November 16, 2021
* Currencies can’t find a bid on Monday…
* Gold & Silver rally in the overnight trading…
Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, remember when I said that the Blues had gotten off to a great start, but it was important not to get too excited early, as it was a long season? Well, Sunday night they lost their third straight game… UGH! Sometimes I hate it when I’m right! HAHAHAHAHA! Recently, someone asked me if I still played the guitar, and I told them that it had been 2 years since I last picked up my guitar… That got me thinking last week, and I went and got my guitar, tried to tune a string, and it broke! Now I had to go online and buy new strings… So much for that wild hair, of playing my guitar! Lunch yesterday, with Frank Trotter, was a real treat for me… We sat and talked about “stuff” for two hours… And then he was gone, and probably not seen again until next spring! UGH! Jack Jezzio greets me this morning with his version of: Jolly Old St. Nicholas…
OK… yesterday, I read that the $480 Billion stop gap spending that was signed into law by the POTUS a month ago, has already been blown through… And it was supposed to have lasted until the December 3, debt ceiling drop dead date… that means that the U.S. is using “extreme measures” to pay the bills right now… That’s scary isn’t it? You betcha it is! And who’s to say that on December 3, the debt ceiling gets raised? I’ve always detested the phrase, “this time it’s different”, but I’m going to have to say that this time, because… The mid-term elections are coming up, and the GOP doesn’t want anything to do with a $7 Trillion increase to the debt ceiling, and therefore they will be real head busters on this debt ceiling thing.. Which could mean that the U.S. would be heading to a default… No hype, no extra words needed… That’s just the facts, ma’am…
And think about this for a moment… That picture of the debt right now, was taken before the signing of the new $1 Trillion infrastructure deficit spending bill… Where’s that money going to come from? When you’re up to your arse with alligators because you forgot to drain the swamp, it’s no time to call and request more flood water come your way… But that’s just what the folks in D.C. just did…. Ooh, we see that we’re now using “extreme measures” to pay out bills, so here’s some more bills to deal with!
And with all those thoughts, we turn to the dollar, and it got bought again yesterday… Starting the day after the overnight session saw the dollar drift, the BDDXY was 1,169.11, but the downward drift, soon got turned around, and the BBDXY rose to close the day at 1,172.60… Now what in all that’s going on would tempt you to want to buy dollars? We have a soap opera-like mess going on at the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel, we have inflation soaring, with nothing in its way to slow it down, and now we’ve gone to “extreme measures” with our debt/ bill paying… And traders are line up to buy dollars? C’Mon give me break!
And again, taking all that stuff into mind, Gold didn’t come much off its $3.30 loss in the early trading yesterday, ending the day down $3.00 to close at $1,863.20, and Silver ended up losing 27-cents to close at $25.14… But not to worry, folks… the stock market just hit another high… I say that in jest… in case you didn’t get my drift there…
The price of Oil bounced back higher yesterday, gaining $2 on the day, and Treasuries got sold, with the 10-year’s yield rising to 1.61%… Remember with bonds, as the yield goes higher, the bond price goes lower… If the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel wasn’t buying $105 Billion of bonds each month, yields would be much higher… But then who else would buy the $105 Billion of bonds each month? And that, my friends is the manipulation of yields in bonds by the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel… And when no one else steps up to the plate to buy the excess bonds that are left on the table each month, the only thing the Treasury can do, is to increase the yields to attract buyers… And that brings about another can of worms that I could spend all day explaining… So I won’t… at least not today… how about that?
In the overnight markets last night… There’s been more selling of the currencies, with the euro dropping below the 1.14 handle, and the BBDXY rising to 1,173.26 overnight. Gold & Silver don’t seem to be caught up in the dollar buying though, as Gold is up $10 in the early trading and Silver follows up with an 18-cent increase this morning. You know there’s one more point I want to make about the rising inflation, and that is… Prices for everything are going higher, but… will they ever come back down? I doubt that seriously… So, higher prices are here to stay in my humble country bumpkin opinion…
Oh, and there is speculation that today is the day that the White House will name the new Fed Chairman… My money is on a renaming of Jerome Powell to the chairman’s position… Not that it makes much difference who is in the seat, for whomever it is, they will continue to lead us down the road to ruins…
OK… do you know who Ben Garrison is? Well, if you don’t, you should… Ben Garrison and his wife Tina, draw cartoons about what’s going on in the U.S. and I signed up for them a long time ago, and can’t believe this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned one of his cartoons… Yesterday, he drew a gas pump that was 5 x taller than the guy trying to reach it to pump gas… then he drew a grocery shopping cart that 5 x taller than the guy trying to reach it, Then he drew a house that had a balloon attached to it soaring high, and all these things were “out of reach”, and then he drew the POTUS and said “out of touch”…
I’m not being political here… just pointing out that we as a country have no idea how to put a lid on this soaring inflation, and that’s a real shame… There are plenty of very intelligent people in the world, why can’t one of them come forward and say… “This is how we fix this”?
Of course they could ask me, and I would tell them to 1. Stop deficit spending 2. Stop currency printing, 3. At least jawbone rates higher to put fear in traders that you could hike rates… But, just like my family, they won’t listen to me… I’m some crazed guy that sits in his basement writing stuff that they don’t understand, So instead of asking for me to explain, they just say, “don’t pay any attention to him, and absolutely do NOT listen to him! You know like the sign at the zoo says, “Don’t Feed The Bears”…
I get why the Great Mogambo Guru used to complain about his daughter and wife, now I get it Mogambo… I see said the blind man has he spit into the wind…. It’s all coming back to me now…
I got a big laugh last week when I saw a picture of all the private jets that were used to shuttle people to the Climate conference in Glasgow last week… I guess all those jets didn’t’ produce an CO2, eh? Fly to a Climate conference in a jet, and then tell everyone how you are going to do everything in your power to bring about changes… Well, you could start by not flying a jet around and just call in on Zoom to the conference! You dolts!
Well, do you want to know what I’m really concerned about now? No? Ok, then just skip ahead, for I’m going to get up on my soapbox now…. After inflation takes its pound of flesh from the middle class of this country, guess what’ll be next to appease them so that they don’t show up at the Eccles Building with fire torches and demand the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel heads be brought to them… Well, it’ll be UBI… Universal Basic Income… The Gov’t learned last year that by sending people stimmy checks that they could appease them for a period of time… So now, they would just send them UBI payments each month…
There’s just one question to ask about that… Where does the money come from? I’m just asking… and oh… Got Gold?
Talk about a greased track to socialism… I’m just saying
OK… The U.S. Data Cupboard today has the Rocktober Retail Sales… I said yesterday that the BHI indicated that the actual report would not meet expectations… I forgot to check the front porch for all the packages that Kathy has sent there while she was gone! So, now I have to amend my forecast for Retail Sales… We’ll also see Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization today for Rocktober… You may recall that these two reports were negative for September, and so, we certainly can’t have that now can we? The massagers and cooks, will do what they have to to make these two more representable for public display….
To recap… The dollar’s downward drift only lasted one day and night, before traders lined up to buy dollars once again yesterday… Chuck wants to know how that happened? But we carry on despite the dolts we have to deal with! Gold lost $3 and Silver lost 27-cents yesterday, in light volume compared to normal days… And the price of Oil rebounded by $2, while bonds got sold… So it was a mixed up crazy day of trading in asset classes, but Chuck says don’t worry, the stock market just hit another high…. Chuck is really on a roll this morning, so don’t stop him… They didn’t stop the Germans when they bombed Pearl Harbor did they? HAHAHAHA! (That’s an Animal House reference there folks, Chuck knows who really bombed Pearl Harbor!
For What It’s Worth… Well, this one really is worthy of FWIW status… And you’ll want to take the time to click on the link and read the whole article, for this is a real doozy folks… Pam and Russ Martens of Wallstreetonparade.com feature a whistleblower at our fave bank (NOT!) JPMorgan Chase, and it can be found here: Wall Street On Parade
Or, here’s your snippet: “On Thursday, a female attorney, Shaquala Williams, who had worked in compliance at JPMorgan Chase, came forward. Williams has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York with allegations that are so alarming that they should send the Justice Department, the bank’s outside auditing firm and the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors into a frenzy. (See the full text of William’s federal complaint here.)
According to the lawsuit, Williams has “approximately 12 years of experience in financial crimes compliance primarily for financial institutions.” She joined JPMorgan Chase in June 2018 and was working in its Global Anti-Corruption Compliance group. After reporting serious misconduct by the bank, she alleges that the bank retaliated against her by firing her in October 2019.
Williams makes numerous, stunning allegations that the bank was falsely reporting to the Justice Department that it was in compliance with the non-prosecution agreement it had reached in 2016 when, in fact, it was simply reporting what the Justice Department wanted to hear while gaming the terms of the agreement.
The Justice Department had charged in 2016 that JPMorgan’s Asia subsidiary had through “certain senior executives and employees of the Company conspired to engage in quid pro quo agreements with Chinese officials to obtain investment-banking business, planned and executed a program to provide specific personal benefits to senior Chinese officials in the position to award or influence the award of banking mandates, and repeatedly falsified or caused to be falsified internal compliance documents in place to prevent the specific conduct at issue….”
To put it bluntly, the bank was putting on its payroll the children of high Chinese government officials in order to further its business interests in China.”
Chuck again… It’s really imperative that if you want to know what JPM is up to these days to follow up on their previous convictions of various trading and compliance problems, then clock on the link above, I would think you would come away after reading the article , shaking your head in disgust, because I know I did!
Market Prices 11/16/2021: American Style: A$ .7340, kiwi .7023, C$ .7977, euro 1.1363, sterling 1.3452, Swiss $ 1.0790, European Style: rand 15.2397, krone 8.6988, SEK 8.8266, forint 320.43, zloty 4.0897, koruna 22.1689, RUB 72.51, yen 114.28, sing 1.3538, HKD 7.7886, INR 74.32, China 6.3808, peso 20.57, BRL 5.4361, BBDXY 1,173.26, Dollar Index 95.51, Oil $81.46, 10-year 1.61%, Silver $25.46, Platinum $1,107.00, Palladium $2,254.00, Copper $4.45, and Gold… $1,873.40
That’s it for today… sorry if I ticked anyone off this morning… Just saying what was on my mind… And besides, where’s your thick skin? Well, my St. Louis U. Billikens travel to Memphis tonight to play the Memphis Tigers, in basketball, a ranked team… So a real test for my young Billikens… My beloved Missouri Tigers play Florida, in football, this coming Saturday… if they can win they’ll be bowl eligible, not exactly what they were thought they would be at this point, but… when you play in the SEC, a win is very difficult to come by… I thoroughly enjoyed being in the stadium last Saturday for the Tigers win… I don’t get to too many football games any longer… So that one was special! In case you missed me telling you this… I’m listening to Pandora’s Smooth Jazz Christmas station, not Sirius XM, but Pandora… Once Christmas is over, I’ll switch back to my iPod… And with that, Kenny G takes us to the finish line today with his version of the song: God Rest ye, Merry Gentlemen… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today… And please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler