December 14, 2022
* currencies & metals rally on Tuesday…
* Chuck tells us what he really thinks of SBF…
Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well, I got the word yesterday from a medical person that I will have to now carry an epi-pen with me from now on, as I am now someone that’s at risk of suffering another anaphylaxis shock… Oh, boy, well I guess that beats the alternative, eh? Our Blues didn’t play last night, so they didn’t lose… OOOOH, that’s harsh, Chuck! They did win the night before, so what are you talking about? The fact that the Blues offense has turned to the Blahs offense… They can’t get the puck out of their own zone, and they allow too many point blank shots on goal… Oh, well, that’s out team, so I’ll still support them… RIP Mike Leach, the football coach that died Monday night at 61… Way too young, eh? The Stephen Kummer Trio greets me this morning with their version of the song: I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm…
Well…. The markets think they see the writing on the wall… And that writing says, “Inflation is coming down, so the Fed can ease up on their rate hike scenario”… And because of that thought, the dollar got sold to the tune of 10 index points in the BBDXY dollar index, the euro rose to the 1.06 handle, and sterling rose higher in the 1.23 handle… And the rest of the currencies took their own ounce of flesh from the dollar during the day yesterday. The BIG Mover of the day though was Gold, which gained $28.70 yesterday to close at $1,811.50, and Silver gained 43-cents to close at $23.81… So, it wasn’t just the dollar traders that think they have this all figured out, the metals traders also are on board with that line of thinking…
That was quite a showing by Gold & Silver yesterday, but… there’s always a but, right? Their gains were capped by the price manipulators…. Gold’s recorded high for the day was $1,836.00, and Silver’s was 40-cents higher! The wolf is always at the door, folks… He may allow some gains, but he’s going to keep the sheep count down… But, I’m convinced that the price manipulators are losing their willingness to go through all this, especially after another of their brothers in arms got sentenced for manipulating metals prices, just last week… Oh, and he worked for JPMorgan, of course!
The price of Oil gained $2 and is up $5 so far this week, and traded yesterday at the close with a $75 handle… An the 10-year got bought, with people thinking that the yields are the highest they will turn out to be…
Before we go on to the overnight markets today, let me remind you of a little story that keeps popping back into my head… Back in April of 1981, everyone thought that inflation had been defeated, interest rates were 20%, and inflation reports showed slowing… And the Fed cut rates to 16%, only to have to come back a month later and raise them again… And they remained at 20% for 6 more months, before they finally began to come down for good… Now, if we didn’t know that happened we would think that it could never happen, that once inflation begins to come down, it stays down… History, what you don’t know about it will hurt you… I’m just saying…
And the other thing is this… Vockler, the Fed Chairman back in 1981, raised rates above the inflation rate to get it under control… Our Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel, is still 300 Basis Points behind inflation, and that’s the inflation that the Gov’t tells us about… We all know they lie to us… Shameful lies…
In The overnight markets last night…. The dollar got sold some more, but at a slower pace than yesterday’s 10 index point drop. The BBDXY lost 2 index point overnight, so the currencies have added just a smidge more to their values VS the dollar. Gold is seeing some profit taking in the early trading today, and is off by $5 to start the day, while Sliver gives up 15-cents early this morning. Like I said the other day, those are levels that are easily turned around, so let’s not give up on the metals today, yet…
The price of Oil bumped another buck higher overnight and trades this morning with a $76 handle… The feeling here is that the U.S. will have a soft landing, and with China opening up their economy, the demand for Oil will return… Now that’s some real snake oil getting sold, there isn’t it?
OK… Well, they won’t call it this, but it is what it is… Universal Income… The City of St.Louis is going to send out $500 checks to people below the poverty line, who apply and are accepted. This is a BAAAADDDD precedent to set folks… Just like I said about the first stimmy checks… Why don’t we just all quit our jobs and wait for that Universal Income check to come in the mail? I’m telling you now, so you can listen to me later, this is a very bad idea, and will only make the drug and alcohol dealers richer…
But St. Louis isn’t the trend setter on this, there’s already 5 or 6 other cities in the U.S. doing this… I shake my head, and wonder how the heck we got here, from the world I grew up in, where you worked hard, kept your head down, and didn’t spend more than you made.
Well, down under in New Zealand, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) held a meeting and announced that they want to get feedback on its proposed approach to opportunities and challenges of new private money forms. Companies based in New Zealand involved in financial services are urged to take an interest and provide feedback of their own.
So, as I’ve explained many times before, everyone in the world is looking to do Central Bank Digitial Currencies or DBDC’s… It’s not just the U.S. that’s going down that road to removing any crumbs of privacy that you have left…
Yesterday I went the whole 9 yards in talking about how the U.S. economy is in trouble, and then later in the day I saw this tweet from economist David Rosenberg. “Another blowout consumer credit report for Oct (+$27 bn). Year to date, credit card balances soared $130 bn, double all of 2021. The surge financed ~1/3rd of spending this year; throws cold water on the view that balance sheets are in fine shape and replete with “excess savings.” – David Rosenberg on Twitter
Consumers are in trouble, and if consumers are in trouble, the economy is in trouble… I’m just saying…
While Sam Bankman-Fried was having his bail denied in the Bahamas, thus greasing the tracks for an extradition to the U.S. to be tried, as the SEC has gone after him, yesterday, The new CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX appeared before a House committee Tuesday, detailing for lawmakers the lack of oversight and financial controls that he discovered since taking over the company a month ago.
I think this guy that lost billions of client money, that will never be recovered, should be hanged, no I say we shoot him, then we put him on public display, then we hang him ( in my best Pee Wee Herman voice)
This whole FTX thing keeps making me think of ENRON… And all those other Corporate scandals that took place in the early 2000’s… I’ll lose it forever if Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t at least go to jail for a long, long time….
The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the stupid aforementioned CPI (consumer inflation) that gets all the hedonic adjustments to, so it looks good, softened in November and fell to an annual rate of 7.1%, still high, but obviously not AS high… But then we don’t know what the BLS did to adjust the number downward, do we? And John Williams at www.shadowstats.com still has inflation calculated the old way before all the hedonic adjustments were added to the calcs, and he says inflation is really 15.23%… I believe his number 100 times more than the BLS’s number…
On Monday this week, I forgot to mention that the Budget Deficit in November was $249 Billion dollars worse than it was a year ago! That’s right, I said $249 Billion dollars of deficit! Just keep adding it on… The Debt Clock tells us that in 4 short high school years, the national debt will be $41 Trillion… Oh my!
Today’s Data Cupboard has the FOMC meeting… And like I said yesterday, I expect the Fed / Cabal/ Cartel to hike rates 50 Basis Points to 4.5%… Then we’ll hear what the chairman Jerome Powell has to say about the future of rates… The markets will be hanging on every word, and noting every comma, and pause… Because… he’s got to be sending us an encoded message! HA
To recap… Well, the stupid CPI softened in November, and the markets think they see the writing on the wall, which is that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel won’t have to carry on with the rate hike scenario, because inflation is softening… Chuck points out that in our history, this has happened before, only to have to go back and hike rates again… So… keep that in mind… But the markets know best, and you can’t fight the markets, and old bond trader once taught me… And Chuck goes ape on the FTX guy… you won’t want to have missed that! Oh, and the dollar got sold, and Gold rallied yesterday!
For What It’s Worth… Well, I spilled my guts out on how I feel about Sam Bankman-fried earlier this morning, but I wanted you to hear about it from someone else… And while this isn’t all he’s had to say about this whole fiasco, this is just a thought from longtime friend, Addison Wiggin, in his Wiggin Sessions, that can be found here: Wiggin Sessions Archive – 5 Min Forecast
Or, here’s your snippet, although it’s not really just a snippet, it’s the whole thought from Addison… “Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was arrested in the Bahamas yesterday for being the knucklehead that lost – or hid – $10 billion dollars through his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. His girlfriend, who ran the sister company Alameda Research, who was puffing up… er, buying a lion’s share of the crypto FTT that SBF created, was seen at a coffee shop in New York. At the very least the pair are derelict of their fiduciary responsibility.
The Durden Dispatch speculated this morning Caroline Ellison threw her former boyfriend under the bus. The details of this story are going to be interesting to follow. Who “misplaces” $10 billion dollars? Oops.
Also, I can’t help but wonder about the dude’s name. Bankman-Fried? For a crypto hero turned indicted suspect in a massive fraud and money laundering scheme? You can’t make this stuff up… unless that’s exactly what they did.
The historian Niall Furgeson likened the FTX story to the Mississippi Scheme perpetrated by John Law way back in 1718. When new technologies are introduced – in this case blockchain – fraud and deception are not far behind. We wrote a whole chapter on the subject in our first book Financial Reckoning Day. Good thing we have an update for the book on schedule, eh?”
Chuck again… You can’t make this stuff up, the things he did with client money is beyond evil… I’ll say no more…
Market Prices 12/14/ 2022: American Style: A$ .6860, kiwi .6440, C$ .7373, euro 1.0646, sterling 1.2386, Swiss $1.0772, European Style: rand 17.0772, krone 9.6985, SEK 10.2144, forint 382.42, zloty 4.3989, koruna 23.8138, RUB 63..59, yen 135.00, sing 1.3469, HKD 7.7729, INR 82.45, China 6.9505, peso 19.58, BRL 5.3461, BBDXY 1,252.53, Dollar Index 103.86, Oil $76.09, 10-year 3.50%, Silver $23.66, Platinum $1,031.00, Palladium $1,921.00, Copper $3.80, and Gold… $1,806.83
That’s it for today… Congrats to Argentina for making it to the World Cup final… The team they will play will be decided today between either France or Morocco. I’ll be joining friends, Ty, and Jack to watch the game at the local watering hole today… Jack recently had his hip replaced, so we can compare walking canes… Some college basketball games on TV last night, not my teams, so they didn’t interest me. The free Agent signings in baseball are heating up, I guess everyone wants to know where they will call home when they open their Christmas gifts this year! HA! So, did you watch the video I provided you yesterday? If you did, wasn’t that good? See why I like reading what those guys have to say? Beegie Adair takes us to the finish line today as she plays the Carpenter’s song: Merry Christmas Darlin… I found myself somehow knowing the lyrics to that song, what’s gotten into me? HA I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and Please remember To Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler