Archive - Aug 2011 - Blog entry

Put your bongs down for a moment...

This is hardly what I’d call a bullish chart. Gold actually looks to have peaked in mid-August and is now correcting. Indeed, if it doesn’t rally hard now, this pattern could see prices down to $1650 in short order.

What exactly do we have left after several decades of frenzied spending and mindless consumption? I’ll tell you what we have left. We have our rituals and dogma, and soon enough not much more.

As we learn of plans for President Obama to address a joint session of Congress next Wednesday night it is worth noting that a single picture is worth billions of borrowed dollars. But this time really really will be different.

A complicted story. I'm looking for clues to the future.

QE 3 won’t solve this mess (assuming it even arrives). Neither will the European bailout fund. We’re already in the Second Round of the Great Crisis which will see the EU broken up, the US economy implode, and a market collapse that will make 2008 look like a joke.

I am tearing up my Eurail Pass, returning my espresso machine to Costco, and sending my gelato maker to the recycling center. Next year’s summer vacation is going to be at Coney Island, not the Italian Rivera. Those damn Europeans are spoiling everything!

The US stock markets made a determined effort to put in a bottom last week, with the S&P 500 rallying 106 points off the bottom with blinding speed. But the Europeans had other ideas.

All you need to read.

We want you to prop up the stock markets. Everybody knows it's a Ponzi scheme that will collapse without your support. You don't want us to end up like Bernie Madoff's clients. No, Ben, we love Ponzi schemes. We get in early and get out before they collapse. That's why we're rich. The bad thing is that they sometimes collapse before we can get out. But you've bailed us out twice in the last couple of years.

Oh, the Rocky Horrors...[BANZAI7 COFFEE FREE ZONE]

More than just "tradition".

This one stinks. I think it rises to the surface soon.

Do you really think the Fed hasn’t already discussed QE 3 and every other insane intervention you can imagine over since the Financial Crisis began in 2008? Do youreally think that the Fed’s magically going to come up with something new that will fix the Financial System?

Try, try, try as you might, you really cannot manipulate global markets on a sustainable basis. Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece are joining the ECB at the back of the class for a crash course in this lesson as I type this...

I love Swiss chocolate, but it’s not that good. The Swiss franc has been driven up to absurd levels by a safe haven bid. This is the next “short gold” trade. It is far easier to weaken a currency than to strengthen them