December 10, 2020
* currencies trade in tight ranges on Wednesday
* JPMorgan wants to be a Bitcoin Billionaire!
Good day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to you! I really wanted to keep sleeping this morning… I think it’s going to be one of those days where I sleep most of the day. This happens about once a month, and it’s been awhile since I felt this way. It’s an accumulation thing with the chemo I take daily… The bad part is that today is supposed to be a fairly warm day with sunshine… UGH! I’ll attempt to get out side, but… Like the great reliever, Big Lee Smith, when he would come out of the bullpen, “I’m so tired”… HA! Sniff-n-The Tears greet me this morning with their great song: Driver’s Seat…
A quick side bar here… Quite a few years ago now, I mentioned that song and band in the Pfennig, and later in the day, I received an email from a fellow who said he had been the bass player for the band! We traded emails back and forth, and then I never heard from him again…
Well… Wednesday was not kind to Gold & Silver… Apparently, the “sellers” decided that Gold’s rally needed to be squelched… I was doing some reading yesterday, and did a quick check on the metals and saw Gold down even more than it closed on the day… So, it did rally back a bit, but still ended the day down $31.00, to close at $1,839.30, and Silver had the same trading pattern as Gold, and ended the day down 61-cents to close at $23.91…
The currencies traded in a very tight range once again, thus stalling their appointment with lofty levels… Even the Chinese renminbi, which had seen daily appreciations lately, saw a pullback. But… The Aussie dollar (A$) is within spittin’ distance of 75-cents this morning… That’s pretty impressive, for a country that is in a saber rattling dispute with China, and has near zero interest rates…
In the overnight markets, Gold has held pretty Steady Eddie, and is only down 60-cents today… The Dollar Index has strengthened since yesterday, and sits this morning at 90.96… But the move upward is small and like I said, the currencies have been trading in tight ranges since Tuesday…
One more thing on Gold… Our old friends at JPMorgan (NOT!) issued a report that basically said that Gold is going to suffer for years, because of Bitcoin… Ok, let me get this straight… Not only does JPMorgan lead the price manipulators in their raids on Gold’s price, now they are attempting to scare investors out of Gold?
The GATA folks had something to say about JPMorgan’s thoughts, and I’ll let them take the conn here for a minute… “What is JPMorgan’s motive in touting cryptos and disparaging gold? Is it to enlighten investors or scare them out of monetary metals and into a currency that governments might defeat more easily?
Maybe a hint is provided by the $900 million fine recently imposed on the investment bank for manipulating the monetary metals and Treasury bond futures markets.
With its libertarian inclinations, GATA wishes the best for all attempts to increase competition in money. But investors in cryptocurrencies should know just as investors in gold do that more than pestilence, famine, and war, governments hate competition with their money and that, as a result, all monetary alternatives have their risks.”
Chuck again… And then they included this link to a video by a comedian about Bitcoin that I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy… so, here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7zLhEWanc
Well, well, well, what have we here? As usual, Pam and Russ Martens have found some very interesting information for us… The entire article can be found at: www.wallstreetonparade.com but I’ve shortened it, here… Remember the repo fiasco a year ago? Ok, Pam and Russ take it away, :” Last Thursday the Financial Stability Oversight Council (pronounced F-SOC) released its 2020 Annual Report. Those tend to be tediously boring reports that tell one nothing meaningful about the true state of the Wall Street mega banks, so we just got around to perusing the document yesterday. Mixed in with the typical snooze-worthy minutiae was a bombshell that made us sit up straight in our chair. Those cumulative repo loans totaling more than $9 trillion to the trading houses on Wall Street that the Fed had been making from September 17 of 2019 – months before the onset of COVID-19 anywhere in the world – didn’t actually stop in July as the daily data from the Fed made it seem. The New York Fed simply went dark and stopped reporting how many billions of dollars a week it was funneling to miscreant mega banks on Wall Street as food pantry lines grew by miles across the U.S. and 3.3 million small businesses were forced to shutter.” -wallstreetonparade.com
Ok, Chuck again… Recently I talked about the Repo fiasco, and a dear reader asked me if I thought it was still ongoing? And I replied “yes”… I thought it probably would be because if the banks had funding problems 6 months before the plandemic hit, they sure still had them a year later…
And now I was proven to be correct in my thought! But doesn’t this just get you so fired up that you want to go yell at the walls? This ticks me off, period! But what can a poor boy do to alert everyone of what’s going on in the financial world, other than write about it and hope that everyone feels the same way and forwards the letter to everyone on their contact lists?
OK, calm down Chuck… These dolts will get what’s coming to them one day… You don’t cheat, lie, and destroy an economy, without having to face the consequences eventually… Yeah, but I may be long gone by that time! I want to see them suffer now! Ok, the good Christian in me says I went too far there, so I apologize…
Where is Congress on this? I thought that we, as the people, of this Empire of Debt, elected these dolts to represent us, our thoughts, our wishes for the country? Oh, Ahem… Psst… Chuck, that’s so old time… This is the new millennium, things don’t work like that any longer… Well, I’m holding on to my “old time views”, and think that it’s Congress’s job to rein in the Cartel, I mean the Fed here… And that’s that!
All right, I’ll talk about other stuff now… Just had to get that all out of my system… The U.S. Data Cupboard today, has already given us the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, and they were, drum roll please…. 853,000! I told, you that this week’s numbers would be larger because the previous week only had 3 days in which the unemployed could file their claims… And from here I just don’t see this data set getting any better…
We also already saw the color of the stupid CPI (consumer inflation), for Nov., and it was up .2% from a flat rate in Rocktober… No great shakes here, but just for grins I went to www.shadowstats.com to see what John Williams says inflation is really printing, and… he says that inflation is really 4.5%… And of course I’ve ALWAYS said that inflation is a personal thing, and to that, inflation can be higher or lower depending on your personal spending habits…
To recap… The currencies traded in a tight range again yesterday, marking two consecutive days of that pattern, but Gold got sold and ended the day down $31, with Silver also getting sold down 61-cents… The overnight markets haven’t seen any movement to speak of in both asset classes. Chuck has major issues with JPM, and the cartel, I mean the Fed today, so hopefully you didn’t miss any of that, but if you did, please go back and reread, Chuck put his heart and soul into telling you these things, and it would be a real shame if you missed them! hehehehehehehe!
For What It’s Worth… Ok.. this article is very long, but…. A very good read, and I implore you to take the time to click the link below and read the article in its entirety… This is Egon Von Greyerz of whom I’ve quoted many times before, talking about us repeating history… So… here’s the link, please make sure you go there and read it! THE HANNIBAL TRAP WILL CRUSH GLOBAL WEALTH | Matterhorn – GoldSwitzerland
Or, here’s your snippet: “ Is the global investment world about to be caught in the Hannibal trap?
Hannibal was considered as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals in history. He was a master of strategy and regularly led his enemies into excruciating defeats.The trap that investors are now being led into has many similarities with Hannibal’s strategy in his victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC.
Hannibal was a general and statesman from Carthage (now Tunisia) who successfully fought against the Romans in the Second Punic War.
THE BATTLE AT LAKE TRASIMENE
In 218 BC Hannibal took his troupes, with cavalry and elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. Hannibal enticed the Roman Consul Flaminius, and his troupes, in 217 BC to follow him to Lake Trasimene in Umbria. The Romans followed Hannibal’s troupes into a narrow valley on the northern shores of the lake. When the Roman troupes were inside the valley, they were trapped. They had the Carthaginians ahead of them, the lake on their right and hills on their left.
What the Romans didn’t know was that Hannibal had hidden his light cavalry and part of his army up in the hills. So once the Romans were locked into the valley, they were attacked from both ends with nowhere to escape.
Over 15,000 Romans were killed and 10,000 captured in a catastrophic defeat.
So what has Hannibal got to do with the present world? Well, it is pretty obvious. It is all about being led into a fatal trap without even being aware.
This is clearly the biggest wealth trap in history. Hannibal couldn’t have done it better.
Billionaires, millionaires and ordinary investors have all been sucked into a honeypot believing that they have real wealth based on sound foundations.
What they don’t realize is that they will in the next few years be ambushed by what to them is an invisible enemy.
This will initially involve total debasement of the currency, whether it is dollars, euros, pounds or yen. No they can’t all go down together against each other.
But they will all go down in real terms. Real terms means measured in the only money which has survived in history – GOLD.
The route there will not be straight forward. As currencies collapse, we will most likely first see hyperinflation. That could temporarily boost asset prices in nominal terms but certainly not in real terms.
There will also be an implosion of both the debt bubble and the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and property.”
Chuck again.. I know that the snippet was long… but it’s only a small piece of the entire article… And a very good read! You know, publishing guru, Bill Bonner always relates today to events in history, and I like that, for if you don’t know history, you’re bound to repeat it!
Market Prices 12/10/20: American Style: A$.7499, kiwi .7051, C$ .7839, euro 1.2110, sterling 1.3284, Swiss $1.1259, European Style: rand 15.0074, krone 8.8320, SEK 8.4592, forint 293.25, zloty 3.6516, koruna 21.7280, RUB 73.53, yen 104.44, sing 1.3371, HKD 7.7511, INR 73.62, China 6.5352, peso 19.90, BRL 5.1326, Dollar Index 90.96, Oil $46.22, 10-year .92%, Silver $24.12, Platinum $1,017.00, Palladium $2,348.00, and Gold… $1,839.70
That’s it for today and this week… A long week for me… or so it seems. Maybe it’s just that I’m so amped up about this Saturday, when the college sports will be happening in Columbia Mo. And I think back to when I was younger, and how you would have to tie me down to keep me from being there! Both Football and Basketball teams have BIG games.. Well, I’ve awakened a little more, and maybe I won’t have to sleep all day! A good cup of steaming coffee should do the trick! Still no word from Roger Dean Stadium about Spring Training… I’m becoming very afraid that I won’t be invited to watch the games. UGH! Usually by now, I’ve paid for my season tickets, and don’t have a worried mind, but not this year… Go figure, it’s 2020! Ok… Midnight Oil takes us to the finish line today with their song: Beds Are Burning… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, and a Fantastico Friday tomorrow, and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler