April 24, 2023
* metals see another engineered takedown on Friday
* A credit crunch is here…
Good Day… and a Marvelous Monday to you! Man, it’s cold outside this morning… my iWatch tells me it was 33 degrees when I awoke… YUCK! I do not like cold weather! Saturday and Sunder never even got close to normal temps for this time of year! I said to Kathy yesterday, “let’s go back to Florida”, to which she replied, “It’ll warm up here”… So, I guess I’m stuck here in the cold… UGH! The Cardinals are cold, and that’s a bad thing… I met up with the normal crowd at our local watering hole on Friday, and then was treated when a friend from High School days showed up! It was great seeing Linda Bilgere Moore again… Her laugh is so different, you could be in a crowd of people and know that she was there when she laughed! The Guess Who greets me this morning, with their song: No Sugar Tonight/ New Mother Nature… Burton Cummings, the lead singer of the Guess Who, was always a fave of mine…
Well, the bears performed another engineered takedown of Gold on Friday last week… It just doesn’t make any sense to me besides their profits they make by shorting Gold (& Silver)… But it is what it is… And to me, all the Central Bank buying of physical Gold is the only thing standing in the short paper traders’ way… So, on a day when the dollar barely moved… The U.S. data was bad… Gold was sold to the tune of losing $21.40 on the day and closing the week at $1,984.90… Silver saw it’s value lose 17-cents to close the week at $25.17… The currencies are range trading with the dollar barely moving, while the price of Oil sunk $2 on Friday, and ended the week trading with a $77 handle.. The 10-year Treasury trading was boring, with the 10-year’s yield ending the week at 3.61%
I mentioned the Central Bank buying, and it just so happens that the good folks at GATA sent me this note: “Central bankers who manage trillions in foreign exchange reserves are loading up on gold as geopolitical tensions including the war in Ukraine force them to rethink their investment strategies.
An annual poll of 83 central banks, which manage a combined $7 trillion in foreign exchange assets, found that more than two-thirds of respondents thought their peers would increase their gold holdings in 2023.”
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? That the Central Banks could be behind the short paper traders, having them get the price of Gold lower so they can buy more phsyical Gold? Stranger thing have happend through the years folks, all you have to do is think, “what would I do I was a Central Bank Gov.? ”
In the overnight markets last night… It was boredom city… There was little to no movement in the currencies and metals, Oil remained trading with a $77 handle, and the only asset class that moved, bonds… The BBDXY is trading in the same clothes as Friday, 1,225, Gold is flat this morning and Silver is down just 3-cents in the early trading… The euro did move back above 1.10 overnight, so there was that… The 10-year saw some major buying overnight, I wonder by whom? That is strange folks… the other asset classes were flat as a pancake (Head East), but bonds got bought? The 10-year’s yield this morning is 3.53%, down from Friday’s close of 3.62%… That’s a big overnight move, that was caused by some major buying… And again, I look at the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel and accuse them of backdoor QE… I’m just saying…
I really got to thinking this past weekend, about how we got into this mess, and i started with the fact that it began a long time ago with transfer payments… We, as a country began to pay out monthly payments to people that couldn’t work, and that was fine, until… Our illustrious (NOT!) leaders decided to win more votes they could make promises to more people, and the deficit spending on these programs started mounting… The defict began to grow, like a weed… Then somewhere along the way, we began to believe that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel was our savior… The markets would swoon over Big Al Greenspan, who started the bailing out of economy a regular occurance for the Central Bank. The Dot.com bubble, lead to the Housing Bubble, which lead to the stock/ bond market bubbel, and the free money just kept being printed and distributed… But to me, that era is over… Interest rates are rising, and we have inflation volatility, and deflation at the same time, and it’s all just getting started folks…
Longtime friend, and best-selling author, and publishing guru, Bill Bonner, has been describing what happened in Argentina to bring the country to hyper-inflation and currency debasement, and he had this warning to Americans… “How many people have a Plan B… some gold under the floorboards… some silver coins… a crypto wallet… a foreign bank account… anything outside the State’s strangulating system?” Bill Bonner at Bonner Reseach.com
Chuck again… Or, you could just go with my solution to this mess… Got Gold?
You know, dear reader, that the responses to the Pfennig, haven’t been working for a couple of months now, and it’s a shame that it’s like that, for I no longer get to see what’s on your mind, after reading the Pfennig each day. There is a work around that they showed me, but I thought it was too junky and full of things that had to be done, and so I scrapped it, and asked them to come up with something else… I don’t know, something like, rewriting the template with a new link to the web responses? Sounds like a solution to me, but then I’m not even your last choice as a Tech guy!
Last week was Earth Day… Did you know that? I recall in the 70’s Earth Day was a BIG DEAL in St. Louis…
Did you hear about the Gold heist in Canada? This is good… stay with me here: “More than $20 million worth of gold and other high-value items have been stolen from Toronto Pearson Airport, Peel Regional Police said today.
Duty Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told media police are investigating the theft that took place early Monday evening after a plane that arrived at the airport was unloaded and its cargo transported to a holding facility.
“Once this cargo was offloaded at a holding facility, subsequent to its arrival, this high-value container was removed by illegal means,” said Duivesteyn.
“The container contained a high-value shipment. It did contain gold, but was not exclusive to gold, and contained other items of monetary value.”
Chuck again… Now doesn’t that sound like a trailer for a movie? Like I said above: stranger things have happened…
More than $20 million worth of gold and other high-value items have been stolen from Toronto Pearson Airport, Peel Regional Police said today.
Duty Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told media police are investigating the theft that took place early Monday evening after a plane that arrived at the airport was unloaded and its cargo transported to a holding facility.
“Once this cargo was offloaded at a holding facility, subsequent to its arrival, this high-value container was removed by illegal means,” said Duivesteyn.
“The container contained a high-value shipment. It did contain gold, but was not exclusive to gold, and contained other items of monetary value.”
Chuck again… Now doesn’t that sound like a trailer for movie? Like I said above: Stranger things have happened…
The U.S. Data Cupboard today has no data for us… nada, nil, zero, a Big Fat Goose Egg! And that’s probably a good thing, considering the uglyness of last week’s data… On Thursday alone the data was so ugly, it could make onions cry! Here’s the rundown of the Thursday data prints… Weekly Initial Claims were up 5,000 to 245,000, The Philly Fed Manufacturing Index was a negative -31.2, which followed Feb’s negative -23.2, so things here are just getting worse… That was followed by Existing Home Sales, which were down 2%, and finally the piece de’ resitance… Leading Economic Indicators followed Feb’s negative -.5%, with a March print of negative -1.2%, if that data doesn’t spell a recession is coming then I’m a monky’s uncle!
And I found this on www.wallstreetonparade.com: “On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released its Beige Book, a compilation of current economic conditions in each of its 12 Federal Reserve districts. The information that was collected in each of the regional reports was gathered on or before April 10 – so it is relatively current.
It is not a good sign that three of the Fed districts that pump out a significant chunk of U.S. GDP reported that bank credit had tightened noticeably, ostensibly as fallout from the banking collapses in March and depositor runs.
The New York Fed reported that credit conditions in the Second Fed District, which includes New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey, Connecticut’s Fairfield County, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, “deteriorated sharply.” “
Chuck again… Uh-oh… The credit economy is in trouble… I’m just saying…
To recap… The dollar was boring to end the week last week, but the metals saw another engineered takedown , by the short gold paper traders… And lost $21 to end the week… Chuck points out that if it weren’t for all the buying of physical Gold by Central Banks, Gold would be in deep dookie… And then Chuck goes and give us his thoughts that ran through his mind this past weekend about how we got into this mess… The data last week was very ugly, and I would just point to the Thursday data prints if anyone says to you that the conomy is strong…
For What It’s Worth… All this talk about dedollarization that’s going on these days, prompted me to look for an article that would explain why other than the sanctions and this one does it… And it an be found here: Dollar May Fall to Yuan, Crypto But Not Soon: Niall Ferguson – Bloomberg
Or, here’s your snippet: ““Every night,” the president mused, “I ask myself why every country needs to trade in the dollar. … Who decided it was the dollar after the disappearance of the gold standard? … Today, countries have to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies.”
The president in question was Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, and the venue was the New Development Bank in Shanghai on April 13. There was a great deal of interest in this latest news about Lula when I visited Sao Paulo last week. To me, however, the striking thing was how un-new it was. Lula’s words immediately brought to my mind the musings of another president more than half a century ago:
The convention whereby the dollar is given a transcendent value as an international currency no longer rests on its initial base. … The fact that many states accept dollars … in order to make up for the deficits of [the] American balance of payments, has enabled the United States to be indebted to foreign countries free of charge. Indeed, what they owe those countries, they pay … in dollars that they themselves can issue as they wish. … This unilateral facility attributed to America has helped spread the idea that the dollar is an impartial, international [means] of exchange, whereas it is a means of credit appropriated to one state.
The speaker then was President Charles de Gaulle of France, and the date was Feb. 4, 1965. It was de Gaulle’s broadside against the dollar that prompted his finance minister, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, to coin the memorable phrase “exorbitant privilege,” which encapsulated the French complaint.
Being fed up with the dominance of the mighty dollar is, in other words, old hat. Indeed, it is such a recurrent theme of financial journalism that one can identify cycles in the use of the phrase “exorbitant privilege.” Recent peaks, according to Google, were in 2007, 2011 and 2014. The Google “program” for “de-dollarization” follows a similar path.”
Chuck again… the writer goes on to say that dedollarization isn’t going to be a thing that happens overnight, if it actually does happen it will be years in the coming… But then just last week I ran across an article that talked about how the pace of dedollarization really picked up steam last year… Hmmm…
Market Prices 4/24/ 2023: American Style: A$ .6683, kiwi .6142, C$ .7387, euro 1.1004, sterling 1.2435, Swiss $1.1235, European Style: rand 18.1192, krone 10.5767, SEK 10.2085, forint 341.36, zloty 4.1878,
koruna 21.3018, RUB 81.26, yen 134.64, sing 1.3348, HKD 7.8486, INR 81.93, China 6.8927, peso 18.08, BRL 5.0504, BBDXY 1,225.81, Dollar Index 101.66, Oil $77.76, 10-year 3.53%, Silver $25.08, Platinum $1,106.00, Palladium $1,590.00, Copper $3.98, and Gold… $1,984.21
That’s it for today… Tough weekend in Seattle for my beloved Cardinals…Salvaging one game on Sunday.. They’ve found just about every way possible to lose a game so far this young season, I sure hope they turn things around soon.. Our soccer team, StL City SC played to a draw in Colorado… It’s never a bad thing to play to draw on the road… Great Goaltending by the City team kept them from being blown out in that game… The City team has to play a Cup game on Tuesday night, a very quick turnaround… Man did the weather revert to cold this past weekend! I was grilling for my son, Andrew’s, water polo tournament in 40 degree weather! Eric Burdon and the Animals take us to the finish line today with their song: We Gotta Get Out Of This Place… I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler