Author: admin

December 10, 2020 

* currencies trade in tight ranges on Wednesday

* JPMorgan wants to be a Bitcoin Billionaire! 

Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! I really wanted to keep sleeping this morning… I think it’s going to be one of those days where I sleep most of the day. This happens about once a month, and it’s been awhile since I felt this way.  It’s an accumulation thing with the chemo I take daily… The bad part is that today is supposed to be a fairly warm day with sunshine… UGH!  I’ll attempt to get out side, but… Like the great reliever, Big Lee Smith, when he would come out of the bullpen, “I’m so tired”… HA!  Sniff-n-The Tears greet me this morning with their great song: Driver’s Seat… 

A quick side bar here…  Quite a few years ago now, I mentioned that song and band in the Pfennig, and later in the day, I received an email from a fellow who said he had been the bass player for the band! We traded emails back and forth, and then I never heard from him again… 

Well…  Wednesday was not kind to Gold & Silver… Apparently, the “sellers”  decided that Gold’s rally needed to be squelched…  I was doing some reading yesterday, and did a quick check on the metals and saw Gold down even more than it closed on the day… So, it did rally back a bit, but still ended the day down $31.00, to close at $1,839.30, and Silver had the same trading pattern as Gold, and ended the day down 61-cents to close at $23.91… 

The currencies traded in a very tight range once again, thus stalling their appointment with lofty levels…  Even the Chinese renminbi, which had seen daily appreciations lately, saw a pullback. But… The Aussie dollar (A$) is within spittin’ distance of 75-cents this morning…  That’s pretty impressive, for a country that is in a saber rattling dispute with China, and has near zero interest rates…  

In the overnight markets, Gold has held pretty Steady Eddie, and is only down 60-cents today…  The Dollar Index has strengthened since yesterday, and sits this morning at 90.96… But the move upward is small and like I said, the currencies have been trading in tight ranges since Tuesday… 

One more thing on Gold…  Our old friends at JPMorgan (NOT!) issued a report that basically  said that Gold is going to suffer for years, because of Bitcoin…  Ok, let me get this straight… Not only does JPMorgan lead the price manipulators in their raids on Gold’s price, now they are attempting to scare investors out of Gold?   

The GATA folks had something to say about JPMorgan’s thoughts, and I’ll let them take the conn here for a minute… “What is JPMorgan’s motive in touting cryptos and disparaging gold? Is it to enlighten investors or scare them out of monetary metals and into a currency that governments might defeat more easily?

Maybe a hint is provided by the $900 million fine recently imposed on the investment bank for manipulating the monetary metals and Treasury bond futures markets.

With its libertarian inclinations, GATA wishes the best for all attempts to increase competition in money. But investors in cryptocurrencies should know just as investors in gold do that more than pestilence, famine, and war, governments hate competition with their money and that, as a result, all monetary alternatives have their risks.”

Chuck again… And then they included this link to a video by a comedian about Bitcoin that I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy…  so, here’s the link: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7zLhEWanc

Well, well, well, what have we here?  As usual, Pam and Russ Martens have found some very interesting information for us… The entire article can be found at: www.wallstreetonparade.com  but I’ve shortened it, here… Remember the repo fiasco a year ago?  Ok, Pam and Russ take it away, :” Last Thursday the Financial Stability Oversight Council (pronounced F-SOC) released its 2020 Annual Report. Those tend to be tediously boring reports that tell one nothing meaningful about the true state of the Wall Street mega banks, so we just got around to perusing the document yesterday. Mixed in with the typical snooze-worthy minutiae was a bombshell that made us sit up straight in our chair. Those cumulative repo loans totaling more than $9 trillion to the trading houses on Wall Street that the Fed had been making from September 17 of 2019 – months before the onset of COVID-19 anywhere in the world – didn’t actually stop in July as the daily data from the Fed made it seem. The New York Fed simply went dark and stopped reporting how many billions of dollars a week it was funneling to miscreant mega banks on Wall Street as food pantry lines grew by miles across the U.S. and 3.3 million small businesses were forced to shutter.” -wallstreetonparade.com

Ok, Chuck again…  Recently I talked about the Repo fiasco, and a dear reader asked me if I thought it was still ongoing? And I replied “yes”…  I thought it probably would be because if the banks had funding problems 6 months before the plandemic hit, they sure still had them a year later… 

And now I was proven to be correct in my thought!   But doesn’t this just get you so fired up that you want to go yell at the walls?  This ticks me off, period! But what can a poor boy do to alert everyone of what’s going on in the financial world, other than write about it and hope that everyone feels the same way and forwards the letter to everyone on their contact lists?

OK, calm down Chuck… These dolts will get what’s coming to them one day… You don’t cheat, lie, and destroy an economy, without having to face the consequences eventually…  Yeah, but I may be long gone by that time! I want to see them suffer now!  Ok, the good Christian in me says I went too far there, so I apologize… 

Where is Congress on this? I thought that we, as the people, of this Empire of Debt, elected these dolts to represent us, our thoughts, our wishes for the country?  Oh, Ahem… Psst… Chuck, that’s so old time… This is the new millennium, things don’t work like that any longer…  Well, I’m holding on to my “old time views”, and think that it’s Congress’s job to rein in the Cartel, I mean the Fed here… And that’s that! 

All right, I’ll talk about other stuff now… Just had to get that all out of my system…  The U.S. Data Cupboard today, has already given us the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, and they were, drum roll please…. 853,000! I told, you that this week’s numbers would be larger because the previous week only had 3 days in which the unemployed could file their claims…  And from here I just don’t see this data set getting any better… 

We also already saw the color of the stupid CPI (consumer inflation), for Nov., and it was up .2% from a flat rate in Rocktober…  No great shakes here, but just for grins I went to www.shadowstats.com to see what John Williams says inflation is really printing, and… he says that inflation is really 4.5%…  And of course I’ve ALWAYS said that inflation is a personal thing, and to that, inflation can be higher or lower depending on your personal spending habits… 

To recap…  The currencies traded in a tight range again yesterday, marking two consecutive days of that pattern, but Gold got sold and ended the day down $31, with Silver also getting sold down 61-cents… The overnight markets haven’t seen any movement to speak of in both asset classes.  Chuck has major issues with JPM, and the cartel, I mean the Fed today, so hopefully you didn’t miss any of that, but if you did, please go back and reread, Chuck put his heart and soul into telling you these things, and it would be a real shame if you missed them!  hehehehehehehe!

For What It’s Worth…  Ok.. this article is very long, but…. A very good read, and I implore you to take the time to click the link below and read the article in its entirety…  This is Egon Von Greyerz of whom I’ve quoted many times before, talking about us repeating history… So… here’s the link, please make sure you go there and read it!  THE HANNIBAL TRAP WILL CRUSH GLOBAL WEALTH | Matterhorn – GoldSwitzerland

Or, here’s your snippet: “ Is the global investment world about to be caught in the Hannibal trap?

Hannibal was considered as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals in history. He was a master of strategy and regularly led his enemies into excruciating defeats.The trap that investors are now being led into has many similarities with Hannibal’s strategy in his victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC.

Hannibal was a general and statesman from Carthage (now Tunisia) who successfully fought against the Romans in the Second Punic War.

THE BATTLE AT LAKE TRASIMENE

In 218 BC Hannibal took his troupes, with cavalry and elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. Hannibal enticed the Roman Consul Flaminius, and his troupes, in 217 BC to follow him to Lake Trasimene in Umbria. The Romans followed Hannibal’s troupes into a narrow valley on the northern shores of the lake. When the Roman troupes were inside the valley, they were trapped. They had the Carthaginians ahead of them, the lake on their right and hills on their left.

What the Romans didn’t know was that Hannibal had hidden his light cavalry and part of his army up in the hills. So once the Romans were locked into the valley, they were attacked from both ends with nowhere to escape.

Over 15,000 Romans were killed and 10,000 captured in a catastrophic defeat.

So what has Hannibal got to do with the present world? Well, it is pretty obvious. It is all about being led into a fatal trap without even being aware.

This is clearly the biggest wealth trap in history. Hannibal couldn’t have done it better.

Billionaires, millionaires and ordinary investors have all been sucked into a honeypot believing that they have real wealth based on sound foundations.

What they don’t realize is that they will in the next few years be ambushed by what to them is an invisible enemy.

This will initially involve total debasement of the currency, whether it is dollars, euros, pounds or yen. No they can’t all go down together against each other.

But they will all go down in real terms. Real terms means measured in the only money which has survived in history – GOLD.

The route there will not be straight forward. As currencies collapse, we will most likely first see hyperinflation. That could temporarily boost asset prices in nominal terms but certainly not in real terms.

There will also be an implosion of both the debt bubble and the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.”

Chuck again.. I know that the snippet was long… but it’s only a small piece of the entire article…  And a very good read!  You know, publishing guru, Bill Bonner always relates today to events in history, and I like that, for if you don’t know history, you’re bound to repeat it! 

Market Prices 12/10/20: American Style: A$.7499, kiwi .7051, C$ .7839, euro 1.2110, sterling 1.3284, Swiss $1.1259, European Style: rand 15.0074, krone 8.8320, SEK 8.4592,  forint 293.25,  zloty 3.6516,   koruna 21.7280, RUB 73.53, yen 104.44, sing 1.3371, HKD 7.7511, INR 73.62, China 6.5352, peso 19.90,  BRL 5.1326,  Dollar Index 90.96,  Oil $46.22,  10-year .92%, Silver $24.12, Platinum $1,017.00, Palladium $2,348.00, and Gold… $1,839.70

That’s it for today and this week… A long week for me… or so it seems. Maybe it’s just that I’m so amped up about this Saturday, when the college sports will be happening in Columbia Mo. And I think back to when I was younger, and how you would have to tie me down to keep me from being there! Both Football and Basketball teams have BIG games..  Well, I’ve awakened a little more, and maybe I won’t have to sleep all day!  A good cup of steaming coffee should do the trick! Still no word from Roger Dean Stadium about Spring Training… I’m becoming very afraid that I won’t be invited to watch the games. UGH! Usually by now, I’ve paid for my season tickets, and don’t have a worried mind, but not this year… Go figure, it’s 2020!  Ok…  Midnight Oil takes us to the finish line today with their song: Beds Are Burning…  I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, and a Fantastico Friday tomorrow, and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

December 9, 2020

* Currencies trade in a tight range on Tuesday

* Gold gains $8 on Tuesday, and gives it right back today… 

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Before I go any further, I have to question the sanity of the folks at the Olympics who approve and remove sports… I read yesterday, that the Olympics have sanctioned the approval of “breakdancing” as an Olympic sport… Are you kidding me? That’s where you say, “no we wouldn’t kid you, you’re our favorite goat!” HA!  Well, I for one, can’t wait until the next Olympics to watch me some breakdancing… NOT!  Well, I had to go out yesterday for a bit to a store, and had to wear my face rosary… There’s no scientific proof that wearing a mask keeps you from getting the virus… As I say, the virus gonna virus…  And the powers that be know that the way to get people to comply with the wearing of face masks, they get the businesses to require customers to wear one… I go three places… The hospital, my doctor’s offices, and the cleaners… And all three won’t let you in the door without a mask… I find this to be a real attack on my civil liberties… But, it is what it is, and life goes on, right?  Robin Trower greets me this morning with his song: Bridge of Sighs… Robin Trower was the lead guitar player in Procol Harum…

OK… I know I’m going to see hundreds of people tell me I’m full of B.S. for what I said in the intro today, but so be it… I’ve never, in my life been afraid to say what’s on my mind… And to me, that’s what makes this letter so good to read… You get another point of view that you don’t get from everyone else…  

It was really a nothing happened day in the currencies yesterday… The Dollar Index fell to 90.85, from 90.93 in the morning…  But the euro at the end of the day was trading in the same clothes it had on early on Tuesday morning. (1.2120)… Gold gained $8.30 on the day to close at $1,871.30, and Silver gained a wooden nickel, no wait, just a plain nickel, to close at $24.63…  I’m of the opinion that these two metals would have gained more on the day, if not for “sellers”…  I thought I would be nice to the price manipulators today, and just call them “sellers”… 

You could get me to really go off on the CFTC (commodities regulator) if you egged me on… Ok, that’s enough, I’ll do it!  Why on earth do we have a commodities regulator that doesn’t regulate?  Isn’t this what got us into some deep dookie with mortgage bonds, that were rated AAA and shouldn’t have been? The ratings agencies fell down on the job, and we really didn’t need a ratings agency to tell us a bond was AAA when it should have been A at best…  The CFTC is about as useful as a pay toilet in a diarrhea ward…  And I’m being nice about that description! I could have said, that they were as useful as mudguards on a turtle…   Ok, now that’s funny…  And this isn’t a funny subject, Chuck, so try to stick with the program will you?

In the overnight markets last night and early this morning, there’s some slippage going on… The euro is weaker, but still above 1.21, and Gold is getting sold by $10.90, and Silver is getting sold by 10-cents…  I have to say that I’m somewhat surprised at this move in the metals… Sure there’s never a one-way street of rallies… There’s got to be some rain to make the sunny days even more enjoyable. But… in my mind, I think that these two metals should be firmly on the rally tracks now, with nothing to bring them down…  

Think about that for a moment… We have vaccines… We have refrigerated places to store the vaccines in each location… All we need is the green light from the FDA, and then we start getting back to, I’m not going to say normal, because that will never happen, but back to spending money, and when that happens, inflation will begin to rise… And when inflation is rising, what asset class do you want to own?  Precious Metals… i.e. Gold & Silver… 

Ok… I had a few readers send me a note asking me to explain the scenario I presented last week as the reason for the smashing of Gold’s price…  OK, it’s like this… please take notes, because I won’t explain it again… Investors buy futures contracts to buy Gold at a specific price and expiration date…  And so it was for the December expiration date… But the problem for the COMEX was that I don’t think they had the stock of Gold it would take to make good delivery on all those contracts that had piled up for the December expiry.  So… basically it was a signal to the price manipulators to “do their thing”, and bring the price of Gold down dramatically, to get all those buy contracts to sell, and give up getting Gold at their specified price…  And it worked….  There, I hope that explains everything, other than the fact that the smashing of the Gold price should never have been allowed, but that’s a different story…

Alrighty then… The BIS (Bank for International Settlements), the central bank of Central Banks, if you will, issued a very interesting statement late last week… Let’s listen in to what’s on their minds, eh?

