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