could have gone either way, and in some cases saw citizens slaughtering fellow citizens. But I have tried to avoid thinking about the reality of what is likely to happen over the next five to ten years, as this Crisis turns from rhetoric and debate to violence and death. Keyboard warriors will yield to real warriors.

After reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s – Say Nothing – a fascinating tale of the brutal violence which lasted for three decades from the 1960’s through the 1990’s in Northern Ireland, I’ve come to the realization of what civil war might look like here in America. In reality, the conflict in Ireland between the Catholics and Protestants dated back centuries.

I know the degradation of the intellectual, moral, and critical thinking skills of the American populace due to decades in government indoctrination centers known as public schools along with relentless propaganda and misinformation spewed from our boob tubes and now “smart” phones has reached critical mass, with little hope for a reversal until a full-out societal collapse. Well, that is where we are headed, because that is the course set in motion by those we trusted to lead this country. What ails this country, and the world is too much debt, too much corruption, too much materialism, too many lies, too much propaganda, too much delusion, too much stupidity, too much evil, and absolutely no solutions put forth which are capable of saving us from the course we chose decades ago.

We are hurtling towards an abyss and there is no way of voting ourselves out of it. The uniparty agrees on 90% of the issues and pass trillions in spending bills while jointly supporting never ending wars and unaccountable central bankers who print fiat to infinity. Political parties have failed the people and rooting for our team is still used to keep us divided and unaware of how badly we have been screwed over by these politician puppets doing the bidding of the globalist billionaire cabal who really run the show.”

Chuck again…  Well, the article is long, and it goes into a lot of the political stuff that I don’t care to talk about, so I think you should probably be good with just the snippet today… 

Market Prices 9/8/2022: American Style: A$ .6724,  kiwi .6033,  C$ .7612, euro 1.0003, sterling 1.1497, Swiss $1.0266, European Style: rand 17.4025, krone 10.0318, SEK 10.6969,  forint 397.40,  zloty 4.7287, koruna 24.5594, RUB 60.83, yen 143.86, sing 1.4064, HKD 7.8498, INR 79.71, China 6.9581, peso 20.01, BRL 5.2512,  BBDXY 1,307.67,  Dollar Index 109.67, Oil $81.49, Copper $3.51, and Gold… $1,721.45

That’s it for today… Still no word from the ECB… so I carry on…  Maybe if I hadn’t gotten up so early to write this morning, I wouldn’t be waiting on the ECB, eh? Don’t know why I woke up so early, just couldn’t get back to sleep and decided, what the heck, just go write!  Well, I get to go to the day game today, and I’m so happy, and excited! I’ll sit in the bleachers just like I used to when my dad would take me to games at the old Sportsmans Park!  I have a picture of that stadium in my bar area, and I whenever I see it, I stop and look at the spot where we always sat in the bleachers! The Beach Boys take us to the finish line today with their big hit song: Wouldn’t It Be Nice… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today and will remember to Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

September 7, 2022

* Currencies & metals get sold again on Tuesday… 

* The U.K has a new Prime Minister.. 

Good day… and a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Where has the warm/ hot days of late summer gone this year? I realize that summer is about to end, but that has never meant that the temps cool immediately as we turn to autumn. I’m not complaining here, just talking about how we’ve had a run of beautiful weather here in the MidWest…  My Beloved Cardinas got back on the winning side last night. I head to the heart doctor this morning, I’m wonder what he might talk about this time?  Weezer greets me this morning with their song: Island In The Sun… 

Well, there’s no two ways about this, the dollar is king of the hill and there’s no other currency to fight the dollar. The dollar has pushed the currency appreciation envelope all the way across the desk, and is looking for another desk to continue its push! The BBDXY gained more than 4 index points yesterday, and in the overnight markets it has gained another 4 index points! The Dollar Index is pushing to a record high, and damage that the dollar is inflicting on the currencies, like the euro, Aussie dollar, kiwi, krone has been devastating. and shoot Rudy, even the Russian ruble has slipped a little! 

And it’s not just the currencies that can’t take this heat the dollar is applying right now. Gold & Silver can’t find a bid and lost more ground yesterday. Gold lost $8.60 to close the day at $1,703.36, and Silver lost 13-cents to close the day at $18.11…  I know that 95% of you dear readers look at Gold priced in dollars. But the other 5% of you dear readers are foreign and denominate your Gold in your local currency, and to you, Gold is at record highs… But that’s because your local currency has fallen at a greater rate than Gold. 

The price of Oil remained trading with a $87 handle yesterday, and throughout the night. The OPRC decision to cut Oil production, hasn’t set its hooks into the Oil price yet, I’m sure Oil traders want to confirm that the OPEC members really do cut production, as their individual history shows that there are always cheaters… 

And bonds keep seeing their respective yields grow larger, it’s like a weed in your garden these days… The 10-year Treasury’s yield rose to 3.32% yesterday and last night, that’s quite a jump from the 3.10% yield it sported at the end of August!  To me, these quickly rising yields are just playing catch-up, as they were held down too long, as traders believed the Fed Heads would pivot and rates had gone as far as they were going to go. But that thought has been thrown out with the bathwater, and now it’s time to get yields higher to fight inflation. 

In the overnight markets last night, I already told you that the BBDXY gained 4 more index points overnight, and everything else is falling around the dollar.  I’m still perplexed as to why the currencies of Australia and New Zealand are getting taken to the woodshed. These two respective countries have hiked interest rates and kept pace with the Fed Head’s rate hikes, but they get slammed to the ground like everyone else that hasn’t hiked their rates at the same pace, i.e. the Eurozone and Japan! 

Speaking of Japan… their yen continues to lose ground to the dollar, the yen trades this morning at 144.70… A weak currency invites inflation into the economy, and something that I always thought Japan needed to get their economy moving again. Will this come to fruition? I’m questioning my thoughts on that now… As the yen has really lost a lot of ground, and the inflation rate should have been rising in Japan… Maybe I just need to be more patient, these things are not in the instant gratification league… 

OK… Well, I reported a few weeks ago, that the leaders of the Eurozone had less than 3 months to figure out how to avoid a very cold winter without Russian Oil and gas.  Well, to emphasize this even more, I found this tid bit on zerohedge.com last night, check it out: “Two days after Russia indefinitely halted natural gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for the amusing reason that there was an “oil leak” on Monday Russia finally admitted what everyone has known since February – namely that it has weaponized commodities in response to the West’s weaponization of currencies (as Zoltan Pozsar has said all along), when the Kremlin said that Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, blamed E.U., U.K., and Canadian sanctions for Russia’s failure to deliver gas through the key pipeline, which delivers gas to Germany from St Petersburg via the Baltic sea.

“The problems pumping gas came about because of the sanctions western countries introduced against our country and several companies,” Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency. “There are no other reasons that could have caused this pumping problem.”

Chuck again… So, it’s a simple fix for the Eurozone… drop the economic sanctions, and don’t freeze… 

The Bank of Canada meets today, and is expected to deliver a super-sized rate hike. They will be followed by the European Central Bank (ECB) that will meet on Thursday, and they too are expected to deliver a super-sized rate hike.  Both of these Central Banks are now playing catch-up as they are far behind the inflation 8 ball…  I just don’t think they are going to be able to save their respective currencies from all this dollar strength.  They might provide a quick uptick, as opposed to what it should provide, if not for all the dollar strength. 

But, you’ve got to start to fight back against all this dollar strength, at some time, eh? I give these two Central Banks a little credit for finally seeing the light, albeit too late though…  

The U.K. has a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is her name, and she’s stepping into a s&*% storm…  The currency is weaker than Olive Oyl, and inflation is soaring, and the economy is drowning in debt…  Good luck Liz, you’re going to need it! 

The U.S. Data Cupboard today has the latest Trade Deficit numbers, and a couple of Fed Heads speaking… These Fed Head speaking engagements have really become a sound board for the markets to trade from…  I remember a time when no one knew who the Fed Board members were! I was speaking on the phone with good friend, Dennis Miller, last week and I mentioned the Fed President before Volcker… Can you name him?  No searching on Google is allowed!  

You don’t have to email me with the answer if you know it, just know that you are one of a few that can name him… 

To recap… The dollar is soaring and there’s no holding it back any longer! The BBDXY has gained more than 8 index points since yesterday morning, and there’s not one currency out there that hasn’t felt the pressure of a strong dollar. Gold & Silver can’t find a bid, and Gold is danger of falling below $1,700…  Gold in other currencies around the world is still high, but against the dollar, not so much… And Bonds have finally given up the ghost on their thought that the Fed will pivot, and decided to push yields higher, and higher. The 10-year has gained 22 bips since we changed the calendar to Sept…. 

For What It’s Worth… This is a very important article to look into folks… It’s a very good explanation of the deep dookie we are in here in the U.S. and it can be found here: Fed Can’t Avoid a Recession or Bring Inflation Down to 2%: BlackRock (businessinsider.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “The Federal Reserve may not be able to avoid a recession – and may not be able to bring inflation back down to its 2% target either, according to analysts from BlackRock.

Markets are expecting the Fed to stick to aggressive rate hikes after Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole last month.

But higher rates won’t solve the biggest problem, namely low production capacity, analysts said, meaning low supply relative to demand. Without addressing supply, the Fed would have to lower demand by 2% via rate hikes to get inflation down quickly.

“The Fed will be surprised by the growth damage caused by its tightening, in our view,” analysts said in a note on Tuesday. “When the Fed sees this pain, we think it will stop raising rates. It will be too late to avoid a contraction in economic activity by then, we think, but the decrease won’t be deep enough to bring PCE inflation down to the Fed’s target of 2%. Instead, we expect inflation to persist close to 3%.”

The Federal Reserve has scrambled to bring down sky-high inflation this year, but so far, has only seen only a slight fall to 8.5% inflation in July.

Meanwhile, GDP has declined for two consecutive quarters, signaling the US is already in a technical recession, and supply bottlenecks from the pandemic are lingering in key markets.

“The U.S. economy has already stalled. Now we see recession in the cards early next year,” BlackRock said.”

Chuck again… yes… even though the Gov’t won’t use the “R” word, recession as I would have it, we are in a slowdown of the economy, and it’s only going to get worse… Too much debt, too much currency printed, and too much of the thought process by the Gov’t, that if they just ignore it, it will all go away… 

Market Prices 9/7/2022: American Style: A$ .6717,  kiwi .6020,  C$ .7594, euro .9893, sterling 1.1426, Swiss $1.0148, European Style: rand 17.4105, krone 10.0404, SEK 10.8077,  forint 405.74,  zloty 4.7697, koruna 24,9061, RUB 61.00, yen 144.70, sing 1.4091, HKD 7.8498, INR 79.90, China 6.9188, peso 20.12, BRL 5.2572,  BBDXY 1,315.96, Dollar Index 110.62,  Oil $87.16, 10-year 3.32%, Silver $18.16, Platinum $858.00, Palladium $2,012.00, Copper $3.48, and Gold… $1,702.97

That’s it for today… It’s been 6 weeks since my beloved Cardinals lost two games in a row, and that my friends is how you build a good record to lead a division! I did find someone to attend the day game on Thursday with me, so I’ll be in baseball heaven tomorrow!  This being a holiday shortened week, doesn’t have too much going on other than daily beatings of anything not named the dollar… One thing that happened at our BBQ party on Saturday that I keep seeing in mind, is Little Evie eating chicken wings, and having the sauce all over her face, and then her needing water to drink! So funny, and cute! R.E.M. takes us to the finish line today with their song: It’s The End Of The World…  Hmm… OK, I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and will Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

September 6, 2022

* currencies & metals continued to get sold on Friday

* The U.S. Oil reserves are being wasted!

Good Day… and a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! What a grand time that was had at the Butler Labor Day BBQ & Pool Party on Saturday. It rained all Saturday morning, but by noon, the sun was out, and it became an absolutely fantabulous day! My beloved Cardinals beat the Cubs, with a whole backyard of people watching… My also beloved Missouri Tigers won their opener on Thursday night last week, and this week travel to K-State… An old Big 12 foe… I hope the Tigers got all the jitteriness and mistakes out of their system and are ready to show a Big 12 team some SEC football! Sat outside with good friends, Duane and Rick last night to watch the Clemson game… Rick graduated from Clemson, and bleeds orange!  Johnny Nash greets me this morning with his song: I Can See Clearly Now…

I wish I could say that about the markets right now, that I can see clearly that is… None of this fiasco makes one iota of sense to me, but I carry on despite my shortcomings! When I left you on Thursday morning, the dollar was still being bought, and Gold & Silver were still being treated like a red headed stepchild…  (Ok no comments on that old saying, it’s just what it is, an old saying!)  Thursday wasn’t any different in that way, trading wise, and Friday, well, Friday was something… The BLS’s Jobs Jamboree, showed 315,000 jobs created in August… Well, they did create some of those jobs, adding 109,000 of the 315,000 jobs the markets believed were added…

Of course, if the press was actually covering the jobs jamboree they would has reported the 315,000 jobs added by the BLS this way: “Job creation dropped in August from 528,000 in July, to 315,000 in August” but they didn’t, because saying it that way, doesn’t paint the picture that the Gov’t wants you to believe…  In reality there were only 206,000 jobs reported by the surveys of the Companies in the U.S. ADP said last week that the number of jobs added was 132,000, so that’s what’s really happening with labor in the U.S. For if so many jobs were actually being added each month, as the BLS would have us to believe, then there wouldn’t be so many “help wanted” signs, everywhere you look, or there wouldn’t be businesses closing for lack of workers…  I’m just saying…

So, the dollar traders took the news of the trumped-up jobs report and thought, “The Fed will have to hike rates more to calm this down” And they bought dollars… The BBDXY on Friday closed up 6 index points, to 1,305…  I’m telling you this now, so maybe you’ll listen to me later, that the dollar is so overbought, it’s getting ridiculous… The euro dropped back below 1.00, and all the other currencies, not named rubles, followed the Big Dog, euro down the drain…  They’re circling the bowl folks… it’s a sad thing to say and see each day, but it is what it is…

Gold lost $1.70 on Friday to close the week at $1,711.80, and Silver gained 9-cents to close the week at $18.25… The price manipulators just couldn’t let Gold close in the positive and they saw to it that there was some red in Gold’l number… You know, the thing that all this Gold selling is causing, don’t you? Well, if I must tell you… It’s causing the price of Gold & Silver to be much cheaper than previously… So, back up the truck! And if Chuck is right, one day soon, all this dollar buying will end, and Gold & Silver selling will end… And that will be that!

Our friends, (NOT!) at OPEC decided this last weekend to cut production of Oil, to help boost the price higher once again… It was also reported last week that the U.S. has been shipping out Oil to foreign countries from our Oil reserves…  It’s time to contact your representative and tell them the Oil reserves are for U.S. citizens so that they never have to sit on gas lines again… not for foreigners! Meanwhile the price of Oil lingers below $90, and the lack of demand is what’s causing this price decline in Oil… Once it gets to a price where gas that’s refined from Oil, is relatively cheaper at the pump, the lack of demand will go away… 

The other thing to think about with oil and gas, is that Russia has basically turned off the spigot of Oil and gas to Europe, and the U.S. is frantically attempting to replace the Oil and gas that Russia has stopped delivering to Europe… But here’s the dilemma, The U.S. can’t supply both Europe and its own citizens with enough Oil and gas to get us through a winter… Then what do we do? 

Bonds are getting sold and seeing their yields rise just about every day now, albeit small increases, but over time they seem to add up… The 10-year Treasury’s yield is now 3.21%…  That’s a far cry from the sub 1% yields the 10-year used to sport!  I would have to say that the multi-decade long Bond Rally, has come to an end… And with the Fed Heads hell bent and whisky bound to hike rates higher, the yields on bonds will continue to rise, and that’s a good thing for investors seeking yield… I’m not even going to mention that unless the Fed Heads start hiking rates really aggressively, then inflation is going to remain higher than the bond yields, and that in essence makes them negative returns!

In The overnight markets last night, the dollar continued to be overbought as the BBDXY gained 2 more index points and trades this morning at 1,307… The euro remains below 1.00, and the two currencies that look the sickest are the pound sterling, and yen… The Japanese yen is trading above 140 for the first time since 1998…  And still, the BOJ sits on its collective hands and keeps their negative yields and bond buying monetary policy in place… 

Gold is flat to up a buck this morning, and Silver is moving higher with at 19-cents gain this morning. But as we’ve known for some time now, these early morning gains in Gold & Silver can be wiped out in a NY Minute by the price manipulators… I’m just saying… 

Bonds got sold again last night, the yield on the 10-year rose a few more bips to 3.25%… The bond yield curve is still inverted, with the 3-year Treasury sporting a 3.50% yield! 

OK, my first item to talk about after the markets roundup is this story I read about this past weekend that talked about how Factory Orders here in the U.S. were supposed to gain in July only to find out that they were way off as July factory orders tumbled 1.0% MoM and June was revised down from +2.0% to +1.8% MoM.  It seems the rate hikes are already causing a slower economy, just wait until the Fed Heads are finished with their rate hikes, what will the economy look like then?