“BIS from continuing this trend of warnings, and today the Basel-based organization did just that when in its Quarterly Review publication it cautioned that the surge in financial markets following COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs and the U.S. election has left asset prices increasingly stretched.

Sounding surprisingly similar to Goldman, which as we reported earlier today issued an almost identical warning, when it observed that its sentiment indicator is now +2.0 standard deviations above average… …which has left positioning extremely stretched and represents a 98th percentile reading since 2009.

The BIS’ quarterly report on Monday noted how credit markets and some of world’s biggest stock markets had surpassed their pre-pandemic levels despite the significant degree of uncertainty that still remains over the pandemic as it continues to spread.”

Will anyone listen to them? Nah… why would stock jockeys pay attention to this bank that’s in Switzerland? They don’t have the pulse of the Robinhood traders…  Or for that matter, anyone else, but I thought it was interesting enough to see that there is an institution out there that thinks that stocks have gotten out of control…   Oh, and JPMorgan says that stocks will get a $1.1 Trillion boost next year….   So, you’ve got Goldman and the BIS saying “be careful”, and JPMorgan saying “drive fast and take chances!” 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but the recent performance of the Russian ruble has been quite impressive… I think back to a FWIW I had a month or so ago, where I quoted the Fin Min, from Russia, saying that the ruble would come back from the then level of 77 to today’s level of 73.90… And the ruble still pays interest! The price of Oil hasn’t budged since I told you that I thought it had gone about as high as it was going to go, for now, a couple of weeks ago. So, the ruble, krone, real, peso, and even sterling has been getting a lot of love from traders lately, and one would immediately think that the price of Oil has to be going upward, right? But it isn’t… So, these rallies are all about selling dollars, folks… selling dollars… selling dollars… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the 3^rd QTR Productivity, and it showed that productivity had weakened in the 3^rd QTR from 4.9% in the previous quarter, to 4.6% in the 3^rd QTR…  I had said yesterday that I just didn’t think that the working from home crowds are being very productive, but then I don’t know, really…   But the data confirms that…   We also saw the Unit Labor Costs, for the 3^rd QTR… And while they remained negative at -6.6%, labor costs were increased during the quarter, as the 2^nd QTR Costs were negative -8.9%… But as with everything else these days, I truly expect this to get worse again in the 4^th QTR…

The Data Cupboard today is pretty barren, with only a couple of lower tiered reports to print, that I doubt anyone even notices…  And then tomorrow, we get back to the regular fare, of the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, which might be skewed to the upside, given the previous week only had 3 days to file in it…

For What It’s Worth…  This is something that a dear reader sent me that he received and thought I should see it, and I in turn, thought you should see it…  Remember last fall 2019, when I kept harping about how the Casino Banks were being bailed out daily by the Fed in the repo markets?  Well, this article addresses that, and more, and it can be found here: Trump regulators leave a warning for the Biden team | NewsChannel 3-12 (keyt.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “As they head out the door, Trump-led financial regulators are warning the incoming Biden team that a little-known yet critical corner of Wall Street is broken.

Their concern centers on the short-term funding market, which provides money to businesses, local governments and market players. When this market breaks down, the entire economy can screech to a halt.

That’s what happened during the 2008 financial crisis — and the pandemic caused it to collapse again.

“Recent events, including the financial fallout from the pandemic, have confirmed that potentially significant structural vulnerabilities remain” in short-term funding markets, the Trump-led Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) warned late last week in its final annual report.

FSOC, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, is a team of regulators from the SEC, Fed, FDIC and other agencies charged with identifying risks to the financial system. It’s chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Next year, assuming she’s confirmed by the US Senate, the council will be led by Janet Yellen, whom President-elect Joe Biden tapped as Mnuchin’s successor.

The council did not offer any potential solutions, however — leaving that task up to the incoming team.

“Our short-term markets don’t seem to be able to function without a very significant government backstop. We need to fix it,” said Jeremy Kress, a University of Michigan professor who researches financial regulation.

That won’t be easy, because regulators and experts don’t seem to know exactly why this corner of the financial market keeps breaking down.

“There is still so much we don’t know about these markets and how they work,” said Kress. “That’s a big part of the problem,”

But there’s little doubt short-term markets are vulnerable to bouts of market stress.”

Chuck again… Now doesn’t that just give you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling that the regulators don’t understand how the markets work?  I’m beside myself on this one folks… Shaking my  head in disbelief, for sure!

Market Prices 12/9/20: American Style: A$ .7482,  kiwi .7o80, C$ .7826, euro 1.2109, sterling 1.3456, Swiss $1.1250, European Style: rand 14.9293, krone 8.7328, SEK 8.4829,  forint 294.34,  zloty 3.6532,   koruna 21.6606, RUB 73.47, yen 104.10, sing 1.3355, HKD 7.7515, INR 73.63, China 6.5300, peso 19.75,  BRL 5.1022,  Dollar Index 90.85,  Oil $45.77,  10-year .94%, Silver $24.46, Platinum $1,026.00, Palladium $2,360.00, and Gold… $1,860.40

That’s it for today…  Wanna get into the Christmas Spirit? The next time they show the movie: The Grinch That Stole Christmas, with Jim Carrey, make sure you tune in! I sat there laughing and getting filled with goo thoughts while watching it, again…  When my kids were young, every year around this time, we would take to to the movies to see the newest Christmas themed movie… I remember Dawn repeating the line from Prancer, over and over… “Prancer is in the shed by my house”…  Ok… I’ve got to go pick up the groceries I ordered 2 days ago!  I just pull up and they load my car and I go home… Don’t have to wear a mask!  Del Shannon takes us to the finish line today with his song: Runaway…   Now, there’s a great 60’s song!  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and will please Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

 

December 8, 2020

* Gold & Silver turn around on Monday… 

* The dollar continues to get sold… 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you!  I got the good word from the wound center doc yesterday, She told me not to come back for 3 weeks, and that by then I should be all healed up. I told her that would be a good thing, since I’m leaving a few days after that visit, and won’t be back until it gets warmer here…  I always get the same response from anyone I tell that I go to S. Florida for the winter. They always say, “I’m jealous”…  Well, I always tell them, save your money, build critical mass and then you’ll be half-way there!  These are people that are always much younger than me… So they have plenty of time to work toward that goal!  When I was younger I always thought that I would retire in San Diego… The weather there is incredible… But the costs of living there just got way out of hand, and so I changed my direction… People from the upper East Coast, and California, have been moving out of their respective states to better environments economically, that is, in Florida and Texas, and some other southern states… Makes sense to me… The problem I see with this though, is that if too many of them move to a new state and bring their voting habits with them, it could upset the applecart of the new state…  I’m just saying…   Ok.. This morning, I’m greeted by my all time fave song from Chicago… They greet me with their song: Hard Habit To Break…

Well, what I was afraid of happening with the euro seems to be going on…  Sunday night going into Monday morning, saw the euro pull back… Maybe it was profit taking and maybe it wasn’t… The pullback wasn’t of great magnitude, and so I put it down to profit taking… But then all day Monday, the euro rose again, and was trading at 1.2150 at one point in the day, only to see it have another pullback in the overnight markets…  So, you may fool me once, but not twice…  And I’m going to put these pullbacks on intervention, to throw down speed bumps for the euro…  But in the end, they won’t work, because, unless we’re taking about unlimited money printing, the markets used to always have deeper pockets than any Central Bank… but again, that was before Central Banks learned that they could turn the spigot of money printing on and not worry about it… 

What a great surprise from the metals yesterday… Ok, it was Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day, when I signed off yesterday morning, and Gold was down $8…  But by noon, the shiny metal has rebounded and was up $24 for the day, which make it a $32 turnaround… And Silver pushed through its early looses of 43-cents to show a gain of 31-cents on the day, or a 74-cent turn around! Gold closed at $1,863, and Silver closed at $24.67….   Again, don’t let the drops in price that are caused by the price manipulators, bother you… Just hold onto your Gold & Silver, folks… and pass it on to your kids and grandkids when your time comes…   With explicit instructions to not sell…   

In the overnight markets, the euro has seen the pullback once again as described above, but the Dollar Index sits this morning at 90.93, still weaker than yesterday. Gold & Silver are moving upward this morning, as the early trading has Gold up $4 and Silver up 9-cents. 

The BIG news this morning is that in Britain, they are rolling out the mass distribution of the virus vaccine. The Pfizer version of the virus is being used here…  The world is watching to see what side effects come of this new drug…  We may not know of any side effects for some time…  I find that the roll out of this new vaccine in the U.K. is interesting…  Why there? And why not here?  You know how I always say that what happens in the U.K. usually shows up on our shores about 6 months later?  Well, in this case I’m thinking that 6 months would be too long a time to wait for “our turn”…  

I read the other day that once given the vaccine, a person would receive a “card”, that identifies them as a recipient of the vaccine… That’s really kind of dumb in my book… why not just put a stamp on each person’s forehead, that said, “IAGP”….    (I’m A Guinea Pig)… 

I don’t know why, but the Pink Floyd song, Us and Them, keeps coming into my head, with this line: “haven’t you heard, it’s a battle of words, and most of them are lies”….  

Man, I just learned that one of my longtime heroes had died at age 97… Chuck Yeager the famous pilot that broke the sound barrier, back in the day… He was a decorated fighter pilot in WWII, and I loved reading his book about his life…

OK, back to regular programming…  Well, the U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday, had the Rocktober print of Consumer Credit (read debt), and there was a big surprise here… Consumer’s in Rocktober, paid down their credit card debt, by $5.5 Billion, to the lowest level its been since May 2017…  However, the revolving debt was still rising, and added $12.7 Billion in Rocktober…  

IF…. and that’s a BIG IF, consumers are doing the right thing and paying down their credit card debt,  that would be a BIG Plus for their respective balance sheets… But the economy? The economy relies on personal consumption/ spending… And with consumers paying down their debt instead of spending more on trinkets and stuff they don’t need, the economy will continue to weaken…  

Today’s Cupboard only has the stupid Productivity print for the 3rd QTR… I expect this to remain Steady Eddie with the 2nd QTR’s print of 4.9%… But since I’m no longer in the working environment, being retired as I am, I no longer get to see how hard people are working… I would suspect that those working from home, have seen their productivity go down… But that’s just a guess on my part. 

To Recap…  The Vaccine gets a rollout in Britain… Chuck Yeager died… Oh, and Gold & Silver had a great day yesterday, for the the first time in over a month, the metals rallied on a Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day! And it appears to Chuck that the Europeans are intervening in the currencies, to keep the euro from soaring…   And the Data Cupboard is really disappointing, as usual… 

Before we head to the Big Finish today, I have this for your viewing… 

I was going through Twitter and Parler yesterday and found this interesting bit of history of the dollar’s value since the Fed was shoved down the throats of U.S. citizens, by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, this should be shown on mass media TV stations, and get everyone riled up about what the cartel, I mean the Fed has done to our dollar through the years… Check this out!

What is $100 (USD) worth in 1913 over time?

1913: $100

1923: $57.89

1933: $76.15

1943: $57.23

1953: $37.08

1963: $32.35

1973: $22.30

1983: $9.94

1993: $6.85

2003: $5.38

2013: $4.25

2019: $3.87

And still, we allow the cartel, I mean the Fed, to work their “magic”… 

For What It’s Worth…   Well, as I’ve explained before a few times, but will again now, whenever things begin to get really hairy in the markets, and world, I turn to publishing guru, Bill Bonner, to see what he has to say about what’s going on… And today, that’s what I’m going to do… So, here’s Bill most recent take on things, and it can be found here: Republicans and Democrats Have One Common Goal – Rogue Economics

Or, here’s your snippet: “Every advanced society has an elite. Its patricians. It’s Aristoi. Its propertied classes. Its gentry or its Hidalgos.

They are the lucky ones. The smart ones… the educated ones… the ones with the Ph.D.s, the formulae, and the secrets. 

They’re also usually the ones with the money.

They design the bridges, write the laws, and count the votes. They also write computer code… and God knows what else.

In ancient societies, the elite claimed to have some inside track with God. It – the elite – used religion to stay in power. The religion explained each caste’s duties and privileges. One ruled. The others obeyed. 

Today, the elite uses science.

We don’t need to wear masks, said the experts in January. Ooops… No, we must all wear masks, say the experts now.

“The Earth is freezing” was the climatological alarm in the 1970s. Now, “it’s burning up” is the gospel according to today’s experts. 

There will be no more financial crises “in our lifetimes,” forecast Janet Yellen, Ph.D., three years ago. Now, she says we must mobilize Congress and the Federal Reserve to fight the crisis she said wouldn’t happen. 

We must do battle with the Sunni Muslims in Iraq, said the experts; the Shi’a are our friends. Now, we must fight the Shi’a in Iran; the Sunni are our friends. Or vice versa?

In the past, only the elite could read and write. This gave them a special source of knowledge and power. They could open up their sacred books… and there, they would find wisdom and secrets forbidden to the masses. 

Then, when the invention of the printing press made literacy more widespread, the elite set up schools to teach people what to think and do.

Catholic schools taught obedience to the Pope. Shiite Muslim schools did the same for their Ayatollahs. Secular schools required students to pledge allegiance to the flag. 

Like all things in nature, elites age and decay. Power corrupts them. Wealth weakens them. Over time, each generation becomes more grasping and less competent.

 

We saw last week that when Team Trump yields to the Biden Bunch, the new White House elite will be a bit more feminine and darker-skinned.

But in the ways that matter, they will be of the same tribe, drawn from the best schools and privileged pasts, where they were taught the new faith – that they have a right to rule… relying on their superior knowledge of (social) science. 

Then, they made their way up through the ranks, joined political parties, took jobs in Washington, moved from lobbying to think tanks to staff positions on Capitol Hill. And there… they found what they were after – power.”

Chuck Again…  Oh my… what have we done? Our Empire of Debt, is about to be expanded again. You know, you can only put so much air in a balloon, before it pops… So, the same thing goes for the debt bubble…  I’m just saying… 

Market Prices  12/8/20: American Style: A$ .7422, kiwi .7040, C$ .7816, euro 1.2121, sterling 1.3358, Swiss $1.1243, European Style: rand 15.0094, krone 8.7515, SEK 8.4323,  forint 296.54,  zloty 3.6784,   koruna 21.7600, RUB 73.90, yen 104.08, sing 1.3368, HKD 7.7506, INR 73.55, China 6.5330, peso 19.82,  BLR 5.1260, Dollar Index 90.93,  Oil $45.44,  10-year .92%, Silver $24.66, Platinum $1,033.00, Palladium $2,332.00, and Gold… $1,867.70

That’s it for today…  A little shorter today, as I didn’t have a lot to say today, which is a good thing sometimes! HA!  Well, my beloved Missouri Tigers will play the mighty Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday in Columbia, Mo. It’s a mighty big test for the upstart program at Mizzou…  And then later that day, the Missouri Basketball team will play their Braggin’ Rights game VS Illinois… So, a day of black and gold for me! I’ll be digging around in my closet for smaller clothes, as I’ve dropped some weight lately… And that’s a good thing!  The Blue Jays take us to the finish line today with their great song: Maybe…  The Blue Jays were two members (John Lodge & Justin Haywood) from the Moody Blues, so the Blue Jays music sounds like Moody Blues…   I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

 

 

December 7, 2020

*Currencies finish last week with a rally… 

* Gold & Silver try to rally back… 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! What a football game for my beloved Missouri Tigers on Saturday VS rival Arkansas! It was tough to watch until the end… Back and forth, back and forth with over 1,000 yards of total offense for the game…  I was here watching it alone… So when I was screaming at the officials that it wasn’t a targeting offense on Mizzou linebacker Nick Bolton, nobody could hear me…

You know, I miss the days, where friends, and family would come together to watch our Missouri Tigers football games…  Saturday night, I watched Clemson win their game and then go to the corner of the visitor’s stadium, where their fans would be sitting if they were there, and sing their fight song… College football has the best traditions, and I was glad to see Clemson continue with them…

Today is December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day…  Our first day of infamy, unfortunately…  Supertramp greets me this morning with their uber-great song: Hide In Your Shell… 

Ok… Well, Friday was another good day for the euro, as the single unit moved upward, and passed the 1.21 level. Like I said last week, this upward move in the euro has got to be a real pain in the rear of the Eurozone officials, who are struggling with the Club Med countries once again…  For new readers, I coined the phrase Club Med countries, to signify the members of the euro, who reside in the south… Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain…  These semi-socialist countries have given away the store to their citizens over the years, run up debts to their eyeballs and past them, and continue to cry about the requirements the northern countries of the euro put on them for more bailouts… 

Longtime readers may recall me telling you all, years ago, about how Goldman Sachs, aka Lola, had schooled Greece on how to hide their debts, and by doing so, Greece was able to continue to borrow at the same borrowing costs as Germany…  Now, someone with an ounce of sense should have been able to figure out that there was no way Greece should have the same borrowing costs of Germany, but that didn’t stop the Big Boys from selling Greek debt…  to the folks that should have done their homework, but didn’t.  

OK… Enough of that talk… The dollar bugs are really hiding behind the wall boards these days, afraid to come out of hiding, and quaking with fear that they are about to be relegated to behind the wall boards for a long period of time.  Longtime fave economist, Stephen Roach, told his audience a couple of months ago, that the dollar was ready to be weakened by a large amount…  And of course, I told you a few weeks ago, that what we could be seeing is the beginning of a new Weak dollar trend… 

And the Dollar Index is at 90.99 this morning, which means that it has fallen further, as last week it was 91.30 ish at last check…  There’s something brewing here folks… and it’s not coffee! 

And then there was the famous Chuck talk about how all these debts these countries around the world would have to be dealt with, and the only way to deal with them these days, now that the countries have all tried to inflate them away, with no success, is to default on them…  And that fiat currencies around the world would suffer, with Gold & Silver replacing them. So, what gives with all this talk about a long term weak dollar trend coming into place?

Well, I never said that these defaults would take place in the next year, or whenever, just that they would take place eventually… So, that’s not going to stop another weak dollar trend from taking place…  In fact, a very weak dollar might just be what the cartel, I mean the Fed, Treasury and Gov’t are looking for… And apparently, they are going to get their wish! 

The thing that you, me and the guy down the street need to know about a weak dollar trend, is that our buying power evaporates…  Things will cost much more, and the companies that sell things, will do their best to downsize whatever it is you’re buying to lessen the cost… But in the end you get less, for less… and that’s a no-win deal…  The loss of buying power, to me, has always been like a TAX!

But what’s a country to do when they have zero bound interest rates, negative real interest yields in their Gov’t Bonds, and a darn plandemic still hanging over our economy like the Sword of Damocles… ? They have to take whatever the markets tell them to take, and in this case it’s going to be a very weak dollar…

So… getting back to the markets from late last week…  We saw something that you don’t see everyday on Thursday and Friday… Thursday Gold closed up $10.50, and Silver closed down 4.5-cents… And on Friday, Gold closed down $3.20, and Silver closed up 11-cents…   So, Gold closed the week at $1,839, and Silver close the week at $24.26…   While $1,839 isn’t $2,000, it is a far cry from what was going on earlier in the week, when the daily chopping of Gold’s value was going on… And now that the price engineering takedowns to get the Dec. Long contracts out of their positions so that deliver didn’t need to be made to them, from stock that wasn’t there… And that so the price manipulators could book their profits on their short positions… We can get Gold & Silver back on the rally tracks. 

Speaking of short positions…  Ed Steer tells me in his Saturday letter, (www.edsteergoldsilver.com) that it would take more than 160 days of Silver production to equal the ounces of Silver that have been sold short. And it would take over 90 days of Gold production to equal the ounces of Gold that have been sold short…   And here’s where I have a problem that the continues to be ignored by the CFTC (commodities regulator), and that is… How can Gold or Silver that hasn’t even been pulled out of the mines yet, and who knows maybe never will be, be sold short before it is above ground? 

Riddle me this Batman… Are these short trades a result of customers thinking that the metals will be worth less when they are mined? Or, are they simply used to engineer price takedowns that are used to line the pockets of the metals traders in the Casino Banks like JPMorgan?

OK, I’ve got to move on… This is a Monday, and the past 4 Mondays we saw major price takedowns in Gold & Silver… Right now in the early trading today, Gold is down $8.30… UGH!  Mondays… Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day…  (Mamas & Papas) And Silver is down 45-cents, and has been pushed back below $24 once again… 

I talked last week about why investors should just ignore these interruptions to the Gold & Silver rally…. And then the good folks at GATA sent me this blurb that I think is important for you to read, so here you go!

“Nick Barisheff of bullion dealer and fund manager BMG Group reviews gold leasing by central banks and says they do not have the gold they claim to own. Neither do gold exchange-traded funds own the gold they claim to have, Barisheff adds.

Barisheff can’t predict when the longstanding manipulation of the gold price will end, but he says it should not discourage investing in gold, since over the longer term gold has been outperforming all assets and since U.S. treasury bonds can’t provide a safe haven when the U.S. dollar is steadily depreciating.

The manipulation will break down eventually, Barisheff says, and when it does gold investors will get a bonus.”

Chuck again…  OK…  The GATA folks also sent me a note highlighting a speech that James Rickards gave to the Australia’s Gold and Alternative Investments Conference, last week, where Rickards told the audience that the only course Central Banks have is to devalue their respective currencies VS Gold, and that investors should front-run the Central Banks…   

That’s an interesting take on what’s going on, isn’t it?  I’m just saying… 

OK… I listened to another of Grant Williams and Bill Fleckenstein’s podcast series titled: The End Game…  They interview different investment gurus about what they see for the End Game…  And this one had the famous investor, James Rogers, as their guest…   This was one of the best ones I’ve heard…  

One of the ideas they discussed centered around Japan… And how the Bank of Japan (BOJ) had basically cornered the Japanese Gov’t Bond (JGB‘s) market, (sort of like the cartel, I mean the Fed has done with Treasuries) and the question arose of what would happen if the BOJ just decided to tear up all those JGB’s and say, they didn’t have to be repaid?   Well, that’s just another form of default folks… And then who’s ever going to buy your Gov’t debt again?  

But do I see these knuckleheads that run Central Banks doing this? Of course I do, because they never consider what happens after they ruin economies…   

OK, back to reality…  Let’s hope that the scenario I just described never becomes reality… Especially, here in the good ‘ole USA…

The U.S. Data Cupboard last week had some surprises in it… First and foremost, the Jobs Jamboree on Friday for the November employment figures showed that 245,000 jobs were created, which was far below the expectations of 432,000…  And there were no shenanigans played by the BLS with only 6,000 jobs added, which was a far cry from their 346,000 they added out of thin air, the month before!

The Weekly Initial Jobless claims were interesting…  In a 3-day, shortened Holiday week, there were 712,000 initial claims filed…  712,000 for 3 days!  Just for fun, let’s average those 3 days out and then see what the number would have been for 5 days… 1,186,666…   OK, I know that we probably can’t do that, but I wanted to make sure you noticed that the 712,000 were only for 3 days… 

I have an article for you in the FWIW Section today about how these Claims numbers are questionable… So, stay tuned, don’t touch that dial! 

We, as a country still have over 20 Million people on continuing claims… And that number has been coming down, but only because receivers of unemployment benefits run out… And then they are no longer counted as unemployed…  Genius right? I mean, who on earth thought of that way of counting the Unemployed? 

We also saw Factory Orders for Rocktober drop from 1.3% to 1.0%…  Just wait until next month when we see the Nov. report… 

This week’s Data Cupboard doesn’t have much for us, with the highlight of the week being the stupid CPI (consumer inflation) report for last month… Other than that, we have Consumer Credit (read debt) due to print this morning, and other things that aren’t quite as important the rest of the week.

To recap… It was a good week for the currencies, led by the euro, to gain VS the dollar, but the overnight markets have seen some pullback, so we’ll have to see what today brings us… Chuck is convinced that we’re in the beginning of a new weak dollar trend…  Gold & Silver rallied last week after the first two days of takedowns, but are both down in the early trading this morning… It is a Monday…  

And before we head to the Big Finish today, I wanted to mention that I heard on the nightly news that thieves are cutting the catalytic converters from cars and stealing them for the palladium that’s in them… Toyotas seem to have the most palladium in their Converters…  Copper will be the next to get ripped out and stolen from properties, and the the price of copper has been rising…   Just another Public Service Announcement for you! 

For What It’s Worth…  Well, longtime readers know that I don’t trust any of the employment numbers from the BLS…  And now I have to question the Claims numbers each week too. According to this article that can be found here: U.S. Jobless-Claims Data to Come With Disclaimer on Accuracy (msn.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “The closely watched weekly reports on U.S. claims for unemployment benefits will soon come with a disclaimer that the figures aren’t accurately capturing how many people are actually claiming benefits, after a government watchdog found the figures to be “flawed.”

The latest jobless-claims report said 20.5 million people were claiming benefits across all unemployment insurance programs in the week ended Nov. 7. This figure includes programs ranging from regular state unemployment insurance to special pandemic programs providing extended benefits and help for those not traditionally eligible for unemployment assistance.

But if a person files for six weeks of benefits in a given week, for example, that’s typically counted as six separate people in the total, instead of one person. The GAO report said this method of counting is normal for the Labor Department, and before the pandemic provided a good proxy for the actual number of people claiming benefits.”

Chuck again… Wait, What? They’re telling me that the numbers are flawed the wrong way? I don’t believe that one minute!  I do believe that the numbers are flawed, but not the way they think they are!  I’m not buying that argument one iota! 

Market  Prices 12/7/20: American Style: A$ .7392,  kiwi .7020, C$ .7806, euro 1.2108, sterling 1.3280, Swiss $1.1221, European Style: rand 15.2388, krone 8.8070, SEK 8.4388,  forint 297.17,  zloty 3.6857,   koruna 21.8900, RUB 74.08, yen 104.22, sing 1.3376, HKD 7.7503, INR 73.85, China 6.5306, peso 19.89,  BRL 5.1547,  Dollar Index 90.99,  Oil $45.75,  10-year .94%, Silver $23.82, Platinum $1.021.00, Palladium $2,353.00, and Gold… $1,830.80

That’s it for today… One week down, being alone during the day, another week to go… It was a good weekend for my Missouri Tigers, who won both their football game and basketball game! This coming Saturday, will be the Braggin’ Rights Game, which used to be the hottest ticket for a game in the city… Missouri VS Illinois… I went to that game every year for about 10 years, and only saw my Tigers win a couple of those games… And now because of the plandemic, only a few thousand fans will see the game in person… UGH!  I head to the wound center around noon today, hopefully this is all going to end soon…  Oh! my oncologist visit last week was good… So, I have that going for me! HAHAHAHA!  Time to go…  Blackfoot takes us to the finish line today with his song: Highway Song…  (a good long one to finish out the letter!)  I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, (can’t trust that day!) and will Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

December 2, 2020 

* The euro & the metals have a great day! 

* Chuck has an early Christmas gift for you! 

Good Day.. And a Manfred The Wonder Dog Wednesday to you…  As a reminder, don’t look for a Pfennig tomorrow, the next one will come your way on Monday, Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day, for those of you who are historians, like me! Our first day of infamy… More on the on Monday. All by myself… don’t want to be all by myself, any more… (Eric Carmon)…  It’s only been 3 days, and the house is so quiet and eerie during the day, that yesterday, I just went out to my car, got in it and went for a drive just to break the monotony of the quiet house… Today, my two older kids, Andrew and Dawn, will come to visit me, as we will all be going together to a funeral home, as a family member passed away last week. Not someone that we knew well, but knew. And Kathy, Chuck, Andrew and Rachel attended his wedding a few years back. Too young to pass, that’s for sure… RIP Tommy…  OK… back to the Smooth Jazz Christmas station on Pandora this morning, and they have for me The Stephen Kummer Trio’s version of: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas…

I looked up buying the CD that Stephen Kummer’s Trio put together that gets the individual songs played on this station, and it was selling on Amazon for $60!!!  I said, well I guess I can listen to it for free on Pandora, so I passed….

What a day for the euro! The single unit began the morning at 1.1966, and last night when I checked, it was trading at 1.2080!  I have a good friend, Mike, that likes to kid me about getting excited about 25-cent moves… Well yesterday’s move was over $1, Mike… now imagine if you have $100,000 invested in euros, and you bought them a last fall, when we first had this discussion…  You would be up $10,000 in profits…  Of course I cherry picked the dates, because, well, that’s my prerogative! HA! 

The euro, Norwegian krone, New Zealand dollar, and sterling were the top three performing currencies yesterday… I have to think that at some point the European Leaders are going to need a crying towel, for as I said a few months ago, a stronger euro is not what the Eurozone needs right now, but as President Nixon’s Treasury Sec., John Connally told finance ministers in 1971… “The dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem,”  So, when will we see some intervention, first jawboning, then physical intervention to at least stem the growing euro’s value? I would think very soon… So, don’t chase this market… If you haven’t already bought your euros, you probably need to wait to see if there is a pullback due to intervention, to buy…  Don’t fall into the trap that most retail investors fall into… Chasing a market higher…

And the euro was joined in the rally VS the dollar by Gold & Silver… Gold closed up $39 to $1,816.20, and Silver closed up $1.38, to $24.08… Silver’s rise was very impressive, folks… You rarely see a day when Silver rises over a dollar in value, without some response from the price manipulators, who especially like to take Silver to the woodshed.  

In the overnight markets, Gold started down $6 probably from some profit taking… And then went through the night, it fought back, and is trading in the early markets this morning up $7.50… And the euro has slipped just a tiny bit from its lofty figure of last night of 1.2080, to 1.2066, as I write… Still quite an impressive move yesterday for the two anti-dollar asset classes… 

I know I don’t talk about Platinum and Palladium very much, but I do have to note that Platinum has been on a tear onward and upward, and has climbed back above $1,000… Good show! 

And in our daily tracking of the Dollar Index, we see that the index has fallen again down to 91.37…  As I’ve explained in the past, the Dollar Index is heavily weighted with euros (from the combination of all the legacy currencies, francs, lira, etc.) But the markets like to use the Index, and so we use it as a quick show of how the dollar is trading… which for the last 6 weeks has been down… 

Ok, I made a big deal out of the Powell, Mnuchin testimony to Congress on the CARES Act spending yesterday, and it did turn into an exchange of words that became almost like a debate, on how each person sees the economy…  One senator called Mnuchin’s calling back of the unused funds as “malpractice”…  And with that, just like everything else these days, this hearing became Political…  There’s much to talk about here, so I have a recap in the FWIW section today on this, so stay tuned, don’t touch that dial, and you’ll come around to it in about 5 minutes…

There could be some real problems ahead for the economy folks… More shutdowns, lockdowns, whatever you want to call them… They didn’t work the first time, for if they did, we wouldn’t be experiencing a new wave… And people suffered, the economy suffered, and life was changed forever… And now we’re going to go the same thing over again… The World Health Organization says that 130 Million people world wide will starve from Lockdowns…  Tom Woods just gave a speech on this and his video can be found here: What I Told State Legislators About Lockdowns | Tom Woods . But I wan to point out here is that 130 Million people exist on the east coast of the U.S. so if you were to drive from Main to Miami, and saw 130 Million people starving, what would you think?

Ok, and no, I’m not out to kill anyone’s grandma…  So, don’t you dare send me any emails telling me that’s what I’m trying to do! What I’m trying to do is to educate people on the truth on the political science… that keeps putting fear into everyone’s mind, for as long as they keep the fear factor high, they can control us…  I’m just saying…

And you thought this was a letter about investments, economies and dolts… Just another public service announcement from yours truly… Think of it as an early Christmas gift!

Hey! I hear we might get a dusting of snow Thursday night!  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have just a dusting of snow on Christmas? 

OK… sorry for that change of direction there… I got to the fork in the road, and decided to turn a different direction… 

Now, back to our regular programming…   The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the Nov. ISM Manufacturing Index, which I told you I thought would slip from the Rocktober number of 59, and that’s exactly what it did, slipping to 57 (there are some decimals involved, but I rounded them off!) And next month’s report for Nov. should show more rot on the vine…   When you look under the hood of the report you find that Managers that were surveyed were skeptical of the future, and the employment component of the report was very soft…   

I think this data is very important, as it is showing us that the momentum the economy was building is fading fast… 

Today’s Cupboard only has the ADP Employment Report for Nov. the precursor to the BLS Jobs Jamboree on Friday this week… And again, I believe that the ADP report will be weaker than it was in Rocktober…  We were also supposed to see U.S. Vehicle Sales yesterday, but the data was delayed…  I guess they didn’t have enough time to massage and cook the numbers to be just right, as Goldilocks would say…  

To recap… The euro had a great day, and dragged some selected currencies with it to the dance party. Gold & Silver had great days too! The overnight markets started out on the wrong foot for the metals, but turned around at some point while I was sleeping a bit, and is up $7.50 in the early trading today…  And the Powell / Mnuchin testimony before Congress turned political, just like everything else these days… It turns my stomach when I see it coming… Why is everything politicized? UGH! 

For What It’s Worth…  Well, I built this up earlier in the letter, and the snippet won’t be able to capture the who shootin’ match, so here’s the link to the article I used, so you can check it out in its entirety… Rare Mnuchin-Powell spat takes center stage at COVID-19 hearing | TheHill

Or, here’s Your snippet: “A rare public break between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell took center stage during a Senate hearing Tuesday as Republicans and Democrats sparred over the expiration of coronavirus relief.

Democrats were eager to exploit the fallout from Mnuchin’s recent decision to close $454 billion in Fed emergency lending facilities set up through the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a move that elicited public criticism from Powell.

While the Fed initially disagreed with Mnuchin’s decision, Powell eventually relented and agreed to return the unused credit protections by Dec. 31 without endorsing the Treasury secretary’s decision.

Both Mnuchin and Powell sought to play down the divide before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday by deferring to each other’s authority and treading carefully around disagreements. Mnuchin insisted he was simply abiding by a statutory deadline to wind down certain programs by the end of the year, and Powell said the Fed did not dispute Mnuchin’s legal authority to make that call.

“Our thinking is that we would have left facilities in place to be backstops. We don’t question the secretary’s decision about the CARES Act money because that’s entirely his decision to make. But I think central banks generally would have done that,” Powell said.

But furious Democrats, who insist the lending facilities could be crucial if the third COVID-19 wave causes more financial turmoil, urged Powell to take a tougher stand against what they called a politically motivated decision to undermine the economy before Mnuchin departs on Jan. 20.

“My decision not to extend these facilities was not an economic decision,” Mnuchin told senators. “I find it implausible that any member of this committee believed that in voting for the CARES Act, you were authorizing me to invest $500 billion to make loans in perpetuity.”

Chuck again…  And now this morning it was revealed that President Trump signed an executive order giving Mnuchin $50 Billion to use for the ESF (exchange stabilization fund, or slush fund if you will) and Mnuchin decided to take the extra $386 Billion on his own…  this stuff is crazy folks, and just shows to go ya that when you start dealing with these large numbers it numbs the minds of people, which is their objective to keep everyone confused…  I’m just saying… 

Market Price 12/2/20: American Style: A$ .7368,  kiwi .7047, C$ .7725,  euro 1.2068, sterling 1.3332, Swiss $1.1156, European Style: rand 15.3760, krone 8.8682, SEK 8.5183, forint 296.27,  zloty 3.7092, koruna 21.8780, RUB 76.02, yen 104.55, sing 1.3403, HKD 7.7515, INR 73.70, China 6.5715, peso 20.09,  BRL 5.2890,  Dollar Index 91.37,  Oil $44.42,  10-year .92%, Silver $24.00, Platinum $1,015.00, Palladium $2,427.00, and Gold… $1,823.70

That’s it for today, and this week… next week will be a full week, the Good Lord willing, and Creek don’t rise… Did you know that the Creek don’t rise, isn’t about the bubbling brook rising, but rather the Creek Indians rising….. Good to know! I’ll see my oncologist today for the last time until April, when I return from Florida…  She’ll be so sad to see me go… HA!   My latest blood sugar numbers were lower and keep going lower, which is a good thing… I don’t want to be a diabetic!  When I go to doctor’s offices they always ask me if I’m a diabetic, and I love telling them no…  and I want to keep telling them no! I’ve cut the carbs I intake, not a keto diet, just a cutback of the carbs… No sugar means so sweets, and brother do I have a sweet tooth! So, that alone is a very big pain to me! But I’ll do what I have to do… You can bet your sweet bippie on that! OK… enough of that talk!  One of these days, medicine will come up with a magic pill that cures all that ails me… Hey! I’ve got to have hope, and dreams right?   Well the jazz Christmas station is playing Beggie Adair’s version of:  The Holly and the Ivy….  I hope you have a Manfred The Wonder Dog, Wednesday, and will be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

December 1, 2020

* The dollar bugs fight back on Monday… 

* Gold & Silver are back on the rally tracks today! 

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you!  And Welcome to December… And good riddance to November!!! I think I’m going to need Tom Terrific today to fight off the Crabby Appleton mood I’m in this morning… You see, the gout in my arm returned over the weekend, and the normal treatment for this ailment is a 5 day pack of steroids. Unfortunately, for me, the first two days of high doses leaves me sleepless in Seattle… Sunday night I got 1 hour of sleep, and last night maybe, 3 in bits… I’m on the downside of the doses now, so maybe tonight some real sleep and rest is in my future. But for today, I’m in no mood to be dealt with, so if you have something not so nice to say to me in the Pfennig Replies, you had better watch out for my reply! Oh, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to write on Thursday morning, as I would be hurried throughout the morning to get it done and out the door, in time for me to be at my oncologist’s office in time.  So, I just made an executive decision for the first time in 4 years!  I haven’t been officially retired for 4 years, but my last couple at the bank were in a reduced capacity mode… They had sent me out to pasture 2 years, before TIAA came along and pulled the pin on my career… But I really couldn’t answer the bell every day any longer, so it was all for the good… I would have liked to been able to make the call myself though, I would have thought that after I had done for the Bank, they would have let me do that, and not just call me on the phone and tell me the gig was up…  I’m just saying…   Ok.. see, I’m in no mood to be nice today! Weezer greets me this morning with their catchy tune: Island In The Sun… 

Ok, that was a long first paragraph… I just thought I would give the folks that only read the first and last paragraphs, something to read while they sip their coffee….   Ok, well, the dollar weakness that we saw yesterday morning, backed off a bit, not much, but by a bit, and it kind of took the edge off the selling of the dollar… For the day, the euro was 1.1987 in the morning, and finished the day at 1.1958, and the Aussie dollar (A$) which was trading over 74-cents in the early morning, finished the day at .7366…  Gold, which began the day down $17 fought back throughout the day, and finished down $11, to close at $1,777.20, and Silver, which began the day down 54-cents, ended the day down 10-cents, to close at $22.70. 

There was no vaccine news, except the VP announcing that distribution of a vaccine will begin in a couple of weeks… Nothing new there, so one has to wonder, what or who threw up the roadblock for the currencies to keep pushing the dollar downward… Strange days indeed, so peculiar momma, Strange days indeed. (John Lennon) I would normally say that it looked like some profit taking was the trading pattern of the day, but these days, with all the manipulations and back room deals, it has become very difficult to decipher what’s what when it comes to a day of selling…  

In the overnight markets, It’s a whole different story for Gold & Silver this morning… Gold is up $31 to $1,808, and Silver is up 78-cents to $23.48. I had a long time reader send me a note yesterday, and asked me  if I thought the low was in for Gold?  I said that I thought that Gold would recover once the delivery period for the December Contracts at COMEX ended, which would began late last week and early this week.  I did say the other day that historically, Gold doesn’t perform too well, during past Decembers… 

But those Decembers didn’t just have the “rout of the month” that Gold experienced in November, so a recovery will be very welcomed, and should erase the dark days of November…  I just thought of something… This year’s November for Gold will be another reason I dislike the month of November so much! 

I had a dear reader send me a note yesterday, to tell me about how he protects his Bitcoin, and I congratulated him on doing that, but… Think about that for a minute, how many people are doing that?  I would think that backing up your computer to a flash drive every night, would be something that most people fail to do, just like changing their passwords, or even turning their computer off and back on, to allow it to refresh… 

OK… I had received a notice from LinkedIn that a former colleague, Peter Mason, has celebrated 1 year at his new job, so I logged into the site to send him a congrats notice, and when doing so I noticed this  message from the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) who returned a man’s tax return because of the way he answered this question: “Do you have anyone dependent on you?” the man wrote: 2.1 Million illegal immigrants, 1.1 Million crackheads, 4.4 Million unemployable scroungers, 80,000 prisoners in 85 prisons, and 450 idiots in parliament, thousands of politicians, and an entire group that call themselves Senators.”  

The CRA wrote back that the answer was unacceptable, to which the man answered, “ who did I leave out?”   

Now that’s funny I don’t care who you are, (as Larry the Cable guy says)!  I needed that diversion away from my Crabby Appleton mood this morning!

Of course seeing Gold & Silver back on the rally tracks this morning, and not have to report another “drive-by shooting” cheered me up a bit before reading that CRA stuff…  

The Dollar Index is trading at 91.80 this morning, and shows the pushback that the dollar bugs employed yesterday to bring the Index to that level, from the 91.60 is sat at yesterday morning.  But one day’s trading doesn’t make a trend, like Rome wasn’t built in a day. You have to step back and look at a month’s worth of trading to see the forest from the trees… And that’s what I did yesterday, telling you that the Dollar Index was 93.39 on 10/20…   

I just wish the price manipulators of dollars would realize that their engineered take downs don’t stop of trend when the trend is firmly in place… All they do is give potential buyers of currencies an opportunity to buy at cheaper levels… And we all do thoroughly enjoy cheaper levels, when we’re looking to buy, don’t we? 

Of course if you’re already set on your balances, and not looking to buy more at the time of the price dip, you don’t like seeing a cheaper buying opportunity!  So, as the old saying goes, You can make 1/2 of the people happy 1/2 of the time…   sure does come into play here, eh? 

OK… get ready for this today…  Cartel, I mean Fed, chairman Jerome Powell, and Treasury Sec. Mnuchin will go before a Congressional hearing on the CARES Act spending…  This is where things could get quite ugly, IF the right questions are asked and answers are demanded… Honest answers…  I’m sure our friends over at www.wallstreetonparade.com will have something to write about, since they’ve been all over this ongoing missing funds since the beginning…  

Other than that testimony, the U.S. Data Cupboard has the Nov. ISM Manufacturing Index today. The ISM has been a real mystery to me, in the past couple of months as it recovered from its sub-50 levels of the spring, and jumped to a 58 level in Rocktober… But what about the shutdowns? I think the Nov. report today will show the effects of the shutdowns, and will be weaker… But then I never expected to see the ISM rise so strongly the last few months either…. Hmmm….  

There will also be some cartel, I mean Fed Heads, on the speaking circuit today, with Brainard, and Daly, speaking…  I started to make a joke about it being Ladies Day, but then I thought, that might be not politically correct, so I won’t…    See? I’m waking up and rounding about in a better mood as I write… So, writing is good for my soul, I guess…  It doesn’t put me to sleep is all I know! 

To recap…  The dollar bugs pushed back yesterday, but the move was small, and the currencies are back to pushing the envelope of currency appreciation across the desk once again this morning. And after suffering through another Monday morning of downward movements, Gold fought back, although still ending down on the day, but has reversed its downward course this morning, and is up $31 as I write…  Today, is the day that Powell & Mnuchin speak to Congress about the Cares Act spending, Chuck believes this could be really good Pfodder for the Pfennig tomorrow! 

For What It’s Worth…  OK… longtime reader Bob, sent me a link to an article about businesses shutting down, and at first I thought, no news here, but when I clicked on it, the article talks about how many businesses have shutdown in New Jersey… I have friends that live in N.J. so this interested me and thought it to be FWIW worthy! And you have find the article here: Almost one-third of small businesses in New Jersey have have closed: report | TheHill

Or, here’s your snippet: “A third of small businesses in New Jersey have closed down in 2020, according to a report from The Star-Ledger newspaper.

“It’s really bad… And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter.” said Eileen Kean, the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Harvard-based data project TrackTheRecovery.org estimated that 31 percent of businesses have closed down so far as of Nov. 9. This number is just above the national average estimated by the website. The New Jersey Business & Industry Association reported similar numbers, estimating 28 percent of businesses had closed down by October.

The newspaper notes that despite the holiday shopping season, business leaders are still concerned that the trend could get worse as stimulus talks stall on Capitol Hill.

New Jersey, like most of the U.S., is currently experiencing a surge of new cases. Over 329,000 cases and nearly 17,000 deaths have been reported. On Nov. 21, New Jersey recorded 4,669 cases, the most it has ever reported in a single day.

Last week New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was harassed by hecklers who shouted at him while he and his family ate at an outdoor restaurant. Speaking to “CBS This Morning,” Murphy said he understood “the overwhelming amount of stress.”

Chuck Again…  economic shutdowns are really stupid and that’s my take on it and you won’t change my mind!  

Market  Prices 12/1/20: American Style: A$.7361,  kiwi .7035, C$ .7706, euro 1.1966, sterling 1.3321, Swiss $1.1038, European Style: rand 15.3040, krone 8.8613, SEK 8.5350,  forint 298.56,  zloty 3.7447,   koruna 21.9276, RUB 76.17, yen 104.41, sing 1.3408, HKD 7.7517, INR 73.58, China 6.5784, peso 20.11, BRL 5.3411,  Dollar Index 91.80,  Oil $45.18,  10-year .86%, Silver $23.48, Platinum $987.00, Palladium $2,423.00, and Gold… $1,808.60

That’s it for today… A little shorter than the previous 3 Pfennigs, eh? I look up at my pictures on the poster board that faces me at my writing desk, and I see a picture of my darling granddaughter, Delaney Grace sitting on Santa’s knee when she was 2 years old… And I thought, man, is she so darn cute! And then a sad thought came into mind, that kids won’t be able to sit on Santa’s knee this year and tell them what they were wishing him to bring them…  This is American tradition…  Damn plandemic!  Man, I quickly went back to Crabby Appleton there didn’t I?  Ok, I had better end this here before I really say something to tick off everybody!  Faces take us to the finish line today with their song: Ooh La La…  One of my all time fave songs for sure!  I hope you have a delightful December, and a Tom Terrific Tuesday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

November 30, 2020 

* Currencies have a good week, and start this week up!

* Ed Steer called the takedown in Gold last week “another drive-by shooting!” 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! I hope everyone had a very nice Thanksgiving… I did, and quite frankly, it was better than most! There were the 12 of us, and we all sat around the dining room table, no need for a kids table this year… I started asking my grandkids, what they were thankful for, and then it turned into everyone taking a turn with their thanks… When it came to me, I simply said, “I’m thankful that the Good Lord has allowed me to live all these years, so I can be here today, with all of you”… Darling daughter Dawn, began to cry, and we had to change the subject…  Friday, was grandson Everett’s Birthday… He’s 10 now… Where have the years gone? I asked Everett if he had a girlfriend yet, because when I was 10 I had a girlfriend…  He got all red and said no way! I’m back to rock-n-roll this morning, which means that Sugar Ray is up first this morning with their song: Every Morning…

Saturday morning, was the first time I looked to see what had happened on Friday… And by that time I had read Ed Steer’s Saturday edition, in which he described the selling in Gold On Friday as: “Another drive-by shooting”… OMG what are these demons doing to the price of Gold? The shiny metal lost another $22 on Friday, and closed at $1,788. OK, call me crazy if you will, but these takedowns last week had a purpose to them…  And I think I know what the purpose was…   Oh, wait, I’ll let this missive from Dave Kranzler which was reported by the GATA folks, tell you… (he’ll make more sense of this than me!)

“The gold price was given a a quick $35 ride on the down-elevator today starting at 7:40 a.m ET. There were no news items or events that occurred that would have triggered the price hit.

More likely the Comex banks implemented another Comex open-interest liquidation operation targeting the remaining 45,000+ longs in the December contract in an effort to get the December gold contract open interest as low as possible ahead the December 1 notice period, which begins this afternoon.”

In other words… The COMEX probably doesn’t have the physical Gold to meet all those deliveries of the longs for December, so if they can get those longs to sell before hand, then no delivery would be necessary…  Man, did they go to some great lengths to make that happen!  

On the other hand, the dollar got sold like funnel cakes at a State Fair on Friday, and the euro climbed to 1.1965… The Aussie dollar climbed to .7392, and so on… The Dollar Index fell to 91.79…  On its way to lower levels for sure… At least I think so… There was a report out late last week that 21% of the toal money supply was printed last year… That means that money supply increased by a HUGE amount… But until we see the velocity of money being spent rise, inflation is going to remain in check, somewhat that is…  John Williams over at shadowstats.com, who computes inflation the way it used to be computed, before, Clinton, Greenspan, and the Boston Commission changed all that, shows that inflation right now is around 5%…   Not the sub 2% the hedonically adjusted CPI shows…

So, what I was getting at before I went all inflation on you, was that while money printing in of itself is not the only thing that causes inflation, it does, however, create a situation where you’ve got more dollars that dilute the value of the current dollars… And that, my friend, is why we’re seeing the dollar get moved downward nearly every day now, as witnessed by the Dollar Index, which a couple of weeks ago, when we first started tracking it, was 93.39 on Rocktober 20^th…   And this morning it’s 91.60, still going down… 

Usually, when the dollar is falling in value, it’s falling against the non-dollar currencies, and Gold… But not during last week’s engineered takedowns… I think the takedowns have become a game for the price manipulators, a game of limbo… to see how low it can go!  I had a dear reader send me a note last week, and ask me this: “If Gold is continually taken down like you describe, and Bitcoin just keeps going higher, why would you still be telling people to buy Gold?” 

 

OK, I’ve been through this before, but who knows, who was participating in class that day, so here we go again…. “First of all, Gold is a storage of wealth…  once you own Gold, you really shouldn’t care what it does, for we know that it’s not going to go to zero, never has, never will…  Second, these price manipulations simply give potential buyers, cheaper levels to buy… They don’t take away the need to own Gold… And then finally, I truly believe that Gold is going to move higher, and higher as we go into 2021… I read last week, where a casino bank said that Gold would average $2,300 in 2021…  But put that aside… What are your beliefs of where inflation is, and where it’s going?  If you believe that the war on inflation that was won by Paul Volcker in 1981, is  never coming back, then by all means don’t own Gold… But if you believe like I believe that inflation is going to be just one of the major problems we experience going forward, defaults, with dollar depreciation, and digital dollars, amon them, then you had better be long physical Gold… And there’s no better performing asset class since 2000, than Gold!…  I’m just saying!

And I gave you my thoughts on Bitcoin and all other digital currencies out there right now, last week. I would suggest you go back and read the Wednesday Nov. 25^th Pfennig, that can be found here: www.dailpfennig.com 

And since I don’t know who’s participating in class each day, when I talk about Gold, I’m also referring to Silver… 

And before I go on longer this morning, the overnight markets haven’t been kind to Gold & Silver with both down significantly already today, which would make 4 consecutive Mondays of Engineered takedowns… The dollar however is taking a ride on the slippery slope, and the currencies are booking gains as everyone arrives at their trading screens this morning. 

The euro is pushing the envelope of currency gains closer and closer to 1.20, and the A$ was trading over 74-cents last night when I checked the markets, but there must have been some profit taking because is has slipped back below the 74-cent figure this morning…  The New Zealand dollar/ kiwi has been the best performing currency in the last month, and reminds me of the fact that during the 2002-2011 weak dollar trend, kiwi was the best performing currency for that trend.  

Do you recall me telling you a little ditty about the Euro Wannabes? Polish zloty, Hungarian forints, and Czech koruna, are the currencies I named, “the Euro Wannabes” back in 2003… Recall that I said that we’ll know for sure that the weak dollar trend is in place, when the Euro Wannabes are firmly on the rally tracks…  And guess what boys and girls? That’s where they are getting situated on…  I’m just saying…

The price of Oil continued to hold the $45 handle on Friday…  That was quite the jump last week for the price of Oil, and now, what’s next? Well, I believe that we won’t see any further upside to the price of Oil until people start receiving the vaccine…  Once the distribution problems are solved, and people are lining up for a shot, then the viewpoint would be that it won’t be long before the economies of the world begin to ramp up again, and that’s when we might see further upside in the price of Oil…

Let’s talk a bit about Currency Trends….  The first currency trend was a weak dollar trend that began in 1971, and ended in 1978….  Then came a strong dollar trend from 1979-1985… Then a weak dollar trend from 1985-1995, followed by a strong dollar trend from 1995-2002. Our last weak dollar trend was from 2002-2011… And we’ve been in a strong dollar trend since, but I do believe that the new weak dollar trend has begun…  I know that the last three years years, we’ve se seen false dawns with regards to a new weak dollar trend, but this time, I think it’s not a false dawn…  So, are you ready for this multi-year weak dollar trend? 

I would think that a very large number of people that held non-dollar currencies in the past, aren’t even thinking that they should load up again, now… They’ll wait until the taxi driver asks them if they own any euros… Or Time says, the dollar is in the dumps”, or something like that…  And then they’ll be chasing the prices upward… Good luck with that…  Instead of cyber-Monday, it should be “currency-Monday”…  

The U.S. Data Cupboard last Wednesday had a plethora of economic data to show us… And like I said on Wednesday morning before these reports printed that I thought that we would begin to see rot on the economy’s vine, from the shutdowns already taking place in Rocktober. And well, that’s exactly what we say…  So, let’s go through these…. First up the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims rose again for the 2^nd week to 778,000, from 742,00 the previous week. The Continuing claims moved up  for the first time in weeks to 20.45 Million… (That’s an Unemployment Rate of: 13.63%, using real numbers!), Durable Goods Orders fell to 1.3% from 2.1 (in sept), and Capital Goods also fell to .7% from 1.9%… Then along cam Personal Income, which went negative in Rocktober, -.7%, and Personal Spending was also down to .5% from 1.2% previously…  And finally Core Inflation was flat… 0.0% move in inflation for Rocktober… 

This week’s Data Cupboard doesn’t have much, with only ISM (manufacturing index) for this month and the Jobs Jamboree on Friday…  I’m looking for a big drop in the jobs number for November, but who knows that the BLS is going to do, right?

To recap…  Gold saw another “drive by shooting” on Friday, and while it tried to come back during the day, it lost another $22, closing at $1,788, and is down already this morning too… The dollar is falling in value folks… The Dollar index which we noted on 10/20^th was 93.39, and today it’s 91.60. The euro is climbing, the A$ is climbing, and Chuck believes that what we’re seeing is a new multi-year weak dollar trend…  Chuck talks about Gold and the reasons you should ignore the price engineered takedowns, unless you feel the need to buy more physical Gold at cheaper prices…   And the Data Cupboard last week, showed a lot of rot on the U.S. economy’s vine… Chuck thinks this is just the beginning of more rot being exposed, as the shutdowns come on board.

For What It’s Worth…  Well, the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims and the Continuing Claims went higher in the week before Thanksgiving… This weekend, there was news that Disney is going to layoff 32,000 workers… That article can be found here: Walt Disney Company Plans to Cut 32,000 Jobs Following Coronavirus-Related Park Closures – Sputnik International (sputniknews.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “U.S. media and entertainment conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company, has announced that it will look to cut 32,000 jobs in the first half of the 2021 fiscal year, 4,000 more than previously announced, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to decimate the theme park industry.

“Due to the current climate, including COVID-19 impacts, and changing environment in which we are operating, the Company has generated efficiencies in its staffing, including limiting hiring to critical business roles, furloughs and reductions-in-force. As part of these actions, the employment of approximately 32,000 employees primarily at Parks, Experiences and Products will terminate in the first half of fiscal 2021,” the Walt Disney Company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that was published on Wednesday evening.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the temporary closure of the company’s Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disneyland Park in California. Both have since reopened, the latter in mid-November, although attendance has been capped as part of social distancing restrictions.

On November 12, the Walt Disney Company said that operating income at the company’s parks had fallen by $6.9 billion year-on-year in 2020 due to the closures and reduced attendances upon reopening.

Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Parks, announced in September that 28,000 of the unit’s 100,000 U.S. employees would be made redundant.”

Chuck again…  On Friday, last week, Ed Steer had a cartoon posted regarding this story about the layoffs at Disney…  It showed people in line at the Unemployment Office, and in the door comes Mickey Mouse!  Yes, even the decendents of Steamboat Willy, are filing for unemployment these days…

Market Prices 11/30/20:  American Style: A$ .7385, kiwi .7048, C$ .7720, euro 1.1987, sterling 1.3338, Swiss $1.1069, European Style: rand 15.2750, krone 8.7864, SEK 8.4492, forint 299.34, zloty 3.7297,   koruna 21.8075, RUB 75.99, yen 103.97, sing 1.3370, HKD 7.7511, INR 73.89, China 6.5760, peso 20.06, BRL 5.3421, Dollar Index 91.60,  Oil $44.84,  10-year .85%, Silver $22.26, Platinum $967.00, Palladium $2,427.00, and Gold… $1,771.50

That’s it for today…  I’m up in the air on writing on Thursday, as I do have to visit my oncologist for the last time until April (when I return from Florida) on Thursday, but not so bright an early… So, maybe you’ll see a Pfennig in your email box on Thursday, and maybe you won’t…  A great weekend for the two schools I follow… My beloved Missouri Tigers won their football game on Saturday, and the very strong St. Louis University Billikens won their basketball game also on Saturday VS LSU… And without their Big Man who had to miss the game with a concussion. If COVID doesn’t interfere, the Billikens should have a very good season! Lots of senior leadership!   Well, my wife left for Florida again yesterday, and I’ll be alone during the days for the next two weeks…  Before she left, the Christmas tree was putt up, decorated and lit up… I love a decorated Christmas tree…   The Turtles take us to the finish line today with their song: She’d Rather Be With Me….   Hmmm, I was just thinking… no, don’t go there Chuck!   I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

November 25, 2020 

* Gold & Siler get whacked badly on Mon & Tues

* Turkey for me, Turkey for you… 

Good Day… and a Wonderful Wednesday to you! I’ve decided to go back and forth with the other Wednesday greeting, so for this week, its this one!  Well, my visit to the hospital yesterday early morning was fine… The doctor called me yesterday afternoon, to tell me that there was no NEW cancer found…  I thank the Good Lord for looking over me!   Things sure are crazy in the world today, eh? I sure hope that the police will not take any orders to storm houses that are hosting Thanksgiving dinners!  I doubt that will happen, as policemen have families too, and know how difficult it has been this year to be a regular family….   OK… Tomorrow is Thanksgiving… I’m really of the opinion that it’s nobody’s business who or how many people I have in my house… And I’m not going to cower to anyone that tells me I can’t do something in my own house! (except if I ever decided to cook meth!) Then I guess I would deserve it! HA!  Smooth Jazz Christmas is on again this morning, and the song is: It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year… 

OK, Pfennig Tradition calls for Adam Sandler and his Turkey song to lead us off today… so take it away, Adam!

Turkey for me
Turkey for you
Let’s eat the turkey
In my big brown shoe
Love to eat the turkey
At the table
I once saw a movie
With Betty Grable

That song has got to be one of the silliest songs ever, but I still get a kick out of hearing Adam do the song, and it brings a big smile to my face…

OK… Well, that makes 3 Mondays in a row that the price manipulators have taken down the price of Gold by HUGE chunks! That’s right, 3 Mondays in a row…  So, from now on, if you want a cheaper price to buy Gold, wait until the price manipulators have finished on Monday, or like this week on Tuesday too… As they took Gold down again on Tuesday…   Gold has lost over $60 in its value this week, and for what?   I’m shaking my head in disbelief that this is going on, while Rome is burning… The world, as a whole, is circling the bowl, and Gold is get sold? Come on! Give me a Break here! I may have been born, I just wasn’t born yesterday!

And the manipulations didn’t stop with Gold & Silver either! Recall that on Monday I mentioned that the euro had climbed above 1.19, but wondered how long that would last?  Well, it didn’t last too long, as the single unit was sold down to 1.1830 during the day…  It rallied back yesterday, but my-oh-my was the damage to the euro too much? I would say so… but then, I presume that some of the selling was justified, as the safe haven assets of Gold, euros, yen, sterling, all got sold on Monday… But as I said above, Come on! That’s crazy!

In the overnight markets, the currencies have held their gains from yesterday, and the euro is pushing the envelope toward 1.19 once again. Gold is up $5 in the early trading today, and after the bloodletting of Gold’s price the last two days, I’ll take $5 any day!  There’s a ton of economic data to print today, so it’ll be interesting to see where traders take these two asset classes…. 

And don’t look now, but the price of Oil has jumped higher to a $45 handle this morning… I read where the Oil traders are really into the storyline of how the vaccine brings the economy back and drivers of automobiles back on the road…  I’m thinking that they have been drinking the Kool-Aid, that’s spiked… That’s what I’m thinking… But, shoot Rudy, we’ve got the price of Oil higher, which means the Petrol Currencies are looking healthier, including the Russian ruble and Norwegian krone… 

All that anyone wants to talk about today, markets wise, is Bitcoin… There are people out there telling investors to sell their Gold and buy Bitcoin… Wait, What? Yes, that’s right, sell your storage of wealth for a scam, or ponzi scheme, as I see it… Now, that makes a lot of sense to me! NOT!  OK, let’s go through this…  I realize that Bitcoin has made many riches for investors to date…  But… here’s where the rubber meets the road, folks… What if, you go to turn on your computer one morning and find that your stash of Bitcoin is gone? Someone hacked your computer, and stole your Bitcoin, along with your identity, etc.  Who ya’ gonna call? Not Ghostbusters that’s for sure! But they would be about as much help as anyone else, because there will be no one to call! 

Then think about this seriously…. Gov’t’s all over the world are creating their own digital currencies, and the U.S. is far out in front here… Now what makes you think that the U.S. or any Gov’t would allow a private digital currency to compete with their own?  Can you say, private digital currencies could be outlawed? There! I knew you could!      So, go ahead and sell your Gold, I’m sure there are plenty of investors out there that would love to scoop up some cheaper priced Gold!  

You know, the more I think about this armegeddon that we’re going through, and it will only get worse, in the coming months, I wonder about how Joe six pack is going to put bread on his table, or a roof over his house…  And then add to that the prospects of higher taxes next year, and an increase in Capital gains taxes, etc. It would make sense if you own something that has gone through the roof in price since you bought it, and you weren’t planning on holding it very long, to sell it while the getting’s good, with regards to taxes…   Obviously, the stock jockeys aren’t looking at that yet…  But as you would expect, I am…

On Monday, I talked briefly about taxes… And then came my weekly letter from my fave writer, Grant Williams, and his Things That Make You Go Hmmm…   And he spent this week talking about taxes… I have lots of thoughts to add to his, and I’m going to do so here…   Tax the Rich! That’s all we hear these days… Did they, who make these claims ever stop to think that the wealth that the “rich” have, has already been taxed? And if we’re talking about capital gains taxes, that money has already been taxed a couple of times! Same with dividends…  But in fairness to those that believe that the panacea of their money problems lies with the “rich”…  The wealthy always seem to get thrown in as the “cure all” for all that ails us…  And they make easy targets, because… well, they’re so well off!

And I believe that it won’t be long here in the U.S. until we see an attempt to go after the “rich”…  Here’s a quote from Grant Williams, “With the ongoing struggle between asset-rich Boomers and asset-poor millennials constantly building up steam, this will be coming to a head sooner rather than later and the ‘wealthy’ are going to find themselves squarely in the crosshairs.”

I’m not considered “wealthy” so I have no dog in the hunt here… I just wanted to point out that while it does seem to be the low hanging fruit on our trip to find equality, I don’t think that in the end it will solve anything…  Because once you give an inch, the next thing will be wanting to take a foot, then a yard, and soon enough it will be a mile…  No one will ever be satisfied, period…  And that’s it for me on taxes today…

Before I go on… I’ll leave my thoughts on Taxes just lay there, and allow the soothing way that Mr. Grant Williams explains things take it from here….

“It’s been a wonderful ride, folks, but the time to pay the piper is here and, if you have ‘wealth’ – particularly if it’s in the form of capital gains from the wildest, most improbable equity bull market of our lifetimes – might I humbly suggest it may be time to peer a short distance into the future and take precautions to guard against what you’re being told by those in control of such things is most definitely on its way? The fact that capital punishment is most certainly going to be liberally dished out, doesn’t mean you have to merely sit quietly and wait for it to be applied. “ – Grant Williams from TTMYGH……

Oh, and I do have one more thought here, folks…(you knew I would, right?)  Recall that I believe that we’ll all be using a digital currency in the not so distant future, right?  Well, think about the Gov’t and its ability to implement taxes….   If we have digits in our account that can’t be taken out and stuffed under pillows and into coffee cans, then they are there to be taken…. By the Gov’t with any % of taxation that they deem to be “what’s needed”…   I’m very afraid that’s where we’re headed folks…  And when that happens, I will take my bat and ball and glove and go home… My days fo writing will be over, for there will be no markets to talk about any longer…   But if you’re the gov’t. and you see an opportunity to get everyone on the same playing field, tax them accordingly, and watch the money flow into the Gov’t’s coffers, to whittle away any way they feel it should be whittled away, why would you wait for 2025, 2030, or 2023? I’m just saying…

The great comedian, Chris Rock, has this to say about Taxes…. “Taxes aren’t paid, they’re taken”…. How true this will all be when we’re digitized!

OK, in other news… our old friend, (NOT!) Janet Yellen is back to haunt us… She’s been named the new Treasury Sec. Wait, What? I thought the Fed was supposed to be an independent Central Bank? But now the former Fed Chair, is the Treasury Sec. how convenient is that?  Well, it appears that the swamp, is filling up very quickly again…  I’m just saying…

And then speaking of the Gov’t…..  David Crosby, yes, THAT David Crosby, posted something to Twitter that I also saw from someone else, but since David Crosby posted it, I went with that… Check this out from Twitter:

“The vaccine should be tested on politicians first.

If they survive, the vaccine is safe…

I they don’t, the country is safe… 

Now, isn’t that something we can all get behind? “

As I told you on Monday, The U.S. Data Cupboard is chock-full-0-data today…  I’ll list all the data prints today, and save comment on them for the end… We start with: The Weekly Initial Jobless Claims from last week, then Rocktober prints of Durable Goods and Capital Goods Orders, and Personal Income and Spending, and finish it off with Core Inflation… There will also be another revision of 3^rd QTR GDP… Which if you recall, I did the math on last time it tried to pull the wool over our eyes….

I believe we’ll see some rot on the economy’s vine with these prints, folks… And that was in Rocktober, before the latest surge of virus cases, caused Governors, Mayors, Congress, to lose their collective minds, and begin the whole shutdown process over again…  We’re watching the systemic take down of the great American economy, folks… If you’re like me, you sure don’t like what you’re seeing…

To recap…  it’s been an ugly week so far for Gold & Silver, with the euro getting sold on Monday, but rallying on Tuesday.   The selloffs of Gold & Silver on Monday & Tuesday have been colossal to say the least…  Chuck just doesn’t get it, but then that’s the plan in his opinion, to pull the wool over our eyes.   Janet Yellen, formerly of the Cartel, I mean the Fed, will be our new Treasury Sec. And the incestuous feeling between the Cartel and Gov’t just grows closer… And Chuck goes out on a limb with Bitcoin…

For What It’s Worth…  Well… this was an interesting article, with the viewpoints of a couple of the casino bank dudes, giving their thoughts on what the Fed is going to do in the coming months, and it can be found here: Central Banks To Add Liquidity Worth 0.66% Of Global GDP On Average Every Month In 2021 | Zero Hedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “Earlier today we explained why Morgan Stanley’s chief equity strategist Michael Wilson voiced concerns about the continuation of the “overcooked” equity rally, expecting a draw-down into year end for the simple reason that “both fiscal and now monetary policy have become reactive rather than proactive. For markets, that becomes the itch that needs to be scratched–i.e. market pressure is necessary and likely to get Congress and/or the Fed to act.”

And yet, once the coming period of volatility is over, Morgan Stanley sees the bull market continuing with the S&P expected to rise another 10% over the next 12 months.

Why? The answer is simple, and is the same one explaining the market’s rally over the past decade: the unprecedented liquidity injection by central banks since 2009.

As Morgan Stanley’s chief rates strategist Matthew Hornbach wrote in a note this morning, while conceding that “unforeseen obstacles to a buoyant risk environment will arise” he said that “current central bank policies are aimed at softening those blows, and will be effective at doing so.” Indeed, as Hornback predicts, “not only will central bank balance sheets continue to expand“, with the Morgan Stanley  strategist expecting G4 central bank balance sheets to hit just why of $30 trillion in two years, up from $25 trillion currently…

While it was once seen in poor form to assign a bullish thesis to central bank liquidity and intervention, those days are long gone as Hornbach shows:

“Central bank purchases of private sector assets (government bonds, corporate bonds, agency MBS) feature heavily in both types of liquidity injection. Exhibit 7 shows our monthly QE projections for the 8 central banks we think will be active in 2021.

We expect these 8 combined to remove US$304 billion of securities ($238 billion of which will be government bonds), on average, from private markets every month in 2021. Unsurprisingly, the Fed and the ECB will remove the most securities each month, in U.S. dollar terms.“

In total, these 8 central banks are expected to add liquidity worth 0.66% of annual nominal GDP, on average, every month in 2021. “That is a rapid pace of global liquidity injection, the likes of which we haven’t seen outside of 2020” Hornbach casually inserts.

While these are staggering numbers, consider that the IIF now sees total global debt rising from $277 trillion at the end of 2020 to a grotesque $360 trillion by 2030, over $85 trillion from current levels.”

Chuck again… This is crazy folks… The Central Bank is the defacto-buyer of last resort for the stock jockeys… Who’d a thunk that could happen in our lifetimes?  And I think that the boys in the article are being too conservative with their thoughts on the Fed’s balance sheet… I would expect it to explode higher in 2021…  I’m just saying…

Market  Prices 11/25/20: American Style: A$ .7346,  kiwi .6965, C$ .7663, euro 1.1887, sterling 1.3343, Swiss $1.0970, European Style: rand 15.2585, krone 8.8876, SEK 8.5320,  forint 303.67,  zloty 3.7681,   koruna 22.0350, RUB 75.78, yen 104.47, sing 1.3425, HKD 7.7510, INR 73.85, China 6.5843, peso 20.05, BRL 5.4123,  Dollar Index 92.22,  Oil $45.15,  10-year .85%, Silver $23.49, Platinum $964.00, Palladium $2,356.00, and Gold… 1,815.10

That’s it for today… Whew, counting Monday’s long Pfennig, and today’s Long Pfennig, there’s enough reading there for everyone to take home and read through the weekend!  That’s your Thanksgiving break assignment, should you choose to accept it! HA!  The powers that be, sure are keeping the “fear factor” high with us right now… As I explained to my kids, they have to keep the “fear factor” up to maintain their control…  I can’t wait to see the video of Tom Woods telling 100 state legislators his thoughts on lockdowns, masks, etc.  I sure hope you get to enjoy a very blessed Thanksgiving, and don’t eat too much!  But if you do, that’s what an afternoon nap is for! I always enjoy a turkey sandwich at night… Well, our crowd has been whittled down, to just the 12 of the Butler family for dinner… UGH!.. One of these days, I’m going to sit everyone down and explain to them the risks they take every day… But that’s for another day… I’m still on the smooth jazz Christmas station on Pandora, so the song that takes us to the finish line today, is a jazzy rendition of O Christmas Tree…   I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and Tub Thumpin’ Thanksgiving tomorrow, and rest of the week, and please remember to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

November 23, 2020 

* Dollar gets sold, along with Gold… 

* It’s a long one today, so fill your coffee cup! 

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! This will be a very shortened week for Pfennigs, as tomorrow I’ll be at the hospital for my quarterly scans at this 6:30 am… I know, you’re saying, “how lucky you are to be the first in the CT scanner!”  I have to say, that I wish I had never needed to be scanned!  But I have 100’s of times now in the past 13.5 years of dealing with this awful disease.. I’ve had bone scans, where they pump nuclear stuff into my blood stream… MRI’s of my head a couple of times (they didn’t find anything! HA!) And hundreds of other tests… If I could have done something in my younger life to prevent me from getting cancer, I would have certainly done that… But when you’re a young man, you think your Super Man, and nothing will destroy your body… Boy, do I know differently about that now! OK… enough of that! I have on my Smooth Jazz Christmas station that’s on Pandora, and The Ramsey Lewis Trio greets me this morning with their really jazzy version of: Here Comes Santa Claus…  (this version gets me moving in my chair for sure!)

Yes, it’s that time of year again… My most disliked month is nearly over, and one of my fave months will soon be here.. December…  Soon the houses will be lit up with colorful lights, and you’ll see freshly cut trees on the tops of automobiles.  And people will be much nicer to each other this time of year, which always brings a smile to my face, for sure!   So, let’s hurry up and get November out of the way!

I want to start today’s discussion about the markets I cover, by talking about Gold…  It came across my screen on Thursday last week that Gold has taken a plunge below $1.870 seven times since first crossing it on the way up to $2,000, back in August, and each time it has been taken below $1,870 by the price manipulators, it has rebounded, and moved higher… And that happened again last week… At one point on Thursday, Gold had been taken down to $1,852, but came back during the day on Thursday to close at $1,866, and on Friday, it moved the rest of the way past $1,870… 

Do you remember what it was like back before the plandemic, and Gold couldn’t get past $1,350?  And then one day it did, and there was no looking back?  History will repeat itself again folks…  I’m just saying..  Oh, and one more thing to think about… as I attempt to fair… December is historically a bad month for Gold, and people’s minds are taken away from the things that make Gold so “buyable”…  So, if we see weakness in Gold in December… It’s just its normal thang!”

So, on Friday, last week, the currencies came back against the dollar bugs, and saw some very range bound rallied across the board…  There was some news on the euro on Friday, that I feel compelled to tell you about…  And will in a minute, but first the rest of the recap from last Friday… The price of Oil rose, on the day to back above the $42 handle, and Treasuries rallied too…  Stocks lost ground again, and on a day when Pfizer announced that they would fine an emergency use authorization for their vaccine, which means it could be ready for dispersal next month… (Although Like I said last week, I doubt the mass injections won’t be done until spring)   Stocks sure have been acting strangely lately, I’m no stock jockey, but to me they appear to be out of gas…  I’m just saying…

In the overnight markets, the dollar has been sold at a greater pace, and the euro has climbed to 1.19 (we’ll see how long that lasts this time!). But news of another successful virus vaccine has got Gold & Silver on the run this morning, downward… Seems that the risk appetite is off, for now, and Gold has given back $3 to fall back below $1,870, which now makes that happening an 8th time…  

The price of Oil has shot higher on the vaccine news, and that has the Petrol Currencies looking better this morning, for sure! The Norwegian krone has moved back below 9.00, which is a good sight to see, and the Russian ruble is moving toward moving below 76…  

OK, The good folks at GATA sent me this link to an article on Bloomberg.com that talked about how euro was the most used currency in SWIFT, last month…  So, let’s get to the snippet of this article:

“The euro was the most used currency for global payments last month, the first time it has outpaced the dollar since February 2013.

Data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, which handles cross-border payment messages for more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries, showed the European Union’s single currency and the greenback were followed by the British pound and the Japanese yen. The Canadian dollar overtook China’s yuan for the fifth spot, SWIFT said.

Trade upheaval, a pandemic-induced recession, and political disharmony renewed pressure to reduce the share of international payments in dollars. The U.S. currency has weakened more than 11% from its March peak, based on a Bloomberg index that measures it against a basket of major peers, and many observers are predicting its valuation to drop further. “

Chuck again… As I wrote about a month or so ago, foreigners are buying smaller amounts of U.S. debt, in the form of Treasuries, with Russia and China leading the drops… And now the dollar is being used less in SWIFT?  As I said in the last 10 days, the problems for the dollar are piling up, and the Hedge Funds, Pension funds, trading desks, etc. all have their fingers on the trigger of shooting holes in the strong dollar trend… 

Oh, and one more thought that I read on Friday… The Fed now owns more Treasuries (their value) than all foreigners combined…  Now tell me how this doesn’t end in a trail of tears… 

In other news from late last week: OK… this has got to be something that will turn into a Hatfields and McCoys feud… Treasury Sec. Mnuchin asked the Cartel, I mean the Fed, to return the unused funds that they were given to fund their various alphabet soup programs….  And the cartel, I mean the Fed didn’t like it one iota! They basically said, “The Federal Reserve would prefer that the full suite of emergency facilities established during the coronavirus pandemic continue to serve their important role as a backstop for our still-strained and vulnerable economy.”   WOW!  A pushback from the Cartel! I’m impressed at their gumption! Basically, they could have said, “we’ll review the facts, and get back to you.” And then never get back to the Treasury Sec. because soon he’ll be back to looking for a new job…  And everyone will have forgotten about the request… I’m just saying…

In addition, to that news, there was also news that President Trump announced that drug prices are going to be coming down… Boy that’s music to my ears, folks… I take so many drugs, and the costs of them even with insurance is pretty daunting when you add them all up for a year… And chemo drugs? For-get-a-bout-it!  Those are insane folks… I’m just saying…

And still the stocks couldn’t buy a bid… Hmmm…    Oh well, not my cup-o-tea, so we’ll move on now…

So, I was doing some shopping on Amazon the other day, and it suddenly occurred to me what was going on…  As I see this whole plandemic, it is being used to wean us off of using folding currency… I’ve been walking around with the same folding currency in my pocked for months now… I don’t go anywhere to spend cash, and whatever I buy is online, and with my credit card…  And I’m sure that most people are in the same boat as me… After this is all over, the government will probably say, something like: “ now that we’ve all gotten used to not spending folding currency, let’s just get rid of it and go to our new digital currency”…     Talk about a revolt! Or, maybe not, given how easily the Gov’t got everyone in the country to go home, shut down businesses, move on out to the country, wear masks, and stay away from family, including our parents in homes… 

I shake my head in amazement every day that I think about how easily all that was done… And the “controllers of the universe” are quite happy about how easily that was all done too…

Ok, I’ll take my tin foil hat off now…. But remember, I used to be told to do that when I talked about metals price manipulation, and look at how that became “conspiracy fact!” …  I’m just saying…

Good friend, Dennis Miller, of www.milleronthemoney.com sent me a couple of quotes from the Burning Platform site, and one of them really hit home with me, and so I told him I was going to use it on Monday, and wonders of wonders, I remembered to do just that” Check this out…

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – HENRY FORD

Man, if he was saying that all those years ago, imagine what he would think of our monetary and banking systems now?  It’s a real shame that most people in this country don’t know and lot of them don’t care to know about this stuff… To them, they know that payday is Friday…  And as long as the money shows up in their bank account, it matters not one iota to them how it got there, and how far it’s going to go, when it comes to spending it.

That’s why I wonder what’s happened to all those readers of this letter that I used to have…  The mail server would get bogged down at times, because of the number of email addresses the letter was getting sent to…  I know that some have passed on… ☹  But they haven’t all passed on!  I guess, they just didn’t want to know the truth about stuff any longer…

But rather than worry about those that have dropped the letter, I celebrate all those that have remained with me through the years…   in two years… 2022… it will be 30 years of writing the Pfennig… Can you believe that? I think that 30 years of doing something is long enough, don’t you? But who knows, maybe I’ll still feel like putting my thoughts on markets out there, and if all goes the way I said it was going to go, then I know for sure that I won’t want to talk about it any longer!

I had a special email late last week one that I’ll savor for a long time… My good friend, by nature of me sending him a fruit basket years ago, the Great Mogambo Guru, sent me a note with his, what he called, his last Mogambo letter…   So, it is with the highest esteem for him that I present this small snippet of his last Mogambo letter…  I say with a tear in my eye…

“And, now that you mention it, things are falling into ruination literally every “here, there and every-freaking-where,” which is not only unassailably true, but also classically poetic in an oddly lyrical way. 

Now you are sneering “Ozzy who? Poems? What is this idiot talking about?”

I’m talking about how the future is grim, and how to convince you to take action.  This time I am using a line from Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat.”  The line is “Upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat”, which is not only weirdly stilted, but here suffices as a springboard for me to turn it into something, as is my wont, truly immortal.

Thus, instead of my usual “We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD)!” and a breathless exhortation to buy gold and silver, I leave you with:

                        Mogambo At The Bat

Upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,

Because they had no gold and silver to save their fat asses, and they regretted that.

And speaking of asses, those pants you wear make your butt look fat.

There is a vital message in there.  Maybe two.  Trust me. You’re welcome.”

Chuck again…  Classic Mogambo….   But please Mr. Mogambo Guru, don’t stop writing these missives, if it’s only to me, I’ll be sure to share them with everyone!

I’m running long today, but… these are important things to think about, and this next section is very important folks…  I took this from www.wallstreetonparade.com  And I would suggest that if you want to know more about what I’m about to put down here, then go there to read it…  Take it away Pam and Russ Martens!

“On March 27, 2020 President Trump signed the CARES Act emergency stimulus plan into law. That law instructed the Treasury Secretary to make $454 billion available to the Federal Reserve for emergency lending facilities. The funds were to make $10 of Fed emergency funding available for each $1 from the taxpayer. The taxpayers’ money was to be used as loss-absorbing capital. The $454 billion would have supported up to $4.54 trillion in lending by the Fed.

But according to the Fed’s H.4.1 balance sheet statements that are released weekly on Thursday afternoon, the Fed has only used the following amounts of money from the Treasury: $10 billion for the Commercial Paper Funding Facility; $37.5 billion for the Corporate Credit Facilities to buy up corporate bonds and Exchange Traded Funds; $37.5 billion for the Main Street Lending Facilities for loans to small and mid-size businesses; $17.5 billion for the Municipal Liquidity Facility that buys up municipal bonds; $10 billion for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility; and $1.5 billion for the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility which bailed out toxic waste in money market mutual funds to keep them from breaking a buck. All of this adds up to just $114 billion out of the $454 billion that Congress allocated.

Wall Street On Parade has been repeatedly asking for an explanation as to what has happened to the balance of $340 billion that Congress intended to be used to help American families and businesses during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”

Chuck again… Where’s the beef? Or where’s the money? Or, how in the hell did we get in this position in the first place? Oh, that’s right deficits didn’t matter…. 

The U.S. Data Cupboard this week is stacked on Wednesday, as they shove everything into one day’s data prints… Durable & Capital Goods Orders, Personal Income & Spending, and the usual Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, and everything else under the sun and moon!  This is all planned, folks… You see most of us will be either traveling (against CDC recommendations!), or getting things ready for our family Thanksgivings…  So, we won’t be paying attention to any financial news… And then that’s it for the week, as there will be no data prints on Friday…. 

To recap… The currencies and metals were OK, not great, but OK on Thursday & Friday last week, and overnight has brought the dollar selling to the currencies, and Gold selling in the metals… Seems that all the news this morning is about how risk appetite has gone away…  I don’t see how that works, for me, as there are still major problems going on around the world, but it is what it is…  

For What It’s Worth… I feel as though I’ve had about 3 FWIW things to talk about today, and don’t know how much one reader can absorb in a setting! But here’s something to whet your whistle… I took this from Ed Steer’s letter from Saturday, and it caught my attention only for the historical stuff in it that I will highlight below. It’s about taxation, and it can be found in its entirety here: https://internationalman.com/articles/the-greatest-swindle-in-american-history-and-how-they-will-try-it-again-soon/

Or, here’s your snippet: “International Man: Before 1913 there was no income tax, and the United States was a much freer country. Initially, the government sold the federal income tax to the American people as something only the rich would have to pay.

Jeff Thomas: Yes, exactly. It always begins this way. The average person is always happy to see the rich taken down a peg, so this makes the introduction of the concept of theft by the government more palatable. Once people have gotten used to the concept and accept it as being perfectly reasonable, then it’s time to begin to drop the bar as to who “the rich” are. Ultimately, the middle class are always the real target.

International Man: The top bracket in 1913 kicked in at $500,000 (equivalent to around $12 million today), and the tax rate for it was only 7%. The government taxed those making up to $20,000 (equivalent to around $475,000 today) at only 1% – that’s one percent.

Jeff Thomas: Any good politician understands that you begin with the thin end of the wedge, then expand upon that as soon as you feel you can get away with it. The speed at which the tax rises is commensurate with the level of tolerance of the people. And in different eras, the same nation may have a different mindset. The more domination a people have come to accept from their government, the faster the pillaging can be expanded.

As an example, the Stamp Tax that King George III placed upon the American colonies in the eighteenth century was very small indeed – less than two percent – but the colonists were very independent people, asking little from the king in the way of assistance, and instead, relying upon themselves for their well-being. Such self-reliant people tend to be very touchy as regards confiscations by governments, and even two percent was more than they would tolerate.

By comparison, if today, say, Texas were to eliminate all state taxation and allow only two percent in federal taxation, Washington would come down on them like a ton of bricks, saying they were attempting to become a “tax haven.” They’d be accused of money laundering and aiding terrorism and might well be cut out of the SWIFT system. The federal government would shut down the state government if necessary, but diminished tax would not be tolerated.”

Chuck again… Yes, taxes… I find them overbearing, and too costly for the average person… And then to think of what is done with my tax dollars, really gets me riled up to no end!  I used to say, when I didn’t make enough to even talk about in the way of wages, that I would gladly pay the taxes on a higher wage… But then when my wages did go higher, I was like, “I wish I hadn’t said that, because this is ridiculous!”

Market Prices 11/23/20: American Style: A$ .7331,  kiwi .6965, C$ .7663, euro 1.1901, sterling 1.3388, Swiss $1.1013, European Style: rand 15.3118, krone 8.9807, SEK 8.5837, forint 302.67,  zloty 3.7570,    koruna 22.0815, RUB 76.17, yen 103.72, sing 1.3405, HKD 7.7519, INR 73.96, China 6.5576, peso 19.99,  BRL 5.3786,  Dollar Index 92.02,  Oil $42.97,  10-year .85%, Silver $24.12, Platinum $944.00, Palladium $2,354.00, and Gold… $1.868.30

That’s it for today… I’ll make this really short, because I’ve gone on way too long today… I had a lot of time this weekend to read, and see what happens when that occurs? Congrats to my beloved Mizzou Tigers on their win at S. Carolina Saturday night. What’s with that awful rooster sound they play there? That was so annoying, I almost turned the game off!  I go to the wound center this afternoon, scans tomorrow, and then a break for a few days… I’m trying like hell to lose weight, I know, bad time of the year for that, but… my doctor is very upset and so I’ll do what I can… No salt, no sugar, no beer, what the heck! What’s the point of living? I’m just kidding…  I can’t get enough of the smooth jazz Christmas station on Pandora… And right now they are playing my fave song they play… The Charlie Brown theme song…  I hope you have a Marvelous Monday, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

 

 

 

 

November 19, 2020

* Dollar bugs fight back, but not by much… 

* Chuck goes on and on like the Energizer Bunny today… 

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! Well, the conversations around the house sure have picked up, with all the things that need to get done before the closing and Alex’s move-in to his newly purchase home.  Next Thursday is Thanksgiving… I have come 180 degrees through the years, on how I view Thanksgiving. I used to dislike the run-up to T-Day, because, I would say that it’s the only time of the year that Kathy and I argue. We would argue about which family we would eat T-Day dinner with… We tried alternating years, etc. But it would always lead to arguments. Then my parents died, and I said that from then on T-Day would be at our house, if people wanted to see us, then they will come to our house, and that’s how it’s been now for 23 years…  I simply love a houseful of people or a backyard full of people… So, I’m all into T-Day now… And then along came COVID, and people telling me that I should cancel T-Day… To that I say bullocks! So, we’ll see how that goes next Thursday… I’m getting pumped up, right from the get-go today as AC/DC greets me this morning with their song:  Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution…

OK, I’m shaking in my seat, and raring to go, so let’s go! Oh, that’s right, it was another of those days where we saw drifting in the currencies nearly all day with a slight downward movement at the end of the day… And Gold which was down $6.90 in the early trading, was never able to overcome that downward move in the trading during the day, and ended the day down $8.50, at $1,872.50, and Silver followed suit, closing down 16-cents, to $24.41…   There was no real economic data to speak of yesterday, and therefore no impetus to move one way or the other for traders…

In the overnight markets… It’s starting as if this is going to be another of those days when Gold holders will need to put their blinders on, and ignore the price engineered takedown, as Gold is down $17.70, as I write… And it’s not dollar strength causing this move, it’s all about sellers…  Why?  Because the price manipulators felt like it would be one of those days, that’s why… At least that’s how I see it… When the predominate mover is sellers, I have to think that moves like this can be attributed to the price manipulators…  

In our daily check of the Dollar Index, the dollar bugs have fought back a bit as the Dollar Index this morning is 92.58, up from the 92.34 of the last two  days.. but the euro remains above 1.18, so the dollar is still on the chopping block, just not getting chopped right now, but in my opinion, that’s just the butcher taking a break… 

I had a reader go all bonkers on me yesterday, and accuse me backing the calls for fraud in the election… I said, “How one earth did you get that from, my statements that, “the election is sill undecided and will be until the courts decide”?    I will tell you that from what I’ve seen there sure seems to be some shenanigans played with the voting, but I did never mention that until now… UGH! The Book I just read: The Madness of Crowds, explains the mindset of the reader to a “T”… I should have been prepared to not even reply… But that’s not my nature… And so we go on despite my short comings…

I was very disheartened yesterday to hear the the nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed Governors was defeated 50-47…  Our old friend, (NOT), Mitt Romney, voted no… Thanks for holding the line there Mitt…  Ok, the way I understand this, is that McConnel voted no so that he can bring the vote up again when the Senate has a full accounting of voters, as a couple of Sens. Were at home isolating…  and couldn’t make the vote… So, with some gamesmanship and working the system, there will be another go at this nomination again in the near future…

I really thought that this shoot from the hip mindset that the Cartel, I mean the Fed has would be given a kick in the shins by Shelton… But maybe the Senators don’t want that. That they see things just peachy dandy with the cartel, I mean Fed. And that’s the problem as I see it folks…  Congress is in cahoots with the Cartel, I mean the Fed, (one of these days I’ll stop that, I promise) And that makes me sick to my stomach thinking about this mess we’re in… The Cartel, I mean the Fed is NOT the independent Central Bank that they would have you believe themselves to be…   They are more the “money man” facilitator for Congress… I’m just saying…

Well, I’m off to a good start here today, eh? So, let’s get into some more good stuff that’s going on, OK, with you? I thought so…  Well, according to Reuters, “Global debt is expected to soar to a record $277 trillion by the end of the year as governments and companies continue to spend in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute of International Finance said in a report on Wednesday.”

Developed markets’ overall debt jumped to 432% of GDP in the third quarter, from a ratio of about 380% at the end of 2019…  That’s crazy stuff folks… 432% of GDP?  The U.S’s portion of that $277 Trillion is $80 Trillion, and that’s not counting Unfunded Liabilities which are $155 Trillion…  How in the world will all this debt get repaid you may be asking…  Well, at least I’m asking… And I know the answer, I’ve told you all a couple of months ago, right here in the Pfennig…  I told you that there’s going to be big defaults on debt all over the world, sans Russia where debt is miniscule. And that’s going to bring each country’s currency to its knees, while Gold soars… 

In my last trip to Vancouver about 5 years ago, I gave a presentation on my usual stuff Debt, Debt and more Debt, and at that time the U.S.’s Total debt was $50 Trillion (not counting unfunded liabilities) So, we as a country have grown $30 Trillion in less than 5 years…  And back then I used to tell people that economist Lawrence Kotlikoff was quoted as saying the U.S.’s real debt was more than $200 Trillion… I haven’t heard from Mr. Kotlikoff in some time, I wonder what he thinks of all this debt these days?  I just had a smile come across my face, thinking about my last trip to Vancouver, when I had the crowd singing Trini Lopez’s song: Lemon Tree…  My colleague at the show, Suzanne Lee, recorded the event on her phone, and played it back for the big Boss, Frank Trotter, when we returned and he got the biggest laugh out it…

I miss going to Conferences/ Shows with my colleague, Suzanne Lee… She moved on to another place of business a couple of years ago, and I wrote a glowing review for her new employer…  Chris Gaffney used to accompany me on quite a few of those trips, but most of the Agora, International Living, Sovereign Society things I was on my own…  I would leave out someone if I began to list all the help I had at the Conferences, so I’ll leave that there… But a great big hug and thank you to everyone!

My publishers, the Aden Sisters, Mary Anne and Pamela were doing a virtual presentation for the virtual Money Show on Tuesday, and I put it in my calendar to watch it, and then fell asleep and missed it! (don’t tell them I missed it! HA!)  I’m sure there will be a chance to view it again later… There title was GOLD HAS A BRIGHT FUTURE, AND SILVER EVEN MORE…   When I see the link I’ll be sure to include it in the letter, for sure!

Today, we’ll see the latest Weekly Initial Jobless Claims for last week, when they held above the 700,000 level at 709,000…  The data just printed and it showed what I was expecting… a rise to 742,000 last week, as the lockdowns began again… Next week’s print will be on Wednesday, and should show more rot on the vine, in my opinion…  and then the following week will be a mess with the T-Day holiday in the middle of the week, the numbers will be skewed, but just keep in that in mind when the time comes. I’m sure I’ll remind everyone but then one never knows, where I’ll be, right?   

The Continuing Claims fell last week to 20.63 Million from 21.16, which still figures to be an Unemployment Rate of 13.5%, which is still a mountain top away from where we were before the plandemic…   And the thing to keep in mind with the Continuing Claims is that the drop is probably not people going back to work, rather , it’s more due to people’s unemployment benefits running out, and they are dropped from the list, which makes about as much sense as shoveling deep snow when you’re 80…  But that’s the games that people play, every night and every day, never saying what they mean, never meaning what they say…  (Joe South)

Yesterday, Fed NY President Williams spoke, and got the markets all lathered up, by saying, “full recovery could come earlier than the 3 years he projected just a couple months earlier due to progress on the vaccine.”  OK, can we all just calm down just a tad about the vaccine? The distribution of the vaccine is not really going to take place until spring 2021, Yes, some will get it before then, but the masses won’t until spring of 2021… And that’s at the earliest!  So, can we just push back on all the excitement about the vaccine, until it gets distributed and we see if it actually works? 

Did you know that the Pfizer version of the vaccine needs to be refrigerated at minus 70 degrees Celsius, which is colder than winter in Antarctica. Moderna has said that its vaccine needs to be frozen too, but only at minus 20 Celsius, more like a regular freezer.  To me that requirement makes distribution of the vaccine a logistical nightmare…  I’m just saying…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for how these companies went to bat and in 9 months they came up with a solution, one that obviously will be tweaked going forward, but I have a question for these drug companies… 9 months to come up with a solution for a virus, and over 100 years of no solution for combating cancer… other than treatments that allow a cancer patient to live longer, but no cure… Yes, I understand that cancer is a whole different pile of beans, but… 100 years? Come on…

As I understand cancer research, in Nazi Germany, Hitler had a doctor that figured out the cause of Cancer, and was on his way to coming up with a cure, when the collapse of Nazi Germany took place… I’ve read the notes and he was onto something for sure!

Wow! That was some tangent I just went through… sorry, but the next thing I consciously  knew I was typing was this…   James Taylor is singing: Shower The People You Love, as I type this morning, and I couldn’t agree with him more!  I try to do that daily… But sometimes “life” gets in the way…

To recap, Wednesday was another day of drifting for the currencies and they didn’t actually move (downward) until the end of the day… Must have been some dollar buying that caught the markets by surprise… The PPT? probably… We certainly couldn’t have quiet markets for more than 2 day could we?  Oh well, the slippage was small in the currencies and in Gold which lost $760 on the day, and Silver which lost 16-cents on the day.   Chuck talks about all the hoopla regarding the virus vaccine, and asks the question where has all this rush to get a solution been for cancer the last 100 years?

For What It’s Worth… I really don’t have anything new for you today… So, I thought, what the heck… let’s go back in time… dodododododod, (that’s time machine sounds!) And what do we have here?  it’s a snippet of what I talked about on May 18th… of this year, and it can be found here: 

Or, here’s your snippet, no reason to reread the whole May 18th Pfennig! I said on that day: “Global debt is at levels that it should never have reached in a million years, but it’s there, and there’s no paying back, in the traditional sense of paying off a debt…. So, how are the countries around the world (except Russia, who’s debt IS manageable) going to deal with this ever-growing debt? I’ve thought long and hard about this folks, and in my heart of hearts, I know what the answer is, and I’ve fought saying it, for so long, because, well, I just didn’t want to believe it could happen…. And it’s not just because of the virus that this is the way it is… At the end of 2019, Global Debt stood at $255 Trillion… Once the dust settles on all the debt accumulated during the economic shutdowns, the Global debt will be greater than $300 Trillion… With no ability to pay it down….

A month or so, I talked about the IMF’s SDR’s (special Drawing Rights), and how they used by Central Banks, and not suitable for individual use…. I almost went down the rabbit hole then that I’m ready to go down now….

I truly feel that with all this debt, and Central Banks going nuts with one alphabet plan after another, that they’ve all backed themselves into a corner… 

To me, it seems, the only way out of this debt mess is for countries, including the U.S. to take haircuts, in other words, default on some of their debt…. What this will do, is have every trader in the book, out to sell the currency of a country taking the haircut, and buy the currency of a country that hasn’t announced they would be taking a haircut. But soon, they will all have announced it, and at that point is when I believe currencies, as we know them today, will no longer be…

I thought I would be long gone by the time this all unfolded, for it’s been in the cards for years. I never would have thought that during my time on earth, that would see these kinds of debt levels… I always thought that somewhere, someone with their head screwed on right, would figure out that we kept accumulating debt, that a default had to come eventually… I always figured, Japan was first, then Greece, then the U.S. But instead, what I view happening is there would be a meeting of finance ministers where the coordinated announcement was made….”

Chuck again… what a day that was… I scared people half to death, judging from the responses in the Pfennig Replies box…  And there’s nothing in the last 6 months that would change my thoughts! 

Market Prices 11/19/20: American Style: A$.7261,  kiwi .6888, C$ .7625, euro 1.1830, sterling 1.3220, Swiss $1.0960, European Style: rand 15.5425, krone 9.0555, SEK 8.6373,  forint 304.97,  zloty 3.7830,  koruna 22.2975, RUB 75.96, yen 104.05, sing 1.3467, HKD 7.7529, INR 74.13, China 6.5541, peso 20.33,  BRL 5.3258,  Dollar Index 92.58,  Oil $41.60,  10-year .85%, Silver $23.88, Platinum $943.00, Palladium $2,319.00, and Gold… $1,853.10

That’s it for today…  And I’ve got some appt news for you to digest… Next Tuesday there will be no Pfennig as I will be at the hospital for my quarterly scans… (I wonder if they cancel those scans?) So, a Pfennig On Monday and Wednesday next week, that’s it! So, what are your plans for Thanksgiving? Will you be rogue and have a normal T-Day? I will, you can be sure of that! I have a tele doctor visit later this morning… I had just seen him last week in his office, but I received word that he wanted to talk to me about something… Uh-Oh! He wouldn’t tell me over Zoom that he found something would he? Nah… I don’t even want to think about that, so maybe he just wants to follow up with my sugar counts…  which by the way are dropping like a rock, which is a  od thing, because as I told you I don’t want to be a diabetic!  Ok, good luck to my beloved Missouri Tigers this Saturday… They only have 64 players for the game, and the min. they can have is 53, so they are cutting it close…  Well, I’m being rocked out this morning, as Humble Pie takes us to the finish line today with their song: I Don’t Need No Doctor…  A young Peter Frampton played guitar for Humble Pie…  I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, a Fantastico Friday tomorrow, and get ready for T-Day!  And please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler