Month: November 2020

Washington elites are breathing a sigh of relief, as power players on both sides of the aisle gear up for ‘business as usual’ following a four-year disruption in swamp-activities – thanks to one Donald J. Trump, whose anticipated departure from the Oval Office has the DC establishment lick their chops in anticipation.

“The classic friendly-rivals dinner party will be back, likely bigger than ever, with VIP guests from the Biden administration, a few formers from the Obama crowd, a senator or two seated next to a Supreme Court justice,” according to the Washington Post‘s Roxanne Roberts

Shoving the Uniparty’s collective excitement in our plebeian faces, Roberts writes in. full. stops. “Washington is exhausted. Washington is optimistic. Washington is desperate for change. The aristocracy of this city is ready to move on, daring to hope that the last four years was a fever that finally broke and life can get back to normal.”

Poor Washington.

“Normal, as in a respect for experience and expertise. Normal, as in civility and bipartisan cooperation. Normal, as in not wanting to punch someone in the face,” Roxanne continues.

And who’s about to usher in this period of ‘bipartisan cooperation’ and controlling one’s violent delights? Joe Biden, of course!

Biden and wife Jill Biden “know how to get around Washington, how to be a part of the establishment, how to make it work for them in their everyday lives,” says an influential Republican hostess who, like many of the city’s social leaders, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly without retribution. “People who have always enjoyed the Washington scene are yearning to get back to that, have some semblance of what they enjoyed so much before. There are a lot of Republicans who sat out the Trump years and bit their tongues for four years who are thrilled to have Biden.” At the heart of this optimism is the belief that politicians on both sides of the aisle get more accomplished when they like each other. -WaPo

And of course, no self-respecting DC power-player can survive without attending establishment soirées, fundraisers, diplomatic corps and ‘historical traditions’ underpinning the ‘business of Washington’ – which Roxanne says needs ‘bipartisanship to really thrive’ after the Trump administration made everything a ‘test of loyalty.’

“Washington’s elite social world can pivot faster than a prima ballerina,” Roxanne continues – noting that a COVID-19 vaccine and a ‘call for comity’ will allow them to ‘press the reset button and start fresh.‘

According to the report, the ‘permanent establishment’ was polarized by a White House that referred to them as the ‘swamp’ or ‘deep state.’ Not anymore, writes Roxanne – who looks forward to DC’s return to its ‘former glory.’

“The president-elect has a great number of friends who are Republicans that he served with,” says Clinton and Obama administration veteran, Ambassador Capricia Marshall. “And he will be inviting them into the White House because that’s how you get work done: creating those relationships in these social atmospheres, making people feel invited and welcomed.“

Bipartisanship equals money

Perhaps the biggest relief to Washington insiders from a lack of Trumpian politics will be the restoration of bipartisan fundraising – as “The quickest way to attract money is to have support from both sides of aisle: a Republican and a Democrat prominently displayed at the head table, with the corporate support and underwriting that greases all those wheels.”

“This idea that we are a democracy, we disagree on a lot, but we come together around certain moments. You may not be happy with who wins, but you understand and recognize the power of it,” says event planner Philip Dufour.

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

I wanted to offer some thoughts on Gold on this Thanksgiving weekend as Gold has reached a key price pivot and has seen sizable selling in recent weeks as the rest of the market continues to melt into the stratosphere and speculative bubbles are spreading across asset classes.

So why not Gold?

There are multiple factors at play: The more obvious is that market participants thought Gold to be a safety hedge in an uncertain world and with Covid vaccines being announced weekly that uncertainty is being presumable priced out of the market and the safety hedges unwound.

Yet Gold has also been presumed to be a central bank currency printing trade as the dollar is being pounded into the ground. That correlation worked all year but has stopped working as both dollar and Gold have been dropping together lately and that has to be concern for Gold longs. If Gold can’t rally with the dollar dropping then when can it rally?

This is where technicals are coming in and they suggest a key time for Gold.

Now those that are following our market videos know I’ve been cautious Gold ever since the target got hit in the summer:

$GLD target reached pic.twitter.com/5p5D3Dib48

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) July 28, 2020

The main reason being technical, once targets are reached and charts show negative divergences I’m of the mindset to sit back and wait for new chart patterns to evolve.

As market video subscribers know I’ve been watching key patterns that could suggest Gold to be buying opportunity here.

Firstly, the most obvious chart aspect is the support of the 200MA which probably most people are watching, also in context of bullish falling wedge/bull flag that has formed:

Note this pattern was challenged late last week, but also note Gold has been following one bullish pattern after another which we identified ahead of time in 2019 ( Gold Going Bull, Gold Bull Part II ).

So Gold continues to follow bullish patterns, also note Gold is getting oversold, but has room to become more oversold.

What’s more interesting to me here is how Gold has precisely reached the retrace target zone I’ve been outlining in the market videos since the summer, the .382 fib along with the 2012 bounce highs as support:

That is confluence support and holding this confluence zone would support the notion of this corrective move in Gold off of the weekly negative divergence having the opportunity to build a larger cup and handle pattern which would be tremendously bullish Gold long term for a target north of $3,000.

I need to outline two caveats here.

First, note how similar the rip rally in 2020 is to the one of 2011. That period was followed by a steep correction similar to the current one. Gold then chopped up and down in price for 2 years before finally dropping to the 2015 lows. The similarity of the structure certainly leaves room for a similar outcome. One argument to support such a price development is to say that incremental central bank intervention will be diminishing in the years to come. They went all in this year and there are frankly less assets for them to buy, certainly in comparison to the magnitude they bought in the short time period in 2020.

Second, and this goes to my earlier point: Watch the US dollar:

Gold should’ve been able to take advantage of the recent dollar weakness, but hasn’t been able to. That’s a concern. Note Gold peaked in the summer near the time when the dollar bottomed. Now the dollar is retesting these lows with a potential falling wedge which could play as bullish pattern and firm as a potential double bottom.

If Gold can’t rally with a falling dollar how will it cope with a potential rising dollar? As the dollar has yet to show strength it is an academic question at the moment, but it’s something to keep a watchful eye on it as correlations are to be viewed with extreme caution at the moment.

Let’s not forget: We are inside the largest asset bubble of all time:

179.9% market cap vs. GDP.
The widest market disconnect from the economy ever.#documentingreality pic.twitter.com/YLCpEEYD6U

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) November 28, 2020

Distortions having been created that central bankers are fully aware of, but rarely admit. But when they do one best pay attention:

Thanks @CNBCJou for asking the question.

Rosengren: “It does distort markets but that’s what monetary policy does”.

Finally a key admission of the obvious. Central banks and their policies distort markets and hence we find ourselves in a historic asset bubble. https://t.co/B9f4l8Y4pd

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) November 11, 2020

Distortions brought about by the loosest financial conditions in history:

Pedal to the metal risk on. Except in Gold in recent months.

Bottomline: Gold has continued to follow technicals beautifully and the recent weakness is no surprise to those that have followed the technical chart structures. Now Gold has reached key confluence support and has the opportunity to rally from this support. But the caveats need to be watched and risk managed as we live in times of broad market correlations having been mercilessly raped by central bankers and their policies.

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Powerful drugs recently authorized by the FDA are expected to help patients suffering from the earliest stages of COVID-19 avoid the most severe symptoms. President Donald Trump even once referred to Regeneron’s antibody treatment as a “cure” for the virus.

But there are still some issues that have yet to be resolved.

The US, like several other developed nations, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure supplies of Eli Lilly and supplies of the Regeneron.

Officials are working to establish sites to infuse the medications to patients with mild to moderate disease who had until recently been advised to stay home.

Both the Eli Lilly and Regeneron monoclonal antibodies mimic proteins the body normally makes to block the virus from entering cells; they were cleared by the FDA earlier this month. They’re the first drugs authorized specifically for non-hospitalized patients, and are targeted at those at risk of severe symptoms because of older age, obesity and other chronic conditions.

Experts told Bloomberg that while Trump touted Regeneron’s therapy after receiving it in October, infectious disease doctors noted that the evidence supporting the drugs’ use in Covid-19 is not yet definitive. Yet there’s hope they could help the country battle its worst-ever coronavirus surge, as average daily infections soared to almost 170,000 over the last week. About 90,500 Americans were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Thursday.

Coronavirus-beset hospitals around the US are grappling with more infected staff, said Allison Suttle, chief medical officer at Sanford Health, a nonprofit health system based in South Dakota. Treatment that keeps patients from being admitted to overcrowded hospital wards is offering a tantalizing reprieve, she said.

The US has paid Eli Lilly $375 million to lock in supplies of its antibody medication – the amusingly-named “bamlanivimav”, equivalent to 300,000 vials of the antibody, bamlanivimab, over the next two months. The government has also awarded Regeneron $450 million to make and supply enough doses of its antibody cocktail for another 300,000 patients through the end of January. Both companies intend to scale up supply for the U.S. next year.

Submitted by Rusty Weiss of The Mental Recession,

Robby Dinero, the owner of Athletes Unleashed gym located in Orchard Park, New York, tore up a $15,000 fine from the Erie County Health Department during a live Fox News interview.

Dinero got hit with the extraordinarily hefty fine following a confrontation in which roughly 50 business owners attending a meeting inside the gym refused to allow a pair of sheriffs and a health inspector entry to the building without a warrant.

“They picked a fight with a Marine and a whole bunch of patriots,” the gym owner said in a separate interview with WBEN, before pointing out that “The Constitution protects those rights.”

The moment tonight when Athletes Unleashed gym owner Robby Dinero ripped up the $15k fine he received today from @ECDOH LIVE on @FoxNews. The fine was for holding a rally inside his gym Friday night. @NewsRadio930 pic.twitter.com/FUk6sOSCX4

— Tim Wenger (@TimWBEN) November 25, 2020

New York Gym Owner Rips Up His Fine, Says He Will Not Comply

Dinero, speaking with Fox anchor Sandra Smith, reiterated that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lockdown edicts infringe upon his rights.

The veteran, having pointed out Cuomo’s and Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries, challenged them to look their constituents’ children in the eyes and tell them their parents’ work is not “essential.”

The lockdown rules, he believes, deny citizens their Constitutional right to earn a living.

Dinero then ripped up the fine on camera while supporters behind waved American flags and shouted, “We will not comply.”

Robby Dinero, the owner of Athletes Unleashed, tells WBEN that this protest today is about one thing: Freedom. They’re protesting the continued lockdown and he said they’re not able to get customers and because of the shutdown, they can’t replace them. pic.twitter.com/zf1wHgcloy

— WBEN NewsRadio 930AM (@NewsRadio930) November 23, 2020

Confrontation With Business Owners and Authorities Goes Viral

Last week, Dinero held a meeting with business owners inside his gym. He explained that the meeting was a protest of New York’s regulations that have closed gyms, salons, and other businesses deemed nonessential.

Oddly enough, despite the state’s blind eye to riots under the guise of ‘protests’ over the summer, authorities took issue with this particular peaceful protest. Sheriffs and the health inspector showed up and things escalated as the business owners refused to let them on the property without a proper warrant.

“Get out! Get out!” they repeatedly yelled.

As the authorities leave, one protester can be heard shouting, “Take your Commie s*** elsewhere!”

Cuomo has been regulating everything in his state during the pandemic, from what time New Yorkers can eat in restaurants to what they can eat in restaurants, and on to what people can do in their own home. His constitutional overreach has prompted several sheriffs to refuse to enforce his orders. 

Cuomo responded by calling any sheriff who refuses to enforce his edicts a “dictator.” He said that without a hint of irony.

Some fascinating new details have emerged regarding last Sunday’s (11/22) unprecedented visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Saudi Arabia.

First to recap, amid widespread reports that the Saudis will be the next Arab country to normalize ties with the Jewish state, after the UAE and Bahrain were the first to do so, Netanyahu met with crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS) the Saudi city of Neom. It was also in the presence of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

This was reported as a “covert meeting” – also given Riyadh officially denies it took place while it was widely acknowledged in Israeli and international press. The two leaders reportedly discussed joint efforts to counter Iran, an issue which already saw intelligence and operations sharing in places like Syria.

Reuters on Friday released new bombshell information alleging the whole meeting with Netanyahu was done without the approval or even knowledge of the Saudi head of state, King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

The Times of Israel also underscored that “Saudi Arabia’s King Salman was reportedly kept out of the loop about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s secretive trip to the kingdom this week for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.” And further:

Quoting a Saudi source and a foreign diplomat in Riyadh, Reuters reported Friday that normalization with Israel appeared off the table as long as the Saudi monarch is alive — an analysis also made Thursday by a senior Israeli source cited by Israeli TV.

Given the king’s age and increased reported senility, MbS has in recent years acted as de facto head of the kingdom, but it remains an incredibly bold move (the meeting with Israel’s leader) especially given King Salman is said to be against any ‘normalization’ with Israel. 

And then there’s this incident from thie G-20 the prior week… the video was said to have been intentionally leaked:

#Saudi King Salman does not remember where was the last #G20 summit and he doesn’t remember if he participated in that summit.
Saudi CP #MBS tells him that he (MBS) went instead of the King for the Japan summit. https://t.co/Zk43ChU69b

— Nabeel Nowairah (@NabeelNowairah) November 21, 2020

“A video was leaked during the G20 summit which showed MbS correcting the confused king’s recollection, a leak which sources said was intentional,” according to Reuters.

It appears MbS plans to further sideline his father especially when it comes to foreign policy, relying on the ‘poor health’ angle to argue Salman is incapable of making crucial decisions as official head of state.

Submitted by Market Crumbs,

Last month we wrote about the strength in the sports card market and how blue chip sports cards may actually be a better investment than blue chip stocks, at least over the last decade.

The Daily Mail says data from PWCC—which manages the largest trading card auction venue in the world, shows the index of the top-performing 500 cards had a return on investment of 216% since 2008 compared to 135% for the S&P 500.

“The market’s just on fire,” PWCC director of business development Jesse Craig told the DailyMail.com.

Another corner of the collectors world that is on fire is the market for rare video games. Driven by nostalgia and a flood of money, the last few months has seen record prices paid for video games.

In July, a copy of Super Mario Bros. brought a winning bid of $114,000 and set a new record for the most ever paid for a video game. The video game, which is the first in the popular Super Mario Bros. series, was one of the first variants produced after Nintendo began sealing the games in shrink-wrap in 1985.

“The demand for this game was extremely high, and if any lot in the sale could hit a number like that, it was going to be this one,” Heritage Auctions’ Director of Video Games Valarie McLeckie said.

With just over four months having passed since the copy of Super Mario Bros. set a new record, it was easily topped by a $156,000 winning bid last Friday for a sealed copy of 1990’s Super Mario Bros. 3. Heritage Auctions said 20 bidders were trying to acquire the video game following an opening bid of $62,500.

This particular game is a rarity for the way the word “Bros.” is printed on the front cover, slightly covering Mario’s famous white glove. This particular cover indicates it’s the earliest version of Super Mario Bros. 3 that was produced.

“We couldn’t be more pleased about breaking the world record for the second time in the same year,” McLeckie said. “That said, it’s no surprise that another Mario game, which so many of us grew up with, would set the new bar.

It’s not just Super Mario Bros. games attracting top dollar. A Pokémon “Red Version” for Nintendo’s GameBoy auctioned for $84,000 last week, marking a record price for a Pokémon title and more than four times the pre-sale estimate. At July’s auction, 27 bidders attempted to acquire a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! before it ended up selling for $50,400.

With virtually every asset soaring in price, who knows which nostalgic item from your childhood will be the next hot collectors item.

Over 60 protesters were arrested in anti-lockdown demonstrations on Saturday, as activists clashed with police who sought to break it up.

If only it was a BLM demonstration.

Nobody can answer the question sufficiently.

Why is there a 2 tier policing system in the UK that treats lockdown protesters like criminals while literally kneeling and bowing for Black Lives Matter? https://t.co/yTkabMfVEa

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 28, 2020

According to The Guardian, “officers were attempting to disperse the protesters after the Metropolitan police argued the demonstration was unlawful under coronavirus bans on gatherings after the removal of the specific protest exemption.”

Rights groups, however, believe the protests should be permitted under the “reasonable excuse” law, and called the de-facto ban as “alarming.”

First arrest at antilockdown protest taking place at King’s Cross Station, London. Police cited covid restrictions before the arrest. #kingscross #antilockdown pic.twitter.com/AuqMKk2h0P

— Urban Pictures (@Urban_Pictures) November 28, 2020

Officers faced jeers from demonstrators and chants of “shame on you” and “choose your side” as they sought to end the protest and enter crowds to make arrests, some forcibly. They were also pelted with missiles on at least one occasion, video footage showed.

The Metropolitan police tweeted: “Officers have made over 60 arrests following groups gathering in London today. These were for a number of different offences, including breaching coronavirus restrictions. We expect this number to rise. We continue to urge people to go home.” –The Guardian

“Please ensure you have access to social media throughout the day, as the rally will need to be reactive to circumstances,” wrote anti-lockdown group StandUpX in a Telegram post. “Bring pots, pans, whistles, party horns and anything you can to be heard,” the post continues.

“I got pushed about by police for no reason earlier, just cause they’re squashing up anybody that wants to complain. This is no free country,” one protester told Sky News, while another held a sign saying “Your fear leads to losing our liberty.”

The protest comes weeks after 190 people were arrested on Nov. 5 during another lockdown demonstration.

According to police spokesman Stuart Bell, “This type of behaviour not only breaks the law, it also risks spreading the virus between multiple areas of the country. It is for this reason that we urge people not to travel into London and this is also why we will be taking appropriate enforcement action if this happens.”

We assume he’s OK with BLM protests.

Here we go again. Why do the Met #TakeTheKnee to #BlackLivesMatter & soft-soap #ExtinctionRebellion – yet send in the bovver-boys to an anti-lockdown protest, or when somebody they don’t like speaks at Speaker’s Corner?

It’s blatant two-tiered policing #londonprotest pic.twitter.com/jq2Pn5fRpL

— Martin Daubney (@MartinDaubney) November 28, 2020

“In practice, police are increasingly treating protests as banned,” said Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo, who has campaigned for civil liberties during the lockdown. “The incompetence and casual authoritarianism demonstrated by the Met police here is breathtaking. The right to protest is the bedrock of any democracy. It’s clear to me that there’s a deliberate attempt to chill that right and misrepresent the law,” she added.

“As the government takes unprecedented steps to interfere with our rights, sidelines parliament and attacks the rule of law, undermining protest is another threat to our ability to hold it to account and stand up to power. Protest and dissent are the lifeblood of a healthy democracy, and even more so important in a public emergency,” said Gracie Bradley, interim director of rights group “Liberty.”

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Our national claim of moral superiority is no longer plausible.

A very strong case can be made that America is now a moral cesspool. Consider just three cases: Jeffrey Epstein, the CEO of Pfizer and JPMorgan Chase.

Sadly, Epstein is the epitome of America’s elite: getting away with abusing children for years, if not decades; when finally caught a few years ago, escaping with a legal wrist-slap; acquiring a fortune of $200 million without creating any jobs, innovations or value; buying his way into the good graces of Harvard, MIT and a seemingly endless parade of celebrities, politicians, scientists, etc.

And very par for the course in America’s elite: Epstein’s crimes were known by America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but rather than indict him, they made him an “intelligence asset” that had to protected from exposure to the consequences of the rule of law.

When some tiny sliver of light was shed on his decades of blatant corruption and exploitation, a sliver that implicated the wealthy and powerful, then Epstein was dispatched in classic Deep State fashion, in a manner that speaks volumes about the banana “republic” nature of America.

Pfizer’s CEO arranged a massive sale of Pfizer stock and then timed the release of overhyped vaccine data to maximize his private gains.

Nothing illegal here, just another example of what I call legalized looting.

JPMorgan Chase manipulated markets to maximize its gains, and its $1 billion fine is just the cost of doing business in a pervasively corrupt society and economy. Nobody ever goes to prison for these billion-dollar skims, scams, frauds amd embezzlements; financial criminals get a get out of jail free card with every crime.

These three examples are just a few of thousands of examples of insider skimming and gaming the system, abuse of power, fraud, pay-to-play, embezzlement, racketeering and other forms of corruption that enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Whenever I mention America’s moral decay, somebody is always quick to discount the decay with cliches such as “there’s always been corruption” or “it’s human nature, you’ll never get rid of it.”

These pathetically flimsy excuses mask the reality that America’s moral decay has reached extremes that eventually trigger collapse in the financial, social and political realms.

The decay of civic virtue and the social contract is so gradual that only the few who recall specific set-points from previous generations even notice the advancing rot.

A third of the Roman Senate was killed in combat during the disastrous defeat at Cannae; can we imagine a third of the U.S. Senate putting their own lives at risk? No, we cannot; that level of sacrifice is unthinkable in America today. The protected elites have no real skin in the game. The consequences of their mismanagement fall on the unprotected many.

Can we imagine the two eldest sons of a present-day political scion volunteering for combat overseas, with one killed in combat and the other severely wounded? (Joe Kennedy, Jr. and John F. Kennedy in World War II.) Such elite sacrifice is unimaginable in today’s America.

As for the social contract: to saddle young people with highly uncertain prospects with $1.7 trillion in student loan debt would have been unimaginable, If not criminal, two generations ago. Now this ruthless exploitation of students–in essence, punitive debt-serfdom that enriches the wealthiest few who own the student loans–is now the norm. Parasitic elites sucking the powerless dry is now the status quo in America.

This academic paper (via A.P.) sheds light on the severe consequences of moral decay: Moral Collapse and State Failure: A View From the Past.

In summary, the authors examined premodern states / empires with an eye on socio-economic systems that generated a social environment which provided real benefits to citizens via a moral code and good government practices.

(I would include the early Tang and Song dynasties in China of examples of such systems that were not democratic but which offered a judiciary of recourse, investment in infrastructure and other forms of public good, rule of law and social mobility.)

Yes, elite corruption is ever-present, but good governance requires limiting elite corruption as part of the social contract in which citizens support the state (paying taxes, etc.) because the state provides for the common good.

The authors point out that citizens expect relatively little of autocracies in the way of public good because the citizenry know the autocracy is a self-serving, corrupt elite. But governments that earned the consent of the governed by providing for the common good are held to a higher standard.

When the moral code that requires service to the public good decays, the legitimacy of the state collapses. Here is a quote from the paper:

“Moral failure of the leadership in this social setting brings calamity because the state’s lifeblood–its citizen-produced resource-base–is threatened when there is loss of confidence in the state, which brings in its wake social division, strife, flight, and a reduced motivation to comply with tax obligations.

In the resulting weakened fiscal economy, services that citizens have come to depend on fail, including public goods and administrative control of corruption.

To realize and sustain good government is especially difficult owing in large part to the importance of shared moral obligations between citizens and the state.”

In other words, a strict moral code that requires elites to devote resources and leadership for the public good is the critical foundation of the entire social, economic and political order. When this moral code decays, the state and its elites both lose legitimacy and the consent of the governed.

Put another way: once the elites have decayed to exploitive, self-serving, profiteering parasites, the public has no interest in supporting the state or its elites. Rather, they will cheer the collapse and ruin of the parasitic elites.

The explosive rise of elites’ wealth and power in the past few decades has been documented and charted, and I’ve repeatedly posted charts showing that virtually all the real income gains of the past 20 years have flowed to the top 0.1%. This RAND study found that America’s elites siphoned $50 trillion into their own pockets in the past two generations: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018.

This is the chilling summation of America’s terminal moral decay from Moral Collapse and State Failure: A View From the Past:

“Many citizens perceive that they have little stake in what should be a democratic society.

Decline in citizen confidence is compounded by a great economic transition in the US, a U-turn over the last five decades in wealth and income inequalities.

These economic shifts are undergirded by a new ethos and practices that enshrine shareholder value, personal freedom, nepotism, cronyism, the comingling of state and personal resources, and narcissistic aggrandizement in ways rarely seen in the early history of our Republic.”

Our national claim of moral superiority is no longer plausible: America is a moral cesspool that cannot be drained.

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