The lies, half-truths and material obfuscation by the government has reached new heights with the latest flip-flop on the "Osama bin Laden is dead" story.
Now the president won't release a picture of a dead bin Laden because it might inflame the Jihadists of the world. Rubbish! Pure, unadulterated nonsense from the man who is supposed to be the leader of the greatest nation on the planet, but is now exposed as nothing more than a simple liar.
Lies, lies and more lies are all the American people can expect from the most corrupt government the world has ever seen. The details of this entire, "we got him" affair have changed so often as to strain credulity until it doubles over in laughter or vomiting, or both.
First, the story originally released by AP on Sunday night, May 1, was that bin Laden was killed a week prior and that the White House had been waiting for DNA tests to confirm that the victim was indeed the world's bogeyman. Anyone watching the news scroll on FoxNews or CNN saw it, undeniably. That story vanished as soon as the president stepped up to the podium that Sunday night.
Then there were reports of a firefight, now, no firefight. Osama was armed, then he wasn't; he used his wife as a human shield, then he didn't and it wasn't even his wife, then it was his wife and she was shot because she rushed one of the Seals. There were two helicopters, no, three, no, there were four. Then Osama bin Laden is taken out of the compound to Afghanistan and rushed to an aircraft carrier for a proper burial at sea. Sure, that's completely understandable, especially if you believe Osama bin Laden was a seaman or a pirate.
Of course, there's the implausibility factor of a huge compound with 18-foot high walls, topped by barbed wire in a town populated by retired Pakistani military people, which never raised any suspicion for five or six years. That's certainly believable.
The entire episode is one huge farce and sadly, the iPad buying American sheeple public-at-large will gooble up every last sound bite of it, all the while chanting, USA, USA, USA! because the American sheeple actually love being conned, swindled, cheated, fleeced and sheared by their government. After all, this is the culmination of the 9/11 attacks, the major farce that has to this day never been adequately explained.
But, so what? Osama the Terrible is dead, right, and whether he's been dead for five, six or seven years is really immaterial because the powers that be are changing the narrative. They had to, because the most recent narrative of borrow and spend and gas at $4.00 a gallon and rising food prices and war on three fronts wasn't really going all that well, was it?
So, now, we have crashing commodity prices, falling stocks and oil down seven bucks in three days. Get ready for the new AUSTERITY coming to America. The sheeple will be fleeced from an entirely different direction and instead of calling it a recession or a depression, it will be known as a period of "slow growth" or "stagnation." Anything but calling a spade a spade, a recession a recession, a depression a depression.
The American sheeple will receive less in government service and be taxed more for it all in a "shared sacrifice" decade of austerity that is evolving even as we sit back and watch the latest American Idol or Star Dancing. America has been permanently dumbed-down and defeated, and the government loves it because an ignorant public is a well-behaved public. Give them their bread and circuses, today known as food stamps and football, and they'll just blindly follow along.
That's just the way it is, sheeple, one and all. You love being played.
Dow 12,723.58, -83.93 (0.66%)
NASDAQ 2,828.23, -13.39 (0.47%)
S&P 500 1,347.32, -9.30 (0.69%)
NYSE Composite 8,506.61, -78.07 (0.91%)
For a change, everything (except bonds) went down. Declining issues overwhelmed advancers - for the third day in a row - by a score of 4700-1904. On the NASDAQ, the flip required to shake the markets from rally mode to selling spree occurred today with 52 new highs, but 53 new lows. On the NYSE, stubbornness prevailed with 89 new highs and 28 new lows, but it's getting closer. Volume, unsurprisingly, was up again today, on a down day, an ominous warning that more selling is on the way.
NASDAQ Volume 2,250,185,000
NYSE Volume 5,078,037,500
Commodities continued to be whipped into submission. WTI crude oil futures fell another $1.81, to $109.24, the lowest price in two weeks. Gold tumbled another $20.60, to $1516.50 and silver took another massive beating, down $2.27, to $39.39. And, this just in after the close, margin requirements on silver are being raised again by the CME. Apparently sending the price of silver down $11 in three days isn't enough to square all of HSBC's and JP Morgan's short positions.
The often-discredited ADP Payroll report for April was released prior to the open today, showing private payrolls increasing by 179,000, short of consensus. But the real news was that the ISM Services index fell from 57.3 in March to 52.8 in April, a pretty big loss and well below consensus estimates of 57.5.
Tomorrow comes another week of initial unemployment and continuing claims, which precedes the BLS non-farm payroll report on Friday.
Prepare for disaster because we've been living one for the past three years.
Showing posts with label Osama bin Laden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Osama bin Laden. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Death of Osama bin Laden Springs Bernanke Trap
Whether or not one accepts the story of the demise of Osama bin Laden as gospel or Golem, there is no doubting that the mainstream news media is treating it as the truth, and celebrating it with requisite aplomb.
It served as the leading commentary to an otherwise dull Monday, especially in the financial markets. At one time, the capture or death of the man who was widely recognized as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was thought to able to create a market rally of dizzying proportions, but today's response was muted, if not downright dismissive of the manhunt that took nearly ten years, untold thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars.
The euphoria felt at the White House on Sunday night was not reflected in the trading on Wall Street, though the death of the world's most infamous terrorist did manage to provide a suitable cover story for crashing silver, and, to some degree, calming the Midas effect in the gold pits.
Other than those obvious manipulations, the death of OBL did less to inspire confidence than it did to induce relief that the most evil person in the world had finally met his maker. The rest of the moves in the market could widely be attributed to nothing as earth-shattering as the ordinary movement of the US Dollar against other fiat currencies, particularly well=reflected by the dollar index (DXY).
Initially higher on the news, the DXY lost ground throughout the day, finally bottoming out at 72.72 in early afternoon before rallying back to 73.04 at the 4:00 pm NY close. The decline and subsequent rise in the dollar index was the primary mover of stocks throughout the session, in an inverse relationship that has been in effect since the first round of QE in 2009.
In essence - apply tin-foil hat here in appropriate degree - the timing of OBL's death came at the perfect time for the world's money men. The dollar had been in a vicious slide over the past three months, which fueled the commodity and stocks boom, but was also threatening to undermine the reserve status of the US dollar. The decision to "pull the trigger" - whether real or imagined - quieted dollar devaluation fears, for now, but also took down stocks, creating a Bernanke Trap, in which monetization of US debt and the associated demise of the dollar gives rise to inflation and commodity speculation but the inverse could foment a stock market correction or crash and more severe economic fallout.
Thus, with the death of Osama bin Laden, we have a new enemy, the evil genius chairman of the Federal Reserve, the man behind the curtain pulling the levers, Ben Bernanke, and he is hopelessly trapped into a scenario in which neither outcome is preferable or palatable. One might assume that the esteemed chairman will side momentarily with the monetarists who believe dollar hegemony is preferable to runaway inflation and rioting at gas stations, though making assumptions in the age of political markets is a dangerous game.
For today, the dollar and Bernanke have survived, barely, but tomorrow may be another story altogether. In the very least, we can be assured that the killing of Osama bin Laden represents a shared view at the very pinnacle of power that the the overarching narrative needed to be changed, and abruptly.
Mission Accomplished.
Dow 12,807.36, -3.18 (0.02%)
NASDAQ 2,861.84, -11.70 (0.41%)
S&P 500 1,361.22, -2.39 (0.18%)
NYSE Composite 8,641.56, -29.85 (0.34%)
Market internals belied the slight declines. Stocks which lost ground far outnumbered those gaining, 4135-2454. On the NASDAQ there were 177 new highs and 28 new lows. The NYSE had 337 stocks make new highs and just 13 reach new lows. Obviously, the new highs were made early in the session, before the dollar began to rise and kill the carry trade (now known as risk on). Volume could best be described as either laughable, embarrassing or just plain disinterested.
NASDAQ Volume 1,768,677,875
NYSE Volume 3,669,946,000
WTI crude futures actually fell 41 cents, to $113.52, though that hardly can be construed as relief for motorists already feeling the pinch from $4.00 gasoline. According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gas is now $3.95, so, $5.00 by summer becomes a distinct possibility in at least 10 states. Already 14 states are experiencing average prices above $4.00, with Hawaii the highest, at $4.57. The lowest average price is in Wyoming, at $3.60, hardly a bargain.
Precious metals were hammered down by the movers and shakers at JP Morgan and the Fed, with gold getting hit with a $19.80 decline, down to $1545.90 as of this writing. Silver took the brunt of the action, with five margin hikes in the past two weeks putting the kibosh on larger speculation in the paper markets. Silver fell $4.39, to $43.55, a point which may actually trigger more paper selling and eventually result in ramped up physical buying.
There's little doubt that the masters of fiat money at the Federal Reserve will do anything to keep gold and silver from appreciating, though they've been an abject failure up to this point. The Fed simply cannot stomach competing currencies and gold and silver amply qualify. If it means the end of screenings at airports and reduction of global tensions, maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff, but the other side of the Fed's coin is already painted red. Any squelching of precious metals by pumping up the US dollar is likely to have similar deleterious effects on the risk trade in stocks.
At the end of the trading day, Tim Giethner made his appearance and the purpose of all the frenetic activities of the past 18 hours suddenly became crystal clear. The Treasury outlined plans to extend the deadline for raising the debt ceiling to the first week of August, thus delaying or deferring a crisis in the congress.
America teetering on a debt default with the currency debased for the whole world to see must have appeared as the opportune moment to divert attention by killing public enemy #1.
Mission accomplished, indeed, but beware the ultimate costs.
