BELLY OF THE BEAST

Nice to be home after spending a week in a place that rhymes with Poopertino. I had an unexpected invitation to tour the belly of the beast and managed to gain some browny points with the Mrs. and visit one of the most concentrated areas of wealth and intellect in the World. I would love to go into detail but will only mention, the people, the ambiance, the weather, and the food were great. I will also add that in spite of the lovely experience, my outlook about our near term future unfortunately, has not changed one iota. 
If we don't burn ourselves to the ground in the next few years then I have hopes that our coming exponential boom in technology will give us hope. But once again, we've got to get through the neocon shitstorm....and maybe we can.

The (Supposedly Booming) US Economy Just Saw The Govt Borrow Half A Trillion Bucks In Three Months

Back to the boring beatdown called the miners and metals. We CONtinue to play our CONsolidation game. Most of you have no CONfidence in the miner shares or for that matter precious metals. Hopefully you are enjoying the pretend time you've been given at your children's expense, and hopefully you have made a positive impact on the earth and the life here that you enjoy. I still own my mining shares and have no plans to change my attitude or positions. Not gonna be too active trading them, but will always work on my peripheral positions if an obvious imbalance or opportunity presents. 

'It didn't produce anything:' Warren Buffett uses $10,000 to demonstrate why buying gold is much worse than buying stocks

Hope you all maintain a positive outlook and I hope you are able to compartmentalize the insanity and say "its all good" while you smile at the daily antics of our "leaders" and the propaganda that follows. gl

YOU DANCED WITH THE DEVIL

What happened in late 2008 when all the late night meetings were going on to determine the course of a world mired in debt and facing the realities of their 30 year spending binge? They decided that facing these realities and taking the malinvestments out of the system was not going to be the best policy. Instead they embarked on a fairly complex set of decisions to "reinflate" a broken debt-laden economy with MORE debt. Simply put they were going to look into every crack and crevice to add money and therefore DEBT into a deflated bubble economy. They were going to blow a new bubble to keep us from facing a system collapse.

Imagine telling the state and municipal pensioners they are not going to receive even half of what their pensions are promised to be. It wasn't going to happen. Instead they made the deal with the devil. The deal was to kick the "reset" down the road at least for "one more cycle". In the meantime maybe a fix could be found. For now they needed to find a home for Trillions of newly minted Federal reserve notes.

They knew the big banks needed to be propped up and their liabilities served as an easy sponge for the majority of the debt. The Federal Reserve actually directly bought a lot of the toxic debt from the banks and put it on their balance sheet. Much of the printed notes sopped up bonds from every sector of the economy and drove down interest rates to levels unheard of. Junk bonds carried rates of 3 and 4 %. It made no sense, except in an insane world, but they needed more debt. Their appetite was insatiable. They needed to get the real economy going, but with Trillions sloshing in the publicly traded stock market, malinvestments were going to explode. 

Canadians Just Set A New Record For Borrowing Against Their Homes....lol that should end well

Tesla Is Being Sued Yet Again, For Allegedly Not Paying Contract Workers

Explode they did.  Money is fungible. It will move. When you increase the liquidity, guess what happens? The liquid flows. It flows into holes EVERYWHERE. The more you pour in. The more it moves. They needed bigger holes. They needed more holes. So they dug and they dug. They made Netflix holes. They made Amazon holes bigger. They made Tesla holes. They made Uber holes. They didn't care what was in making the hole as long as it was going to get bigger. THEY WANTED BIGGER AND BIGGER DEBT HOLES. So what if the business model could NEVER be profitable? So what if it destroyed competing companies with sound profitable business models?  They could call it "disruptive". 

Mike Adams’ Stark Warning: The Civil War Begins When Hillary Clinton Gets Indicted

Useful Idiots? New Yorker Magazine Fails Litmus Test For Media Impartiality On Syrian War....LOL...NO SHIT

They just kept pouring the liquid fuel into the holes hoping that somehow they could create a spark to get the free market system engine going. They knew there was a limit and therefore a major risk. You pour enough liquid fuel into enough holes and eventually there's going to be a spark. The danger is the spark doesn't get the engine just running but ignites an explosion. For instance, you now have companies like Tesla with billions of dollars in debt that are sucking up losses in the billions EVERY year with no hope of profit. And you're going to take away the punch bowl? You're going to "normalize" interest rates? Hell, virtually every mortgage holder out there is holding on by their finger nails at 3% mortgages. Just imagine what happens to the home market at even a historically low rate of 6% much less 8 or 9%. 

So here's what is our future (provided we don't get an external "missile").....we get low inflation this year and the Fed keeps on track with rate hikes and liquidity withdrawal. The "market" isn't going to like it. Another possibility is inflation begins to heat up to the level they have to INCREASE rate hike projections. This is the scenario I predicted last year. The market REALLY doesn't like this one. Its going to sell hard at some point and the Fed will have to back track, and then CONfidence is shaken. 

The smart money knows all of this. The smart money will move ahead of all of these scenarios and into sectors of the market that will benefit from these Fed moves. The fuel is there already. A lot of it will burn but a lot of it is going to flow out of the Fed created fuel bombs and into other "containers".  Those containers are already starting to fill. They're the resource and energy sectors. 

The sad part of all of this is the damage done to good, solid profitable companies and small businesses by this idiotic attempt to play with free markets by the Fed. They didn't get the "free money". They were extracted. Many were taken out and shot. We have lost a lot of strong hands over the last ten years for the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. We're screwed, but over time nature will reassert itself and in a couple of generations we can overcome this insanity. Maybe we learned something.  There will be a reset at some point and there will be strong hands. I hope they're benevolent hands and I hope they're "just" hands. We could use some justice. gl

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! RUSSIA DEFEATED!

Nothing like a good bombing and a proxy beatdown to show who's boss. You gotta feel proud about yourself after launching smart bombs from a nice safe distance and blowing the hell out of a third world country that has already been bombed to hell for five years from your regime change chaos.  Never mind your "boogie man" just defeated your proxy rebels and WHY would the evil dictator drop chemical weapons on the very populace that had just surrendered and was literally within hours of being transported out of "harms way". Nahh....never mind those small factoids when you can just say WAR!! and BOMBS AWAY!!  

One thing is certain, all of the media talking heads that have trashed you for months will immediately support this action without even blinking. After all, what is better than death and mayhem on a nice long weekend. 

WORLD EDGES CLOSER TO WAR: Greyerz – Forget Pullbacks, Silver Price Set To Skyrocket 46X!

Here's what's better. You might get lucky and no one shoots back. For sure you won't have anyone from Syria shoot back. But what happens when you kill a bunch of Russians or Iranians that have been fighting the ISIS rebels that YOU are taking credit for eliminating when it was actually the very people you are bombing and trying to start a hot war with that eliminated ISIS. You know that already though don't you since YOU created ISIS....LOL....

Syria Is Not What You Think: It’s Evil. Pure Evil. As In Massive Organ Harvesting And Trafficking Ring

Just How Bad Has Obamacare Become? Nearly Half Of All Americans Don’t Go To The Doctor Anymore

Herein lies your problem. Actually maybe its your real goal. Anyway it doesn't matter whether its YOUR goal or your puppet master's goal. You're going to light a fuse and that fuse might be on a little bomb that blows up in your face or possibly a very BIG bomb that goes off in all of our faces. Maybe that is your goal. Either way millions of people in this country and BILLIONS of people around the World know what you just did Donald. They know you sold us out. The little people that thought you were that rare breed......a buffoon with a brain. Well we were half right.

Hold on folks. This ride just got a lot more dangerous. Its obvious to me that something is very wrong with our driver and its not going to end the way we hoped it would. China and Russia are not going to just roll over for this. Revenge is a dish best served chilled. In other words, "Mission Accomplished" is not something you want to hear. gl

WE MUST STOP ASSAD!

Within days of announcing a pullout of our troops in Syria where our troops are currently defending jihadist rebels against the secular westernized Syrian government of Assad....our President has changed his mind. With the famous Nobel Peace Prize winner John "I'll Slaughter You" Bolton at his side now, the Don has decided that Putin and Assad must be brought to heal. I like it. Its brilliant. Chess at its very best.  

Trump Threatens Putin, "Animal Assad" Over Syrian "Chemical Attack"; Russia Warns Of "Grave" Response If US Launches Strike

After all we have helped to liberate the once peaceful nation of Syria where Christians, Muslims, and Jews coexisted peacefully for hundreds of years by leveling their cities and slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children in the name of peace and love. I guess I can see how you don't have a problem with  several hundred thousand deaths of women and children and the installation of a radical jihadist government. I get that. I also understand the importance of keeping our troops and resources on the ground in the middle of this chaos in the name of regime change. I get that.

The Great War to End All Wars Nears With John Bolton Now by Trump's Side Guiding Us to MAGA

Where I really have to draw the line is with Russia. They have to be stopped and stopped now. Never mind the duly elected Syrian government invited Russia in as their ally to protect them from "foreign" influences and radical jihadists (sound familiar). I just think its time to finally have it out with Russia like John Bolton has repeatedly tried to get us all to see. Its time. We need to truly draw a line and then if they don't cross that line we need to attack. Slaughter them. We've got the right stuff not to mention we have the best paid think tanks. 

Netanyahu: Trump Is Very Likely To Order Attack On Syria....lol...

I'm starting to get warm all over now thinking about seeing Anderson Cooper on the front line of another Middle East invasion with the really cute helmet on with artillery bursts exploding into the night sky. It really is a great way to spend an evening in front of a 60 inch high def flat screen on a quiet week day night. I know it would make me feel safe too. The kid thing kinda bothers me, but I know we need to do this to keep us safe over here.  love ya all and especially I love big John and daddy Don.

BOING

I mentioned at the end of 2016 that 2017 would see a lot of chop before they took the miners back up. It was still a crowded trade from their performance in 2016 even with their late 2016 pullback. After all they were still the best performing sector by far in the overall market for 2016.  I felt they had to just keep shaking off those bitter clingers before they ripped them up from their newly established base. 

US Deploys Three Carrier Battle Groups To Face-Off Against Chinese Aircraft Carrier In South China Sea

"I Just Discovered I Owe The IRS $50,000 I Don't Have, Because I Traded Cryptos"

Bitcoin Tumbles Below $7000 After Binance Hack Fears.....but don't worry its real money

The Average Worker Can’t Afford To Buy A Home In About 70% Of All American Counties

I certainly didn't think it would take this long before they moved the sector up for the next leg, but its not shocking after watching them knock them down by 90% after their 2011 high. That was just breath taking in its severity. So here we are with another long accumulation phase. They're tedious and will try Jesse Livermore's patience. If you're determined to stay in the paper market, then I think this sector is the best risk/reward, but anyone that says enough is enough can't be blamed. I, on the other hand will see this ponzi to its CONclusion. I have college to pay for and paper is the game. It ain't cheap.

This week could see everything break out or it just might be another shake um up week. Nothing will happen until it you see the big volume big percentage moves. Its gonna happen at some point and just like in 2016 we won't believe it even when its happening right in front of our lyin' eyes, but its going to be one helluva boing. gl