Author: admin

January 27, 2021

* Currencies gain on Tues, but give back gains overnight

* Gold can’t find terra firma since last Wednesday… 

Good day, and a Wonderful Wednesday to you! After the double win by the Tigers and Blues on Saturday night, they weren’t able to duplicate that last night with a win by the Blues VS Vegas and a loss on the road by the Tigers, VS Auburn…  It was another night of watching one game on the TV and the other on my phone…  The NHL is playing a condensed schedule this year to cut down on travel, So the Blues will play Vegas again tomorrow night…  Strange season so far, with all these back-to-back games VS the same opponent. But, at least they are playing!  Another beautiful day here with a high of 83… Another one of those is in store today, before another cold front comes down from the north… Crosby and Nash greet me this morning with their song: Wind On The Water…  It’s about saving the whales…

Well… The currencies sure didn’t exactly take liberties with the dollar yesterday, but, they did gain small amounts.  To me watching this unfold yesterday, I saw a pattern of traders not willing to take a hard position of being short dollars ahead of the FOMC meeting and press conference that follows the no rate change announcement…  In their heart of hearts, traders know that Cartel, I mean Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, will most likely sound very dovish in his press conference… He has to, for you see that Powell, has whined and cried about the need for more stimulus, and so he has to play the part of the poor Cartel, I mean Fed Chairman, with no tools at his disposal to stir the economy… 

How could he say one day that the economy needs more stimulus, and then the next day talk about how strong the economy is?  If anything, other than being really dovish, is I see a chance of calling the economy uneven, but still with problems, and downside risks…    He has to sound like there’s a little bit of growth, or else the dollar will be sent to the currency woodshed. Traders wanted to take the dollar to the currency woodshed yesterday, but just didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to do so ahead of the FOMC meeting…

So, the FOMC meeting is today, and we’ll know more about what is on the mind of the Cartel, I mean Fed Heads this afternoon…  I tell you I bet I could write the monologue for the press conference this afternoon…  But I’ll be too busy! HA!

Gold lost ground yesterday, while the currencies moved higher VS the dollar… Gold closed down $5.60 on the day to close at $1,851.60, and Silver lost 9-cents to close at $25.55…   What’s up with Gold lately? Last Wednesday Gold rose by $32, and then didn’t see any follow up and have been down by small amounts each successive day…  As I said a week or so ago, the price manipulators did their job, of scaring away potential buyers, and getting short term holders to sell their Gold…  And I think that fear of more price manipulation is scaring away potential buyers still… 

I think what Jerome Powell says this afternoon will weigh in for the direction of Gold going forward… I’m thinking that Gold traders are waiting for confirmation of the $1.9 Trillion stimulus package by Congress, before moving Gold higher…  Memo to Gold Traders: Ahem, Congress and the purse strings of deficit spending are no longer going to be held up by the Senate, the liberals have control of the whole shootin’ match, so go ahead and make your bets on more deficit spending and currency printing…

The same goes for the currencies… And it’s time to get past the fears of a China virus outbreak, and get those commodity prices rising again…  One of the Commodity Currencies, the Aussie dollar (A$) has recently gone through some consolidation, and correction, and moved back to 77-cents, but from that the A$ is moving higher again… The Good Folks at FXSTREET believe the fundamentals are in the A$’s favor, and could climb as high as 80-cents…  I agree with them, that the cards are stacked in the A$’s favor, that is as long as traders can get past the fears…

In the overnight markets, we’re right back to where we started the day yesterday, as the currencies gave back their small gains in overnight markets, and Gold is down $12 in the early trading today…  To illustrate what I’m taking about with the currencies… The Dollar Index was trading at 90.46 yesterday morning, and it closed down at 90.40, but this morning it’s back up to 90.47…    UGH, no traction, no direction, no nothing from these traders who seem to be afraid of the big bad Cartel, I mean Fed… 

Remember what I told you last week that new Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen had said about the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), and intervening in the currency markets… Basically she said that she didn’t believe in intervention and currencies should be left alone to set their own market rates…  This means that one fear factor has been removed, and Currency Traders should be trading the dollar accordingly…  In my opinion that is… 

Longtime reader, Bob, sent me a very interesting article yesterday, that talked about how $7 Trillion of U.S. Debt held by investors, is coming due in 2021…  These maturities will have to be paid out unless of course they are “rolled over”… And here’s where things could get quite sticky… So, what happens if ½ of those maturities don’t want to be rolled over, and demand payment of principal?  That would mean that an additional $3.5 Trillion of debt will have to be refinanced… And with no buyers, the Fed will have to step up to buy the bonds, and print new currency to pay for them…  Got Gold?

The U.S. Data Cupboard finally gets back in the real economic reports printing game today, with the printing of the December Durable & Capital Goods Orders… I suspect these both will be weaker than the already weak prints of November…  We’ve all become Comfortably Numb regarding bad economic prints…  They get shrugged off each time they print, and you have to wonder out loud, just how bad does a print have to be before the market reacts?  

I used to say that we had become Comfortably Numb with the debt numbers, and now we’re way past them, and no one seems to care or give two hoots that we’ve run up $27.8 Trillion in Current Debt, and $159 Trillion in Unfunded Liabilities… that means our real debt is $ 186.8 Trillion!  The mental giants (NOT!) believe that the size of debt doesn’t matter any longer, for now that we’ve learned that the currency printing press can be turned on whenever they feel the need…  And I think that kind of thinking is dangerous… Very dangerous…  

But in reality, they are correct they could print enough money to bring down the debt or pay for any new deficit spending boondoggle… What they aren’t considering that every time you go to the well to print more currency, the current stock of currency gets debased… And well, that means your personal buying power goes to hell in a handbasket… When your personal buying power loses ground, it’s like a big fat TAX… And that my friends is what the problem with this new thought process by the mental giants (NOT!)… 

To recap… The currencies gained VS the dollar on Tuesday, but the gains were limited and were held back by traders not wanting to go too far ahead of the FOMC meeting this afternoon. And those gains were given back in the overnight markets last night…  Gold lost a small amount again on Tuesday, marking small mark downs since last Wednesday when gold gained $32… Chuck thinks that everyone is holding back until they get confirmation of the $1.9 Trillion deficit spending, currency printing plan that’s being billed as a stimulus package… 

Before I head to the big finish today, there was a story that came into my email box yesterday from the good folks at GATA. The article told a story about a Treasure Trove of Gold that was found in a corn field in Poland that had been buried for over 900 years! After hearing a priest tell of the legend of the Treasure, the locals began to excavate and the legend was fact… Pretty cool story if you ask me! 

For What it’s Worth…  Ever since the economy was shut down and locked down last spring, for a few months for some, and still for other states, the rot on the U.S.’s economy vine just keeps getting exposed more and more.. Sure the plandemic had a lot to with this, but… I could go back to Pfennigs last year pre-Covid where I pointed out the weakness that was already evident… So, any way, this article talks about how the poverty rate in the U.S. which had hit a low pre-Covid is soaring again, and it can be found here: U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years (msn.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “The end of 2020 brought the sharpest rise in the U.S. poverty rate since the 1960s, according to a study released Monday.

Economists Bruce Meyer, from the University of Chicago, and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S. continued to suffer the economic impacts from Covid-19.

That percentage-point rise is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s. This means an additional 8 million people nationwide are now considered poor. Moreover, the poverty rate for Black Americans is estimated to have jumped by 5.4 percentage points, or by 2.4 million individuals.

The scholars’ findings put the rate at 11.8% in December. While poverty is down from readings of more than 15% a decade earlier, the new estimates suggest that the annual Census Bureau tally due in September will be higher than the last official, pre-pandemic level of 10.5% in 2019.”

Chuck Again.. yes, the wealth of a nation depends on how weak the poverty rate is… And accordingly the poverty levels are falling, and that’s a bad thing… But shoot, nothing that weekly or monthly stimmy checks won’t fix!  I say in jest!

Market Price 1/27/21: American Style:  A$ .7705,  kiwi .7208,  C$ .7846, euro 1.2111, sterling 1.3703, Swiss $1.1252, European Style; rand 15.2345, krone 8.6212, SEK 8.3443,  forint 297.48,  zloty 3.7582,   koruna 21.4690, RUB 75.26, yen 103.86, sing 1.3275, HKD 7.7519, INR 72.99, China 6.4666, peso 20.17, BRL 5.4172,  Dollar Index 90.47,  Oil $52.65,  10-year 1.02%, Silver $25.23, Platinum $1,081.00, Palladium $2,393.00, Copper $3.57, and Gold… $1,839.00

That’s it for today… Day 6 alone, had me thinking that for the first time I realized I was really alone. I went out to the deck that overlooks the beach and ocean, and looked out on the beach for Kathy, and then realized that she’s not here…  In the words of the Zombies, “Don’t bother trying to look for her, she’s not there”…   Santana also did that song, but you know me, I like the originals! The St. Louis U. Billikens lost their return to hardcourt game last night. They hadn’t played in this calendar year, due to an outbreak on the team… A pretty good game for a team that hadn’t played in 3 weeks… Yesterday, I mentioned a book I’m reading that’s weird, but failed to mention the name of the book… It’s an oldie but goodie, Fahrenheit 451…  Fireman that burns down houses instead of saving houses that are on fire…  I’ll be 1/2  of the way through it after my reading session on the deck this afternoon…  The Main Ingredient takes us to the finish line today with their song: Everybody Plays The Fool…   “it may be factual, maybe cruel, but everybody plays the fool.” I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

January 26, 2021

*  Stephen Roach is committed to his call of a weak dollar!

* Chuck navigates through the landmines… 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you!  Well, it was pointed out to me yesterday, that I mistyped the A$ price yesterday… Fat fingers are to blame! Seriously, sorry about that, I usually go over them after typing them but I must’ve just breezed right by the A$ mis-price yesterday… For A$ holders, I didn’t mean to cause heart palpitations! This is day 5 of my two weeks alone here… I’m surviving! HA! My former colleagues, Jen, and Christine, used to say that men couldn’t survive alone without their wives… So, every time Kathy goes away, and leaves me alone, I think of them… And Laugh!  I had to go to the pharmacy yesterday, and it was the first time I had put on a mask since traveling here almost 4 weeks ago…  I’m with Tom Woods regarding my thoughts toward face masks, but I comply because… I have to!  The Allman Brothers greet me this morning with their song: Statesboro Blues… “Woke up this morning, had those Statesboro blues…”

And that, I certainly did! Wake up with the blues this morning… But that shouldn’t hang around too long, as I can almost taste the ham, eggs, and cheese I’m fixing to make once I send this out this morning!  When my darling daughter, Dawn and her family come down for Spring Training this year, my granddaughter, Delaney Grace will be singing the national anthem at the stadium before a game! We don’t know which game, just when they’re in town for a week…  Now, THAT will make going to the game even more fun!

Well, it was a day of drifting for the currencies yesterday, they just couldn’t get any traction on rally attempts throughout the day, and ended the day weaker VS the dollar…  Both the currencies and metals seem to be adrift at Sea…  Waiting for someone to tow them to safety… The China-virus outbreak story, continues to be a drag on Commodity prices, and anything associated with Commodities… And now the new strain of the virus here in the U.S. is becoming a problem… I read one guy’s opinion on the virus, and he thinks that we’ll have to live with Covid from here on out…  I sure hope he’s wrong, but, with different strains coming to the forefront every year… Who knows?

So… here’s something that really sticks in my craw…  I read yesterday, that Congress and the President are contemplating sending out stimmy checks on a regular basis…  That would be done, folks, under the guise of “stimulating the economy, when we all know that it’s really Universal Basic Income… The centerpiece of the Magic Money Tree  (MMT) proponents…  Shoot while we’re at it, why don’t we just go out right now, and devalue the dollar now, and get it over with!

Longtime economist that I used to follow very closely, Stephen Roach, recently said, and I quoted him here, that the dollar was going to crash… And he followed that up this past weekend saying: “The dollar’s crash is only just beginning”…    So, come one Treasury and Cartel, I mean the Fed, go ahead and beat the markets to the punch! Devalue now!   

Look folks, I don’t want to see this happening to our currency, the one I use for gas, groceries and giggles, but if we’re going to be moronic and send out regularly scheduled stimmy checks, And not call it what it really is, then  a crash, or devalue is in the dollar’s future… I’m just saying…

Gold couldn’t hold its early morning gains yesterday, and only moved higher by 70-cents, while Silver gave back 13-cents… not a good way to start the week, so let’s use today as the start of the week, ok, gold traders?   Gold & Silver are considered and traded by U.S. investors like a commodity… It’s not, in reality, it’s a store of wealth, that should be bought, stored, and forgotten about…  And then passed down to your kids/ grandkids, with instructions that they not sell it either!  

In the overnight markets…. There was more drifting by the currencies, with the Commodity related currencies really taking on the brunt of the dollar bugs pressure.  Gold is down a buck or two in the early trading, and Silver is up a dime… 

There’s been some interesting movement in the 10-year Treasury’s yield… I say interesting because after a month of rising, the yield is now back on the way down…  Of course this could be a result of a ton of Cartel, I mean the Fed buying…  In case you’ve missed class the several hundred times I’ve talked about this… bonds trade like this, as bonds are bought, the price goes up and the yield goes down… As bonds are sold the price goes down and the yield goes up… So, if there was more buying recently, that would explain the yield dropping to the current 1.04% from 1.15% it traded at as we turned the calendar of the year… 

You know, these days, are getting very tricky for me, in how I describe currency printing, deficit spending, and MMT… This is getting to be very difficult for me to navigate and when it gets too difficult I’ll hang it up… I had a longtime readers send me a note last week, and said that he was very upset with something I said, and that he wanted to unsubscribe…  Wait! What?  What on earth did I say, or better yet, how did I say it, that got him riled up?  I’m at a loss, here folks… My dad taught me, that you can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time… When I started out writing this letter in 1992… My goal was to prove him wrong…  I’ve never achieved that goal, and it looks like I never will!

The U.S. Data Cupboard is still lacking any real economic data today, that will have to wait until tomorrow… But first today, we will see the latest Case/ Shiller Home Price Index, and the stupid Consumer Confidence…  Tomorrow we’ll release the Kraken! Well, we’ll see real economic data in Durable and Capital Goods Orders…

To recap… It was a day of drifting with no real direction carved out for the currencies yesterday. The Commodity Currencies still are facing some selling because of the China virus outbreak story… Gold couldn’t hold its early gains yesterday, and only gained 70=cents on the day…  The overnight markets have been pretty much the same as we saw all day yesterday… Yes, sir may I have another?  UGH! 

Before I head to the Big Finish today, I wanted to talk about this…  In the article I mentioned above from Stephen Roach, I pulled this comment that explains why he sees the dollar crashing let’s listen in: “Based on a wildly unpopular forecast that I made in June of a 35% decline in the value of the dollar by the end of 2021, we are only in the third inning of a nine-inning baseball game. If that forecast comes to pass, it will provide an important exclamation point on the first year in office for America’s 46th president, Joe Biden. There were three main reasons why I argued the dollar would fall: 1) a sharp widening in the  U.S. current-account deficit, 2) the rise of the euro, and 3) a Federal Reserve that would do little in response to any weakness in the greenback. On each of these counts, I have greater conviction on the weak-dollar call today than I did six months ago.” – Stephen Roach

Chuck, thinking out loud…  Opinions are like rear ends, everyone has one, and the best thing, today, that is, maybe not tomorrow, you the reader gets to decide whether you will agree with the opinion or not…  To me, Stephen Roach is singing from the same song sheet as me… So… I agree with his opinion…  I’m just saying… 

For What It’s Worth… OK, I had earmarked a story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch from last week that said that “Thousands of eviction filings are piling up in St. Louis and St. Louis County, leaving landlords and tenants frustrated, and advocates predicting a tidal wave of homelessness to come.”  5,000 eviction notices have been filed since March 2020…  Well, that was a good start to the FWIW article today, that I pulled from Ed Steer’s letter this morning regarding a national view on this problem, and it can be found here: Nearly 20% of renters in America are behind on their payments (cnbc.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “About 18% renters in America, or around 10 million people, were behind in their rent payments as of the beginning of the month.

It is far more than the approximately 7 million homeowners who lost their properties to foreclosure during the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. And that happened over a five-year period.

In one of his first executive orders, President Joe Biden extended the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s current eviction moratorium through the end of March, but that is unlikely to be long enough.

A new analysis from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, and Jim Parrott, a fellow at the Urban Institute, shows the typical delinquent renter now owes $5,600, being nearly four months behind on their monthly payment. This also includes utilities and late fees. In total, an astounding $57.3 billion is owed. This includes all delinquent renters, not just those suffering financially due to the Covid pandemic.”

Chuck Again…  Didn’t I tell you that the problems caused by rents not being paid go way deeper than meets the eye…  Remember, all mortgages are bundled together and sold as a bond… those bond holders expect to receive principal and interest payments each month…  And landlords depend heavily on the rents they receive to pay for upkeep, taxes, etc… I’ll betcha a dollar to a Krispy Kreme that if a landlord fell behind on his taxes owed to the city, country or State, that these official offices wouldn’t think twice about taking away his property…  I’m just saying…  That’s an old line that goes something like this…  We you pay off your mortgage loan and own your house outright, you had better keep up with the taxes or else you’ll find out who really owns your house… 

Market Prices 1/26/21: American Style: A$ .7695,  kiwi .7200, C$ .7848, euro 1.2130, sterling 1.3651, Swiss $1.1248, European Style: rand 15.3003, krone 8.5635, SEK 8.3160,  forint 295.81,  zloty 3.7503,   koruna 21.5237, RUB 75.31, yen 103.79, sing 1.3273, HKD 7.7515, INR 73.03, China 6.4766, peso 20.15, BRL 5.4654,  Dollar Index 90.46,  Oil $52.99,  10-year 1.04%, Silver $25.52, Platinum $1,092.00, Palladium $2,406.00, Copper $3.55, and Gold… $1,855.70

That’s it for today… Well, today is the birthday of my younger sister, Joan…  So, Happy Birthday Joanie, I hope your day is grand! Joan moved to Houston, Texas quite a few years ago now, and so I seldom see her any longer…  And I finally heard from the folks at Roger Dean Stadium… And they are going to sell tickets to the games, with season ticket holders having first shot…  I’m not happy about it, but at least I’ll be in the stadium!  Bring on day baseball! YAHOO!  I started reading my new book, and man is it weird… I don’t remember it being this weird when I read it in High School!  Oh, well, it’s supposed to make me think, and it it’s doing the job! Maybe that’s why I don’t recall it from H.S. I probably just read the jacket notes, and passed the test!  Steely Dan takes us to the finish line today with their song: Aja…  “Aja, when all my dime dancing is through, I run to you”…  A great song in my opinion! I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday, and Please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

January 25, 2021

* Currencies push against the dollar bugs… 

* Gold bounces in the early trading today… 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Well, Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Bucs, and the K.C. Chiefs  for winning their respective conference championships, and will play in this year’s Super Bowl in two weeks…  And Saturday night was a “double winner” for me, as my beloved Missouri Tigers won their basketball game beating # 6 Tennessee, and our Blues won too!  I had the Blues on the TV and the Tigers on my phone…  We had some beautiful weather this past weekend, as I was left alone for the next two weeks… But that didn’t change what I do each day and night!  I watched the St. Louis weathercast last night, and they were fretting about snow and ice for this morning there… YUCK!  I’m glad I’m not there! The late Great Leon Russell greets me this morning with his song: Stranger In A Strange Land..   “how many days has it been since I was born, and how many days till I die? “

On Friday last week, the currencies pushed against the dollar bugs, and eventually gained some ground on the day, except that is the Aussie dollar (A$). The A$ saw some real selling on Friday. Falling from .7780 on Thursday to end the week at .7105…  I looked and looked for reasons for this decline but couldn’t find any… One would think that with commodity prices rising, that the lead “Commodity Currency” would be rising in price too… I see this morning that the A$ is rising again, so maybe it was just a day of profit taking….  

But then it occurred to me that the news that there’s a new Covid virus outbreak in China could be the news I’m looking for!  The fear here is that demand for raw materials will wane because of the outbreak, and that has thrown a spanner in the works as far as the A$ is concerned…  As I look at the other commodities, Copper has dropped a few cents on this news too… 

Gold lost $14.50 to close at $1,856.50, and Silver lost 44-cents to close at $25.58… This after Gold & Silver’s large gains on Wednesday last week. On Thursday, Gold was down $2.00 and Silver was up 12-cents…  The good folks at GATA sent me this on Friday, “silver market analyst Ted Butler  (no relation that I know of) writes about the seeming inability of the major bullion banks to close their huge short positions in silver futures without exploding the price and costing them a lot of money.

Butler writes: “This is the big shorts’ last stand.”

Most Gold & Silver owners would like to think that statement were going to be true… But to me, this isn’t about what the bullion banks want to do…. It’s about what the U.S. Gov’t wants them to do to suppress the price of Gold so that investors don’t lose faith in the dollar…   You may recall a Pfennig from back in the day, when I highlighted an article that centered on Blythe Masters the former head of JPMorgan’s Commodities desk, and her statement that “JPMorgan doesn’t enter trades for their own proprietary account, but for the accounts of their clients”

I’ll always remember that Pfennig, for it told me that 1. Either she was lying through her teeth or 2. She was telling the truth, and JPMorgan’s HUGE short positions were done for the Gov’t…    See? It pays to write for years, because things that people said, might come back into play!

One thing I want to point out is that the rising Commodity prices have nothing to do with the idea that the major economies are coming back strong..  Instead, the rise in Commodity prices have to do with the fears that inflation is ready to take off to higher ground…  Certainly not according to the the Gov’t’s calculation of CPI (consumer inflation), but if you go over to shadowstats.com, the proprietor of the site, John Williams says that real inflation is running at 4.5%… And John also had this to say on his website:” Panicked, Unlimited Federal Reserve Money Creation and Federal Government Deficit Spending Continue and Will Expand, Triggering Major Domestic Inflation.”

Yes, major currency creation will not only spur inflation, (if the currency creation is in the hands of spenders to get the velocity of money moving) but will also debase the dollar even more, causing a loss of buying power for dollar holders, and fortify the reason why one holds Gold & Silver… I read a piece this past weekend where the author sounded as if he was a longtime Pfennig Reader, when he said, that he owns Gold, and it’s not for sale… He holds it as a store of wealth, and a hedge against the falling dollar…  Man, I could swear I’ve said those exact word one hundred times in this letter in the past!  Oh, well, at least there’s somebody out there that thinks like me! HA!

In the overnight markets… The currencies have drifted overnight, losing a little ground, but not much at this point. Gold is up $7 and Silver is up 21-cents in the early trading today, so a good start for those two.  The Russian ruble has slipped back to a 75-handle, from the 73-handle it traded last week. The price of Oil has slipped back to a $52 handle, and it appears the China news is affecting anything commodity related… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard finally gets back into the business of printing some real economic data this week, but not today! Today the Cupboard is as bare as a bone… Not only will the Cupboard get restocked this week, but we will also have a FOMC Meeting, the first one of 2021… And much like 2021, so far is much like 2020, the Cartel’s, I mean the Fed’s meeting will also be much like those that took plast last year… They’ll whine about not having the tools to prop up the economy, and throw Congress in front of the bus, claiming that Congress needs to pass more stimulus immediately…

But come on! Cartel, I mean Fed, you know better than that! The U.S. is broke! It doesn’t have the money in its purse to pay the piper, nor does it have the money to send out to citizens to help them out…  But maybe, now that I’ve said that, maybe, just maybe, cause we never know, the Cartel, I mean the Fed needs Congress to deficit spend till the cows come home, to increase inflation…  Not that the Cartel, I mean the Fed, wants to fight inflation, they think that they’ll be able to squelch any rapid rise in inflation… And Chuck says, “I’m from Missouri, they’re going to have to show me”! Because I don’t believe for one minute that they will be able to get inflation under control quickly… They’ve painted themselves into a corner, they can’t raise rates, and they if they can’t raise rates, they won’t be able to combat inflation…

This is going to be a doozy of a year, financial system wise, folks… I do believe that this massive increase in deficit spending that’s coming is going to bring into question, Who’s going to buy our Treasuries?” And when they total all the hands that rose to say they’re buying Treasuries, the amount left unbought is going to cause some major thinking to take place, folks… And remember what I told you a few months ago, about how the weight of debt was going to cause defaults…  They’re coming… I feel that train a comin’ it’s rolling around the bend, and ain’t seen a surplus since I don’t know when…  (Johnny Cash, with the help of C. Butler!)

And after last week’s European Central Bank’s (ECB) staying the course, with their negative deposit rates, and bond buying programs, it will be the Cartel, I mean the Fed’s turn to stay the course, with near zero interest rates, and their bond buying…  Imagine if the Cartel, I mean the Fed, actually said, “We’ve decided to TAPER our bond buying, to get back to no buying”   Imagine the temper tantrum the stock and bond markets would throw… Worse than a two-year old in the grocery aisle screaming and pounding the floor because they can’t have a candy bar!

So, back to the Data Cupboard this week… We’ll see Durable Goods, and Capital Goods orders, Personal Income and Spending, along with the FOMC meeting, and the usual Tub Thumpin’ Thursday fare, of Weekly Initial Jobless Claims…  But not today, the cupboard is bare..

To recap…  The currencies have been on a mission to push the dollar bugs back into the wallboards where they came from, but the pushing has been in small amounts, but for nondollar holders the dollar bugs are getting pushed around… Gold lost $14 on Friday… Silver lost 44-cents…  The FOMC meets this week, and Chuck thinks it’ll be a meeting of whining and crying…  But not real action…  Chuck talks about inflation, Gold & Silver Manipulation, and other stuff this morning, that if you just came here first, you’ll be compelled to go back and read! HA!

Before we head to the Big Finish… I dropped the ball last week, as I was asked to give the link to a webinar that my publishers, and good friends, Mary Anne and Pamela Aden were taking part in… But, I did get a reprieve of sorts, as they recorded the event and gave ,me the link for the recording. So if you can carve out a few minutes today or whenever, I think you’ll enjoy hearing what everyone on the Webinar had to say, and you can find that here: https://mailchi.mp/assetstrategies/q1webinar-link-chuck-butler

For What It’s Worth….  Well, if I had a Gold coin for every time I read about some economist calling for a crash in the stock market, I would have to find a new place to store them!   But, this time this one is a little different, because this isn’t your ordinary economist… This is the venerate Jeremy Grantham, and when he talks people listen… he has his thoughts on the stock market and they can be found here: Investing Legend Sees “Spectacular” Crash In “The Next Few Months” | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “Two weeks ago, investing icon Jeremy Grantham turned apocalyptic and warned that the “Bursting Of This “Great, Epic Bubble” Will Be “Most Important Investing Event Of Your Lives.” Since then the market has generally continued to melt up, yet Grantham’s conviction that all this will end in tears has only grown, and in an interview with Bloomberg today, the co-founder of GMO who correctly called the last two crashes, now predicts that Joe Biden’s economic-recovery plan will propel stocks to perilous new heights, followed by an inevitable crash.

“We will have a few weeks of extra money and a few weeks of putting your last, desperate chips into the game, and then an even more spectacular bust,” the value-investing legend said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview.

“When you have reached this level of obvious super-enthusiasm, the bubble has always, without exception, broken in the next few months, not a few years.”

Amid market euphoria the likes of which have – literally – never been seen before. and which prompted Citi, B of A and Goldman to all warn that a selloff appears imminent, and which was fueled by risk-taking behavior funded by the latest round of pandemic-relief checks, Grantham has “no doubt” at least some of the $1.9 trillion in federal aid Biden is seeking from Congress will end up being spent on stocks instead of food or shelter.

While that will help push stocks even higher, Grantham then sees it all ending in tears, or rather a collapse rivaling the 1929 crash or the dot-com bust of 2000, when the Nasdaq cratered 80% before recovering thanks to trillions more in Fed “stimmy” checks.”

Chuck Again…  But not to worry, this is not going to happen overnight folks…  But didn’t you like Mr. Grantham using a phrase of mine…  “it’ll all lend up in tears”?   Pretty cool… 

Market Prices  1/25/21: American Style: A$ .7729,  kiwi .7210,  C$ .7874, euro 1.2158, sterling 1.3691, Swiss $1.1282, European Style: rand 15.2065, krone 8.4789, SEK 8.2768,  forint 293.52,  zloty 3.7333,   koruna 21.4376, RUB 75.26, yen 103.84, sing 1.3265, HKD 7.7512, INR 72.92, China 6.4763, peso 19.72, BRL 5.4653,  Dollar Index 90.24,  Oil $52.73,  10-year 1.08%, Silver $25.79, Platinum $1,117.00, Palladium $2,456.00, Copper $3.57, and Gold… $1,853.70

That’s it for today…  Well, I still haven’t heard from the folks at Roger Dean Stadium, regarding my Spring Training Season Tickets.. But a dear reader sent me a copy of a letter he received from the Twins about his season tickets… And I don’t like it one iota! As I’m sure the same procedure will be implemented at each stadium… At least fans are going to be in the stadium… That’s half the battle, but now, where will I sit? UGH!  Pitchers and catchers report in 3 weeks!  My blood sugar numbers are still falling, and that’s a great thing, albeit slowly!   And be sure to check out the Adens on the webinar link I have above!  I finished 1984… Man, there are so many things that remind me of today in that book… And now I’m onto another oldie but goodie, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury… And when I finish that one, I’ll go back to my murder mysteries! Triumph takes us to the finish line today with their song: Fight The Good Fight…  my good friend, Rick B. will like that one!  I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

January 21, 2021

* Gold & Silver soar on Wednesday! 

* New Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen dominates today’s letter

Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! Well, we have a new President and House and Senate, and they all lean left… No longer are there checks and balances in our Gov’t… But what the heck, we can give this new arrangement a try, right?  Before the new arrangement turns its back on the 80 Million people that didn’t vote for them, they might want to keep in mind what happens when you get those 80 Million people riled up…  I’m just saying…  Our Blues were playing again last night and I was able to watch the game that began at 9 my time here…  The Rock Classic band, Blind Faith, greets me this morning with their song: Can’t Find My Way Home…   I’ve been there believe me on that one folks!

Well… yesterday, I said that I didn’t think that much would happen with the currencies for everyone’s attention would be on D.C. And the Currencies drifted, albeit a bit lower on the day.   But while the cat was away, the mice did play, and Gold gained $32 on the day to close at $1,872.00, and Silver gained 62-cents to close at $25.90…  I guess that Gold traders and investors got the memo that the new Administration is going to push harder on the Cold War with China… Ahhh… Those geopolitical problems… And while we’re at it, maybe they also heard the news that the next Stimulus Bill will be a DOOZY   And that, my friends, is exactly what I talked about in an interview with Dennis Miller of www.milleronthemoney.com a few months ago. I said that once you start giving out currency, the next time will require a bigger payout, and the next one will require a larger payout than the last one, etc. etc. ….

I know that I’ve been remiss in not mentioning what’s going on overseas each day… I actually have done this on purpose, because as always, it’s all about the dollar… So, I focus on dollar stuff each day… I will tell you that tomorrow is a HUGE day for economic data overseas… So, Monday, I’ll try to recall to go back and look at it and see what’s happening… The European Central Bank (ECB) is meeting today, and I’m thinking that ECB President will be looking to move interest rates more negative… I guess, we’ll see, eh? 

In the overnight markets, the currencies are getting marked up VS the dollar, and Gold is flat to down a buck or two…  The Petrol Currencies are leading the pack today, with good gains in Russian rubles, Canadian dollars/ loonies, Brazilian real, Norwegian krone, and even pound sterling!   Yesterday, was a real nothing for the currencies, and today, they’ve gotten back to the business at hand, which is pushing the dollar toward the currency woodshed… 

OK… Well new Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen was in the news quite a bit this week as her nomination was voted on.  Here are some thoughts from Janet Yellen, that caught my eye… when asked about how seniors have been damaged greatly by the zero interest rates policy that was partly under her regime at the Fed… She responded:

“I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who have been struggling for a very long time,” she said in the statement, which was obtained by Reuters.

And those words got publishing guru, Bill Bonner sitting up to respond to her: “Who are these people who have been struggling? American household income (thanks to the feds’ bailouts and giveaways) was at its highest point ever last year – with $1 trillion more in earnings than the year before.

And we need not remind dear readers that the U.S. government is broke – with a $2 trillion deficit already on the books for this year” – Bill Bonner

Well… I want to thank the good folks at GATA for this next blurb, as they highlighted it from an article on the FT.com.  Apparently new Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen is not a fan of currency manipulation.. Let’s listen in: “Janet Yellen warned U.S. trading partners against currency manipulation and touted the importance of market-based exchange rates in her most exhaustive comments yet on the incoming Biden administration’s approach to international economic policy.

Ms. Yellen, who is Joe Biden’s nominee to serve as Treasury secretary, said “the intentional targeting of exchange rates to gain commercial advantage is unacceptable” and that she would “oppose any and all attempts by foreign countries to artificially manipulate currency values to gain an unfair advantage in trade.”

Chuck again… So, who wants to set the over / under on how long it takes Yellen to change her mind and put some of those Billions, with a capital B, in the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), or Slush Fund, as I call it, to work?  

Ok, currency traders you heard it straight from the horse’s mouth, that using the ESF to protect the dollar is not going to happen going forward….   What are you waiting for now? Take the dollar to the woodshed and leave it there! Because that’s what it deserves!

Well, let’s see what else is there to talk about this morning?  It is a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, so we will see the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims this morning right out of the starter’s blocks…  This unemployment problem has become a rash that won’t go away… A lot of businesses that these unemployed people worked for, will not be coming back, so there will be no job for the Unemployed person to go to once things open up again… What will they do?  It’s a sad, sad situation… and it’s getting more and more absurd… (in case you didn’t catch it, those lyrics are from an Elton John song titles: Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word…

You know 3 years ago, I didn’t really care for the decision that was made to show me the door… But as time goes buy, I think it was the best thing I could do, given my health, age, and my willingness to keep writing my letter, which the new company wasn’t going to tolerate one iota…   So, there was no Unemployment Claim by me… I simply walked away, found a new publisher, and retired…  But I had been there where a lot of the unemployed people are now, back in 1998… And I didn’t like the feeling of not going somewhere to earn money each day, so I know what it feels like, folks… And it’s not a happy place! 

There’s really nothing else, unless you are tied to the Home Building, Housing starts, and existing home sales data to look at today or tomorrow… But before we close out the week I wanted to circle back to what I talked about on Tuesday, and that is that U.S. Retail Sales were negative the last 3 months, which included the Christmas shopping season!  How on earth can that be? Unless of course the U.S. Consumer is tapped out…  They can’t put any more on their Credit card, and they’re savings have dwindled greatly…  And without Consumption the economy is going nowhere, folks…  There’s just no way the Gov’t can make up for this lack of consumer spending… of course that won’t stop the Gov’t from trying! So, look for more deficit spending and currency printing…   Got Gold?

To recap… It was Inauguration Day in the U.S. yesterday, and the currencies basically drifted, albeit a bit lower on the day.. Gold on the other hand rallied by $32, and Silver by 62-cents on the day… The overnight markets have gone back to pushing the dollar toward the currency woodshed. Chuck has read and heard some interesting things about new Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, so he spends a large part of today’s letter talking about her…

Before we had to the Big Finish today, I wanted to highlight another quote from someone that should be revered, Ayn Rand, talking about Freedom of Speech…  Here’s Ayn Rand, “Once a country accepts censorship of the press and of speech, then nothing can be won without violence. Therefore, so long as you have free speech, protect it. This is the life and death issue in this country: do not give up the freedom of the press, of newspapers, books, magazines, television, radios, movies, and every other form of presenting ideas. So long as that’s free, a peaceful intellectual turn is possible.” – Ayn Rand

For What It’s Worth… Well, I began today with some quotes from new Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, and the responses to the quotes, and then I saw this from James Rickards, who chimed in with his own response to a Janet Yellen quote, and I thought it played nicely in the sand box with my other highlights, so here it is for your FWIW today : “The Smartest Thing We Can Do Is Act Big” – The Daily Reckoning

Or, here’s your snippet: “Today, Treasury Secretary-nominee Janet Yellen addressed the Senate Finance Committee during her confirmation hearing.

In her statements, she argued that major fiscal stimulus is justified to support the economy while the pandemic still rages.

She stressed the need to address income inequality and pledged support for the incoming Biden administration’s climate change policies.

In other words, she plans to support large amounts of government spending to stimulate the economy.

She acknowledged that debt is a potential problem. “But,” she added, “right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big. In the long run, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who have been struggling for a very long time.”

Let’s just say that’s wishful thinking.

