Worth A Thoudand Words

When Grudgingly Becomes Suddenly

The Drudge Report ran this picture of a younger Donald Trump today with the caption: "Now They Take Him Seriously."

Who is they? The big banks like Citi, JP Morgan's Jamie (It isn't too late to change your mind Brexit voters) Dimon and,of course, the biggest of the big bank villains, Goldman Sachs, one of the Fed's favorite wards.

"Take a look at me now, now that I can dance," goes the words of an old song. Well, these Wall Street boys and girls now know Trump can dance with any of them. And that raises another question. What does this mean for gold in a world dominated by phony fiat paper money, mounds upon mounds of debt and negative zero interest rates being shepherded over not by three blind mice, but Curly, Moe and Larry, aka, the ECB, the BOJ and the Fed. Gold is up 26% this year.

Here's Citi"take. It's of interest not because of its accuracy but because to give the Donald a 40 percent chance of pulling this thing off a few short months back tells you there a lot grudgingly in that 40 percent..

Gold may be in for a bumpy ride in the final quarter as Republican candidate Donald Trump now has a 40 percent chance of winning the presidential election and investors will be preparing for the possibility of higher U.S. interest rates, according to Citigroup Inc.

Volatility in bullion and foreign-exchange markets may increase, according to a commodities report from the bank as it raised the odds on a Trump victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in November from 35 percent. There would probably be a single U.S. hike by year-end, it said. A Bloomberg Politics poll has Trump and Clinton deadlocked before a debate later today.

Bullion has rallied 26 percent in 2016, rebounding from three years of losses, as low or negative interest rates have bolstered demand. Political uncertainty has also played a part, with the U.K.’s vote to quit the European Union spurring haven demand. Forecasters including Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd. have said that the U.S. contest may buttress prices amid concern about the possible implications of a Trump presidency.

“Polls have started to tighten ahead of the U.S. presidential election, and Citi has raised the probability of a Trump victory,” the bank said in the note. “We expect a Trump win would bring out higher volatility in gold and forex, which in turn should lead to higher volumes in other precious metals.”

Gold was at $1,337.23 an ounce by 12:57 p.m. in London, with Citigroup seeing futures at $1,350 on a three-month basis and $1,270 on a six- to 12-month view. Under the bank’s base case it may be at $1,320 in the final quarter, or $1,425 under the bull case, which included the possibility of a Trump win. The Republican and Democratic nominees each get 46 percent of likely voters in a head-to-head contest in the latest Bloomberg Politics national poll, while Trump has 43 percent to Clinton’s 41 percent when third-party candidates are included.

Trump has proven to be a resilient if unconventional candidate, courting controversy with blunt remarks throughout his run for the White House to see off a crowded Republican field of contenders and face the former secretary of state. Among policy proposals, he’s attacked U.S. trade policy and threatened to build a wall along the border with Mexico.



As we pointed out before about Citi"s 40 percent chance of a Trump victory, there's a lot of grudgingly in those gold numbers. 

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-25/citi-says-gold-may-be-volatile-raises-odds-on-trump-win-to-40

Watch The Peso

We have as have others written about this before, the predictive power of the Mexican peso and the outcome of this very contentious presidential election. Track the peso's reaction to tonight's debate. It could swing wildly in one direction or another based on who the forces that be can convince the people who the winner was.

Spinners will be burning the midnight oil. Some of the most egregious spinners will be CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC,  Fox, the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post and Barbara Streisand

The battered Mexican peso has tumbled to historic new lows in recent days, nearing a psychological barrier of 20 pesos to the U.S. dollar and causing anxiety on the streets, at businesses and in the halls of government. 

Among other factors, many point to the recent rise in U.S. presidential polls of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and has been widely accused here of Mexico-bashing.  

“There is a very clear relation with the [U.S.] electoral process,” Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto told Radio Formula last week, linking Trump’s improved standings in the polls to the peso’s doldrums.

The Mexican currency plunged to a record low of about 19.90 to the dollar last week and has hovered near 20 to the dollar for days. Exchange houses are already posting signs offering a 20-peso exchange rate, a jarring sight for many here.

