Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Janet and Her FOMC Financial Asset Bubble Makers

“Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled...

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Charles Mackay


“The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas.   Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, and the restraints of objective journalistic credibility were discarded by pamphleteers bent on promoting subjective slant to an insatiable general public for whom political dissonance was an integral part of social interaction.”

Gavin John Adams, Letters to John Law

Knowledge without the wisdom that is hammered out of it by experience is a very dangerous thing.

Today was likely to be Janet Yellen's last FOMC meeting as the Chairperson.

The Fed raised their key interest rate by 25 basis points.

Chair Yellen has agreed to resign when her successor, Jay Powell, is approved by the Senate.

And so task of tending to the third post-regulatory asset bubble is passing from Janet to Jay, as its forebears had passed from Alan to Ben.

Janet said that the Fed is not interested in pursuing anything to do with Bitcoin, but the central banks of the world are actively investigating their own forms of digital currencies.  I am sure that this will not turn out badly for the general public.  (/sarc).

Perhaps they can create, issue, and hold our digits in their banking system for us.  And we can tattoo, figuratively speaking, our digital money accounts on our hands, for the purpose of buying and selling, all of it recorded in one great ledger.  And if you misbehave, whoops, your digits are gone.

Money is the life blood of all worldly power.   And as with all great power, it is immensely attractive to the easily corruptible, who willfully prey on the weak and the naive.  Political and financial power is the mother's milk of spiritual death.

Well, such are the times.  And since some have done it so well with this general corruption, many others are joining in.  Truth is too often led down a blind alley and strangled in the service of this power.  And people look aside, based on their own personal advantage and craven careerism.

Bitcoin stumbled a bit today  As did the dollar.  The one is a cresting bubble.  The latter, not so much— yet.  But they are working on it.

There is seems to be little understanding of the fundamentals of monetary value today and its foundation in history that one might despair of our ability to avoid one of the more memorable failures.

The spirit of John Law is alive and well.  And  it is stalking the halls of the academy, and the fevered brains of the untethered innovators of money creation.  And the less unfettered the better.

The FCC looks set to put an end to 'net neutrality.'  This is the beginning of the end for the internet as we have known it.  I would hope that the Congress can do something to override it, but I am not hopeful in their integrity in the face of corporate millions.

Don't give yourself away to the worldly powers too easily.  Yes, the lies are flying thick and fast from both sides.  But deep down you know what to do.  It is just hard sometimes.

Gold managed a nice rally back off the FOMC day. Wow, who could have expected that?

And silver joined in and took back the 16 handle.

Stocks were lackluster.   There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

I doubt we will see any sustained selling into the end of the year.  The volumes are likely to be too light for that, although we should expect some 'portfolio rebalancing.'

This will get very interesting next year.  We will hardly be able to stand the excitement.

Have a pleasant evening.

The End of an Error, or Just the End of the Beginning?

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And the Band Played On

“Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Charles E. Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.”

Donald Trump, tweet du jour

Trump is a compulsively vulgar knucklehead. 

FOMC announcement on rates tomorrow. 25 basis point increase is expected.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stock Markets and Precious Metals Charts - FOMC Decision Wednesday, Stock Option Expiration Friday

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."

Thomas Reed (R-Maine)

Bloomberg had economist Art Laffer, of the eponymous Laffer Curve, talking up the GOP 'Tax Reform' bill in all its 'trickle down' glory. I did not even know this retrograde nonsense peddler was still around, having been discredited in his economic theory of top down stimulus rebranded as 'supply side economics'. Now we know just how bad for the people this new tax legislation may be.

The last refuge of a scoundrel is Art Laffer.

Can a credibly accused and completely unrepentant sexual predator with a penchant for the underaged be elected to the US Senate? We may find out the answer to that tomorrow. Could be a new low for manners and morals, and a new high for political hypocrisy, which these days is really saying something.

I was listening to a citizen of that state in question providing an argument for the reasonableness of the age of consent to be 13, as it was in the good old days.  PR-wise the election may be a seminal event for Brand Alabama.

Most likely the Russians are to blame. And Wikileaks.  Certainly it is not due to any failing on our parts. We are exceptional.

It is funny to see the Democrats and their supply chain trying to claim the moral high ground with the Clintons and Wall Street hanging around their necks. 

There will be an FOMC rate decision on Wednesday. The entire market expects the Fed to raise 25 basis points. More or less than that will like shock traders who will suspect that the Fed is seeing something previously undisclosed.

And there will be a stock option expiration on Friday. So this looks like a good week to game the miners.

Speaking of gaming markets, the much awaited Bitcoin futures made their debut last night.  I still find it utterly incredible that they would bring out leveraged futures on such a thinly held, thinly traded and unregulated commodity.

And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.

Have a pleasant evening.

Leaked DNC Memo Demands 'Unity' of All 2018 Candidates - GOP Tax Bill Shows a Party Beyond Repentance

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

Harry Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950


"We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership.  We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

Thurgood Marshall

The political and social establishment is ensnared,  strangling within a credibility trap.  It prevents them from truly confronting themselves and what they have done, and what they are still doing in the service of power and money.

It prevents them from addressing the problems, much less the needed reforms.  It prompts them to act ineffectively and oddly, to the point that they obviously become a part of the problem and an impediment to progress.

The GOP seems almost beyond repair.  The Democrats need to unravel the Clinton/Wall Street wing of the party which has its head buried deep in their party power structure like a big fat tick.

The Republicans need a 'twelve step' program for any kind of helpful change to have even the slightest chance.

The GOP tax bill is blatant corporate giveaway for the benefit of the one percent, and one of the more recent signs of their blindness caused by ideology in service to greed.  They are not even bothering to excuse it anymore, except for the most naive of their supporters.  They try to hide it by voting in secret on largely undiscussed bills with little debate.  And as usual cover their perfidy with hypocritical slogans about freedom.

An even bigger disappointment because they have become content with failure, the DNC is purging itself of all progressive policies, dissent from the Wall Street status quo, with the Clintonistas trying to retain a tight grip on power— the power to keep losing elections unfortunately. But as long as they are pulling down fat consulting fees and favors from wealthy donors they seem to be content.

They cannot talk about real economic policy proposals for the benefit of their base. This would expose their hypocrisy and anger their real masters. All they have is negative campaigning about the other party, the 'lesser evil' proposition, and never ending fear tactics about Russia.

They too are serving their big money donors first and foremost, but at least have the modesty to cover themselves with the fig leaf of identity politics in addition to jingoism.

Both parties have come to resemble competing crime families, more so than representative political organizations.

There is another financial crisis coming, which will be fueled by the third artificial asset bubble since the GOP and the Clintons deregulated Wall Street, the financial sector, and the media, permitting the growth of powerful monopolies.

And there will be hell to pay. The problem is that they plan to stick the public with the tab, once again. That is why they wish to retain their control of the levers of power. 

Don't believe it? Watch, and be amazed. They have no shame in the pursuit of power and money.