Author: admin

March 14, 2023

* currencies & metals rally on Monday

* Banks are sitting on a mountain of unrealized losses! 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Another beautiful day here yesterday… We got a brief bit of rain last night, and that’s the only rain we’ve seen in month! But cold front moved in, again… That means the highs for the next couple of days will be in the 70’s…  cold front, he he he…   Whenever there’s a cold front that come through, the ocean gets very angry… Our Blues had won 2 straight games, before falling on the ice again last night, and losing… It has been a lost season for the Blues this year… There’s always next year! I’m excited about the NCAA basketball tournament that will begin tonight with play-in games… My beloved Mizzou Tigers play on Thursday afternoon, while I’m at the baseball game. UGH! Brian Setzer and his orchestra greet me this morning with their version of the song: Sleepwalk…

Well, the fear that’s in the markets from consumers/ investors, has greatened… I really don’t know what else to call it, other than fear…  And when there’s fear, there’s a run to Gold… And that’s exactly what we saw yesterday… Gold gained $45.80 on the day, to end the day at $1,924.70, and Silver outperformed Gold on a percentage basis, gaining $1.28, to end the day at $21.90… The dollar got sold again yesterday, as it followed up the overnight selling. The BBDXY lost over 6 index points from Friday’s close yesterday, and looks to be in trouble right now… The euro climbed back over the 1.07 figure, and all the other currencies followed the Big Dog euro, as it chased the dollar down the street.   But what will the currencies be when they are compared to a digital currency?  Ahhh, that’s the $64 question, folks… Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel!

My longtime friend, and best selling author, Bill Bonner, has maintained that the Fed will continue to hike rates until they break something…  Well, did the breaking of two banks last week, equal a real breaking of something? I doubt it… But it could, be the reason the Gov’t decides to go to digital currency, and not wait any longer…  But I did read an article yesterday where the pundit said that these two bank failures will push the Fed to pivot and cut rates by 100 Basis Points!  Wow, now that was from left field!  But what would happen if the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel did decide to pivot now, after telling everyone that would listen that they are in the rate hike business until inflation is back to 2%?   

It would mean that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel has decided to hell with all of us suffering from inflation! Changing horses in the middle of the stream is never a good idea, and changing their position in the fight against inflation now, would also be bad idea…  Now, I’m not one to think that people should suffer from a bank failure, but… All of us with deposits in the bank, no matter what bank it is, are adults, and we know that the limit for a join account is $250,000 , FDIC insurance…   Any amount over that figure, is each depositors risk… And when you put funds at risk, you could lose them…  So, for the Gov’t to step in and say that all depositors’ funds will be available to them, is NOT, what should be done here…

I won’t go on and on about the bank’s failure, the regulators’ failure, and the depositor’s failure, to monitor what the heck was going on with these two banks… But in the end, why does the Gov’t need to stop in and cover up all their sins?   

Bank stocks all over the world took a hit yesterday… Here’s Reuters with their call on this: “Shockwaves from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank further pounded global bank stocks despite President Joe Biden’s efforts to reassure markets. Emergency U.S. measures to shore up banks by giving them access to additional funding failed to dispel investor worries.”

In the overnight markets last night…The selling of the dollar came to and end. Apparently, currency traders were satisfied with the drop in the dollar that was associated with the failure of 2 U.S. banks last week. The BBDXY gained 1 index point overnight, and Gold is seeing some selling in the early trading today. Gold is down $11 this morning, and Silver has lost 15-cents to start the day. I had a conversation with a guy on Saturday, and he asked me if I thought the dollar was trading where it should… And I emphatically said no! The dollar is overpriced, and has been for sometime now… He then wanted to know why I thought that, and I reeled off a list of things that would make you wonder if I sat up nights thinking of these things… But, as I explained to the man, just because I think that the dollar is overpriced, doesn’t mean a hill of beans to the markets, for they don’t see it that way…

The price of Oil keeps slipping by the day, with it trading with a $73 handle this morning… The Oil price is really playing heck with Petrol Currencies… The darling Mexican peso has lost its shine, with the weak Oil price, and the Norwegian krone is cheaper than the Swedish krona, and that’s a phenomenon that rarely occurs… The Russian ruble has lost its shine, and Canadian dollar/ loonie, can’t stop stepping on its own feet… 

Well, here’s where I draw the line of being believable or not… Remember when now Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen said that “the U.S. wouldn’t experience another financial crisis”?   Kind of reminded me of when then, Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel chairman, Ben Bernanke, said that there was no housing crisis in 2008?  These public figure heads are there to make sure that the regular folks, don’t panic and sell… When the fit hits the shan, later, they just go hide and you don’t hear from them again…  But the rot on the economy/ markets vine has been exposed, and everyone knows it, but they have forgotten that they were told there was no crisis… But I don’t forget these things… and I find it to be my job to remind everyone!

Well then, thank you Chuck! Wait! What? Don’t be thanking yourself you dolt! Well, my dad taught me long ago that if you don’t toot your own horn, who else is going to do it?  So there! And don’t be calling me a dolt!  Even if sometimes I write like one! HA!

Ok, back to being serious… The good folks at GATA sent me a note on SVB and other banks that took a snippet from, here it is: “Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse last week sent tingles of panic down investors’ spines as it highlighted a larger problem across the banking sector: The widening gap between the value large lenders place on the bonds they hold and what they’re actually worth on the market.

SVB’s downfall was tied, in part, to the plunge in the value of bonds it acquired during boom times, when it had a lot of customer deposits coming in and needed somewhere to park the cash.

But SVB isn’t the only institution with that issue. U.S. banks were sitting on $620 billion in unrealized losses (assets that have decreased in price but haven’t been sold yet) at the end of 2022, according to the FDIC.

What’s happening: Back when interest rates were near zero, U.S. banks scooped up lots of Treasuries and bonds. Now, as the Federal Reserve hikes rates to fight inflation, those bonds have declined in value.”

Chuck again… yes, these are “Unrealized losses”, and they don’t have to be taken… Unless, there’s a run on their deposits like SVB had… And once again, I don’t believe these two bank failures is enough to get the Fed Heads to pivot and reverse their rate hike agenda… So, in that case, interest rates will continue to rise, and thus worsen the unrealized losses of banks…  They’ve got that going for them, eh?

The U.S. Data Cupboard today has the stupid CPI report for Feb.  I really don’t get why the markets still look at the stupid CPI, for it doesn’t properly reflect what the real inflation rate is, and how could it, given all the hedonic adjustments that have been added to the stupid CPI calc over the years… And those hedonic adjustments just keep getting added, there was a change to CPI made just a month or so ago!  As I’ve talked about previously, several times, that is, John Williams at www.shadowstats.com does the calc the way it was done before Clinton and Greenspan began the spiral of hedonic adjustments to CPI, and his calc is the only inflation calc that counts in my book!

To recap… The dollar got sent to the woodshed yesterday, with Gold & Silver being the main beneficiaries of the failure of two U.S. Banks last week.  Chuck doesn’t believe that these two bank failures will be the end of this…  And investors are fearing that there will be more rot on the vine exposed, and therefore the safe haven investments of: Gold, Silver, Swiss francs, and Treasuries have been the end choices of investors… Bank stocks are taking a hit, and well they should!  There has to be many a bank that has the same makeup as SVB out there folks…  And the Unrealized losses of the Banks is going to get worse, as interest rates continue to climb… And the price of Oil keeps slipping, and that has really weighed heavily on the Petrol Currencies…

For What It’s Worth… This came to me from long time reader, Bob, who thought it might be important, and I agree! This is an article about the SVB failure, etc and it can be found here: Ellen Brown: The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami  – scheerpost.com

Or, here’s your snippet: “A fuller report on the collapse of SVB will have to wait on developments that occur over the weekend and soon thereafter.

This column, meanwhile, focuses on derivatives and is a followup to my Feb. 23  column on the “bail in” provisions of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which eliminated taxpayer bailouts by requiring insolvent SIFIs to recapitalize themselves with the funds of their creditors. “Creditors” are defined to include depositors, but deposits under $250,000 are protected by FDIC insurance. However, the FDIC fund is sufficient to cover only about 2% of the $9.6 trillion in U.S. insured deposits. A nationwide crisis triggering bank runs across the country, as happened in the early 1930s, would wipe out the fund. Today, some financial pundits are predicting a crisis of that magnitude in the quadrillion dollar-plus derivatives market, due to rapidly rising interest rates. This column looks at how likely that is and what can be done either to prevent it or dodge out of the way.

“Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction”

In 2002, mega-investor Warren Buffett wrote that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction.” At that time, their total “notional” value (the value of the underlying assets from which the “derivatives” were “derived”) was estimated at $56 trillion. Investopedia reported in May 2022 that the derivatives bubble had reached an estimated $600 trillion according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and that the total is often estimated at over $1 quadrillion.  No one knows for sure, because most of the trades are done privately.

As of the third quarter of 2022, according to the “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities” of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the federal bank regulator),  a total of 1,211 insured U.S. national and state commercial banks and savings associations held derivatives, but 88.6% of these were concentrated in only four large banks: J.P. Morgan Chase ($54.3 trillion), Goldman Sachs ($51 trillion), Citibank ($46 trillion), Bank of America ($21.6 trillion), followed by Wells Fargo ($12.2 trillion).”

Chuck again… ahhh, those darn derivatives… I’ve been talking about them for years now, and this is coming to a big bottle neck, folks… With interest rates rising, these derivatives, have all accounted on them remaining low, things are sure to go bust… But when? Ahhh, that’s the $64 question… But in the meantime, Got Gold?

Market Prices 3/14/ 2023: American Style: A$ .6668, kiwi .6222, C$ .7291, euro 1.0714, sterling 1.2152, Swiss $1.0975, European Style: rand 18.2590, krone 10.6280, SEK 10.5863, forint 366.40, zloty 4.3731, koruna 22.2091, RUB 75.31, yen 134.40, sing 1.3461, HKD 7.8467, INR 82.49, China 6.8769, peso 18.85, BRL 5.2473, BBDXY 1,246.53, Dollar Index 103.78, Oil $73.20, 10-year 3.60%, Silver $21.68, Platinum $992.00, Palladium $1,468.00, Copper $3.92, and Gold… $1,903.54

That’s it for today… I had a long conversation with good friend Dennis Miller on the phone yesterday, we both were fired up about the SVB failure and the Gov’t’s intervention… If the NSA was listening, they got an earful of thoughts on how this bank failure could have been averted… Team USA took their loss to Mexico out on the Canada team last night, pounding them into submission with a 12-1 victory… These games come on so late for me, I fall asleep in the my chair watching them, and then I wake up and wonder where I am!  My beloved Cardinals get back on the field after a day off, yesterday, but they’ll be on the road until Thursday… Paul McCartney, takes us to the finish line today with his solo song: Every Night… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

March 13, 2023

* currencies & metals rally on Friday

* Will this Wednesday be the end of folding currency? 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you… Lots of sports for those of us that love sports to watch this past weekend… Tomorrow, Kathy is heading back home again, for a few days, so I’ll be all by myself until darling daughter Dawn and her family arrive Friday night… Thursday, I’ll be at the game by myself, so if you’re in the area, send me a note, I do have an extra ticket! HA! After a few hot days at the ballpark, the last two visits have been downright delightful! Especially, with a Cardinals win in each game! 3 of the Cardinals star players are away playing in the World Baseball Classic, so the young kids are getting their opportunity to shine… Grand Funk Railroad greets me this morning with their song: I’m Your Captain…

Well, Friday was something… Not only did the Gov’t try to pull the wool over our eyes once again with the Jobs Jamboree number, but the Gold traders said, “well, if you want to play that game, we’ll just go ahead and start marking up the price of Gold”… The dollar got sold to the tune of 5 index points in the BBDXY. The euro climbed back over the 1.06 handle, and sterling recovered over the 1.20 handle… Gold gained $37 on Friday, to end the week at $1,869.10… Silver gained 47-cents on Friday to end the week at $20.63…

The price of Oil was steady in the $76 handle, and bonds…  Well, bust my buttons! The 10-year Treasury lost 21 basis Points on Friday, to yield 3.70%…  You’ve got to be kidding me! Bonds do not move like that in huge chunks! But the 10-year did on Friday… The SVB bank failure is really pushing investors into safe haven investments, like Treasuries, and Gold…  One writer for Kitco, said that the sentiment toward Gold has changed and it could return to $1,900 this week!

Here’s what I believe we’re seeing right now… The SVB failure is going to cause a large number of over the FDIC limit, to pull their collective excesses from their bank, and invest them in short Term Treasuries, or Gold… I myself would opt for Gold… But then that’s just me… So, that’s the reason for the HUGE move in bonds & Gold on Friday…  And guess who touted SVB stock just weeks ago?   Well, you know who, so I won’t have to mention J.C.’s name…

I have more details on the SVB failure in the FWIW section today, so if you want to skip ahead, and read it now, feel free to do so, but make sure you circle back for the rest of the letter today!  But before I go on, my good friend, and former Big Boss, Frank Trotter, always on top of things as he is, sent me a PDF from JPM that dove deep into the SVB failure, and here’s a brief snippet: “The irony of SIVB is that most banks have historically failed due to credit risk issues. This is the first major one I recall where the primary issue was a duration mismatch between high quality assets and deposit liabilities. As shown below, being flooded with deposits from fast-money VC firms and other corporate accounts at a time of historically low interest rates might have been more of a curse than a blessing.”

Ahhh… another case of low interest rates being the bane of things…

But shoot Rudy, looky here! Now the FDIC has announced that they will make all deposits available to customers of the bank on Monday…  Here we go…   Oh, and the FDIC also announced the shuttering of another bank on Sunday… Signature Bank…  The FDIC said that by making all deposits available, they have relieved the tension that other banks around the country would have experienced otherwise…   I could be naïve and say that this will work… or… I could be jaded like I am, and say this is just bad money, going out to more bad money…   And that’s all I’ll say about that!

In the overnight markets last night… Well, the FDIC announcing that the depositors of SVB and Signature bank will be made whole, hasn’t stopped the selling of the dollar. The BBDXY has lost 4 more index points overnight, and starts the week at 1,249…   Gold is up $17 in the early trading this morning, and is climbing toward that $1,900 figure. Silver has added 20-cents this morning also.  The markets looked confused as to what to think… on one hand you have the 2^nd largest bank failure, along with a crypto bank failure, which signifies that there’s something seriously wrong with the financial structure of the U.S., but on the other hand you have the fact that all depositors will be made whole, and no tax payer money was used to bail them out…  So… what do you think about all of this?

The government’s intervention here is to be thought of as something that was expected given their past history of bailing out whom they figure is worthy…  I was talking about something similar to all this to a financial person the other day, and told him that at Mark Twain Bank we used to do a Bank CD product that would go out and find the highest rate and place funds into that bank’s CDs… That was all good until there was problems in the U.S. and a slew of banks failed… That was when I had to go out to the banks and  obtain the FDIC claim papers and then deliver them to the clients, who then had to file them to get their principal back, which I was told would take months to recover, because of all the Gov’t red tape…

Where was the Gov’t bail outs then? Oh, that was a different time, Chuck… The Gov’t didn’t bail out anyone, if you failed, you failed, and then we stared over… But somewhere along the way, that all changed, and now we’re in the business of bailing out everyone!   I’m no fan of bailouts, in whatever shape or form they are made… I’m just saying…

The Ides of March… is forever associated with the assassination of Julius Caesar by senators hoping to preserve the Roman Republic. And why am I bringing this up today? Because, James Rickards, who along with me, have been warning people about the coming of digital currencies, says that March 15^th will be the day that the Gov’t announces digital currencies… Thus the Ides Of March, the assassination of the folding currency…  Now, I don’t know if that’s really going to take place this week, but… it’s coming, and soon…  And then what will you do?

Remember that over two years ago, I told you, in the Pfennig, that this day was coming, and it would most likely be associated with defaults…   Silicon Valley Bank going under last week, could be the straw that breaks the folding currency’s back…

The best performer of last week was the Swiss franc… which has historically been a “safe haven” currency, when things look as tenuous as they do now, and has resumed that position apparently… The euro was also a safe haven currency only from being the offset currency to the dollar. I would watch for additional bank problems in the U.S. to confirm that the dollar is in trouble, and that the safe haven currencies are the way to combat that, other than Gold…

The U.S. Data Cupboard on Friday last week, saw the Gov’t try to pull the wool over our eyes once again, with a Jobs Jamboree print of 311,000 jobs created in Feb…  Ahem… Psst… I’ll let you in on a little secret that few people ever really look at… of that 311,000 jobs created, 176.000 of them were added to the surveys by the BLS, because 135,000 jobs created just doesn’t sound like a strong economy, now does it? And here’s another caveat that I figured out…  The Unemployment Rate rose…   yes, Feb’s level was 3.6%, VS 3.4% in Jan…  Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road, folks… The Gov’t wants you to believe that 311,000 jobs were created in Feb, but if that’s the case, then how could the Unemployment Rate rise?  Riddle me that Batman!

This week’s Data Cupboard has a few real economic data reports, but none today… starting tomorrow, we’ll begin to see the stupid CPI, then Retail Sales, and so on… So, it will be a busy week for the bean counters, but… will their data prints go unnoticed because of the Ides Of March?

To recap… The SVB failure last week,  is going to play BIG with investor sentiment, and Gold gained $37 on Friday last week, and the 10-year Treasury got bought hand over fist, as it lost 21 Basis Points of yield. (remember bonds price like this, as the yield goes down, the bond price goes up and vice versa)  James Rickards says that the Ides Of March will be memorable this week, as he believes that’s when the Gov’t will announce digital currencies…   Got Gold?

For What It’s Worth…  I talked briefly about this above this morning, but this story needs more attention than just a brief note!  This is going to be the first of many bank failures, I believe… So, where are you on the $250,000 FDIC limit? The Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) IS A BIG STORY folks, and you can read about it all here: “Expect Mass Layoffs…” – The Real-World Impact Of SVB’s Failure | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “For most people in America, the news that a ‘bank in Silicon Valley’ has failed will be forgotten quicker than a story about soaring shoplifting in their local supermarket.

It shouldn’t.

Reality is that the contagion of the shuttering of the 18th largest bank in the US are widespread.

SVB is in fact the second largest (by assets) bank failure in US history after WaMu.

First things first, there is a long line of depositors who are over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit (in fact only somewhere between 3 and 7% of total deposits are insured).

And, investors are out a lot…

Whenever a company stumbles, shareholder lawsuits become pretty common. As Bloomberg reports, already this morning, law firms including Faruqi & Faruqi LLP, Schall Law Firm, Pomerantz LLP and Girard Sharp LLP have put out press releases saying they’re looking into SVB and that investors who’ve suffered losses as the bank’s shares slumped can contact the firms’ attorneys.

Brad Hargreaves explains in a brief thread how SVB’s closure & receivership is going to have a massive impact on the tech ecosystem.

SVB was not just a dominant player in tech but were highly integrated in some nontraditional ways.”

Chuck again… I strongly suggest you click on the link above today, because to see the incomplete list of companies in SVB, it’ll shock you, and then make you wonder, what comes next?  And bank runs are going to become a real problem, folks…   Got Gold?

Market Prices 3/13/2023: American Style: A$ .6635, kiwi .6180, C$ .7250, euro 1.0670, sterling 1.2067, Swiss $1.0925, European Style: rand 18.2161, krone 10.6440, SEK 10.7152, forint 363.10, zloty 4.3997, koruna 22.2275, RUB 75.18, yen 135.40, sing 1.3475, HKD 7.8445, INR 82.76, China 6.8802, peso 18.76, BRL 5.2140, BBDXY 1,249.29, Dollar Index 104.29, Oil $75.50, 10-year 3.55%, Silver $20.83, Platinum $969.00, Palladium $1,401.00, Copper $3.96, and Gold… $1,886.54

That’s it for today… 3 games, 3 wins! Our expansion soccer team, STL City SC, has stared their season and existence, with 3 wings, being only the 2^nd expansion team in the league, to start out 3-0! Team USA got the World Baseball Classic off on a good note, with a win Saturday night. Both games the soccer game, and the baseball game came on late Saturday night, and I fell asleep watching them!   Team USA followed Saturday night’s win with a loss to Mexico! Proving that you can’t win them all, even with an all-star lineup. Both my fave basketball teams lost in their respective conference tournaments on Saturday… The Mizzou Tigers will play in the NCAA Tournament, while the SLU Billikens will have to settle for an invitation from the NIT… Well, this is the last week before I head out on my annual spring vacation, so I have that going for me!  The Allman Brothers take us to the finish line today with their song: Blue Sky…   I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

March 9, 2023

* Currencies & metals rally in the overnight markets

* Will Solar Panels drive shortages in Silver? 

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Well, yesterday was a different kind of day for me, as we attended a meeting at the town hall, and came back to friends, who then spent the day at the beach, with me included! I truly used to love to be on the beach, but since being somewhat handicapped, it’s not so much fun for me any longer. I usually just hang out on the deck that overlooks the beach. But yesterday, I went out on the beach, and had a good time!  The day was beautiful, and my beloved Cardinals beat the Yankees in Tampa! So, a good day, all-in-all… The Killers greet me this morning with their song: Somebody Told Me…

Well, yesterday, the dollar drifted throughout the day, with no real direction to lead it up or down. The BBDXY lost 1 index point, and the currencies, at the end of the day, looked the same as they did at the beginning of the day… weak…   Gold only gained 50-cents on the day, and Silver lost 2-cents on the day… So, basically a flat day for the metals…  Gold ended the day at $1,814.80, and Silver at $20.13… The price of Oil dropped 50-cents, to trade with a $76 handle, and the 10-year Treasury saw its yield rise a bp or two…  So, as you can see, the things I follow the closest, were stuck in the mud, and brought out the yawns from traders throughout the day yesterday.

In The overnight markets… There was some dollar selling, with the BBDXY losing 3 index points, and starts the day on a down note. The currencies don’t look any better for this loss in the dollar, so it must be very wide in its losses… Gold is up $5 in the early trading today, with Silver flat as a pancake (Head East)… Gold traders have to start over again after the whacking that Gold took on Tuesday. Reestablishing  their position, and erasing the memory of what happened that day…  I read a note the other day about Silver, and how there will be a shortage of Silver in the coming months, due to the demand for Solar Panels… Silver is a major component of the Solar Panels, and therefore, the forecast for a shortage.

That should be good news for Silver, but then there is no amount of good news that can overcome the number of short contracts that are at COMEX in Silver… Right now, Ed Steer tells me that the amount of ounces of Silver that are sold short, would take 137 days of production to cover…  That’s a wake up call for you folks… But there is a Silver lining (pun intended), here and that is that a year ago, the number of days of production to cover the short positions was around 180…  

The price Of Oil was steady overnight and trades this morning with a $76 handle…  Recall that recently the price of Oil rose to $80, but that bump higher was short-lived… The fears of an economic slowdown are weighing heavily on the price of Oil, right now…  And Bonds… Well the 10-year is at 3.98% this morning, still below 4.0%, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why this bond is not yielding more right now… But then I’m not one of the bond boys…  

In a follow up of the story I told you about yesterday, where the Perth Mint was accused of diluting the Gold they sent to China… This too, came from the good folks at GATA; “BEIJING — The Shanghai Gold Exchange today backed Perth Mint in denying that the Australian processor had sold it “doped” gold bars and said it could take action to protect its reputation.

“The relevant media failed to fulfill their responsibility to review the content, resulting in dissemination of inaccurate content on the Internet, causing serious damage to the reputation of the Shanghai Gold Exchange,” the exchange said in a statement on its website.”

Chuck again… Well, that settles it… it was a non-story, or fake news, take it however you wish to do so… But to me, there had to be a reason for the smoke to rise on this, and where there’s smoke… There’s fire, and that’s all I’m going to say about that for now…

Well, decades of dollar dominance in the trading Oil, came to an end recently when India didn’t use dollars in the terms of the transaction for Oil, with China…  India is the world’s #3 importer of Oil, so this is not small potatoes we’re talking about here, folks… This opens the door for other countries to take the dollars out of the terms of transactions with OIL…   Once they see that India did it, without repercussions…  Who will be next in line to buy Oil and not use dollars to pay for it?

I’m sure the boys in the U.S. with their 3 piece suits, and watch pockets weren’t shaking in their boots, when they first heard that not paying for Oil with dollars was even possible… But they should be now! I can all hear the joking and laughing out loud when they first heard the news of the possibility, and now? Well, now they aren’t joking and laughing so loud…  In fact, I bet you can see the sweat dripping off their collective foreheads…

So, the divergence from the dollar is a real thing, and is happening right before our eyes… (my eye, your eyes) Russia and China have stopped buying Treasuries, with Russia having sold all theirs, and China just allowing their Treasury holdings to just mature or run off…  China is in talks to pay for Saudi Oil in renminbi, or maybe even Gold… It won’t take long for this move out of dollars to become really scary for the dollar bugs…

The sooner dollar traders and investors realize this to be the case, that the dollar is no longer going to be held as a reserve currency by nations around the world, the sooner the dollar will begin to lose value, and then lose it some more, and then lose it some more, until the world rids itself of the dollar hegemony… But if you would ask me about this, I would reply, “The US dollar has dominated the global economy since World War II. With the emergence of new challengers, American power is waning, the dollar is weakening and its hegemony is fading away.”

So, how about that? Did that scare you? If so, then what are you going to do about it?  Well, if you ask me, I would say, “you had better get your money out of the bank before the cash gets turned into digital dollars, and I would spend most of it on physical Gold… yes, you’ve still got to have currency for your gas, groceries, and giggles, but that’s it…

You know the guy that has called for the collapse of stocks, now says that Bidenbucks, his name for digital currency could become a reality next week!  Let’s hope not, not this soon…  

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the ADP Employment Report and it showed that businesses increased their employment numbers by 242,000, which was greater than the 205,000 expected… The number of Job Openings fell to 10.8 Million, from 11.2 Million the previous month. So, those two reports play together nicely in the sand box… 

Recall that I told you yesterday that the Consumer Credit Report that was supposed to print on Tuesday, but didn’t, as it wasn’t ready for Prime Time… Well, it did get printed yesterday, and showed a real dampening of the American spirit to spend… The figure was $14.8 Billion…  You may recall that just a few months ago this figure was around $25 Billion…  This report for January was the second in a row to show that consumers are tapped out, and that the higher interest rates are not helping here. December’s figure showed just $10.78 Billion…  

On one hand, this is a good thing that Americans are racking up the debt like they used to, but on the other hand it’s a bad sign for the economy that depends on consumption…  I’m just saying…

To Recap… The markets were a bore yesterday, with not much movement anywhere… But in the overnight markets we’ve seen some dollar selling, not much but some. And Gold is up $5 to start the day today… Chuck points out that Silver which is used in Solar Panels, will be in high demand going forward, which should be a good thing for Silver’s price… If only there weren’t so many short positions weighing down on Silver…  and Chuck talks about Oil… gas.. and digital currencies today…

For What It’s Worth… well, yesterday, I talked a lot about how India had purchased Russian Oil and didn’t use dollars in the terms of transaction, and that it would open the door for other countries to do the same going forward.. And then this article fell into my lap, that talks about that very thing and it can be found here: Russian Oil Gets More Pricey as Pool of Asian Buyers Expands – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “China and India have become key outlets for Russian crude after most others shunned its energy due to the war in Ukraine. The pool of buyers willing to import cheap oil from the OPEC+ producer has grown as more players set aside concerns over Western sanctions that had kept them on the sidelines.

More importers are comfortable with methods to reduce their risk exposure by asking sellers to handle shipping and insurance, on top of using non-western banks and making payments in yuan, rupees, dirhams or rubles. This approach has given buyers more confidence to maintain and even increase flows without too much worry about their compliance to the $60-a-barrel price cap that exempts shipments from European sanctions, traders said.

It’s unclear if imports by India and China currently meet the terms of the cap as most cargoes are sold on a delivered basis with opacity around shipping and insurance costs. However, the US says India is complying.

Chuck again… a short snippet today, as it should be!  I think that the markets are missing this story by a wide margin, folks… but you don’t have to miss it, because you read the Pfennig!  These are chinks in the dollar’s armor folks, and those dents are starting to open up and take on water… I’m just saying…

Market Prices 3/9/ 2023: American Style: A$ .6618, kiwi .6137, C$ .7252, euro 1.0573, sterling 1.1890, Swiss $1.0666, European Style: rand 18.5625, krone 10.6478, SEK 10.6914, forint 358.49, zloty 4.4250, koruna 22.3388, RUB 75.86, yen 136.19, sing 1.3515, HKD 7.8500, INR 81.98, China 6.9620, peso 17.91, BRL 5.1428, BBDXY 1,256.32, Dollar Index 105.35, Oil $76.76, 10-year 3.98%, Silver $20.13, Platinum $950.00, Palladium $1,373.00, Copper $4.00, and Gold… $1,819.25

That’s it for today and this week… One more week until my spring vacation!  Tomorrow is the birthday of my very good friend, Rick Baur… Happy Birthday, young man!  I hope you have a Grand Day tomorrow! This weekend back home, will be the St. Pat’s Day Parade, which used to be a fun time for sure, because it signaled the start of spring! The folks down here will have a St. Pat’s Celebration this weekend too, but I would suspect it wont’ be as grand as the St. Louis Celebration!  The Nicaragua World Baseball Classic team will play at Roger Dean today VS my beloved Cardinals… Should be interesting! The weather up north must be unsettling again, because the ocean is really angry this morning, after days of calm… Sammy Hagar takes us to the finish line today with his song: Rock-n-Roll Weekend, which is exactly what it will be in St. Louis!   I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

March 8, 2023 

* Currencies and metals get whacked on Tuesday! 

* What’s going on at the Perth Mint? 

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well, a successful transfer was made yesterday, as Kathy returned to S. Florida, and my good friends went home from S. Florida…  The place here was “back to normal yesterday afternoon, with Kathy cleaning the place, and me napping! I hadn’t had a nap in over a week, and it was beginning to get to me! Good thing my beloved Cardinals were in Lakeland Fla yesterday to play the Tigers, because they got thumped!  And… I didn’t have to watch that!  My beloved Mizzou Tigers play on Friday this week, their opponent is TBA at this point, as is St. Louis U’s opponent for their game on Thursday…  I’ve gained a few pounds in the past couple of weeks, so I’ve got to watch that, so it doesn’t get out of hand!  Marvin Gaye greets me this morning with his song that could be sung today just like it was sung 50 years ago: What’s Going On?

Well, Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel chairman, Jerome Powell, threw a cat among the pigeons yesterday, with his comments before lawmakers that “interest rates may need to go higher than expected to combat inflation”… Well, shoot Rudy, I could have told him that! And… A long time ago, so that we could have done away with all the middling 25 Basis Points Rate Hikes, and gotten to the meat of the real rate hikes, like 75 Basis Points or 100 Basis Points! The one year anniversary of the first rate hike in this sequence that has reached 7 rate hikes, is coming on St. Pat’s Day next week…  So, doing the quick math… 7 x 100 BPS, would put the Fed Funds rate at 7.0%… And on the way to toward combating inflation…Remember, it is my contention that the interest rate must be greater than the rate of inflation to make a difference…

So, with Powell throwing the cat among the pigeons, the dollar went on a moon shot higher! The BBDXY gained 12 index points on the day!   With the currencies that have lower interest rates than the U.S. getting whacked, the selling in the euro,  yen, and sterling  has been strong…  And before Powell even said a word to the lawmakers yesterday, Gold was getting sold… My good friend, Rick said, “is that because of what Powell is saying?” and I replied… “no, Powell hasn’t even said a word yet, this is more the new short positions being placed to replace all the old stale ones that got covered last week.

Gold lost $33.20 on the day yesterday, and ended the day at $1.814.30… Silver was treated even worse, and lost 99-cents on the day to end the day at $20.15…  I told Rick that these bas…. ds, should all be thrown in jail! And I meant it! 

Ed steer added this message in his daily letter today regarding the short positions/ price manipulators… “As to how much lower the commercial traders can rig precious metal prices will be pretty much determined by their resolve to take out gold’s 200-day moving average, as there’s not much left to get in silver…their No. 1 problem child.  Without doubt, they’ll use continued selling pressure to go after silver as well …along with platinum, their No. 2 problem child.

But make no mistake about it, no matter how hard the Big 4/8 shorts huff & puff, they’ll never be able to cover all of their short positions…ever. This is especially true considering the fact that Ted’s raptors, the commercial traders other than the Big 8 shorts…amongst others…are continuing to add to their long positions in direct competition with short covering efforts of the big shorts.

And, as Ted always says, we won’t know when that bottom is in until the Managed Money traders et al. have sold the last long position that they’re willing to sell — and sold as many short contracts as they dare to. That day, as it always is, won’t be known until it’s in the rearview mirror.”

Chuck again…  As I said above, they all should be rounded up and thrown in jail! 

Speaking of getting whacked! The price of Oil slid $3 yesterday, after hitting $80 to end last week, the price of Oil ended the day with a $77 handle…  Sure, I had just filled up my gas tank the night before! The price of gas down here in S. Florida is higher than back home in Missouri… But that’s the price you pay for living where it’s warm! 

All the buying of bonds last week, went to hell in a hand basket yesterday, as the yield on the 10-year climbed back to 4.0%…   Powell’ words to lawmakers sure did the trick here, eh?

In the overnight markets last night… Well, the whipping the metals and currencies took yesterday, was eased overnight.. The BBDXY gained only 1 index point overnight, and the thought of taking a pause for the cause was the overall feeling.  Gold is up just a buck in the early trading today, and Silver is flat as a pancake (Head East)… The price of Oil is steady with a $77 handle, and the 10-year lost the 4% yield overnight, but this has got to end soon, all this bond buying… The Head Fed, Powell, has said that inflation is still above their 2% target, and that interest rates will have to go higher… that, to me means that bond yields will need to go higher… I’m just saying…

Well, check this out… it seems that the Perth Mint sold diluted Gold to China… Uh-Oh!  The Good Folks at GATA sent this to me: “The historic Perth Mint is facing a potential $9 billion recall of gold bars after selling diluted or “doped” bullion to China and then covering it up, according to a leaked internal report.

ABC’s “Four Corners” program has uncovered documents charting the Western Australian government-owned mint’s decision to begin “doping” its gold in 2018, and then how it withheld evidence from its largest client in an effort to protect its reputation.

While the gold remained above broader industry standards, the report estimated up to 100 tonnes of gold sent to Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) potentially did not comply with the exchange’s strict purity standards for silver content.

One Perth Mint insider, who asked not to be named and risk five years in jail if the insider’s identity is revealed, says it is a “scandal of the highest level.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one this big,” the insider says.

The mint is the largest processor of newly mined gold in the world, one of Perth’s top tourist attractions, and is well known for producing commemorative coins to mark everything from royal weddings to a new James Bond film.”

Chuck again… I know that’s long enough to be a FWIW article, but this is SO BIG a Story, that I thought I had better put it where people will read it, and not skip over it like they do to some of the FWIW articles…

OK… Circling back to the chairman’s claim that interest rates will have to go higher than expected… Leads me to remind everyone that bonds that are issued have current yields/ interest rates that must be paid or have the bond go into default…   With interest rates going higher, they will test the limits of what the tax receipts can cover…  Right now,  those cots represent about ½ of the tax receipts…   Why is this a problem as long as the tax receipts cover the bond interest costs? 

Ahh Grasshopper, come sit, and learn….  If all the tax receipts are being used to pay interest costs, then there’s nothing else to distribute to other programs… Where will these things get the money to pay for them?  They won’t… Unless the Gov’t goes back to printing currency, and then we’re getting right back to where we are with inflation that was caused by currency printing! Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, stimy checks, welfare payments, you name it… it won’t have any receipts to fund them! That includes the Defense of the country… Uh-Oh!  

Oh, we could see tax hikes to improve the coiffures of the country… Oh boy, I can hardly wait for this! NOT!  Rising taxation along high inflation… Where can I get an extra scoop of that? NOT!

So… as longtime pundit and best selling author, Bill Boner says all the time: “Inflate or Die”…

Oh, and keep buying those dollars you dollar bugs… They will be worthless pieces of paper one day, in probably not the far future… 

Got Gold?

Speaking of Gold… Here’s Doug Casey, speaking for the www.internationalman.com site: “The best way to do that is to purchase widely recognized gold bullion coins, like the Canadian Maple Leaf or the American Eagle.

I recommend avoiding numismatic or collectible coins. They are more complicated, can have significant premiums, and present an opportunity for you to get ripped off if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead, keep it simple and stick to the widely recognized bullion coins.

You should hold your physical gold bullion in your own possession or a private non-bank vault in a wealth-friendly jurisdiction like Singapore, Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands. Never put your gold in a bank’s safe deposit box. They will be among the first targets if and when governments decide to confiscate private wealth.”

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday, had the Powell testimony day one, and today will be day two, to the other side of the Hill… Senate yesterday, House today…    the Consumer Credit (read debt) data didn’t print yesterday, as scheduled… must have not been ready for prime time, wink, wink…

And today’s Data Cupboard will have the ADP Employment Report for Feb, which used to be looked at as a harbinger for Friday’s Jobs Jamboree… more on that tomorrow…  And finally, we’ll see the color of the Job Openings for January…

To recap… It was a bad day at bed rock yesterday for the currencies & metals, as Fed Head Chairman, Powell, threw a cat among the pigeons yesterday, shocking the stock jockeys, bond jockeys, and currency jockeys…. The only thing to gain yesterday was the dollar… The price of Oil slid $3, and bonds got sold with the 10-year’s yield rising back to 4.0%… Chuck goes through what will happen if Powell does keep to his word and continues to hike rates beyond expectations… And Doug Casey tells us how to buy and store physical Gold..  

For What It’s Worth…  I just can’t get my arms around the fact that this country was built and prospered greatly because of Oil and Coal… And now the powers that be, want to eliminate those two energy producers, and replace them with wind mills, and solar panels…  And then add to the electrical demands with electric cars…  Those things just don’t add up…  Nuclear energy would be a good source too, and that’s what this article is about, the fact that the first Nuclear Reactor has been built in decades, and it can be found here: Newest US nuclear plant begins splitting atoms for first time | AP News

Or, here’s your snippet: “A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States.

The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity.

A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2009, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The company now says Unit 3 could begin commercial operation in May or June.

Unit 4 is projected to begin commercial operation sometime between this November and March 2024.

The latest set of delays at Unit 3 included a pipe part of a critical backup cooling system that was vibrating during startup testing. Construction workers had failed to install supports called for on blueprints. The company has also said it had to repair a slowly dripping valve and diagnose a problem involving water flow through reactor coolant pumps.

Georgia Power said Unit 3 would continue startup testing to show that its cooling system and steam supply system will work at the intense heat and pressure that a nuclear reactor creates. After that, operators are supposed to link the reactor to the electrical grid and gradually raise it to full power.

“We remain focused on safely bringing this unit online, fully addressing any issues and getting it right at every level,” Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, said in a written statement. “Reaching initial criticality is one of the final steps in the startup process and has required tremendous diligence and attention to detail from our teams.”

Chuck again…  Well, good for Georgia for putting these on track to be power sources in the future!

Market Prices 3/8/2023: American Style: A$ .6602, kiwi .6118, C$ .7272, euro 1.0537, sterling 1.1841, Swiss $1.0604, European Style: rand 18.6024, krone 10.6632, SEK 10.7350, forint 360.68, zloty 4.4594, koruna 22.4303, RUB 76.27, yen 137.35, sing 1.3541, HKD 7.8499, INR 82.06, China 6.9625, peso 18.04, BRL 5.1917, BBDXY 1,260.50, Dollar Index 105.72, Oil $77.41, 10-year 3.96%, Silver $20.15, Platinum $946.00, Palladium $1,406.00, Copper $3.98, and Gold… $1,815.30

That’s it for today… Another beautiful day down here in the South yesterday… We’ve had a nice string of beautiful days now that has run long… But the area needs some rain… just not during the day! The weather people say a cold front is coming, and the temps will only be in the 70’s…  They certainly have a different definition of “cold front” down here, than they do up north! Our Blues fell on their faces again last night… UGH!  This is a lost year, for our town’s hockey team, hopefully, all those draft picks they picked up for trading their star players, will work out quickly, like next year!  My beloved Cardinals play the Yankees in a spring game today in Tampa… The Yankees come to Jupiter March 23…  that should be fun! The McCoys take us to the finish line today with their song: Hang On Sloopy… I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

March 7, 2023

* currencies & metals get sold on Monday

* What’s a Humphrey Hawkins Act! 

Good Day.. And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, this is the last day down here for my spring training buddies, Duane and Rick, as they fly home today. In their place my wife, Kathy, will return and she’ll be going to games with me here on out…  Lucky for her!  (NOT!) She really just goes to the games to placate me… The Cardinals won their last game yesterday for the boys… It was a truly beautiful day once again, and they have had wonderful weather for their visit down to Jupiter, Fla!  Congrats to Mizzou Tiger, Kobe Brown, who was named 1^st team All SEC! That’s 5th time for a Tiger, since joining the SEC!   Marty Balin greets me this morning with his song: Hearts…  (Marty Balin was the lead singer of the Jefferson Starship, and then went solo… this is from his solo years)

Well, watching the currency markets these days is a lot like, counting flowers on the wall, that doesn’t bother me at all, watching Captain Kangaroo, etc.  In other words, the are down right boring!  But boring isn’t always a bad thing… At least if you are looking to diversify your investment portfolio with currencies, at least they aren’t moving away from you at the speed of fired bullet…

Yesterday, the dollar, drifted around, until finally succumbing to the pressure of the sellers, and the BBDXY lost 1 index point… Again, much like last year, when the only currency that looked perky against the dollar was the Russian ruble, this year it’s the Mexican peso… And we’ve talked about the peso, so much, that I’ll soon be called names again…  (years ago, a reader took exception to my story about singing in a Mexican outdoor mall, and basically accused me of being… oh, never mind, no sense in rehashing it!)

Gold never found a bid yesterday, and saw a lot of new short positions being put on, in place of all those old stale ones that were covered last week. Gold lost $10 yesterday, and ended the day at $1,847.50.. Silver followed Gold’s lead, and saw the same kind of selling… Silver lost 22-cents on the day, and ended at $21.14…  The price of Oil jumped to $80 yesterday…  Memo to the POTUS… You’ve released a good portion of our strategic petroleum reserve, to move the price of Oil down, and look here… the price of Oil is still strong… What a waste! Tsk, tsk, tsk…

There was no “crisis in oil” that would garner a release from the SPR… That leaves us with the only reason the release of the SPR would be made…  Political…

Moving on… In the overnight markets last night, the BDDXY gained back that lost 1 index point, and so we’re right back to where we were yesterday morning… I guess the currency traders are holding back from playing their cards until they see what  top Fed Head, Jerome Powell, shows his hand first… And that opportunity will come first this morning, as Powell, heads to Capitol Hill to give the first of his two testimonies to lawmakers, on the economy…  I see this as Powell’s final attempt to set the world straight, that he’s hell bent and whiskey bound to see inflation defeated, and the economy come to a soft landing… To date, the only markets that have believed him from the get-go, is the currency markets… 

This two-day trek to The Hill, started many years ago, when it was called the Humphrey Hawkins Act, that required the Fed Head Chairman to testify before, the Senate one day, and the House the next day… The actual ACT ended years ago, but… the Fed Heads have continued to honor the ACT, by making the trek to Capitol Hill and testify…

I can’t begin to think that Powell will announce a pivot, or a delay in rate hikes at his testimony… I see Powell, talking about how the economy is proving to be resilient in the face of over 400 Basis Points of rate hikes, and that inflation is still a problem and that it will require additional rate hikes…

Anything else from the Chairman, and I’ll be surprised… 

The price of Oil maintained its handle of $80 overnight, and the 10-year’s yield was unmoved…  Waiting for Jay, I guess…

Well, in a case of saber rattling going on once again… The Chinese are having their annual Communist National Meeting… and according to Reuters this morning this is what occurred… “The United States should change its “distorted” attitude towards China or “conflict and confrontation” will follow, China’s foreign minister said, while defending its stance on the war in Ukraine and its close ties with Russia.”

C’mon, why can’t we all just get along, we all live on the same planet, right?  Remember these are just words, and sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me… Well, sometimes, words can be very hurtful… so that old saying, isn’t really true…  The other thing in play here is the fact that in the past, China doesn’t say things it can’t back up or carry through… I’m just saying…

Ok, before we head to the Big Finish today, I wanted to highlight this snippet I took from the GoldSwitzerland.com site, where the head of the company, Egon von Greyerz, is talking with Chris Waltzek of Gold Seek Radio… let’s listen in: “The conversation opens with a critique of over-valued (bubbled) stock, bond and property markets. Their collective and historical rise has been supported exclusively by central bank (inflationary) money printing. The inevitable and longer-term consequence of this fantasy “solution”/support is a massive race to the bottom of assets and currencies in real terms. With fewer places to hide, gold naturally emerges as insurance against these asset and currency risks. Egon specifically addresses the demise of paper money and reminds that gold doesn’t effectively “go up,” currencies merely fall—a historical reality which only a small minority of investors fully understand today.”

Chuck again.. Yes, one of these days, Alice! Gold will take its place at the top where it belongs, has belonged, and will belong once again!

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday has the Factory Orders from Jan, and they surprised everyone by showing a gain of 1.6%…  I saw that print and immediately thought, “oh no, now the gov’t is cooking these books too!”…   UGH!   Oh well…

Today’s Cupboard is dominated by the Powell Testimony talked about above…  And then we’ll see what Consumer’s have been up to, when Consumer Credit (read debt) prints for January… I suspect that consumers piled on the debt in Jan…

To recap… Chuck is counting flowers on the wall and watching Captain Kangaroo, because the currency markets have gone boring… It could be because the Fed Head Chairman Powell, will speak today on the economy, and the currency traders want him to show his hand first…  Gold & Silver are seeing all the old stale short positions that were covered last week, be put back on… UGH!  And Chuck is still at odds with the POTUS for releasing the SPR…  

For What It’s Worth… This article came to me from longtime reader Bob… and it’s about how JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is in deep dookie right now, (once again I might add), and you can read about it in its entirety, here: Jamie Dimon Is Fighting a Deposition in a Devastating Lawsuit Charging JPMorgan With Being the Cash Conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex Crimes (blacklistednews.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “ he Attorney General’s office of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has filed a First Amended Complaint against JPMorgan Chase that has less redactions than an earlier version. The complaint makes devastating and detailed charges. It charges that the bank sat on a pile of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring as it continued to keep him as a client; accept his lucrative referrals of wealthy clients; and provided him with large sums of cash and wire transfers to pay off victims – one of whom was a “14-year old sex slave.”

Attorneys for the bank are now resisting allowing Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon from being deposed under oath in the matter as to what he knew and when he knew it.

The case is USVI v JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. (22-cv-10904) in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. As is becoming a regular occurrence when there is a politically sensitive case involving JPMorgan Chase, Judge Jed Rakoff is the presiding judge. (See Judge Rakoff Signs a Dangerous Protective Order in Whistleblower Case Against 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase.)

The lawsuit includes the following charges against JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States with more than 5,000 local branches serving mom and pop accounts:

“JP Morgan did business with Jeffrey Epstein from as early as 1998 to 2013. In that time, JP Morgan serviced approximately fifty-five Epstein-related accounts collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“…at least 20 individuals paid through JP Morgan accounts were victims of trafficking and sexual assault in Little St. James, New York, and/or other Epstein properties. These women were trafficked and abused during different intervals between at least 2003 and July 2019, when Epstein was arrested and jailed, and these women received payments, typically multiple payments, between 2003 and 2013 in excess of $1 million collectively. Epstein also withdrew more than $775,000 in cash over that time frame from JP Morgan accounts, especially significant as Epstein was known to pay for ‘massages,’ or sexual encounters, in cash. Financial information also reflects payments drawn from JP Morgan accounts of nearly $1.5 million to known recruiters, including to the MC2 modeling agency, and another $150,000 to a private investigative firm.”

Chuck again… I just don’t know how the leader of an organization that has been accused of RICO crimes, been fined for manipulating markets, a few times, I might add, and then this, is not going to jail…  But then that’s the way things used to work… You broke the law, you went to jail…  These days, it’s more like: you broke the law, you get a bonus!

Market Prices 3/7/2023: American Style: A$ .6667, kiwi .6196, C$ .7338, euro 1.0669, sterling 1.2008, Swiss $1.0722, European Style: rand 18.3582, krone 10.4789, SEK 10.4978, forint 354.24, zloty 4.3944, koruna 22.0083, RUB 75.47, yen 135.90, sing 1.3460, HKD 7.8499, INR 81.92, China 6.9324, peso 17.97, BRL 5.1584, BBDXY 1,248.87, Dollar Index 104.40, Oil $80.10, 10-year 3.92%, Silver $20.95, Platinum $966.00, Palladium $1,433.00, Copper $3.99, and Gold… $1,842.11

That’s it for today…  Well the World Baseball Classic starts play tonight, with pool play in Taiwan, Tokyo, Miami, and Phoenix…  USA, USA, USA!  So, this will be a week chock-full-o-sports, with the WBC going on, and the college conference championships going on..  Today is the birthday of one my good friends… Gus! Gus is my Greek friend, that lives on Long Island, and owns the Candy Kitchen restaurant…  Happy Birthday, my friend, I raise a martini to you!  I was up very late last night playing dominoes with friends, and didn’t realize the time had gone by!   It’s time to hit send, so Neil Young takes us to the finish line today with his song: After The Gold Rush…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and will Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

March 6, 2023

* currencies & metals rally on Friday last week

* What’s this about ERA? 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Well, at first, last weekend was going great for our sports teams… The Billikens won Friday night, Mizzou won Saturday, the Cardinals won on Saturday, our brand spanking new soccer team STL City SC won their historic home opener on Saturday, and then… The Blues lost on Saturday night.  But how about that expansion team STL City SC?  They are 2-0 for an expansion team that’s almost non heard of previously! The city the stadium, were rockin’ and rollin’ all day and night long… I watched it on TV, as I’m not in St. Louis right now… and I’m sad I missed the historic night in the city I grew up in… R.E.M. greets me this morning with their song: The One I Love

Well, I started a string of short-n-sweet Pfennigs last Wednesday, and I’m afraid that today will make 3-in-a-row… But what’s a country boy to do, when he’s beaten the debt horse, the inflation horse, and the bad economy horse enough all ready? There’s always a Fed Head dolt to beat on, but then even that gets old, and stale… So, here goes nothing…

The dollar ended last week looking like it was getting very tired… You know, like Big Lee Smith, a former Cardinals’ relief pitcher, used to come into the game… “I’m so tired”… he would slog onto the field, looking as if he was not supposed to be buying any green bananas, and then he would wind up and pitch a fastball that, for that time, was pretty darn fast!  The BBDXY lost 1 index point on Friday, in some very range based trading… The only currency of note was the Mexican peso… more on the peso later…  

Gold ended the week on Friday, up $20.60, and Silver was up 36-cents… So, it was a good day for the metals, with Gold ending the week at $1,857.50, and Silver at $21.36..  There were reports of yet more short covering in both metals… Now wouldn’t it be nice (Beach Boys) if all the short positions got covered? Well, yes, we can all dream of seashells and balloons, but they don’t pay the bills… C’mon Chuck, get with the program here! Wake up!

The price of Oil, which had bumped higher to the $79 handle earlier last week, saw some selling  on Friday, and ended the week trading with a $78 handle. Bonds, which had appeared to turn the corner and were heading in the right direction, last week, ended the week with buying, and yield on the 10-year Treasury, fell to 3.94%… Recall that it had finally, moved past 4.0% last week.. So, there had to be some major buying to reverse this move higher in the yield… Can you say, bond manipulation? I knew you could!

You see, the powers that be, can’t have bonds getting out of hand, with their rising yields, because that would take away from the stock jockeys… Uh-Oh! What are we going to do now? Well, if you ask me I would only be buying short term Treasuries, and live for another day… But then that’s just me, C’mon Chuck, they already know that! Sorry…

In the overnight markets last night, the dollar fought back, and regained the 1 index point it had lost Friday, and trades this morning at 1,248…  And like I said above, the only currency that looks like it came out of the fight with the dollar without a black eye, is the Mexican peso…  Well, I’ve beaten this peso “risk premium being back” to death too, so… let’s kept moving along…

Gold is down $8 in the early trading today.. So the start of the week isn’t a good one for Gold, unless things turn around quickly today. Silver is also giving back some gains in the early trading with it being down 26-cents…  Blood, Sweat & Tears, used to sing about how “what goes up, must come down”, and while it’s a very true statement, it just doesn’t seem to be in effect for the dollar, not as long as the PPT has their treasure chest of Exchange Stabilization Funds to protect the dollar each and every time it begins to fall off a cliff…  I’m just saying..

The price of Oil has slipped further down in the $78 handle this morning, and the 10-year’s yield continued to drop.. Stranger things have happened in Bonds, folks… But the bond yield performance is stranger than fiction to me…

So… I was perusing the USA Today yesterday before heading the ballpark, and cam across something that I was unaware of… Did you know that the ERA Amendment wasn’t a law?  Here’s the skinny from USA Today: “What is the ERA? The Equal Rights Amendment states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

• This isn’t already law? Nope. Congress first approved a resolution formally proposing the amendment in 1972, triggering the requirement that 38 states ratify it before enshrinement to the U.S. Constitution. Lawmakers set a seven-year deadline for the ratification process, then extended it by another three years.
• Only 35 states adopted the amendment by the extended 10-year deadline. But in 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, meeting the threshold required but doing so nearly four decades after the deadline lapsed.’

Chuck again…  How’d that happen? All this time everyone worked under the idea that it was a law, and now we find out it really isn’t?  Aye, Aye, Aye…

Last week, the eurozone reported their January Inflation number, and while it was less (8.5% VS 8.6%), and the spin doctors tried to make it sound like inflation was under control, it wasn’t… Inflation in the Eurozone is sticky, and in Germany inflation actually was higher… But there were other countries in the Union  that had reported drops in inflation…  This report will not change the direction of interest rates in the Eurozone… The European Central Bank (ECB) will mostly like hike rates 50 Basis Points again at their next meeting, and that should continue to support the euro, but then, it really shouldn’t, but it will, because that’s the way traders think about currencies these days…  These days, I sit on cornerstones, and count the time in quarter tones… (Jackson Browne)

The thing that keeps dragging the euro downward, beyond dollar strength, is the Club Med countries, of Italy, Spain, Greece, all have debt up to their eyeballs and little to no economic growth… Germany keeps pulling the rest of the Union out of the gutter, but, how much longer will they be able to do that? That’s the $64 dollar question… And if you know the answer to that, you win the Big Floppy Teddy Bear!

Speaking of sticky inflation… In the U.K. inflation continues to rise… despite the Bank of England’s(BOE) rate hikes… memo to BOE…  you’ve got to get ahead of inflation to get control of it… you’re just like the U.S. Fed Heads, and ECB… you’re coming to a gun fight with inflation with a pea shooter…

The Russian ruble continues to show weakness, and has given back over 5 points in price since we turned the calendar to 2023… I still say that the ruble is an oil play, nothing more, nothing less, and if you believe that Oil is undervalued right now, then you see why the ruble has been having trouble getting a bid each day…

The U.S. Data Cupboard, last week, had the productivity for the 4^th QTR and it was awful… The report showed a gain of just 1.7% VS a gain of 3.0% the previous quarter… And then the icing on the cake was the Unit Labor Costs, and they soared in the 4^th QTR by 3.2% VS just a gain of 1.1% in the previous quarter… So, the skinny here is that employees are not working as hard, but getting paid more for doing less… And isn’t that the way we, as humans, do things these days?  Actually, most youngsters want to get paid for doing nothing! 

These two reports are a very telling picture of the what’s going on in the U.S. folks…  I’m just saying..

The Data Cupboard today, just has Factory Orders for Jan, and they will most likely be negative again, following February’s -1.8% print…

To recap… The dollar gets sold one day, it gets bought the next day…  Friday’s price action looked to Chuck like the dollar was getting to be a very tired trade… and then in the overnight markets, that’s all wiped out, and we start the week on the wrong foot… UGH!  Gold has given back ½ of its Friday’s gains in the early markets today. Did you know that ERA isn’t a law?  Well, you’ll have to go back and read that part of the Pfennig this morning, for Chuck has the skinny on all of it!  Inflation is sticky… and the ECB, BOE and Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel are all finding out about that!

For What It’s Worth… A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the troubles of Credit Suisse… And now this past weekend ZeroHedge.com had some info on the problems with Credit Suisse and that’s what this article is about, and it can be found here:  Credit Suisse Crashes To All Time Low After Boosting Deposit Rates To Reverse Bank Run | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “Fast forward another two weeks to today, as CS stock craters 7% to a fresh all-time low, after reports from Reuters and Bloomberg that in hopes of reversing the seemingly endless bank run – and who can blame depositors from pulling their money from a company whose stock is less than $3 from zero – Credit Suisse is now offering aggressively higher deposit rates to attract new funds from wealthy clients in Asia.

Citing sources, Reuters notes that the Swiss bank is offering a 6.5% annual rate on new three-month deposits of $5 million or above – and a rate as high as 7% for one-year deposits – far above matched maturity Bills, and suggesting that to attract a client, the bank is forced to eat a loss. The hope, of course, is that after it attracts enough new clients, the bank will then be able to quietly lower the rates and make the new accounts profitable, however as the various DeFi blow ups of 2022 showed, it never quite works out that way.

“The banking sector has been responding to global rate hikes with higher rates and Credit Suisse is fully focused on providing our clients with differentiated advice and competitive solutions,” a Credit Suisse spokesperson said.

Credit Suisse’s generous offers are not only well above risk-free rates, but also about 100 to 200 basis points higher than those of major rivals in the region such as JPMorgan, UBS and Citi Group.

Hilariously, the new deposit rates are higher than Credit Suisse’s lending rates in Asia, a Reuters source said, adding that “it raises concerns about how the business can sustain such a funding gap.” Spoiler alert: it can’t, and as explained above, the bank is willing to eat a short-term loss in hopes of attracting enough sticky money before it flees again once the teaser rates are cut. Sure enough, another source said the offers are valid until the end of this quarter and only apply to new cash deposits, not to existing portfolios.

Asked about the lender’s pricing to win back money during Credit Suisse’s earnings call last month, CEO Ullrich Koerner said the bank is trying to be “competitive” like many rivals: “But we are not buying assets, just to be clear, because that would not be very smart going forward,” he said, which is ironic because buying assets – and at a very high price – is precisely what he is doing… and it’s not working: the bank’s assets managed for wealthy clients, excluding the Swiss bank, tumbled to 540.5 billion Swiss francs ($574 billion) at the end of December, from 742.6 billion francs a year ago, contributing to a second consecutive annual loss, according to Bloomberg.”