Longtime friend, and publishing guru, and bestselling book author, Bill Bonner, is always reminding his readers that the Fed Heads have no other option than to “inflate or die” …  In other words, the Fed Heads could stop hiking rates and allow inflation to take over the economy worse than it already does, and thus bring the economy to its knees with little consumer spending, or… The Fed Heads could continue to hike rates, and bring the economy to its knees, and die…  I agree with Bill on this, wholeheartedly,  While I would love to see inflation defeated, it’s going to require interest rates rising to above the inflation rate, and I always keep in the back of my mind, the words that Donald Trump said when he was running for President… “5% rates, and we’re screwed” …

Think about that for a moment, and forget about the language he used… with Billions of bonds abroad, held by foreigners, they will not sit around and hold their low yielding bond until maturity, they will sell it and buy the higher yielding bond, that comes with a much higher yield, because the Fed Heads hiked rates to combat inflation, and therefore hiked up the bond servicing costs (yield payments) And when all the tax receipts in the country go toward bond servicing costs, how will the Gov’t decide what Gov’t program goes first to the trash heap?

And who said that “deficits don’t matter?” If he were still around, I wonder if he would have a different song to sing now?

Ok, and here’s the second Item to talk about today that was printed last week “Average Credit-Card Debt Soars by 13%, Largest Increase Since 1999

The average credit card debt held by households in the United States surged by 13 percent in the second quarter, the largest increase in such debt since 1999, according to an August 30 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

More consumers are increasingly relying on credit amid sky-high inflation in order to pay their bills.

Credit card balances increased by $46 billion from last year, becoming the second-biggest source of overall debt last quarter, though it is below pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, the current credit card interest rate is now at a record high of 17.96 percent, according to Bankrate, a financial advice website.

Total American household debt rose by $312 billion from the second quarter of 2021 for a total of $16.15 trillion at the end of June 2022.”

Chuck again… this is a very scary thing folks… I’m just saying! Oh, by the way, I got most of that stuff on credit cards from zerohedge.com   

The U.S. Data Cupboard is lacking this week for any real economic data, and that should be a good thing for the dollar, not having to worry about data showing the economy is slowing down…

To recap… The dollar just keeps rollin’ folks… Chuck believes that the dollar is very much overbought right now, and wonders how much longer can this go?  Gold & silver continue to be on the chopping block each and every day. And the euro fell back to below 1.0 late last week, and brought the other currencies, no named, rubles, down VS the dollar.

For What It’s Worth….  I’ve said this before, but here goes again… Every now and then our local paper, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, actually writes something original, and Sunday morning, was one of those days… this article is about the new Student Loan Payoff Plan, and quite frankly I was surprised that David Nicklaus of the Post Dispatch, agreed with me on this. Of course he puts it much nicer, and not confrontational like I do… it can be found here: Nicklaus: Student loan forgiveness may be popular, but it’s likely to make inflation worse | David Nicklaus | stltoday.com

Or, here’s your snippet: “here’s no question that our costly higher education system saddles some students with too much debt. President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, however, is the wrong solution at the wrong time.

For one thing, it’s likely to contribute to inflation. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the plan will create $500 billion in new deficit spending, adding to demand in an economy that the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to cool down.

The committee projects that the spending will produce between 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points of extra inflation next year. That may not sound like a lot, but it makes the Fed’s job harder and increases the chances that we’ll have a recession before the central bank can cut inflation down to size.

Such worries aren’t just coming from fusty think tanks. Two prominent Democratic economists, Larry Summers and Jason Furman, also argue that loan forgiveness will make inflation worse. “Pouring roughly half a trillion dollars of gasoline on an inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless,” Furman wrote on Twitter.

Debt forgiveness raises fairness issues too. The White House argues that most of the plan’s benefits go to low- and middle-income Americans, but Biden is forgiving up to $20,000 in debt for households earning as much as $250,000 a year.

Speaking of fairness, why do college graduates deserve help at the expense of other hard-working taxpayers who have already paid off their debt, or who didn’t attend college at all?

While Biden’s plan fulfills a campaign promise and clearly helps some people, it does nothing to address higher education’s underlying affordability problem.”

Chuck again… Yes, finance-wise, this is another deficit causing problem, but moral-wise, it’s just plain wrong, to wipe out people’s debts, that never had a gun at their heads and told to take the loan…. I’m just saying…

Market Prices 9/6/2022: American Style: A$ .6770,  kiwi .6081, C$ .7615, euro .9924, sterling 1.1516, Swiss $1.0182, European Style: rand 17.2215, krone 9.9235, SEK 10.7697,  forint 405.82,  zloty 4.7471, koruna 24.7378, RUB 61.41, yen 142.02, sing 1.4044, HKD 7.8497, INR 79.83, China 6.9599, peso 19.99, BRL 5.1542,  BBDXY 1,307.53, Dollar Index 109.90,  Oil $86.50, 10-year 3.25%, Silver $18.44, Platinum $850.00, Palladium $2,036.00, Copper $4.47, and Gold… $1,712.46

That’s it for today… Quite wordy this morning… See what happens when I get a few days to read?   HA!  Cardinals got shut out yesterday by the Nationals. UGH! Back at it tonight…  My oncologist is happy with me these days, so that’s a good thing. I go to see my heart doctor tomorrow, it’s not an early appt, so I’ll still be in the saddle writing tomorrow morning before I take off for the heart doc. I’ll find out how many more years I have left with the battery in my pacemaker…  Another day of rain in the forecast today… I hope all this rain moves out today! The late great Marvin Gaye takes us to the finish line today with his song: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please remember to Be Good TO Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

 

 

September 1, 2022

* currencies & metals gain on Wednesday

* But get sold overnight! 

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! That’s what I need is a little Chumba Wumba to sing that song this morning, as I am dragging the line right now. Welcome to September…  It took by beloved Cardinals 13 innings to finally beat the Reds last night. Every extra inning was full of suspense… And guess what starts tonight? The start of my beloved Missouri Tigers football season! YAHOO! Fight Tigers fight for Old Mizzou… Right behind you, everyone is with you! And the Missouri Waltz, and so on, it’s time for tailgating and some good college football! And I won’t have to choose between the Cardinals and Tigers tonight, because it’s an off day for the Cardinals! That couldn’t have worked out any better! I’ll be wearing my balck and gold today and tonight, so if you want to root on the Tigers with me, drop on by, I’ll be out back! HA! REO Speedwagon greets me this morning with their song: Golden Country… “Golden country your face is so red, with all of your money you’re poor can’t be fed” Yeah,, that song…

Well, the dollar got sold yesterday, but before you go hootin’ and hollerin’ The dollar got bought in the overnight markets last night, and the buying made up for the loss during the day, and more! The Japanese yen continues to reach multi-decade lows, along with pound sterling… See what it gets your currency when you drag your feet to hike rates? The euro, on the other hand has dealt with a sloth-like moving Central Bank, but from all reports it appears the ECB will be hiking rates aggressively in their next meeting. So, those reports regarding ECB rate hikes, is what’s keeping the euro afloat right now…

The BBDXY lost 3 index points yesterday, and had some pundits believing that the overbought dollar was heading into a correction period of trading… But the overnight markets put an end to that thought, and the BBDXY gained 4 index points during the night..

Two currencies that haven’t been dragging their feet regarding hiking interest rates to combat inflation, are the antipodean currencies of Australia and New Zealand. But in their case, they get all bundled up with the rest of Asia, and that drags their respective currencies downward. These two currencies had it “all going for them” earlier this year, as Commodities began their ascent to fight inflation. But then, as I chronicled here in the Pfennig, the PPT started putting some of their Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) to work, buying dollars and ever since that happened, the only currency to hold its value VS the dollar is the Russian ruble… Go figure!

Gold & Silver continued to get sold yesterday, and everyone is talking about how the prospect of higher Fed rates is what’s causing Gold & Silver to genuflect… OK, for those of you not versed in the word, genuflect, it means to get down on one knee… Gold & Silver have been on their respective knees begging for a bid, and just can’t find one out there… Buyers are leery of getting caught in an engineered takedown… The buyers figure, “Why buy now, when I can buy cheaper when this is over?”

I reckon they are probably on to something there, but… to me the price of Gold doesn’t really matter, when I’m looking to buy… Maybe I’m being short some silverware in the box, by thinking that way, but it’s who I am… I have never looked for bargains when buying anything. If I feel I need to buy something, I go out and buy it, right then, and there!

So, as I told you above the overnight markets last night quickly dispelled any thoughts that a correction in the overbought dollar was in store… The BBDXY gained 4 index points and trades this morning at 1,299… The U.S. Data Cupboard probably had something to do with the dollar selling yesterday during the day, and we’ll talk about that in a bit…

Yesterday, I told you that Goldman, aka Lola had told clients that commodities should be bought, and this morning I have two more casino banks steering clients to something… Let’s get to the skinny on that hey?

On Bloomberg.com this morning, there’s this title: Goldman, Citigroup Tell Clients to Bet Big on Singapore Dollar…  And here’s why they believe this is the direction that investors should take… 

“While the relentless greenback strength has clobbered Asian currencies this year, Singapore’s dollar has held up relatively well thanks to a hawkish central bank and recovering economic growth. The currency has weakened 3.8% against the dollar in 2022, but has strengthened against all of its Asian peers with the exception of the Hong Kong dollar. “

For those of you who are new to class, the Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) does things differently than everyone else. They use a range that the Sing dollar is allowed to trade in, thus using the currency as their internal rate… So, in the end, it appears that Goldman and Citi believe that the MAS which has adjusted the range twice already this year, will do so again at their next meeting in Rocktober…    I, myself, have always thought the MAS version of adjusting interest rates would be better than having a group of eggheads that have never worked a day outside of the Fed, arbitrarily set the internal rate…  I’m just saying… 

So, either the MAS in Singapore is going to adjust their range in Rocktober, or, both Goldman and Citi are long sing dollars and need for everyone else to prop us heir trading position…  For haven’t I always told you to be careful when these Casino Banks make these calls, due to their inner drive to make their long positions profitable?  Why yes, you have Chuck, and thank you for that!  HA! 

Ok, just to keep you up to date with market lingo…  The new buzzword that’s being used over and over again is “Growth Recession”…   this term came about after Jerome Powell’s 7-minute speech at the Jackson Hole boondoggle last week. As I told you earlier this week, Powell, told his audience, and thus the world, that the U.S. economy will need to suffer some pain as the Fed Heads continue to hike rates to combat inflation. 

The “Growth Recession” means that the Fed Head will have to slow economic growth to achieve their goal of reducing inflation.  I find this new term being as being useless… Because, we already know that rate hikes slow an economy!  Oh, well… we move on despite their shortcomings! 

To back up the thoughts that the Fed Heads will continue to hike rates to combat inflation, Cleveland Fed Head, Mester, believes that the Fed Funds rate will be 4% by early 2023, and that she does not anticipate the Fed Heads cutting that Fed Funds rate in 2023…    

Well, in my humble country boy opinion,  while 4% rates would be significant move toward fighting inflation, it’s not going to cut the mustard!  As I’ve explained before, historically speaking, a Central Bank needs to hike rates above the inflation rate to achieve their goal…  I’m just saying… 

OK, enough of Fed Head talk, too much of that could cause a bad rash! 

I read an article this morning that talked about how U.S. farmers are warning that there could be a tomato shortage coming… That means tomatoes, salsa, paste, marinara, spaghetti sauce, would all be affected…  

Now, I would draw the line in the sand, if I went to a Mexican Food restaurant and they charged me for my chips and salsa! But, if this warning about tomatoes comes to fruition, then we could very well see that happen… UGH!

The ADP Employment Report yesterday, showed that only 132,000 jobs were added in August..  Now keep that in mind when the BLS issues their jobs report on Friday this week. I’ve always contended that the U.S. should use the ADP report as their official jobs report, because ADP simply counts the number of new jobs that were added to their computer, and doesn’t get into forecasting jobs, and saying they existed when they don’t! 

The so-called experts are calling for 328,000 jobs to have been created in August. So, I guess we’ll have to wait until Friday to see what the BLS has up their sleeve…  Ala Bullwinkle! 

Today’s Data Cupboard has the weekly Initial Jobless Claims, and revisions of 2nd QTR Productivity and the Employment Cost Index…  I really, truly don’t believe the markets even notice revisions any longer… I’m just saying… 

To recap… The dollar saw some selling on Wednesday, but before anyone could say this is the correction we’ve been waiting for, the dollar turned around and got bought in the overnight markets last night.  The Japanese yen and U.K. pound sterling are sporting multi-decade lows VS the dollar, and looking very sickly… Chuck talks about inflation, the Fed Heads, and lingo this morning, hope you didn’t miss that!

For What It’s Worth…  There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear (Buffalo Springfield)…  this article came to from longtime reader, Bob, and it’s about how many zombie companies are in the U.S. and other countries, and it can be found here: Up to one-third of all Australian and US companies could be “Zombies” – Christopher Joye | Livewire (livewiremarkets.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “Since 2019, we have been warning about the rise of “zombie companies” kept alive by perpetually cheap money care of the near-zero interest rate and QE-to-infinity policies of profligate central banks in the period following the GFC. The worry is that as interest rates now normalise, many of these zombies could fail to survive, creating waves of corporate defaults the likes of which has not been seen since the 1991 recession in Australia and during the GFC in the US.

We have, therefore, updated our quantitative zombie detection models to cover both Australia and the US. And we have stress-tested some of the definitions of what is, and is not, a zombie. The standard definition for a zombie is a company that meets two tests:

They have existed for more than 10 years, and
They have an interest coverage ratio (ICR) of less than 1 for 3 years in a row.
There are other more complex definitions that we employ, but this will suffice for our public research. So the ICR is defined as the ratio of a company’s earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) relative to the interest (note, not principal) repayments on their debt. If the firm’s ICR is less than one, it is not earning sufficient income to repay the interest due on its debt. Hence the “zombie” moniker.

As a final exercise, when classify companies as zombies only using the data from their last financial year alone, as opposed to requiring them to have ICRs less then one for three years in succession. The final panel of the table below shows that the zombie share rises further to 39% in Australia and 37% in the US.”

Chuck again… yes, the article is a good one and should be used in determining stock values of these zombie companies… The article also has a table chart that’s useful. 

Market prices 9/1/2022: American Style: A$ .6817,  kiwi .6096,  C$ .7691, euro 1.0015, sterling 1.1569, Swiss $1.0218, European Style: rand 17.1474, krone 10.0263, SEK 10.7251,  forint 398.75,  zloty 4.7023,  koruna 24.4259, RUB 60.41, yen 139.31, sing 1.3794, HKD 7.8477, INR 79.55, China 6.8999, peso 20.18, BRL 5.1848,  BBDXY 1,299.56, Dollar Index 109.06, Oil $87.86, 10-year 3.19%, Silver $17.71, Platinum $839.00, Palladium $2,060.00, Copper $3.49, and Gold… $1,701.37

That’s it for today and this week of course… Tomorrow I visit my oncologist for my monthly blood draw, and examination. Last month, the nurse drawing my blood asked me if I was ok? I said, darlin, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve been stuck with a needle in the last 15 years, I would be a rich man… My wife gets mad at me when I call someone “darlin” I tell her, I’m an old man now, who cares?  Root, root, root for old Mizzou! Go Tigers! I’m so excited… The Moody Blues take us to the finish line today with their song from the Seventh Sojourn album, which is one of the albums I would take to the island, another discussion someday,  and the song is: Lost In A Lost World…    which aptly describes where I am these days! I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and a fantastico Labor Day Weekend! Please Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

 

 

 

August 31, 2022

* Currencies & metals get sold on Tuesday

* And the overnight markets didn’t give them any reprieve… 

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! If I were a betting man, I would have made a bet, yesterday, that the Cardinals would find it difficult to score runs last night, after scoring 13 runs the night before, and I would have won! My beloved Cardinals lost 5-1 last night to the weak Reds… UGH! It was an absolutely beautiful evening siting outside watching the ballgame with good friend, Mike… And with the game in the Eastern time zone, it was an early start, and finish! I love it when the games are in the Eastern time zone! The Beatles greet me this morning with a song from their acclaimed album: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band: She’s Leaving Home…

Well, the overnight selling of the dollar on Monday night, wasn’t followed up on in Tuesday’s trading, as the dollar took back those 4 index points it lost the night before, and upped the ante with 2 additional index points to close the day at 1,295… The dollar just keeps rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river (Ike & Tina Turner) I don’t know when it’s going to stop, but it will at some time, and then the markets will see what goofballs they were for buying dollars. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Did I mention that my first wife was a young Elizabeth Taylor? Yeah, that’s the ticket! (Jon Lovitz)

Ok, Chuck this is no time to be playing around, and having fun! You’re supposed to be all stoic and mad about how things are going, like having 11.2 Million job openings in the U.S., and having 4.2 Million people quit their jobs last month, and so on… But Hey! If there is something I’m mad about , it’s the way that Gold & Silver just keep getting chopped up like liver! Goldman Sachs, aka Lola, is telling clients that now is the time to buy Commodities… Hmmm… You know the old saying, that whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, right? It will be interesting to see if Gold & Silver begin to turn around, now that August is coming to an end.

