Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Currency War, What Is It Good For? - Crimea River

 

"Another amusing incident arose from the fact that the Reichsbank maintained a not inconsiderable gold deposit in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Strong was proud to be able to show us the vaults which were situated in the deepest cellar of the building and remarked:

'Now, Herr Schacht, you shall see where the Reichsbank gold is kept.'

While the staff looked for the hiding place of the Reichsbank gold we went through the vaults.We waited several minutes: at length we were told:

'Mr. Strong, we can't find the Reichsbank gold.'

Strong was flabbergasted but I comforted him. 'Never mind: I believe you when you say the gold is there. Even if it weren't you are good for its replacement.'"

Hjalmar Schacht, Autobiography: Confessions of 'The Old Wizard', 1956, p.245

“Currency warfare is the most destructive form of economic warfare."

Harry Dexter White, US Representative to Bretton Woods, 1944

"This is a story based on a report out of the Ukraine.  Obviously I do not know yet if it is accurate.  The information coming out of the Ukraine and Crimea should be sifted carefully, no matter what the source. I find this one hard to believe.  I am informed by highly reliable people that no one cares about gold anymore.  And very important analysts claim that transporting many tonnes of gold is very difficult, and so unwieldy and fraught with peril that it must be a multiyear project... Just ask Germany."

Jesse, Ukraine Gold Reserves Said To Be Put On Plane For Safekeeping in the US, 9 March 2014

"Like quite a few people I found myself asking, 'Why the Ukraine?  Why the sudden push there, risking conflict with Russia on their own doorstep?  Why are we suddenly risking all to support what was clearly an extra-legal coup d'état?

It is telling perhaps that one of the first things that happened after the coup d'état is that the Ukraine's gold was on a flight to New York.

Follow the money.

Jesse, Ukraine: The Global Corporate Annexation, 21 April 2014

"As per the report of a source from the Ukrainian Government, the Ukrainian gold reserves were confirmed to be moved on an aircraft from the Bristol Airport at Kiev to the United States. The report says that about 40 tons of gold was flown from Ukraine to US. However, according to the World Gold Council, Ukraine has in store 36 tons of gold reserves."

Ploumis, Ukraine Gold Reserves Reported To Be Hastily Aircrafted To U.S, Shanghai Metals Market, 12 Mar 2014

YIV, July 17 (Reuters) - Ukraine's central bank has sold $12.4 billion of gold reserves since the beginning of Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, the bank's deputy head said on Sunday. "We are selling (this gold) so that our importers are able to buy necessary goods for the country," Deputy Governor Kateryna Rozhkova told national television. She said the gold was not being sold to shore up Ukraine's hryvnia currency."

Reuters, Ukraine central bank has sold over $12 billion of its gold reserves, July 17,2022

"Gold Reserves in Ukraine remained unchanged at 27.06 tonnes in the fourth quarter of 2023 from 27.06 tonnes in the third quarter of 2023.  Gold Reserves in Ukraine averaged 25.29 tonnes from 2000 until 2023, reaching an all time high of 42.61 tonnes in the first quarter of 2014 and a record low of 13.40 Tonnes in the first quarter of 2000."  source: World Gold Council

Trading Economics, Ukraine Gold Reserves, 2024

 

I have not been able lately to find out exactly where the gold of the Ukraine is, and any encumbrances and claims there may be placed on it.  Although there does seem to be less of it, and the Ukraine minister knows what it was not used for.  

The World Bank and the World Gold Council have been reporting that nation's reserves including FX and gold, but the details seem to be a bit hard for me to find in the fog of war.  But I am sure it is safe somewhere, and being put to good use on behalf of the people. 

But I seem to recall when the people of Germany asked for the return of their gold in 2012, that request presented a mountain of practical difficulties.  

I am sure this will all be sorted out in time, as Herr Schacht had said, so many years ago.

Stocks slid down to their next support levels again today.  

There seems to be a disturbance in the force.

Stock option expiration tomorrow.

Gold bounced, while silver lost a bit more of its recent gains.

The Dollar bounced back up to the 106 handle.

The VIX is waffling around at a slightly highest level.

The geopolitical environment is simmering on several fronts of proximate interest to the US.

Uncle Joe the peacemaker.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Grifters in an Ocean of Lies - Stock Option Expiration on Friday

 

"A common feature of all these earlier troubles [panics such as 1907 and 1914] was that having happened they were over.  The worst was reasonably recognizable as such.  The singular feature of the great crash of 1929 was that the worst continued to worsen.  What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning.

Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few as possible escaped the common misfortune.  The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another.  In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. 

The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall.  Even the man who waited out all of October and all of November, who saw the volume of trading return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next twenty-four months.

The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revivial, but finally giving up in the final collapse."

Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 1978


The hallmark of forecasting a crash is a 'trigger event' that causes the rally that fails. 

If there is no trigger event the usual market interventions by the fiscal and monetary authorities can turn the markets back up, and prolong the putative financial asset bubble until the real economy catches up to its valuations, or an event of sufficient magnitude finally occurs and a severe correction ensues. 

Like snow building for an avalanche, at some point in an extended bubble it may take an event of much lesser magnitude than one might expect to set off the slide.  Of late, however, the Fed and the Exchange Stabilization Fund have become so determined to support markets that the events tend to be of a greater magnitude.  So what has happened in the past may not happened now. 

Stocks continued their decline today.   Goldilocks seems to have the vapours.

Gold and silver took a pause most likely with an eye to the stock market option expiration on Friday.

The Dollar slipped off the 106 handle.

VIX marked time at an elevated level.

It would be hard for me to remember a time when so many masks fell off the powerful, who increasingly drop all pretense to the rule of law, and any sort of morality other than 'do what thou will is the whole of the law.'

But God has a way of standing before the nations with judgement.

This is going to end badly, and many innocent people will be caught up in their wickedness.

It would be better for many of these criminals and their enablers if they had never been born.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - How Time Flies - Tactics and Strategies

 

"This forecast was published on my old website (Yahoo Geocities) at the beginning of 2005, when optimism was running high, the maestro was still on his throne, black swans still an uncommon topic, and the US was in a fresh bull market in stocks with a growing housing bubble that very few would admit, and many would vehemently deny.  

I have edited out extraneous contemporary detail, and most of the charts which are dated, except for one. I edited out some grammatical errors and awkward phrasing.  I have also renumbered the footnotes and eliminated several for the sake of simplicity and relevance."

Jesse, 11 January 2010

"Predicting the failure of a complex system is not easy.  One can examine it as a whole, and determine that it will fail, and often calculate what must change in order to allow the system to function more reliably.  But it is often beyond our power to calculate exactly how it will fail, and consequently when it will fail. 

This does not invalidate the observation that the system will ultimately fail.  It merely underscores the unpredictability of timing a failure with the degrees of freedom inherent in a calculation with a large number of exogenous variables. 

There are four major types of tipping points:

o Demand:  a break in the level of consumption in the US caused by the unwillingness or ability of households to incur further debt to support consumption beyond real wage growth

o Supply:  a major disruption in the supply of an essential commodity like energy, food, or raw materials, or even the realization that a major commodity is in shorter supply than expected, such as silver or oil.

o Monetary:  an inability of foreign central banks to continue to monetize the US trade deficit and budget deficit through the recycling of their trade surplus into US debt securities.

o Systemic failure:  the failure of a major counter party that threatens the US financial system, particularly in the hugely leveraged derivatives market.

Jesse, Long Term Forecast: The Humpty Dumpty Economy, 2005 

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?   Or apartheid?   What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'  The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

Aaron Bushnell

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

William Wilberforce


Stocks ended up with another ranging day which seems to be so common now in this 'roller coaster' valuation ride. 

This reminds me of this same time of year, but in 1929.

Stocks finished flat to lower.

VIX fell from its lofty close from yesterday.

The Dollar chopped but held on to the 106 handle.

There is a stock market option expiration this Friday.

The geopolitical situation is on a hair trigger.

It's all about managing risk in a market such as this.

There was an intraday post about the Performance of Various Assets including Precious Metals in General Market Declines.

During times of unrest and war the lies start flowing hot and heavy, and often delivered with a great deal of unwarranted hubris and presumed audience ignorance.  

Jerome Corsi does a reasonable job in this video of summing up the case for the hidden details in the National Security State assassination of JFK.  They are other books that go into more details including motivations but this is a nice summary. 

This was the beginning of the fall of the Republic, and the rise of oligarchy and Empire.

Have a pleasant evening.