Chuck again… so, why is this important to us here in the U.S., I hear you asking? Well, the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone is connected to the shin bone, etc.  All of these major banks have deals with each other, and when one is affected, they all get affected… I’m just saying…

Market Prices 3/6/2023: American Style: A$ .6722, kiwi .6180, C$ .7344, euro 1.0631, sterling 1.2006, Swiss $1.0692, European Style: rand 18.2041, krone 10.4593, SEK 10.4873, forint 355.36, zloty 4.4287, koruna 22.1516, RUB 75.34, yen 136.04, sing 1.3462, HKD 7.8495, INR 81.92, China 6.9338, peso 17.96, BRL 5.1961, BBDXY 1,248.69, Dollar Index 105.66, Oil $78.44, 10-year 3.91%, Silver $21.10, Platinum $965.00, Palladium $1,427.00, Copper $4.03, and Gold… $1,849.47

That’s it for today…  Well, the college basketball conference championships start this week, this is when basketball begins to get really interesting! Cardinals play the Cheaters, I mean the Astros today… The weather for the games has been terrific, and today should be no different!  Things have been really nice down here this winter… And that’s the reason I come here for the winter! Ok… Chuck’s annual spring vacation starts in 12 days… So, mark your calendars accordingly! HA!  You never know, I might chime in on something that’s crazy or completely out of line, and then again, I might not… Mama’s Pride (a St. Louis band) take us to the finish line today with their song: Blue Mist…   I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please, please, please, with sugar on top, Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

March 2, 2023

* currencies & metals rally on Wednesday… 

* China’s economy rolls out strong… 

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Well, March came in like lamb… I sure hope that doesn’t play out like the old saying, for I will be returning home on April Fool’s Day! Another absolutely beautiful day here yesterday, and more are in store in the coming days! Baseball game today… After a day off, my beloved Cardinals get back on the field today at Roger Dean Stadium, and we will be there! My Mizzou Tigers pulled out a win on the road last night at LSU… It was a nail biter, but… the outcome was good… This one will be yet another short-n-sweet letter this morning… Boy aren’t you happy about that! HA!  Jimmy Buffett greets me this morning with his song: Come Monday…

When I left you yesterday, the dollar had been getting sold in the overnight markets, with Gold & Silver on the rally tracks.. In the U.S. session yesterday, the dollar stopped getting sold, but still ended down on the day, with the BBDXY losing 5 index points…  The biggest mover yesterday was the 10-year Treasury… The yield on the 10-year is now above 4%!  About time, too!  The price of Oil also jumped higher and ended the day with a $78 handle… So, yesterday, was good day for the non-dollar/ anti-dollar investments…

I read where the POTUS wants to spend $1.6 Billion to tackle fraud tied to U.S. pandemic relief programs and help victims of identity theft, the White House said. Wait! What? Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight… Our Gov’t admits that there were problems with the previous money printing scheme, and now want to print more to correct those problems?  Have I died and gone to an economic hell? We as a country didn’t have the money to spend in the first place, and now we want to go into further debt to smooth out bribes, I mean, payments?    Serenity now!

In the overnight markets last night, the dollar fought back a bit, with the BBDXY up 3 index points to start today… The currencies all look like they did yesterday, pretty weary, and tired of fighting for ground VS the dollar… Gold is down 1 buck in the early trading this morning, and Silver has given back 15-cents, falling back below $21 again… UGH!   Bonds are hanging out to dry this morning, and the price of Oil looks like all the fears of a slowdown are fading… It’s difficult to tell at this point if that’s the case, but it sure looks like it could be..

Well… I told you when China reopened their economy a few months ago, that they would find it difficult to get up and running again… But that doesn’t appear to be the case, as even Chinese officials are surprised by the strength of the Chinese economy already… So, what does this mean for the renminbi and the rest of Asia? Well, I’m not sure, but I would think that the Chinese economy can only grow as much as the demand for their goods grow… And with the Eurozone fighting inflation, the U.S. doing the same, it doesn’t look like the growth in those economies will be strong enough… I’m just saying…

Speaking of inflation in the Eurozone.. Their latest report showed that inflation has increased, instead of falling like they expected to see it do… That’s the thing with inflation folks… Just like we’ve found here in the U.S., it’s very sticky… And seems to pop up here, there, and around the corner, just when you think you’ve got it corralled…

The Mexican peso, continues to get bought, as the “risk premium” has returned to the peso, after being absent for many years!  The peso has a history of disappointment, with moving decimals, the Gov’t taking over businesses, etc.  So, all I’ll say about the peso, is be careful here… But the interest rate certainly is appealing, eh?  Yes, sort of like the song that went through the air that the Sea Hag would send out to entice Popeye to come to her…   Oh, my goodness, did I just give away how old I am? HA!

The U.S. Data Cupboard had the latest ISM (manufacturing index)  and while it improved a bit, from 47.7 to 48, it was still below the 50 line in the sand… And that’s not a good thing for the economy, folks, so when you hear someone that should know better than to say things like this, say, that everything is good, you don’t need to correct them, but just ask them “so, how is manufacturing in the country going?”  That should bring them back to earth…

Today’s Data Cupboard has the usual fare for a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, the weekly Initial Jobless Claims, which have been inching higher… And with all the announced layoffs that have been made, I can see why… We’ll also see 4^th QTR revisions for Productivity and Unit Labor Costs…  I suspect that both will be revised downward… but we’ll see in few minutes…

To recap… The dollar’s selling in the overnight markets the previous night, didn’t see any follow through, yesterday, but the dollar did end up down for the day… Gold gained $10 yesterday, and is flat this morning, the big mover yesterday was the yield of the 10-year Treasury, which is now above 4%, which Chuck says is about time!  And the price of Oil jumped by $2 in the last 24 hours.  Chuck is not happy about a new deficit spending request by the POTUS… And Chuck also reviews the Chinese recovery…  All that in a sweet little bundle for you all today!

For What It’s Worth…  This article is about how bankruptcies are piling up here in the U.S. with record amount of the filings in the last two months, and it can be found here: US Bankruptcy Filings Surge At Fastest Pace Since 2009 | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “For the past year, both the Biden White House and the Fed have been desperate to usher in a (mild) recession in the U.S. to break the back of runaway inflation and the wage-price spiral with little success. But judging by the surge in bankruptcy filings, they are about to get their wish.

One month ago, when looking at the recent pace of large bankruptcy filings (those with more than $50MM in liabilities), we noted a troubling trend: in the first month of the year, the number of U.S. bankruptcies topped 20, the highest in any other January dating back to 2010. Back then, 25 filings were seen as the economy was still reeling from the aftermath of the GFC.

The spike in defaults was not a fluke, and according to Bloomberg data, one month later – as of the end of February – no less than 39 large companies had filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. so far this year, as February’s pace matches that of January; the YTD total represents the fastest pace of companies filing for bankruptcy since the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009. By comparison, U.S. bankruptcy courts had seen 63 large filings at this point in 2009.

Last week’s seven large filings — those tied to at least $50 million of liabilities — include the liquidation of generic drug maker Akorn and the Chapter 11 filing of Covid-19 test maker Lucira Health.

This year, some of the most notable bankruptcy filings have been festive retailer Party City Holdco Inc, mattress maker Serta Simmons Bedding LLC, and cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Holdco.

The pile of dollar-denominated corporate bonds and loans in the Americas trading at distressed levels rose to $237.2 billion in the week ended Friday, about a 1.63% increase from $233.4 billion a week earlier, according to BBG data.”

Chuck again… That’s some scary data folks… And other arrow in your quiver to pull out when somebody tells you that everything is hunky dory! 

Market Prices 3/2/2023: American Style: A$ .6739, kiwi .6231, C$ .7349, euro 1.0623, sterling 1.1982, Swiss $1.0639, European Style: rand 18.1739, krone 10.4344, SEK 10.4879, forint 352.89, zloty 4.4082, koruna 22.0965, RUB 75.58, yen 136.80, sing 1.3478, HKD 7.8497, INR 82.59, China 6.9054, peso 18.10, BRL 5.1850, BBDXY 1,251.40, Dollar Index 104.75, Oil $78.14, 10-year 4.01%, Silver $20.82, Platinum $961.00, Palladium $1,434.00, Copper $4.01, and Gold… $1,835.78

That’s it for today and this week…  I can’t wait to get back to the ballpark today… I love Roger Dean Stadium, I love my seat, my view, the field looks fabulous, so, it’s not difficult to see why I enjoy going to the ballpark! And today, I’ll have my good friend, Rick and Duane with me! YAHOO! There have been more of my friends here in years past, but in the beginning, it was just the us three, and since we all get along so well together, it works out!   The Billikens play tomorrow night at home, their last regular season game before the A10 Tournament. The college basketball conferences will begin their end of the season Tournaments that decide who goes to the NCAA Tournament, aka The Big Dance…  I think my beloved Mizzou Tigers will make the tournament without winning the SEC, but I think the Billikens will need to win the A10 Tournament to get into the Big Dance…  Good luck guys!   Hall & Oates take us to the finish line today with their song: I Can’t Go For That… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and a Fantastico Friday tomorrow, and I’ll talk to you again next Monday… Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

March 1, 2023

* Currencies & metals rally in the overnight markets!

* No Tik-Tok for you! (soup nazi voice! ) 

Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! And Welcome to March!  Another Chamber of Commerce Day here yesterday greeted my friends, Duane and Rick to S. Florida!  The sun rising out of the ocean this morning is simply beautiful.. It was a bad night for St. Louis sports… The StL University Billikens lost a game on the road, and it was an important game for them… UGH!  And our Blues continued to lose games, and have lost every game since they traded their Captain… Hmmm…. I’m thinking that this will be short-n-sweet this morning, as I’ve had little luck finding things to talk about that I haven’t already hammered home multiple times! Thin Lizzy greets me this morning with their song: The Boys Are Back In Town.. (kind of appropriate song title for my buddies)

Well, there were reports yesterday of a huge amount of short positions in Gold & Silver getting closed out for month-end accounting, and the result from that short covering saw Gold gain $9.60 on the day and Silver gain 25-cents.. Gold ended the day at $1,827.80, and Silver at $20.99.  There wasn’t much happening in the currencies yesterday, with the BBDXY gaining only 1 index point.  I see this lack of follow-up by the dollar, very interesting…  Usually, when something like this goes on, it’s time for a big move the other day… Like I’ve explained before, like a star that’s burning out, it shines the brightest right before the burn out…

In The overnight markets last night, we may well have seen the burn out begin… The BBDXY has lost 7 index points overnight, the euro is pushing higher once again, and the buying of kiwi has started up again… The best performing currency so far this year has been… are you ready for this?  I bet in a million years you couldn’t guess this one… The Hungarian forint…  Go figure! One of the, what I call, The Euro Wannabes, have all gotten a little stronger… What? You don’t recall the euro Wannabes?  Ahh grasshopper, the three amigos here are the Hungarian forint, Polish zloty, and the Czech koruna…

Gold is following up yesterday’s gains with another gain in the early markets today, of $9… And Silver has climbed back above the $21 handle this morning with an 8-cent gain in the early trading. The price of Oil is steady with a $76 handle, and Bonds are so-so… stuck in a range, with no major conviction to move one way or the other by the bond boys…

Pam and Russ Martens from www.wallstreetonparade.com sent out a very interesting article yesterday, reporting that… well, let me allow you to listen from them, for they wrote it: “According to Goldman’s annual report, it is being investigated for pretty much everything it does to make money: derivatives, currencies, mortgages, financial advisory, securities lending, dark pools, investment management, commodities, U.S. Treasuries, corporate bonds, credit cards, hiring and compensation practices, research practices, compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, transactions involving government-related financings – and on and on.

Things are so bad that it concedes in this annual report that it may have under-reserved for its legal costs by $2.3 billion.”

Chuck again, so… it seems that Lola has gotten a major snag in her stockings!  The regulators will not be able to shut down Lola, or even cause her to stumble… They’ll get the memo soon that says, “Leave Lola alone”… I’m just saying…

The Case/ Shiller Home Price Index showed a house price drop in January, which marked 6 straight months of home price drops…  And the headline national home price index is at it lowest since March 2022… the home price chart looks like half of a M….  Up and down with the downward slope not looking like it’s going to stop any time soon…   I told you all that this would be the result of the Fed Heads’ rate hikes, and now it’s showing up…

In a case of “it’s about time!” The White House is giving government agencies 30 days to remove Chinese-owned TikTok from federal devices over security concerns surrounding the video-sharing app. Congress approved the ban in December.

The news comes amid concerns TikTok could be used by Beijing to collect individual private data… But the real reason that the Gov’t won’t admit to is that they want to remove this app because the employees are using it all day instead of working!  I know when I ran a trading desk, there were temptations to peruse the internet all day, but we were too busy to do that!  So, keep them busy, keep their noses down and get to work, and quit watching videos on Tik-Tok!

I was doing some reading yesterday, and came across an article that had the writer talking about a Bullish Bank of Japan… (BOJ)… I saw that comment and about fell out of my chair!  You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Well, the writer was steadfast in his idea that the BOJ will be entertaining the thoughts of rate hikes soon…  That idea made its way to the currency desks, and the yen got bought for the first time in a month of Sundays! Well, I’m from Missouri, the BOJ is going to have to “show me”…  until they do, I’ll keep saying that Japan is a basket case, and the yen is not worthy…

I’m sure the brief up-tick of the yen scared some of the Carry Trade participants, but In my opinion, they have nothing to be concerned about.. Carry On, my wayward son! (Kansas!)

The U.S. Data Cupboard today has the Feb reading of the ISM (manufacturing index), which has fallen below the 50 line that marks the difference between contraction and expansion… The last reading in January had the ISM at 47… Now, if things worked out the way they are supposed to, all the regional readings for manufacturing have come in negative, and that should be the harbinger for a weaker ISM national report…   Remember something that I taught you all quite a few years ago, and that is if the ISM falls below 45 for two months, the economy is in a deep recession…  So, keep that in mind..

We also have 3 Fed Heads out speaking today… Don’t rush out and try to hear what they have to say, for it’s all sex, lies, and inuendo! Just kidding… But sometimes I truly think that to be the case!

For What It’s Worth…  I told you last week how so many people were delinquent in their sub prime car loans… Well, this week it came to a head, and the subprime lending company folded tent… That’s what this article is about and it can be found here; Subprime Auto Lender And Used Car Retailer Collapses As Distress Cycle Finally Arrives | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “One month ago, when discussing the “perfect storm” hitting the US auto market, we showed that according to Fitch “More Americans Can’t Afford Their Car Payments Than During The Peak Of Financial Crisis”…

… which was to be expected: after all the latest consumer credit report from the Fed revealed an exponential spike in the amount of new car loans, which increased by more than $2,000 in one quarter, from just over $38,000 (a record), to $40,155 (a new record).

And yet something just didn’t click: if so many subprime Americans were saddled with record amounts of auto loans – on average more than $40K – where were the defaults? After all, the average loan rate for new car loans just hit a 13 year high and will soon rise to the highest level this centiry.

Well, after a lengthy period in which nothing seemed to happen, suddenly the dominoes are starting to fall, and as Bloomberg reports, used car retailer and subprime auto loan lender, American Car Center, told employees the business was closing its doors, just one day after the company had hoped to pull off a funding Hail Mary by selling a $222 million bond (it failed).

According to Bloomberg, the used car retailer, which targets consumers regardless of their credit history (and thus targets almost entirely subprime borrowers who can’t get a loan elsewhere), said in an email to employees on Friday the firm was ceasing all operations, closing its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and that all employees would be terminated by the end of the business day, the people said. It employed about 288 people at its headquarters.

The closure email came a day after the company sent another message to staff saying management and advisors had been working with lenders to improve liquidity and continue operations. American Car Center, which has more than 40 dealerships across 10 states, is owned by York Capital’s private equity group.

The long overdue collapse – the first of many – comes as more Americans are starting to fall behind on their car payments, and the distress cycle is rapidly accelerating.

Think of it as the infamous New Century domino that signaled the collapse of subprime housing… only for cars.”

Chuck again… ok cars don’t have the size loans of houses (in most cases that is) so this won’t be as big of a catastrophe as the housing bubble pop in 2007… But… it’s still a major part of the economy… I’m just saying… 

Market Prices 3/1/2023: American Style: A$ .6767, kiwi .6263, C$ .7350, euro 1.0675, sterling 1.2036, Swiss $1.0675, European Style: rand 18.1379, krone 10.3411, SEK 10.3993, forint 351.60, zloty 4.4017, koruna 21.9574, RUB 75.31, yen 135.40, sing 1.3406, HKD 7.8499, INR 82.50, China 6.8700, peso 18.27, BRL 5.2364, BBDXY 1,247.67,  Dollar Index 104.31, Oil $76.26, 10-year 3.91%, Silver $21.07, Platinum $961.00, Palladium $1,433.00, Copper $4.04, and Gold… $1,836.90

That’s it for today…See? Short-n-sweet like I promised! Well, maybe not as short, as I thought it would be, but it certainly is SWEET!  Sort of like how I used to tell people when I would meet them, I say I was number 10 on the roster, but number 1 in the hearts of the fans!  HA!   No game for my beloved Cardinals at Roger Dean today, so what will we do today? Probably just loll around, listen to the game on the radio, and before we know it, it will be dinner time!  We could go to Blowing Rocks, or someplace else, but I doubt we will… Ok… keeping this short is getting difficult… so… Alvin Lee and 10 Years After, take us to the finish line today with their song: I’d Love To Change The World…  Alvin Lee was a guitar god, and we lost him way to early… I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

February 28, 2023

* the dollar buying takes a breather… 

* Ron Paul adds to the Pfennig today… 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! The last day of February! Today would have been my closest sister’s 70^th birthday… We lost my Barbie doll, to ALS in 2017…  Cancer/ ALS has reeked its havoc on my family through the years… Makes one wonder about the environment we grew up in… Oh well, it’s all in the past, got to move forward…   My Spring Training buddies will arrive today!  The three Amigos, Chuck, Rick and Duane, will be loose in Juno Beach! HA!  I couldn’t sleep last night, and got up at 3:30am this morning, and thought, oh, what the hell, might as well write!  So, here I am!  Oh, the replies part of the Pfennig, still are inoperable… And no, I didn’t break it on purpose! I miss the comments!  Dire Straits greet me this morning with their song: Brothers In Arms..

Well, there are little to no follow-up yesterday to the Friday price action in the dollar… The BBDXY was basically flat on the day, up just pennies… I read on Kitco yesterday that there was some short covering going on in Gold, and that allowed Gold to gain $6.10, but, as Ed Steer points out in his daily letter, the gains were dealt with in the usual fashion….  Silver was down 13-cents on the day yesterday… I’m going to say this one more time… These are BUYING OPPORTUNITIES! 

The price of Oil was down a buck, and ended the day trading with a $75 handle, while something strange is going on in bonds… The 10-year’s yield hasn’t moved out of a 3.94-95% range in a week now… Stuck in the mud is what I normally say, but with all that’s going on with rate hikes, and stock selling, one would think that this wouldn’t be stuck in the mud… But, it is, what it is… And we move along…

In the overnight markets last night…I think the overnight traders were asleep at the wheel, because there was little to no movement in the currencies/ dollar…  The euro has regained the 1.06 handle, but that’s small potatoes… It looked to me as if everyone yesterday, wanted to take a breather, after Friday’s massacre of the currencies and metals by the dollar… And so, today, should be interesting to see which way the markets turn…   Gold in the early trading today, is down $8, and Silver is down 3-cents… Those are figures that could very easily be turned around, so let’s not give up on the day, just yet…  Oil gained back the buck it lost yesterday, last night, and trades this morning with a $76 handle…  And bonds are still stuck in the mud.

I just don’t know what else to say about how the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel has gone about combating inflation… They have botched it up from the get-go… Remember them telling us last year, that the inflation was just “transitory”?  They kept that line going for months, when they could have been using that time to begin to hike rates in an attempt to get ahead of the rising inflation…  Then the first rate hike was just 25 Basis Points.. .Talk about useless! As useless as a pay toilet in a diarrhea ward!  Ok, sorry for that graphic description, but sometimes they are required!

And now, after a few 50 Basis Points rate hikes, the Fed Heads have reverted back to 25 Basis Points, which keeps them way behind the rate of inflation… I shake my head in disgust… But then what else should have I expected from these non-elected balance sheet pros? 

And on the other side of the curtain, we have the stock jockeys crying about the rate hikes, and how they are going to cause a recession…  You see, most of these guys, and gals, are young, and have never been through a down time in the economy, when all the excesses of the previous boom are wiped clean and then the economy starts again, anew…  So, they have fear that if we go into a recession that we wont’ come out of it… And their fears are warranted… But… they need to embrace the recession, and get on with it, because the sooner it starts the sooner its over…

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today on two challenges to the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan. The challenges involve a lawsuit brought by six states and a separate lawsuit by two students with student loan debt who wouldn’t benefit from all the provisions. See the players here.

The 6-3 conservative-led court will decide first if the plaintiffs have standing, or the right to sue. Next, they will decide if the government exceeded its authority and circumvented Congress in using the 2003 HEROES Act to justify the program.

I sure hope the Supremes, get this right…  And that’s all I have to say about that!

The Supremes could be singing: Stop, in the name of the constitution!  

And in the case of: it was bound to happen sometime….  Well, we have robotic vacuum sweepers… we have robotic cars, we have robotic other things, and now we will begin to see… are you ready for this? Well, here’s what I’m talking about: : Robot-turned-commercial-lawnmower!   If this were 30 years ago, I could hear my son saying, “Sign me up for one of those”! HA!

Remember how mad I was about the Inflation Reduction Act? And called it out for what it was, nothing more than more money printing?  Well, longtime adversary of money printing, former Sen Ron Paul, was also not happy with the Act… Let’s listen in: “Former Rep. Ron Paul called the president’s H.R. 5376 bill, otherwise known as the Inflation Reduction Act, a “vicious financial scheme,”

In August 2022, Republican Rep. Jason Smith reportedly said that the legislation would continue to aggravate inflation, adding $114 billion to the national debt because it masks the actual price of the bill.

Paul reportedly said that the federal government will make the dollar worthless by continuing to print money. This will erode the currency and therefore the savings and retirement of average Americans. But the former politician allegedly has a solution for the American people. He suggested that they invest in physical gold which will avoid taxation. He also allegedly said that physical gold is more trustworthy than “paper gold.”

Chuck again… You tell ‘em Ron

Well, well, well, what have we here? Ahh grasshopper, it’s another hedonic adjustment from our friends (NOT!) at the Gov’t accounting…  It was announced a couple of weeks ago, that the feds would eliminate “rents” from their inflation calcs…  Wanna know why they did that?  Well, we can all guess that rents had skyrocketed, and therefore they would make the stupid CPI calc even higher, right?  Well, guess again… This from Bloomberg.com “Apartment rents fell in every major metropolitan area in the U.S. over the past six months through January, a trend that is poised to continue as the biggest delivery of new apartments in nearly four decades is slated for this year. 

Renters with new leases in January paid a median rent that was 3.5% lower than they would have paid last August.”

So…. Putting my tin foil hat on, I’m going to point out something that I’ve talked about for years now, and that is that the Gov’t knows that inflation is the only tool they have left to pay their debts…  So, think about that for a minute, and you’ll come right back to why they removed Rents from their calcs….  In the end though, this is just another case where the “Gov’t moves the goalposts yet, again!” 

The US. Data Cupboard yesterday has January Durable Goods, and they surprised the markets and me, by going negative -4.3%!   Didn’t make sense to me, but so be it…  Just more rot on the economy’s vine, for sure…  The Data Cupboard today, just has the Case/Shiller Home Price Index for January… It’s almost March, and we’re just now seeing this data… Sure doesn’t help matters much that’s for sure!

To recap… There was little to no follow-up for the dollar yesterday, or last night… The dollar has basically taken ten, for now… Chuck thinks that today’s price action will give us a better reading as to how the week will play out… Gold saw some short covering yesterday, and was allowed to gain $6.10, but in the early trading this morning Gold has given it back! UGH!  Chuck’s not happy with the Fed Heads, as usual, but today he spells out the way they have bumbled, stumbled, fumbled the way they went about combating inflation… And are you read for a robotic lawnmower?

For What It’s Worth…  well, what do we have here this morning? Seems we have word from China that they are shuttering a large Lithium supply… that news and more can be found here: Lithium Industry Reeling After China Shutters 10% Of Global Supply | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “That’s a nice little EV industry you got over there in the U.S., it’s be a shame if suddenly it found itself without the most important commodity.

That’s one way to interpret what just happened in China; another – a less cynical – is the way Bloomberg described it, namely that China’s lithium industry itself is reeling as its top production hub – responsible for around a 10th of the world’s supply – faces sweeping closures amid a government probe of environmental infringements.

The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, also known as the country’s “Lithium capital” follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing.

According to Yicai newspaper, ore-processing operations in Yichun have been ordered to stop as investigators probe alleged violations at lithium mines. That, Bloomberg notes, threatens somewhere between 8% and 13% of global supply, according to various analyst estimates, although it’s unclear for how long the immediate shutdowns will last.

The sudden probe injects a big dose of uncertainty into a lithium market that has seen prices drop, bringing some relief to EV manufacturers, as more global output emerges. Jiangxi province was expected to be a big source of extra supply, from a lithium-bearing mineral known as lepidolite.”

Chuck again… well, this is something that could be HUGE, or it could be tiny…  we’ll have to keep an eye on this going forward… I’m sure all the electric cars owners will be watching it!

Market Prices 2/28/2023: American Style: A$.6721, kiwi .6145, C$ .7360, euro 1.0611, sterling 1.2075, Swiss $1.0664, European Style: rand 18.4359, krone 10.3515, SEK 10.4180, forint 357.94, zloty 4.4467, koruna 22.2395, RUB 74.89, yen 136.16, sing 1.3489, HKD 7.8495, INR 82.66, China 6.9359, peso 18.34, BRL 5.2012, BBDXY 1,253.01, Dollar Index 104.69, Oil $76.46, 10-year 3.94%, Silver $20.71, Platinum $941.00, Palladium $1,438.00, Copper $3.99, and Gold… $1,810.80

That’s it for today, and for February! Crazy times we live in, eh? Well, I sat by myself at the ballpark yesterday, in absolutely delightful weather, watchin my beloved Cardinals beat the pond scum Mets… I joke calling the Mets pond scum, as it dates back to the 80’s when it was either the Mets or the Cardinals for about a 6 year period, that won the division… (back then there were only two divisions in each league) and a radio station in St. Louis, decided that the Mets were pond scum…  I don’t really look at them that way, just thought I would pull a rabbit out of the 80’s! I was worn out yesterday after the game, and a trip to the grocery store! It’s the little things that get to me these days… Humble Pie takes us to the finish line today with their great rock classic song: I Don’t Need No Doctor… A young Peter Frampton was the guitar player in that band…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

February 27, 2023

* currencies & metals get whacked on Friday!

* PCE rises in January, showing inflation isn’t going away… 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! What a fantastic weekend I just had! Baseball started again, and to me, that signals a new year!  I was treated on Saturday for the first game of Spring, with a visit from a former colleague, Suzanne Lee, and her son Riley, went to the game with me… The weather this past weekend was the weather that people come to Florida for…  My Beloved Mizzou Tigers won a road game on Saturday, while the St. Louis U. Billikens won at home, and… our brand spanking new soccer team, City SC, won their inaugural game! That’s only the 2^nd time in the history of the league that and expansion team won its first game!   I’m excited about going to see them play when I return home in April…  Marvin Gaye, and Tammy Terrel, greet me this morning with their song: Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing…

Whoa, there partner! What the heck happened on Friday, last week? The dollar bugs went on a buying spree, and the BBDXY rose 8 index points! The currencies got walloped Big Time, with the euro falling into the 1.05 handle… It was just a couple of weeks ago, when the euro was nearing 1.10…  But it wasn’t just the euro that got taken to the woodshed on Friday, pound sterling was tagging along. In addition, the Japanese yen, Aussie dollar, and kiwi, also got sent there… It was an absolute ugly day for the currencies… Even the Mexican peso that had recently seen some love once again, lost some ground to the dollar on Friday…  

So, what was the all the dollar buying about? Well, recall that I’ve told you that the markets are in what I call “opposites”?   On Friday, the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel’s preferred inflation report the PCE (personal consumption expenditures) surprised the forecasters, and the inflation gage gained .6%, in January, thus proving that inflation isn’t going away. The annual gain was 5.4%, so even using this gage, the Fed Funds Rate is still below inflation, and that’s not going to do the trick, folks…

So, with inflation rising once again, the markets now believe that the Fed Heads will indeed continue to hike rates, and the higher rates, even though they are killing the U.S. debt servicing, are what got the dollar bugs all excited…  I’ll just say this… The debt servicing of the U.S. on their outstanding Treasuries, just went past our Military expenditures…   That’s incredible isn’t it?  And…it’s just going to get worse, and that’s going to require lawmakers to make some very difficult decisions, in the future, about what CAN get paid and what CAN’T get paid… And the CAN’T get paid category will have more items in it than the CAN get paid category…  I’m just saying…

But what’s a Fed Head supposed to do? Inflation is here, and it’s being very sticky, and the only tool the Fed Heads have to combat it, is with rate hikes…  So, here, I’m not blaming them, for this… I have blamed them for allowing all the deficit spending that required money printing…   And that’s what got us into this mess…

In the overnight markets last night… There wasn’t much movement, and no further buying of the dollar to follow up Friday’s mash up by the dollar bugs. The BBDXY is down just 2 index points this morning, as it appears that the foreign markets decided to take a step back and review the damage…  Gold is up $2 in the early trading this morning, while Silver has given back 11-cents…  These are some really interesting buying opportunities for Gold & Silver folks… wink, wink… 

Well, remember when the 4^th QTR GDP printed at 2.9%, and I said, well, we’ll see what the future revisions bring us?  Well, one of those revisions last week, showed that 4^th QTR GDP was revised down to 2.7%… And by the time all the revisions are made, I suspect we’ll see GDP at 2.5%…   And then we’ll move on to the 1^st QTR’s GDP, which in my opinion will be down even more… And mainly because Gov’t spending has been cut back in this QTR…  So… I guess we’ll have to wait-n-see… eh?  The price of Oil has hung onto the $76 handle, and bonds are really unmoved through all this…  It looks like a week that will be filled with attempts to move the dollar higher, that will be thwarted by those not looking through rose colored glasses…   I’m just saying…

You know the Fed Heads aren’t the only Central Bankers getting hell for hiking rates and making things look gloomy for their economy…  Down under, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is under a lot of criticism, for their rate hikes, and how the economy there  is looking shaky…  These are the times that Central Bankers earn their respective livings…  And in a case of what’s good for the dollar (rate hikes, and a shaky economy, isn’t good for the other currencies, this is where we are today with the dollar and the currencies…

One of these days, traders will see the writing on the wall, that they seem to be ignoring right now… And when they do… We will begin to see a multi-year decline in the dollar, and not one of those 1-3 months declines that are reversed by the PPT, and their treasure chest of Exchange Stabilization Funds…

I remember writing in the Decline of the Dollar, white paper, written in 2001, that it was at that time that I pointed out the Housing Bubble that was getting blown up in the U.S. The Bubble didn’t find the pin in the room until 2007, but there I was talking about how we had a housing bubble in 2001, and everyone, even the mortgage people in our own bank, didn’t believe me, said it wasn’t real, and thought I had lost my mind…   Needless to say, in a few years, they were rooting me on, to make as much in earnings for the bank as I could, since they were losing their collective shirts! 

Like, 2001, today’s pricing action reminds me of all that.. .I’m just saying…

What’s it going to take for the traders and investors to see the writing on the wall for the U.S. economy, and thus the dollar?  That’s the $64 question, folks… I would have thought that housing losing over $2.3 Trillion in values would do the trick, I would have thought that the stock market going into a bear market would do the trick, and I thought the Fed losing any credibility that was left would do the trick, and still here we are, waiting for the sentiment toward the dollar to change… The economy is moving slowly toward extinction, we’ll have to wait awhile for that to happen… but then, maybe not!

Can you believe that southern California is getting whacked with snow?  In the mountains 50 miles from Los Angeles they received 7 feet of snow!  While here in S. Florida, the weather is chamber of Commerce like… While back home in St. Louis, they have been enjoying the mildest February… Strange weather patterns, eh? It appears that for most of the country, March will come in like a lamb… My mom used to always say, March comes in like lamb and goes out like a lion…  Hmm…   

Last Friday’s U.S. Data Cupboard also had Personal Spending and Income for January… Personal Spending rebounded in January after faltering in December, by gaining 1.8%… But Personal Income was up only .6%, following December’s .3% gain… So, wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, and that’s how the whole shootin’ match goes up in flames…

Today’s Data Cupboard has the Durable Goods orders for January… I’m expecting this data set to be positive, as if Personal Spending was up, then they were buying durable goods!   See how that works?

To recap… The dollar buying on Friday, was off the charts, with the BBDXY gaining 8.5 index points on the day…   Gold lost $10.70, and Silver lost 56-cents… and lost the $21 handle!   The dollar buying was something to behold… it was swift, it was strong, it was taking no prisoners… Chuck thinks that this is a case of what’s bad for the dollar is also good for the dollar… And that won’t continue forever…   The RBA is experiencing the same criticism as the Fed/ Cabal, Cartel is for hiking rates and putting their respective economies in peril… In the overnight markets last night…

For What It’s Worth… I found this article on Bloomberg.com yesterday, and it sounded as if I was the one that wrote it… It’s about the future of the dollar strength we’re seeing right now, and it can be found here: USD: Dollar Strength Peaks, Bringing Relief for Global Inflation, Trade – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “Some of the world’s top investors are betting the worst of the dollar’s rampage is over after the surge upended the global economy in ways that had few parallels in modern history.

Having skyrocketed to generational highs last year — deepening poverty and turbocharging inflation from Pakistan to Ghana — the currency has now entered what some forecasters are calling the start of a multi-year decline.

Investors say the dollar is on the way down because the bulk of Federal Reserve rate increases is over, and virtually every other currency will strengthen as their central banks keep tightening. While recent data have led traders to rethink how high US rates will go, a shift to risk assets from equities to emerging markets is already underway on bets that the greenback’s strength will ease. Many investors are sticking with these bets, even after the greenback recently recouped its losses for the year, raising the stakes for dollar bears.

“The dollar’s peak is behind us for sure and a structurally weaker dollar lies ahead,” said George Boubouras, a three-decade market veteran and head of research at hedge fund K2 Asset Management. “Yes inflation in the US is stubborn, yes the rates market is signaling higher-for-longer US rates but that doesn’t take away the fact that other economies in the world are catching up with the US.”

A stronger-than-expected reading in a key US inflation gauge Friday, showed just how painful the US dollar’s strength can be. The greenback climbed near year-to-date highs, while riskier assets such as emerging market currencies and stocks slumped across the board. The Australian dollar and the Japanese yen fell more than 1%.

The relief that a weaker dollar would bring to the world economy cannot be overstated. Import prices for developing nations will fall, helping to lower global inflation. It’s also likely to boost the price of everything from gold to as equities and cryptocurrencies as sentiment improves.”

Chuck again… or was that really Chuck in the FWIW snippet? HA!  You know, at one time in the early 2000’s I was about the only person on the earth that wrote about the currencies, the dollar, Gold, etc. I used to be the only person at the Money Shows, the Conferences I attended that talked about these things… Whenever a news outlet wanted to know what was happening with the dollar, Gold, etc. they would contact me!  So, when this person wrote the FWIW article, and it sounded like me, I had to think that maybe, just maybe they heard me speak somewhere along the line, or read an article or white paper that I had written, and liked my style of writing…   Or, maybe I’m just imagining things… Hey! It’s happened before! Don’t laugh! HA!

Market Prices 2/27/ 2023: American Style: A$ .6713, kiwi .6146, C$ .7353, euro 1.0563, sterling 1.1984, Swiss $1.0639, European Style: rand 18.4023, krone 10.3799, SEK 10.4701, forint 359.84, zloty 4.4655, koruna 22.3766, RUB 75.25, yen 136.23, sing 1.3491, HKD 7.8476, INR 82.84, China 6.9508, peso 18.35, BRL 5.1789, BBDXY 1, 255.76, Dollar Index 104.44, Oil $76.19, 10-year 3.95%, Silver $20.75, Platinum $927.00, Palladium $1,419.00, Copper $4.02, and Gold… $1,813.13

That’s it for today… Well, today and tomorrow, and then we’re finished with February, and March begins, and March is one of my fave months!  Baseball begins, the weather turns better, St. Pat’s Day, the Ides of March, my birthday ,March Madness, The Honda Open, and everything begins to turn green again!  The moon is in the right place, the stars are in alignment, and that means Baseball is back! Did I tell you that I’m so happy that Baseball is back? Oh, I did? Sorry about that!  HA!  Our Blues are circling the bowl… The coach even says his players are not giving effort… UGH!  Time to get out the golf clubs…  The Allman Brothers take us to the finish line this morning with their song: Ramblin’ Man  That was their first radio hit song… Though the Allman Brothers weren’t made for radio play…   I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, and will remember to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler