There's Something Very Wrong and the Tea Party Knows It

Stocks were down for the second straight session, as criticism of the Federal Reserve's recently-announced QE2 has ramped up and is nearing a fever pitch. While the Fed seeks to embark on another round of handing easy money to criminals on Wall Street, the rest of the world is not exactly enamored with Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Europe is beset with its own problems, stemming from unstable, out-of-control government spending in the PIIGS countries, but particularly Ireland and Portugal, which have gone from bad to mush worse over the past six months. That has kept the US dollar from appreciating against the Euro to any great degree, only because money seeks its safest refuge, and in currency markets, the US still appears to be a safer bet than most of Europe.

The Chinese expressed their displeasure by having their ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd cut the U.S. local and foreign currency long-term sovereign credit rating to A-plus from AA.

Throughout the day, stocks were sent lower as gold and silver, especially, caromed ever higher, with gold spiking to $1425.50 and silver hitting $29.38. By the end of the day, however, the fiat money-makers had had enough and the CME announced an increase in margin requirements to buy silver from $5000 per contract to $6500 (silver is traded in 5000 oz. increments).

That may have been cover for some serious naked shorting of both gold and silver, because while it may explain the late day selloff in silver, it would have had little effect on gold, which also crashed late in the day (see chart at right). At the moment, the bid on gold is $1393.00, and silver has been smashed down to $26.95. The obvious take-away is that the Bernanke put - his $600-900 billion in USSS created right out of thin air, is receiving some serious competition from real money, that being gold and silver, and the Fed, through their proxies on the trading floors had to do something.


They're likely to try to tamp down gold and silver prices in order to garner more bids on their beloved US stock markets, though it's unclear at this time whether anything they do can stem the tide rising against them. In the long run, though most people will never notice, gold and silver are going to become the basis for currency, not Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) and debt. Sides are being drawn and this battle will end with few winners. Most of the losers will be stockholders and owners of paper currencies. Gold and silver - as they have over thousands of years - will prevail.

Dow 11,346.75, -60.09 (0.53%)
NASDAQ 2,562.98, -17.07 (0.66%)
S&P 500 1,213.40, -9.85 (0.81%)
NYSE Composite 7,702.31, -79.89 (1.03%)
NASDAQ Volume 2,204,733,500
NYSE Volume 5,605,771,500

Declining issues rocked advancers, 4709-1789. There were still 777 new highs to a paltry 82 new lows, but volume was much higher than yesterday's session and better than most days during the run-up of the past two months, a discouraging sign for stock investors, but probably the best news for the long-term, in which the stock market becomes a game of last-man standing.

Oil even came down for a change, dropping 34 cents, to $86.72, and if the stock market continues to slide, expect oil to diverge from gold and silver, following stocks down the deflationary path. Bernanke's big money bet notwithstanding, the next few weeks and into the end of the year may be very hazardous times for trading in anything.

With a pickup of sixty seats in the House, the Republican party has taken control, spurred onward by the success of anywhere from 30-40 Tea Party candidates. In the wide-ranging report from PBS below, some of the nuances are Rand Paul's hint that he may cut federal employee paychecks by 10%, Utah Senator Mike Lee pondering a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, cut the Department of Education and voting NO on raising the debt ceiling, a vote that is likely to come up early in the next term (March-May, 2011).