Stick Save, and a Beauty!

The US stock markets are such a massive fraud. Not that other stock markets aren't, I simply don't know them well enough, though I can take a measured guess that there's some degree of flipidation or flamenomics in play. After all, these stock marketeers are all tied in with the TBTF banks in their own countries.

So what if the entire global banking system is just a huge fraud played upon the middle and lower classes by an elite upper class? Well, we would expect high prices, shoddy service, broken promises, an unsustainable drain from the most productive class element, working people. Were that not enough, the banks in America have brought us much more, as in blatant fraud, bailouts with taxpayer money, record bonuses for executives, voodoo accounting by which they artificially inflate their own earnings, all the time while they are technically insolvent.

Well, then what?

That would be a government overthrown in Tunesia, the nation of Iceland already defaulted, riots in Egypt and Ireland about to go ballistic, insurance companies suing banks, banks walking away from houses they don't want to own, states and municipalities suffering from reduced tax revenues, investigations into pension funds (though like all investigations conducted by government agencies, the result is usually negligible and never is any individual held civilly or criminally culpable), outlandish, never-before-seen federal deficits, an interest rate permanently plugged at ZERO, and a myriad of other social developments such as tent cities, rising bank robberies, wider social distress and general disagreement with government policies.

There isn't room in the blogosphere to represent the kind of damage being done by the Federal Reserve and Chinese central bank's endless money and credit creation (same thing), but the stock markets, supposedly acting as a barometer measuring corporate strength - while falsely implying that America is somehow better for this - are absurdly manipulated, controlled and corrupted.

Today's action is a pure case of intraday manipulation. Let's forget the past two paragraphs for a moment. They're there, they're real, but they apparently don't matter to stocks, because, if they did, stocks would not have staged the dramatic recovery it did today, most of it in the last fifteen minutes of trading.

Just for the record, at the lows for the day, the Dow was down more than 80 points, the S&P was off 10, the NASDAQ down 23. Now, look at the close. The only things that changed were the prices of these "securities." The lows of the day were met around 2:30 - 3:00 pm. In the final hour of trading, stocks went straight up.

The news of the day, in fact, was largely negative. The Case-Shiller index of residential home prices fell for the fifth consecutive month.

Dow 11,977.19, -3.33 (0.03%)
NASDAQ 2,719.25, +1.70 (0.06%)
S&P 500 1,291.18, +0.34 (0.03%)
NYSE Composite 8,141.13, -16.29 (0.20%)

3308 stocks fell; 3193 gained. On the NASDAQ, there were 63 new highs and 23 new lows, the gap compressing once again. The NYSE had 103 new highs; 18 new lows. Volume... well, same old story.

NASDAQ Volume 1,949,290,625.00
NYSE Volume 5,169,361,500

Commodities really complete the story. Consider all that's been reported here in the last few paragraphs. It's all real. Would anyone in their right mind believe that this is an environment ripe for inflation. There are 15 million working-age Americans out of work. 43 million Americans are on food stamps. The Fed will have to print maybe another $10 trillion, maybe more, over the next three years to keep the carousel turning. It's simply not going to happen, or, if it does, will end in disaster.

But the commodity trade over the past week has been flashing those same old deflationary signals again, all on the backs of oversupply and slack demand. Americans, and to a large extent, the populations of other nations, are being squeezed, and their ability to continue to grease the skids of commerce is waning.

Crude was off again, down $1.68, to $86.19, a two-month low. Gold continued what is now a full-blown exodus, losing $12.20, to $1,332.30. Silver fell 52 cents, to $26.80. energy and food also fell, nearly across the board. There's more than enough of everything. So why are we paying through the nose for it?

Everything will follow home prices. Everything, because if the value of a roof over one's head is discounted, then what, really what, has any value?

Price discovery will eventually set free all assets to their rightful holders.