8.5%

With the market not sure what bad news would send it soaring higher today, here comes the Philly Fed to save the day by tumbling from October's 19.8 to a paltry 6.5, slamming through expectations of 15.0 - the biggest miss since February - and assuring that ahead of today's POMO there is enough ammunition for a stock ramp to end the three days of declines. And now, since the economy is once again sliding on every possible banana peel, we can calmly go back to the "market" ramp.

Klingons?

Much has been made recently of the 'implicit' tax cut that a sliding gas price is providing for the beaten-down, confidence-sapped, credit-using consumer. Sure enough, gas prices are at their lows of the year. But, unfortunately, recency bias is our enemy once again since the price of regular gas is still 8.5% above its average since the crisis began - and that with miles-driven still slumping. Not quite as 'tax-cut'-inspiring when viewed that way...

Turkey has been aggressively adding to its gold reserves in recent years and now has the world's 11th-largest gold reserves.

China bought more than 100 tonnes of gold from Hong Kong for a fifth straight month in September as demand for bullion bars and jewellery stayed strong. Chinese demand appears to have fallen marginally in recent days but remains on track to overtake India as the world's biggest store of wealth gold buyer this year.

If there is one single event that could derail the euro experiment it is the German Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and Outright Market Transactions (OMT).

SSDD. Collapsing confidence, check. Housing Recovery meme toast, check. Volume at 2013 lows, check. BTFATH and send Trannies up for 13th of last 15 days (+10.4%), Dow near all-time highs again (thank you IBM buybacks), and S&P to new all-time highs... but don't tell Treasuries (which stand +/-1bps on the week). VIX wasn't drinking the kool-aid but the NASDARK session enabled futures to drag us back to higher before limping lower into the closer. The USD oscilatted around Nowotny comments and POMO ending the day up a rather notable 0.5% from Friday's close and that pressured commodities in general lower (gold hovering at $1345). Credit, Treasuries, VIX, and volume are all diverging from equity exuberance. The last 2 minutes saw stocks scream higher on their own as the world was terrified it would miss out on something (but no other market moved) and all the major indices managed new highs.

Jansen notes that this is a new record for exports for the small country with a yearly estimate of 2,912 tons for exports.  It is surmised that 1,100 tons of the gold bullion is set to flow East to China or Hong Kong.

Faber, whose advice has protected millions of investors in recent years, warned of a global systemic crisis possibly due to the massive size of the global derivatives market which is now worth over an incredible $700 trillion.

He warned “when the system goes down,” and only plastic credit cards are left, “maybe then people will realize and go back to some gold-based system.” He wisely said that, “I advise everyone to have some gold.”

Behold the Wealth Effect: according to the NY State comptroller, the average NYC banker made $360,700 in 2012. This is 5.2 more than the average non-financial job in the city (i.e., all other jobs).

If Obama’s budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the National Debt increased by 87%, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.

The U.S. is engaged in fiscal and monetary policies that are akin to a Banana Republic.

In addition to electronically creating out of nothing $85 billion every month to buy its own debt in the form of bonds, the U.S. is also borrowing more money than it is authorized to borrow, from itself again.

Since all US rating agencies (Fitch is majority French-owned) have been terrified into submission and will never again touch the rating of the US following the DOJ's witch hunt of S&P, any US rating changes on the margin will come from abroad. Like China's Dagong rating agency, which several hours ago just downgraded the US from A to A-, maintaining its negative outlook. The agency said that while a default has been averted by a last minute agreement in Congress, the fundamental situation of debt growth outpacing fiscal income and GDP remains unchanged. "Hence the government is still approaching the verge of default crisis, a situation that cannot be substantially alleviated in the foreseeable future."

How Fitch has not downgraded the U.S. already is a mystery to analysts looking at the U.S. fiscal position and the lack of political will to tackle it. It seems likely that significant political pressure is being put on credit ratings agencies regarding their credit rating of the U.S.

Gold’s price falls are very counter intuitive and suggests that Wall Street banks, either independently or in unison with the U.S. authorities possibly through the Working Group On Financial Markets or the Plunge Protection Team, are suppressing gold lower.