April 12, 2022
* Dollar continues to get bought
* Gold continues to ignore dollar strength…
Good day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you… Rainy days and Mondays always bring me down… with kudos to Karen Carpenter, that was a good description of yesterday, and hoe it affected my mood….My beloved Cardinals had their game canceled due to rain… And I couldn’t go outside! Oh well, it’s days like this thar make the sunny days even better! Frank Sinatra greets me this morning with his song, that I danced with my daughter, Dawn, at her wedding reception: The Way You Look Tonight…
Well, the dollar bulls are romping all over the field and getting anything they want! The dollar buying continued yesterday and at least I can see where they got their idea to buy dollars, even if the idea is a bit stretched…. The markets now believe that the Fed/Cabal/Cartel is going to hike rates at the next two FOMC meetings by 50 Basis Points or ½%…That’s what people in the market believe to be an aggressive approach to fighting inflation…
Now…. Even if the Fed Funds Rate sits @ 2% at the end of May, it’ll still be way below the rate of inflation… Negative real rates don’t get me ready to put on my dancing shoes… But for the dollar bulls… it apparently is…
And speaking of inflation… The White House Press secretary, made a statement yesterday letting us know that March inflation data is going to be big, and then she added that “they would show Putin’s price increases.”
I don’t know why, but that statement got me all riled up and ready to March to Washington DC and explain money supply’s effect on inflation to her… But what good would that do…They are all in denial that inflation is our own fault , and that they are all as dumb as a box of rocks!
And Jim Rickards didn’t care for the statement either as he tweeted “ Memo to Jen: No one in America believes inflation has anything to do with Putin. It was here before the war, and it will remain after. Stop treating people as if they were stupid. Start treating people with respect and they might actually listen to you.” – Jim Rickards on Twitter yesterday…
Gold had an interesting day, yesterday…. In the early trading , yesterday Gold was up $16, then right after the market opened Gold traded up to $19, but then the trap door was sprung and by midday Gold was in the red for the day… But, just like the old saying that its hard to keep a good man down… Gold ended the day up $7.40 to close at $1,955.10. Silver traded the same way as its early morning gain of 34-cents got pushed down to a 30-cent gain, and closed at $25.17….
You may recall me saying yesterday that the early gains in Gold and Silver were ripe for some short selling, and that sure did play out, only to see the metals rebound late in the day… The price od Oil continued to drop, along with bond prices, as yields continue to rise…
In the overnight markets last night… The dollar continued to get bought… I know, I’m beginning to sound like a broken record… But that’s what’s happening and there’s nothing I can do about it…. The BBDXY gained another 2 index points in the past 24 hours…. The currencies just get weaker by the day…
Gold and Silver continue to ignore the dollar rally, with Gold up $10 and Silver is down just 10-cents to start today. Bonds continue to get sold, and the price of Oil wrapped a tourniquet around itself and stopped the bleeding, overnight, and trades this morning with a $98 handle….
I want to mention here that we’ve seen a very strong move in the Brazilian real in recent months… Their strong position of commodities has helped, along with their internal rate of 9.75%…The real has become the darling go-to currency of the “carry trade*… long time readers may recall the phenomenon of the carry trade when Japanese investors sold yen and bought Aussie dollars back quite a few tears ago, now… Russia’s internal 20% rate would seem to be a candidate for the buy side of a carry trade, but…. They are at war…..
I was looking into the concentrated shorts in Silver on Saturday, and saw from Ed Steer’s Saturday letter that that number of days of production that would equal the amount of short positions on the books has risen again and now sits at 171 days of production needed to fill the amount of solver sold short…
That was followed up by a note from the good folks at GATA who had this from Silver guru, Ted Butler ( no relation that I know of)… “Silver market analyst Ted Butler notes tonight that the concentrated short position in silver futures and derivatives in the United States is many, many times larger than the short position in nickel that blew up and prompted default of the London Metals Exchange’s nickel contract.
Butler writes that U.S. market regulators should be investigating the grotesque short position in silver.”
Chuck again, yes the government should be investigating… but, they won’t, because? Well, in my humble opinion they won’t because they are the architects behind all the sort positions… That’s been my position on the price manipulation for over a decade now and no one has been able to prove to me that I’m wrong!
In the U.S Data Cupboard yesterday we saw the govt forecast for inflation out one year, and they forecast it to be 6%…. Well we all know that the govt’s inflation calculator doesn’t calculate inflation in a real world environment, so if inflation, according to the govt, is still at 6% in a year from now that means we all will be suffering greatly from tis form of taxation…
In a follow up of something I Wrote about last week… thank goodness that there has been no follow talk regarding the “gas stimulus” that was being discussed…Of all the lame brain, idiotic, numbskull, ideas…. this was right up there near the top! But leave to our lawmakers to findcways to spend money we don’t have!
Well the aforementioned stupid CPI will print this morning for March… The gov’t says that the March inflation rate will rise to 8.4%! Later today ill check to see where shadowstats.com shows the real inflation rate sits… for those of you new to class… shadowstats.com calculates where real inflation is without the hedonic adjustments of substitutions and weighting adjustments that the stupid CPI uses… The gov’t has no intention of showing the citizenry what real inflation is for they have no intention of being thrown out of office!
To recap… the dollar is still on the rampage, kicking tail and taking names later… There’s no stopping this runaway bus right now… There’s talk that the U.S. Central Bank is going to hike rates by 50 Basis Points in April and May… whoopee our negative real rates will be narrowed by 1%!?? Ooohhh I’m all giddy about that…NOT! And the stupid CPI will print this morning…
For What It’s Worth… This is another very long article today, and its about how the writer feels that the Fed/Cabal/Cartel is panicking and it can be found here: The Fed Is Scared $h*tless – DollarCollapse.com
Or, here’s your snippet:“Commentary out of the Fed over the last few weeks indicates to me that our central bankers know they are doing far too little, far too late.”
The events in monetary policy over the last few weeks have reminded me of an article I wrote almost 4 years ago to the day, in 2018, called “The Fed Is Gutless And By The Time We Realize, It’ll Be Too Late”.
The point of that article was to note that by the time the Fed felt forced to take decisive action, it would already be too late. I’m reminded of it now after watching the Fed squirm for the last couple of weeks. It feels like my predictions are coming true. If anything has been clear over the last few weeks, it is that the FOMC has unanimously decided that decisive action is needed.
Last week, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard came right out and said it, calling the Fed “behind the curve”, before qualifying his language. He said that markets pricing in 3.5% rates by 2023 was “a bit slower” than he anticipated, according to CNBC. Bullard also said last week that “inflation is too high” and the Fed needs to act.
“U.S. inflation is exceptionally high, and that doesn’t mean 2.1% or 2.2% or something. This means comparable to what we saw in the high inflation era in the 1970s and early 1980s. Even if you’re very generous to the Fed in interpreting what the inflation rate really is today … you’d have to raise the policy rate a lot,” Bullard lamented.
But reminding everyone that heavy delusion still exists in the world of Central Banking, Bullard said it would be different this time because the Fed has – wait for it – more credibility.
Chuck again… This article hits the Fed/Cabal/Cartel bang on the head, and although it’s a long article it’s well worth the read…
Market Prices 4/12/2022: American Style: A$.7436, kiwi .6838, C$ .7910, euro 1.0865, sterling 1.3016, Swiss 1.0719, European Style: rand 14.5710, krone 8.7893, SEK 9.4943, forint 347.44, zloty 4.8209, koruna 22.4956, RUB 83.29, yen 125.58, sing 1.3632, HKD 7.8363, INR 75.90, China 6.3705, Peso 19.85, BRL 4.6950, BBDXY 1,208.68, Dollar Index 100.70, Oil $98.28,10-year 2.80%, Silver $25.07, Platinum $983.00, Palladium $2,391.00, Copper $4.64, and Gold… 1,960.00
That’s it for today… A strange day yesterday… I was in one of my lazy moods… did some reading and then slept all afternoon. I’ve told you this before, but here goes… I believe that your body will tell you when it needs to sleep… And if I’ve learned one thing through my travels with cancer, it is to listen to your body! Well I think I’m going to sell my car and buy a new one that guzzles gas just to tick off the gov’t! HA! Nah… I’m going to drive my current car till it dies…But boy do I miss my Navigator! Jack Johnson takes us to the finish line today with his song: Drink The Water…I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please remember to Be Good To Yourself.
Chuck Butler