Because when you have no POMO, and no QE on the horizon, you can always break a stock exchange and send the entire market… higher!?
*CBOE HAD 2ND PERIOD OF ISSUES W/ QUOTE DISSEMINATION TODAY To wit: “The CBOE did not disseminate quotes between 11:45am CDT and 11:48am CDT in the following classes- DEM, DENN, DEPO and PCLN. All systems are operating normally.”
And the result:
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
The following video was published by RT on Nov 4, 2014
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss ‘American Psycho’ type banker murderers roaming the streets beheading prostitutes. While in the central banks, we see ‘corporatism’ as defined by the World Bank in the 80s and 90s – and that is a balance sheet greater than 25% of GDP. In the second half Max interviews Professor Steve Keen and artist Miguel Guerra about their new crowdfunded graphic novel series – CRASH, BOOM, POP – where economics will be fun to learn. Professor Keen promises Max a naked Margaret Thatcher to keep with the genre. They also discuss the godzilla in the Japanese central banking consuming any debt the population throws at it and where this might lead for the final global debt showdown.
Submitted by Money Metals Exchange.
Gold is a touchy subject on Wall Street. It has been ever since FDR drove Americans and their gold apart 80 years ago. Although gold bullion ownership has been legal in the U. S. since 1974, a relentless government campaign to dampen the gold price has left gold trailing in public popularity and perception.
Gold is money. No one knows that better than Wall Street. But it prefers to keep matters of gold to itself. Wall Street doesn’t want you owning gold or even thinking about gold, and treats you shabbily if you do.
As an individual investor, you will probably never come face to face with the masterminds on Wall Street. But you might meet a representative on Main Street, your local stockbroker. He adopts Wall Street’s disdain for gold, whether consciously or in response to institutional incentives for him to push financial products only.
To understand, we looked at how stockbrokers are trained and managed by their Wall Street employers. We spoke to several brokers and regular clients. The brokers insisted on anonymity, as you’ll see.
Stockbrokers Are Steeped in Establishment Thinking
Our hat is off to stockbrokers for the hard work it takes to earn that license. Their basic education revolves around a tough exam called the Series 7, considered by some as difficult as the bar exam. It’s a computer-generated, timed test of 250 questions lasting 7 hours, taken under government supervision. One study guide shows 8,000 possible test questions. No two exams are identical, which eliminates cheating.
This post was published at GoldSilverWorlds on November 4, 2014.
Submitted by Thad Beversdorf via First Rebuttal blog,
I wrote an article recently over at Voices of Liberty that lays out the very dire picture for those of us who have yet to retire. The gist of the article is that the Fed has effectively robbed the retired class of any hope for having enough of a nest egg to live off through the end of their lives if they want to retire at 65.
Some may argue well this past 10 years has just been an anomaly of low interest rates but they will come back i.e. normalize to higher levels here in the next couple years. Well let me show you why that is simply wrong.
Here is why interest rates will be perpetually low for the rest of our lives, why the inflation calculation has been changed to a dynamic formula (meaning they now change the inputs each quarter) and why those of us yet to retire are screwed.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
With French youth revolting, Spanish regions seeking secession, and GREXIT back on the cards, Europe’s social unrest concerns are starting to rise once again to troubling levels. However, it is in Europe’s poorest nation, Bulgaria that the message of dissatisfaction is loudest. As The BBC reports, a woman has set herself ablaze near the presidency building in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. There were six similar self-immolations in Bulgaria last year, amid anger over chronic poverty and alleged corruption.
Game changer? It appears there is a mutiny afoot in Europe as Reuters and Bloomberg report that a number (rumored to be between 7 and 10) central bankers are set to challenge ECB head mario Draghi’s leadership style and question his decisions on quantitative easing. As Reuters reports, bankers faulted his secretiveness and communication style making it hard for ECB to take bolder steps.
NATIONAL BANKERS FAULT SECRETIVENESS AND COMMUNICATION STYLE SOME MEMBERS PLAN TO RAISE CONCERNS AT GOVERNORS DINNER DRAGHI KEPT AIDES IN DARK ON POLICY STEPS IRRITATION COULD MAKE IT HARD FOR ECB TO TAKE BOLDER STEPS
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
Game changer? It appears there is a mutiny afoot in Europe as Reuters and Bloomberg report that a number (rumored to be between 7 and 10) central bankers are set to challenge ECB head mario Draghi’s leadership style and question his decisions on quantitative easing. As Reuters reports, bankers faulted his secretiveness and communication style making it hard for ECB to take bolder steps.
NATIONAL BANKERS FAULT SECRETIVENESS AND COMMUNICATION STYLE SOME MEMBERS PLAN TO RAISE CONCERNS AT GOVERNORS DINNER DRAGHI KEPT AIDES IN DARK ON POLICY STEPS IRRITATION COULD MAKE IT HARD FOR ECB TO TAKE BOLDER STEPS Via Reuters,
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
Graceland Updates
By Stewart Thomson
In January of 2011, I swapped a fair amount of physical silver bullion for physical gold bullion. A couple of weeks ago, I reversed the swap. When I first did the swap in 2011, silver was trading above $30. I wasn’t trying to call any tops or bottoms. Gold simply offered more relative value to me at that period of time than silver did. Likewise, I’m not really interested in predicting that silver has ‘bottomed’ against gold, at this point in time. Silver simply appears to offer more relative value to me now, than gold. While silver is a mighty metal, it’s not for all investors, especially when bought with size. It’s much more volatile than gold. It can trade as wildly as sugar or natural gas. Most amateur investors should invest in gold first, and buy silver after they have built a ‘foundation of comfort’ with gold. Please click here now. That’s the daily silver chart. A rally just up to overhead HSR (horizontal support and resistance) at about $18.70, is quite a sizable move. I’ll be booking some profits in that target area, if it is acquired. Note the position of my price stoker (14,7,7 Stochastics), at the bottom of the chart. Rallies tend to begin from a point below 20, which is where the lead line is now. A post-jobs report rally of sizeis quite likely.
This post was published at GoldSeek on 4 November 2014.
‘I do not believe it’s the Fed’s job to rescue reckless investors from the errors of their ways.’ Now they tell us! Some stock-hype artists said that the Fed can’t actually stop QE, ever, or that it would restart it at the first squiggle in the markets. They were almost right.
On October 15, when stocks were going to heck in a straight line, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard got on Bloomberg TV and pressed the red panic button. The profusely sweating souls on Wall Street had been clamoring for it. Markets could not be allowed to skid more than a couple of percentage points. Dip-buying had to be instantly rewarded. And they’d hold the Fed directly responsible if it didn’t get this mess straightened out pronto.
So Bullard said on TV that the end of QE should be delayed and that the Fed should continue buying $15 billion in securities a month. With that, he’d handed those profusely sweating souls what they’d been clamoring for. Or they thought he did. It was enough. Stocks instantly turned around and started re-soaring. The ‘Yellen Put’ was born. It would kick in before stocks reached the 10% correction mark. Or so they dreamed. But Bullard was just jawboning the markets back from the brink.
It wasn’t what the Fed has been saying. QE is buried. The only question that remains is ZIRP. It increasingly looks like Yellen wasn’t kidding when she warned lawmakers in July that, given a few ifs, interest rate hikes ‘likely would occur sooner and be more rapid than currently envisioned.’
This post was published at Wolf Street on November 4, 2014.
Crude oil has fallen to the $80 area and a monthly closing below $78 will signal a sharp drop into the $60 zone is likely. The long-term support actually begins at $57 and the major support which held previously is still there at the $32-31 zone. While we have the intraday high in 2008, the actual highest yearly closing was 2011 with the intraday high in gold. Here too we do not see any reversal in trend to the upside before 2016.
This post was published at Armstrong Economics on November 4, 2014.
If today’s European Commission slashing of Euro GDP forecasts did not leave a warm and fuzzy feeling in Europeans that the greatest depression ever is proceeding just as planned, if not quite as “forecast” as the following chart shows, confirming yet again that when it comes to predicting the future nobody can hold a candle to the Fed, the IMF or Europe…
… then here is Goldman with the loudest warning yet, courtesy of its internal RETINA model, that Europe is now effectively in a triple-dip recession, with Q3 GDP for the Euro area at -0.2%.
From Goldman’s Huw Pill
RETINA retreats further into Q3 contraction Bottom line: We are less than a fortnight away from Eurostat’s publication of its flash estimate of Q3 GDP growth in the Euro area. In today’s Daily, we look through the lens of our contemporaneous tracker of real-time inflation and activity. Since our previous update in mid-October, RETINA’s median estimate of Q3 GDP growth has moved deeper into negative territory, driven largely by a disappointing print for area-wide industrial production in August. The downside risks to our 0.1%qoq judgemental forecast for Q3 GDP now look skewed to such an extent that our point estimate no longer falls within a 50% confidence interval around RETINA’s median reading.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
Don Quixote is easily one of the most entertaining books of the Renaissance, if not all-time. And almost everyone’s heard of it, even if they haven’t read it.
You know the basic plot line- Alonso Quixano becomes fixated with the idea of chivalry and sets out to single-handedly resurrect knighthood.
His wanderings take him far across the land where he gets involved in comic adventures that are terribly inconvenient for the other characters.
He famously assaults a group of windmills, believing that they are cruel giants. He attacks a group of clergy, believing that they are holding an innocent woman captive.
All of this is based on Don Quixote’s completely delusional view of the world. And everyone else pays the price for it.
Miguel de Cervantes’ novel is brilliantly entertaining. But the modern-day monetary equivalent is not so much.
Central bankers today have an equally delusional view of the world. Just three months ago, Mario Draghi (President of the European Central Bank) embarked on his own Quixotic folly by taking certain interest rates into NEGATIVE territory.
Draghi convinced himself that he was saving Europe from disaster. And like Don Quixote, everyone else has had to pay the price for his delusions.
This post was published at Sovereign Man on November 4, 2014.
Excerpted from the November 2 edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 315. Public readers please filter with the idea that the style of writing meshes with much of what was included in the report that preceded it and hence, maybe appear to be a little vague in some areas.
Currencies & Commentary
In light of the news from the land of the rising sun and the sinking currency, let’s reserve NFTRH 315’s only real charting for a big picture monthly view of currencies, to which we usually give just a brief update, and then some misc. big picture monthly charts [not included in this excerpt] as we try to gain perspective on things that may seem illogical to our rational minds.
Yen is losing the next level of support. BoJ saw that support too. I’ll bet they also took note of the big October bounce and found it unacceptable.
This post was published at GoldSeek on 3 November 2014.
While it is remarkable that the same media organization that a week ago was fawning over the rotting carcass of Keynes’ disastrous economic legacy, can today issue a warning that “Japan Creates World’s Biggest Bond Bubble”, we have long since given up being surprised by things that make absolutely zero sense in the New Abnormal.
So here is William Pesek with a less than Keynesian view on why Banzainomics’ very own Kuroda-san will be regarded as either a genius or a madman in a decade. Spoiler alert: it won’t be “genius.”
Japan Creates World’s Biggest Bond Bubble
Ten years from now, will Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda be regarded as a genius or a madman?
Kuroda’s shock-and-awe stimulus move on Oct. 31 delighted markets and won him plaudits as a monetary virtuoso. Japan, the conventional wisdom tells us, has finally gotten serious about ending deflation, and isn’t it wonderful. But what happens when a central bank buys up an entire bond market? We’re about to find out as Kuroda, like some feverish hedge fund manager, corners Japan’s. Neglected in all the celebrating: To reach a 2 percent inflation goal that’s both arbitrary and meaningless, the BOJ is destroying Japan’s standing as a market economy.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
Disillusionment with Europe’s single currency continues to grow with the cracks beginning to show in it’s heartland, Germany, where the third largest political party is now selling gold coins and bars to raise funds.
In a poll in September Alternative for Germany (AfD) were found to be Germany’s third most popular party. The rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party saw it receive 10.6% of the vote in Thuringia and 12.2% in Brandenburg on 14 September. Two weeks earlier it secured its first regional government seats in Saxony.
AfD are not anti-EU per se and have distanced themselves from other eurosceptic parties. They see a future for Germany in the EU and embrace common markets but wish to see the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the euro itself wound up and a return to the Deutschmark.
In the past two weeks, in a bid to gain as much state funding as possible they have entered the gold bullion market with quite a degree of success. In Germany, the federal government will match, up to a value of 5 million, any funds raised privately by a political party. In a bid to get the full allocation of state funding, AfD have started to sell gold bullion online.
This post was published at Gold Core on 4 November 2014.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D. C., which functions as the central bank of the United States, has farmed out much of its Quantitative Easing (QE) programs to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since the financial crisis of 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has, in turn, contractually farmed out a hefty chunk of the logistics of that work to JPMorgan Chase in the last six years.
Sitting quietly on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s web site is a vendor agreement and other documents indicating that JPMorgan Chase holds all of the Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) that the New York Fed has purchased under its various Quantitative Easing programs. As of last Wednesday, that figure was $1.7 trillion dollars. (The New York Fed has confirmed that JPMorgan is custodian for these assets.)
In addition to holding the MBS, JPMorgan also has a contractual agreement to exercise discretion (its own judgment) in trading the surplus cash that sits in the New York Fed’s cash account. While JPMorgan is restricted to holding collateral backed by U. S. government securities for these cash trades in Repurchase Agreements, its approved list of counter parties include global banks variously charged with rigging the international interest rate benchmark known as Libor, money laundering, aiding and abetting tax evasion, and defrauding clients.
During the period in which JPMorgan has been the trusted custodian of a major part of the assets of the U. S. central bank, it has been repeatedly charged with serial crimes. In January of this year, JPMorgan paid $2.6 billion and made history in being the first Wall Street mega bank to be charged with two felony counts and receive a deferred prosecution agreement. The crime was aiding and abetting the Madoff fraud – the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of modern finance. In September of last year, JPMorgan settled its London Whale scandal for $920 million in penalties. That case involved its use of depositors’ savings to gamble in exotic derivatives in London, lose at least $6.2 billion of those deposits, and initially misstate the amount of losses to its regulators.
This post was published at Wall Street On Parade on November 3, 2014.
My article ‘10,000 tons of gold… The math says China could have easily done it!’explains how it’s possible or even likely China has amassed 10,000 tons of gold. What it doesn’t explain is the context as to why this is so important. I know some now this story well, but for most, this needs repeating.
A little History Gold has long represented the primary means of rebalancing trade surplus / deficits between nations. As a nation ran a trade surplus with another, the exporter ended up with an excess of the importer nations currency. The primary means to rebalance was for the exporter to transfer back to the importer nation it’s currency in exchange for gold. If this continued, the importing nations falling gold holdings would represent a weakening currency…which would mean higher prices to the importing nation and less purchasing of the exporting nations goods slowing down the trade imbalance. Since the advent of paper money until 1971, this had been the general method to rebalance.
The US assumed the role of global reserve currency formally at the Bretton Woods conference just prior to the culmination of WWII. The agreement entailed the US dollar would be the ‘peg’ to which all other currencies would maintain their value within a /-1% band. This was the resolution of what had been lacking between the two world wars: a system of international payments that would allow trade to be conducted without fear of sudden currency depreciation or wild fluctuations in exchange rates. And of course, nations accumulating excess US dollars would be allowed to freely exchange them with the US for gold. And so it was from 1945 through 1971.
The US had amassed 20k tons of gold following WWII as the primary exporter during the war but by 1971 the growing surplus of dollars sent abroad (initiated primarily under Johnsons’ Vietnam war and the creation of unfunded liabilities) had been increasingly exchanged for US gold holdings. The 20k US tons of gold were down to 8k tons and falling precipitously. Nixon subsequently closed the gold window and ended the basis of post war monetary rebalancing. In the place of the Bretton Woods system of balance, Nixon initiated the Petro-Dollar system with Saudi Arabia and eventually all OPEC members.
This post was published at SRSrocco Report on November 3, 2014.
Remember that in a beggar thy neighbor world, where currency warfare has once again broken out between the US, Europe and Japan, for every winner there is a loser. In this case, the loser is the one country that has decided that a strong currency is a great thing for its economy (if only for the time being): that would be the US. There is a problem with that, however: because in Q3 the trade deficit rose by 7.6%, virtually identicaly to how much stronger the US Dollar basket, the DXY, increased by in the same period which surged by 7.7% the most since Q3 2008 when Lehman blew up!
So why is this relevant? Because as the chart below shows, US trade excluding Petroleum, just tumbled to $48.3 billion, essentially matching the worst print in the history of the series, suggesting that portrayals of the US as a resurgent export powerhouse are completely erroneous, and that instead the US is as big a net importer of goods and services, aside from the Shale revolution of course, as ever.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/04/2014.
The following video was published by TruthNeverTold on Nov 4, 2014
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