Despite official declarations downplaying the devaluation, some analysts are warning that things could get worse and assailing what they call government inaction.

“It appears that the authorities in charge of the politics, economics and finances of the country are flummoxed, paralyzed by the magnitude of the devaluation,” wrote columnist Enrique Galvan Ochoa in Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper.  “And the effects of the phenomenon could extend to the large companies of the private sector, deeply indebted in dollars.”
latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-peso-20160924-snap-story.

This Week

Besides tonight's debate there's a lot of other stuff on tap, not the least of which is to see what effect the debate has in Monday Night football. Here's a quick look at the week ahead as it features the heads of three central bank leaders starting Monday with ECB leader Mario Draghi and Bank of Japan Hiruhiko Kuroda  and Fed Chair Janet Yellen in her trip up the Hill to speak to The House Financial Services Committee.

Investors remain confused. And the Federal Reserve in it's infinitely incompetent leadership is proposing another territorial grab by driving banks out of the commodity business. Like other interventionists, the excuse is to save the banks from themselves. This time unpredictable natural disasters that, according to the WSJ, would protect them against "environmental disasters that might cause huge liabilities, would require banks to hold billions of dollars of extra capital in their commodities businesses."

This is about liquidity. It's also about the Fed's failed monetary policies and an economy after all these years that basically sucks.. Apparently, the Fed excludes it's own role of being a natural disaster when it requires higher large capital reserves at banks for other Fed-caused reasons. The article states Goldman Sachs will be hit the hardest. At first blush that's great. Anything that hits Goldman hard is welcome. But this is a gloss-over tactic to take some of the well-deserved heat off the Fed.

As the Wall Street Journal reports:  This week brings speeches by the heads of central banks in the U.S., Europe and Japan, while trade, inflation and other data releases will shed light on the health of a number of large economies.
More:
wsj.com/articles/global-economy-week-ahead-yellen-draghi-and-kuroda-speak-eu-and-japan-inflation

Sometimes it's the stories that you missed that are the more important.

blacklistednews.com/Little_Girls_Lemonade_Stand_Shut_for_Not_Getting_a permit

newstarget.com/2016-09-13-nyt-warned-clinton-to-delete-her-emails.html

newstarget.com/2016-09-14-clinton-camp-threatening-a-free-press-for-daring-to-cover-her-health-issues.

bill-clinton-mocks-the-coal-people-in-west-virginia-kentucky-for-supporting-trump-video

gundlach-puts-his-finger-on-bond-market-tipping-point

Tyranny Traitor_and_Cowardice_In_a_Fight_For_Our_Nation

business/how-to-pick-the-fastest-line-at-the-supermarket.html?

gdp-now-dips-to-3-3-nowcast-at-2-8-4th-quarter-nowcast-1-7

You Decide

Well, it's here, the first debate people have been waiting for despite all the complaints. It's estimated that 100 million viewers could tune in, many of them no doubt wanna be stand-up comics looking for free material.

It should get interesting, especially if something untoward happens like the moderators wearing signs  declaring whom they're going to vote for. To cop a favorite of the PC crowd, no undeclared permitted. That's probably too objective for MSM. At any rate here are some of those factoids everyone hates and loves to manipulate, 26  in all, from Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, 


You can find the rest there.

Factoids

#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, the U.S. government was 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  Today, the U.S. government is 19.5 trillion dollars in debt, and Obama still has several months to go until the end of his second term.  That means that an average of more than 1.1 trillion dollars will be added to the national debt during his presidency.  We are stealing a tremendous amount of consumption from the future to make the economy look much, much better than it otherwise would be, and we are systematically destroying the future in the process.
#2 As Obama prepares to leave office, the rate at which we are adding to the national debt is actually increasing.  During the fiscal year that is just ending, the U.S. government has added another 1.36 trillion dollars to the national debt.

#3 It isn’t just the federal government that is on a massive debt binge.  Total U.S. corporate debt has nearly doubled since the end of 2007.

