Market Commentary
This was Fed Meeting Week – for those who have been distracted by “covid”, the Fed has been hinting about maybe-possibly-tapering their money-printing spree because, maybe, inflation is kinda-sorta starting to become a thing. Finally. To their great relief. Inflation! Yay!!
Ok well sure, inflation sucks if you’re a wage-earner, or on a pension, or you’re a saver, but don’t worry, its transitory! It is barely even noticeable! Which the CPI only rose 4.38% y/y. And that PPI (which of course nobody uses anymore, except a bunch of cranks) is up a … whoa, almost 16% y/y – the most since the mid-70s. Boy does that bring you back: let’s see, there’s Nixon, and Watergate! Sam Ervin and John Dean. The Burglars. Break-ins. Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist! Coverups. Impeachment!! And don’t forget about the tapes!
I digress. Right, so PPIA at 16% seems fairly large. And maybe-possibly-sorta the Fed: “tapering of bond buying coming ‘soon’.” Real soon.
Just not today.
“If progress continues broadly as expected, the Committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted,” the FOMC’s post-meeting statement said. Respondents to a recent CNBC survey said they expect tapering of bond purchases to be announced in November and begin in December.
Federal Reserve holds interest rates steady, says tapering of bond buying coming ‘soon.’
“For inflation, we appear to have achieved more than significant progress, substantial further progress. That part of the test is achieved in my view and the view of many others,” he said.
“My own view is the test for substantial further progress on employment is all but met,” Powell added.
There were some substantial changes in the Fed’s economic forecasts, with a decrease in the growth outlook and higher inflation expectations.
The committee now sees GDP rising just 5.9% this year, compared with a 7% forecast in June. However, 2022 growth is now set at 3.8%, compared with 3.3% previously, and 2.5% in 2023, up one-tenth of a percentage point.
PM spiked higher on the FOMC announcement at 2pm on Wednesday, but the announcement was just a big tease. Once Powell started speaking at 14:30 and started talking about “soon”, gold promptly dropped, and continued to fall over the next two days. “Taper Coming Soon!” seemed to be the driver.
Gold ended the week down -3.61 [-0.21%] on moderate volume. The candle print was mildly bullish but gold remains in a downtrend. Gold had been up fairly briskly on the week – right until Powell started the “soon” thing on Wednesday at 14:35 Eastern. That said – OI did drop on the decline, which was a positive sign. At least this wasn’t some sort of engineered move.
Silver looked fairly similar – what was a moderately positive week ended at 14:30 Wednesday, with silver ending the week up just +0.05 [+0.22%]; as with gold the candle was mildly positive, but silver also remains in a downtrend. No bullish reversal for silver just yet. Silver commercial shorts fell [-9.7k] to a level not seen since 2018. Another drop like that – we’re back to levels last seen in 2012. Commercials want no part of being short right now. I keep saying this is positive. It IS positive! At least, historically it has been positive. But so far, that hasn’t translated into price appreciation.
We saw a new 15-month low in the miners (-3.17%, bearish candle, downtrend), but a bullish reversal for platinum (+4.65%, bullish engulfing 66%, daily uptrend), and just a mildly bearish reading for palladium (-2.56%, spinning top 29%, flat daily trend). Palladium also shows a shocking lack of commercial shorts – quite similar to silver. I take that as a positive sign.
Copper moved higher (+1.42%, long white/bullish reversal 57% – daily uptrend), as did lumber (+1.78%, bullish continuation, uptrend in all timeframes). Interesting the “construction” commodities look substantially stronger than the metals.
The master resource remains in a reasonably strong uptrend (+2.05 +2.85%, bullish continuation), with price looking as though it is about to break out to new highs in the near future.
The buck was volatile this week, but ended up +0.16% – its in a daily downtrend – with a fairly brisk down day on Thursday.
Along with that, the 10 year yield rose (i.e. the underlying bonds fell) +4.0 bp to 1.41%. Not the end of the world, but the losses on Thursday were reasonably heavy. Rates are back in a short-term uptrend. While the Wednesday move was positive for bonds, the big losses came on Thursday.
Even so – there is no clear view as to what is going on in the buck, or in the treasury market. The buck remains (for the most part) in an uptrend, while bond yields are rising at the same time. These two things seem to be acting at cross-purposes. Rising rates (chart below) = falling bonds.
At the same time, we have a debt ceiling issue, which started back in July (if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, the US defaults – the Senate “Republicans” are showing an uncharacteristic amount of discipline on the issue, perhaps due to the fact that President Grandpa’s handlers need 60 votes to clear the Senate, which is a bit more difficult than usual to get right now) – with a vote due Monday. Is the struggle about that $3.5 trillion “I’m not even sure what’s in it” bill + $1.X trillion “infrastructure” bill? This situation is too complicated for me to disentangle. I’m guessing passage of any of these monster spending packages will end up causing the buck to drop hard. But that’s just a guess.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/politics/senate-debt-ceiling-vote-continuing-resolution/index.html
This chart might give you a sense as to the nutty government spending (as % of GDP) that we’ve seen over the past year.
Let’s imagine worst case. Both bills pass. $3.5 trillion + 1.X “infrastructure” = maybe $5 trillion in additional spending over and above the current budget of (roughly) 3.9 trillion. Call it roughly 9 trillion? In one year??? What do we imagine the buck will do if that happens? [I might have missed a trillion here or there in my $9 trillion total.]
My guess: if the buck crashes due to this spending package, commodity prices (copper, lumber, any commodity that has a global market) will just scream higher. This is what the moves in lumber, copper, and crude are all hinting at.
For now, silver and gold remain controlled by the banksters. Palladium and platinum are associated with auto manufacturing, and as we know the WEF doesn’t like internal combustion much (because – Climate Change!) – unless of course it involves private jet travel or limosines, in which case they’re all in favor. “Climate lockdowns” for thee, private jet travel for me!
Even so, the banksters (the Commercial Shorts) don’t seem eager to pile in short – we are at or near the lows in shorts for silver, copper, platinum, palladium, lumber, and crude too. The banksters really don’t want to be short right now.
“But tapering will start soon! Real soon!”
Hey! Jay Powell! Mister Chairman! I have a question: if USG tries to “borrow” another $5 trillion, whadda ya think that does to the price of the 10-year? Who on earth will buy all these bonds anyway? And how will that affect the prices of commodities that are priced in USD?
News That Caught My Eye
China asks local officials to prepare for ‘possible storm’ if Evergrande fails, WSJ says
Local officials described the signals from Chinese authorities as “getting ready for the possible storm” and said the government told them they should only step in at the last minute to prevent spillover effects from Evergrande’s demise, the WSJ report said.
Looks like the CCP may be serious about letting Evergrande blow up. No idea if this ends up being Lehman, or all the fuss fizzles out because CCP blinks and bails them out at the last moment.
The People’s Bank of China said on its website Friday that all cryptocurrency-related transactions in China are illegal, including services provided by offshore exchanges. Services offering trades, order matching, token issuance and derivatives for virtual currencies are all strictly prohibited, according to the PBOC.
Ultimately, the biggest question is whether this latest directive from Beijing has teeth. “The running joke in crypto is that China has banned crypto hundreds of times,” Sobrado said. “I’d be willing to wager people will be trading bitcoin in China a year from now.”
My guess: the CCP is trying to stop capital flight in advance of Evergrande’s demise.
The EU is is set to mandate USB-C on all smartphones and Apple is predictably pouting
Those EU regulators really are focusing on stuff that matters. AAPL is requiring a proprietary power cable. EU bureaucrats: no way! A proprietary power cable is a sin that’s just that egregious. Lives saved = zero.
New-Parent Staple Boppy Recalls 3.3M Pillows After 8 Infant Deaths
There’s that “product liability” concept working its magic again. “Boppy” has a mortality rate of 2.42 deaths/per million pillows. But the safe-and-effective vaccines: Openvaers.com lists 14,925 deaths, yielding a mortality rate (using undercounted-VAERS) of 93/million people.
Wouldn’t product liability for the now-mandated safe-and-effective vaccines (and boosters!) be nice to have?
https://openvaers.com/covid-data
Your car knows too much about you. That could be a privacy nightmare.
I’d summarize, except – its just too depressing. My takeaway: buy a used car that doesn’t have all these features. There’s just no upside to being monitored, especially as the social control rollout continues. Once they have your data, there is no getting it back.