Gold yesterday lost $13.30, and closed the day at $1,724.40, and Silver lost 36-cents to close at $18.51…. Throw them a life jacket, or life saver, something to keep them from downing, eh?

The price of Oil slipped again, back to its up one day, down the next trading pattern. Oil ended the day yesterday trading with a $91 handle… And Bonds saw the 10-year Treasury yield gain a bip to 3.11%…

In The overnight markets last night… The dollar continued to get bought, and the BBDXY gained 3 more index points and sits at 1,298 this morning. This is really getting out of hand folks… Thee’s is no reason for all this dollar buying in my opinion, and dollar strength along with higher interest rates in the U.S. is not what the overseas markets that use dollars and dollar financing need right now, but they are being asked to take it or leave it… 

Gold & Silver are back on the chopping block again this morning, with Gold down $12, and Silver down 30-cents to start the day. OK, PPT, we get it, and you too price Manipulators, we get that you’re trying very hard to make people want to sell their Gold & Silver, to make these metals look sickly and so on… But, it’s not working with me, I’m not selling, and you dear reader shouldn’t either, for Gold is a store of wealth, and not a commodity to be bought and sold on whims…  I’m just saying..  

And the price of Copper, which had recently been on the rally tracks derailed in the last 24 hours and has seen its price drop to $3.54 from the $3.72 it enjoyed just a few days ago.  The Fed Heads throwing cold water on Growth, has probably scared quite a few Copper investors into selling, I would think. 

The price of Oil slipped back below $90 overnight, and trades this morning with an $89 handle, while bond yields rose one more bip overnight to trade this morning with a 3.12% yield. (The 10 year that is) 

Long time ago, I met Addison Wiggins, I believe in New Orleans, and the granddaddy of all the shows, The New Orleans Investment Conference. At that time he was working with Bill Bonner on the Daily Reckoning, and helping Bill write books. Empire of Debt was one of those. Then he wrote his own book, The Demise of the dollar, of which I wrote the Forward for… I tell you all that because he has a new venture he’s taken on and it’s called: The Wiggin Sessions… He can be found here: The Wiggin Sessions (libsyn.com)

Yesterday, Addison led off his letter with a quote from Ernest Hemmingway, that I found to be so appropriate for today… here’s the quote: “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is.”

Told you… now that’s bang on if you ask me!

Yesterday or Monday, I was talking about the lies the Gov’t keeps telling us, and in Monday’s 5 Minute Forecast, Dave Gonigam highlighted the latest “white lie”, here’s Dave: “After sifting through the numbers, The Associated Press finds that “more than 3,600 shipments of wood, metals, rubber and other goods have arrived at U.S. ports from Russia since it began launching missiles and airstrikes into its neighbor in February.”

Granted, that’s down 40% from a year earlier… but it doesn’t exactly fit the narrative about “crippling” Russia”

Chuck again… (more from Dave Gonigam) “Yes, it Turns out Russia makes certain things no one else really can: “Russia’s dense birch forests create such hard, strong timber that most American wooden classroom furniture, and much home flooring, is made from it.”

We have the hedonically adjusted CPI numbers each month, we have the bogus employment numbers each month, we have the Gov’t telling us they have a new description for a recession, and that’s just what’s going on now… Our Gov’t has lied to us through the years many times… But like the good children we all are, we just shrug, and say, “That’s the Gov’t, you can’t fight them”…

Yesterday’s U.S. Data Cupboard had some disappointing prints for us to view… First of all the Home Price Index fell 2% in June, and only showed an 18% price increase year to year, when the previous month’s gain was 20%… I hear home prices sounding like the wicked witch, “I’m melting, I’m melting, who would have thought that some little rate hikes could destroy my home prices?”

We also saw the stupid Consumer Confidence soar earlier this month, when the bear market rally was in place… Not so much in place any longer, now, right? And finally, the Job Openings increased last month to 11.2 Million from 11.0 Million the previous month, and Job Quits came in at 4.2 Million… down from 4.3 Million previously and for every month for the last year!

Today’s Data Cupboard as the ADP Employment Report, which has basically been rendered useless by the BLS’s Jobs report each month and all their jobs created out of thin air… But the ADP report will print today, and it’s supposed to be a peek at the Jobs Jamboree…

To recap… The dollar got sold Monday night, but by Tuesday morning, it was back to buying dollars by the truckload. The BBDXY gained 6 index points on the day, and Gold & Silver got smacked around the head and shoulders pretty good all day. Chuck is thoroughly disgusted with the price manipulators taking pound after pound of flesh from Gold & Silver.. Shoot Rudy, the price manipulators even showed up on Sunday Night with arms full of short Gold/ Silver paper trades!

For What It’s Worth… Not a lot on the docket this morning, but I did find this article from Dough Noland at dollarcollapse.com talking about Jerome Powell, and I think he agreed with me that Powell was the only adult in the room last week in Jackson Hole. The article can be found here: Doug Noland: Powell is a good man but he’ll be “ruthlessly tarred and feathered” – DollarCollapse.com

Or, here’s your snippet: “I appreciate that Jay Powell is no ideologue. His Fed has made some historic missteps, and Powell as Chair has sometimes flailed. But I’m willing to cut him some slack. I hold his predecessors responsible for the Bubble predicament. Greenspan and Bernanke certainly share responsibility for the absolute mess made of contemporary central bank doctrine. No doubt about it, decades of poor analysis, flawed doctrine, bad decisions and obfuscations are coming home to roost on Powell’s watch. The future holds so much uncertainty. One thing seems clear: he’ll be ruthlessly tarred and feathered.

I believe Powell is a good man and wants to do right for the country. At critical junctures, Greenspan and Bernanke consistently veered toward looser and ever more precarious policy courses. Never did I witness the courage necessary to accept the short-term pain necessary to improve long-term outcomes (including reducing the likelihood of catastrophic financial and economic crises).

Monstrous egos put our nation’s wellbeing in jeopardy. When circumstances turned tough, they would resort to BS justification for only more outrageous monetary accommodation. Greenspan and Bernanke were both dangerous ideologues and inflationists that handed the keys to our nation’s future to Wall Street – in the process nurturing a prolonged cycle of runaway monetary inflation, speculative Bubbles, and deep financial and economic maladjustment.

Powell’s Jackson Hole speech was short and powerful. No academic elements with the potential to muddle his message or be misinterpreted. Ideology-free. Powell’s presentation was also notably short on doctrine. No talk of the Fed’s “dual mandate” – not a single mention of “maximum employment.”

Powell: “The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2% goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone.”

“Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth.”

“While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.”

Chuck Again… I think that Dough Noland does a very good job of explaining why Powell had to be so hawkish, in the face of the markets wanting a pivot. 

Market Prices 8/30/2022: American Style: A$ .6858,  kiwi .6131, C$ .7624, euro 1.0001, sterling 1.1623, Swiss $1.0209, European Style: rand 17.0459, krone 9.9945, SEK 10.6802,  forint 402.80,  zloty 4.7282,  koruna 24.5476, RUB 60.54, yen 138.60, sing 1.3967, HKD 7.8487, INR 79.45, China 6.8941, peso 20.18, BRL 6.1712, BBDXY 1,298.37, Dollar Index 108.95,  Oil $89.48, 10-year 3.12%, Silver $18.12, Platinum $850.00, Palladium $2,143.00, Copper $3.54, and Gold… $1,712.20

That’s it for today… A rough day all around for the markets, and the Cardinals yesterday and last night… My beloved Cardinals are back at it tonight in Cincy, before they come home for a weekend series against the Cubs! I see a day game on the schedule for next Thursday, I wonder if I can get some of my buddies to go to the game? That sounds like fun to me! Good friend, Duane, has volunteered to help me with some of the cooking for Saturday, so that’s a great thing for me! Tomorrow, it’ll be September… So, I’ll see you, in September, see you when the summer’s through! Jethro Tull takes us to the finish line today with his rock classic song: Aqualung… My longtime friend, and former boss, Frank Trotter, is a HUGE Jethro Tull fan, so there you go Frank! I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and please remember to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

August 30, 2022

* Currencies & Metals get sold on Monday

* What’s really happening with the economy? 

Good day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, from the first game in Cincinnati last night it was apparent that the Cardinals brought their bats! They beat the Reds 13-4., hitting the 13-run pool! Peggy Jordan, was a woman that taught me how to trade currencies, she used to run the 13-run pool at Mark Twain Bank… I never won it! UGH! There were two hour and a half rain delays last night, and what I thought would be an early night, turned into the night owl again! UGH! But Albert Pujols hit home run number 694 last night. He needs 6 more to reach 700… the games are counting down, along with available at bats…. Will he make it? Three Dog Night greet me this morning with their song: Easy To Be Hard… When I was a young man, I saved my money to buy the Three Dog Night Live at the Forum album… I would get in trouble for turning the record player up too loud, playing that album!

Do kids, for the most part, even save money, first of all, and second, save money to buy something they want? Or, do their parents, just buy it for them and make life easy for them? I’m guessing that’s the case, although I haven’t seen the data on that! HA!

Well, the dollar kind of wandered about yesterday, finally ending the day up one index point, in the BBDXY… The BBDXY ended the day at 1,293… There are all kinds of people out in the newsletter, article writing world that don’t think that we as a country are heading in the right direction… I believe, in talking to people, that more and more people are coming to the realization that the media and Gov’t lie to us about the status of the country, and that “something is not right”… these Americans, for the most part, don’t know how to express what they are feeling in terms of economics, but dagnabit they are darn sure there’s something wrong… And the Gov’t isn’t telling us what it is…The Gov’t denies the recession, they deny that the deficit is too large, they deny that, oh, Chuck, stop… It’s just not worth it to get all riled up in the morning any longer, you don’t have co-workers to share you feeling with any longer!

Ok, so Gold fought back yesterday, as it was getting sold in the morning and was down $14, Gold found a bid and starting coming back about mid-morning, and ended the day down only $1.50, to close at $1,738.20. Silver also fought back from its early morning loss of 14-cents to close the day at $18.87…

I had a dear reader send me a note yesterday, and just say, “I can’t believe the way Gold and Silver are getting priced these days”…

In the overnight markets last night, the dollar buying ended abruptly, with the BBDXY losing 4 index points overnight. The euro has climbed back above 1.0. but Gold & Siver are getting sold this morning, with Gold down $5 and Silver down 14-cents in the early trading.  In an answer to that question above, I can say that the markets are looking at the rate differential that the dollar enjoys and will continue to widen if what the Fed Heads say is true, and the markets refuse to look at the “net rate” that takes into consideration, the inflation rate. 

But it’s not just the so-called rate differential that’s playing on the field here… We also have the price manipulators, who have seen this weakness in Gold & Silver, and have decided to “pile on”…  Now, in football that’s a penalty, piling on, but in metals, whatever the price manipulators want to do, they get away with… 

To me, these recent trials for market manipulation are just window dressing to appease the masses that the Gov’t is looking out for them, when in reality, they aren’t. For it is my contention, and always has been, I’ve never wavered on this thought… That the Gov’t is behind the price manipulation. They have always since the days right after cutting the dollar loose from Gold, have worried that people would find Gold more valuable than the dollar and the Gov’t couldn’t have that. 

So, in some back room full of cigar smoke, and pictures of dogs playing poker on the walls, the Gov’t cut a deal with the bullion banks that if they carried through the price manipulation the Gov’t would look the other way when it came to, “really prosecuting price manipulation”…  

Remember years ago when Bart Chilton, the president of the CFPB, the organization that regulates Commodities, said he would look into the Silver price manipulation, and then weeks later, he said that he couldn’t find anything… I believe that Chilton received a memo from the Gov’t telling him to zip it, and make this all go away…  Chilton was a smarter guy than what he appeared to be, and he probably found Silver manipulation, but had to put it under his hat, and walk away… 

The things that really bothers me about the Bullion Banks and their price manipulation is that they have clients in the bank that hold Gold & Silver, so they deliberately punish their own clients’ portfolio values?  I guess they do, and they smile while they do it…  Now that’s what I don’t get, about this whole price manipulation scheme… 

OK, let’s talk about something else this morning… Well, here’s another bone of contention I have with the Gov’t, and it’s the lies they keep spewing about the economy…  I found this next piece on CNBC.com this morning, and think everyone should listen to what this guy says, because I do!  here you go! “People are not being sensitive enough to this economic slowdown and what it’s going to be mean for corporate earnings and profit margins,” the Bleakley Advisory Group chief investment officer told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Monday.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index dropped into negative territory in August. This is the eight month in a row builder confidence fell. In a news release, NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said, “Tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and persistently elevated construction costs have brought on a housing recession.”

 

Chuck again… Peter Bookvaar was the fellow speaking there, and I follow him on twitter, which always gives me some insight as to what’s going on … I’m just saying… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard has the S&P/ Case Shiller Home Price Index (HPI) for June this morning… This data set has seen weakened prints the previous months, and I don’t expect June’s report to be any different.  We’ll also see the stupid Consumer Confidence report, which is nothing more than a pulse taken of the stock market, and when this report was compiled, the stock market was having a bear market rally, so expect this report to show an improvement, for this month…   

The other things we’ll see are the Job Openings and Job Quits for July… I always find the Job Quits number to be interesting… 

To recap… The dollar continued to get bought, albeit at a lesser rate, yesterday, but then got sold in the overnight markets last night, with the BBDXY losing 4 index points.  Gold & Silver still can’t find a bid, that the price manipulators don’t offset.. And Chuck gives us the skinny on how he believes the price manipulators get away with what they do… 

For What It’s Worth… I’ve told you all for years how I’m addicted to the 5 Minute Forecast each day. Dave Gonigam is the lead person on the letter, and I met him some years ago now, at a Show. A very nice guy, and quite witty I must say! Well, he wrote something yesterday that I pulled or the FWIW article today, and you can find the whole article here: Biden’s Bailout (Student Loan Forgiveness) – 5 Min Forecast

Or, here’s your snippet:”But here’s the point, one that will be highly relevant this winter not just to Europeans but to Americans: Natural gas is quickly becoming a global market like oil.
Until very recently, transport of natural gas was limited mostly to pipelines — which made it at most a regional thing, maybe a continental thing. Shipping it over the ocean requires…

1. A specialized departure terminal where the gas is supercooled into a liquid state — where it takes up a lot less space. This is LNG, or liquefied natural gas
2. Specialized tanker ships that can accommodate LNG
3. A specialized arrival terminal where the LNG is returned to a gaseous state and pumped into a pipeline.

For a long time, and for reasons you can readily understand, LNG was much more costly than plain ol’ natgas in a pipeline.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine… Western governments imposed sanctions on Russia… and European leaders committed themselves for better or worse to a crash program of swearing off Russian gas imports.
Suddenly, American LNG started looking more attractive.
At the same time, Asian customers are also stepping up for imports of American LNG — setting off a bidding war with the Europeans.
If you suspect all these LNG exports overseas will end up making your own natgas more costly here at home… you’re absolutely right. “When you heat your house,” says Byron, “you are now competing with Rotterdam and Shanghai.””

Chuck again… Like I said last week, Europe has 3 months to figure out how they will heat homes this winter… And let’s hope that same problems isn’t plaguing us here in the US.

Market Prices 8/30/2022: American Style: A$ .6945,  kiwi .6186, C$.7695, euro 1.0038, sterling 1.1728, Swiss $1.0302, European Style: rand 16.7879, krone 9.7284, SEK 10.6131,  forint 405.18, zloty 4.7171,  koruna 24.4881, RUB 60.65, yen 138.09, sing 1.3947, HKD 7.8484, INR 79.45, China 6.0293, peso 19.93, BRL 5.0293,  BBDXY 1,289.60, Dollar Index 108.37, Oil $94.27, 10-year 3.06%, Silver $18.71, Platinum $865.00, Palladium $2,127.00, Copper $3.70, and Gold… $1,733.51

That’s it for today… I tried to sit outside to watch the baseball game last night, but the air was very “muggy”, and I thought, “go inside you dummy!”, and I did… Cards and Reds go at it again tonight, let’s hope their didn’t wear out their bats last night! August is coming to an end tomorrow… And for once, I’m not happy to see it go, for the weather has been fantabulous in August this year for us in the MidWest… The luck of the draw has me once again going to my oncologist on a Friday this month… So, you all have that going for you! HA! No getting out of not having the Pfennig show up in your email box a day this week because of a doctor’s appt.! I’ll start my cooking for the BBQ on Saturday on Friday morning… And finish it around noon on Saturday… This year’s BBQ won’t be as Big as the ones we used to have before Covid. I guess people found other things to do this weekend, after not having the Butler BBQ for two years! Apparently, they’ve forgotten how yummy all the food is and what a great time we have in the backyard and the pool! Oh well, we’ll have lots of fun any way! Gladys Knight and the Pips take us to the finish line today with her version of the Marin Gaye song: I Heard It Through The Grapevine… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

August 29, 2022

* Jerome Powell’s 7-minute talk, sends the dollar higher

* Is more fiscal irresponsibility in our future? 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! A strange weekend of sorts for yours truly.. It started out great, sitting outside watching my beloved Cardinals play on Friday night. Saturday was a blur to me, I have no idea what I did all day, and suddenly it was night and the Cardinals were back on TV! Saturday night had grandkids, Braden and little Evie stay with us… I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of little feat running through the house, and thought… I love that sound! And silently wished I could wake up every morning to that sound! My beloved Cardinals had to play the dreaded Sunday night game last night on ESPN… I do NOT LIKE SUNDAY NIGHT GAMES! Sundays are for day games, and an end to the week… Neil Young greets me this morning with his song: After The Gold Rush…

Well, after the Gold rush, and it’s coming one of these days, there will be no physical Gold for one to buy, unless they want to pay astronomical prices for it…It’ll be too late baby, now it’s too late, because we really didn’t listen to Chuck…

7 Minutes… That’s all it took for Fed Head Chairman, Jerome Powell, to way lay stocks on Friday… His speech only lasted 7 minutes, and he told us all that we are going to have to suffer some pain… Ahem, memo to Jerome, but we have already suffered pain! Interest rates are going higher…

Here’s a snippet of what he said, ““There will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions, while higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation. They will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation.” – Jerome Powell at Jackson Hole, Wyoming

So, Jerome is being the only adult in the room.. It’s difficult to believe, but there he is, trying to tell everyone that the Fed Heads are going to continue to hike rates until they get inflation under control… Europe’s not doing that, China’s not doing that, and Russia is fighting a war, they can’t have their attention taken away with fighting inflation!

But I’ll stop my sticking up for Powell right there… Just because he’s acting like an adult now, doesn’t excuse him or give him credit for growing up late… Besides, what’s going to happen when the Gov’t’s new deficit spending bill starts sending the bills to be paid, and the preposterous Student Loan forgiveness idea bills come, and there’s no money to pay them? The Treasury will have to issue new Bonds, and the more fiscal irresponsibility will be printing more dollars to pay for them, and that, my friends, is what got us in the pickle to begin with… Excess Money Supply!

Now, if Powell had said all that about hiking rates and people having to suffer and added that the Fed would not be party to any new money supply, well, then we would have something to write home about!

It’s the first time that a Central Bank will have raised rates during a recession… Think about that for a minute, and then tell me the genius of buying dollars… Because that’s what happened on Friday, the dollar got bought by the bushelful and it was all about rate differentials… Obviously, not “net rate differentials, because if that were the case, the Fed Heads are still over 6% in the red when inflation is taken into account. Stocks got sold, Oil got sold, currencies got sold, bonds got bought (?) and dollars got bought… Stocks saw a 1,000 point drop in the Dow… That’s crazy, and in the past it would have caused major hand wringing and chicken littles running around screaming the sky is falling! But these days, it’s just a drop in the bucket? Oh, I’m sure a lot of people got burned on Friday, but, as my friend said at our local watering hole Friday afternoon, “I’m not worried, stocks always come back”… I shook my head and tried to explain how it could take years, and was he willing to hold during all that time, but he would not listen…

Gold lost $19.80 on Friday… higher dollar rates, and price manipulators make for a bad scene for Gold, folks.. Now Gold has to pick up the pieces again… Silver lost 35-cents, but remained above $19, barely, but above it nonetheless. Gold finished the week at $1,740.10, and Silver at $19.02… India, China, Russia, and other countries have Central Banks buying physical Gold by the truck load. You don’t think they know something that we don’t, do you? Well, I do! Follow the money… I’m just saying…

In The overnight markets last night… The dollar got bought some more and sits this morning near a 20-year high for the green/peachback. The BBDXY has gained over 2 index points and sit this morning at 1,294… OUCH, now that’s going to leave a mark!  The currencies look so sickly this morning, and Gold is getting sold in the early markets this morning. Gold is down $14, and Silver has dropped below $19. 

Bonds slipped and the 10-year is trading with a 3.10% yield this morning. I still don’t get what happened on Friday with bonds… But it looks as if saner heads have prevailed today…  The price of Oil slipped from last Thursday’s figure and trades this morning with a $93 handle. 

If the dollar continues on this path, it will hit a 20-year high… And that brings me back to 2002, and everyone was buying dollars like funnel cakes at a State Fair, and I saw cracks in the veneer of the dollar, and wrote a white paper, Titled: The Declin Of The Dollar…  The press lit into me like I was a leper, and my white paper was not worthy of printing. 

But who had the last laugh? It was me for in Feb of 2003, the dollar began a long decent that lasted 10 years…  Back in 2002, the rest of the currencies looked sickly too, but… they had all been on a recent trend of getting their ducks in order, while the U.S. was spending money they didn’t have, and getting into a war they didn’t need to fight, and eventually, the dollar collapsed, in price that is. Gold soared and was a run-away train… 

So, what’s different this time? Well, the currencies of the countries abroad, aren’t getting their ducks in a row this time… They’re still messing with ultra-low interest rates and bond buying, and run-away inflation. Shoot Rudy, is there any wonder why the Japanese yen is trading with a 138 handle this morning, as their interest rates remain negative? 

I’ve said this before, so get ready for more of it… The dollar is burning very bright right now… And like a star, it’s going to burn the brightest before it burns out… Russia, India and China are making claims that they have rid themselves of dollars, or last least nearing that feat.  So, if China doesn’t show up at the Auction window to buy all those Treasuries that are coming from all the deficit spending, who’s going to pick up the bonds that don’t get sold? 

Well, when this occurs, the only thing the Fed, and Treasury will have up their respective sleeves is to buy the bonds themselves… I just don’t see any other way… They will be self-financing, and history tells us that this will bring about a drop in the dollar… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard last week was very disappointing to say the least… Consumer Spending was up only .2% in July, and Consumer Income was only up .3%, 2nd QTR GDP was revised up but it still remained negative, and the rest of the housing data was awful, Industrial Production was disappointing, and the whole Data Cupboard was a rotten mess last week, but the dollar rallied… Go figure… 

To recap… the dollar is driving higher to near a 20-year high this morning, after Jerome Powell, spent just 7 minutes telling the audience at the Jackson Hole Boondoggle, that the Fed Heads are going to continue to fight inflation with interest rate hikes and there will be some suffering… Chuck pointed out that we had already suffered… But it was important for the markets to hear that, and stocks lost 1,000 points, hearing that. 

For What It’s Worth… Well, it’s long been thought that to combat inflation you need to have interest rates higher than the inflation rate…  And I contend that the Fed Heads waited too long to start hiking rates to combat inflation. This article refutes that contention, and so in an effort to be “fair and balanced”, this article talks about raising interest rates isn’t going to fight inflation and it can be found here: Fed Can’t Fix Fiscal-Driven Inflation: Jackson Hole Paper – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “The Federal Reserve won’t be able to curb inflationary pressures because they are rooted in expansionary fiscal policy, according to a paper presented at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole conference on Saturday.

“The fact that approximately half of the recent increase in inflation has fiscal roots poses some specific challenges for policy makers today. Not only fiscal inflation tends to be highly persistent but it also requires a different policy response,” the paper’s authors, Francesco Bianchi of Johns Hopkins University and Leonardo Melosi of the Chicago Fed, wrote.

The US central bank began raising interest rates in March, and many officials have since said they were too slow to begin doing so. Bianchi and Melosi argued that beginning to tighten sooner wouldn’t have made much difference for inflation, however.

“When inflation has a fiscal nature, monetary policy alone may not provide an effective response. To show this, we ask whether tightening monetary policy earlier on could have prevented the post-pandemic increase in US inflation,” they wrote.

“The increase in rates would have resulted in only a modest reduction in inflation, at the cost of a large reduction in output. This large sacrifice ratio arises because when inflation has a fiscal nature, the central bank is not uniquely responsible for its reduction.”

