The Gloves Are Off: Networks Cut Off President Trump During Broadcast; Georgia Flips To Biden

Publisher's Note: Sorry if this report is a little bit disjointed. The election story is very fluid and things are happening fast, behind the scenes, the mainstream and social media making it difficult to source stories. Money Daily is trying to keep up with the news, but it promises to be a long, bumpy road.

In most civilized countries - and even in most uncivilized ones - when a president or prime minister is speaking live on TV or radio, he's generally allowed to finish what he's saying.

Thursday night in America a whole new level of arrogance was achieved, when all three major TV networks - ABC, CBS, and NBC, cut the president off in mid-sentence, claiming he was making "false" statements. Now, the networks and
all media share a responsibility to determine truth from falsity, but in regard to the president's own words, to wit: "if you count legal votes, I easily win, if you count illegal votes, they could try to steal the election", there's no doubting the veracity of that statement. It's perfectly logical, true no matter if it's in regard to voting for dog-catcher or president of the United States. Legal votes count. Illegal votes don't, which is why the new chant by the left of "count every vote" is a canard, misleading, and divisive.

The networks, claiming that they were "fact-checking" went overboard, and they took the rest of the country with them. In our new, uncivilized country, interrupting people with whom you disagree is accepted behavior. As we learned in the first Trump-Biden debate, calling your opponent a liar, a clown, and a racist - all of which Biden did call Trump - is quite OK. Moderator Chris Wallace never said a word about it, during or after the debate. And now, broadcasters can cut off the highest elected official in the country.

What the media masterminds continue to claim is that Trump is undermining the integrity of the election by "falsely" claiming that there are voting and counting irregularities "where none exist" or "without proof" or "baseless." They are calling his claims of a corrupted election is "unfounded" and "unsubstantiated."

The problem with such media characterizations is that they are void of reality. There are, in fact, many instances of election irregularities that have been reported and continue to be. What the TV talking heads and other reporters who insist on yet another false narrative (remember, they had no problem reporting that Trump had help from Russia in 2016 when that was patently false) are attempting to do is turn reality on its head. What the media really should be saying is that there's no irregularities or fraud that we care to report, just like they failed to entertain reporting on the incredibly damning evidence that Joe Biden was peddling his influence as Vice President through his brother, Jim, and son, Hunter. That story was subjected to a wholesale media blackout, as if none of the allegations of corruption and money laundering ever happened. It wasn't something the media was interested in covering because it negatively affected their chosen candidate.

The mainstream media has crossed a line and gone to a place from one which they can never return. They cannot be trusted to deliver news honestly, without bias, without reservation. They have rendered themselves null and void. Turn them off, tune them out. Shut them down. They are, at best, activists for the Democrat party, at worst, megalomaniacal propagandists for a new world order or the “Great Reset.”

It's safe to say that whenever the media calls something "false" it is indeed true. And when they say there's no proof of something, like election issues, there's plenty. The media has abdicated its role as unbiased arbiters of events. They are partisan hacks, completely in the tank for the Democrat party. Nothing they say or show can be believed. They are not to be trusted and should be removed as soon as possible, replaced by media commentators and reporters that can be trusted. They are effectively aiding and abetting in a Coup de' Etat, engineered by the Democrat party leadership.

In case there's any doubt that this election has produced more than its fair share of irregularities and evidence of fraud, one need look no further than the ubiquitousness of mail-in ballots and early voting.

Here's a sampling of stories of actual voting fraud. There are hundreds more.

Officials investigate pre-filled Democrat ballots in Fayette County (near Pittsburgh) PA

Thousands of Pennsylvania Mail-in Ballots Are Delayed with Just 25 Days until Election

NY Post: USPS Employee Arrested at Canadian Border near Buffalo, NY with Undelivered Mail, Including Ballots

Washington Examiner: Ballot errors, theft, harvesting, dumping

Pennsylvania Election Law Violated the US Constitution

Project Veritas: Michigan USPS Postmark Scheme to Hand-Stamp Late Ballots as November 3

Project Veritas: Erie, PA, USPS Insider Exposes ‘Nov. 3’ Postmark Voter Fraud Scheme: ‘All These Ballots That Were Coming In--Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday—Are All Supposed To Be Postmarked the Third’

And, it's not as if we weren't warned. President Trump repeatedly, in the run-up to the election, voiced concern that mail-in ballots carried a huge potential for fraud, claims which the mainstream media called, "false" and "unsubstantiated" even after some primaries, like those in New Jersey, exposed serious problems.

The Problem with Mail-In Voting, as Explained By AG Barr - Attorney General William Barr cites 2005 Bi-Partisan Commission on Elections Co-Chaired byJimmy Carter and James Baker that called mail-in voting highly subject to fraud. Barr has to fend off CNN's Wolf Blitzer from interrupting him, cites instances of mail-in voting fraud.

New report argues perils of mail-in voting go beyond fraud

More mailed votes, more rejected votes - Disaster in Wisconsin Primaries

Election fraud has been part and parcel of elections in the United States for a long time. So, it's not out of the ordinary that fraud would be alleged, discovered, and prosecuted. Because of the desperation by the Democrats to get rid of President Trump, the media's obvious agreement to same, and the advent of widespread use of mail-in ballots, this election was likely to be rife with fraud, vote harvesting, counting irregularities and more.

Here is the Heritage Foundation's database of election fraud.

As you slept, vote counters in Clayton County, Georgia worked overnight to put Joe Biden ahead in the state. On election night, Trump had a lead in the state of over 300,000. By Friday morning, all of that was erased by mail-in and absentee votes. Biden now leads in Georgia by about 1100 votes.

Late Thursday night in Minneapolis, Minnesota...
More Than 600 'Don't Let Trump Steal the Election' Protesters Arrested in Minneapolis

Those protesters need not worry. The vote totals in Hennepin County clearly favored Biden by an enormous margin, 70.72% for Biden to 27.35% for Trump. Here are totals from 2020 and 2016 for comparison:
2020: Biden: 532,373 / Trump: 205,877
2016: Clinton 429,288 / Trump: 191,770

What is shows is that Biden received 103,085 more votes than Democrat darling Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and Trump actually scored more votes, though only 14,107 than four years prior. So, of those additional votes, 12.03% voted for Trump and 87.97% went to Biden. Those are astonishing numbers, even for a place as torn apart as Minneapolis. They're well advanced from even the lopsided total count. These new votes must be coming from some extraordinary people.

For more perspective, consider that, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State, there are 835,366 registered voters in Hennepin county, and 738,250 (88.37%) of them voted for president in 2020. That's remarkable, given that the state went for Clinton by a small margin in 2016, and to Biden, by a larger margin, 52% to 45%, with nearly a third (31.17%) of Biden's total (1,707,806) coming just from Hennepin County. Of Trump's total statewide votes (1,484,750) only 12.92% came from the county containing the city of Minneapolis.

Minnesota set a record for voter turnout in this cycle, bordering on 80%.

If one were to take Hennepin County and with it, the city of Minneapolis (and that's using the reported numbers, which are likely far off the mark) out of the state totals, Trump would win the state by more than 100,000 votes, 1,278,873 to 1,175,433.

Similar figures and percentages can be found all over the country, in places like Georgia, with it's big city, Atlanta; or Detroit, Michigan; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charlotte, North Carolina; New York City, New York; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Denver and Boulder, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois, and so on and so on across the fruited plains. If President Trump loses this election and decides to run again in 2024, he might consider the building of another Wall as a campaign platform. Actually, it would be multiple walls, around major cities, to keep the crazy people, people on drugs, rioters, looters, arsonists, delusional, over-medicated people who vote for seriously-flawed candidates like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden inside. The people in the suburbs and rural America would overwhelmingly support the idea and thank him. He could even boast that the cities will pay for it.

Then there's some sketchy details of a possible DHS election sting using watermarked ballots to be tracked through the election system throughout the country. The source claims that 80% of the ballots processed by the DHS failed integrity checks.

Also, see here.

Not to be left out, from 2016, George Soros-Backed Company to Supply Voting Machines in 16 States:

Arizona

California

Colorado

District of Columbia

Florida

Illinois

Louisiana

Michigan

Missouri

New Jersey

Nevada

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Stocks flew again on Thursday, but, after four straight days of gains, futures are indicating a lower open. At 8:30 am ET, the Labor Department released the October Non-farm Payroll report, showing the the US economy produced 680,000 net new jobs during the month, beyond expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 6.9%.

Precious metals took off on Thursday. Gold advanced $47 per ounce, from $1902.60 to $1949.60. As of Friday morning, it's pricing at $1955.30. Silver soared more than six percent, from $23.85 to $25.36 per troy ounce on the day. At this writing, it's putting in a further gain, to $25.66. More than a few watchers of precious metals are commenting that this move, tied to the Fed's announcement to keep rates at the zero bound Thursday, is signaling another leg up in gold and silver. The Fed's FOMC statement included this juicy tidbit for stackers and hoarders: "...over coming months the Federal Reserve will increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning and help foster accommodative financial conditions, thereby supporting the flow of credit to households and businesses." BOOM!

At the Close, Thursday, November 5, 2020:
Dow: 28,390.18, +542.52 (+1.95%)
NASDAQ: 11,890.93, +300.15 (+2.59%)
S&P 500: 3,510.45, +67.01 (+1.95%)
NYSE: 13,199.12, +220.17 (+1.70%)

As Biden Creeps Closer To The Presidency, Wall Street Throws Itself A Party

Evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections is mounting and challenges by the Trump team are growing while voters on both sides are seething, especially the rabid supporters of President Trump.

Superficially, it's difficult to comprehend how Joe Biden could possibly have garnered more votes than any other presidential candidates in history, including recent Democrat darlings Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. While Trump's numbers are equally astounding, Biden's current tally of 71,598,750 votes (50%) is simply not realistic (Trump has 68,459,768 votes (48%)).

If Biden's figures are to be believed, the path to victory for all future candidates would follow his progression to some degree. First, the eventual successful candidate would have to have run twice before and lost, then after being vice president for eight years, take four years off to allow the party's preferred candidate (in this case Hillary Clinton, 2016) to run, then emerge looking haggard with a cheap set of dentures and some shoddy cosmetic surgery, win the Iowa caucus only after losing and having the party reallocate the delegates in your favor, lose the first two primaries in New Hampshire and Nevada, then win South Carolina only after the other viable candidates drop out of the race simultaneously except for the radical independent candidate (Bernie Sanders).

From there, it's a cakewalk, with a pandemic used as an excuse to keep the crowds at rallies low and run the table to the nomination in a largely under-reported race to the nomination. Choose a running mate that the early primary voters universally rejected, then spend the next two months in your basement, emerging sporadically wearing a mask to give speeches in empty airplane hangars or in front of a half dozen or so socially-distanced supporters and a number of people honking horns in their parked cars, all the while having the pollsters place you far ahead of an extremely popular president who draws crowds in the tens of thousands while the media hammers your opponent relentlessly as a liar, racist, cheat, womanizer, dunce, loudmouth, virus spreader, and other disparaging characterizations.

Choose to have three debates but only hold two, winning the first one by having the moderator harrang and harass your opponent. Claim every allegation of wrongdoing on your part as false or debunked. With days to go before the election, have an influence-peddling scandal break against you in a major newspaper (NY Post) only to have social media and the mainstream press censor and ignore the story completely. With mail-in voting allowed in more than half the states, you fall far behind on election day, losing Florida and Ohio badly, only to win a handful of battleground states (Wisconsin, Michigan) the following day as votes magically appear, erasing your opponent's lead and putting you ahead.

Wait a few days as some of the mathematically-challenged states (North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania) slow walk the vote counting as your vote count gradually eats away at your opponent's leads and your electoral college numbers slowly creep towards the mythical 270 mark.

Seriously, this scenario is only believable in bizarro-world, which the United States apparently fell into through some space-time warp sometime in March. Meanwhile, the vote counting continues. Biden is on the cusp of victory while President Trump files lawsuits and demands recounts. Paramount in this ongoing fiasco are the huge number of mail-in and absentee votes cast prior to election day. Unprecedented, mail-in ballots and early in-person voting will account for more than half of all votes cast. As the president warned repeatedly, and the media denied just as often, mail-in voting was ripe for fraud and that's apparently what happened in the 2020 vote.

As the United States trudges toward a decision in what may shake out as the most corrupted election in the country's history, people have to do what they do, go to work, collect unemployment, protest and riot. For its part, Wall Street sees a party as the rally that began on Monday hit overdrive on Wednesday. All of the major indices put on sharp gains. In particular, the NASDAQ took off like an Elon Musk rocket, gaining nearly four percent on Wednesday.

With Thursday's trading just ahead, futures are once again pointing to a huge upside at the opening bell. And why not? With Sleepy Joe Biden apparently gliding toward a corrupted, stolen victory, the grifters on Wall Street, criminals to the core, see the money flowing from future president Joe's deficit spending and handouts directly into stocks and to their bonus checks.

Even if you don't own stocks, you have to marvel at the levels of corruption and audacity at the highest levels of government and finance. Regular working stiffs, who largely don't have half a million stashed away in a retirement plan need not worry, because, as we all know, the Wall Street millionaires and billionaires all ascribe to the trickle down theory of economics and want nothing more than to create high-paying jobs for regular people (that's a joke son).

No, making money on Wall Street isn't for everybody. It's a tight little club that is open only to those on the inside select, and that selection process doesn't include waiters, nurses, teachers, baristas, dog groomers, carpenters or any of the countless "little people" jobs that actually keep the economy humming along.

Thanks to the pandemic, shutdowns, lockdowns and social distancing requirements, most of those jobs and small businesses are going by the wayside. Walmart, Target, Home Depot and other mega-corporations will likely fid new avenues for revenue in providing services to the population. Sure, Suzy Q will still be clipping your dog's nails, but she'll be doing it as an employee, not as the owner of her own business. That's the kind of economy that's coming down the pike. Everybody is a worker, owned by a corporation and listed as an asset. Kurt Vonnegut would be proud.

That's the kind of future that's been planned for us, so the election was kind of a big deal because if Biden wins, there will be tacit approval of dystopia by the federal government. Trump was seen as a major impediment to the ends of the elitists from Davos' World Economic Forum and the technocrats of Silicon Valley, so he had to go, and the only way they could get him out of the way to to steal the election. Sad. But, true, and most people know it.

At this juncture, it's not yet over. Biden hasn't wrapped up the presidency yet and Trump still has an outside chance of gaining enough electoral votes to ascend to a second term. But, don't count on it. There are significant forces aligned against him and they're capable of just about any kind of atrocity. It's pretty obvious that the deep state tentacles extend just about everywhere and denying President Trump a second term in office is at the top of their top agenda. Trump's pathways to victory include either winning the few remaining states that haven't already found enough extra votes to put Biden in the winner's circle or getting actual relief via vote audits, recounts, and lawsuits, eventually all the way to the Supreme Court.

He's got a chance to win this still, but the clock is ticking, there are major forces aligned against him and most of his supporters are now in a state ranging from numbness to outrage, neither of those doing any good towards seeing good triumph over evil.

At this point, everybody needs to help out. Share information on the fraud. Post to social media (if they allow it). Put up signs. Tell people outright that the election of 2020 looks very fishy. Call out the mainstream media.

This is war. We've been at war for nearly five years, since Trump won the Republican nomination all the way to today. We've been subjected to fake media, lies about Trump's character, the Russian hoax, impeachment, extreme media bias. It's time to fight back. You, we, cannot stand idly by and hope that somebody does something. Our president (and yes, Donald J. Trump is still president until January 20, 2021) needs you. He has fought the good fight. It's time for his supporters to do more than wave flags, attend rallies, and vote. Our voices need to be heard, not silenced. Now is not the time to wait or hold back; now is the time to act.

"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

At the tip of the election fraud iceberg, here's Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe uncovering some disturbing information from a Michigan postal worker turned whistleblower. Watch this, because this and other stories like it are probably going to become increasingly difficult to find on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. The mainstream media is 100% guaranteed to never mention this at all.

And finally, here's Dr. Chris Martenson with some insight on the elections and the evolving Great Reset. Martenson is insightful, original and often funny. You don't have to agree with him, but his videos are - more often than not - instructive and entertaining.

At the Close, Wednesday, November 4, 2020:
Dow: 27,847.66, +367.63 (+1.34%)
NASDAQ: 11,590.78, +430.21 (+3.85%)
S&P 500: 3,443.44, +74.28 (+2.20%)
NYSE: 12,978.95, +101.49 (+0.79%)

No Decision On Election Day; Prepare For Recounts, Court Contests, Market Volatility

Having telegraphed this outcome for weeks, the mainstream media is in their glory spot, with a contested election virtually assured as votes for president in Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are all too close to call on Wednesday morning.

What this portends is certain recounts in most of those states, along with court pleadings contesting mail-in and absentee ballots which have likely kept President Trump from a second term in office. The most contentious and important states yet remaining to call a clear winner are Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

In the pre-dawn hours Wednesday, Trump's lead of more than 200,000 votes in Michigan magically was cut down to 68,000 and continues to shrink. By noon today, as the counting continues, Michigan may have turned from a Trump lead to one for Joe Biden.

North Carolina may be counting votes for days as their constitution gives them up to nine days to count votes. Trump currently holds a slim edge of roughly 60,000 votes. Trump's lead in Georgia is more than 100,000 as of this writing, but the count will resume this morning, focusing on Dekalb county, the Democrat stronghold of Atlanta.

Pennsylvania is a nightmare, with less than 30% of the votes in Philadelphia having been counted. As of Tuesday night, when counting stopped, President Trump held a lead of more than 600,000 votes, but Democrats are energized by the huge numbers of mail-in and absentee votes not yet counted in their base of Philadelphia and its suburbs.

Any result will trigger recounts in at least five states, if not more. Court challenges have already been filed, with more to come. All of this leaves the American public in a state of deja vu, harkening back to the contested election in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which was eventually decided by the Supreme Court, in a decision that is, to this day, a sore spot for constitutional scholars as there is no written guideline that gives the court the power to decide elections.

With the presidential outcome and that of several senate races completely up in the air, America faces hard days ahead. The process could play out over a week, a month, or longer. Despite the uncertainty, stocks continue to trend positively. On the heels of back-to-back gains Monday and Tuesday, futures Wednesday morning are wildly positive.

Making predictions on where all of this is headed, in markets, in politics and in social response is a fool's errand. Only one thing is certain: the pre-election polls, which had Biden handily winning in many states that are still being contested, were not polls at all, but guidance points for the corrupted media that has been in the tank for Democrat candidates for years. Pre-election polls have become an endangered species, believable by only the truly daft or gullible members of society. They have become highly politicized and tools of the mainstream media.

At the Close, Tuesday, November 3, 2020:
Dow: 27,480.03, +554.98 (+2.06%)
NASDAQ: 11,160.57, +202.96 (+1.85%)
S&P 500: 3,369.02, +58.78 (+1.78%)
NYSE: 12,877.45, +215.29 (+1.70%)

Bull Market or Just Bull?; Election Day In America Has the Nation On Edge

Whatever this guy - Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist/Suntrust Advisory - is smoking, he better not be sharing it, because it seems to be pretty potent.

"We think we're in the early stages of an economic cycle, and we think we're in the early stages of a bull market," Lerner said, talking to Yahoo! Finance.

Two things: One, it would be nice to finish the current economic cycle, the one that includes a recession and high unemployment, massive bankruptcies, and a commercial real estate bust. Two, don't trust advice or articles from any site purporting to be a finance portal that has an exclamation point in its name, especially the day before an existentially-impactful national election.

Lerner is advising investors to "lean into that weakness," whatever that means. He could just say, "buy the dip," but then he'd sound so pedestrian. He likes material and industrial stocks, also, regional banks, which isn't surprising, given that he is employed by one, via Truist/Suntrust Advisory.

Truist Financial Corporation was birthed in 2019 upon completion of the merger between Suntrust and BB&T, two regional banks serving primarily the Southeast with somewhat sketchy pasts. Both were the subject of fraud investigations and paid fines within the past five years. Now, the merger has made Truist the sixth-largest bank in the country.

While there may be some of the opinion that the corona panic was a one-off event that isn't likely to repeat nor cause lasting damage to economies, the measures taken in response to the virus have been far-reaching. Even now, some countries, especially in Europe, are re-instituting lockdowns and other measures that will surely crimp any economic growth and the future is largely unknown.

To the extent that a virus that effective kills only 0.01% of the adult population under retirement age, the draconian measures taken by advanced nations boggles the mind. In response, populations in France, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere have taken to the streets to express their outrage over having their lives turned upside down by government action that they consider excessive.

How the eventual drama plays out over the next six months is a matter of speculation, but one would be hard-pressed - with the exception of Mr. Lerner - to make the case for a speedy recovery and return to bullishness.

Of course, top of mind on this thrid day of November is the presidential election in the United States, which has shaped up to be a tight race that may take days, weeks, or even months before an actual victory is made official.

Democrats are dug in against President Trump, who has been making reference to the ultimate veracity of the results, suggesting in very strong terms that early, mail-in, and absentee voting - indirect results of the coronavirus scare - opened the door to cheating and voting irregularities. Legal challenges have been mounted on both sides, with more to come, for certain, but on Tuesday, voters will head to polling places to cast ballots that should be counted by later in the evening.

While most polls have Biden leading in important states, the margins are razor thin and polling was proven to be faulty in the last presidential election of 2016, when Trump pulled off a major upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Largely overlooked, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested. A swing from a the Democrat majority earned in 2018 to a Republican edge would have profound effects on governance no matter which presidential candidate is chosen. In the Senate, Republicans seek to retain control of the slim 53-47 edge they currently hold, with as many as nine of their seats in tight races.

Whatever the outcome, participation this year is projected to be the best since 1990.

Wall Street's Monday rally took the form of a serious rebound from last week's drubbing, though the NASDAQ did not participate to any great extent. A solid cohort of market participants see an oversold condition and may have piled into some of the more beaten down equities on Monday, their motivation to be ahead of the curve when election results are announced Tuesday night. With futures pointing to another positive start in US markets, a continuation of the snap-back rally is being foretold. If the presidential election is not clear-cut and might be contested, they may be caught wrong-footed, especially if the race is too close to call in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Georgia. Lawsuits could be flying to courthouses across various jurisdictions. Hope is that the Supreme Court does not have to be involved as it was in 2000, when they appointed George Bush the victor over Democrat Al Gore.

So much is riding on the presidential outcome that it's easy to envision a condition wherein markets could be whipsawed for weeks.

At the Close, Monday, November 2, 2020:
Dow: 26,925.05, +423.45 (+1.60%)
NASDAQ: 10,957.61, +46.02 (+0.42%)
S&P 500: 3,310.24, +40.28 (+1.23%)
NYSE: 12,662.17, +232.89 (+1.87%)

WEEKEND WRAP: After the Elections: Breaking Away; Stocks, Bonds, Metals, Oil All Down

With the hotly-contested presidential, state and local elections (Senate, House, governors, etc.) looming just two days hence, Americans are rightfully focused on polls, news and voting for people who will supposedly lead the nation for the next few years.

As quaint notions as voting and elections may be, the idea that ordinary people are electing leaders may be as far from reality as a distant asteroid is from crashing into planet Earth. Truthfully, Americans are voting for people who will manage the government, another anachronistic relic of the past that has, in many ways, outlived its purpose.

It's been many decades since government was actually a function "of the people, by the people, for the people" and while it is true that more people will likely vote in this election than in any other in the nation's history, the results will neither lead to an enlightenment nor to a radical shift of long-standing values.

Partisanship aside, President Trump, who won the 2016 election as an outsider, is now the status quo candidate, whereas Joe Biden - who has spent 47 years in public office - is appealing as the agent of change. The transmogrification is unique to this episode of presidential politics.

While there is a case to be made that President Trump is a once in a generation leader, the same cannot be said about other high muckety-mucks like House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and other high profile contestants for public office. These are not leaders in the traditional sense. They are negotiators, players, figureheads of a government transfixed upon retaining power. Both sides of the aisle share equally in the quest to maintain their status over the general population.

What this concentration of power (and money) by mostly septuagenarians and octogenarians is doing to the United States is dragging it all slowly into an abyss of greed, corruption, and reliance upon broken or outdated systems by which the country will gradually fall from its mantle of world power.

This is manifested by the concentration of wealth by so-called "one percenters," the multimillionaires and billionaires spawned out of Wall Street's public corporations, by the inability of congress to pass legislation that improves the lives of its citizens such as infrastructure spending, a health care bill that is affordable and detached from deep-pocketed vested interests, the recent faux negotiations over a second major stimulus bill, and, generally, a congress that has spent the better part of the past four years trying to undo the results of the 2016 presidential election, which put into the White House an outsider, Donald Trump, who vowed to "drain the swamp."

Rather than appear to be an endorsement of President Trump, this article aims to reveal some of the issues facing the United States as elections loom and the specter of the coronavirus still overhangs via the media. For all his faults (and there are many, just as everyone is far from perfect), President Trump has tried to lead, but the choices he was presented with, in terms of choosing qualified people to man his administration, came mostly from the same swamp he pledged to drain. So entrenched is government, politics, academia, and big business at the top levels, it was nearly impossible for the president to find quality and qualified individuals who weren't already compromised by money, fealty, or long-standing connections.

The rot at or near the top of the political system, the business structures, the medical, educational, and financial systems is deeply entrenched. Individuals and institutions strain to retain their cherished positions of power, making real change impossible. Electing Joe Biden will likely make matters worse; re-electing president Trump is at least an attempt to step away from the institutionalized behaviors, crony capitalism, and corruption that has plagued the country for at least the past twenty years and to some degree, much, much longer.

By clinging to antiquated functions like the borrow and spend policies that have produced massive, unpayable debt of more than $27 trillion such as the Federal Reserve and its unconstitutional currency, political favors arranged by lobbyists for the good of themselves and their business interests, congressional legislation that is so dense to be not understandable, and reliance upon measurements such as GDP, the stock market, and corporate profits to gauge the health of the economy, the United States is being left behind on innovation that is transforming entire industries and nations open to adoption of new ideas.

As the US dollar becomes less relevant around the world, the United States faces a crisis at the very root of its existence. While the dollar may retain value against other currencies like the euro and the yen, it is losing ground to China's renminbi, to crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, to gold and silver. Debt-based currencies, as are most in the developed world, eventually fail. The euro, yen, pound sterling, and the dollar are vestiges of the past, doomed to lose purchasing power as the giant debt balloon central banks have created eventually overwhelms everything and then explodes. Not only the United States, but the entirety of the developed world, using fiat currencies, are at a tipping point.

Recently, the IMF, itself a vestigial construct of American hegemony and supremacy of the dollar, called for a "new Bretton Woods," - referencing the 1944 agreement that established the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency in the aftermath of World War II - as the debt-based economies continue to crumble. The IMF and World Bank are pushing on a string, hoping to keep the failing fiat currency systems intact for a while longer, all the while piling up odious debt upon odious debt as the real solutions - gold-backed or digital currency (Bitcoin) stare them in the face and continue at an accelerating pace to be adopted by the general public and increasingly, the business community.

Governments around the world have long ago acceded their power to the central banks. Without their currency creation machines they would lose all power and ability to govern. This is being manifested daily by millions sinking into poverty, growing protests, demands for fairness for the middle and lower classes, and the ascendancy of alternative currencies and the growth of countries like China, Indonesia, Russia, and other developing nations that are developing and adapting to new paradigms in finance, industry, and culture, leaving the mostly Euro-centric nations in their dust.

One glaring example of how the staid and stodgy functions of central banks and their shareholders - the multi-national untouchable, too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions - extend their reach and hold onto their failing, unfair systems is presented below, outlining how the banks and government are able to change the rules and move the goalposts to their own ends, none of which will eventually aid in transitioning to a more sustainable and prosperous society.

New Revelations About Banks' Bottom Lines and Credit Loss Reserves

The following is from Discover Financial Services' (DFS) third quarter earnings report (emphasis Money Daily):

Adoption of Accounting Standard for Measurement of Credit Losses

The company’s results for the third quarter of 2020 reflect the January 1, 2020 adoption of Accounting Standards Update No. 2016-13, Financial Instruments-Credit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments for the Company (the "ASU"). For purposes of calculating the company’s regulatory capital, the company has elected to defer recognition of the estimated impact of the ASU on regulatory capital for two years in accordance with the interim final rule adopted by federal bank regulatory agencies on March 27, 2020. Pursuant to the interim final rule, the estimated impact of the ASU on regulatory capital will be phased in over a three year period beginning in 2022.

In other words, Discover isn't going to be reporting adequate credit loss reserves until, at the earliest, the second quarter of 2022. This is a complete scam of the financial system, similar to the March 2009 ruling by the FASB that allowed banks to mark assets to whatever benchmarks they desired, eliminating the mark-to-market standard that had kept banks somewhat sane for decades.

The accounting change in 2009 is roughly comparable to valuing your 2002 Honda Civic at $24,000 on your balance sheet, rather than close to the Kelly Blue Book value of $1200. What the one crucial change did for banks was allow them to shore up their balance sheets by pricing assets that were basically toxic soup at par or close to it, even if they were non-performing loans.

Now, the Fed has allowed the banks and financial institutions to take the next step forward into the world of bizarre finance, by allowing them to underreport credit loan loss reserves. Prior to March 27, 2020 - again, coincident with the market bottom - banks and financial firms which deal with credit cards, personal loans, mortgages and all manner of consumer loans were supposed to make reasonable assumptions about future credit losses (i.e., delinquencies and defaults) and report them as such. Now, they don't have to make any assumptions, just defer the expected losses to some later date.

By not reporting expected losses as they are building (these companies know this; they monitor delinquencies with an eagle's eye), they're allowed to boost share price by giving the impression that they are profitable and growing, when, in fact, the opposite is occurring. Most of these firms, like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Capital One, and Discover, took fairly large provision for credit losses in the first and second quarters. Discover, for instance, took a $2.046 billion provision in the second quarter, but only provisioned $750 million in the third, all the while allowing personal loan and credit card users the luxury of deferring their payments for as many as six months in some cases, just as people were beginning to feel the effects of the wearing off of the first stimulus without a second round approved by congress.

Discover may have sealed its own fate by believing congress had its back and would pass another bailout or relief bill, as the company cancelled its deferral program, leaving customers with the untidy prospect of making a payment and strapping their cash or falling into delinquency. With millions out of work and hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed for good, the chances are many chose the latter course of action, leaving Discover with unpaid credit cards, mortgages, car loans, personal loans, and student loans, and a massive loss that they didn't have to report.

In their third quarter report, Discover's net income of $771 million would have been a loss had they reported true credit loss provisions. They plugged in the $750 million number for credit losses to make it just better than year ago results of a net profit of $770 million. How convenient. The other financial firms did exactly the same thing, making the third quarter results look surprisingly robust.

The media roundly criticized President Trump for downplaying the threat of COVID-19, but are completely silent when it comes to huge financial firms fudging the numbers to meet or exceed analyst expectations, which is a nice way of saying "committing widespread fraud at the behest of the Federal Reserve."

There's no proof that the banks under-reported their credit loss provisions, only the evidence that every one of them provisioned much less in the third quarter than in the second quarter of 2020, as if the economy had rebounded and everybody was paying their bills. Anybody paying attention would have known that the "V-shaped recovery" narrative being pushed by Wall Street and the White House was a complete fraud, about as good as the "Russia, Russia, Russia" hoax deployed by the Democrats on President Trump over the past four years. Good for goose, good for gander.

An October 24 article by MarketWatch, titled Big U.S. banks’ day of reckoning is delayed, illustrates the extent to which the ten biggest banks in America managed to use accounting trickery to beat analyst estimates, in some cases, blowing them completely away. For instance, Goldman Sachs (GS) was supposed to return earnings per share of $5.28. They reported $9.68 for the quarter. Capital One (COF) buried their estimated eps of $2.08 with a stunning $5.06 per share performance. For Capital One, whose revenue is derived overwhelmingly from credit card income, this was a coup, as their third quarter oan loss provision was a mere $331 million, when they were estimated to provision $2.16 billion.

Capital One's amazing quarter can be attributed to only one thing: excessively creative accounting, which, although it's extremely sleazy and misleading, is all perfectly legal. This puts the onus on stock pickers and self-driven investors who either don't bother or can't properly read or interpret quarterly reports. They see blowout numbers and dive right in, like unseasoned RobinHood traders. Down the road, Capital One's deceit and eventual collapse will rival that of Countrywide in the sub-prime era. Sometime in the next two years, when people ask Capital One "what's in your wallet?" the answer will be "Nothing. Nothing but bad loans."

And the Fed will swoop in to buy them all, at par, to save yet another insolvent institution.

---

As the week progressed and the electioneering became more bizarre by the day through revelations of possible corruption and criminality on the part of Democrat candidate Joe Biden and his family, stocks continued to sink. Making matters even more alarming to the pubic and Wall Street was the mainstream media blackout of the Hunter Biden laptop containing damning evidence. Outright censorship of the New York Post's stories - where the news was originally broken - by Twitter and feigned ignorance by the television networks, New York Times and the Washington Post served only to increase the public's distrust of the media and expose its obvious political bias.

Stocks had their worst week since March, but it could have been much worse. Friday's late-day rally saved the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 from falling below their 200-day moving averages. As it was, all the major exchanges fell 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 percent for the week and on the cusp of a correction, which, in all likelihood will be achieved on Monday or Tuesday as Americans continue to the polls.

Friday's late afternoon rally lifted the Dow more than 360 points, the S&P by nearly 38 points, the NASDAQ 102 points, and the NYSE Composite 132 points. All together, the lift of one percent or more left the averages just above correction levels.

At Friday's close, the Dow was down 10.3% from its February high; the NASDAQ 9.5% lower from its September 2nd record close, the S&P 500 down 8.7% from its record close of September 2nd, the NYSE down 12.1% from its February all-time high. Thus, the push at the end of the day saved the bacon of the most prominent indices. While the Dow and NYSE Composite are technically in correction, the supine financial media uses the most recent highs of September 2nd instead of the pre-COVID February highs, thus avoiding use of the nasty term "correction."

On an intraday basis, all of the averages are firmly at or beyond correction levels. It's just more or the conditioning and institutionlized fraud that keeps the public sadly misinformed.

Treasury yields saw some movement during the week but ended higher by Friday as the massive movement of money out of fixed income that began in earnest at the start of October offered no indication of waning, with both the 10-year note and 30-year bond finishing at high points, 0.88% and 1.65%, respectively.

Oil was taken to the woodshed and severely beaten, closing at $35.79 per barrel, down from $39.85 the prior week, the price decline reflective of increasing COVID-related quarantines and lockdowns in parts of Europe, notably France, and slack demand overall. This was the weakest price for WTI crude since June 1, a five-month low.

Gold ended another down week at $1881.00, a decline of $11.90, from $1902.90 the week prior and the second time since reaching its peak (2058.90, August 6) three months ago. Silver was also punished for being real money, ending the week at $23.63, also well off it's August 10 high of $29.23. While the paper prices for the metals continues to be put under pressure by the bullion banks and other nefarious sources, premiums remain elevated, as shown below.

While stocks and bonds fell, oil was crushed, and precious metals took a hit, the big winner of the week was Bitcoin, which trades continuously, not taking the weekend off, like other asset classes. From Sunday of last week (10/25) to its present price, the world's most recognizable cryptocurrency added 700 points, to 13,748.393. The week was an extension of the rally which began September 23, when the value was 10,225.86. That's a gain of 25.6% while the established financial order was largely falling apart.

Here are the weekly prices for common gold and silver items on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping, often free, included):

Item: Low / High / Average / Median
1 oz silver coin: 29.00 / 46.46 / 38.05 / 38.40
1 oz silver bar: 28.00 / 56.20 / 37.49 / 35.25
1 oz gold coin: 1,975.00 / 2,037.31 / 2,006.59 / 2,010.00
1 oz gold bar: 1,965.00 / 2,001.79 / 1,982.16 / 1,981.34

Finally, here are Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert explaining how Jamie Dimon was wrong and they were right about Bitcoin. The second part of the video is an interview with entrepreneur, Dan Collins, who recently returned to the United States after 20 years in China, who envisions that country as the dominant new world power.

At the Close, Friday, October 30, 2020:
Dow: 26,501.60, -157.51 (-0.59%)
NASDAQ: 10,911.59, -274.00 (-2.45%)
S&P 500: 3,269.96, -40.15 (-1.21%)
NYSE: 12,429.28, -73.01 (-0.58%)

For the Week:
Dow: -1833.97 (-6.47%)
NASDAQ: -636.69 (-5.51%)
S&P 500: -195.43 (-5.64%)
NYSE: -770.58 (-5.84%)

Stocks Bounce, Tech Giants Report Solid 3Q Earnings; Market Braces For Month End

Wednesday's market drops - the worst since June of this year - were followed by a cut-and-paste type of relief rally, with dip-buyers jumping into some of the more beaten down names, and even more buying up of the tech stocks which fueled the rally after March and are being counted on to bring the US equity markets back to summer levels.

Following Thursday's close, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet all reported quarterly results. Each of these companies beat estimates handily.

Interestingly, Apple ended Thursday up four points, but was selling off into the close and is down another four points (roughly 4%) in pre-market trading. Amazon was higher on Thursday by 48.23 points (+1.52%), but has given all of that back Friday morning, down 51.01 (-1.59%), to 3,160.00.

Facebook plowed ahead 13.16 points (+4.92%) Thursday, but is trending lower, down 4.03 (-1.44%), at 276.80, 90 minutes prior to the opening bell. Alphabet, parent company of Google bucked the early morning trend. It was up 50.62 (+3.34%) in Thursday's cash market session and has tacked on 96.51 (6.16%) in the pre-market. Its share price of 1,663.75 is closing in on the all-time high of 1728.28, marked on September 2, coincident with all-time highs of the S&P and NASDAQ indices.

Through Wednesday’s close, the FAAMNG stocks, Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Netflix (NFLX), and Google (GOOG, parent company Alphabet), are up 7.19% this year, against a 5.44% drop for the rest of the S&P 500, a 12.63% performance spread between the FAAMNGs and the rest of the market.

Obviously, there are a good number of companies in the market's 500 largest companies that have not done so well through the coronavirus crash and into the election season. This kind of crowding into select market darlings has pushed the market caps and stock prices of this group of tech giants to stratospheric levels, leaving the rest of the market in the dust.

The market has been weighed down by victims of the coronavirus, predictably led by elements of the travel and tourism industry. Cruise line, airlines, and energy firms take up most of the top spots in the 50 worst-performing S&P stocks of 2020.

Investors seeking bargain-basement plays can find stocks on this list that are down between 48 and 81 percent on the year, many of them household names, like Carnival Cruise Lines, American Airlines, Boeing, Slumberger, Marathon Oil and financial firms Wells Fargo, Citizens and Discover. These stocks, and many in the tiers above them, down between 20 and 48 percent continue to pressure the market, forcing more money into the tech giants, increasingly seen as the only game in town.

This sets up a dangerous situation. Should the six stocks that are leading on the year stumble or investors decide that they've made enough for 2020 and consider them overvalued, the discounting in the market would set off a cascading effect to the downside. A slew of funds are closing their books for the year today, the final trading session of October, and many more will simply hold through the end of the year.

Without active gains by the leading stocks, US equity markets ar staring straight into an abyss leading up to the election and beyond. Funds with gains on the year will want to lock them in, leaving little choice for smaller market participants who may become holiday bag-holders of some of he top names.

Overnight, Asian shares were off sharply, though none of the main exchanges down more than two percent. US market futures were in a slaughterhouse, but have pared some of the declines leading into the cash open. European stocks are flat, but under pressure.

Unless stocks rally magnificently on Friday, this week will look like a bloodbath, already sporting losses in from three to five percent in the worst weekly decline since early June. Any further deterioration will exceed that, though it would take near capitulation to rival the losses from February and March. Dow stocks have been particularly hardest hit, with that index down nearly six percent.

Putting pressure on the entire market, oil prices have been hammered. WTI crude futures are hovering just above $36, breaking down from the steady-state $40 level than has been in place since June. The current level is a five-month low, the result of a continued glut of product globally and threats of a second wave of widespread shutdowns, such as has already been put into place in France and parts of Britain and some Eurozone countries.

It's worth noting that even with the recent declines, the NASDAQ and S&P are still above September's lows, though the Dow appears to be falling off a cliff.

At the Close, Thursday, October 29, 2020:
Dow: 26,659.11, +139.16 (+0.52%)
NASDAQ: 11,185.59, +180.72 (+1.64%)
S&P 500: 3,310.11, +39.08 (+1.19%)
NYSE: 12,502.29, +86.87 (+0.70%)

Wednesday's Stock Rout May Be Just The Beginning As Politics Overwhelms Markets

Wednesday's massive stock beatdown was not without warning. Stocks had been trending lower since the beginning of September, when all of the indices made new highs, for the NASDAQ and S&P these were all-time highs.

After significant drops in September, markets stabilized and made gains from late in the month through October 12. After that, it was all downhill. For the past eleven sessions stocks had been trending lower, the losses accelerating over time. The media's incessant focus on the failure of congress to pass a stimulus bill surely had impact on trader sentiment, but chartists saw a clear double top had formed and lower lows and lower highs were obvious danger signs.

Now in the midst of third quarter earnings season, reports aren't doing much to inspire investor confidence. In fact, the first batch of reports - from the nation's major banks - were met with elevated levels of skepticism, as the largest issuers of consumer debt - credit cards, mortgages, personal loans - such as Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase massively under-reserved for credit losses, a policy endorsed by the Federal Reserve and codified into the first coronavirus stimulus bill, the CARES Act. (Money Daily will have a more in depth look at the accounting trickery banks employed to boost their third quarter earnings in Sunday's WEEKEND WRAP.)

What stood out to investors and interested onlookers of the banking industry was the overwhelmingly negative response. Instead of seeing their stock prices boosted by what were, for some, blowout earnings reports, bank stocks were among the weakest trades in the immediate aftermath of their reporting. Astute money managers were simply not buying the story the banks were peddling.

Beyond some disappointment in the earnings space and the slapstick stylings of congress and the administration in the failed negotiations over stimulus - which had persisted since late July - presidential politics and mainstream media's constant, over-the-top bias also added a degree of uncertainty to the mood of the market. A narrative that a Democratic sweep, a "blue wave" theory, had made the rounds in recent weeks, and that somehow, socialist, free-spending policies of a president Biden and a left-leaning senate and house, would usher in an era of utopian prosperity.

Hard-core capitalist economists and seasoned political pundits dismissed such a scenario as pipe-dreaming even as polling numbers - largely reporting that Biden and some Democrat senate candidates had built large leads - were being questioned and President Trump was drawing his usual overflow crowds at rallies in swing states.

When bombshell reports on the exploits of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, began to emerge via the New York Post and Rudy Giuliani, suggesting that serious improprieties by the candidate had been committed while he was Vice President under Obama, involving not just dealings in Ukraine, but also in Russia and China, the blue wave theory began to unravel. When, on Tuesday evening, Tucker Carlson devoted his entire show to a Biden business partner by the name of Tony Bobulinski and more damning revelations, it became clear that Biden's campaign was in serious trouble. Making matters worse were the outright bans on referencing these allegations and news stories on Twitter and Facebook and complete silence from TV networks and major newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

The media made the choice to ignore a story that should have been front-page, special report material, instead focusing more on President Trump's flaws and policies with which the media disagreed and consequently disparaged, endlessly.

Politics doesn't often influence stocks, but in this case, it was the tipping point. Beyond a weakened economy with dim prospects to escape from a deep recession, the Biden revelations and media reaction was beyond the pale, shaking confidence in government and the revered fourth estate. The confluence of economic forces, overvaluation (if anyone can even decode what "value" means in today's markets), and frightening political prospects culminated in a colossal spasm of lost confidence and global retching.

Despite the suddenness of the selloff, stocks still have not even fallen beyond the levels seen in late September, so more of the same is to be expected. It's not out of the question that by the end of next week regardless of political winners and losers, stocks could be another five to eight percent lower than current levels.

Already, stocks are close to correction levels. The Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ are uniformly down nearly nine percent from September 2nd's highs. All are trading well below their 50-day and close to their 200-day moving averages. The next step lower will confirm a correction and the follow-up should result in resumption of the bear case, regardless of Fed jawboning, bond-buying, and special dispensations to distressed publicly-traded companies.

There's simply nothing to inspire a positive attitude. Dip-buyers, those who haven't already been reamed by the recent movement, are heading for slaughter. Put-call ratios are elevated, as is the VIX, to say nothing of the inner seething of the general populace. People will put up with a lot, but there is hardly an individual who can stomach liars and cheaters. All together, the mood is ugly and about to devolve into complete disarray and that's not good for anything, especially your investments.

At the Close, Wednesday, October 28, 2020:
Dow: 26,519.95, -943.24 (-3.43%)
NASDAQ: 11,004.87, -426.48 (-3.73%)
S&P 500: 3,271.03, -119.65 (-3.53%)
NYSE: 12,415.42, -402.45 (-3.14%)

Tony Bobulinski Torpedos Biden Campaign; Media Silent; America At Crucial Crossroads

Unless you're living under a rock or only watch mainstream media (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX) or read the Washington Post and New York Times exclusively, you should be aware of the bombshell interview conducted by Tucker Carlson Tuesday night with a business partner of the Biden family, Tony Bobulinski.

If you haven't seen it, you should. It's embedded below. It may be the most important video you'll see all year, maybe in your entire life, because it exposes the depth of corruption surrounding the Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, and his dealings not just with Ukraine or Russia, but with the Chinese Communist Party, and how he used his name through surrogates - mainly his brother Jim and sone, Hunter - to peddle influence and enrich himself and his family.

What's likely even worse is the complete mainstream media blackout of this story, which began last week in an expose by the New York Post. This is the most important story of the year and of the election and the mainstream media cabal is completely ignoring it as though it never happened.

The trouble with this tactic media censorship is that it cannot be kept secret. The media cabal does not own Tucker Carlson. Nor do they own Tony Bobulinski, or Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Red Eye Radio, or any of the talk shows with hundreds of affiliates nationwide. Radio reaches 97% of the adult American public. They most certainly do not own the New York Post or the Washington Times.

The media cabal also doesn't own the internet, though they're obviously in cahoots with Facebook and Twitter censors. They don't own Zero Hedge, or The Liberty Daily, Breitbart, Townhall, the Conservative Treehouse, Gateway Pundit or hundreds, if not thousands of independent websites or blogs which publish the truth. As far as integrity is concerned, the mainstream media has squandered theirs. Reliable journalism can largely only be found on radio or within the internet's alternative media.

Another problem that the media blackout on this story is that many people have already voted and won't make the effort to change their votes if they even get to see this story. Many people have submitted absentee ballots. There's widespread reporting of voter fraud, everywhere, yet the media continues to deny any exists. Looking at this condition from a cynical perspective, one might assume, as they say, "the fix is in." It may already be too late.

This story has a direct impact on the presidential election and tangentially, all down-vote elections for congress and local offices. If the media was actually doing its job, this story would be the top headline on every network. Instead, they're featuring the World Series, Hurricane Zeta, and riots in Philadelphia.

By themselves, those stories are worthwhile and important, but the Biden corruption saga and how badly he has sold his influence and is compromised is more important by many degrees of magnitude. It will affect the votes of millions and who will be elected to public office for years, and the media's tacit willingness to bury it, to keep it out of the eyes and ears of the American public is nothing short of a criminal conspiracy.

We're supposed to have a free press in this country. What we have instead is a propaganda arm for a leftist movement designed to usher in an era of tyranny and destroy the constitution.

Everybody in America, white, black, Democrat, Republican, should be outraged at the media's handling of this vital story and they should be demanding honest journalism, not the backhanded shilling for Democrats hat's being spoon-fed to the public day in and day out, constantly, without being called into question.

When you mosey over to the stock market this morning and see that futures are cratering, that European stocks are down across the board, that oil is down, gold and silver are down, don't buy into the hype that it's because of COVID-19 cases spiking (another big lie), or that stocks are down because there's no stimulus bill forthcoming before the election (politicians playing games). Everything is going to crash because of this interview and the media's willful ignorance. The story of a compromised presidential candidate and the media's refusal to cover it will shake the foundation of this nation and of society. Smart money is getting out of the way, in a hurry.

Our government has failed us. Our media has failed us, miserably.

We are, truly, on our own. The only hope is that enough people cast ballots for President Trump and he wins re-election in a landslide, by enough votes that even widespread ballot stuffing and other dirty tricks can't overcome it because he is truly the only man standing between saving the Republic and tyranny.

At the Close, Tuesday, October 27, 2020:
Dow: 27,463.19, -222.19 (-0.80%)
NASDAQ: 11,431.35, +72.41 (+0.64%)
S&P 500: 3,390.68, -10.29 (-0.30%)
NYSE: 12,817.87, -118.52 (-0.92%)

Monday Was Ugly. Now, Can the Fed Staunch the Selling or Is a Trump Victory Being Baked In?

Early on Monday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sensed a disturbance in the force that is central bank intervention, mad money printing, control of interest rates and equity market command.

Despite the best efforts of the Chairman and his cohorts, there was little they could do to prevent Monday’s wholesale one-day slaughter of the equity market and the spreading fear that a Democrat "blue wave" election was not going to materialize.

What some corners had been talking openly about for weeks - A Biden victory over the Bad Orange Man, Donald Trump, and a sweep of the senate, giving Democrats a troika of power with the House added in - all of a sudden seemed to be less certain. It was something Wall Street professionals were banking on, because complete control of the purse-and-policy strings in the nation's capitol by liberal Democrats would likely result in bucketsful of cash flowing to the money center in Manhattan.

What the Wall Street crowd wants more than anything out of this election is four more years of easy money policies, making their world safe from regulation and scrutiny, or so the thinking went.

However they were playing their cards and their money, there was a sneaking suspicion that the polls might be wrong, that President Trump was indeed winning hearts and minds and might pull along some of the Republicans in hotly-contested senatorial races with a week to go before all the votes are counted. That was always a possibility and the hedging of their bets was evident in trading the prior week, which was manifested in selling into strength rather than buying of dips. Lower highs and lower lows became more typical as the week wore on and by Monday, the trickle of dissent became a flood of angry traders relentlessly banging on their sell buttons.

Stocks took a major tumble on Monday, and the likelihood of a continuation - with possibly a brief respite Tuesday, even Wednesday of this week - of a downward spiral appeared not just possible, but probable. After all, any talk of a stimulus bill prior to the election had also been scrapped by Friday, so that helping hand had been withdrawn. There might not be another stimulus (read: free money) after the election or even after inauguration if Trump won and Republicans held the Senate.

After Monday night's senate confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court - filling the vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg - the 6-3 conservative majority on the high bench had been obviated. Trump and loyal Republicans celebrated the swearing in at a White House celebration. The outrage from Democrats would sound hollow to the American public Tuesday morning as races tightened, the veracity of polling again being brought into question. The volatility index (VIX) was bounding upward, futures were trending toward the flatline, and European stocks were under pressure, signaling that the markets might be poised for a dead cat bounce preceding another bloodbath for stocks.

It would not come as a surprise to anybody if the selloff continued all the way through to election day, with little respite in between waves of anxious unloading of stocks, prices falling back below trend lines.

Stay tuned. This is just part of the second leg down of a confirmed bear market.

At the Close, Monday, October 26, 2020:
Dow: 27,685.38, -650.19 (-2.29%)
NASDAQ: 11,358.94, -189.34 (-1.64%)
S&P 500: 3,400.97, -64.42 (-1.86%)
NYSE: 12,936.38, -263.48 (-2.00%)

Non-Stimulus Fatigue? Bond Yields Jump; Election Just 9 Days Away

Stocks took it mostly on the chin this week, though the blow was nothing that could cause a knockdown or even the faintest whisper of a selloff.

Rather, equity markets seemed to be suffering from a combination of coronavirus fatigue, overvaluation fatigue, election fatigue, stimulus fatigue (is such a thing even possible?) and media censorship fatigue. What the market needs most right now is a nap, a good long one, to wring out the excessive volatility that has been built into it by outside forces.

The week's trading provided something along those lines, but it's probably not enough, as Monday will start yet another cycle of incessant noise that has little to do with fundamentals and even less to do with proper valuations, a concept that's been thrown out the window in the age of instant gratification, instant profits, instant allegations, instant bailouts, instant karma.

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead

-- John Lennon, Instant Karma, Plastic Ono Band, 1970

What the financial media claimed was responsible for slumping markets was continued foot-dragging by congress on a second stimulus bill. Another week passed without congress capable of agreeing on a bill that would send more money to individuals and families and potentially shore up failing businesses, aid airlines, and maybe even cure cancer.

The mere fact that congress wastes everyone's time on their inability to blow another $1.8 or $2.2 trillion is indictment enough to send them all packing on November 3rd, or to not bother to vote at all, a practice that has been in vogue for decades in the US, with roughly a third of eligible voters to avoid the process altogether every four years, and even more so in off-year elections.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidates squared off in a final debate, with President Trump winning handily, if only for prodding Joe Biden into an outright admission that he would end the use of fossil fuels in America, meaning he would likely ban fracking, which pretty much cost him the state of Pennsylvania and any other constituency that relies on oil or gas for its economy.

Biden, who has called himself a "gaffe machine," really planted his foot into his mouth this time, so much so that moderator Kristen Welker blurted out, "why would you say that?" as almost an admonishment to the favored candidate of the left-leaning media cabal.

On top of that, Trump made reference to Biden's public statements to ban fracking, to which Biden responded that it wasn't true and challenged Trump to put it on his website.

Team Trump did, releasing a tweet that was featured on the campaign website shortly after the debate.

Here you go @JoeBiden! pic.twitter.com/UBqPJT85Pt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2020

Admist all the chatter of the week, various companies released third quarter earnings results, most notably computer chip manufacturer, Intel (INTC), which was punished for reveaing the truth despite beating earnings and revenue projections.

Revenue fell 4% year-over-year for the quarter, GAAP profits per share slipped 25%, and gross profit margins were lower by 5.7%. CEO George Davis noted that PCs “in the consumer and education markets,” which are “more entry-level,” or lower margin, were leading sales for the quarter.

Not to let the tidbits of bad news stand alone, Intel raised guidance for upcoming quarters. It didn't matter at all to investors, who took the stock down nearly 11% on Friday, from its close Thursday of 53.90 to 48.20 per share.

What Intel's results say about the real economy is that the slowdown from the summer is obvious and not about to self-immolate. Businesses of all sizes have been slammed, the hardest hit, small to medium sized businesses which have traditionally been the backbone of job creation. While the number of initial claims fell again this week, the data is still staggering. Thursday's reading of 787,000 new unemployment claims was the best number in months, but still extraordinarily high.

Alarm bells were going off in fixed income markets as yield on the 10-year note skyrocketed, hitting 0.87% on Thursday before settling in at 0.85% on Friday. The jump, week-over-week, was nine basis points, or 11.8%. The 30 year bond rose 12 basis points, from 1.52% to 1.64%. Yields on the two long-dated instruments were the highest since June 5th.

For reference, the move from 5/29 to 6/5 dwarfed this past week's. Back then, yields on the 10-year and 30-year spiked by 26 basis points (0.65% to 0.91%) and 27 basis points (1.41% to 1.68%), respectively.

Could this move in the bond market be a signal for a coincident sell-off in equities? Stocks are already lower since October 12. In the week following the June bond rout, the Dow popped to 27,572.44 on June 8, but lost ground the follow four sessions. By June 11, the Dow stood at 25,128.17, a drop of nearly nine percent.

Should bonds and stocks follow the same pattern, the final week of October - and the last full week before the election - could bring an unwanted surprise to the Trump equation, as the president routinely touts the stock market as a gauge for the "recovery."

Certain to bring out the most radical conspiracy theorists, a stock market decline at this juncture might be perceived as damaging to Trump's re-election, though reality suggests that people have already made up their minds and many (as much as 40% in some states) have already voted.

We'll just have to wait and see how things pan out before getting spooked (next Sunday is Halloween).

On the NYMEX, WTI crude oil remained tethered to $40 per barrel. Nothing new there, as crude has maintained this price level - give or take a few points - consistently since the beginning of June. Such remarkable stability in the one market that just happens to be the lifeblood of the global economy is uncanny and is likely the result of an unannounced gentleman's agreement between the major oil producers, the US, Russia, and the Saudis. Nobody will openly admit that oil prices are controlled, but there's undeniable proof that prices that are either too high or too low are damaging to economies. The past five months may have been an orchestrated "goldilocks" moment in the oil fields and something that may extend for longer.

Precious metals were flat on the week. Gold rose from $1899.29 to $1924.33 on Wednesday, only to be beaten back to $1902.05 by Friday's close. Silver put on a small gain, rising from $24.16 to $24.61 the ounce on Friday.

Metals continue to be in short supply as demand has not abated since earlier in the year, especially acute during the early days of the coronavirus panic back in February and March. Back then, shortages were blamed on supply chain interruptions due to travel restrictions, but there's no excuses now, as prices remain elevated and premiums have not come back down.

The most recent prices on eBay for common gold and silver items (shipping - often free - included, numismatics excluded) are presented below:

Item: Low / High / Average / Median

1 oz silver coin: 29.12 / 51.00 / 38.04 / 38.23
1 oz silver bar: 30.50 / 43.01 / 35.81 / 35.00
1 oz gold coin: 1,974.85 / 2,052.13 / 2,023.40 / 2,024.40
1 oz gold bar: 1,995.00 / 2,012.84 / 2,003.75 / 2,003.57

At the Close, Friday, October 23, 2020:
Dow: 28,335.57, -28.09 (-0.10%)
NASDAQ: 11,548.28, +42.28 (+0.37%)
S&P 500: 3,465.39, +11.90 (+0.34%)
NYSE: 13,199.86, +53.94 (+0.41%)

For the Week:
Dow: -270.74 (-0.95%)
NASDAQ: -123.27 (-1.06%)
S&P 500: -18.42 (-0.53%)
NYSE: +30.55 (+0.23%)

Stocks Looking At Losses for the Week as Stimulus Talks Continue to Go Nowhere

To reach positive territory for the week, on Friday, the Dow needs to gain 243 points; the NASDAQ, 166; S&P, 31; and the NYSE Composite, just 24 points.

In the aftermath of Thursday night's presidential debate, stock futures are pointing to a positive open (nothing new there), and headlines are still promoting the idea that the politicians are zeroing in on a stimulus deal.

A stimulus deal has been the dominant, running theme for the past three months. Nothing else seems to matter, indicating the converse of the narrative. Wall Street sees handing out money to individuals and corporations as a positive, but the reality is that if the economy were on sound footing, stimulus would not be needed, such is the paradoxical nature of the market and public perception, usually short-sighted.

President Trump, in a tweet, and also during the debate, put a less-than-enthusiastic spin on current negotiations, saying that there's unlikely to be a deal prior to the election. The president blames House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, for purposely stalling on any deal, her thinking being that denying a stimulus is somehow good for Democrat prospects in the November 3rd voting. Trump believes the tactic will backfire on the Democrats.

As far as the debate is concerned, it's difficult to pick a winner, as both President Trump and former VP Joe Biden had moments of strength and weakness, though the president seemed to be the more confident of the two and able to counter his opponent's arguments. Biden made a number of false claims, such as the US facing another 200,000 COVID deaths by the end of the year, saying Trump was somehow in cahoots with foreign governments when there's absolutely no proof of that, and repeated bleats of "false" or "not true" in response to Trump accusations.

Biden did outright deny receiving money from any foreign government, though the evidence is almost at a point of 100% certainty that he did. The media's continued stonewalling on the explosive stories coming out of the NY Post and elsewhere don't help his case at all. The fact that they are covering for the former VP is probably doing more harm for his campaign than good.

Of particular note on background issues, Russ and Pam Martens' Wall Street on Parade reports that banks - which last week reported generally solid earnings for the third quarter - are not setting aside sufficient amounts for loan loss reserves as they were allowed to under-report expected losses via the CARES Act which gave the banks until December 31, 2020 to opt out of employing the accounting standard, ASU 2016-13, for reporting Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL).

What this means is that some of the largest banks in the country - Well Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase - are not likely to report sufficient set-asides for the outgrowth of their deferrals, forbearances, and other accounting magic until the first quarter of 2021, or, about the second week of April, 2021, a key time frame to keep back of mind.

This fundamental fakery helps explain why the banks are reporting mostly strong results, but their shares are not appreciating. Rather, bank stocks remain mired closer to the March lows than the August-September highs. Investors simply are not buying into the fake numbers.

Andrew Maguire explains how China is bypassing the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), which no longer can provide much metal, and buying unrefined gold directly from mines in Africa and South America in the interview below.

At the Close, Thursday, October 21, 2020:
Dow: 28,363.66, +152.84 (+0.54%)
NASDAQ: 11,506.01, +21.31 (+0.19%)
S&P 500: 3,453.49, +17.93 (+0.52%)
NYSE: 13,145.92, +105.79 (+0.81%)

With Election 12 Days Away, Congress Punts On Stimulus; Biden, Media Cabal Hides From Truth

The tenor of Wednesday's session was marked by caution and selling into strength. As was Tuesday, dip-buyers were led to the feeding trough and then slaughtered, mercilessly.

Not only were the past two days of trading tough on short-term tacticians, but the charts from the past four days - only one of which, Monday, produced a positive close - illustrate just how nasty the market has been to those convinced that buying dips is a profitable strategy as every bounce higher was met with engaged selling, marked generally by lower highs and lower lows.

Since it's the middle of earnings season, bets are being laid down on expectations or post-reporting euphoria or derision, but most trades have ended up in tatters, as the mood has shifted quite forcefully to pessimism over everything from the coronavirus to failed stimulus talks to presidential politics. Astute traders are sensing that nothing is being done in Washington prior to the election unless it's a political event, such as the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Deadlines and ultimatums on the Covid relief package have turned out to be mostly false bravado and not even good negotiating tactics.

Anyone believing that there's going to be a stimulus bill forthcoming prior to the election - now a mere 12 days off with early voting already well underway - must have overlooked the jabbering and back-and-forth nattering that's been a feature of Washington politics since July (and, for the truly cynical, forever). The stimulus bill is a can that anticipates and enjoys being kicked down the road by any kind of shoe, Republican or Democrat.

Even if, in the extremely improbable case that a bill does manage to sneak through both the House and Senate and reach the president's desk within the next few days, nobody is going to get a check or direct deposit until well after November 3rd, despite promises - like with the first round - that the money will be going out "right away."

In Washington, "right away" generally means after the next recess or at least three weeks into the future and beyond, unless, of course, you're a Wall Street firm, hedge fund, or airline company seeking bailout booty. If the legislators in DC were employed as wait-people, clerks, or messengers, they wouldn't last a week before being fired.

Since the current posture on both sides appears to be one of not giving in to even the most severe prodding to get a deal done and the second round stimulus bill likely already priced into many market models, any stimulus bill passed will have little to no lasting effect on stocks. There are a plethora of other, more pressing issues facing up to the wall of worry that is the stock market that make coronavirus relief a second rate passenger on the road to ruin.

At 8:30 am ET, another 787,000 people filed initial unemployment claims, futures are off the bottoms put in overnight, as though something uplifting is about to happen. Meanwhile, the mainstream media cabal continues to refuse to report on the unfolding Joe and Hunter Biden graft, corruption and bribery scandal, all the while scaring the bejeezus out of the viewing public with warnings about a third wave of COVID-19 infections, cases, hospitalizations, deaths and the toll it is taking on health care workers, teachers, kids, and even pets.

The mainstream meadia has been consistent above all else in reporting anything even remotely negative about President Trump while ignoring any indications that he is drawing enormous crowds at rallies and that his administration continues to work on important issues such as immigration and Middle East peace.

While Kamala Harris spoke to a "crowd" of what looks like about a dozen "supporters" in Asheville, North Carolina, President Trump held a rally for thousands of cheering, enthusiastic supporters in Gastonia, NC. (full videos below, judge for yourself)

The contrast in crowd size and enthusiasm is stunning, putting the accuracy of the mainstream polls into question and reminiscent of scenes from 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to sweep the nation to victory and instead Donald J. Trump shocked the sold out media.

The media circus stopped being amusing last week when Twitter and Facebook began banning stories from the New York Post that were damaging to Joe Biden and became a national emergency because their censorship effort was quickly reinforced by all of the major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and FOX. If the media enjoyed using the word "collusion" in their non-stop fake news reporting over the Trump-Russia hoax, they're going to hate it when American citizens and hopefully a court of law takes up the same term in referring to their election interference efforts, not just in this cycle, but from 2016 as well.

The American public may be a lot of things, but they are certainly capable of discerning - after plenty of obfuscation and misinformation - when they are being deceived. The mainstream press has been lying, prevaricating, and amplifying anti-Trump messaging so consistently for the past five years (and longer), that people are tuning it out. Those Democrats and left-leaning individuals who still feel a need to get rid of the current president and replace him with a crooked, demented, sick individual like Joe Biden have to be checking their morals at the polling station door and selling their worthless souls to the devil.

That's why there's mail-in and absentee voting. It makes impossible decisions palatable, unseen, and quickly forgotten.

All the time Joe Biden cowers in his basement, millions of early voters are trying desperately to forget what they've already done, quietly hoping that their votes will be repudiated come November 3rd and their worst fears - that they've elected a serial criminal to the highest office in the land - will not be realized.

BTW: The final presidential debate is Thursday night at 9:00 pm ET. It will be carried by the major networks and should likely provide more talking points for each candidate and little more. It's time to go to the polls and start counting the votes.

This will soon be over, though the aftermath may be even more unsettling than what the country has been though the past eight months.

Kamala Harris in Asheville, NC:

President Trump in Gastonia, NC:

At the Close, Wednesday, October 21, 2020:
Dow: 28,210.82, -97.97 (-0.35%)
NASDAQ: 11,484.69, -31.80 (-0.28%)
S&P 500: 3,435.56, -7.56 (-0.22%)
NYSE: 13,040.13, -52.03 (-0.40%)

Stocks Slump Into Close, Futures Flat as Stimulus Talks Fail, 10-Year Yields Spike

Slumping into the close, stocks posted small gains Tuesday as Nancy Pelosi's deadline for a stimulus bill passed with nothing accomplished in the nation's capitol.

As the opening bell approaches, deal-makers in Washington are probably just getting around to talking points for another day of finger-pointing and doing nothing. Meanwhile, the corrupt media still won't address the issues stemming from emails and text messages discovered on the Hunter Biden's computer as father Joe, presidential candidate, cowers in his bunker, refusing to answer any questions related to the findings.

These developments put quite the spin on the final two weeks heading into the election. Donald Trump is surging while the Biden-Harris ticket appears t be circling the drain. The massive censorship and denial campaign being waged on social and mainstream media points up the levels of corruption that exist on the Democrat, liberal side of the equation. While Republicans may or may not be much better, at least they haven'tbeen accused of anything illegal lately. More importantly, President Trump weathered four years of bad (horrifyingly biased) press and every effort, including impeachment, to remove him from office and is now on the cusp of winning a second term in the White House.

The left has no answers and the election, should this condition persist, may as well be over. The media and pollsters, along with their candidates, have been shown to be frauds at best, criminals at worst. The American public isn't going to sit back and allow crooks to rule over them. The Democrats - and some RINO Republicans - are about to get a shock treatmet of public outrage and withdrawn consent. People really don't like being lied to, and theyre not very fond of censorship and politicians who hide from misdeeds. The Biden campaign is effectively over.

With the sudden reversal of fortunes (remember, like in 2016, the Democrat candidate was supposedly well ahead in the polls), Wall Street will reassess their positions, though a Trump win wouldn't exactly be the worst outcome for the country. As it stands, the economy was doing OK until the coronavirus hit, so it stands to reason that President Trump's comtinued policies would include lower taxes and reduced regulation, both good for business. Thus, regardless of one's political position, a Trump victory on November 3rd should be seen as a positive.

However, the damage done by the government shutdowns of businesses in the US and around the world, and with Europe looking at another virus wave and more shutdowns is compelling and has set gloabl economies back substantially. Individual freedoms are being challenged around the globe. And while the lack of a stimulus bill from Washington may be top of mind for some, underlying trends, especially for major urban areas, are still quite troubling.

Should the politicians actually come up with a satisfactory stimulus bill within the next week, it's not going to change the dynamics of the market or the election very much. Minds are already made up; money is already in play. It's doubtful that even a $2 trillion package would move the needle much at all on either front.

With the opening bell just moments away, a serious development come via the bond market where the yield on the 10-year note has creasted above 0.80 for the first time since early June. The 10-year benchmark yield has been elevated recently and may be getting away from the control freaks at the Federal Reserve. Should the bond selling spree continue apace, gold and silver - already higher on the day - will rocket higher. Stocks could be getting set up for a dramtic multi-session decline.

At the Close, Tuesday, October 20, 2020:
Dow: 28,308.79, +113.37 (+0.40%)
NASDAQ: 11,516.49, +37.61 (+0.33%)
S&P 500: 3,443.12, +16.20 (+0.47%)
NYSE: 13,092.16, +73.66 (+0.57%)

Stocks Dump on Anniversary of Black Monday; Silver Buys Much More Chicken Than in 1960

On the 33rd anniversary of Black Monday (October 19, 1987), stocks didn't drop by 20% or more as they did on that fateful day, though there was a level of trepidation not seen in recent market action. After a lull in September, the major averages have been rising over the past two to three weeks.

For sure, Monday's market action left plenty of dip buyers holding a bag of pain, as gains were wiped out in waves of lower highs and lower lows as stocks stair-stepped their way to a distressing close.

29 of 30 Dow stocks closed in the red, led by:

AAPL, Apple: 115.98, -3.04 (-2.55%)

JNJ, Johnson & Johnson: 144.32, -3.78 (-2.55%)

MSFT, Microsoft: 214.22, -5.44 (-2.48%)

AXP, American Express: 102.47, -2.44 (-2.33%)

The only winner of the bunch was Intel (INTC), which closed at 54.58, up 0.42 (+0.78%).

As usual, the financial news pundits trotted out the same tired excuse for stocks losing steam: continued failure of congress to pass a stimulus bill.

Now, this most recent of Washington's foibles has been a steady-state comedy of errors since mid-July, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin first began negotiating for a second major coronavirus bailout. For the duration, Pelosi's been pushing for a bigger price tag and including money for states and municipalities, schools, and other pet projects while Mnuchin and the White House favored a much smaller expenditure.

The two sides keep inching closer to a deal, with the latest ploy by Pelosi being a demand that an agreement be reached by Tuesday, which just happens to be today. Accordingly, the newspeople are reporting that the two sides are "close to a deal," a position they've bandied about twice as often as being "far apart."

Blaming the demise of the stock market on the inability of politicians to reach agreement on the size of a stimulus bill is the height of folly. It's akin to blaming the manufacturer for your 12-year-old car's performance when your tires are bald, the oil hasn't been changed in three years, and the half of the fuel injectors are plugged.

In other words, there may be other reasons for stocks to go up or down outside of what the nitwits in the nation's capitol are doing, or not doing.

Here are some other possible reasons for stocks to lose value:

Unemployment is very high

Coronavirus fatigue

Concerns over electing Joe Biden president

Concerns over electing Donald Trump president

Many schools are closed or only partially open

Cities are facing budget deficits (New York, Chicago, others)

Protests, riots, looting by leftist groups ANTIFA and BLM

Stocks are overpriced

Record federal budget deficit

Record trade deficit

Slumping GDP

Corrupt politicians

Corrupt media

Censorship by Big Tech companies like Facebook and Twitter

Consumer price inflation

Lack of trust in government

Wall Street's V-shaped recovery looks more like an "L" on Main Street

Taken together, those issues would make a normal person want to crawl into a hole and wait until it all passes, but these issues are at least as concerning to some traders and fund managers as a government stimulus bill.

Besides, if the stock market is pinning its hopes on a stimulus bill, having the federal government go deeper into deficit by bailing out everything from airlines to schools to cities to restaurants to you and your neighbor, doesn't that indicate that there may be deeper problems facing the stock market and the general economy?

For some perspective, here's a mind experiment on the value of silver.

Silver and gold aren't going to the moon, as some suggest.

Think in terms of purchasing power. Currently, an ounce of silver is worth about $32 (probably more, see this link for a survey of recent actual sales on eBay).

Let's say a 6 pound roasting chicken (yum) is $8, or $1.33 a pound. (it's usually cheaper, but stick with us here). Right now, you can buy four of those with a one ounce silver coin or bar. OK, you can eat for a couple of weeks.

With inflation, that same chicken may be $2.00 a pound, or $12, in six months, so $32 will only buy two of them, plus a 4-pound fryer.

The ounce of silver will still buy four, and probably more, unless, of course, the mendacious futures marketeers are allowed to suppress the price as they have been for decades in order to keep fiat ($US dollar) the circulating currency.

For reference, chicken was 29 cents a pound in 1960, when silver was still a circulating currency. A six pound chicken cost $1.74, or seven Washington quarters (you'd get an all-copper penny back). That's more than an ounce of silver. There's actually 1.2659 troy ounces of silver in 7 silver Washington quarters, so you couldn't even buy one chicken with an ounce of silver, when today, 60 years later, you can buy four. Four chickens in 1960 would have set you back 5 ounces of silver. Today, that same five ounces will buy you 20 6-pound chickens. On this basis, silver has improved its purchasing power five-fold while the purchasing power of the US dollar has declined in a corresponding fashion.

A six pound chicken in 1960 set you back $1.74. Today, it's $8.00.

That means silver is actually worth much more today than it was then, in real terms (chickens). This illustrates how the dollar has been losing value and will continue to do so. Silver is a long-term investment in real money. This example proves it to be also a worthwhile store of value.

The Fed didn't know how good they had it, both when they conspired to take silver out of circulation and when they started printing money willy-nilly to boost the economy (and the price of everything).

A 401k or an IRA is a trap, tying up fiat currency for decades while its value declines. Silver (and gold) is salvation from inflation.

At the Close, Monday, October 19, 2020:
Dow: 28,195.42, -410.89 (-1.44%)
NASDAQ: 11,478.88, -192.67 (-1.65%)
S&P 500: 3,426.92, -56.89 (-1.63%)
NYSE: 13,018.51, -150.81 (-1.15%)

WEEKEND WRAP: Presidential Politics, Biden, Social Media Scandal Dominate

On the surface, stocks put in a mostly positive five days, with three of the four main US indices ending the week in positive territory. Only the NYSE Composite suffered a loss.

It appears as if Friday's trading was extended, all of the bourses would have joined the NYSE in negative ground as the final hour was all selling, perhaps spurred by smart money exiting the equity markets in anticipation of the weekend's re-pricing of $80 trillion of loans and derivative contracts form LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) to SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate), a result of the manipulation of LIBOR during the sub-prime crisis of 2007-09.

Since the resetting of interest rates on trillions of dollars worth of loans and derivative contracts isn't an ordinary practice, this weekend's reset has been nicknamed the "Big Bang" as banks and financial institutions around the world hope to make the transition a smooth one. The vast majority of these contracts are over-the-counter derivatives held by banks, ostensibly between two contract partners, but about five percent of the total $200 trillion notional are business loans, floating rate notes and bonds, securitizations, and consumer loans (credit cards, car loans, personal loans).

How this all plays out will be closely guarded by the participants, but could show up in differences in rates on some mortgages and consumer loans.

While some people have become apoplectic over the change, it's likely that nothing earth-shattering will result. Still, there is some trepidation that this event might lead to some overflow turbulence in other markets, particularly, stocks and bonds. Thus, some people were likely selling late Friday to avoid possibly being left out in the open with their pants down on Monday morning.

Otherwise, the week just ended was dominated once again by presidential politics as the November 3rd date with destiny crept closer. With less than three weeks in the monumental election race between President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the rancor reached a fever pitch when damning evidence of Biden's son, Hunter's, involvement in Ukraine politics - implicating the senior Biden as an influence peddler - was reported by the New York Post and subsequently squelched by social media giants, Facebook and Twitter.

The story, which involved emails and photos from a computer supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden that was left at a Delaware repair shop and never picked up, gained traction in the alternate media but was completely ignored by the mainstream, to which proponents on the right claimed foul.

Twitter accounts of the NY Post, Trump's campaign, Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany and others were shut down on Wednesday, though most of them were restored by Thursday. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey issued a couple of thinly-worded apologies, neither of which satisfied congressmen and senators who rang the alarm over first amendment protections and sought to bring Dorsey and Facebook CEO in for hearings on the matter.

By the weekend, following Thursday night's dueling presidential town halls (Trump on NBC, Biden on ABC), the mainstream, including the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox, remained mum on the story, despite the attempted censorship by their cohorts in the social universe. The censorship of these explosive allegations and evidence of wrong-doing by Biden while he was Vice President under Obama (2009-2016) was so egregious it could not be readily contained. Unless one were living under a rock, the story made the rounds to the public nonetheless.

More revelations have followed from Hunter Biden's hard drive and elsewhere, and the mainstream media's reluctance to even acknowledge their existence shows how partisan and biased these giant media companies are and poses a serious threat to democracy and to the welfare of the United States.

Outside of politics, earnings were the focus on Wall Street, as banks posted third quarter results, noting the usual record-setting trading profits and the unusual, severely slashed loan loss provisions. Apparently, the banks aren't gearing up for a spate of bankruptcies, mortgage defaults and credit card delinquencies stemming from the coronavirus and associated lockdowns, business closures, and various state-by-state restrictions.

In congress, the Senate was occupied with confirmation hearings of Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, while Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to spar over stimulus proposals. On Saturday, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced that the senate would take a standalone vote on more funds for the Paycheck Protection Program Tuesday, followed by the main relief bill, including, ostensibly, $1200 checks for most Americans, money for states and municipalities, relief for the airlines, and other measures on Wednesday. Estimates vary, but it's assumed that McConnell's bills will amount to less than the $1.8 to $2.2 trillion being bandied about by the administration and House operatives.

Treasuries saw little movement. Yield on the 10-year note fell three basis points to 0.76%, while the 30-year dropped six basis points to 1.52%.

Price for a barrel of WTI crude oil continued to hug the $40 mark, dipping as low as $39.43 (Monday), but gaining through the week to close out at $40.88.

Precious metals were lower, primarily due to another raid on the futures Tuesday which brought the price of gold down from $1922.77 to $1891.36. The price finished the week at $1899.29 on Friday. Silver was victimized as well, losing just under a dollar on the spot market, to 24.16.

Premiums for deliverable, physical gold and silver remained high. Latest prices for common items on eBay are as follows (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):

Item: Low / High / Average / Median
1 oz silver coin: 28.00 / 43.95 / 37.91 / 38.20
1 oz silver bar: 28.00 / 45.05 / 35.49 / 34.40
1 oz gold coin: 1,950.00 / 2,108.82 / 2,018.20 / 2,026.65
1 oz gold bar: 1,903.70 / 2,019.73 / 1,996.39 / 2,000.08

Obviously, buyers of small physical gold and silver items aren't quite buying into the derivative-based prices generated by the futures market. Of particular note this week was the US Mint's jacking of the price of its flagship silver eagle to $67.00, along with significant price hikes (30-60%) on other silver products. The mint's move may explain the extraordinary premium price rise in silver eagle auctions on eBay and by dealers.

At the Close, Friday, October 16, 2020:
Dow: 28,606.31, +112.11 (+0.39%)
NASDAQ: 11,671.56, -42.31 (-0.36%)
S&P 500: 3,483.81, +0.47 (+0.01%)
NYSE: 13,169.32, +32.07 (+0.24%)

For the Week:
Dow: +19.41 (+0.07%)
NASDAQ: +91.61 (0.79%)
S&P 500: +6.67 (+0.19%)
NYSE: -83.30 (-0.63%)