Monday, May 23, 2011

No Surprises Today...

U2's show on Saturday night at the new Mile High Stadium was epic (see below).  With Canadian markets closed today, I didn't expect the action in the metals/miners to be very exciting.  Silver continued on its volatile ride.  The COT report on Friday showed continued liquidation by the large hedge fund category and continued reduction in the net short position of the commercial category (i.e. the manipulating bullion banks backed by the Fed).   This is VERY bullish.  Furthermore, if you participate in the trading action on the Comex on a daily basis, you can't but believe but that silver doesn't want to go any lower and that the "path of least resistance" will be sideways to up.  The hourly trading chart is carving out a nice higher-lows "wedge" formation, which is typically bullish (although not always).  It is my view that, ironically, the manipulators are seeding the silver market (and gold, in fact especially gold) for the next move higher.

From a fundamental perspective, it is clear to anyone who is active in the bullion markets that the lower price of silver has intensified the public's appetite to purchase physical silver. There are shortages of silver eagles and the premiums at all coin dealers moved up sharply over the last two weeks.  Furthermore, the situation in Europe with Greece/Italy etc is creating a buying frenzy in eurogold that is driving eurogold to new record highs.  Obviously in this country QE3 is being planned, and somewhat anticipated by the markets, unless the Fed for some reason decides to let the Dow/SPX and economy crash.  That will be very gold bullish and likely the reason that James Turk made these comments at King World News yesterday:  LINK

This is typically a slower week in the markets ahead of the 3-day Memorial Weekend.  It probably will be for me posting, unless of course I come across news that irritates me lol.  I thought I would make sure that everyone saw how the banks are repaying the Taxpayer's kindness for saving them and their hefty compensation packages:  Banks Push Consumer Bureau to Keep U.S. Complaint Line Private This news item came out 10 days ago but I ran across it again to day and I thought people should be aware of just how two-tiered our Rule of Law system has become:  There's the big banks and then there's everyone else.  Here's the LINK

U2 put on a spectacular show Saturday night.  I'm not sure there's any other active rock band right now that can sellout a concert stadium show.  I get a bit irritated by Bono's limousine-liberal politics and his impassioned political activism on behalf of small out-of-the-way countries - he should really be working on helping to solve Ireland's potentially catastrophic financial situation.  But politics aside, I think the only rock show I've seen that's more memorable than a U2 show was sitting in the second row at Madison Square Garden for the Rolling Stones in 1998.  Here's the intro from Saturday:

11 comments:

  1. That's kind of a cheap shot on Bono's charitable work....he's not just writing checks. Seems to me the man has done more to help the truly impoverished than any of us could ever imagine doing.

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  2. How about as a percent of his net worth? His venture capital firm just made a few billion on the sale of Skype. My point is why Burma? Ya that's great to promote human rights but how about spending some energy and, more importantly, millions on the impoverished and oppressed in his own homeland? How about in the United States, arguably his biggest fan-base. Hell, the concert at Red Rocks is what catapulted U2 into the real big time (Under A Blood Red Sky video) and I didn't seem him extending charity to the severy oppressed and impoverished in Denver.

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  3. I have no idea what % of his net worth he contributes to charity and neither do you. I know he spends a great deal of his personal time on these issues, how do you value that?

    I truly can't imagine why you are picking on him for choosing to help Africa & Burma? We all choose our favorite charities and contribute what we like. He's free to donate as much as he likes to whatever he likes. These are the areas he's become an expert in (at least Africa, I don't know anything about what he's doing in Burma) and it's where he obviously feels he can make the greatest contribution. I don't think you'd like it very much if someone told you the charities you donate to aren't as worthwhile as another charity.

    Finally, you can't seriously compare someone who's impoverished in Denver with someone who's impoverished in Africa. I'm not trying to diminish how difficult life can be in the U.S. but I don't think it's remotely similar. There's no SNAP program, Medicaid, Head Start, unemployement checks, housing aid, etc. in Africa.

    I'm not trying to pick a fight with you, I just don't get why, with all the suffering in the world, you're throwing daggers at Bono for trying to make life better for a group of people who truly can't help themselves.

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  4. No worries. I just think there's better venues to preach his wares on political causes than on a Saturday night at a rock concert when most of the crowd is stoned and drunk to the be-jeeezus and just want to forget how brutal life is.

    He should do tele-thons or something...

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  5. Looks like the show was awesome! One difference I felt we would see as the silver "bubble" has burst would be physical buyers would get more excited about gathering metals cheaper. When Pets.com blew up and all the rest no one was interested in dot.com stocks at cheaper prices.

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  6. That I totally agree with! You did not pay for a sermon!

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  7. Exactly PW! I wasn't either drunk or stoned but the last thing I wanted to have presented was the horrible plight of most of the world LOL - we deal with that all day long during the week!

    GYC, we haven't even begun to see metal buyers go into a real buying frenzy. Look at the mining stocks. No ipo's or stock splits. No CNBC hype. Although there is growing participation in the metals market, I bet way less than 5% of the investing public has even thought about buying metals or miners.

    When is the last time you heard about any big firm investment advisor/broker calling his client-base and saying "hey man, you HAVE to start buying some gold and silver and I have some great mining stock ideas for potential home runs?" LOL

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  8. Bono could dramatically tilt thinking about banksterism and arbitrage in the 1st world, and how it facilitates the starvation and economic rape of the 3rd world.

    But he is mum on the core evil -- and the simple FACT that the perpetrators of the 2008 financial train wreck remain unmolested, unquestioned, and firmly still in control of the monetary levers.

    One has to suspect that Bono, like Obama, is either stupid or complicit or simply afraid. Given that he is profiting handsomely from the ongoing financial rape, I think we can rule out stupid and nominate complicit as most likely reason.

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  9. Don't care for Bono or really U2 as a band outright, but I really dig The Edge. If you haven't seen it, check out "It Might Get Loud" feat Edge, Jack White and Jimmy Page. Goes through their musical histories and such, pretty fascinating I thought. At one point The Edge says something to the effect that the only people who call him by his real name (David) are the police and border patrol - to all else, he's The Edge even to his Mom. Thought that was funny.

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  10. The only TRU-MAN about the DOLLAR is ex-CEA head Christina Romer

    In the Sunday New York Times, Christina Romer, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, wrote an opinion piece titled, “Straight Talk About the Dollar.” Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog about a speech Romer gave at the Council on Foreign Relations and it more than hinted at a WEAK DOLLAR POLICY as a necessary tool to get manufacturing restarted in America. In this weekend’s piece, Romer is much more direct in her call for a weak DOLLAR to aid the U.S. economic recovery. In a quick discussion about the DOLLAR, Romer makes clear to his eminence, Larry Summers, that the value of the U.S. DOLLAR is just a PRICE, just like any other value set by a market.

    This is critical because it is as clear and concise as it gets and it makes light out of the Secretary Treasury’s mantra of a strong DOLLAR policy that has been handed down from Bob Rubin to Larry Summers, to Paul O’Neill, to John Snow, to Hank Paulson and, of course, Secretary Geithner.
    The only thing supporting the DOLLAR in the short-term is EUROPEAN malfeasance and deceit.
    http://yrah53.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/tru-man/

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  11. All you need to know about gold---its the anti fraud vehicle.
    ...and remember..bono...big ben...et al..everyone's a shyster to some extent!

    In Praise of Sorkin’s Praise of Lowenstein’s Praise of Financial CEOs

    This is the first of a multi-part response to Lowenstein’s column. The remaining columns will address why control fraud drove the current crisis and respond to Lowenstein’s strawman arguments. The sources of the quotations used in this column, from Messrs. Lowenstein and Sorkin, are provided below.

    Roger Lowenstein has just taken the brave step of praising the failure to prosecute elite financial managers for fraud as a demonstration of the greatness of America. Lowenstein declares (1) that Blankfein was right – Goldman really was doing “God’s work,” (2) virtually no financial elites committed crimes, (3) any crimes they may have committed were trivial and played no material role in causing the crisis, (4) those that wish to hold fraudulent elites accountable for their crimes are (a) financially illiterate, (b) paranoid conspiracy theorists equivalent to those claiming the U.S. attacked the twin towers on 9/11, (c) a threat to our democracy and constitutional rights, and (d) engaged in “punishing profit,” (5) the prosecutors who refuse to bring criminal charges where they find elite frauds are the heroes safeguarding our democracy and constitutional rights, (6) the FBI is conducting a “serious” investigation of the elite financial frauds (despite points one through four above), and (7) the crisis was caused by “society” – because we’re all guilty no one should be held accountable – except those paranoids who want to destroy America’s greatness by prosecuting financial CEOs on fraud charges.
    The author also attacks the private sector. Neoclassical economists have long assured us that fraud is impossible in the securities markets because creditors and investors exercise effective “private market discipline.” Private market discipline is the core function essential to efficient markets and capitalism, but the author claims that private market discipline has become so perverse that the supposed sources of discipline actually aid what criminologists call “accounting control frauds.”

    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/in-praise-of-sorkin%E2%80%99s-praise-of-lowenstein%E2%80%99s-praise-of-financial-ceos/

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