Gold and silver were in the usual capping mode today,
although silver managed to finish the week on a slight gain.
I am liking silver more and more here, and am not adverse
to some small buys at regular intervals with a longer term time horizon.
Nibbles, if you will.
Today was all China and Greece. China rallied so everyone
had a good day. I think this is just the end of Act I, and direct your
attention to the comparison of the Shanghai Composite and the Nasdaq in the
dot.com bubble.
As for Greece, we had florid headlines about 'Tsipras is
destroying Greece' today.
Greece is playing a rough hand, and playing for
time. What else does one think they would have gotten out of the
Berlin blockheads, a workable solution? Hah! Why should
that happen now, when the crony capitalists have been pushing so hard for
deprivation first, and then privatization and a general looting of
productive assets next? This is a well-established pattern.
I think this was laid out in a pretty straightforward
manner a couple of weeks ago. But the sturm und drang is
certainly diverting, especially the German hubris and the Greek negotiation
tactics. You cannot adequately follow the game unless you
understand the objectives.
The drama in gold and silver is now laid bare for all to
see. Anyone who doubts the rigging in the precious metals is not
to be taken seriously anymore.
I really wish I could understand the intended endgame
a bit better, as least as it stands in the minds of the gold pool and the
silver market riggers. I think I know what the other side
expects. They know the price manipulation will eventually run out
of steam. All such operation invariably do so. And in that
aftermath market forces that have built up with take the pricing higher by
multiples.
Yellen's speech was held at the City Club of
Cleveland, which is one of my old haunts. I used to have lunch there
almost every Friday, some years ago, and attended some notable speakers who
said exciting things. Yellen was certainly not one of them.
The Fed wants to raise rates for their own policy purposes
and will do quite a bit to get a fig leaf to cover what is a self-serving act
from a generally insular and self-serving crew of technocrats in the service
of kleptocrats.
The real solutions are fairly simple, but will not happen
because there are such powerful interests allied against them. And they
have managed to delude a vocal portion of the populace by feeding them a
steady diet of slogans, sociological phantoms for children, and
economic hoo-haw.
Financial reform and wage growth, with more certainty in
the big variables of healthcare costs and retirement plans is key to a
sustainable and organic recovery.
The way things are arranged now, hiring even a
single person is a 'step function' because you are not only signing them
up for a wage, but for benefits that can vary all over the place and represent
a burden for a new or small business.
Gee, I wonder what a developed country would
do. Oh yes, the US started on the path for a sane solution in this
matter in the 1930s and the New Deal, but alas, were hijacked along the way.
Single payer healthcare and a robust social security
system, taking the matter out of the hands of individual businesses
who look for ways to cheat and cut corners would be more cost effective
and much more workable.
And much easier then to get business to pay a living wage
to a national workforce in which essential items like healthcare were not
wild cards and the feeding grounds of healthcare and insurance monopolies
that add roughly 50 percent overhead to the costs.
And finally there is the matter of tax loopholes and
multinational tax cheating to consider.
And for the love of God: break up the Banks.
Oh well, interesting times. It is a good
phrase for the day.