It served as the leading commentary to an otherwise dull Monday, especially in the financial markets. At one time, the capture or death of the man who was widely recognized as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was thought to able to create a market rally of dizzying proportions, but today's response was muted, if not downright dismissive of the manhunt that took nearly ten years, untold thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars.
The euphoria felt at the White House on Sunday night was not reflected in the trading on Wall Street, though the death of the world's most infamous terrorist did manage to provide a suitable cover story for crashing silver, and, to some degree, calming the Midas effect in the gold pits.
Other than those obvious manipulations, the death of OBL did less to inspire confidence than it did to induce relief that the most evil person in the world had finally met his maker. The rest of the moves in the market could widely be attributed to nothing as earth-shattering as the ordinary movement of the US Dollar against other fiat currencies, particularly well=reflected by the dollar index (DXY).
Initially higher on the news, the DXY lost ground throughout the day, finally bottoming out at 72.72 in early afternoon before rallying back to 73.04 at the 4:00 pm NY close. The decline and subsequent rise in the dollar index was the primary mover of stocks throughout the session, in an inverse relationship that has been in effect since the first round of QE in 2009.
In essence - apply tin-foil hat here in appropriate degree - the timing of OBL's death came at the perfect time for the world's money men. The dollar had been in a vicious slide over the past three months, which fueled the commodity and stocks boom, but was also threatening to undermine the reserve status of the US dollar. The decision to "pull the trigger" - whether real or imagined - quieted dollar devaluation fears, for now, but also took down stocks, creating a Bernanke Trap, in which monetization of US debt and the associated demise of the dollar gives rise to inflation and commodity speculation but the inverse could foment a stock market correction or crash and more severe economic fallout.
Thus, with the death of Osama bin Laden, we have a new enemy, the evil genius chairman of the Federal Reserve, the man behind the curtain pulling the levers, Ben Bernanke, and he is hopelessly trapped into a scenario in which neither outcome is preferable or palatable. One might assume that the esteemed chairman will side momentarily with the monetarists who believe dollar hegemony is preferable to runaway inflation and rioting at gas stations, though making assumptions in the age of political markets is a dangerous game.
For today, the dollar and Bernanke have survived, barely, but tomorrow may be another story altogether. In the very least, we can be assured that the killing of Osama bin Laden represents a shared view at the very pinnacle of power that the the overarching narrative needed to be changed, and abruptly.
Mission Accomplished.
Dow 12,807.36, -3.18 (0.02%)
NASDAQ 2,861.84, -11.70 (0.41%)
S&P 500 1,361.22, -2.39 (0.18%)
NYSE Composite 8,641.56, -29.85 (0.34%)
Market internals belied the slight declines. Stocks which lost ground far outnumbered those gaining, 4135-2454. On the NASDAQ there were 177 new highs and 28 new lows. The NYSE had 337 stocks make new highs and just 13 reach new lows. Obviously, the new highs were made early in the session, before the dollar began to rise and kill the carry trade (now known as risk on). Volume could best be described as either laughable, embarrassing or just plain disinterested.
NASDAQ Volume 1,768,677,875
NYSE Volume 3,669,946,000
WTI crude futures actually fell 41 cents, to $113.52, though that hardly can be construed as relief for motorists already feeling the pinch from $4.00 gasoline. According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gas is now $3.95, so, $5.00 by summer becomes a distinct possibility in at least 10 states. Already 14 states are experiencing average prices above $4.00, with Hawaii the highest, at $4.57. The lowest average price is in Wyoming, at $3.60, hardly a bargain.
Precious metals were hammered down by the movers and shakers at JP Morgan and the Fed, with gold getting hit with a $19.80 decline, down to $1545.90 as of this writing. Silver took the brunt of the action, with five margin hikes in the past two weeks putting the kibosh on larger speculation in the paper markets. Silver fell $4.39, to $43.55, a point which may actually trigger more paper selling and eventually result in ramped up physical buying.
There's little doubt that the masters of fiat money at the Federal Reserve will do anything to keep gold and silver from appreciating, though they've been an abject failure up to this point. The Fed simply cannot stomach competing currencies and gold and silver amply qualify. If it means the end of screenings at airports and reduction of global tensions, maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff, but the other side of the Fed's coin is already painted red. Any squelching of precious metals by pumping up the US dollar is likely to have similar deleterious effects on the risk trade in stocks.
At the end of the trading day, Tim Giethner made his appearance and the purpose of all the frenetic activities of the past 18 hours suddenly became crystal clear. The Treasury outlined plans to extend the deadline for raising the debt ceiling to the first week of August, thus delaying or deferring a crisis in the congress.
America teetering on a debt default with the currency debased for the whole world to see must have appeared as the opportune moment to divert attention by killing public enemy #1.
Mission accomplished, indeed, but beware the ultimate costs.
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