Chuck Again…  Phooey! I didn’t attend night school and ace my economics classes to have to listen to junk like this… 

Market Prices 8/29/2022: American Style: A$ .6869,  kiwi .6120,  C$ .7665, euro .9995, sterling 1.1697, Swiss $1.0328, European Style: rand 16.9044, krone 9.7750, SEK 10.6365,  forint 410.20,  zloty 4.7456,  koruna 24.6069, RUB 60.98, yen 138.53, sing 1.3966, HKD 7.8477, INR 79.65, China 6.9167, peso 20.04, BRL 5.0640, BBDXY 1,292.54, Dollar Index 108.85, Oil $93.46, 10-year 3.10%, Silver $18.67, Platinum $860.00, Palladium $2,133.00, Copper $3.72, and Gold… $1,726.91

That’s it for today… Man, my iPod has been playing some great songs this morning while my fat fingers flew across the keyboard!  Cardinals win 2 of 3 from the defending Champion, Braves this past weekend, winning their two games with late inning rallies… We received Biblical proportions of rain yesterday evening… The creek behind my property, was raging! I started getting ready for this coming weekend’s Labor Day BBQ yesterday… Lots to do… but I’ve got plenty of time, as long as I don’t procrastinate, which was never my bag, but in retirement, I’ve gotten soft… Oh well… Ian Gomm takes us to the finish line today with his song: Hold On…  Don’t know that one? YouTube it, I think you’ll like it! I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please remember to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

 

 

August 25, 2022

* currencies & metals rally on Wednesday

* The Housing Bubble has found a pin… 

Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all!  Yet another Chamber of Commerce Day in the MidWest yesterday. We haven’t experienced a “normal August heat day” in over two weeks! And this modest temperature is supposed to last through Labor Day! My beloved Cardinals couldn’t find their bats again last night. UGH! And our best hitter in the lineup last night, got tossed by a smirking, smug didn’t ask for help on the call, umpire… Other than that, it was a great day and evening for yours truly yesterday, so I had that going for me! I have a sneaky feeling that today’s letter will be short-n-sweet, as I was reading last night and early this morning, and not much is being talked about right now… I guess we’ll have to wait for the Jackson Hole boondoggle for everyone to sit and take notice again…  Bob Marley greets me this morning with his great song: Three Little Birds…   “People don’t worry, cause every little thing is gonna be alright” … Apparently that song was first recorded in 1977, and first released in 1980… It sure doesn’t apply now, eh?

Well, I left you yesterday with the thought that the Gold & Silver performance in the morning wasn’t that bad ad if all things were equal the losses could be overcome on the day.  Well, believe or don’t.. They were overcome, with Gold gaining $3.20, and Silver gaining back its 18-cent loss in the morning to finish the day flat as a pancake (Head East)… Gold ended the day at $1,752.50, and Silver at $19.21…

I told you yesterday that the dollar was way overbought, and that usually meant for a correction to come about in the markets, but these days no one knows what direction asset classes are going from day to day… Well, the dollar got sold in the US. Session yesterday, just like it did on Tues, only to see it come back in the overnight markets. The BBDXY lost 3 index points yesterday and ended the day at $1,289.24… The euro remained below 1, but it did add ½-cent to its value to climb closer to the 1 figure once again.  Even with the dollar index losing ground, the currencies remain sickly looking… With the Petrol Currencies at least showing some life each day…

The price of Oil rose again yesterday, but this time only by 50-cents, but by doing so, it climbed to a new handle of $95…  And bonds… Man, when the bond boys finally figured out that the Fed Heads weren’t going to pivot next month, they went to work on getting yields higher once again, and the 10-year Treasury yield has gone from 2.55% at the start of this month, to 3.10%, where it ended up yesterday…

In the overnight markets last night… Well, believe it or don’t, but the dollar got sold overnight too! The BBDXY lost 3 more index points overnight, and trades this morning at 1,286… The euro remains below 1, but some of the other currencies, like Norwegian krone, are looking as if they want to be healed…  

Bonds and Oil are sitting at their same levels as yesterday’s close: 3.10% and $95…  There have been a parade of Fed Heads hitting the speaking circuit this week, and all of them, including the dove king, Neal Kashkari, have all talked about how the markets got it all wrong, and that interest rates have to go higher to combat inflation. 

Now, all the markets need is confirmation from Jerome Powell, in his Jackson Hole Boondoggle speech tomorrow. If he does paint a picture of gloom, despair, and agony on the U.S. for if it weren’t for bad luck we’d have no luck at all… then you forget about this strong dollar rally, and a return of the bear market rally in stocks. 

Of course, that’s not going to happen, for the deep state has a say in what Powell says tomorrow, and their speechwriters have probably got a pocket full of speeches that paint a different picture altogether.  I’m just saying… 

China decided to fight Powell’s strong dollar yesterday and fixed the renminbi at a higher level than we’ve seen in a while.  The Chinese could have been shooting a cannon ball over the bows of the short sellers of renminbi, and the short sellers have been multiplying by the basketful. 

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday, had a very disappointing Durable Goods Orders and Capital Goods Orders combination report…  Durable Goods were flat as a pancake (Head East), and Capital Goods were supposed to be strong, but only gained .5%… 

And I might as well talk about the housing market that’s dropping like flies, and won’t get the chance to recover, as long as the Fed Heads are all talking about fire…  This is from zerohedge.com on the housing number yesterday: “After yesterday’s dreadful collapse in new home sales (and Toll Brothers’ less than rosy picture overnight), analysts expected another monthly decline in pending home sales in July (though not as violent as the June plunge). They were right as pending home sales dropped 1.0% MoM (beating expectations of a 2.6% drop but that was largely driven by a downward revision for June data)…

This is the 8th monthly drop in the last 9 leaving sales down 22.5% YoY. Aside from the COVID lock-down, this is the biggest YoY drop since April 2011.Aside from the COVID lock-down crash, this is the weakest Pending Home Sales Index level since October 2011.”

So, not only are existing home prices falling, but also new home sales are suffering too… This is getting ugly, but, we have Super Potus to save them, for who knows, maybe he’ll follow up the student loan bail out with a bail out of home prices, he’ll guarantee that your home price will not fall!  Boy am I glad we have leaders that see that these things need to be done! 

I’m being my usual smart alec there folks, don’t for one minute believe that I think the Gov’t should spend money they don’t have on boondoggles and things that shouldn’t be being bailed out… 

To recap… The dollar correction is going on as I write… It began on Tuesday, but then the overnight markets didn’t go along, so on Wednesday the dollar correction began again and this time the overnight markets played along. Gold is up to start the day today, after rallying yesterday to overcome the early morning loss.  And housing is dropping like flies… Got Gold?

For What It’s Worth… I talked about how China had fixed the renminbi at a higher level yesterday, and then I found this article on Bloomberg.com that explains it, and so that’s our FWIW article for today, and it can be found here: China Starts Stealth Fightback Against Powell’s Strong Dollar – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “China took steps to support the weakening yuan Thursday, after a resurgent dollar pushed the currency to a fresh two-year low.

The People’s Bank of China set its yuan reference rate at a stronger-than-expected level for the managed currency, as a widening monetary policy gap with the US continued to weigh. It was seen a signal the central bank wants to slow the pace of yuan depreciation, which has accelerated as aggressive bets on US rate hikes boosts the greenback.

“The strong yuan fix by PBOC could be a warning shot to speculators who bet against the yuan in volatile times,” said Fiona Lim, senior foreign exchange strategist at Malayan Banking Bhd in Singapore. “While a weaker currency can help improve its export competitiveness, the central bank needs to guard against a snowballing effect that can aggravate market volatility and worsen imported inflation.”

The PBOC had largely refrained from pushing back against the currency’s weakness until this week. It set Thursday’s fixing 120 pips stronger than the average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts and traders — the widest gap since February 2020.

“These moves suggest subtle intervention to prevent further, rapid weakness,” said Peiqian Liu, chief China economist at NatWestGroup Plc.”

Chuck again… I’ve explained this many times in the past, but I’ll do so again because I haven’t done so in a long time… The Chinese currency is the renminbi, the slang name for it is yuan.  The media uses yuan because it’s easier for them to say and spell…   I’m just saying… 

Market prices 8/25/2022: American Style: A$ .6973,  kiwi .6236, C$ .7741, euro .9976, sterling 1.1838, Swiss $1.0373, European Style: rand 16.8287, krone 9.6661, SEK 10.5733,  forint 409.24,  zloty 4.7674,  koruna 24.7079, RUB 60.02, yen 136.43, sing 1.3895, HKD 7.8470, INR 79.88, China 6.8470, peso 19.88, BRL 5.0924,  BBDXY 1,286.43, Dollar Index 108.39, Oil $95.35, 10-year 3.10%, Silver $19.30, Platinum $884.00, Palladium $2,063.00, Copper $3.69, and Gold… $1,760.85

That’s it for today… I got a bit snippy this morning regarding the bail out of student loans… sorry about that, I just can’t get past feeling like a “Chump” for paying for my kids’ college expenses… Cardinals lose to the Cubs last night… Cardinals doing what they normally do, play to the level of their competition…  They play a day game today, on get away day… The Braves come to town this weekend, now that will potentially be a good tough series… we shall see, eh?  REO Speedwagon takes us to the finish line today with their great 70’s song: Riding The Storm Out…   I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please for goodness sakes, Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler