investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--Goldman’s Stacks of Gold

Goldman’s Stacks of Gold

Goldman Sachs , JPMorgan , and BlackRock Financial Management are stacking up wealth like never before , thanks to the Great Recession 2.0 , a.k.a .
the Second Great Depression .
Yet , the Fed maintains its recovery plans do not create wealth disparity .
At no time have we seen more clearly how that works than in this week ’ s second-quarter corporate reports from major US banks .
The oligarchs are actually prospering while Rome burns .
MarketWatch reports that major banks have been hauling in more dough than bakers can even dream of .
Goldman Sucks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis , hit the mother load , reporting a 41 % rush in second-quarter revenue to $ 13.3 billion from a year ago .
Was it because the economy isn ’ t hurting them ?
No , it was hurting them ( and other banks ) in terms of what we might call more pedestrian or old-fashion activities like making money off mortgages and car payments .
They struck gold because their father , the Fed , knows how to print money and essentially gave lots of it to them !
Much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which they use the Fed ’ s free or practically free money to help other corporations , obtaining rich fees for doing so ; but some of it was just direct gains in cash from bonds they issued then sold directly to the Fed .
The Fed so thoroughly believes that all support for the average person has to come through the banks that it saved the banks before they could even start to fail .
You could call that failsafe or preventative FedMed , or you could call it making sure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealthier while everyone else becomes poorer .
As Ron Paul said , the Fed is the leading cause of economic inequality .
How banks and their richest friends win when everyone else loses First , there are those fees the major investment banks make by using Fed money to help other businesses in a crisis : Yes , take them far away !
Please .
The same was said for Citigroup this week : Yet , the money is not just made off of service fees .
When the Federal Reserve says it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just government bonds , it creates a market for banks to actually print their own money .
As they are losing money right now from standard loan operations , they are enabled by the Fed to make more than they ever have by essentially printing their own .
A crashing economy equals massive Fed support .
When the Fed promises to buy up as many bonds as the banks will sell , what is to stop the banks from issuing their own bonds and selling them directly to the Fed for easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue bonds at ultra-low rates that the bank promises will immediately all be purchased .
Sure , the bond is an offsetting liability when the banks issue their own , but think of what you can do by investing all the cash at the good rate you can get from the Fed , which offers to buy up all you have .
It ’ s essentially a money-printing engine , and up go stocks as you do that .
The bonds they convince customers to issue are not even a liability for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them all and just immediately pass them through to the Fed for a tidy markup .
Get the money while it ’ s cheap , and you don ’ t qualify for this kind of easy money unless you ’ re very big and very rich .
The Fed isn ’ t just soaking up existing bad debt .
It ’ s creating a market and enticing corporations to offer new bond issuances into the market the Fed is creating ( as essentially the sole but certain buyer in that market ) .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ nice service fees along the way .
But what is to stop the banks from being enticed into making their own bond issuances as well ?
Even if they are limited by the Fed in ways I don ’ t perceive , they can certainly buy the entire bond issuance another corporation offers , knowing they have a guaranteed repurchaser in the Fed and then sell it directly to the Fed for profit .
The Fed has promised to soak up as much of this new debt as corporations , including banks I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , everyone is issuing bonds into the Fed ’ s ready vacuum cleaner .
It ’ s cheap , easy money to get at a time when the economy is losing money everywhere outside of those who know someone who knows the Fed .
It takes billions to be a player in that risk-free casino and big connections with investment bankers , or you have to be one !
You and I can not play in that game .
Who knows if corporations will ever even have to pay off those bonds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find a way to use the crisis to simply write off those bonds … or will endlessly refi them at almost-zero interest because not doing otherwise would cause a crash down the road .
It ’ s a great gig if you can get it !
Revenue from this activity is at its highest since five years ago .
No surprise .
Five years ago , the Fed was roaring along in QE3 .
Now they are in QE4ever in that QE3 could be stopped but not reversed .
QE4ever can not even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That is how Goldman added to its Sachs of gold via massive bond trading enticed and made possible by the Fed issuing trillions to purchase bonds .
That is how Goldman and its bankster pals wiped out all expectations with their corporate reports this week .
After which , it gained an additional expansion of its wealth because the good news caused its stock to go up .
It is the biggest banks that make all of this money .
They are the ones that are the Fed ’ s direct dealers of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ main wholesale-level financial corporations that carry out the bond issuances of all other major corporations .
The little banks may be struggling , but they don ’ t make the headlines , so who among us will ever know unless they collapse ?
Thus , it turns out Q2 2020 was the second-best quarter on record for Goldman Sucks net revenues .
How high was it ?
Well , one segment of their income , “ Global Market , ” was up 93 % YoY .
Not bad !
That ’ s how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fuel line from the Fed because that is where the Fed ’ s new money directly flows .
But the Fed has nothing to do with the creation of wealth disparity .
Nothing !
And to think they not only say that with a straight face but that no one in the media tears their face off when they do !
If you want a picture of how good the COVID crisis has been for the biggest banks , try this image for size ( of GS revenue from Fixed Income , Currency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could fly so high in times like this !
The best way for a big bank to make bank is for the economy to go broke !
Once again , we see there is nothing like a major economic crisis to provide exactly the rationale the Fed needs to fire up its money-printing engines like never before !
While all the new money goes into banks first , the Fed promises it will trickle down to the extremely rich who can afford to play with big stakes in bond markets and who , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on into stocks for faster gains , and then it will trickle down to you an me .
Can we believe the Fed is dumb enough not to realize the rich will filter 99 % of that into their own hands to prevent it from getting down to you ?
Please !
It has never worked any other way .
If you want any of it , you ’ re going to have to fight to your death to get it .
In fact , Goldman ’ s other side of banking in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the rest of us .
Their provision for credit losses , like those of other banks that have reported this week , has soared .
That ’ s the part where the rubber meets the road for you and me .
For them , those losses are small stuff compared to their gains from Fed money printing .
So , what do they care ?
The Fed could require them to write off mortgages or , at least , the unpaid payments for good in order to qualify for making those ungodly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balance sheets so that some help goes to the common folk .
But that is unthinkable .
The little people who are hurting need to struggle through and manage via what little trickles down to them by having the corporations they work for saved .
Thus , the banks that are too big to fail are made monumentally richer ( again ) on one side of their balance sheet while you lose your home in bankruptcy on the other side and the banks casually write off the loan for whatever they can get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or car or whatever ) .
It ’ s merely a small cost of doing business on the ugly side of they balance sheet as a tradeoff for the huge gains on the other side .
Alternately , you become the bank ’ s debt slave over the years ahead as you struggle to make up forbearance payments while the biggest banks do not struggle at all .
The Fed ’ s longstanding rationale is that this way you don ’ t have to worry about the too-big bank falling on you by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Well , so long as it is one of the big banks .
If its a small bank that can not play with the big boys in this Fed-direct game , it might fail , but that ’ s OK even for you .
The Fed will arrange to have those banks snarfed up by one of the big boys at fire-sale prices just like it did in the Great Financial Crisis in order to protect your deposits .
The Fed ’ s modus operandi ASSURES us that the banks that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bigger .
Think the Fed has us covered then ?
Well , did it have the GFC covered before it happened to the whole world ?
No .
It happened , didn ’ t it ?
It most likely hurt you to some extent .
It hurt some people to a huge extent when stocks plummeted and they lost their retirement funds .
It sent companies out of business , and even some major banks ( remember the name Washington Mutual ? )
went down for the count .
( WAMU probably wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was competing outside the normal way of doing business as a thrift institution that had become bigger than investment banks . )
So , don ’ t think this plan can not fail .
The Fed has failed many times .
BlackRock busting out ahead of everyone In the meantime , for your own economic solace , look at all the money BlackRock is making for being the Fed ’ s sole contractor doling out one particular kind of US-government guaranteed loans .
( Note that Fed Chair Jerome Powell owns MILLIONS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Not only is BlackRock doling out Fed funds for fantastic fees , it is also getting Fed funds to use to buy stock on the Fed ’ s behalf !
The Fed doesn ’ t want to look like it is already buying stocks because it feels the public might frown on that , so it does it through its proxy , while the mainstream media is dumb enough to completely ignore that connection as if it is a legitimate arm ’ s length operation and as if the Fed is not buying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ longer term it wouldn ’ t be a bad thing for Congress to reconsider the powers that the Fed has with respect to assets it can own , ” none of that matters !
It ’ s a smoke screen !
A mere inconvenience to the Fed .
The Fed has been using proxies to buy stocks for years .
Who can believe that , if J. Powell picks up the phone and calls one of its major member banks and says , “ We ’ re going to conduct X @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 billion , and we want you to invest that $ 20 billion in XYZ , ” that the bank he calls won ’ t do exactly that ?
They certainly won ’ t be the beneficiary of those free-money operations in the future if they don ’ t !
So , it is with the blackest of corporations — BlackRock .
You can see that language here : BlackRock is the Fed ’ s sole partner for administering everything the Fed does through this particular SPV .
Why would anyone think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which BlackRock has “ full and COMPLETE AUTHORITY ” to “ supervise and DIRECT ” all “ investments ” as “ attorney-in-fact ” — that BlackRock would not be using that decision-making authority already to buy “ all stocks ” as the document names first in the order of all that BlackRock “ may select ?
” Sure , they ’ re just sitting on that power !
It ’ s a great gig if you can get it , but to get it , you have to know J. Powell .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invested in your corporation !
( No apparent conflict of interest there !
I ’ m sure Powell officially stepped out of the vote … after making sure he knew everyone was on board with voting the right way . )
I don ’ t want to say , Powell is just serving his self-interest here .
I ’ ll leave that for you to say ( or not ) based on what you see in the document .
What I do want to say is that , if you think the fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarterly reports this week had any reflection on how the economy is doing … you ’ re not thinking !
And you ’ re probably not one of my regular readers .
Unless , of course , you mean there is an inverse relationship between how well banks are doing and how the economy is doing .
In which case , you ’ re right on .
The banks are doing great because the economy is doing so poorly .
They ’ re doing great because of their partnerships with the Fed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owned by Jerome Powell .
To know that , however , you have to read the fine print of those SPV agreements the Fed has been issuing with its “ agents , ” as in the illustration above .
You see , it ’ s not necessary for the Fed to buy stocks directly when it appoints administrators of its agencies and states outright they have full decision-making authority on whether to use the money in those accounts to buy stocks !
Will the stock market crash again anyway ?
Some bullish investment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stocks or justify their own lunacy in buying them at oxygen-depriving heights ) , “ stocks always go up.
” With this kind of support finally fully in place , would it any wonder ?
Maybe they always will .
Certainly , historically , over a long enough timeframe , stocks have always gone up .
However , one can just as truthfully say , “ stocks always crash ” because , over a long enough time frame , they also always correct to the economy .
If they don ’ t this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first .
Just as the economy has always continued to grow over the longterm , so have stocks ; but whenever the economy has gone down hard , so have stocks !
They went down in 2018 when the Fed thought it could reverse QE .
They went down this year … hard !
They ’ re topping out again as the Fed has slowed its QE from “ doing all that it takes ” for the moment .
So , to think the Fed never fails at supporting them is to deny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fed continues slowing its money-printing engines , seeing full well that stocks started stalling as soon as that support faded ( even though it is still continuing at a greater rate than any previous QE , but just much less than the burst given at the start of this economic crisis ) ?
The Fed has been rapidly roaring toward the limits of its promised $ 5 trillion in QE .
It would probably like to not overshoot that $ 5 trillion if it can avoid it , or it wouldn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cap there in the first place .
Why does the Federal Reserve limit its promised QE ?
Because you can not just increase the printing of money exponentially without eventually crashing the value of your money .
You also can not do all the Fed is doing without creating massive economic and financial distortions that become ever harder to manage in the future .
The Fed knows that by experience .
It certainly saw how unable it was to back out of its last rounds of QE .
You also can not do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ greater wealth disparity , and that is problematic for the Fed in a time of utmost social unrest .
That is why the Fed categorically denies , as noted at the start of this article , that it is doing that .
The Fed clearly doesn ’ t want to be blamed for creating economic disparity .
The number-one reason the market is likely to crash , in spite of the Fed ’ s support , ( possibly in August , almost certainly by October ) is … The Fed knows there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems as it pushes again into full warp drive .
As captain , J. Powell can probably hear Scottie yelling , “ She ’ s gon na blow , Captain.
” Meaning there is risk in blowing up huge inflation .
So , yeah the Fed can do all of this , but you don ’ t stay at Warp-factor 10 any longer than you must , even if you can .
There are limits , and the Fed knows it .
( And , no , I ’ m not a Trekkie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ analogy . )
Others know it , too , because what is said below of the Fed ’ s partners in what should be a crime can be said of the Fed : The Fed has to be very mindful about managing the backlash that would happen if it goes too far .
There is no Fed magic for preventing public outage if the economic disparity becomes too obviously the Fed ’ s own doing .
The Fed doesn ’ t like political backlash because it threatens its free hands .
It must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to argue it is only doing as much as necessary for the economy … for everyone .
So , the Fed can not do everything and anything it takes to prop up stocks forever if that means becoming so extreme that it will create public outcry .
So far , they have adroitly steered clear of that .
One would think these close relationships with “ agents ” like BlackRock that are making landslides of money off the Fed would already be creating backlash .
The Fed must be very careful not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fed now takes a rest from the warp-drive support that is absolutely essential to the market , putting the market at risk of slumping from lack of warp-factor ten support .
Please note that this recent rush of the greatest support the Fed has ever given STILL did not get the Dow or the S & P back up even to the last height they attained .
And they attained that previous height with half this level of Fed support .
So , diminishing returns are being seen in a big way now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is happening even though the Fed is actually far from resting .
It has simply dropped down to a new high cruising speed by only expanding its balance sheet , as I ’ ve reported a couple of times , at a rate of 1.5x the rate of expansion under QE3 .
Just a few years ago , two-thirds of that much financial expansion was enough to support a seemingly endless bull run .
1.5x QE3 is now just barely able to sustain the market at the level it reached under this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than $ 3 trillion .
In fact , I think it won ’ t sustain it there for long before the Fed has to go back up to warp 10 .
It ’ s already out of control Do you think the Fed has all of this under control ?
Well , as Ron Paul concluded , In other words , the Fed ’ s last recovery effort was already spinning so badly out of control that the Fed had to create almost a trillion dollars into the economy back in 2019 because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Does that sound like control ?
It sounds like frantic attempts to keep from losing control to me .
The Fed believed it could unwind from its recovery efforts , as it always preached it could and would ( and as I always said it would fail at ) .
It learned the hard way it can not .
It crashed its own recovery , making itself look inept .
Fed Powell averred the Fed was at risk of losing public trust .
So , the Fed did increasingly more and more to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Repo Crisis until COVID-19 gave it the excuse it needed to go thermo-nuclear into full thrust .
Is that how an organization that “ has it all under control ” operates ?
I don ’ t think so .
I don ’ t think they savor the idea of looking like idiots or of losing public trust and getting , as a result , a lot of public backlash because senator and Reps start getting public pressure .
They must keep the sleeping child asleep .
Now the Fed is slowing down just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Fed is slowing down because it is quickly reading the limits the Fed preset for itself — limits that exist because the Fed KNOWS it has to manage money supply carefully , or it will destroy the value of its product , which is money , or lose the public trust and face backlash that can potentially strip it of power .
There is no free lunch .
The Fed is not limitless in how much money it can create .
The Fed is not God .
Even modern monetary theory has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right now is called Modern Monetary Theory — creating as much money as it takes to fund the federal government and move the economy .
Central Bank of India Governor and University of Chicago Professor Raghuram Rajan explained why MMT won ’ t work because it has its limits , too .
First , his interviewer noted how widely this bad idea , fostered by Stony Brook University ’ s abstract Professor Stephanie Kelton , is successfully spreading , simply because governments all over the world need her arguments to justify the money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into their economies back to life due to all their past profligacy that has left them with nothing for battling the Coronacrisis : Rajan , as a rare former central-bank governor who seems to get it , responded , Indeed .
Why do they ?
That ’ s a moral question I ’ ve been raising here for some time , but our generation apparently doesn ’ t have the moral compass to care about what it is doing to its children .
However , I think we are already at the point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all the previous decades of extreme government deficits are reaching their limit in borrowing .
The next generation is the Millennial generation because we started down this path of massive deficit increases in the Reagan days .
Those days may have been nothing compared to now , but those are the days when we effectively started to say “ deficit be damned , we need the money now !
” We need our military .
We need to change the world through war .
Or we need our welfare !
We need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our children !
Well , those children have grown , and those who started down this path are aged and now get to face the end of the road along with their children .
We ’ re at the point where the ever-widening spirals of debt necessary to maintain the old debt and create the new debt needed for a dying economy are swinging so wide that the Fed will have a hard time going one more circle wider without discovering the center doesn ’ t hold this time , and centrifugal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to your common cents You know life has taught you there is no such thing as a free lunch , and you can SEE that the Fed ’ s containment efforts are now swinging in enormous outward spirals that don ’ t look very round anymore , requiring new inventions … even by Fed standards .
And you know that new inventions alway contain unknown risks .
So , believe in what your commons sense tells you .
Does this look like something the Fed has under control ?
Or does it look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look when the Fed is losing control ?
Do you trust these guys ?
This thing is blowing up !
Consider the following : We were already screaming toward an economic collapse , given that it took a trillion dollars in monetary expansion on the Fed ’ s balance sheet last year just to keep us in the perpetual Repo Crisis , as Ron Paul notes .
It took that much just to help the economy trundle along at a near-recessionary rate of 2 % annualized GDP growth through a half year of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other words , already under massive stimulus just to sustain ourselves in a half-baked recession last year and to keep the banking crisis from blowing up .
And just remember , even though bankers are rolling in the dough like drunken bakers right now because the Fed looks out for its own first and foremost ( because it is literally owned by banks ) , there were banks that failed under the Fed ’ s watch last time , bringing on the Great Recession ; so , there will likely be banks that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too .
It is not as though the Fed has not failed spectacularly in the past !
They are not gods , and sometimes , I ’ m , not even convinced they are smart .
Maybe they are , and they just don ’ t care about the smaller banks because the big ones will snarf those up like vampire squids , but we have many times seen smaller banks fail and have seen the stock market fail this year under the Fed ’ s full and ready watch !
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fed has this covered ; the market can ’ t fall ?
” The market has fallen many times under the Fed ’ s watch , and it will again .
The end of all of this could easily look like this , says Paul :

by David Haggith
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and BlackRock Financial Management are stacking up wealth like never before, thanks to the Great Recession 2.0, a.k.a. the Second Great Depression. Yet, the Fed maintains its recovery plans do not create wealth disparity.
Fed-hawk Ron Paul wrote this week,
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly both recently denied that the Federal Reserve’s policies create economic inequality. Unfortunately for Powell, Daly, and other Fed promoters, a cursory look at the Fed’s operations shows that the central bank is the leading cause of economic inequality…. When the Fed decides to pump money into the economy, it does so by putting it in the pockets of wealthy, and oftentimes politically-connected, investors who are able to spend the new money before the Fed’s actions result in widespread inflation. Ron Paul Institute
At no time have we seen more clearly how that works than in this week’s second-quarter corporate reports from major US banks. The oligarchs are actually prospering while Rome burns.
MarketWatch reports that major banks have been hauling in more dough than bakers can even dream of.
Goldman Sucks, the vampire squid during the last financial crisis, hit the mother load, reporting a 41% rush in second-quarter revenue to $13.3 billion from a year ago. Was it because the economy isn’t hurting them? No, it was hurting them (and other banks) in terms of what we might call more pedestrian or old-fashion activities like making money off mortgages and car payments.
They struck gold because their father, the Fed, knows how to print money and essentially gave lots of it to them! Much of it comes by way of a pass-through in which they use the Fed’s free or practically free money to help other corporations, obtaining rich fees for doing so; but some of it was just direct gains in cash from bonds they issued then sold directly to the Fed.
The Fed so thoroughly believes that all support for the average person has to come through the banks that it saved the banks before they could even start to fail. You could call that failsafe or preventative FedMed, or you could call it making sure the oligarchs in our economy get vastly wealthier while everyone else becomes poorer.
As Ron Paul said, the Fed is the leading cause of economic inequality.
How banks and their richest friends win when everyone else loses
First, there are those fees the major investment banks make by using Fed money to help other businesses in a crisis:
Cash might be king during a crisis but for top investment banks helping the Federal Reserve do “whatever it takes” to keep credit flowing during the pandemic, the ace in the hole has been capital markets fees.… Take JPMorgan, Chase & Co. … which recorded a chart-busting $33.8 billion of revenue for the second-quarter on Tuesday, despite the coronavirus recession, and a 54% jump in investment banking fees from a year ago. MarketWatch
Yes, take them far away! Please.
The same was said for Citigroup this week:
Citigroup Inc. … also on Tuesday reported $19.8 billion in revenue for the second-quarter, driven in part by a 68% surge in fixed-income trading revenue and a 131% jump in investment-grade debt underwriting activity from a year ago.
Yet, the money is not just made off of service fees. When the Federal Reserve says it will backstop all kinds of bonds, not just government bonds, it creates a market for banks to actually print their own money. As they are losing money right now from standard loan operations, they are enabled by the Fed to make more than they ever have by essentially printing their own.
A crashing economy equals massive Fed support. When the Fed promises to buy up as many bonds as the banks will sell, what is to stop the banks from issuing their own bonds and selling them directly to the Fed for easy cash or convincing their rich customers to issue bonds at ultra-low rates that the bank promises will immediately all be purchased.
Sure, the bond is an offsetting liability when the banks issue their own, but think of what you can do by investing all the cash at the good rate you can get from the Fed, which offers to buy up all you have. It’s essentially a money-printing engine, and up go stocks as you do that.
The bonds they convince customers to issue are not even a liability for the banks, as the bank can buy them all and just immediately pass them through to the Fed for a tidy markup.
The Fed plays a big part of that, because they’ve really opened up the capital markets,” said Stuart Plesser, a primary credit analyst for banks at S&P Global Ratings, in an interview Tuesday. He pointed to recent bond issuance records set by both U.S. investment-grade and high-yield companies during the pandemic, as examples of the ways several of the world’s largest investment banks have thrived as the Fed has offered more than $2 trillion in emergency funding facilities and major corporations have raced to build up war chests this year.
Get the money while it’s cheap, and you don’t qualify for this kind of easy money unless you’re very big and very rich.
The Fed isn’t just soaking up existing bad debt. It’s creating a market and enticing corporations to offer new bond issuances into the market the Fed is creating (as essentially the sole but certain buyer in that market). Their friends at major investment banks make nice service fees along the way.
But what is to stop the banks from being enticed into making their own bond issuances as well? Even if they are limited by the Fed in ways I don’t perceive, they can certainly buy the entire bond issuance another corporation offers, knowing they have a guaranteed repurchaser in the Fed and then sell it directly to the Fed for profit.
The Fed has promised to soak up as much of this new debt as corporations, including banks I would presume, want to create. So, everyone is issuing bonds into the Fed’s ready vacuum cleaner. It’s cheap, easy money to get at a time when the economy is losing money everywhere outside of those who know someone who knows the Fed.
It takes billions to be a player in that risk-free casino and big connections with investment bankers, or you have to be one! You and I cannot play in that game.
Who knows if corporations will ever even have to pay off those bonds at maturity? Perhaps the Fed will find a way to use the crisis to simply write off those bonds … or will endlessly refi them at almost-zero interest because not doing otherwise would cause a crash down the road.
It’s a great gig if you can get it!
Revenue from this activity is at its highest since five years ago. No surprise. Five years ago, the Fed was roaring along in QE3. Now they are in QE4ever in that QE3 could be stopped but not reversed. QE4ever cannot even be stopped without crashing the party.
That is how Goldman added to its Sachs of gold via massive bond trading enticed and made possible by the Fed issuing trillions to purchase bonds. That is how Goldman and its bankster pals wiped out all expectations with their corporate reports this week. After which, it gained an additional expansion of its wealth because the good news caused its stock to go up.
It is the biggest banks that make all of this money. They are the ones that are the Fed’s direct dealers of government bond issuances. They are the main wholesale-level financial corporations that carry out the bond issuances of all other major corporations. The little banks may be struggling, but they don’t make the headlines, so who among us will ever know unless they collapse?
Thus, it turns out Q2 2020 was the second-best quarter on record for Goldman Sucks net revenues. How high was it? Well, one segment of their income, “Global Market,” was up 93% YoY. Not bad! That’s how it goes for corporations with a direct fuel line from the Fed because that is where the Fed’s new money directly flows.
But the Fed has nothing to do with the creation of wealth disparity. Nothing! And to think they not only say that with a straight face but that no one in the media tears their face off when they do!
If you want a picture of how good the COVID crisis has been for the biggest banks, try this image for size (of GS revenue from Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities):
If only airlines could fly so high in times like this!
The best way for a big bank to make bank is for the economy to go broke!
Once again, we see there is nothing like a major economic crisis to provide exactly the rationale the Fed needs to fire up its money-printing engines like never before! While all the new money goes into banks first, the Fed promises it will trickle down to the extremely rich who can afford to play with big stakes in bond markets and who, then, roll some of that money on into stocks for faster gains, and then it will trickle down to you an me.
Can we believe the Fed is dumb enough not to realize the rich will filter 99% of that into their own hands to prevent it from getting down to you? Please! It has never worked any other way. If you want any of it, you’re going to have to fight to your death to get it.
In fact, Goldman’s other side of banking in its report shows how that is working for the rest of us. Their provision for credit losses, like those of other banks that have reported this week, has soared. That’s the part where the rubber meets the road for you and me. For them, those losses are small stuff compared to their gains from Fed money printing. So, what do they care?
The Fed could require them to write off mortgages or, at least, the unpaid payments for good in order to qualify for making those ungodly gains on the other side of their balance sheets so that some help goes to the common folk. But that is unthinkable. The little people who are hurting need to struggle through and manage via what little trickles down to them by having the corporations they work for saved.
Thus, the banks that are too big to fail are made monumentally richer (again) on one side of their balance sheet while you lose your home in bankruptcy on the other side and the banks casually write off the loan for whatever they can get out of your rapidly devaluing house (or car or whatever). It’s merely a small cost of doing business on the ugly side of they balance sheet as a tradeoff for the huge gains on the other side.
Alternately, you become the bank’s debt slave over the years ahead as you struggle to make up forbearance payments while the biggest banks do not struggle at all.
The Fed’s longstanding rationale is that this way you don’t have to worry about the too-big bank falling on you by failing so that you lose your deposits. Well, so long as it is one of the big banks. If its a small bank that cannot play with the big boys in this Fed-direct game, it might fail, but that’s OK even for you. The Fed will arrange to have those banks snarfed up by one of the big boys at fire-sale prices just like it did in the Great Financial Crisis in order to protect your deposits.
The Fed’s modus operandi ASSURES us that the banks that are too big to fail will become much bigger.
Think the Fed has us covered then? Well, did it have the GFC covered before it happened to the whole world? No. It happened, didn’t it? It most likely hurt you to some extent. It hurt some people to a huge extent when stocks plummeted and they lost their retirement funds. It sent companies out of business, and even some major banks (remember the name Washington Mutual?) went down for the count. (WAMU probably wasn’t part of the club because it was competing outside the normal way of doing business as a thrift institution that had become bigger than investment banks.)
So, don’t think this plan cannot fail. The Fed has failed many times.
BlackRock busting out ahead of everyone
In the meantime, for your own economic solace, look at all the money BlackRock is making for being the Fed’s sole contractor doling out one particular kind of US-government guaranteed loans. (Note that Fed Chair Jerome Powell owns MILLIONS of dollars of BlackRock stock.)
Not only is BlackRock doling out Fed funds for fantastic fees, it is also getting Fed funds to use to buy stock on the Fed’s behalf! The Fed doesn’t want to look like it is already buying stocks because it feels the public might frown on that, so it does it through its proxy, while the mainstream media is dumb enough to completely ignore that connection as if it is a legitimate arm’s length operation and as if the Fed is not buying stock.
Let’s take a deeper look.
The Fed is allowing BlackRock to “manage, supervise, and direct the investments” for the Fed’s account. Seeking Alpha
While Janet Yellen once said, “longer term it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Congress to reconsider the powers that the Fed has with respect to assets it can own,” none of that matters! It’s a smoke screen! A mere inconvenience to the Fed. The Fed has been using proxies to buy stocks for years.
Who can believe that, if J. Powell picks up the phone and calls one of its major member banks and says, “We’re going to conduct X operation, which will make you $20 billion, and we want you to invest that $20 billion in XYZ,” that the bank he calls won’t do exactly that? They certainly won’t be the beneficiary of those free-money operations in the future if they don’t!
So, it is with the blackest of corporations — BlackRock.
According to the Federal Reserve’s website, they created a special purpose vehicle (SPV) in March 2020 … managed by BlackRock … to do the buying of bonds. Most people are well aware of the bond purchases that is [sic.] already happening…. However, in the investment management agreement with BlackRock, most people missed the fact that the Federal Reserve also included language to allow them to transact in stocks as well. Essentially, the Fed is ready to go and buy stocks if truly needed. This is their hidden ace card. Seeking Alpha
You can see that language here:
BlackRock is the Fed’s sole partner for administering everything the Fed does through this particular SPV. Why would anyone think that — given the power specifically stated over which BlackRock has “full and COMPLETE AUTHORITY” to “supervise and DIRECT” all “investments” as “attorney-in-fact” — that BlackRock would not be using that decision-making authority already to buy “all stocks” as the document names first in the order of all that BlackRock “may select?”
Sure, they’re just sitting on that power!
It’s a great gig if you can get it, but to get it, you have to know J. Powell. It probably helps if he’s deeply invested in your corporation! (No apparent conflict of interest there! I’m sure Powell officially stepped out of the vote … after making sure he knew everyone was on board with voting the right way.) I don’t want to say, Powell is just serving his self-interest here. I’ll leave that for you to say (or not) based on what you see in the document.
What I do want to say is that, if you think the fact that banks were doing great in their quarterly reports this week had any reflection on how the economy is doing … you’re not thinking! And you’re probably not one of my regular readers.
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Unless, of course, you mean there is an inverse relationship between how well banks are doing and how the economy is doing. In which case, you’re right on. The banks are doing great because the economy is doing so poorly. They’re doing great because of their partnerships with the Fed, like this one with BlackRock, partially owned by Jerome Powell.
To know that, however, you have to read the fine print of those SPV agreements the Fed has been issuing with its “agents,” as in the illustration above.
You see, it’s not necessary for the Fed to buy stocks directly when it appoints administrators of its agencies and states outright they have full decision-making authority on whether to use the money in those accounts to buy stocks!
Will the stock market crash again anyway?
Some bullish investment advisors say (in order to sell stocks or justify their own lunacy in buying them at oxygen-depriving heights), “stocks always go up.” With this kind of support finally fully in place, would it any wonder? Maybe they always will.
Certainly, historically, over a long enough timeframe, stocks have always gone up. However, one can just as truthfully say, “stocks always crash” because, over a long enough time frame, they also always correct to the economy. If they don’t this time, it will be an historic first.
Just as the economy has always continued to grow over the longterm, so have stocks; but whenever the economy has gone down hard, so have stocks! They went down in 2018 when the Fed thought it could reverse QE. They went down this year … hard! They’re topping out again as the Fed has slowed its QE from “doing all that it takes” for the moment. So, to think the Fed never fails at supporting them is to deny history.
You might ask why the Fed continues slowing its money-printing engines, seeing full well that stocks started stalling as soon as that support faded (even though it is still continuing at a greater rate than any previous QE, but just much less than the burst given at the start of this economic crisis)?
The Fed has been rapidly roaring toward the limits of its promised $5 trillion in QE. It would probably like to not overshoot that $5 trillion if it can avoid it, or it wouldn’t have felt a need to put that cap there in the first place.
Why does the Federal Reserve limit its promised QE? Because you cannot just increase the printing of money exponentially without eventually crashing the value of your money.
You also cannot do all the Fed is doing without creating massive economic and financial distortions that become ever harder to manage in the future. The Fed knows that by experience. It certainly saw how unable it was to back out of its last rounds of QE.
You also cannot do what the Fed is doing without creating greater wealth disparity, and that is problematic for the Fed in a time of utmost social unrest. That is why the Fed categorically denies, as noted at the start of this article, that it is doing that. The Fed clearly doesn’t want to be blamed for creating economic disparity.
The number-one reason the market is likely to crash, in spite of the Fed’s support, (possibly in August, almost certainly by October) is …
The Fed knows there are limits
It knows it is risking considerable problems as it pushes again into full warp drive. As captain, J. Powell can probably hear Scottie yelling, “She’s gonna blow, Captain.” Meaning there is risk in blowing up huge inflation.
So, yeah the Fed can do all of this, but you don’t stay at Warp-factor 10 any longer than you must, even if you can. There are limits, and the Fed knows it. (And, no, I’m not a Trekkie, but it seems the most apropos analogy.)
Others know it, too, because what is said below of the Fed’s partners in what should be a crime can be said of the Fed:
Opimas CEO Octavio Marenzi amusingly warned that Goldman’s “almost indecent” earnings may trigger a political backlash, “The Fed has been able to engineer a huge bounce back in the markets by injecting trillions of dollars, benefiting investment banks primarily. This will lead to calls for the government to do more to help Main Street rather than Wall Street.“ Zero Hedge
The Fed has to be very mindful about managing the backlash that would happen if it goes too far. There is no Fed magic for preventing public outage if the economic disparity becomes too obviously the Fed’s own doing.
The Fed doesn’t like political backlash because it threatens its free hands. It must, therefore, look disciplined and be able to argue it is only doing as much as necessary for the economy … for everyone.
So, the Fed cannot do everything and anything it takes to prop up stocks forever if that means becoming so extreme that it will create public outcry. So far, they have adroitly steered clear of that.
One would think these close relationships with “agents” like BlackRock that are making landslides of money off the Fed would already be creating backlash. The Fed must be very careful not to wake the sleeping public.
The Fed now takes a rest from the warp-drive support that is absolutely essential to the market, putting the market at risk of slumping from lack of warp-factor ten support.
Please note that this recent rush of the greatest support the Fed has ever given STILL did not get the Dow or the S&P back up even to the last height they attained. And they attained that previous height with half this level of Fed support. So, diminishing returns are being seen in a big way now.
And the currently apparent market topping is happening even though the Fed is actually far from resting. It has simply dropped down to a new high cruising speed by only expanding its balance sheet, as I’ve reported a couple of times, at a rate of 1.5x the rate of expansion under QE3.
Just a few years ago, two-thirds of that much financial expansion was enough to support a seemingly endless bull run. 1.5x QE3 is now just barely able to sustain the market at the level it reached under this year’s earlier whopping expansion of more than $3 trillion. In fact, I think it won’t sustain it there for long before the Fed has to go back up to warp 10.
It’s already out of control
Do you think the Fed has all of this under control? Well, as Ron Paul concluded,
In response to the government-caused economic collapse, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by about a trillion dollars from mid-April to early June. In contrast, it took the Fed all of 2019 to grow the money supply by 921 billion dollars. Even before the lockdown, the Fed was massively intervening in the economy in a futile attempt to prevent economic crisis. Ron Paul Institute
In other words, the Fed’s last recovery effort was already spinning so badly out of control that the Fed had to create almost a trillion dollars into the economy back in 2019 because of the stock failures of 2018. Does that sound like control? It sounds like frantic attempts to keep from losing control to me.
The Fed believed it could unwind from its recovery efforts, as it always preached it could and would (and as I always said it would fail at). It learned the hard way it cannot. It crashed its own recovery, making itself look inept.
Fed Powell averred the Fed was at risk of losing public trust. So, the Fed did increasingly more and more to prop the recovery back up through the Repo Crisis until COVID-19 gave it the excuse it needed to go thermo-nuclear into full thrust.
Is that how an organization that “has it all under control” operates? I don’t think so. I don’t think they savor the idea of looking like idiots or of losing public trust and getting, as a result, a lot of public backlash because senator and Reps start getting public pressure. They must keep the sleeping child asleep.
Now the Fed is slowing down just as COVID is speeding back up. The Fed is slowing down because it is quickly reading the limits the Fed preset for itself — limits that exist because the Fed KNOWS it has to manage money supply carefully, or it will destroy the value of its product, which is money, or lose the public trust and face backlash that can potentially strip it of power.
There is no free lunch. The Fed is not limitless in how much money it can create. The Fed is not God.
Even modern monetary theory has it limits
What the Fed is doing right now is called Modern Monetary Theory — creating as much money as it takes to fund the federal government and move the economy. Central Bank of India Governor and University of Chicago Professor Raghuram Rajan explained why MMT won’t work because it has its limits, too.
First, his interviewer noted how widely this bad idea, fostered by Stony Brook University’s abstract Professor Stephanie Kelton, is successfully spreading, simply because governments all over the world need her arguments to justify the money printing they need in order to accelerate into their economies back to life due to all their past profligacy that has left them with nothing for battling the Coronacrisis:
We talked about sustainability and one of the big topics in markets at least is this whole idea of QE MMT infinity, the ability of sovereigns to borrow. Now in developed countries, they have historical capital they’ve built up and credibility…. But you’re starting to also see this idea…you’re starting to see more emerging market countries experiment with it, including Indonesia and several others. Zero Hedge
Rajan, as a rare former central-bank governor who seems to get it, responded,
We know that markets can be complacent until a certain point and then they turn on a time [sic.]. We are at this point in a benign phase supported by an enormous amount of central bank liquidity emanating from the primary reserve currencies, the euro area, the US Fed and to some extent the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England. But we must also recognize is that there are no free lunches. If there’s one statement you want to keep to pound into the head of every policy maker, it’s that there are no free lunches. If you borrow today, there is a presumption that it will be repaired at some point, so you are in a sense taking away resources from somebody else in the future. Now it may be a generation or two down the line will be on the hook for this…whether they can pass it on to their children is an open question…but you’re definitely taking away their ability to borrow by borrowing today.… So the idea that there are free lunches…which certainly is what the lay person takes away from MMT…is very sort of attractive, seductive – but it’s absolute nonsense…. It strikes me these guys who want to open up the government wallet and spend to protect everybody from the consequences of the pandemic don’t realize that there’s one person who’s bearing the hit: it may not be you, but it might be your children…. And the question is: Why do they have to pay when they have no part in this?
Indeed. Why do they? That’s a moral question I’ve been raising here for some time, but our generation apparently doesn’t have the moral compass to care about what it is doing to its children.
However, I think we are already at the point where the “next generation” from all the previous decades of extreme government deficits are reaching their limit in borrowing. The next generation is the Millennial generation because we started down this path of massive deficit increases in the Reagan days.
Those days may have been nothing compared to now, but those are the days when we effectively started to say “deficit be damned, we need the money now!” We need our military. We need to change the world through war. Or we need our welfare! We need to save the poor now with the money of our children!
Well, those children have grown, and those who started down this path are aged and now get to face the end of the road along with their children.
Rapper Steve Mnuchin, US Treasurer at Large
We’re at the point where the ever-widening spirals of debt necessary to maintain the old debt and create the new debt needed for a dying economy are swinging so wide that the Fed will have a hard time going one more circle wider without discovering the center doesn’t hold this time, and centrifugal force throws everything apart.
Hold on to your common cents
You know life has taught you there is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can SEE that the Fed’s containment efforts are now swinging in enormous outward spirals that don’t look very round anymore, requiring new inventions … even by Fed standards. And you know that new inventions alway contain unknown risks.
So, believe in what your commons sense tells you. Does this look like something the Fed has under control? Or does it look like how you would expect things to look when the Fed is losing control? Do you trust these guys?
This thing is blowing up!
Consider the following:
We were already screaming toward an economic collapse, given that it took a trillion dollars in monetary expansion on the Fed’s balance sheet last year just to keep us in the perpetual Repo Crisis, as Ron Paul notes.
It took that much just to help the economy trundle along at a near-recessionary rate of 2% annualized GDP growth through a half year of manufacturing recession. We were, in other words, already under massive stimulus just to sustain ourselves in a half-baked recession last year and to keep the banking crisis from blowing up.
And just remember, even though bankers are rolling in the dough like drunken bakers right now because the Fed looks out for its own first and foremost (because it is literally owned by banks), there were banks that failed under the Fed’s watch last time, bringing on the Great Recession; so, there will likely be banks that fail under their watch this time, too.
It is not as though the Fed has not failed spectacularly in the past! They are not gods, and sometimes, I’m, not even convinced they are smart. Maybe they are, and they just don’t care about the smaller banks because the big ones will snarf those up like vampire squids, but we have many times seen smaller banks fail and have seen the stock market fail this year under the Fed’s full and ready watch!
So, why would anyone say, “The Fed has this covered; the market can’t fall?” The market has fallen many times under the Fed’s watch, and it will again.
The end of all of this could easily look like this, says Paul:
A coming crisis will likely be triggered by a collapse in the dollar’s value and a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. The economic collapse will be worse than the Great Depression. This will result in widespread violence along with government crackdowns on liberties, accelerating the US slide into authoritarianism. Ron Paul Institute
The Epocalypse.


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--Manipulation Exposed, [DS] Panicking Over Barr/Durham Investigation

The [ DS ] /MSM have just lost the narrative , the truth about the pandemic numbers are now being @ @ @ @ @ The [ AS ] and other corrupt politicians are now panicking , they don ’ @ @ @ @ @ Barr are investigating .
Q dropped some bread , the investigation moves forward and confirms @ @ @ @ @ .

The [DS]/MSM have just lost the narrative, the truth about the pandemic numbers are now being revealed to the public. The [AS] and other corrupt politicians are now panicking, they don’t know what Durham and Barr are investigating. Q dropped some bread, the investigation moves forward and confirms the number are being manipulated.
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investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--Papa John founder says CEOs are ‘scared’ of the Left

Alex Nitzberg and Carrue Sheffield report for Just the News ( JTN ) , July 16 , 2020 , that in an interview with JTN , John Schnatter , founder of the Papa John pizza chain , said CEOs are “ scared ” of the “ woke ” Left because they fear being “ persecuted ” .
Schnatter was responding to the Left ’ s current hate-campaign to boycott Goya Foods , a Hispanic food company , because Goya CEO Bob Unanue made a positive comment about President Trump at a July 9 White House event related to a Hispanic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founded Goya Foods in 1936 , said : “ We ’ re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder .
And that ’ s what my grandfather did , he came to this country to build , to grow , to prosper .
And so we have an incredible builder , and we pray , we pray for our leadership , our president , and we pray for our country that we will continue to prosper and to grow.
” Among the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are : • Julián Castro , a former Democratic presidential candidate who was Obama ’ s Housing and Urban Development secretary .
Back to Papa John founder John Schnatter , who himself had been a repeated target of the Left ’ s hate campaign .
On January 1 , 2018 , Schnatter was forced to step down as Papa John ’ s CEO because in November 2017 , he criticized NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for not doing anything about football players ’ take-a-knee national anthem protests .
Like Unanue , Schnatter also has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calling him a “ leader ” for reducing government regulations : “ I think that this is probably the hardest working president that we ’ ve ever had .
He understands business , he understands entrepreneurship .
I mean can you imagine if we had somebody in the White House that was making decisions right now on politics instead of what ’ s right for Americans , what ’ s right for America ?
I mean it ’ d be pretty scary .
I think he makes the right decision for the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keeps preaching diversity , unless it ’ s diversity of thought , diversity of philosophy , or diversity of ideology .
And if you don ’ t think a certain way , then you get persecuted .
That ’ s not diversity .
Entrepreneurship and creativity and innovation come from independent critical judgment , which is you think for yourself , you believe in yourself , you have independent critical judgment .
They ’ re trying to paint you in a corner , that if you don ’ t believe 100 % in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they attack you .
And I think that ’ s extremely unhealthy for the country .
And I think it ’ s a really bad path for the CEOs to go down .
And I think they ’ re scared.
“ To that I say the CEOs of “ woke capitalism ” are spineless soy-boys .
By giving in to the Left ’ s abusive bullies , they ’ re simply making things worse for themselves and America .
Click here to see some of Goya ’ s products .

by Dr. Eowyn
Alex Nitzberg and Carrue Sheffield report for Just the News (JTN), July 16, 2020, that in an interview with JTN, John Schnatter, founder of the Papa John pizza chain, said CEOs are “scared” of the “woke” Left because they fear being “persecuted”.
Schnatter was responding to the Left’s current hate-campaign to boycott Goya Foods, a Hispanic food company, because Goya CEO Bob Unanue made a positive comment about President Trump at a July 9 White House event related to a Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.
Unanue, whose grandfather founded Goya Foods in 1936, said: “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder. And that’s what my grandfather did, he came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper. And so we have an incredible builder, and we pray, we pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country that we will continue to prosper and to grow.”
Among the bullies of the hate-campaign against Goya Foods are:
The insufferable Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
(D-NY) Julián Castro, a former Democratic presidential candidate who was Obama’s Housing and Urban Development secretary.
Back to Papa John founder John Schnatter, who himself had been a repeated target of the Left’s hate campaign.
On January 1, 2018, Schnatter was forced to step down as Papa John’s CEO because in November 2017, he criticized NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for not doing anything about football players’ take-a-knee national anthem protests.
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Like Unanue, Schnatter also has positive things to say about Trump, calling him a “leader” for reducing government regulations:
“I think that this is probably the hardest working president that we’ve ever had. He understands business, he understands entrepreneurship. I mean can you imagine if we had somebody in the White House that was making decisions right now on politics instead of what’s right for Americans, what’s right for America? I mean it’d be pretty scary. I think he makes the right decision for the right reasons.”
Schnatter told Just the News:
“Everybody on the left keeps preaching diversity, unless it’s diversity of thought, diversity of philosophy, or diversity of ideology. And if you don’t think a certain way, then you get persecuted. That’s not diversity. Entrepreneurship and creativity and innovation come from independent critical judgment, which is you think for yourself, you believe in yourself, you have independent critical judgment. They’re trying to paint you in a corner, that if you don’t believe 100% in their ideology, then they persecute you, they attack you. And I think that’s extremely unhealthy for the country. And I think it’s a really bad path for the CEOs to go down. And I think they’re scared.“
To that I say the CEOs of “woke capitalism” are spineless soy-boys. By giving in to the Left’s abusive bullies, they’re simply making things worse for themselves and America.
Support Goya Foods!
Click here to see some of Goya’s products.
~Eowyn


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--SECOND PHASE REAL ESTATE COLLAPSE PENDING, PART II

by Chris Vermeulen of The Technical Traders In this second part of our research into what we believe is the US pending real estate collapse , we ’ ll explore more data supporting our expectations .
In the first part of this article , we highlighted the Case-Shiller data showing home price levels had already exceeded 2006-07 levels and how earning levels have collapsed after the COVID-19 virus event .
Our research team believes thee extremely high price levels , combined with the uncertainty of future earnings , unemployment , layoffs , and other economic contractions will result in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the residential real estate market .
We already know that commercial real estate has experienced one of the worst declines in decades .
Delinquencies have skyrocketed and thousands of US businesses have entered bankruptcies .
Main street and consumer services sectors will likely continue to feel the pain related to the post-COVID-19 economy for many months still .
The question before all investors should be “ how will the price levels reflect the changes in earning and economic data throughout this transition ?
” Our research team believes the contraction in earnings for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unemployment levels will present a very real potential for future foreclosures and delinquencies in the residential real estate market .
We believe this process will begin to become noticeable approximately 6+ months after the COVID-19 shutdowns started – sometime near August or September 2020 .
Once the destruction of earning levels properly reflects into the economic cycles and banks tighten lending opportunities , the scale of capable buyers will shrink at a time when home inventories may begin to skyrocket – very similar to the 2008-09 credit crisis .
Ever since the lower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ % , residential home sales have been booming .
This is likely because people in cities are wanting to move out of the city and into the suburbs for a healthier and less compacted lifestyle .
Additionally , many of these more rural areas present better home price levels and more value for people selling urban real estate .
Another aspect of this boom in rural home sales is that people wanted to escape the trap of the city and move to locations where they have more room and more ability to “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off the supermarket or local outlets .
This process of urban escape could take many months or possibly years for qualified sellers to relocate out into the more rural areas .
The point being that urban real estate values may dramatically decline as a result of the mass exodus from the cities that are currently taking place .
US manufacturing continues to decline year over year which indicates that manufacturing jobs and output is far from recovering .
If we attempt to read between the lines , it suggests that one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is still showing -10 % year over year contraction .
This suggests a longer recovery process for manufacturing output and jobs .
US retail sales have also collapsed over the past 3+ months .
Although one could argue that e-commerce sales have made up for these losses , one has to understand that retail sales within the US employs a host of other people that support local and regional stores .
Sales clerks , managers , warehouse , delivery and shipping and other positions that would normally be associated with retail or retail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 to 15 % ( or more ) over the past 3+ months .
Additionally , consumer activity , which includes retail sales and retail services , makes up more than 80 % of the US GDP levels .
If manufacturing and retail/consumer activity levels have dropped by 10 % to 15 % or more over the past 3+ months and will continue a slow recovery process lasting many months , we believe the eventual shift and contraction in the real estate market could present a lasting collapse in prices for many urban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Real Estate ETFs may experience a 20 % to 40 % decline over the next 3+ months as the reality of the urban exodus hits .
Cities like Miami , Los Angeles , Chicago , San Francisco , and dozens of others may see a dramatic decrease in demand as buyers focus on more rural areas and the new “ work from home ” environment .
We ’ re already seen some evidence from discussions with local real estate professionals that a shift in buying interests is taking place .
Now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scale real estate markets in urban areas to confirm our hypothesis .
Once we start to see price decreases in larger urban areas ( like Los Angeles , New York , Miami , and other areas ) , particularly in the condo and apartment sectors , we ’ ll know the shift in buying is taking place .
We believe condos and apartments will be one of the first sectors hit as well as middle and upper scale real estate .
We are also watching the foreclosure and auction data to determine if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to hit the marketplace .
After stating what we believe to be a factual interpretation of the current real estate marketplace and the transition that is taking place , we believe the real shock will come to some of the hottest urban markets in the US and abroad .
We believe areas like Miami , New York , Los Angeles , Seattle , Portland , and others will experience a sudden lack of demand which will translate into decreasing price levels and sales activity .
The COVID-19 virus event has suddenly prompted people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with some risks that are partially negated in a rural environment and away from the packed and busy cities .
If our research is correct , there is a very real opportunity for skilled technical traders to take advantage of the next downside price wave in IYR and REM .
We believe a 20 % to 40 % price contraction will take place over the next 3+ months prompting a new momentum base to set up near November or December of 2020 .
This base level may become a temporary base level as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is affecting the US economy and how quickly or aggressively people are exiting the urban environment .
Overall , we believe this is an excellent opportunity for skilled technical traders to profit from a new downside price wave .
IYR may target $ 65 to $ 68 before finding any real support .
Extended downside selling may push IYR to levels near $ 55 to $ 60 over the next 6+ months .
REM price levels may collapse to $ 13 to $ 15 over the next 4+ months as we believe the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tightening bank standards may result in a more constricted buying phase .
Inventory in rural areas is limited – very limited .
This may prompt a wave of current sellers to attempt to “ get out now ” and then wait for/hunt for the best rural opportunities .
Attempting to read this shifting market is like trying to predict the weather 3 months out .
There are many various aspects of the real estate market that could subtly change how the market dynamics shift .
The one thing we are certain of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus as well as the social and political turmoil will not end until sometime after November/December 2020 .
Therefore , we are certain to have another 6+ months of shifting markets which may peak shortly after the US Presidential election ( although we doubt it ) .
We strongly believe the remainder of 2020 and most of 2021 may continue to prove very challenging for homeowners and people attempting to make transitions away from urban areas .
We are alerting you to these opportunities because we believe a very good opportunity exists in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ estate market will continue to be one of the biggest transitional price rotations we ’ ve seen in the past 8+ years .
Trillions of dollars reside in both the residential and commercial real estate marketplaces and we believe a huge shift in these markets is about to unload on consumers/banks .
This could be one very big component of a fantastic trading opportunity for skilled technical traders .
Get our Active ETF Swing Trade Signals or if you have any type of retirement account and are looking for signals when to own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be sure to become a member of my Passive Long-Term ETF Investing Signals which we are about to issue a new signal for subscribers .
NOTICE : Our free research does not constitute a trade recommendation or solicitation for our readers to take any action regarding this research .
It is provided for educational purposes only .
Our research team produces these research articles to share information with our followers/readers in an effort to try to keep you well informed .

by Chris Vermeulen of The Technical Traders
In this second part of our research into what we believe is the US pending real estate collapse, we’ll explore more data supporting our expectations. In the first part of this article, we highlighted the Case-Shiller data showing home price levels had already exceeded 2006-07 levels and how earning levels have collapsed after the COVID-19 virus event. Our research team believes thee extremely high price levels, combined with the uncertainty of future earnings, unemployment, layoffs, and other economic contractions will result in a late 2020 or early 2021 shift in the residential real estate market.
We already know that commercial real estate has experienced one of the worst declines in decades. Delinquencies have skyrocketed and thousands of US businesses have entered bankruptcies. Main street and consumer services sectors will likely continue to feel the pain related to the post-COVID-19 economy for many months still. The question before all investors should be “how will the price levels reflect the changes in earning and economic data throughout this transition?”
Our research team believes the contraction in earnings for the consumers as well as the extended unemployment levels will present a very real potential for future foreclosures and delinquencies in the residential real estate market. We believe this process will begin to become noticeable approximately 6+ months after the COVID-19 shutdowns started – sometime near August or September 2020. Once the destruction of earning levels properly reflects into the economic cycles and banks tighten lending opportunities, the scale of capable buyers will shrink at a time when home inventories may begin to skyrocket – very similar to the 2008-09 credit crisis.
Ever since the lower interest rates pushed mortgage levels below 3%, residential home sales have been booming. This is likely because people in cities are wanting to move out of the city and into the suburbs for a healthier and less compacted lifestyle. Additionally, many of these more rural areas present better home price levels and more value for people selling urban real estate.
Another aspect of this boom in rural home sales is that people wanted to escape the trap of the city and move to locations where they have more room and more ability to “live off the property instead of living off the supermarket or local outlets. This process of urban escape could take many months or possibly years for qualified sellers to relocate out into the more rural areas. The point being that urban real estate values may dramatically decline as a result of the mass exodus from the cities that are currently taking place.
US manufacturing continues to decline year over year which indicates that manufacturing jobs and output is far from recovering. If we attempt to read between the lines, it suggests that one of the most important aspects of any economic recovery is still showing -10% year over year contraction. This suggests a longer recovery process for manufacturing output and jobs.
(Source: www.investing.com/economic-calendar/industrial-production-1755 )
US retail sales have also collapsed over the past 3+ months. Although one could argue that e-commerce sales have made up for these losses, one has to understand that retail sales within the US employs a host of other people that support local and regional stores. Sales clerks, managers, warehouse, delivery and shipping and other positions that would normally be associated with retail or retail services have contracted by as much as 10 to 15% (or more) over the past 3+ months.
Additionally, consumer activity, which includes retail sales and retail services, makes up more than 80% of the US GDP levels. If manufacturing and retail/consumer activity levels have dropped by 10% to 15% or more over the past 3+ months and will continue a slow recovery process lasting many months, we believe the eventual shift and contraction in the real estate market could present a lasting collapse in prices for many urban and outlying areas.
(Source: www.investing.com/economic-calendar/retail-sales-1878 )
Our researchers believe the Real Estate ETFs may experience a 20% to 40% decline over the next 3+ months as the reality of the urban exodus hits. Cities like Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and dozens of others may see a dramatic decrease in demand as buyers focus on more rural areas and the new “work from home” environment. We’re already seen some evidence from discussions with local real estate professionals that a shift in buying interests is taking place. Now, we are watching the middle and upper scale real estate markets in urban areas to confirm our hypothesis.
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Once we start to see price decreases in larger urban areas (like Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and other areas), particularly in the condo and apartment sectors, we’ll know the shift in buying is taking place. We believe condos and apartments will be one of the first sectors hit as well as middle and upper scale real estate. We are also watching the foreclosure and auction data to determine if and when new waves of defaults start to hit the marketplace.
After stating what we believe to be a factual interpretation of the current real estate marketplace and the transition that is taking place, we believe the real shock will come to some of the hottest urban markets in the US and abroad. We believe areas like Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and others will experience a sudden lack of demand which will translate into decreasing price levels and sales activity. The COVID-19 virus event has suddenly prompted people to realize the urban lifestyle if fraught with some risks that are partially negated in a rural environment and away from the packed and busy cities.
If our research is correct, there is a very real opportunity for skilled technical traders to take advantage of the next downside price wave in IYR and REM. We believe a 20% to 40% price contraction will take place over the next 3+ months prompting a new momentum base to set up near November or December of 2020. This base level may become a temporary base level as we find out how the COVID-19 virus is affecting the US economy and how quickly or aggressively people are exiting the urban environment. Overall, we believe this is an excellent opportunity for skilled technical traders to profit from a new downside price wave.
IYR may target $65 to $68 before finding any real support. Extended downside selling may push IYR to levels near $55 to $60 over the next 6+ months.
REM price levels may collapse to $13 to $15 over the next 4+ months as we believe the shift towards selling the urban areas and the tightening bank standards may result in a more constricted buying phase. Inventory in rural areas is limited – very limited. This may prompt a wave of current sellers to attempt to “get out now” and then wait for/hunt for the best rural opportunities.
Attempting to read this shifting market is like trying to predict the weather 3 months out. There are many various aspects of the real estate market that could subtly change how the market dynamics shift. The one thing we are certain of at this point is that the COVID-19 virus as well as the social and political turmoil will not end until sometime after November/December 2020. Therefore, we are certain to have another 6+ months of shifting markets which may peak shortly after the US Presidential election (although we doubt it).
We strongly believe the remainder of 2020 and most of 2021 may continue to prove very challenging for homeowners and people attempting to make transitions away from urban areas. We are alerting you to these opportunities because we believe a very good opportunity exists in these trades and we believe the real estate market will continue to be one of the biggest transitional price rotations we’ve seen in the past 8+ years. Trillions of dollars reside in both the residential and commercial real estate marketplaces and we believe a huge shift in these markets is about to unload on consumers/banks.
This could be one very big component of a fantastic trading opportunity for skilled technical traders.
Get our Active ETF Swing Trade Signals or if you have any type of retirement account and are looking for signals when to own equities, bonds, or cash, be sure to become a member of my Passive Long-Term ETF Investing Signals which we are about to issue a new signal for subscribers.
Chris Vermeulen
Chief Market Strategies
Founder of Technical Traders Ltd.
NOTICE: Our free research does not constitute a trade recommendation or solicitation for our readers to take any action regarding this research. It is provided for educational purposes only. Our research team produces these research articles to share information with our followers/readers in an effort to try to keep you well informed.


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--Labor Market Continues To Stagnate

Labor Market Continues To Stagnate

With the recent labor market slowdown in the past few weeks , the economy has come precariously close at times to ending the streak of declines in initial unemployment claims .
Technically , if you look at unadjusted claims , they were up in the week of July 11th .
Either way , the labor market improvement has stagnated due to COVID-19 coming back with a vengeance .
On Thursday , the number of new cases hit a record high .
The good news is the 7 day average of new cases in Arizona is falling .
That state was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases in this 2nd wave which potentially means the other hotspots will see improvement as well .
Seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims only fell from 1.31 million to 1.3 million .
This 0.8 % decline was the lowest of this streak of declines .
The labor market is probably getting worse .
It ’ s only a matter of time before the seasonally adjusted reading increases .
If that ends up being next week , that would be bad timing because that ’ s the July BLS reference week .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very weak monthly labor report .
The GOP won ’ t like the headlines as it will hurt their election chances .
They have proudly promoted the strong job creation in May and June .
Hopefully , there is a stimulus before the first Friday of August , but if there isn ’ t , this report will motivate politicians to get something done quickly .
There probably would have been a stimulus anyway , but there definitely needs to be one because of this spike in cases which has caused added restrictions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As you know , the $ 600 in weekly unemployment insurance money will go away on July 25th .
Something needs to be done to help consumers because they face a massive decline in income as they won ’ t suddenly get their jobs back when this program ends .
The labor market isn ’ t uniform throughout the country as states are facing various threats from COVID-19 and restrictions .
The table above shows the weekly change in initial claims in each state on an unadjusted basis .
Unadjusted national claims were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best state was Maryland which saw a 14,534 decline in claims to 18,657 .
Even though Texas is facing the worst of COVID-19 , it had an 11,509 decline in claims .
The worst states were Florida , Georgia , and California which all are dealing with the worst of COVID-19 .
Florida had a 62,467 increase in initial claims to 129,408 .
This was the largest increase in 12 weeks .
Kansas had its largest increase in 15 weeks .
The best part of this jobless claims report was the 118,000 decline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unadjusted basis , initial claims were stagnant at 2.4 million .
In the past 5 weekly reports , the best reading has been a 1 % decline .
In other words , there has been no improvement in 5 weeks .
The situation will likely get worse before it gets better .
Seasonally adjusted continued claims were down from 17.76 million to 17.338 million , but on a non-seasonally adjusted basis , they rose 838,307 to 17.355 million .
Since continued claims peaked in March , this is only the 2nd increase ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is a very bad spot for the labor market to stop increasing as the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the last recession .
In a survey from July 6th to the 12th , 40.3 % of people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic said they are already back at work .
12.8 % expect to get back to work soon .
15.9 % and 28.5 % expect to return eventually or don ’ t expect to return at all .
This is a do or die @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weeks people will ether get their jobs back or permanently lose their job .
We expect to see a large increase in permanent job losses in the July BLS report .
If jobs are lost in July , the permanent job losses figure will be the most discussed part of the reading .
Consumer sentiment has been weakening , but the June retail sales report was still very strong and beat estimates .
That ’ s because the weakness was towards the end of the month and into July .
Monthly headline retail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ estimates for 5.2 % .
That ’ s impressive given the 18.2 % growth comp .
Given the recent weakness and the tough comp coming up , it wouldn ’ t be a surprise to see negative monthly sales growth in July .
Retail sales ex-gas stations were 0.7 % above January ’ s level .
The chart below shows the new high nearly got sales back to the long term trend .
Headline yearly growth was 1.1 % .
Amazingly , yearly control group growth was 6.3 % .
This old June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country reopening .
Too bad the trends reversed since this data was measured .
As the chart below shows , monthly sales growth in clothing and accessories was 105 % .
Since June 16th , TJX ’ s stock is down 3.7 % as the market knows this trend didn ’ t continue .
Online sales actually fell 2.4 % monthly as people left the house more .
Restaurant and bar sales were up 20 % , but now places such as California are restricting indoor eating at restaurants .
Motor vehicle and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 21 % of total retail sales .
It had 8.3 % monthly growth and 7.5 % yearly growth .
This expansion is due to people wanting their own cars to avoid public transportation as COVID-19 is transmitted easily on public transportation .
That fear could even extend to ride hailing services .
The jobless claims report in the week of July 11th was terrible .
It ’ s almost inevitable that the July BLS report will be bad .
A fiscal stimulus needs to be passed to save the consumer from an income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jobs back , but many won ’ t if the number of new COVID-19 cases continues to rise .
Arizona data suggests new cases will start falling again soon .
Consumer sentiment has since weakened from the record setting June retail sales report .
Official data continues to lag the trend changes heavily .

by UPFINA
With the recent labor market slowdown in the past few weeks, the economy has come precariously close at times to ending the streak of declines in initial unemployment claims. Technically, if you look at unadjusted claims, they were up in the week of July 11th. Either way, the labor market improvement has stagnated due to COVID-19 coming back with a vengeance. On Thursday, the number of new cases hit a record high. The good news is the 7 day average of new cases in Arizona is falling. That state was the first to see a spike in cases in this 2nd wave which potentially means the other hotspots will see improvement as well.
2. That's an unambiguously favourable trend. Yes, AZ still has far too many cases, but the trend is now falling, thanks to people choosing to stay home and bar closings, etc. Paging @TheStalwart, who do I complain to about Bloomberg's innumeracy? pic.twitter.com/OuBy3degxr — Ian Shepherdson (@IanShepherdson) July 17, 2020
Seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims only fell from 1.31 million to 1.3 million. This 0.8% decline was the lowest of this streak of declines. The labor market is probably getting worse. It’s only a matter of time before the seasonally adjusted reading increases. If that ends up being next week, that would be bad timing because that’s the July BLS reference week. It’s highly likely that this will be a very weak monthly labor report.
The GOP won’t like the headlines as it will hurt their election chances. They have proudly promoted the strong job creation in May and June. Hopefully, there is a stimulus before the first Friday of August, but if there isn’t, this report will motivate politicians to get something done quickly. There probably would have been a stimulus anyway, but there definitely needs to be one because of this spike in cases which has caused added restrictions in the west and the south. As you know, the $600 in weekly unemployment insurance money will go away on July 25th. Something needs to be done to help consumers because they face a massive decline in income as they won’t suddenly get their jobs back when this program ends.
The labor market isn’t uniform throughout the country as states are facing various threats from COVID-19 and restrictions. The table above shows the weekly change in initial claims in each state on an unadjusted basis. Unadjusted national claims were up 108,811 to 1.5 million. The best state was Maryland which saw a 14,534 decline in claims to 18,657. Even though Texas is facing the worst of COVID-19, it had an 11,509 decline in claims. The worst states were Florida, Georgia, and California which all are dealing with the worst of COVID-19. Florida had a 62,467 increase in initial claims to 129,408. This was the largest increase in 12 weeks. Kansas had its largest increase in 15 weeks.
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The best part of this jobless claims report was the 118,000 decline in PUAs. That means on an unadjusted basis, initial claims were stagnant at 2.4 million. In the past 5 weekly reports, the best reading has been a 1% decline. In other words, there has been no improvement in 5 weeks. The situation will likely get worse before it gets better. Seasonally adjusted continued claims were down from 17.76 million to 17.338 million, but on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, they rose 838,307 to 17.355 million. Since continued claims peaked in March, this is only the 2nd increase; it’s also the largest increase. This is a very bad spot for the labor market to stop increasing as the unemployment rate is higher than the peak of the last recession.
Going Back To Work
In a survey from July 6th to the 12th, 40.3% of people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic said they are already back at work. 12.8% expect to get back to work soon. 15.9% and 28.5% expect to return eventually or don’t expect to return at all. This is a do or die moment which means in the next few weeks people will ether get their jobs back or permanently lose their job. We expect to see a large increase in permanent job losses in the July BLS report. If jobs are lost in July, the permanent job losses figure will be the most discussed part of the reading.
A key question for the economy: How many of these job losses will prove permanent?
Some very concerning news on that score in our most recent @SurveyMonkey survey: A *majority* of people who are still out of work don't expect to return to their old jobs.t.co/khswzegWHp pic.twitter.com/YX9I6ylAtD — Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) July 16, 2020
Retail Sales Hit A New High
Consumer sentiment has been weakening, but the June retail sales report was still very strong and beat estimates. That’s because the weakness was towards the end of the month and into July. Monthly headline retail sales growth was 7.5% which beat estimates for 5.2%. That’s impressive given the 18.2% growth comp. Given the recent weakness and the tough comp coming up, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see negative monthly sales growth in July. Retail sales ex-gas stations were 0.7% above January’s level. The chart below shows the new high nearly got sales back to the long term trend. Headline yearly growth was 1.1%. Amazingly, yearly control group growth was 6.3%.
Retail sales ex gas stations (which are unduly driven by oil price alone) were up 27% in two months through June to an all-time high; +0.7% versus January prior peak. pic.twitter.com/ydsJXeMtx3 — Bespoke (@bespokeinvest) July 16, 2020
This old June retail sales data was all about the country reopening. Too bad the trends reversed since this data was measured. As the chart below shows, monthly sales growth in clothing and accessories was 105%. Since June 16th, TJX’s stock is down 3.7% as the market knows this trend didn’t continue. Online sales actually fell 2.4% monthly as people left the house more. Restaurant and bar sales were up 20%, but now places such as California are restricting indoor eating at restaurants. Motor vehicle and parts sales is the biggest category representing 21% of total retail sales. It had 8.3% monthly growth and 7.5% yearly growth. This expansion is due to people wanting their own cars to avoid public transportation as COVID-19 is transmitted easily on public transportation. That fear could even extend to ride hailing services.
US #retail sales better-than-expected 7.5% rebound in June. Sales still down 0.6% from pre-#COVID19 levels, but much better than -7.9% from last month. – Cloth +105%
– Furn +32.5%
– Elect +37.4%
– Sports +26.5%
– Autos +8.2%
– Rest/bars +20%
– Food -1.2%
– Online -2.4% pic.twitter.com/Vy6Bhs4Yml — Gregory Daco (@GregDaco) July 16, 2020
Conclusion
The jobless claims report in the week of July 11th was terrible. It’s almost inevitable that the July BLS report will be bad. A fiscal stimulus needs to be passed to save the consumer from an income crash. People hope to get their jobs back, but many won’t if the number of new COVID-19 cases continues to rise. Arizona data suggests new cases will start falling again soon. Consumer sentiment has since weakened from the record setting June retail sales report. Official data continues to lag the trend changes heavily.


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-18--Jeff Clark: The Real Crash and How to Hedge with Triple-Digit Silver

Tom welcomes a new guest to Palisade , Jeff Clark , who is Senior Precious Metals Analyst of GoldSilver.com .
Jeff discusses what led him to become interested in mining and metals .
He worked and learned from Louis James and Doug Casey and now works with Mike Maloney .
Jeff cautions that investors should be skeptical of mining companies ’ claims because they will always place their best foot forward .
Both Jeff and Mike believe there will be a wealth transfer from fiat-backed assets to precious metals .
This will overshoot , and that will be the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assets .
We could see triple-digit silver since it ’ s a small market and quite volatile .
It doesn ’ t take a lot of cash inflows to impact the price .
Silver today is valued at $ 68 billion in above-ground physical metal in coins and bars .
Compared to the global markets , silver is just a drop in a swimming pool .
Jeff discusses the silver mining situation today and the increasingly severe lack of new growth in the industry .
Investors should consider that it usually takes ten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He feels the risk of confiscation is lower today than in the past because gold and silver are no longer part of the monetary base , but it remains a possibility .

Tom welcomes a new guest to Palisade, Jeff Clark, who is Senior Precious Metals Analyst of GoldSilver.com.
Jeff discusses what led him to become interested in mining and metals. He worked and learned from Louis James and Doug Casey and now works with Mike Maloney.
Jeff cautions that investors should be skeptical of mining companies’ claims because they will always place their best foot forward.
Both Jeff and Mike believe there will be a wealth transfer from fiat-backed assets to precious metals. This will overshoot, and that will be the time to pull profits and purchase other discounted assets.
We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!
We could see triple-digit silver since it’s a small market and quite volatile. It doesn’t take a lot of cash inflows to impact the price. Silver today is valued at $68 billion in above-ground physical metal in coins and bars. Compared to the global markets, silver is just a drop in a swimming pool.
Jeff discusses the silver mining situation today and the increasingly severe lack of new growth in the industry. Investors should consider that it usually takes ten years to bring a new mine online.
He feels the risk of confiscation is lower today than in the past because gold and silver are no longer part of the monetary base, but it remains a possibility.


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-19--NY governor Cuomo attacks the restaurant and bar industry! no more drinking in bars unless you order

NY governor Cuomo attacks the restaurant and bar industry! no more drinking in bars unless you order food! 3 strikes you our business gets shut!

According to Cuomo , there have been issues with compliance issues in New York City , as well as other areas downstate , particularly with bars and restaurants not adhering to social distancing guidelines or outdoor dining instructions .
Due to these issues of noncompliance , the state is enacting a “ three strikes ” rule in New York City that if a restaurant is hit with three failing to comply with COVID-19 measures violations , the establishment will be closed down .
Restaurants and bars that have received disciplinary action will be posted online .
“ There is significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said Cuomo .
“ It ’ s wrong , it ’ s dangerous , it ’ s selfish , and it ’ s illegal.
” Throughout the state , it will also be mandated that outdoor dining establishments can not sell alcohol to patrons that are not ordering food .
Walk-up bar service will also be banned .
According to Cuomo , both of these actions do not support social distancing and will lead to more mingling between customers .
“ Outdoor dining , if they think that meant an outdoor bar , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the exact behavior that we ’ re seeing across the nation that ’ s causing an increase in the virus .
So that was never authorized in the first place .
Takeout drinks were authorized , but the takeout drinks were you could purchase the container and then the container law , and you can go home and drink it .
but there was never an authorization of outside congregant drinking .
That was never authorized , ” said Cuomo in a later conference .

According to Cuomo, there have been issues with compliance issues in New York City, as well as other areas downstate, particularly with bars and restaurants not adhering to social distancing guidelines or outdoor dining instructions.
Due to these issues of noncompliance, the state is enacting a “three strikes” rule in New York City that if a restaurant is hit with three failing to comply with COVID-19 measures violations, the establishment will be closed down. Restaurants and bars that have received disciplinary action will be posted online.
“There is significant evidence of failure to comply,” said Cuomo. “It’s wrong, it’s dangerous, it’s selfish, and it’s illegal.”
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Throughout the state, it will also be mandated that outdoor dining establishments cannot sell alcohol to patrons that are not ordering food. Walk-up bar service will also be banned. According to Cuomo, both of these actions do not support social distancing and will lead to more mingling between customers.
“Outdoor dining, if they think that meant an outdoor bar, they’re wrong. and that’s the exact behavior that we’re seeing across the nation that’s causing an increase in the virus. So that was never authorized in the first place. Takeout drinks were authorized, but the takeout drinks were you could purchase the container and then the container law, and you can go home and drink it. but there was never an authorization of outside congregant drinking. That was never authorized,” said Cuomo in a later conference.
www.amny.com/coronavirus/no-further-indoor-activity-will-be-allowed-even-if-new-york-city-enters-phase-4-cuomo-says/


investmentwatchblog--2020-07-19--Couple under house arrest after testing positive for COVID-19

LOUISVILLE , Kentucky — A Kentucky couple is under house arrest after one of them tested positive for coronavirus and @ @ @ @ @ .
Elizabeth Linscott got tested for COVID-19 because she was planning to go visit her @ @

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — A Kentucky couple is under house arrest after one of them tested positive for coronavirus and refused to sign self-quarantine papers.
Elizabeth Linscott got tested for COVID-19 because she was planning to go visit her parents.
We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!
abc13.com/6323759/?ex_cid=TA_KTRK_FB&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:%20Trending%20Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0uFDab5AxPcM5A6AMw43RvMLObxu0J_KxuKNOnY95Mo_y9WdUk6WFKQpM