by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
The Texas pastor who sued Whole Foods in April for allegedly writing a gay slur on a cake he bought withdrew his lawsuit on Monday and apologized to the supermarket chain for perpetrating a hoax, KVUE reported.
“The company did nothing wrong,” openly gay pastor Jordan Brown wrote in a Monday statement. “I was wrong to pursue this matter and use the media to perpetuate this story.”
Wrong to pursue this matter? He made the entire thing up to smear the company!
by Shawn Ritenour
Mises.org
One of the points I like to stress in my introductory economics course, as well in my course on Economic Expansion and Development is that socialism, when implemented, results in poverty, starvation, death, and cultural ossification. The more hard-core socialist the system is, the worse its problems. Mary Anastasia O’Grady documents this in a short essay in the Wall Street Journal. It is an excellent primer in the problems of socialism in which she uses Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” to illustrate what any economic system must do if society is to survive. As O’Grady notes:
‘The 401(k)’s biggest value is that it turns spenders into savers’
by Jeremy Olshan
Market Watch
Most religious men find the answers to their prayers in scripture. Ted Benna found them in the U.S. tax code.
Fed up with clients only interested in getting the maximum tax break for themselves while doing as little as possible for their employees, he began to feel he could either remain a workplace benefits consultant or a Christian, but not both. In fact, just weeks before his life’s eureka moment came in September 1980, he thought about leaving the Johnson Companies, his suburban Philadelphia firm, to take a job at a local Christian college.
Instead of quitting, Benna, 74, helped turn a little-noticed new subsection of the tax code into the least likely of household names: the 401(k).
by Daily Bell Staff
The Daily Bell
Merkel warns of return to nationalism unless EU protects borders … German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged European leaders to protect EU borders or risk a “return to nationalism” as the continent battles its worst migration crisis since World War II. – Yahoo
Merkel and other Eurocrats are worried about a degeneration of Europe. The idea is that until Europe pulled together as one entity, its quarrelsome nation-states fought one another regularly, culminating in world wars.
But this is a misreading of history. For at least the past 500 years and probably longer, Western elites have been behind the wars that Merkel warns about.
Germany itself formalized colonialism with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 attended by Western powers.
Michael Ballanger expounds on the Goldcorp/Kaminak deal and what it means for the gold market, and he dissects the most recent COT report.
by Michael J. Ballanger
The Gold Report
I was emailing back and forth with my pal Brien Lundin, editor of Gold Newsletter, this week and as we were basking in the limelight of analytical brilliance, it occurred to me that having a stock that many of us own, Kaminak Gold Corp. (KAM:TSX.V), suddenly the target of a $520,000,000 bid by a major mining company, Goldcorp Inc. (G:TSX; GG:NYSE), is exactly how proper analysis should be rewarded. At least, that’s how we were taught, to say the least. To wit, this event is truly a significant watershed and a concrete block of confirmation that the New Golden Bull has arrived. Whether or not you are a raving foam-in-the-mouth bull, or a patient hiding-under-the-desk bull (as am I), Goldcorp’s bravado is a wonderful thing to behold and would have made Harry Callahan proud.
by Argentus Maximus
TF Metals Report
I reduced the full chart from it’s full size (in today’s RNP video) to about 30% to allow it to fit in here. The detail that matters most is still retained with adequate clarity.
It’s the kind of analog which a computer, using for example Pearson’s Ratio, would give a very low correlation. Looking at it by eye from experience I’d expect maybe not much more than a 15-25% Pearson’s Correlation score if that. But when somebody familiar with market movement, and the character of market movement, particularly someone who knows the difference between impulsive and corrective price action, sees this for the first time they’re more likely to say something like “How about that!”.
In the green and red is the price of gold in Venezuelan Bolivars. In the shocking pink is the price of gold in US Dollars, which is the leaders of society assure us is the strongest currency in the world.
by Ranjeetha Pakiam
Bloomberg.com
The great gold rush of 2016 is gathering pace. Holdings in exchange-traded funds have now surged by a quarter, with investors taking advantage of lower prices over the past two weeks to enlarge stakes on rising concern about central bank policy making worldwide.
The holdings have increased to 1,822.3 metric tons, the most since December 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, after bottoming at a seven-year low in January. In the past two weeks, as prices lost 1.6 percent, ETFs swelled 63.2 tons, rising every day.
by Keith Weiner
Gold Seek
The price of gold moved down about sixteen bucks, while that of silver dropped about three dimes. In other words, the dollar gained 0.3 milligrams of gold and 0.04 grams of silver.
We continue to read stories of the “loss of confidence in central banks.” We may not know the last detail of what that will look like—when it occurs one day. However, we will wager an ounce of fine gold against a soggy dollar bill that it will not look like today with the market bidding dollars higher.
Loss of confidence is just a meme used by gold bettors. What are they using to make their bets? Dollars. What are they trying to win? More of the dollars they say will soon go bidless.
by Michael Covel
Daily Reckoning
Do you support bombing Agrabah?
That’s a poll question posed to American primary voters recently.
And roughly 30% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats replied “yes.”
Why does a sizeable chunk of America want to annihilate the fictional city in Disney’s 1992 film Aladdin?
Simple answer: They are brain dead. Effectively, victims of full frontal lobotomies.
by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books
“Late last week,” Flying Dog’s CEO Jim Caruso reported last Monday, “a Federal Court ruled in favor of yours truly in a landmark case for freedom of speech, proving yet again that Good Beer, No Censorship prevails.”
Back in 2009, you might recall, Flying Dog brewery was hit with a ban by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission. Apparently, the label of their newest beer at the time — the Raging Bitch — was deemed by the Michigan commission’s most cross-eyed, bowlegged busybodies as “detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the general public.”
by Jeffrey P. Snider
Alhambra Partners
It’s not just that there was an obvious and intense change in sentiment, as that is quite common among and within markets. It is more so that this repetition is a little too familiar. In January, the mainstream was taken aback as the world looked headed for a very dark place, all “unexpected” of course. Just a few months later, it has been nothing but a huge sigh of relief as if anyone might know for sure the danger has passed.
It has been nearly universal. In Canada, for example, as a proxy for both US and Chinese economies, this exhale into renewed optimism was a big one:
by Jeff Nielson
Bullion Bulls Canada
To paraphrase an old expression, “there are lies, damned lies, and Obama lies.” In 2008; Barack Obama promised Americans (and the world) “change”, meaning a change of direction from the eight year reign-of-error of George Bush Jr. What Americans and the world got was more of the same, in every way.
Obama promised to “get tough on Wall Street.” Instead, his corrupt regime has proclaimed that it will never prosecute a Big Bank, ever again. Obama promised to repeal “the Bush tax-cuts”, which were at the time the largest single windfall for the wealthy in history. Instead, he has entrenched this never-tax-the-Rich philosophy.
The net effect of eight more years of allowing the Big Bank crime syndicate to run wild, and eight more years of allowing the very-rich a taxation “free ride”? Globally, the Top-1% now possess more wealth than everyone else on the planet, combined. In the U.S., the Top 0.1%, by themselves, hoard as much wealth as the bottom-90% of the population.
by Gerardo Del Real
Outsider Club
Gold remained range-bound, and saw a decline last week of 1.7%.
That was its first weekly loss in three weeks.
Silver — also range-bound — dropped last week by 2.3%, while the U.S. dollar had a weekly gain of 0.8%. Copper experienced the biggest commodity declines with a weekly loss of 3.7%.
The next few weeks will provide important price action.
Despite all of the positive publicity recently, gold has failed to break the $1309 level that technicians view as critical for a further rally.
by David Kranzler
Investment Research Dynamics
The Federal Reserve’s “invisible hand” in the markets is no longer “invisible.” It’s become obvious to most market participants that the Fed is working hard to keep the stock market from collapsing and the price of gold below $1300. But why?
The price of gold moved up $15 overnight from the time the Asian markets opened until the Comex gold pit opened. Shortly after the Comex paper gold market trading was underway, an avalanche of paper contracts was dumped onto the Comex – both the electronic trading system and the floor. This is what it looked like (click to enlarge):
by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Mish Talk
Under a freedom of information request, the Treasury department disclosed Saudi Arabia’s treasury holdings as $116.8 billion.
Last month, Saudi Arabia threatened to dump $750 billion in treasury holdings if Congress passed a bill allowing US citizens to file 911 claims against the Saudis.
Clearly the numbers don’t mesh. Who is telling the truth?
Please consider U.S. Discloses Saudi Arabia’s Treasuries Holdings for First Time.
by Daily Bell Staff
The Daily Bell
U.S. military upping anti-ISIS activity in Libya … The Pentagon is slightly expanding its efforts to counter ISIS activity in Libya, sending in small teams of troops to try to establish relationships with groups that may be able to form a new nationwide government, according to a U.S. defense official familiar with the operation. – CNN
The US is sending troops into Libya.
Libya is seen as a dysfunctional state by Western powers that prefer a unified government that provides “civil order.” Now the US military is “upping” its presence
It is questionable as to whether order and civil society are the inevitable outcome of central government. But the Pentagon and State Dept. seem to believe that.
More:
by Peter Schiff
Euro Pacific Capital
During a lengthy interview on CNBC the week before last, Donald Trump, fresh from becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, came as close as any major presidential contender ever has to saying that America is not capable of repaying her debts in full, and that our path to economic recovery might involve some pain for our creditors. This moment of candor earned Trump almost as much condemnation as his earlier suggestions to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
To many, the idea that U.S. debt obligations involved even the slightest risks to investors was both the height of financial naiveté and the epitome of political recklessness. The pressure was so great in fact that The Donald, who has consistently refused to engage in even the most sensible strategic retreats, appeared on CNN last Monday to “clarify” his earlier remarks. However, he ignited another firestorm when he inadvertently let slip another unspoken truth, namely, that the United States can always print however much money she needs to “repay” her debt. Apparently the only acceptable position to hold on this issue is to completely deny reality.
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
The Citigroup Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. in Miami is located in a 34-story building in downtown Miami with breathtaking views of Biscayne Bay. It’s also the address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The graph below shows just some of those companies, a number of which were incorporated as recently as 2013 through 2015. (Some companies indicate they are no longer active.) This new information comes from a search of the public database made available by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which received more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which ICIJ calls “one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.” The full cache of records has yet to be made public and is being investigated by journalists around the world.
by David Stockman
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
After a week in which all the big retailers—Macy’s, Kohl’s, Nordstrom’s, Gap, JC Penney, Dillard’s——reported exceedingly downbeat results for their April quarter, it is not surprising that the Census Bureau’s statistical fabrication mill reported robust April retail sales. Likewise, you could count on the financial press to trot out the superlatives, as in the case of the Reuters’ headline proclaiming, “U.S. retail sales rise strongly, boost economic outlook”:
U.S. retail sales in April recorded their biggest increase in a year as Americans stepped up purchases of automobiles and a range of other goods, suggesting the economy was regaining momentum after growth almost stalled in the first quarter…….”The retail sales report shows that recent claims of the demise of the U.S. consumer have been greatly exaggerated,” said Steve Murphy, a U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
Not exactly. Retail sales of $450.89 billion in April were down 2% from $460.1 billion in March.
from Zero Hedge
After making over $1 billion in one day last August, and warning that “the markets are overvalued to the tune of 50%,” Mark Spitznagel knows a thing or two about managing tail risk.
[…] The outspoken practitioner of Austrian economic philosophy tells The FT, “Markets don’t have a purpose any more – they just reflect whatever central planners want them to,” confirming his fund-management partner, Nassim Taleb’s perspective that “being protected from fragility in the financial system is a necessity rather than an option.”
by Andrew Hoffman
Miles Franklin
On Wednesday, just before yet another blatant Cartel attack – not to mention, before we learned on Friday, that the COMEX “commercial” short position hit another all-time high, I taunted “hey Cartel, is that the best you got?” Well, here we are just three trading days later, and gold is back in earshot of the very, very key round number of $1,308/oz (listen to this interview with Andrew Maguire); whilst silver is back up to $17.35/oz, having recouped all of the “losses” from Mondays’ and Thursdays’ paper raids. To that end, take a look at how pathetic last night’s 143rd “Sunday Night Sentiment” raid of the past 149 weeks was; followed by an even more pitiful “2:15 AM” EST attack. Which is why, yet again, I emphatically retort to fear-mongerers that don’t realize we’re back in a Precious Metals bull market, “it’s the ‘commercials’ that should be scared!” I mean geez, even JP Morgan says so – and as they say, what won’t go down, must go up!
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
I took a fair bit of heat when I started raising hell about the entire “push” to “normalize” people’s “feelings” when it came to their alleged “gender”.
A material number of people “get it”, as it’s just viscerally evident to anyone who isn’t emotionally damaged or worse. But there are those who didn’t and don’t. For those who didn’t, or don’t, if you think this was really about what is typically a fairly private function (taking a crap) — you’re wrong.
It was never really about that at all, because law or no law, if you actually perform what is a normally-private function as a private function nobody is the wiser that you’re a man dressing up as a woman. It is only when you violate that expectation of it being a private function that anyone will know. If and only if you do violate such expectation then laws similar to North Carolina’s provide a rational means of deterring such behavior by applying a sanction to it.
PepsiCo: ‘There have been a lot of self-induced problems in Brazil’
by Sue Chang
Market Watch
The one political risk on the minds of U.S. executives isn’t the U.K. bailing from the European Union or even a Donald Trump presidency. It’s the impeachment drama in Brazil, according to a Goldman Sachs report.
“Managements discussed the implications of Brexit, U.S. policies, and the crisis in Brazil. The effects of the Brazilian political uncertainty coupled with the nation’s economic slowdown were felt most acutely,” said economists at Goldman in a research note Friday.
Brazil is posing a significant challenge on various fronts and is among the most discussed topics by executives who occupy corner offices, as the following excerpts from earnings calls highlighted by the economists indicate:
Britain’s dysfunctional housing market is causing major problems for the UK economy
by Jeremy Warner
Telegraph.co.uk
Fitch, the credit rating agency, today warns that Brexit might lead to a 25pc correction in house prices, bringing them down to what Fitch believes is their long term “sustainable” level. I don’t mean to be irresponsible, but good; this would be very welcome.
There are few things likely to turn me into a Brexiteer, but the prospect of falling house prices might just do it, and I speak here as someone with some degree of housing wealth. A Treasury assessment of the short term consequences of Brexit, due to be published in the next week or so, is expected to focus heavily on this supposed bogey. But I wonder whether a sharp correction in the housing market is in fact the unarguable harm presumed, or even if it is true that Brexit would lead to such an outcome.
by Patrick O’Hare
Financial Sense
The first quarter earnings reporting period is nearly complete with over 90% of the S&P 500 having reported results for the March quarter. What we have learned to this point is that the first quarter earnings decline was not as bad as expected. Still, the first quarter reporting period can’t really be thought of as being good either.
According to S&P Capital IQ, aggregate S&P 500 earnings per share (EPS) are estimated to be down 6.0% year-over-year in the first quarter. When we published our earnings preview on April 8, it was thought first quarter EPS would be down 7.9%.
by Eddie Van Der Walt and Stephen Morris
Bloomberg.com
ICBC Standard Bank Plc expanded its push into London’s precious metals market by agreeing to buy one of Europe’s largest vaults from Barclays Plc.
ICBC Standard, formed last year after Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. — China’s biggest bank — bought a controlling stake in Standard Bank Plc’s global markets business, expects the purchase of the vaulting business and related contracts to be completed in July, it said in an e-mailed statement Monday. No financial details were given.
About $5 trillion of transactions are cleared every year in London’s gold market, which Barclays is exiting as it pulls out of precious metals. ICBC Standard last week joined the city’s precious-metals clearing system and last month won classification as a market maker by the London Bullion Market Association.
