The scoreboard never lies. Silver rose, but like gold, not too enthusiastically. Dollar index stayed flat, stocks edged up, as long as you ignore their performance during the week. Most markets remained range bound but terrorized by the European bank solvency crisis. Y'all ponder a moment Mr. Lucas Papadimos called in to fix Greece. Note that he walks onstage only for an "interim" gig, to get the fix passed & then has promised to exit, stage left or right. 'Tis always instructive to look at fixers' backgrounds & connexions. From 1994 thru 2002 he was governor of the Bank of Greece, and from 2002 to 2010 VP of the European Central Bank. Wait? Doesn't that mean that he was the Greek central bank head EXACTLY when the Greek government and Goldman Sachs were jimmying the books so Greece could pass the test & get into the euro? Did he object at the time, trained economist as he is? I forget. Doesn't that also mean he was working at the ECB when he euro was beginning to unravel? Do y'all remember what solution he put forth? Trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, & taught economics at Columbia University. Whoops! Looky here: he was also senior economist at the Boston Federal Reserve in 1980. From 2002 to 2010 he worked with ECB head Jean-Claude Trichet, who fouled the euro's nest, did nothing to clean it up, then retired. Whoa! What's this! What a coincidence! What a surprise! Since 1998 Papadimos has been a member of the Trilateral Commission. (What's that? A club that specializes in triangles? Trigonometry?) Creeping Conspiracy Theories! This fellow has enchufe -- connexions. Friends, this natural born fool throws an eye over all that & the words "Establishment Fixer & Hatchetman" spring unbidden to mind. Is this the Judas goat who will lead Greece into slavery to the banks for the next 100 years? It's a fix, all right. Shucks! Did I forget to mention the Italian fixer, Mario Monti? Economist, did graduate work at Yale, was a professor and chairman of a think-tank (where they put smart people into an oxygen-deprived tank to see what really stupid thoughts they come up with), and -- WHOOPS! I almost forgot to mention that he is European CHAIRMAN of the Trilateral Commission and a leading member of the Bilderberger Group. He tops off that foaming resume with stints as an international adviser to Goldman Sachs and The Coca-Cola Company. He is also a former European Commissioner for "Internal Market, Financial Services & Financial Integration, Customs, & Taxation." When he's not doing all that, he hobnobs with the likes of Jacques Delors & Daniel "Danny the Red" Cohn-Bendit in the Spinelli Group, founded to force further centralization on the European Union. "Fix" doesn't adequately describe this one. Lawsy mercy! The cosmopolites are sending in the Big Guns. They're scared One is tempted to conclude that this is all a "managed crisis," managed to murder the rest of EU member states sovereignty & independence. & to harvest their middle class. WHOA! Y'all don't tell anybody I said that. They're liable to put me in Bilderberger Jail for telling off on them. This is fun, but I need to talk about markets today. US dollar index took a mysterious hit -- no Nice Government Men involved in that, I'm sure -- dropping 83.7 basis points or 1.08% to 76.906. That doesn't really damage anything, just carried the dollar back to 76.80 for a final kiss good-bye before it takes off rallying. The Franken-currency, the euro, rose smartly today, up 1.05% (like the dollar fell 1.08%) to 1.3753. As yet that's a meaningless as a sidesaddle is to a hog. Still leaves the euro beneath the May-September trading channel, under the downtrend line, and under the 20 & 200 DMAs. Look for the euro at 1.2000. Japanese yen rose 0.7% to 129.69c/Y100 (Y77.11/$1). Altho the NGM sliced its legs off last week, the yen has grown them back & today closed above its 20 DMA. Stocks rose 2.18% today (259.14) to take the Dow to a 12,152.93 close. S&P500 ended at 1,263.73, up 24.03 (1.94%). I'll just go on and admit that 5 day Dow chart presents me with a deep mystery. It looks kind of like an upside down head and shoulders reversal pattern, but usually a market posts that only after a decline, not at a peak. Whoops! That might make it a DOUBLE TOP instead, with peaks at 12,150 on Tuesday & Friday. Misery, pain, wailing, moaning, & gnashing of teeth await stock investors. Flee while time remains! Gold rose again, $28.60 or 1.6%, to close at $1,787.50. For the week it's up only 1.8%, after falling Wednesday & Thursday. Now gold has come plumb back up to the real breaking point at $1,800. If gold can stay above that mark for two days, then plainly it is rallying again & y'all better buy it. A fall below $1,740 turns gold down. I'm watching just like y'all. It can go either way. If those two fixers in Greece & Italy fail to fix, the euro crisis will erupt again & pull gold skyward. Watch out for that. SILVER worked out like gold this week, with highs Monday & Tuesday dropping off into Wednesday and a Thursday bottom. Once it climbed above 3400c again, it shot up today to a 3479.7c high. Comex silver kept most of that gain, closing up 57.6c at 3467.1c. Silver could rally to 3680c & still break down. Silver's Death Cross. A so-called death cross occurs when the 50 day moving average crosses below the 200 day moving average. Actually, in stocks at least, the death cross isn't as deadly as most people think. Certainly, the death cross turns the market's momentum down, but in silver it hasn't amounted to much during this bull market. Out of six death crosses, three began insignificant declines and one saw silver rise. In the last two cases (2007 & 2008) silver dropped 34 and 50 days respectively by 13% and 45%. There you have it, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Death cross MIGHT mean something, but probably not. Market has nearly changed my mind & persuaded me NOT to expect another leg down in silver & gold. Remember this: if gold stays above $1,800 for two days, stop waiting and BUY. On 11 November 1880 Australian outlaw & bank robber Ned Kelly was hanged at the Melbourne jail. He was only 25, outlaw or hero, according to your viewpoint. At the eleventh hour (a.m.) of the eleventh day of 1918 an armistice took effect, ending World War I. It was the only good thing about that whole war. Y'all enjoy your weekend!
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
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