Monday, November 5, 2012

Fed Allowing Lehman-Type Blowup To Occur

Today James Turk spoke with King World News about the Fed purposely allowing a Lehman-type blowup to occur, the stunning news about what is taking place with the Fed’s balance sheet, Friday’s gold and silver smash, as well as what to expect going forward.

Here is what Turk had to say:  “When we get days like Friday with big price drops in the precious metals, Eric, two things come to mind.  First, there have been a lot of similar smashes in precious metal prices over the past decade, particularly on a Friday.  Why on Fridays?”
“These takedowns are intended to have the maximum psychological effect.  The best way for the commercial shorts and the central planners to do that is to keep people pondering over the weekend about the big price drop.  Big price drops often get some weak hands shaken out of the market, particularly when the weak hands have a whole weekend to worry about it.

It also gets people who intend to buy gold and silver to put off their purchase, either because they are too worried to buy or because they think they might get a lower price if they wait to buy at a later date....
“However, the reality is that the day-to-day movements should not distract you from the main goal, which is to continue accumulating gold and silver because they remain good value and are in important long-term uptrends.

Friday is also another good example of how the shorts and central planners have been killing the black-box short-term trend followers who mindlessly do whatever their mathematical models tell them.  These models have the pretense of sophistication, but one really doesn't need complex math to see whether a price is in an uptrend or downtrend.  Over the past week or two the trend-followers have been selling their long positions and going short.

As of Friday's big price drop, the last of these short-term trend followers threw in the towel.  All of the black-box trend followers are now on the short side.  The sales by these trend followers give the commercial shorts and central planners the opportunity to buy back their existing in-the-money short positions from when they sold everything they could - even throwing the kitchen sink at gold at $1780 and silver ay $35 to keep them below these key resistance levels. 

These black-box trend followers have been buying high and selling low time and again, getting their pockets picked in the process.  But Friday also highlights something else that is ominous.  When markets sell-off across the board, with the exception of the dollar, which receives the proceeds from various asset sales, it raises the possibility that a Lehman-type blow-up is in the cards.  The weird thing is that the Fed may be allowing it to happen.  Here's a curious observation, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

It's been nearly two months since the Fed announced QE3, but the Fed hasn't been buying any securities.  Its balance sheet is the same size today as it was in mid-September when it announced QE3.  Why is that?  Is Mr. Bernanke purposely not increasing the Fed's balance sheet so that he can't be accused of juicing the markets before the election?  Or is there some other factor at work here?

It is a real puzzle, but we know why the stock market is in a funk.  The Fed has not been adding any juice to the system.  In fact, the amount of total assets in its balance sheet is basically unchanged since last summer.  The stock market rose in anticipation of QE3, but is now starting to falter because Mr Bernanke has not opened up the tap, despite his September announcement to do so.  As a consequence, the stock market is turning lower, and we have some knock-on pressure being applied to gold and silver.

This observation goes back to an expression coined by Richard Russell which I believe he started in the 1980s - “inflate or die.”  If the Fed doesn't start pumping juice soon, the stock market could tank.  It's not the economy that has kept stock prices up at these levels; it is Fed money printing.

But importantly, gold and silver do not need Fed money printing to climb higher.  They are safe havens that do not have any counterparty risk because physical gold and physical silver are tangible assets.  So regardless whether it is Fed money printing or the need for a safe haven, I expect gold and silver to resume their decade-long upward climb.

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