We cannot spend our way out of a debt trap. As I’ve explained before, fiscal policy is not stimulus because the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is now over 130% and rising quickly. Extensive research shows that at debt-to-GDP ratios above 90%, the multiplier on new debt is less than one.

This means we’re in a debt trap (in addition to a liquidity trap caused by Yellen’s previous organization, the Fed).

But Janet Yellen has no real understanding of money and monetary economics. Her tenure at the Fed proves it.”

Chuck Again… Well, I would say that Rickards comments qualify him to be banned from Twitter and Facebook!  HA! Seriously, he sure doesn’t pull any punches talking about Yellen does he? 

Market Prices 1/21/21: American Style: A$ .7780,  kiwi $ .7222, C$ .7926, euro 1.2150, sterling 1.3724, Swiss $1.1283, European Style: rand 14.7908, krone 8.4254, SEK 8.3014,  forint 294.05,  zloty 3.7260,   koruna 21.4770, RUB 73.52, yen 103.39, sing 1.3220, HKD 7.7516, INR 72.94, China 6.4669, peso 19.56,  BRL 5.3300,  Dollar Index 90.17,  Oil $53.02,  10-year 1.09%, Silver $25.97, Platinum $1,131.00, Palladium $2,419.00, Copper $3.64, and Gold… $1,871.30

That’s it for today and this week… Yesterday, was an absolutely beautiful day here, I sat out on the deck reading my book, 1984, for about 2 hours and then I had taken in enough sun for the day…  Another beautiful sunrise this morning, with an orange sky, not red…  My next book is Fahrenheit 451, which I have sitting here waiting for it to be read!  Oldies but goodies, right? Well, that’s pretty much how I am with my music too!   Dan Fogelberg takes us to the finish line today with his song: Late For The Sky…  I think I’ve told you before, that this song always brings me to tears, as it so sad…  You know, come to think of it, ever since 2007, I’ve become a big cry baby, over anything that’s sad…  Now there’s something that I’ve never talked about before to anyone… So, you dear reader know something about me that others don’t!  So, any way, it’s time to go, so I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and a Fantastico Friday tomorrow… And Please Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

January 20, 2021

* Currencies rally then fall back… 

* Debt, is everywhere… 

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! How about my Mizzou Tigers basketball team! After winning on the road at Texas A&M on Saturday, they came home and beat S. Carolina last night handily… Their Big man Jeremiah Tilmon, is really playing his best basketball in his 4^th season… I was able to watch the game last night since it was on the SEC network. It was a beautiful day here yesterday, with full sun, and mid 70’s… Very warm in the sun, for sure! I didn’t stray too far from home base yesterday, not knowing how my stomach was going to react, but it was fine, and I’m looking forward to going back out to the deck again today to read in the sun! The Moody Blues greet me this morning with their song: Lost In A Lost World… 

A lost world is where we find ourselves these days… not knowing what and to whom we can talk to and say what’s on our minds… I said it last week that I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone… And I really think that’s the case. This whole shootin’ match seems like the Twilight Zone to me, and that’s how we’ll start it off today… with a report from the Twilight Zone…

Imagine if you will… A country that is no more… A republic that is no more…  Civil liberties? Gone! Freedom of speech? Gone! Markets that trade on fundamentals?  Gone!   Gold rising on geopolitical problems, inflation rising, and currency printing? Gone!  Lies and Corruption get dealt with legally? Gone!  I could keep going, but I think you get the gist of what I’m talking about here…

Let’s talk markets…  The currencies held on to their overnight gains on Tuesday, and added just a bit more to their values during the day… The Dollar Index traded at 90.46 yesterday morning and at day’s end it was trading at 90.33… So, as you can see there was little upward movement, but for currency holders it was at least an upward movement…. Gold & Silver on the other hand weren’t able to hold on to their early morning gains, and only ended up $2.30 in Gold to close at $1,840.70, and 25-cents in Silver to close at $25.28… 

In the Overnight Markets last night… the dollar bugs have taken back some of the ground they lost yesterday.. The Dollar Index this morning is trading at 90.55… Gold & Silver, however, are trying to flex their muscles this morning, with Gold up $8.40, and Silver up 14-cents…  I really don’t see much room for the non-dollar assets to move today, as all eyes will be on Washington D.C. 

Debt, Debt, everywhere I look, I see Debt, and more debt….   For instance did you know that the U.S. Gov’t spent $1,376, 269,000,000 in the first 3 months of this year?  That’s a record for 3 months, by the way…  Also New York City Renters (I use that term loosely) owe more than $1 Billion in unpaid rent, according to the WSJ…    The U.S. National Debt is $27.8 Trillion and will soon be over $30 Trillion, with Unfunded Liabilities at $158 Trillion… Gold please help us, we are lost and can’t be found… And then there’s this from the World Bank Chief Economist…

“I’m warning you of persisting issues inevitably bringing a full blown Financial Crisis…  Many individuals are buying stocks, more real estate, and all other assets. At the same time, we are seeing countless who are behind on their rent payments. Money, debt, cash, all being an issue today. Not enough money, while debt is adding up. Student debt is at record levels. Credit Card debt increases. Many can’t pay their rent right now.” 

Chuck Again… But you have those in Congress that believe that the way to address this problem is with more debt, more currency printing, more, more, more… And each time they go back to the well for more, more, more… Matthew Piepenberg, recently wrote an article for his company Goldswitzerland.com where he compared the meltdown of society, finances, and the country in France in the 1800’s to what’s going on today… This was very well done, and I thank the dear reader that sent it to me.  I’ll give you just a  snippet of what he’s saying in the article: “ But with public debt soon passing $30T and climbing, we all know the Fed will never raise rates this generation, for the simple reason that they can’t afford to.

So long as the cost of debt (rates) are stapled to the floor of history, debt levels can equally surpass the record books of history.

But here’s the rub: What happens when rates go up?

The soothsayers behind MMT (Magical Monetary Theory) will tell you inflation and rates won’t go up, as the central banks won’t let them.

Like Santa Claus, that’s a very comforting thought.

Unfortunately, natural bond market forces rather than unnatural central bankers ultimately get the last say (and dark laugh) when it comes to rising rates.

With over $18T worth of negative-yielding bonds in circulation, it’s only a matter of time and headlines before someone yells “fire” in a crowded bond theater whose exit door (i.e. liquidity) is the size of a mouse hole.

With little to no yield for over-bought risk, bond holders will eventually become bond sellers, and when bonds sell off, their prices tank and hence their yields skyrocket.

Of course, when yields sky rocket, rates spike.

And when rates spike: Party over.”

Chuck Again.. I suggest you go to Goldswitzerland.com and search for the article I think you’ll find that he compares France 1800’s to the U.S. today, and you’ll be amazed at how similar the two countries are…   In fact, it’s frightening…   he even has a picture of people storming the capital in France and then compares it to the picture of the people storming the capital here…  

But I do want to circle back to the rent payments that aren’t being made, and probably won’t for most of this year… The unintended consequences of these lost rent payments on the bond, and the banks, and the landowners is really nasty folks… Bond will default, banks will have to write off large loans, and the landowners will see large numbers of them filing bankruptcy…  And for what?  In NYC the total is $1 Billion in rent payments not made… Think about that for a minute, and then tell me this is all going to work out… 

But Deficits don’t matter do they… Until they do…  Just like liquidity isn’t a problem until there’s a shortage, and so on…  And Gold can’t get firmly on the rally tracks to save its life right now… But as I told a reader yesterday, I do believe Gold will rise again, from the ashes, like the Phoenix….

Find a safe harbor in all this rot, is going to be difficult… Got Gold?

Another reader asked me the  other day if I could talk about the new Fedcoin… I said, all this talk of Fed coin reminds me of all the fiasco regarding the Amero… Remember that one?  Oh, the calls we used to take on the trading desk asking about when we would offer the Amero…  Crazy, simply crazy…  But, the Cartel, I mean Fed has to do something to take some the shine off Bitcoin, or else… no one except the shop keeper in rural Montana will be handling dollars/ folding currency any longer… I’m just saying…

Writing about the Amero, got me thinking of all the crazy currency rumors that were out there back in the day that we had to deal with daily on the Trading Desk…  Shoot Rudy, I even remember someone sending us a picture of what the Amero looked like!  You know, you don’t hear any more talk about the currency that was going to unite the U.S. with Canada and Mexico…  And then there was the Iraqi dinar, and how it was going to be revalued upward and make holders of the currency rich beyond their dreams…  Well, neither of these two ever came to fruition… And after all the bad things I had to say about them, I was glad they didn’t come to being!

OK… the price of Oil rallied again bringing it back from the $52 handle to the $53 handle in the past 24 hours… You just can’t say that the price of Oil is going to ho higher, because there’s little demand globally, because people don’t have jobs to go to, or disposable money to spend on gas…  But I’ve been surprised by the Oil traders before, and I doubt they’re finished surprising me!

I’ve got two guys talking to me, one on my left shoulder, and one on my right shoulder… One is telling me to sign up for the vaccine, and the other is telling me to wait… Not that I’m asking your opinion on this, I was just saying that this is a real dilemma for me…  So far so good, but… The wolf is always at the door…  And I simply can’t get my arms around the idea of receiving a vaccine for a disease where there’s a better than 99% chance of survival…  Now let that though swish around in your head a bit…

OK… Today is inauguration day…  A lot of people didn’t think that Trump would step away, but he has, and given his farewell speech, and said he would pray for the success of the new administration…  So, did you know that we have more military people on the ground in DC than we do in Afghanistan and Iraq combined?  I find that to be just a tad overdone, don’t you?   So, needless to say I don’t think the markets will make any strong moves until this whole shootin’ match is over…  Too much tension…

To recap… The currencies held their overnight gains and traded up a bit more on Tuesday, but Gold & Silver couldn’t hold their early gains, but did retain a small bit of their early gains…  Chuck believes he’s in the Twilight Zone… Help I’m slipping into the Twilight Zone, place is a madhouse fells like being cloned….  (Golden Earring)  And Chuck talks about Debt, and how what we’re going through now in the U.S. is very similar to the goings on in France in the 1800’s.. Spoiler alert, it didn’t turn out good for France!…   And just for good old times sake, Chuck takes us back to when the discussions on the Trading desk were about the Amero, and the dinar!

For What It’s Worth… Well, I’ve quoted Hugo Salinas Price previously so he’s not new to our FWIW section… This is a good article about how he believes Gold is ready for takeoff… And it can be found here: plata.com.mx/enUS/More/406?idioma=2

Or, here’s your snippet: “At the present time, it is clear that there is only a minimal interest in owning gold, on the part of the mass of investors, who are focused on maximizing their ownership of Dollars, or Euros, or Pounds, etc. 

However, when the King of Fiat – the Dollar – suffers a sudden loss of value in terms of other currencies, or evinces a persistent tendency to fall in value, at some point, it will dawn upon investors that owning Dollars (and other fiat currencies) is a losing proposition, and they will rush, in mass, to acquire whatever they can of the yellow metal. Official selling to break the price will, at best, only slow down its rise and present a momentary opportunity for panicked investors, to acquire some gold – far less than they might have acquired, had they not been so blind to the danger. 

At this point, the price of gold will be rising by hundreds of Dollars an hour. 

 After the dust settles on this episode of World History – that will be another story.”

Chuck again… I got a kick out of him saying that when the dollar falls, and the rush to buy Gold is strong, all those people that haven’t bought enough Gold will wish they had bought more…

Market Prices 1/20/21: American Style: A$ .7722,  kiwi .7130,  C$ .7865, euro 1.2110, sterling 1.3671, Swiss $ 1.1239, European Style: rand 14.9560, krone 8.5344, SEK 8.3812,  forint 295.24,  zloty 3.7395,   koruna 21.5937, RUB 73.76, yen 103.82, sing 1.3263, HKD 7.7512, INR 72.98, China 6.4814, peso 19.64,  BRL 5.3098,  Dollar Index 90.55,  Oil $53.48,  10-year 1.10%, Silver $25.42, Platinum $1,090.00, Palladium $2,405.00, Copper $3.62, and Gold… $1,849.30

That’s if tor today…  Well, well, well… Did you check out the interview I did with Dennis Miller?  If not, on second thought it’s probably nothing you haven’t read here first! HA!  I still feel as though I’m stuck in the Twilight Zone… I don’t know what will break this spell I’m under…  Some baseball would most likely do the trick! I talked to the folks at Roger Dean Stadium about my Spring Training Season Tickets yesterday… They still don’t know much, but are waiting word from Major League Baseball on how many people they can let in the stadium… I’m just hoping they do let people in to watch games! Because that’s when I’ll be a happy camper! I absolutely adore day baseball games! And with that… the great Marty Balin takes us to the finish line today with his song: Hearts… Marty was the lead singer in Jefferson Airplane and then went solo… I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

January 19, 2021

* Is the dollar buying over? 

