Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gold. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Monday, March 11, 2024

Gold new closing high Friday 3/8/24: 2185.50

 Where she stops nobody knows.



Sunday, February 4, 2024

This is your periodic reminder that the net worth of U.S. households is $151 trillion but there's only $2.3 trillion fiat currency in circulation anyway

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TNWBSHNO

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CURRCIR 

Meanwhile all the gold and silver in the world hardly close the gap: 


 

 

You can't put bitcoin in your pocket like gold and silver, and gold doesn't require 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually for its existence

Crock of shit this bitcoin is. Same for anything digital.


But crypto has a dirty little secret that is very relevant to the real world: it uses a lot of energy. How much energy? Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, currently consumes an estimated 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — more than the entire country of Argentina, population 45 million. Producing that energy emits some 65 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — comparable to the emissions of Greece — making crypto a significant contributor to global air pollution and climate change.     

More.



 


Tuesday, December 5, 2023

Four gold bars in possession of Senator Bob Menendez traced to 2013 armed robbery of Fred Daibes, who is accused of bribing Menendez

  That's on top of the cash in Menendez' possession which has also been traced to Daibes, but which the senator says he took out of the bank:

Menendez has denied taking payoffs from Daibes even though prosecutors allege testing shows Daibes’ fingerprints and DNA are on some of the tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in Menendez’s home.

“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said.

Looks like they'll finally get this guy.

Story.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

The only reason Democrat Senator Bob Menendez didn't keep his cash in the freezer like Democrat William J. Jefferson was because it wouldn't all fit in there


  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Authorities found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars in Menendez’s home, and $480,000 in cash — much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe.

More

 

 

 

 

"In a subsequent raid, agents found $90,000 in marked money in the freezer of Jefferson’s Virginia home."

 

Sunday, July 23, 2023

NASA Psyche Mission headed to iron and nickel-rich asteroid possibly worth quadrillions

 The current value of ~208,874 tonnes of all the gold ever mined is only $14.47 trillion, so the discovery and mining of huge new supplies of precious metals could cause a deflationary depression . . . some day.

Launch date is October, arriving in 2029. 

Stories here and here.

Meanwhile we can exchange worthless pieces of paper for all kinds of stuff made in China.

Seems fair. 

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Gold remains far more overvalued than US stocks, which is saying a lot

Gold is at least 167% overvalued relative to inflation since 1913. $600ish gold makes sense. $1600 gold does not, let alone $2067, the 2020 high.

Meanwhile stocks are off-the-charts overvalued, about 93% relative to the post-Great Depression median valuation of 81 through 2019, as of the latest GDP figures from late May.

Speculation in both gold and stocks, not to mention a host of other things, has been driven by Federal Reserve interest rate suppression since 2001.

How long elevated gold and stock prices can persist in the new higher interest rate environment is anyone's guess.

The Fed Funds rate still averaged a low 1.69% in 2022, so it's still early innings.


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May 25, 2023


Saturday, April 29, 2023

Sunday, November 20, 2022

The investment cheerleaders in the US are arrayed against the Fed's rising interest rate regime and lie when they say interest rates are coming down

The yield curve recovered 98 basis points in the last week to close at 5488 on Nov 18.

Despite all the alarming volatility in US Treasuries, the curve is little changed from Oct 28 at 5487 or Oct 19 at 5486, one month ago.

The upward trend remains intact. Raising the Fed Funds rate to 3.83% has produced an overall yield curve at 4.22%.

There's plenty more to be done.

The lying rhetoric is designed to persuade the Fed to halt ("You've done enough!"), enlisting as many dupes along the way as it can to join the chorus, since easy money is the industry's goose that laid the golden egg.

But easy money is why this country is $31 trillion in debt, and why inflation is raging at an average of 8.3% in the first half of 2022.

Since March foreigners have held $300 billion less of the stuff on net through September, which is not a good sign.

But consider that there's about $2.9 trillion in US Treasury notes issued in 2020 alone paying just 0.6% on average and maybe you can understand why.

Meanwhile investors holding bonds are down 30.95% year to date (TLT) at the same time the S&P 500 is down 17.33%. A total bond index like VTSAX is down less, 16.92% year to date, which is cold comfort.

But that's not the Fed's biggest problem.

The Fed's biggest problem remains the so-called "dual mandate", to maintain stable prices AND full employment at the same time.

Our disgusting Congress foisted the latter on the Fed in 1978, which was nothing but a damned if you do, damned if you don't abdication of its own political responsibility dumped onto the appointee of the executive.

But the disgusting Congress represents the disgusting people, who want tax cuts AND infrastructure spending at the same time.

The dual mandate didn't stop Paul Volcker from doing what needed to be done to subdue inflation from 1979, but those were different times when the political tables were the reverse. Volcker was a Democrat appointee saddling a new Republican president with an unemployment rate of 9.7% by jacking up the cost of money. 

Jay Powell is a Republican appointee who will have to do the same to a Democrat president to end the current madness.

The pressure on him to relent comes from every quarter. 

We'll see if the new Republican House has the cojones to back him, which it should if it gives a fig about the future of the country.

But Jay Powell will have to prove that he has the cojones first, because the Congress is full of girly men.

He has hardly begun to fight.




Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Jay Powell is only appearing to be serious about battling inflation


 The only thing Jay is doing about inflation is making sure everyone thinks he's doing something about it, while making sure there remains plenty of spread for his pals to trade off it.

Currently the spread is 5.12: Inflation at 8.2 minus an effective funds rate of 3.08. This is a golden opportunity for the banksters and everyone down the food chain until it reaches you. The banks are getting rich off it. Wall Street is getting rich off it. Corporations are getting rich off it. And, of course, the stock market investor parasites are getting rich off it.

You get left holding the bag of all the price increases jacked up under the guise of the general condition.

 

 

 

Three years ago there was no spread: -0.03. Nothing there to exploit.

The banksters LOVE LOVE LOVE this inflation:

Bank of America said Monday that quarterly profit . . . topped expectations on better-than-expected fixed income trading and gains in interest income . . . third-quarter profit fell 8% to $7.1 billion.

The bond market is not happy.

In Rama a voice is heard, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning . . ..



Saturday, October 8, 2022

The percentage holding full-time jobs through September 2022 held above 50%, disappointing the ubiquitous advocates of a Fed interest rate pivot

 Full time as a percentage of civilian population in September was 50.3%, and for 2022 through September averaged 50.15%.

Not bad, considering.

The Fed will see little evidence in this figure that its interest rate increase policy is harming employment.

Stocks on Friday collapsed after a head fake to start the week to within 1.5% of the 52-week lows set a week ago.

Long term investment grade bonds and US Treasury securities also revisited lows from 9/27/22, coming within pennies of those benchmarks.

30-year yield for UST is back up to 3.86%. It was 3.87% on 9/27. At the beginning of 2022, yield was a paltry 2.01% by comparison.

UK gilts are experiencing the same action despite the Bank of England intervening to buy bonds. 

The bond crisis is not over.

With yields soaring across the board no one wants to own the lower paying outstanding issues, which are legion, destroying their value.

But everything in the global economy is based on those, piled up in earnest after The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, and in orgiastic frenzy afterwards during the late pandemic.

Bond yields in 2022 are telling you that they are overvalued by 92%.

Stock market valuation is telling you a similar thing.

From 1938 through 2019 the median ratio of the S&P 500 to GDP is 81. In 2020 we averaged 154, or 90% overvalued.

This is the major deflationary headwind facing the world, the other side of the COVID-19 inflationary shock coin.

Push here, it comes out over there.

Modern central banking cannot escape this conundrum any more than the gold standard could.

The only thing the individual can do in this situation is to owe nothing and save everything, preferably in your hands.

Good luck.

 


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 












Monday, August 15, 2022

The Party of Violence desperately wants Election 2022 to be about abortion

 

 


Right off the bat this story lies, as usual from The New York Times, by omission:

 In Michigan, Democrats took aim at the Republican nominee for governor almost immediately after the primary with a television ad highlighting her opposition to abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest. ...

Some abortion ads use the specific words and positions of Republican candidates against them. ... Some use Republicans’ unyielding stances on abortion to cast them more broadly as extremists.

The ad in Michigan actually says without exceptions for life of the mother, too, which is by itself a drive-by editing lie by "Put Michigan First".

A lie by insertion. Dixon never answered a life of the mother question that way, with "no exceptions".

You see how that works?

The New York Times sort of tells the truth about Dixon's position, which is no exceptions for rape and incest, but lies about the ad, which lies about Dixon's position by making her say something about the life of the mother which she didn't say.

Then later the former paper of record edges close to telling the truth about what's going on in the ad without actually telling you the truth about what's going on in the ad.

The chutzpah.

Democrats lie to you coming and going, and so does the New York Times, but I repeat myself.

Republicans, however, seem hopelessly, perennially, unequipped to counter this disinformation war. 

They're like deer in the headlights.

And when the Democrats spot them, they floor it.



 



Friday, July 29, 2022

America and its people have added over $12 trillion to their total credit market debt outstanding just since 2019, but that has done little but stall the decline of debt growth

The $90 trillion millstone: We did it to ourselves.

We are now in the future we tapped in the past for the prosperity of "debt draws forward prosperity", and there's little here to be found.

From 1946 to 2008 when we hit the debt growth iceberg, real GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 3.324%. Since then it has fallen 49%, to 1.68%.

We should have stayed with capitalism in the post-war, where one risks actual savings instead of future notional tax, income, and fiat money "revenues". But capitalism went out the window a long time ago, bringing with it the end of the gold standard, the creation of the Fed, and the introduction of the income tax, among other horribles.

Payback is a bitch, and what can't be paid back won't. The rest comes out of your hide.

 


 






















 

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

The sex abusers among the new priestly class: Michigan State University dethroned in University of California sex abuse settlement

The number one way to get chicks in the old days used to be to become a rock star.

Those who couldn't sing or play became professors, who have ready access to fresh hordes of impressionable young women each and every year. Just think of the settlements awaiting thousands upon thousands of women across the decades compared with this list of a relative handful of campus doctors involving hundreds upon hundreds.

AP Obama reports here:

The University of California system announced Tuesday it will pay nearly $375 million to more than 300 women who said they were sexually abused by a UCLA gynecologist, bringing a record amount in total payouts by a public university in a wave of sexual misconduct scandals by campus doctors. ...

The university has agreed to pay nearly $700 million to Heap’s patients, dwarfing a $500 million settlement by Michigan State University in 2018 that was considered the largest by a public university. The University of Southern California, a private institution, has agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle thousands of cases against the school’s longtime gynecologist. ...

The university previously reached settlements with other patients of Heaps for $316 million. The most recent settlement with 312 women resolves the vast majority of claims against Heaps, the university said. ...

Sex abuse by doctors on college campuses has led to massive settlements at Ohio State University, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. ...

Michigan State paid $500 million to 300 women and girls who said they were assaulted by Larry Nassar, who was a campus sports doctor and a doctor for USA Gymnastics. Nassar, who also sexually abused Olympic gold medal gymnasts, is serving prison sentences likely to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

The University of Michigan reached a $490 million settlement with more than 1,000 people who said they were sexually assaulted by the late Dr. Robert Anderson, during his nearly four-decade career as a sports doctor at the school.



Tuesday, April 12, 2022

The purchasing power of the US dollar is down 9.4% since Joe Biden was elected in November 2020, just sixteen months ago

 

Percent change from a year ago is shown
 

From 38.4 to 34.8 on the index = 9.375%.

From the spring to the summer of 1933 when FDR confiscated gold and devalued the dollar from $20 to $34 (70%), the decline in this index was 5%, and then 14% by 1940.

 





Thursday, March 31, 2022

Fox News freak show hires man now known as Caitlyn Jenner to normalize perversion

The former Olympic gold medalist [Bruce Jenner] and reality TV star will provide commentary across Fox’s programming and platforms. Jenner will make her first appearance on Hannity on Thursday evening.

“Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said in announcing the hire. “She is a trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community and her illustrious career spans a variety of fields that will be a tremendous asset for our audience.”

More

 

He doesn't need the money.

This is simply more libertarianism normalizing perversion in order to co-opt conservatism.

Same as Glenn Beck, Matt Walsh, Dennis Prager, et alia normalizing "conservative" homo Dave Rubin or Pete Bootyjudge's "husband". Let's throw Stephen L. Miller in for good measure, even if he thinks it matters that he won't go as far as saying with the trans nuts that some men can get pregnant. Not one of us.