It is probably also a good idea to run through your phone’s app permissions and turn literally everything off. Including your “iPhone location history” – which is on by default. Of course it is. “Stop feeding the data tapeworm.”
How To Find, Track & Manage Your iPhone Location History: Everything You Need To Know…
Your iPhone tracks wherever you go, storing the information inside iOS. You can view your iPhone’s location history too. And turn it off. Here’s what you need to know…
GOP Senators Introduce Bill to Block Biden’s ‘Weaponization’ of IRS Bank Account Surveillance
“What they’ve done is, they are weaponizing the IRS, they’re pushing many, many billions of dollars into that and they will be hiring tens of thousands of new agents,” Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) told The Epoch Times late Thursday.
“So this is all about looking at everybody’s transactions and then hoping that perhaps they find something that’s not getting reported, so they can come after you and get that income,” Boozman said.
The Biden proposal would drop the dollar threshold for transactions at which federal tax agents would be allowed to examine an individual’s private bank account from the present $10,000 to only $600.
Biden also wants to double the IRS workforce by adding 87,000 new government agents under the President’s “The American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda.”
Now that the bureaucracy is being purged of “anti-vaxxers” (i.e. anyone with a potentially questioning mindset), they want to double the size of the bureaucracy’s enforcement arm.
This is focused on “the total surveillance of the Plebes.” Their line: if you aren’t doing anything illegal, what do you have to hide? Tell ya what. If we can get those Fauci Emails completely unredacted, they can feel free to take a peek at my bank balance. Can we make that trade? If Fauci doesn’t have anything to hide, why all the redactions?
Prosecutors Lost A Fight To Keep A Set Of Jan. 6 Capitol Surveillance Videos Under Seal
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday released a new collection of Capitol surveillance videos from Jan. 6 after a judge ordered them to do so, rejecting the government’s argument that making the clips public could threaten the security of the complex.
The government cited the latest videos in the case of Eric Torrens, a Tennessee man who took a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty on Aug. 19 to one misdemeanor count of illegally parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol. He admitted entering the building through a broken door and walking around. The government noted in court papers that Capitol surveillance cameras recorded his entry into the building as well as his movements inside. Prosecutors cited four other videos they obtained related to Torrens, including one that showed him exclaiming, “We goin’ in!” Those were also released on Tuesday.
President Grandpa’s bureaucrats have strenuously resisted releasing any of the videos to date. “Transparency for thee, but not for me!”
You can see the 5 released videos in the above article. They display what “armed insurrection” really looked like that day.
Tucker Carlson also has a piece on this: he goes through the evidence, the new footage released, specifically pointing out the initial entry was made by people dressed in all black, none of whom have (apparently) been prosecuted for their much-more-violent acts. How many undercover Federal Agents were there? What were their roles? Would there have been an “insurrection” if they were not present?
Source (starting at 03:47)
Tucker apparently forgot to talk about about the 4 suicides among the Capitol Police over the past 8 months. Did those officers really “kill themselves?” That’s a self-harm rate of 2660/1 million. That’s just “slightly” in excess of normal.
Tucker asks two questions:
- “Why is Chewbacca guy still in prison?”
- “Why are no Republicans saying anything?”
Politico confirms Hunter Biden laptop emails after media declared story ‘Russian disinformation’ amid election
CNN’s top brass admitted they were spiking the scandal as it unfolded, leaked audio showed.
Politico Playbook published reporting from correspondent Ben Schreckinger’s new book “The Bidens,” which delved into the emails that surfaced in the explosive reporting that was ultimately suppressed by Big Tech.
Politico added, “While the leak contains genuine files, it remains possible that fake material has been slipped in.”
Still going with the “disinfo” angle, are we?
“The pre-election joint censorship campaign by the media, Big Tech & CIA was always a gigantic story. The CIA spun an outright lie about these docs that helped these platforms censor the docs while *journalists* cheered that,” Greenwald tweeted on Tuesday. “Again, however much you despise these media outlets, it’s not enough.”
CIA + Tech + MSM journalists, explicitly working together, got President Grandpa elected, by a direct act of censorship combined with disinformation. That was 2020, with the Bad Orange Man allegedly in charge. What will 2022 look like with President Grandpa in place?
That Arizona Audit was completed this week. Almost no coverage on any media source. Here are the two video files I was able to find – parts #1 and #2. That’s 3 hours of video.
Ivory Hecker has gone through and picked out some of the best bits: https://twitter.com/ivoryhecker
Including 23,344 people who moved – but still voted.
Almost all “duplicate ballots” (which numbered about 17,000) arrived after Election Day.
17,126 people double, triple, or quadruple voted by mail in Maricopa County
Note that now-President Grandpa’s margin of victory was around 10,000 votes.
Was the CIA involved in this bit of election-manipulation too? They sure have enough practice at doing this in other countries who have rulers we don’t like.
What might happen in 2022?
Florida Acquires Monoclonal Antibodies From GlaxoSmithKline After Biden Administration’s Rationing
The state of Florida has obtained thousands of monoclonal antibody treatments to treat COVID-19 from a UK-based company after the Biden administration’s abrupt rationing of federally acquired doses.
Earlier this month, sites in Florida were getting more than 30,000 doses. That doesn’t include hospitals. All sites could order directly however much they needed, and the federal government provides the doses for free. In the next weekly shipment, Florida was scheduled to receive less than 18,000, state officials say.
“I would hate to see somebody who really could benefit from this treatment, not be able to have access to it. When we know that the track record has been very, very positive,” DeSantis said.
President Grandpa’s handlers (and their higher-ups) were clearly displeased with FL Gov DeSantis executing his end-around the NIH “No Treatments For You” policy, with DeSantis managing to save the lives of thousands of Americans in his state.
My thought: bless our founding fathers, who came up with the US Federal System. Its like they could envision the timeline we are living in today.
Tucker tells us: COVID treatments are real!
While FOX-Doc Siegel leads off by telling us that he’s “a big proponent for the vaccine”, it turns out, there are early treatments!
Source (starting at 3:02)
Tucker asks: What treatments do you have?
Marc Siegel:
- Aspirin: decreases vent risk by 50%
- Vitamin D: “decreases risk of getting very sick”
- Remdesivir: when taken very early, reduces hospitalization by 87%
- mABS: when taken early, hospitalization risk decreased by 70%
- Merck: Molnupiravir, before end of year! “The Tamiflu” for COVID!
- Pfizer: New drug – similar to what we use for HIV – looks very very effective too!
As a contrast – FLCCC early treatment protocol:
First Line Agents:
- Ivermectin 0.4-0.6 mg/kg with meals for 5 days until recovered
- Antiviral mouthwash
- Aspirin 325 mg daily
- Vitamin D3 5000 IU/day
- Melatonin 10mg before bedtime
- Quercetin 250 mg 2x/day
- Zinc 100 mg/day
- Vitamin C 500-1000 mg 2x/day
Second line agents:
> 5 days of symptoms, poor response to first line, significant co-morbidities
- Spironolactone 100 mg 2x/day for 10 days
- Dutasteride 2mg day 1, 1mg daily for 10 days
- Fluvoxamine 50 mg 2x/day 10 days
- mABS Casirivimab/imdevimab
While some whiners might complain that Doc Siegel’s list of early outpatient treatments misses a whole section of cheap-drugs-that-work, it does provide some possible insight as to the Oligarchy’s pandemic timeline, namely, that we are approaching herd immunity. Why do I say this? The plan appears to be: to withhold outpatient treatments (NTFY!) as long as possible, in order to maximize vax uptake. But once herd immunity appears on the horizon, then pill-season has arrived, and this will be the signal for the FDA to approve Molnupiravir, which the well-connected Doc Siegel tells us will be approved “before end of year.” Along with “early Remdesivir” – never you mind about the liver damage – and that new Pfizer[mectin] which also promises to be utterly fantastic. [Is Doc Siegel long? Who knows! Who cares!!]
An odd historical note: Siegel’s 96-year-old father got HCQ + AZI back in early April 2020. Dad survived, seemingly due to early outpatient treatment with cheap-drugs-that-worked which most Americans never were able to receive due to NIH’s NTFY regime. But maybe Doc Siegel forgot about that. After all, it was only his Dad.
C.D.C. Chief Overrules Agency Panel and Recommends Pfizer-BioNTech Boosters for Workers at Risk
In a highly unusual decision, the C.D.C. director, Rochelle Walensky, reversed a move by agency advisers and endorsed additional doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for health care workers, teachers and other workers at risk.
The C.D.C.’s statement arrived well past midnight, a sign of the complicated and confusing decision-making surrounding the boosters. The C.D.C. advisers similarly spent two days debating who should get boosters and when, and could not agree on whether occupational risk should qualify as a criterion.
“I am surprised that Dr. Walensky overturned one of the four A.C.I.P. votes today, and I believe others will be as well,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford and the American Academy of Pediatrics liaison to the committee.
Well of course Rochelle followed the orders of President Grandpa’s handlers. But look at the phrasing of this New York Times article. Are the handlers starting to lose the New York Times? Or is BMGF just annoyed that the spike vaccines aren’t being handed out like candy to all and sundry (paid for by You and Me, of course) in the third world? There are so many moving parts, it is hard to keep track.
Narrative analysis:
Picture of Walensky: unflattering.
- Adjective: “highly unusual”
- Adjective: “complicated and confusing decision-making”
- Lead Quote: “I am surprised…’
Even more interestingly – Apoorva Mandavilli, the lead author on the byline, is a die-hard member of “Club Apocalypse.” She never saw a lockdown she didn’t like. Because, of course, “Science!!”
Kinda feels like signs of a power struggle from within the Oligarchy.
Lastly – I’ll leave you with a view from “the other side of the hill.” What does life look like in the land of “No Treatments For You”? Take a look at what modern-Pravda has to say:
‘Vigilante treatments’: Anti-vaccine groups push people to leave ICUs
Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments, according to posts seen by NBC News over the past few weeks.
Some people in groups that formed recently to promote the false cure ivermectin, an anti-parasite treatment, have claimed extracting Covid patients from hospitals is pivotal so that they can self-medicate at home with ivermectin. But as the patients begin to realize that ivermectin by itself is not effective, the groups have begun recommending a series of increasingly hazardous at-home treatments, such as gargling with iodine, and nebulizing and inhaling hydrogen peroxide, calling it part of a “protocol.”
Facebook groups dedicated to purported miracle cures and at-home therapies, like ivermectin, have become de facto hubs for anti-vaccine content in the last month.
A Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “We remove content that attempts to buy, sell, or donate for Ivermectin. We also enforce against any account or group that violates our COVID-19 and vaccine policies, including claims that Ivermectin is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed prevention, and we don’t allow ads promoting Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.”
Anti-vaccination activists falsely believe that ivermectin is a secret miracle cure for Covid. Prescriptions for the drug have skyrocketed, despite some pharmacists refusing to fill them. Horse owners are facing a shortage of dewormers, which contains ivermectin, because anti-vaccine influencers and Facebook groups have falsely claimed that the drugs are effectively the same.
Many users in the Ivermectin groups push conspiracy theories about how Food and Drug Administration-recommended treatments frequently used by doctors and nurses in hospitals are secretly killing patients, and some have implied doctors and nurses are killing patients on purpose so they can receive government payouts.
Dr McCullough has definitely recommended that people stay out of Emergency and the hospital, because once you hand your body over to the system, you lose any ability to treat yourself with the sequenced multidrug therapies. Any PP/ICU doctors or nurses care to weigh in on what your hospital’s standard of care is? Is it more than remdesivir, dexamethasone 6mg, and O2/ventilation?
Can you imagine what will happen to the readers of this modern-day Pravda when the truth comes out?
“Wait. So you are telling me that ‘ivermectin’ horse dewormer actually is a treatment for COVID19?? And remdesivir really doesn’t work?” I’m really curious to see what happens to my friends from SF when the truth finally dawns. “Wait. So they knew all along the war in Vietnam was futile?? And they still sent another 50,000 American troops off to their deaths?”
Yep. They did. And they are doing it again. Except the people dying this time around are your friends and family.
In this cohort study of 2344 US veterans hospitalized with COVID-19, remdesivir therapy was not associated with improved 30-day survival but was associated with a significant increase in median time to hospital discharge.
What will be the breaking point?
The post Taper Coming Soon, View from Other Side of the Hill appeared first on Peak Prosperity.
from Peak Prosperity https://ift.tt/3kFLKNA