* Chuck explains Gold manipulation… You don’t want to miss this! 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! How was your 3-day weekend, that is for those of you who got to have a 3-day weekend?  It was a good thing that I had scheduled yesterday a day off last week, because I woke up in the middle of the night (Sunday night) with woeful stomach problems, that carried on into the morning… Chemo does this to me every now and then, and when it does, the only thing I can do is sleep… And so after being up for an hour yesterday morning, I went to my recliner and fell asleep for the next 5 hours… Woke up, got out of bed, ran a comb across my head (Beatles), and felt much better… My stomach is till shaky, but I’m better…   The Final Four teams for the NFL will play this coming Sunday to determine who goes to the Super Bowl…  One of my fave groups from the 70’s, Kansas, greets me this morning with their song: The Wall…

Well, Friday was another one of those days that we would all like to forget, as far as the currencies, metals, and Oil are concerned… Stocks didn’t do too well on Friday, either, but their loss was minimal compared to the $18 loss for Gold… Right now, it does appear that this a battle that Gold can’t win, as long as the Gov’t regulators continue to look the other way…. The Battle I’m talking about is between Gold & Bitcoin… Bitcoin is the new idol in town… And everyone out there is making sure they don’t have a FOMO  (fear of missing out)…  But I’ve got some news regarding Bitcoin that may take the daily major gains away, at least for a bit…  I’ll get to that in a minute…

But first, have I got a treat for you today… Most of you will recall me recommending a book by Stuart Englert titled “Rigged”. For it explained the reasons why the price manipulators do what they do, and how they do it…  Well, the good folks at GATA sent me this link and it’s a 23 minute interview with Stuart Englert… And it’s good! So, sit back, grab your coffee, tea, or Bailey’s and learn about price manipulation without having to buy and read the book!  Here’s the link: Stuart Englert: Why Precious Metals Price Rigging Happens | INN (investingnews.com)

OK, back to what’s going on… So, if you’re like me (heaven help you!) and you wonder how in the hell Gold can lose ground last week, after the goings on in D.C., then we can go in this next direction… And that is to talk about how the price manipulators use futures contracts to manipulate the price of Gold & Silver…   First of all the COMEX (Commodities exchange, is the clearing house for commodities trades, which includes futures contracts…  The CFTC is the Commodities regulator, like the SEC is the regulator for stocks…   And when I’m finished here, you’ll say, “Ahhh, now I see why Chuck thinks the CFTC is a bunch of dolts!”  

Let’s go back in time to a time when the dollar was just removed from the Bretton Woods agreement, which had a Gold backing for the greenback… There’s a Wikileaks cable that quotes Henry Kissinger talking to Paul Volvker, explaining to him why they must keep the price of Gold suppressed, or else it could hurt the value of the dollar…  There’s another Wikileaks cable that has other Senators talking about the same thing. So, now we know that the U.S. Gov’t is behind all this, for nothing has changed through the years, but got revisited in the early 2000’s because the Gold price began to rise again…

So, this is how I believe it all gets done…  The U.S. Gov’t gives the wink and nod to the JPMorgans of the world, to manipulate the price of Gold, and for doing so, they won’t be prosecuted by the Gob’t.  So, back in the 70’s when Gold was finally legal to be hold by U.S. Citizens, the bullion banks had lines of people wanting to buy physical Gold…  And since there’s only a finite amount of Gold mined each year, these Bullion banks had to turn to the Central Banks (The Fed), and obtain a lease agreement. This lease agreement allowed the bullion bank to take delivery of the physical Gold and then the Bullion bank turned around and sold it to their clients…  The clients now owned the physical Gold, and the Central Bank hled a worthless piece of paper…  The only way the Bullion Bank could return the phsycial Gold was to buy it back from their clients…  As Astro Says… Ruh-Ro!

So, in the meantime the COMEX allowed futures contracts on Gold & Silver… And Voila! The Bullion Banks figures that they could come to the COMEX trading window with arms full of short Gold contracts and drive the price down, maybe enough to get owners of Gold to give up and sell their metals, or if not, at least get the price low enough where they could buy some physical metals.

The problem with this is the fact that the Bullion Banks place futures contracts for many, many, many more ounces of Gold (of Silver) than is above the ground…  So, shouldn’t they only be allowed to place short trades for the amount of metals they are long?  These short contracts never, or rarely ever, get to maturity with the buyer demanding delivery… These contracts are settled in cash, or rolled over to new term contracts…  That’s why I highlight every now and then how many days of production of Gold & Silver it would take to cover the number of ounces of each metal that is sold short…  In Gold it’s presently about 95 days, and in Silver it’s been as high as 200 but right now it’s about 185 days…

So, I know I get a little rough on the Beaver, But June… it’s just not right!  To me this process is immoral, and all the people involved in this fiasco should be taken out and flogged!  And that’s that!

Recall I had a few readers ask me how this was all done, every time there’s a what I call an engineered takedown of the metals…  If interest rates were rising, if the economy was hitting on all eight, and there was world peace, then I could see Gold getting sold at times, profit taking, etc. But not at this time in space, folks… not in this time and space…

I almost forgot to mention the overnight markets… I get writing about something and you never know where I’ll end up!  Ok, so for the overnight markets, the dollar has been getting sold again, the currencies are all rallying this morning, along with Gold which is up $6.90, and Silver which is up 42-cents…   It’s difficult to say whether all the dollar buying is over, but if it is, this could very well have been a correction, that exists in markets, to bring an asset back to the stratosphere, to form a new base before going higher… 

Longtime readers know that I’m “old school” when it comes to trading patterns and movements and what causes them… but is “old school” of use to us any longer?  We have the PPT manipulating the dollar, we have the boys in the band manipulating the metals, we have the cartel, I mean the Fed manipulating stocks and bonds…  Well, even with these manipulations, I still feel that trading patterns are still Old School, until the manipulators show up… 

OK… now for Bitcoin…  I should tell you that a week ago I went all dissing on the former CFTC head, Gensler, for his apparent taking over the SEC head job… But there is word out that Gensler is no fan of Bitcoin, he views it as an unregulated investment that’s used by criminals and money launderers… So, I would expect to see, very shortly new regulations implemented for Bitcoin…  Shoot Rudy, even European Central Bank (ECB) President, La Garde made comments last week about how there needs to be regulations for Bitcoin… Talk about just about all Gensler needs in his back pocket to get any new regulation done…   And that’s all I have to say about that!

The U.S. Data Cupboard last week was not in any way dollar supportive, but… the dollar got bought anyway… First of all the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims rose to 965,000… That, my dear reader is trending in the wrong direction…  And then on Friday, we saw Dec. Retail Sales print negative 0.7%, and when you take out auto sales, it was down -1.4%…  In case you had forgotten, November Retail Sales were also negative -1.4%, and Rocktober’s were also negative!  But the thing that’s worth pointing out here is that during the Christmas shopping season of Nov. and Dec. both month were negative…  So, tell me again about the V-shaped recession that we were supposed to have seen by now! 

This week will be a real “nothing going on” for economic data, with the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims the only real piece of data this week… There’ll be some housing data, and some services data, but those aren’t market movers, so the currencies VS the dollar are on their own this week…   But having no real data won’t change the fact that this will be an interesting week…  That is if the reports of what could happen are real… 

To recap…  Just about every asset class was down on Friday..  Even bonds were down a tiny bit… Chuck just doesn’t get why Gold is dropping in value like a rock lately…  There’s some dark times ahead for Bitcoin… And Chuck treats his dear readers with first a video link to Stuart Englert, the author of “Rigged”, and then his explanation of short futures trades…  The history, the winks and nods, etc.

Before we head to the Big Finish… I talked quite a bit last week about Freedom of Speech being taken away, by the social media folks… And then I came across this quote from Benjamin Franklin, that plays nicely in the sandbox with my thought… “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government, when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society, is dissolved and tyranny is erected on its ruins” = Benjamin Franklin…

For What It’s Worth… Last week, my good friend, Dennis Miller of www.milleronthemoney.com , sent out his letter, and in it was an interview with me!  So, that being the case, I looked past that, and thought that his letter needed to be highlighted here… And so here’s the link to that interview: What’s Going To Happen To The Dollar? – Miller on the Money

Or, here’s your snippet; “I was not surprised when the Wall Street Journal reported, “Senate Moves to Confirm Trump Fed Nominee Waller, but Shelton’s Candidacy Hits Likely Dead End.” Waller is an insider, currently working for the St. Louis Fed, while Shelton is an advocate of returning to the gold standard. Ms. Shelton was described by some senators as “radical.”

The deep state does not want anything close to the gold standard which would help reign in their reckless deficit spending. Quite the contrary, they are pushing for a cashless society, digital currency, total control over what is money and knowing how and where you spend every dime.

Subscriber Mike G. asks a great question:

“What happens when fiat currencies fail? Those of us who have precious metals will still need a value vehicle with which to buy and sell. Even digital currencies, backed by nothing, will fail. Digital debt is still debt. Do we go to a barter system in order to buy and sell? We need to think through our options.”

Mike’s concerns are genuine. How far away from digital currency are we?”

Chuck Again… I know that quite a few of you already subscribed to Dennis’ letter, but if you haven’t, you should!  Just click on the link above and sign up, it’s free! 

Market Prices  1/19/21: American Style: A$ .7714, kiwi .7126,  C$ .7860, euro 1.2133, sterling 1.3519, Swiss $ 1.1269, European Style: rand 14.9620, krone 8.5263, SEK 8.3231,  forint 295.65,  zloty 3.7378,   koruna 21.5522, RUB 73.95, yen 104.00, sing 1.3283, HKD 7.7521, INR 73.13, China 6.4886, peso 19.66, BRL 5.2873,  Dollar Index 90.41,  Oil $52.76,  1o-year 1.11%, Silver $25.42, Platinum $1,105.00, Palladium $2,414.00, Copper $3.63, and Gold… $1,834.30

That’s it for today… The sun rise this morning is absolutely beautiful, the sky is red, which is not a good sign for sailors… Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, is the old saying…  My next door neighbor back home, is a sailor at heart, has a big Sail boat, and spends most weekends on it… he’s the one that told me about that old saying, otherwise I would have no idea… My spring training buddies all have motor boats that they keep on lakes, different lakes! So, in the summertime they all head different directions… Times change.. in the winter, I’m gone, and in the summer they are gone, we used to spend just about every summer weekend together…  OK, Vanilla Fudge takes us to the finish line today with their version of the song: You Keep Me Hanging On…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday, and will Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

January 14, 2021

* Gold & Silver get sold once again on Wednesday

* A Big day of economic data tomorrow, will the markets care?

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you!  The sun did make a short time appearance yesterday, as clouds owned most of the skiy for most of the day. It’s important to the Florida Chamber of Commerce that the sun made an appearance (for about an hour). That way the Chamber gets to count it as a day with sunshine. They love to call out the number of days with sunshine that they have in a year…  I woke up this morning with a sore throat, and I don’t think it came about because I yelled at the walls yesterday! Earlier this week I woke up with an ear ache, but that lasted one day… I’m hoping this dryness in my throat also lasts just one day! When the nights here become warmer, I’ll head out to the deck, with my Bose Bluetooth speaker, and sing along with the music from my phone… So, I need a strong voice! HA!  Speaking of music from my phone, Modern English greets me this morning with their 80’s hit song: I Melt With You…

Yesterday brought about more selling in Gold… I think the price manipulators achieved their directive with their massive short Gold paper trades, that caused the price of Gold to fall more than $100 in the last week… Their directive? Well, first, the short sellers want to drive the price of Gold down so that they can close out their existing short trades at profits, and…. To scare short term buyers of Gold into selling their Gold…   Of course long term owners of Gold, that hold it as 1. A diversification, 2. Hedge against dollar weakness, 3. Store of wealth, and have no intention of selling… And if anything they would look to buy more at cheaper prices…

I had a couple of dear readers ask me to explain how the price manipulators get these engineered takedowns to work…  And I will… but not today… I really need to have time to decide how I’m going to say things so that everyone gets it…   So, maybe next week…

OK, the dollar bugs didn’t exactly rule the day yesterday, as most of the currencies traded in a very tight range…  The Dollar Index ended the day at 90.45, up from 90.27 so the dollar bugs did gain some ground on the day…    The stupid CPI (consumer inflation index) showed a .4% gain in December, but that still has annual inflation around 1.80%… And Core Inflation was only up .1%…  And that brings me to the discussion of how the Bond boys were seeing inflation rising, but it’s just not… The velocity of money is falling once again, and that news basically brought bond yields back a bit and brought their trend of rising every day to a halt.

John Williams over at Shadowstats.com did his usual recalculating of CPI the way it used to be calculated before Clinton and Greenspan saw to it that CPI would never be calculated the same again… And Mr. Williams shows that CPI is really running around 4.5%…  So, do you think that IF CPI actually showed 4.5% inflation, that the Fed would be pulling the dust covers off their rate hike machine?  Or would they let inflation run a little hotter?  Before you answer, let me remind you of what I told you the other day about how the Fed can’t hike rates…

I don’t know about you, but there are things that I buy that I see the price increases in, and then there are things like Big Screen Tv’s that prices on them keep going down. As with other technology do-dads…  But in the end it all comes back to the velocity of money…  And as long as the Velocity of Money is going down, we won’t see inflation run hotter, or even get off the ground to run…  I’m just saying…  

A lot of people are talking about “pent up demand” and how when released will cause a huge surge in economic activity here in the U.S.  Well, for a brief discussion of “pent up demand” here’s David Rosenberg on his Twitter handle: “I keep hearing about “pent-up demand.” But how does this apply to services? Are people who used to get haircuts monthly going to make up the spending loss by visiting the barber 2x monthly post-pandemic? Makes no sense but people just talk without understanding basic economics.” – David Rosenberg on Twitter…

In The overnight markets… there’s been some  drifting of the currencies and metals… Gold is down $1 and Silver is up 4-cents this morning, and the I just don’t think there’ll be any major movement today until we see the color of Joe Biden’s stimulus plan, which is on the docket to be shown to the world today.  I got a kick out of a headline story on Bloomberg that said, “It should be hard for Gold to do anything but appreciate” Well, whoever wrote that needs to step back and see what the price manipulators have done to Gold’s price in the last week!  

I received a phone call from good friend Dennis Miller yesterday, and he was chuckling out loud over something I wrote yesterday, regarding my discussion of former CFTC Chairman, Gary Gensler apparently getting the nod to lead the SEC..  I said that I was calling B.S. on his ability to be a hard nosed regulator…  In my opinion, he couldn’t see the trees in the forest if he stood right smack in front of the forest!  And I don’t mean to be mean to him, I’m just saying if he was the Commodities regulator, and never once found any indication of price manipulation, then he’s either blind or didn’t look… I’m just saying… 

The price of Oil backed off and slid downward in the past 24 hours, and trades this morning with a $52 handle…  I know that the Oil business in the U.S. has gone to hell in a handbasket, and that’s a real shame because we, as a country had become energy independent.  I would think that $50 price of Oil would be enough to bring some of the shale producers back, but not all of them… A couple of the big Oil companies filed for bankruptcy last summer… 

So… The U.S. Data Cupboard has the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims for last week, the first full week of Claims since the week before Christmas!  Tomorrow’s Data Cupboard will have December prints of Retail Sales, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, and Business Inventories… So, one of the more busy days for economic data  I’m really getting tired of reporting bad economic numbers and the markets just ignoring them… But that’s the opposites world we live in these days… As Jackson Browne sings… These Days I sit on cobblestones, and count the time in quarter tones to ten…  I think that’s what I’ll start doing on days when there’s economic data to report, as that should be much healthier for me! 

To recap…  The Gold sellers were back in force yesterday, causing a $10.60 loss in Gold on the day. Chuck thinks the price manipulators achieved their goals last week of scaring the short term buyers of Gold into selling… The dollar bugs won a little ground back from the currencies yesterday, and in the overnight markets… there’s just been some drifting of both the metals and currencies…  

For What It’s Worth…  Ok… Remember The Big Mac Index?  Times in the past were that currency traders waited anxiously to see what the Economist mag. Would say each year about their Big Mac Index, and what currencies were undervalued and which ones were overvalued…  Longtime reader Bob, sent me this link and I thought that it was FWIW worthy…  It’s about the Russian ruble, and the Big Mac Index, and it can be found here: Russian Ruble Is World’s Most Undervalued Currency on Big Mac Index – The Moscow Times

Or, here’s your snippet, for those of you feeling squeamish about reading a Russian newspaper article, here are just some bits: “The Russian ruble is the world’s most undervalued currency, according to the Big Mac Index, compiled by British newspaper The Economist.

Based on market exchange rates, the Russian currency should be worth three times more against the U.S. dollar — 24 rubles per $1, rather than the 73.8 the currency was trading at Wednesday.

The Big Mac Index compares the price of the famous McDonald’s burger across the world. After accounting for differences in living standards — measured by GDP per capita — the ruble comes out as the most undervalued of the 55 currencies tracked by The Economist.

“A Big Mac costs 68% less in Russia ($1.81) than in the United States ($5.66) at market exchange rates,” The Economist said in its latest update to the index, published Tuesday.

“Based on differences in GDP per person, a Big Mac should cost 39% less. This suggests the ruble is 47.3% undervalued.”

The ruble has come out as “undervalued” against the dollar on the Index for the last nine years. The currency slid another 20% in 2020 on a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, a slump in global oil prices, geopolitical risks related to the U.S. election and the fallout from the Novichok poisoning of leading Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last August.”

Chuck again… Ok, in the “old days” of currency trading this would be HUGE news to traders, and they would be making trades to bring the ruble back in line, which would mean they would be buying rubles and driving the price higher…  Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day…

Market  Prices 1/14/21: American Style: A$  .7765,  kiwi .7206, C$ .7893, euro 1.2151, sterling 1.3656, Swiss $1.1242, European Style: rand 15.1270, krone 8.4796, SEK 8.3145,  forint 295.56,  zloty 3.7353,  koruna 21.5581, RUB 73.63, yen 104,00, sing 1.3256, HKD 7.7535, INR 73.06, China 6.4633, peso 19.78, BRL 5.3135,  Dollar Index 90.33,  Oil $52.76,  10-year 1.10%, Silver $25.32, Platinum $1,117.00, Palladium $2,422.00, Copper $3.63, and Gold… $1,844.00

That’s it for today, and until next Tuesday, as Monday is a holiday…  Our Blues started their new season last night in Colorado… The NHL did our Blues a real bummer in the league’s realignment… St. Louis was put in the western Division, away from their rivals, Chicago and Nashville. And most of their away games will come on so late that most St. Louis fans won’t be able to stay awake to watch them! UGH! I was able to stay awake for the 1^st period and the Blues looked good… I woke up in the middle of the night, as usual, and checked the score on my phone, to see that the Blues had won the game 4-2. I’m really bummed out about this realignment for our Blues.. I hope management gave the league hell for doing this to the St. Louis fans… I told you earlier in the week that I was rereading the book 1984, and since I first read it in the early 70’s, I had forgotten most of it, so it’s like a new book to me!  Tell me if any of this seems familiar to you:  This is Big Brother’s slogan:

War Is Peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance if Strength…

Seems very familiar to me… Oh, and did you hear that Ron Paul had his Facebook account shut down? More censoring of free speech…    Hmmm…..  Ok, time to go… Oh, and look what’s playing that seem so apropos…  It’s R.E.M. taking us to the finish line today with their song: it’s The End of The World …. “it’s the end of the world, and I feel fine…”   I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, and a nice long holiday weekend, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

January 13, 2021

* Gold, Silver & euros bounce back on Tuesday

* Pound sterling defies logic… but is the opposite the new norm?

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! I experienced my first day down here this winter without sunshine yesterday, as it was cloudy all day… Back home I hear it was a sunny, warmer than usual, day… So good for them! Yesterday, I didn’t spend enough time on Congratulating the University of Alabama and their college football Championship… What an offense they displayed every game all year long! Ohio St. didn’t have an answer for Denvonta Smith… The Heisman Trophy Winner, and rightfully so! And since Alabama is in the SEC, (like Missouri) I root for them when they aren’t playing Mizzou! The late great, Leon Russell greets me this morning with his song: This Masquerade…  We’re lost, in this masquerade… 

Like the Good Witch, Glenda, who waved her wand, and told the Munchkins that it was all right now, that they could come out,  Gold Traders waved their wands and told investors that the sellers were all gone now, and it was all right to get back in… Gold wasn’t able to hold all of its early $16 gain yesterday, but did manage to gain $11.60, to close at $1,856.00, and Silver added $ .70-cents to close at $25.67…  The euro also heard the all clear horn blaring and was able to add back 1 of the 2-cents it had lost Friday and Monday…   The intervention to buy dollars and sell euros, as I described yesterday had come to an end, for now, that is…  There’s no telling if Treasury Sec. Mnuchin will get around to spending all of his Slush Fund, or not, before he leaves office next week, and former Cartel, I mean Fed Chair, Janet Yellen takes over…

Speaking of Yellen… The Good folks at Wallstreetonparade.com , wrote last week about Yellen, so lets step back in time and see what they had to say about Ms. “there will not be another fiscal crisis”…. Here’s Pam & Russ Martens: “Yellen needs to immediately come clean with the American people as to just what happened in 2018 after she left the Fed. As Treasury Secretary, Yellen would not only have control over the slush fund called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, which the New York Fed can use to trade in gold, stocks and currencies, but Yellen will also Chair the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC), which makes decisions on threats posed to the U.S. financial system by those very same banks that have provided millions to enrich Yellen.”

But she won’t, because no one is going to make her do that… And isn’t that just shameful? Take in over $7 Million dollars in speaking fees to the casino banks that you’re now going to be the head person on the oversight group…   If I were still a young man with a wild temper, I would be cussing up a storm right now… But being more mature, in a way, I’m still going to go yell at the walls, once my wife wakes up!  See how understanding I am?  HA!

In the overnight markets, Gold has held steady, and is down just one Washington this morning, and Silver is down 25-cents, to start the day…  And Ed Steer tells us this morning that, “The U.S. Mint is Out of 2021 Gold Coins Already” The euro ran into some more selling in the overnight markets, as the Asian and European traders didn’t get the message that it was all clear now… HA!  

One currency that I haven’t talked about in a while is the pound sterling/ cable… Cable has really been on the rally tracks for a couple of weeks now. Each day when I list the currency prices, I say to myself, I need to mention this currency, and then forget to do that… But not today! I must have my thinking cap on!  Who would’ve thunk that? That Chuck would have his thinking cap on? Well… any way, the pound is proving that it doesn’t need a strong economy, and higher interest rates to rally… I find this to be very strange, in that the Bank of England (BOE) has their fingers on the negative rates trigger, and the markets don’t seem to care…  And can you blame them?  With more than $18 Trillion in negative yielding bonds in the market, and Central Banks at either zero or negative with their base rates, it has become the “norm”…  And that my friends, is a real shame… I’m just saying… 

OK.. Just one more day until we will see just how many Trillions Joe Biden is going to add to our debt levels, and how much currency is going to need to be printed, and how many more Treasuries will the Cartel, I mean the Fed have to buy?   Here’s the thing that scares the bejeebers out of me…  Once the size of the stimulus package is announced, one would think that Gold would take off to the moon…  And while it should do that, the price manipulators know that too, and will do everything in their power to keep that from happening…  And then the naysayers of Gold will say, “Look, the U.S. is turning on the printing presses and Gold can’t rally”….   Of course I hope I’m wrong on that, and the price manipulators stay away…

Speaking of price manipulators… OK, he’s not or was not a price manipulator, but he was an enabler, so he’s just as bad…  Who am I talking about?  Seems that the new president is going to name Gary Gensler as  chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,,, Here’s what the GATA folks said about that, “Former CFTC exec who couldn’t spot gold and silver market rigging to head SEC,,”  I find this news preposterous! Totally preposterous! The Reuters article that GATA highlighted, said that Gensler was known as a hard nosed regulator that would stand up to the Big Banks…  Really? I mean Really?  All the years he was at the CFTC (the commodities regulator) and never found one thread of evidence that price manipulation was going on, is going to be the head of the SEC?   I’m getting some exercise this morning, as I shake my head in disbelief!

We’ve got Yellen overseeing the banks, and Gensler overseeing the brokerage houses…  Neither one of them could find their rear-ends with both hands!   I’m just saying…

The price of Oil keeps rising into new handles to trade in lately…  The price of Oil this morning is trading with a $53 handle…  For the first day in about 10, the yield on the 10-year Treasury didn’t rise yesterday, and instead lost a few BIPs… Maybe the bond boys had gone too far, too fast with their daily increases of yield…  Or, maybe they read the Pfennig, and saw where I said that Biden’s stimulus was going to add to Treasury Bonds that the cartel, I mean the Fed will need to buy, and they backed off for now… The 10-year’s yield is still negative when you take the current yield and subtract inflation.  And that’s something to think about…

Another thing to think about was an article I read yesterday that talked about how for the first ever, Russia owns more physical Gold than U.S. dollars…   And the scales are really tilting toward more gold ownership and less dollar holdings…   You may be thinking that this is just Russia, and they can’t move the markets… And you would be right… But… Russia could get China to go along with them, and India, and even Japan, in owning less dollars….  And that list of participants in the dollarization would begin to grow, and grow… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard finally has something for us today, after suffering through two days of little to no data, and Cartel, I mean Fed speakers by the boat load out speaking that included: Geroge, Mester, Brainard, Bostic, and Rosengren… All speaking on the economy, which they all think will rebound later this year…

I got a kick out of a comment by Cartel, I mean Fed Chairman, Powell, who said that “there was no economic impact from the Fed pumping Billions of dollars into Wall Street.”   He said that folks with a straight face, and no sign of giggling, or snickering…  but inside he must have been doing both! Jerome Powell is a smart man, and smart enough to know that you don’t pile Billions of dollars into Wall Street without causing impact!  He knows that! But he’s selling us a can of goods that’s expired… And not one Congressperson, or man on the street, will call him on that statement.  I call B.S.!   Just look at the stock market’s  buble…   And while we’re speaking of things the Cartel, I mean the Fed nad cuased… The housing Bubble goes along with the stock market bubble that’s been blown even larger by ZIRP, and currency printing…  Need I say more?

OK, back to the Data Cupboard! Today we’ll see the color of the December Core Inflation, and the stupid CPI…  (consumer inflation)  Both will likely show inflation falling in Devember… In addition to those two prints will be more Cartel speakers: Harker, Brainard, and Clarida will be out telling lies about the economy…

To recap… Come out, come out, it’s all clear now… Ding dong the witch is dead, the mean old witch the wicked witch. She’s gone where the goblins go , she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone…  That’s how Gold and the euro had to feel on Tuesday, and the intervention went away, and traders were able to mark up the two assets like they had been doing before the wicked witch (intervention & manipulation) appeared last Thursday…  Wall Street On Parade has a problem with Janet Yellen, and Chuck has a problem with Gary Gensler… And it’s all explained in the letter, above…

For What It’s Worth… OK, talk about losing your mind over something… This article talks about people that have forgotten their passwords, and are locked out of their Bitcoin accounts…  And it’s not just one or two that have done that! This article can be found here: Bitcoin owners without password watch as wallet worth rises – Business Insider 

Or, here’s your snippet: “People have lost roughly $140 billion in Bitcoin because they forgot their passwords or got locked out of accounts, and would-be millionaires are struggling to access their wallets.

People are watching Bitcoin prices rise as some struggle to recover millions of the cryptocurrency, according to The New York Times.
Those who lost access to their Bitcoin are given 10 guesses before the content of their digital wallet is seized up and encrypted for good.
Around 20% of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin are in stranded wallets, worth roughly $140 billion.”

Chuck again… Now that’s a short snippet today! But it gets to the gist of the story, which is amazing to me that people wouldn’t have written down their passwords, and then put that away in a safe place. But given they’ve been given 10 chances to unlock their account, they probably wouldn’t remember where their safe place was…  I’m not making fun of these people, I’m just saying that they’re SOL on their Bitcoin…  

Market prices  1/13/21:  American Style: A$ .7738,  kiwi .7181, C$ .7854, euro 1.2164, sterling 1.3669, Swiss $ 1.1251, European Style: rand 15.2907, krone 8.4886, SEK 8.3274,  forint 296.11,  zloty 3.7218,   koruna 21.5095, RUB 74.05, yen 103.95, sing 1.3259, HKD 7.7538, INR 73.16, China 6.4646, peso 19.82,  BRL 5.4395,  Dollar Index 90.27,  Oil $53.43,  10-year 1.12%, Silver $25.52, Platinum $1,074.00, Palladium $2,473.00, Copper $3.63, and Gold… $1,855.00

That’s it for today… I was surprised the other day when I talked about Ohio St. that I didn’t get some responses telling me how great their team was. I guess I have no readers that are OSU fans…  (now I’ve goaded them into responding! HA!) 70,000 users of Twitter have had their accounts banned…  Parlar had its cloud management taken away… And free speech is getting a very bad rap… What’s going on in this country?  Did you know that Thomas Jefferson fought the sedition Act, saying that it took away a person’s free speech?  I knew that reading that book on Thomas Jefferson would help me with something one day!  When will they come for me?  I’m going to shut down my Twitter account because of these actions taken by Twittter…  Don’t worry The good folks at FXStreet will still post my Pfennig on Twitter…  But may be not after today, eh? The Doobie Brothers take us to the finish line today with their song from the Captain and Me Album: Dark Eyed Cajun’ Woman…  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

 

January 12, 2020 

* Dollar/ euro gets most of the action on Monday

* When will traders wake up and smell the coffee? 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Last nigh, watching the College football championship game, I thought early on, that two BIG 12 teams were playing, as no defense was being played at first… But then the cream rose to the top…  It was late last night, the game seemed out of reach, and so I locked up and went to bed, not staying awake and feeling bad about it this morning! An executive decision, ha!  Today is the birthday of my oldest son, Andrew…  More on that in the closing today… The Beatles greet me this morning with their song: Norwegian Wood…  I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me…. 

Well, let’s see… All the of the world is stacked up against the dollar, and on Monday, the dollar bugs ruled the day… How was that achieved, with all that is up against the dollar these days?  Well, I would guess you would have to think that Treasury Sec. Mnuchin’s “slush fund” aka Exchange Stabilization Fund(ESF) that was first called a “slush fund” by the folks at Wall Street On Parade…., would have to be questioned about their whereabouts yesterday, when the crime was committed… 

The euro lost a full cent yesterday, and is now 2-cents below where it was trading last Thursday morning… So… my spider sense was really tingling yesterday, so if you want to hear why it was tingling, then stay right here… If you’re like my old marketing person that wanted no part of my conspiracy thoughts, skip ahead…

Ok, for those of you who want to know…  this is what was going through my mind yesterday… Remember how I told you weeks ago, that the leaders of the Eurozone, didn’t want the euro to get so strong, as their economy is in the dumps and the last thing they need is for a strong currency to squelch exports?  Well, you don’t suppose that European Central Bank (ECB) President LaGarde gave Mnuchin a ringy dingy last week do you? Well, I do… and I’m sure the conversation went something like this: LaGarde, hello, is this the Treasury Sec.?  And Mnuchin says, yes, how may I help you, Christine?  She says, I’m in a pickle here, Traders are selling dollars and buying euros, and these traders are not slowing up, can you help me?  And Mnuchin answers, Yes, maam, I certainly can… You see I have this slush fund for manipulating the markets, and there’s no reason to be using it all on stocks, and Gold…  LaGarde then says, OK, this conversation never happened, right? To which Mnuchin replies, what conversation?

Oh, and I relook at the currency screen, it’s all there for us to see… The euro was the only currency to lose a chunk of value yesterday… Normally, as the euro goes, so goes the rest of the currencies, but not yesterday, which tells me the trade was buy dollars/ sell euros… Right Mr. Mnuchin?

I welcome those that stuck with me through my conspiracy idea, and for those of you who skipped ahead, here we go…   OK… Gold, after fighting back to recover from a $20 overnight loss, to start the day pretty much flat, ended up losing $6.60 to close $1,844.40, and Silver lost $54-cents to close $24.97…  Not the Huge chunks of selling like in the previous 3 trading days, but still I’m thinking that investors aren’t selling Gold, it has to be paper short Gold trades…

When will the markets weigh in on Biden’s plans for stimulus?  You know, wake up and smell the coffee? Trillions more will be added to the National Debt, which right now closing in on $28 Trillion, and will be over $30 Trillion by the time all the chicks are hatched on the stimulus.?   So, when will the markets begin to punish the dollar again? When the actual stimulus is announced on Thursday this week?  I always was led to believe that the markets are always forward looking…  Well, they certainly aren’t looking forward on this, now are they?

I said out loud on Friday, when looking at my screen, that Gold has lost $55 today…  And my wife replied, even though I didn’t think she was listening, and said that “our gold isn’t going to be worth what we paid for it soon”…  And I said, “are you kidding me? Do you not know at what price we own our Gold? So, we had a long discussion and now she knows… 

In the overnight markets… There’s been little movement in the currencies, the Dollar Index is 90.42, a far cry from the depths it traded to last week. Gold is up $16 in the early trading today, which looks good to me, as the daily attacks on Gold were beginning to give me a rash! Silver is also up this morning, 56-cents, so these two are back to climbing the stairs… 

IF my spider sense is correct, and we did see some currency intervention with the dollar and euro, it won’t take long for traders to figure it out and begin to either fight back and prove once again that the markets have deeper pockets than those that might fight them, or… traders will cower to the intervention and back off their selling… 

If I were a betting man… I would put a few bucks down on what’s behind door number 1 above… For that would be the normal response by traders, but… in this time of opposites, you never know what will happen…  So, make a call for yourself, and see what happens… 

Have you been watching the rise in yield on the 10-year Treasury?  Every day it seems it adds another 5 Bips… This morning the bond has a yield of 1.15%, which is a far cry from the depths it traded to a couple of weeks ago…  So, the question is… Has the low in the Bond’s yield been set and will it now begin to correct higher?  Before you answer that, you need to remember that the U.S. is about to go all out on deficit spending, and thus will need to finance those deficits with MORE Treasuries, which are seeing less interest in them from the likes of China, Japan and Russia, which also means the cartel, I mean the Fed will have to buy them, and that will drive the yield downward… by how much?  We’ll have to see the extent of the Cartel’s, I mean the Fed’s buying… 

But the rise in the yield is the bond boys telling us something folks…  I’m just saying… 

I’m re-reading the book 1984… For if I recall, it really explains what’s going on in this country these days… All the banishing, and removing of people and their free speech, is just one example… I first read the book back in the 70’s and thought at that time, we are so free… This will never happen here…  I’ll betcha a dollar to a Krispy Kreme that they don’t have kids in High School read this book any longer…  I’m just saying…

The U.S. Data Cupboard is really “lacking” this week, for real economic data… We’ll have to wait until Thursday to see something worth talking about, and on that same day is when Biden is scheduled to announce his stimulus package…   We will see Core Inflation tomorrow… but that’s nearly a 2^nd Tier report, as far as I’m concerned…

To Recap the selling of Gold went another day on Monday, but wasn’t as harsh as the previous 3 days… And Gold is up $16 in the earl trading this morning, so maybe the low has been established…  The euro lost about one cent in yesterday’s trading, and has lost over 2-cents since last Thursday morning… Chuck thinks that it’s a case of Mnuchin’s slush fund getting some action, as he thinks the ECB called him for help last week, and the dollar was bought, and euros sold… The proof is in the pudding, as most of the currencies didn’t react negatively to the euro getting sold, which told Chuck that it was just a dollar/ euro intervention… 

For What It’s Worth… The good folks at GATA sent me the link for this article about how it’s not the time now to give up on Gold, and it can be found here: This Is No Time to Give Up on Gold – Ricks Picks (rickackerman.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “

With gold’s gratuitous, 4% plunge on Friday, bullion has once again affirmed its reputation as one of the nastiest, most frustrating assets an investor can own. Its chief enemy is a global network of shamans, thimble-riggers and feather merchants who make their living borrowing bullion from the central banks for practically nothing, then lending it to everyone else for slightly more. They are always looking for excuses to pound quotes so that they can replace what they’ve borrowed at a lower price. Helpful to this goal is a story that, however ridiculous, spooks gold bugs into dumping their holdings. The current story is that the Democrats will somehow be bad for bullion, although no one can say exactly why. To believe such claptrap is to implicitly believe that when Kamala Harris takes over for the mentally failing Biden, she will impose rigorous constraints on spending that will strengthen the dollar. Yeah, sure. But that’s not the point. The balance of power is about to change so radically in Washington that no one really knows what will happen next. For all we know, the Republic might not survive until mid-term elections in 2022. If such a grave crisis is in fact bearish for gold and silver, then Harris, Schumer and Pelosi are bullish for America and the dollar; Greenspan, Bernanke and Powell were skinflints; John Wayne was a homo, and beer causes cancer.