#4 Default rates on U.S. corporate debt are the highest that they have been since the last financial crisis.
#5 Corporate profits have fallen for five quarters in a row, and it is being projected that it will be six in a row once the final numbers for the third quarter come in.
#6 During the month of August, commercial bankruptcy filings were up 29 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
#7 The rate of new business formation in the United States dropped dramatically during the last recession and has hovered at that new lower level ever since.
#8 The Wall Street Journal says that this is the weakest “economic recovery” since 1949.
#9 Barack Obama is on track to be the only president in all of U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least 3 percent.
#10 In August, the Cass Freight Index dipped to the lowest level that we have seen for that month since 2010.  What this means is that the total amount of stuff being shipped around the country by air, by rail and by truck is really dropping, and this is a clear sign that real economic activity is slowing down in a major way.

EpiPen Follow-up

Here's a follow-up to our recent financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/09/spread-wealth. story on EpiPen and what looks increasingly like a family affair with clear Congressional connections.

The post-hearing dead cat bounce in Mylan stock is over. The "blood in the streets" buyers are in trouble as the stock is tumbling following WSJ reports that Mylan is admitting its pre-tax profits for EpiPen are actually 60% higher than they told Congress.

 It seems congress had a hunch that something was up... (as Reuters reported 2 weeks ago)

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee probing Mylan NV's EpiPen price hike on Friday said its response to his query was "incomplete," and called on the drugmaker to give more details over how much government health insurance programs pay for the allergy treatment.
"It's an incomplete response and wouldn't satisfy my constituents who are upset about the EpiPen price increases. It doesn't provide the full picture that I requested, and it doesn't answer all of my questions," U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said in a statement. He added that it is still unclear how many patients will benefit from Mylan's expanded assistance programme.

But then again in this consequence-less world, what difference does it make?

• Reuters 
•  zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-26/mylan-admits-epipen-profits-60-higher-it-told-congress-stock-slips

Lockstep Music

"We won't be shopping at Walmart," is the way one person involved in this story expressed his right to free speech in what has become a less than semi-free nation owing to PC.

According to the story, Walmart issued an apology. What's funny about Walmart is for years the PC crowd blocked the firm's expansion efforts in places like New York. And the PC Not Welcome sign has been shoved in the company's face other places too.

We have written before about one's right to exercise one's purchasing power only to be criticized by Google. It seems one has still the right to exercise it but not the right to talk about it if you blog on Google. The only ones with such rights are those who express views Google agrees with. Like not using Google searches to look up information about certain people.

The Internet is an information highway. That's why certain forces--and the public needs to know who they are and what they are about--are trying to centralized it to globalization bureaucrats who wake up every morning to lockstep music. Apparently, it's the same music that some employees at this Walmart bakery like to also hear.

macon.com/news/nation-world/national/article104188001

Divided We Are

Anyone following the upcoming debate tomorrow night knows the billionaire Mark Cuban has switched from Trump to Hillary and is reported that he will be in the first row at the debate. To which we say bully, bully!

We've never been Mark Cuban fans. And we've never been afraid to say it out loud or up close and in person.  In fact, taking on billionaires in part is what this election is about. What makes his switch from Trump to Hillary interesting is it shows how deeply divided we are. And that, we believe, is one of the healthiest things to come out of this circus. The openness of it all.

More and more Americans are no longer willing to quietly take any more BS from the PC crowd. It's out, it's open and it's on. No more pretending or phony nonsense about this nation being bipartisan or ever being such. It never was and it never will be. So, yea, we welcome the Mark Cubans.

Here is another well known person who has switched the other way, from Hillary to Trump. We don't know and have never met either man. What is important here is that those who disagree with the Mark Cubans are not racists, xenophobes, homophobes, ignoramuses or any of the other epithets MSM have been labeling them since this whole freak show began. We speak for nobody except ourselves.

We don't intend to vote for either person. Nor any of the other candidates. But when you witness the fear Trump traction has caused among the status quo, you know a major nerve has been probed. And probed deeply, a quite healthy thing in itself. There is nothing evil or incorrect about disliking another human being and saying so publicly. It's been around since time began. And it will be around a long time after these days are history and mostly naturally spread to the robot generations ahead.

The only thing that sets the Mark Cubans of the globe apart is their wealth gives them a platform, something the dispossessed, the downtrodden and the over-looked don't have. Cuban is no less an elitist than the rest. You know elitists because they pretend to have the answers that the rest of us are incapable of having in their view. You know elitists because theirs is always a zero sum game. For them to win, someone else must lose. Without the masses, in other words, there's no need for elitists.

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, switched his endorsement from Clinton to Trump today. His primary reason for the switch has to do with confiscation of property via estate taxes. His rationale on “persuasion” is much more interesting.

Please consider Why I Switched My Endorsement from Clinton to Trump.

mishtalk.com/2016/09/25/dilbert-creator-switches-endorsement-from-hillary-to-trump/

Standing Room Only

Maybe someone should pass the word along. Be careful, Hillary, whom you invite to those debates. It might make your eyes start rolling again and bring back not your Bonnie but another round of walking pneumonia.



NEW YORK – Bill Clinton’s alleged sex assault victims are likely so numerous that “we could fill the entire audience,” stated Kathleen Willey when asked by this reporter if she would hypothetically be willing to attend tomorrow’s presidential debate.
Willey, a White House aide during the Clinton administration who famously accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, joins accusers Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones in commenting on the audience of tomorrow’s debate.
Stated Willey:

Most of us are well known and our stories have been repeated several times over the years, but what concerns me the most are the voices of my sisters who are still afraid to come out of the darkness. I have communicated with a number of them and they are still terrified of publicly sharing their experiences with the Clintons.
The real story here is not one of our presence in the front row at any of these debates, but the unhindered lust for power that the Clintons have displayed for decades. Hillary Clinton has lied, cheated and stolen our lives from us. People have died in her wake of deceit.
We could fill the entire audience. I would like to see the day when these women can step into the light and share their stories of brutality, terror and intimidation without the kind of fear of intimidation and recrimination that we have experienced for far too many years.

Regarding whether she would attended the debate if asked, Willey decided, “I would refrain for now. Let her do herself in on her own.”
The issue of Clinton’s alleged mistresses and accusers was put back in the headlines Saturday when Donald Trump threatened on Twitter to bring Gennifer Flowers to the first presidential debate after Trump troll Mark Cuban said he’d sit in the front row. Flowers, who says she had a 12-plus year relationship with Clinton, responded promptly on social media, writing, “Hi Donald Trump… I’m in your corner. Of course I will see u at the debate!!”
After first denying any relationship with Flowers during a 1992 60 Minutes interview, Clinton later admitted to one sexual encounter with her in a 1998 deposition for the Paula Jones lawsuit. Read more:

breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/25/exclusive-kathleen-willey-clinton-sex-victims-fill-entire-audience-presidential-debate

Overnight

Monday overnight started off down for many markets. Last week it was about two central banks, Bank of Japan and the Federal  Reserve while this week's highlight will most probably be the first Presidential debate. There are three schedules presidential and one vice presidential debates on tap all toll. So investors will have some distractions from their usual routines.

Asia markets opened lower on Monday, with sentiment this week likely to be dominated by the first U.S. presidential debate, as well as an upcoming informal meeting of OPEC producers.

In Australia, the ASX 200 was down 0.43 percent in early trade, with most sectors trading lower. The energy sector was down 0.77 percent, materials was lower by 0.6 percent and the heavily-weighted financial sector fell 0.27 percent.

Major banking stocks in the country were slightly lower, with ANZ down 0.33 percent, Commonwealth Bank of Australia off 0.16 percent,Westpac down 0.16 percent and the National Australia Bank dropping 0.25 percent. Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.59 percent, while across the Korean Strait, the Kospi dropped 0.18 percent."Asia Pacific investors are bracing for a sell day, after European and U.S. traders took some hard-won risk off the table," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets.

In the currency market the dollar index traded at 95.477 against a basket of currencies off from the 96.00 it hit briefly last week before the Fed's new holding pattern announcement. The yen hit 100.75 not fat off levels reached at 100.00 last week.