Commentary
Producer prices (PPIACO) looked unpleasant for July; +1.18% m/m, +19.79% y/y. That’s the largest increase since 1973-74. But don’t worry; Powell tells us it is transitory. It was transitory back in the 70s too – but the “transition period” lasted about 8 years, resulting in prices jumping from PPIACO=40 to PPIACO=100. Now that’s the way to wipe out obligations – 150% inflation over that time period. Note: inflation is a wealth transfer – from savers and pensioners, to those who own the underlying assets of society. Who might that be?
The buck plunged [-0.56%] on Friday, at least half-driven by an unexpectedly bad Consumer Sentiment number; 81 expected, but 70 was the actual. Numbers in the 70s hint at recession. Consumers really don’t like inflation. In spite of the mild candle, the buck appears to be entering a downtrend. It also might be a lower high.
Gold closed up on the week +17.78 [+1.01%] after an exciting Monday, which saw a $90 trading range, and a brisk -1.8% plunge. All of the gains occurred on Friday [+1.55%], resulting in a highly-rated reversal bar. Gold’s OI dropped by more than -11k (-1.08%), which is a fair amount of cash-register ringing. I’d say this is all a positive sign for gold.
Silver looked weaker, ending the week down -0.62 [-2.54%]. Monday’s smash was fairly large [-3.7%], and unlike with gold, silver struggled for most of the week. My guess: this was caused by a large rise in silver’s OI during this week’s action: +6k [+3.80%]. Unlike with gold, there was no cash-register-ringing – in fact, banksters added to their shorts, which probably helped to push prices lower. While the candle looked pretty good, I believe the price of silver is definitely being “managed” by the banksters. [FD: I’m long silver.]
Crude mostly just chopped sideways this week, ending up with a positive-looking candle print, but still in a downtrend.
Equities moved higher [+0.71%] which was a new all time high for SPX. Crappy debt was mostly unchanged, while bonds moved a bit higher – the bond gains coming on Friday [-7.6 bp]. Bonds are now back in an uptrend – which means an interest-rate downtrend. So the bearish reversal for DGS10 (see below) is actually bullish for price. Much of Friday’s 10-year move came following the bad Consumer Sentiment number at 10 am. That’s a flight to safety, which runs counter to the “rising interest rate” t(and/or “money printing will be stopped soon) hypothesis from last week, as well as the inflationary PPIACO this week. Which one is correct? No idea.
Maybe – recession-inflation? Is that possible? It would suck to be a bondholder.
Here’s my thumbnail of where the overall economy stands:
- A significant number of people are being paid not to work. So being pragmatic, they aren’t working.
- As a direct result, prices of lots of things are rising, due to rising labor costs. So Oligarchy (temporarily) pays people not to work, and prices rise, hosing the savers and anyone on a pension. Due to the CPI gimmicks, the COLAs of the pensions never keep up with actual prices.
- This engineered wage-price inflation is being called “transitory” by Powell. But as long as you pay people not to work, inflation will probably remain.
- People don’t like inflation – hence the bad consumer sentiment number, which hints at an impending recession.
- There is hope, however. The US is importing a vast new workforce – approximately 2 million new non-English-speaking workers per year, over the southern border. Maybe they can be the new workers – (don’t call them “slaves”, you racist) – while Oligarchy temporarily pays actual Americans not to work. With our money, no less!
- And to add to the fun, there’s still an eviction moratorium in place. Rent payments are for suckers. Of course, the landlords are still required to pay the mortgage on their rental properties. If they can’t – well – Blackrock will be happy to pick up the property (at a discount!) in foreclosure. It can borrow money at 1.2%! Blackrock (and – more importantly – the Stakeholders screened from public view) win!
News Items That Caught My Eye
Where to begin?
Supremes said (thanks ACB) that universities have the right to mandate shots – that don’t prevent infection or transmission – for young adults who receive no benefit, but can still suffer injury from them. The concept: “go elsewhere”. But if you are a continuing PhD student, its tough to just “go elsewhere” without having to repeat years of study. Seems to this non-legal neophyte that the University’s contract with the student is being unilaterally changed mid-stream by the University, with the student having no recourse. No matter. Shots In Arms, because, Pandemic!
U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul
U.S. calls on OPEC and its allies to pump more oil
Alex Berenson: “Uncle Joe’s new foreign policy: begging.”
And: “America will no longer be a world superpower; a handful of countries will dominate.”
Should kids wear masks in school? These states have banned mandates despite experts’ pleas
Which “experts” would that be? “Science!!” experts, who by definition are always correct – thats just how Science!! works. In spite of almost zero risk to children for a severe COVID outcome, and even Osterholm saying that cloth masks are useless (and that we need N95s!), masking children remains a primary Oligarchy goal. How is that going? Four states/territories have school mask mandates: DC, CA, HI, and PR. Twelve do not: NH, MT, SD, UT, AZ, OK, TX, AR, TN, AL, GA, FL The irony of thousands of COVID-positive migrants being shipped all over the US, per day, at our expense, while our Science!!-overlords insist on “masking children.”
Call this a victory for the US Federal system design. Thanks, (racist!) Founding Fathers!
AAPL provided more details in how they are going to Save the Children using machine learning. Instead of scouring all pictures on all iPhones everywhere searching for kiddie porn, AAPL is just going to apply the machine-learning kiddie porn detection system (MLKPDS?) on phones that have “iCloud Photos Libraries” enabled. So it sounds like you can opt out, at least in Version 1, if you don’t use iCloud Photos Libraries. That’s a relief.
Left unaddressed is the known ability of various state, as well as non-state actors who are able to hack any iPhone using a collection of IOS zero day bugs. If “someone” doesn’t like you much, you could well find your iPhone “somehow” opted-in for iCloud Photos Libraries, with you sharing a whole bunch of newly-downloaded kiddie porn. “Those aren’t my pictures!”, you scream, as they drag you off to prison. “Who knew all those Insurrectionists liked Kiddie Porn so much? Bless AAPL for Saving the Children.”
Likely, this is the thin edge of the wedge. It starts with Saving the Children. Next up: “stopping medical disinformation.” And then finally: stopping pictures of ‘Pooh’ alongside Chairman Xi. Tech stays the same, just the “directory of bad pictures” changes.
Value-add to you and me of owning an iPhone with this hackable, entry-level social credit “feature”? Best case: no benefit. Worst case: ten years (or more) in the Big House. Complain? You must like kiddie porn. Which is, of course, why it is the first use case.
Extended rent moratoriums and the slow distribution of billions in federal rent assistance are driving many small landlords to call it quits.
“Multiple landlords have told me they are selling out,” Jon Frickensmith, president of the South Wisconsin Landlord Association, told The Epoch Times. “They ask us how to get out of the business and how to get the tenants out of their houses. These are mom-and-pop operators, the kind of landlords that are willing to take tenants with bad credit or a criminal history. This will only add to the housing crisis.”
The National Equity Atlas estimates that landlords across the United States are owed more than $21 billion in overdue rent.
This is a middle-class-to-Oligarchy wealth transfer construct. Once “enough” mom-and-pop operators are forced to sell on the cheap, you can bet that we will never see an “eviction moratorium” ever again. The Blackrock representatives in Congress will see to it. My mother was a teacher, and she invested her life’s savings building a mom-but-no-pop rental business. She borrowed the purchase price from the bank, paying it back over 20 years using rents from the (3) tenants. Most of them paid. Some did not. She had to pay the bank regardless. Of course. She just broke even in the first decade of this “operation” and it took a lot of time to run. It did better in the next 10, mainly because of inflation. It was the work of a lifetime of saving. Now Oligarchy wants Mom’s asset for itself. Oligarchs gonna oligarch.
Benjamin Mason Meier, a global health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said it will be difficult for businesses or some agencies to verify whether a card is real. After New York City officials last week announced it will require restaurants, cafes, bars, theaters, and gyms to verify whether a customer is vaccinated, it’s not clear how a small business would enforce such a rule and verify that a vaccine card is authentic.
“The United States, unlike most countries which have electronic systems in place, is basing its vaccination on a flimsy paper card,” he said. “There needs to be policies in place for accountability to make sure that every student is operating in the collective interest of the entire campus,” he said of universities.
Lots of fake, flimsy paper “vax cards.” I wonder if the professor is advocating – to “fix” this “problem” – a secure electronic-health-record-social-credit-access-to-transport-permitted-to-work-and-spend-money-and-perhaps-even-vote device of some sort. Because: “public health.” Ya think maybe?
Completely unrelated: in 2020 alone, BMGF provided $19.1 million in funding for UNC Chapel Hill, with $6.4 million for “Global Health.” Whenever I see the words “Global Health”, I always think of one guy – a “Mr G” in BMGF – who really likes to fund this sort of “Global Health” thing worldwide.
And I heard Ralph Baric worked at UNC Chapel Hill also. Good friends with Bat Lady Shi, if I recall correctly.
#SARSCoV2, #COVID19, spike protein, [vax]: they’re all one-in-the-same bioweapons designed to rattle the homeostasis of de novo (i.e., tryptophan to NAD+ & flush niacin to NAD+) NAD+ biosynthesis (upon which your immunity, health, bioenergetic/thermodynamic equilibrium is anchored)
Dr Kats tweeted this hypothesis about the “health goals” of this lab-leak pandemic today. I’d summarize it as, “Spikes for everyone. More spikes are better!” For Kats, the spike protein (either from the virus, or from the shot) is a bioweapon designed to throw as many people as possible into a state of niacin (NAD+) deficiency – with the acute viral phase killing those who are already in a severe state of deficiency. Based on the paper below: 10-30% of previously-healthy COVID survivors will get knocked into a state of chronic NAD+ deficiency, which will make them weak, depressed, anxious, scared, unhealthy, and even more dependent on the on-patent Pharma/sickcare cartel, due to the S1 proteins getting stuck in monocytes – for months and months – causing inflammation wherever they go. That’s my interpretation of the paper below:
I don’t have proof yet, but like Dr Kats, I’m guessing the vaccine-generated S1 – engineered to be more durable than the one from the Fauci-funded lab-leak virus – also gets eaten by the monocytes, and those S1s then get stuck in (non-classical) monocytes for months also. And “boosters” serve to assure that there will be a constant supply of new, stuck S1 proteins for the fortunate vaccinee, so the NAD+ deficiency (theoretically) just never ends.
This is a purposeful construction. According to Dr Kats.
Spikes for everyone. More spikes are better!
“Submitted for your approval.”
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