The bottom line is that we should tune out bullion’s rigged swoons until the crooks and shysters are ready to let it run. Sometimes it takes courage and conviction to stay the course, and this is one of those times.

Gold’s correction since August has been moderate and that when it ends, there is potential for further appreciation to at least $2290/oz. That’s a 25% gain from current levels — sufficient to outperform the broad stock averages just as bullion has reliably been doing for years.”

Chuck again…  Well, that was good in that it put to bed the crazy thought that the new administration will be bad for Gold… I thank the good folks at GATA for sharing that with me…  Did you know that the folks at GATA have been exposing the Gold price manipulation longer than I have?  Well, now you do! 

Market  prices 1/12/21: American Style: A$ .7724,  kiwi .7180,  C$ .7838, euro 1.2156, sterling 1.3493, Swiss $1.1242, European Style: rand 15.4090, krone 8.5344, SEK 8.2578,  forint 295.53,  zloty 3.7721,  koruna 21.5440, RUB 74.54, yen 104.20, sing 1.3283, HKD 7.7548, INR 73.25, China 6.4792, peso 19.97,  BRL 5.4543,  Dollar Index 90.42,  Oil $52.99,  10-year 1.15%, Silver $25.53, Platinum $1,071.00, Palladium $2,420.00, Copper $3.63, and Gold… $1,860.50

That’s it for today…  Happy Birthday, Andrew!  On this day 39 years ago, your mom and I went to the hospital. You see you were two weeks late, and so the doc decided that they would induce your mom… Now this was 39 years ago, and back then normal people didn’t have doplars to tell them the sex of the baby… They went by the speed of the heart beat, which in your case indicated that you would be a girl… We had a girl’s name picked out. Laura, was to be her name. And what a surprise for me when you came out, and you were a boy!  When we took you home, you older sister, Dawn, was happy with you, but she wanted to know where Baby Laura was?  Oh, and it snowed 9 inches on the day you were born…  You played a lot of different sports as a young man, and I always told you that when you stopped playing to “give back to the game you love”, and you have done just that!  Happy Birthday Bud….   And with that it’s time to go…  Mr. Excitement, Jackie Wilson takes us to the finish line today with his song: Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher….  Ok, I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

January 11, 2021

* Currencies get sold on Friday… 

* U.S. Data last week was ugly… 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you….  Well, are you suffering from Football playoff games withdrawal this morning? 6 playoff games this past weekend… Crazy… And the College National Championship Game tonight! I have just a passing interest in the NFL, and on Saturday, I had forgotten about the games being played until it was 8 o’clock at night! The NFL players turned me off to watching them a couple of years ago, and my interest in the games has never really come back. I’m rooting for Alabama in tonight’s game VS Ohio St. I for one, didn’t think that OSU should be included in the final 4, since at that point they had only played 6 games… Not their fault, but still… Try and navigate a full Conference schedule of 10 games, there’s bound to be a bad game there most years… I’m just saying…  OK… Head East greets me this morning with their song: Never Been Any Reason…

On a side bar here… The Band, Head East’s first album had a picture of them eating at counter at a restaurant that my good friend Duane and I used to frequent for breakfasts… The Olivette Diner…

OK… I give… I give, I’m calling uncle, stop twisting my arm! Can you hear Gold crying out in pain? Three straight days of engineered takedowns last week, and in the overnight markets more selling….  On Friday, Gold lost $63.80 to close at $1,851.00 and Silver lost $1.71 to close at $25.50…  It’s been downright ugly this past week for Gold & Silver, with Gold taking the brunt of the selling…  Why? I have no idea why anyone in this day of constant currency printing, zero interest rates, negative yielding bonds, and half the country’s economy shutdown, would anyone that has their head screwed on straight would be selling their Gold…  And I say this to all of the Gold sellers… You’ll be sorry…

I really don’t get it… Biden “has said he plans to push out at least two more comprehensive stimulus packages that could add trillions to the U.S. federal debt,, and mean the printing presses for currency debasement will be running overtime…  If this pullback in Gold’s price doesn’t scream “buy me” then I don’t know what will…  I’m just glad I don’t get the itch to sell my Gold Holdings when it seems that the price manipulators have pushed gold into the elevator going down…  If I were still working, I would be looking to add to my Gold holdings, not sell them…

So, it wasn’t just the metals that got sold late last week, the euro, which had touched 1.23 a couple of times and even traded over it last Thursday morning, found the footing very slippery and hasn’t been able to find terra firma since…  So, suddenly traders had second thoughts about selling dollars? Did they have a coming to Jesus meeting with the Powers that Be about selling dollars?  Because that’s what it sure looks like to me…  Traders arrived at their desks on Friday morning, to a memo from the bosses, that said, “Quit selling dollars, now”!  And don’t think that this scenario is ridiculous, or unfathomable, because that’s how trading desks work…

I found this little snippet on the forexlive.com site, listen in here: “The dollar will go wherever the Fed does, and the Fed will follow inflation. Already the talk from the central bank is changing. Less than a month ago they were contemplating more QE or lengthening the average maturity of purchases. This week, Clarida and Evans were talking about timelines for tapering bond purchases.

They’ve been strident in forecasting no rate rate hikes into 2024 but that always comes with a caveat about inflation.”

Chuck again…  they were trying to explain why they think the dollar is due for a rally…  And they think the Fed will hike rates when inflation starts to run higher…  Have they not been paying attention in class when I’ve explained how with so much debt the U.S. cannot afford to have higher interest rates, period!   It is important to point out though, that in a trend, asset movement is not a ONE-WAY Street, there’s always a chance of volatility, and to me that’s what late last week was… A tempest in a Teacup is more like what’s happening… I do believe… Of course I could be wrong… But I do believe this dollar strength won’t last long… 

So, let’s go through the U.S. Data Cupboard prints from late last week… First we had the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, which were 787,000 for the previous week… That’s not good considering that the week was shortened by the holiday… Then we had the Nov. Trade Deficit which was $68.1 Billion up from the previous month’s number of $63.1 Billion… And we had Clarida and Evans, two Fed Heads, speaking and they both mentioned tapering bond purchases… Hmmmm…  On Friday, we saw the BLS version of Jobs for December and they actually showed 140,000 jobs lost in the month, which was pretty darn close to the ADP number of 123,000 jobs lost…    The problem with this number is that in reality it was far worse than 140,000 jobs lost… The BLS added 157,000 jobs to the surveys, which means that the surveys showed 197,000 jobs lost in December…

And what’s this I see, is this a disturbance in the force? Avg. Hourly Earnings rose from .3% in Nov. to .8% in December…  A .5% gain in wages… This will lead to inflation rising folks… Wage inflation is what the Fed has been waiting for…

We were supposed to see the color of the latest Consumer Credit, (read debt) but it failed to launch on Friday… And that gets my conspiracy controlled mind working overtime, folks…

So, as you can see… The economic data wasn’t good late last week, and so we know that it wasn’t the data that got everyone all lathered up to sell Gold & currencies…  Now, does my explanation of what happened make more sense?  I thought it would…

In the overnight markets… Before I went to bed last night, I checked the markets as they had opened in Asia, and Gold was down already , $20… I went to bed thinking that this morning I would see Gold down another $50… But to my surprise, the $20 loss has been wiped out, and Gold is down just 50-cents this morning…  There had to be a ton of bargain buyers in the overnight markets, to bring Gold back to near even today…  And Gold is taking the stairs up after their trip downward in the elevator! 

The currencies seem to have plugged the hole in the dam..  And they are sitting at the same levels they closed on Friday.  This week, we’ll see what becomes of Biden’s stimulus plans, and how much currency printing will be required… It’s just a darn shame folks, that we, as a country, keep going to the well, of deficit spending… One of these days, we’re going to find that the well had gone dry, we’ll pull up the bucket and there will be no water (currency) and then what will we, as a country do?  Can you say default? I knew you could… 

I had a dear reader send me a note that someone had written that was titled 545 VS 300,000,000,000 People…  (that’s 300 Million!) he’s talking about us! Well, here are a couple of snippets from this excellent piece written by a man named Charlie Reese…

“One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million who are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem
was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional
duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private,
central bank.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace
545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not
traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain
truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it
must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.”

Chuck again..  This is a very good synopsis of what exists in this country, and that if the people of this country would just wake up and realize that all our problems are direct result of what these 545 people do… Maybe we could vote them out, and start all over again… Maybe…

There’s no data scheduled to print today… So maybe they’ll try to sneak the Consumer Credit data under the radar today…   Only the shadow knows if they will or won’t…

To recap… it’s been downright ugly and in the whole forest, for Gold & Silver from Wednesday on… And Chuck gives a few reasons why that shouldn’t be happening, but it is, so use it as a buying opportunity… Currency traders must have gotten a memo to stop selling dollars, which they did on Friday… Gold appears to have taken the elevator down, and will now have to take the stairs back up, but it will… in Chuck’s opinion that is…  The economic data was ugly last week too… But who uses fundamentals like economic data any longer? 

For What It’s Worth… Once again I’ve come to a place where I wish all this information and proof was around 10 years ago, when I said Gold was being manipulated downward, and was told by the power that be that I couldn’t talk about it any longer, because it was simply conspiracy… Well, now it’s conspiracy fact!  This article talks about how Deutsche Bank just had to pay a HUGE fine for manipulating currencies and metals, and it can be found here: Deutsche Bank to pay nearly $125 million to resolve U.S. bribery, metals charges | Reuters

Or, here’s your snippet: “Deutsche Bank AG will pay nearly $125 million to avoid U.S. prosecution on charges it engaged in foreign bribery schemes and manipulated precious metals markets, the latest blow for the bank as it tries to rebound from a series of scandals.

Germany’s largest lender agreed to the payout as it entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, and a related civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Almost all of the payout relates to charges Deutsche Bank violated the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) over its dealings in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, China and Italy, court papers show. Nearly two-thirds of the payout is a criminal fine.

The settlements were made public on Friday at a hearing in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

“Deutsche Bank engaged in a criminal scheme to conceal payments to so-called consultants worldwide who served as conduits for bribes to foreign officials and others,” in order to win and retain “lucrative business projects,” Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme in Brooklyn said in a statement.

In the metals case, prosecutors accused Deutsche Bank traders of placing fraudulent trades, known as spoofing, to induce other traders to buy and sell futures contracts at prices they otherwise would not have.”

Chuck again…  I’ll say what I always say when another bank gets taken to the woodshed for manipulating the markets…  And no one goes to Jail…. 

Market price 1/11/21:  American Style:  A$ .7710,   kiwi .7190,  C$ .7829, euro 1.2267, sterling 1.3487, Swiss $1.1235, European Style: rand 15.4414, krone 8.5109, SEK 8.2731,  forint 296.22,  zloty 3.7187,   koruna 31.5513, RUB 74.05, yen 104.18, sing 1.3286, HKD 7.7551, INR 73.43, China 6.4744, peso 20.18,  BRL 5.4143,  Dollar Index 90.44,  Oil $51.86,  10-year 1.10%, Silver $25.04, Platinum $1,041.00, Palladium $2,409.00, Copper $3.63, and Gold… $1,850.50

That’s it for today… I hope your team won this past weekend… I no longer have a home team to root for, and by default I get the K.C. Chiefs… They are A Missouri Team!  The cold front I talked about coming my way this past weekend, did make it here, but I was still able to sit out by the ocean and read in comfort… In other words, it didn’t actually get cold! Maybe for lifelong Floridians it was cold, but not for me! I received new noise cancelling AirPods for Christmas and I’ve been putting them to work each day! I love they way, when I have to take one out of my ear to hear what someone is saying to me, the music pauses, until I put it back in my ear! I don’t have too much else to say this morning, so I’ll end it.. The Guess Who take us to the finish line today with their song: No Sugar Tonight…  I’m sure I’ve talked about how I like the Guess Who’s singer, Burton Cummings… Ok, I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler