OK… I heard a great song on the radio this morning on my way to work… And I said to myself… Chuck, now that’s a great song to start a day with, that everyone should hear each day! It’s a song from the 60’s (of course!), by the Rascals, called… It’s a Beautiful Morning… Here’s the first verse, and if you know the song, I’m sure you’ll want to sing along, but if not… Look it up, I’m sure, you’ll agree that it’s a great way to start a day!

It’s a beautiful mornin’ Ahhh
I think I’ll go outside a while
An jus’ smile
Just take in some clean fresh air boy
Ain’t no sense in stayin’ inside
If the weather’s fine an’ you got the time
It’s your chance to wake up and plan another brand new day
Either way
It’s a beautiful mornin’ Ahhh

OK… I know, some of you are getting ticked right now, because you remind me all the time, you don’t read this to sing songs, etc. But hey! You’ve got to have a song in your heart, I truly believe that!

One of the reasons I thought it to be OK to go off on that tangent was the fact that the currencies remain in a range… The euro’s range has been between 1.41 and 1.43… One day up a bit, the next day down… No direction… I think the culprit behind this is that there are so many people on each side of the fence right now, claiming that they know what is going to happen to the economy… I, for one, still believe that we’re going to experience a “W” affect…

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist (and don’t get me started on the questionable people that have won Nobel Prizes), believes there is a “significant” chance of a “W”… “it’s not inevitable, but there’s a “significant chance of a “W”…” he went on to say… “It’s not clear that the U.S. is recovering in a sustainable way.”

So… There you go… In the past two days, you’ve heard me, Bill Gross, and now Joseph Stiglitz, all talk about a “W”, which in it’s simplistic form is double dipping for the economy…

As I said yesterday morning… The real winners of the day were the Precious Metals… It could be repeated this morning too! And most likely Monday morning too! Gold is taking off in flight right now, and if you blinked the last two days, you’ve missed it! It’s off about $3 bucks this morning, but give it a chance to have investors see it heading to $1,000 again!

The thing I think you need to think about here is the fact that there are tons, and tons of money sitting in bank accounts right now, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that money begin to make its way toward Gold purchases! This is normal isn’t it? I mean, an asset class, like Precious Metals / Gold, begins to move higher, and then the money begins chasing the price higher and higher… There’s an old saying about how you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink… That’s how I feel about Gold… I’ve have given the wink and nod for so many years about Gold… But I can’t make you buy it!

Ok… Enough… Let’s go to the Eurozone and see what’s up there! The European Central Bank (ECB) met yesterday, and you may recall that I said that the markets were looking for ECB President, Trichet to get them “pumped up” on economic growth expectations… I said the risk for the euro yesterday was that Trichet disappoints the markets expectations… Well, I believe that’s one of the reasons for the move down from 1.4330 yesterday to the low 1.42 handle…

Trichet basically told the markets that it’s premature to call the financial crisis over… And that was enough for the markets… But in reality, Trichet did the right thing… The ECB does not, bow to the markets! If it wasn’t the right time to talk about growth expectations, then don’t do it! I raise a glass to Claude Trichet this morning…

I mentioned that the Trichet statement was one of the reasons the euro had a tough row to hoe yesterday, the other reason was the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims… Weekly Initial Jobless Claims printed at 570,000 (last month was revised up to 574,000), and the Continuing Claims continue to be quite the heavy load for this economy. Continuing Claims hit 6234K! People who know that these things don’t stack up when talking about a strong economy, took money off the risk assets table…

Yesterday, I talked about how the Fed officials had begun to talk about exiting the stimulus measures, or monetary candy, as I prefer to call it, but Treasury Sec. Geithner, spoke out against that. Well, we have a G-20 meeting that begins today in London… I suspect that G-20 will issue a communiqué that basically said that the members do not believe that now is the time to exit the monetary candy…

The price of Oil rebounded yesterday for the first time in a week… I would have to think that with the price of Gold heading toward $1,000 again, it’s taking Oil along for the ride! The weak dollar, feeds higher Oil prices… I would think that we all would recall that to be the case, from the spring and early summer of 2008! The euro was 1.60, Gold was near $1,000, and Oil was $140+!

With both Gold and Oil prices percolating… The Canadian dollar / loonie gets to get in the game! The loonie is so dependent on commodity prices, but especially those of Oil and Gold. So… If this rise of Oil and Gold becomes a trend, I think you could look for loonies to make a run at parity again… But, only if, the rise in prices of Oil and Gold become a trend…

Well… All eyes are focused on the Jobs Jamboree this morning. Hmmm… The ridiculous Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will print their adjusted nonfarm Payrolls this morning… It is forecast to show job losses of 230,000… I know, you’re saying but Chuck, just earlier you told us the Job Claims filed just last week was 570,000, how do we only show 230,000 for the month? Ahhh grasshopper… It’s two different methods of reporting… The Jobless Claims is a “real” number… They have the claims and all they have to do is add them up! So… In my mind wouldn’t it make sense to just add up 4 of these for the monthly total? Unfortunately, that’s not what the BLS does… Instead they do a “survey”… And then make adjustments where they believe they need to be made, because they’re so smart and know all these things… NOT! Geez Louise, even though I was being facetious I still can’t believe my fingers would allow me to write that the BLS was smart!

So… We get stuck with a massaged survey… But, it is what it is, and nothing more… So… I guess we carry on despite the dolts we have to deal with and their cooked books! But, be it as may be, the 230,000 job losses is still bad… Let’s go back a year ago, before we had the eye-opening 600,000 job loss months… If the BLS had printed a 230,000 job loss month, the Chicken Littles of the world would have been screaming that the sky was falling, for crying out loud! But now? The dolts will be spouting off about how that’s a “good number”!

I had better stop there, I was really beginning to pound on the keys! Speaking of which, we were talking the other day, and saying that keyboards some day, will be able to describe the emotion of the person typing! Wouldn’t that be cool?

I’m working on a report about what the IMF did last weekend that most people don’t even know about… But, I’ve got more research to do, so, hopefully I can have that ready for the Review & Focus monthly letter that goes to customers of EverBank World Markets.

I just did a video the other day on a brief but chock-full-0-information history of the dollar. You all know that I write another monthly letter for my friends over at the Sovereign Society, called… The Currency Capitalist. You actually have to pay to receive that letter, but as a subscriber you not only get the letter, but weekly videos of me, answering questions that readers send in… Pretty cool, eh? You can subscribe here… https://www.web-purchases.com/CUC/WCUCJ900/landing

OK… That was a shameless plug… But I couldn’t pass it up! Besides this I my letter, I can talk about anything I want!

The Chinese renminbi finally moved below 6.83, which it held for months! It will be interesting to see if this move higher VS the dollar continues, or if the renminbi pops back over 6.83 next week… I’ll keep an eye out for that!

Well… We went through yesterday, and touched on what’s going on today… (Jobs Jamboree and G-20), and spent a lot of time talking about Gold… It’s a Beautiful Morning isn’t it?

Currencies today 9/4/09: A$ .8430, kiwi .6845, C$ .9150, euro 1.4270, sterling 1.6365, Swiss .9415, rand 7.6775, krone 6.0450, SEK 7.2120, forint 192, zloty 2.8850, koruna 17.90, RUB 31.65, yen 92.80, sing 1.4380, HKD 7.75, INR 48.88, China 6.8299, pesos 13.55, BRL 1.8590, dollar index 78.34, Oil $68.50, 10-year 3.37%, Silver $16.07, and Gold… $990.75

That’s it for today… It’s a Friday before a 3-day holiday weekend! YAHOO! Tomorrow, my beloved Missouri Tigers start their football season VS Illinois… M-I-Z! (you’re supposed to come back with Z-O-U!) The Butler family is going to the game (except darling daughter Dawn and beautiful Delaney Grace). Sunday is the annual Butler House end of summer bar-b-que with neighbors, family and friends. It’s always a good day! And Monday I’ll try to relax and recharge the batteries, for I’m dragging the line today! Next week, the NFL season begins… WOW! All these sports going on at one time is too much excitement for me! HA! Well, I guess I’ll end this here, and hope you have a beautiful morning… And a Fantastico Friday!

Source: A Jobs Jamboree Friday!

Silver fared much worse than gold, as it finished almost 40 cents off its London highs.

Friday’s open interest changes for gold showed yet another decline…this time 3,655 contracts. Silver o.i. was also down….a sizeable 1,046 contracts. This will all be in Friday’s COT…and it will be of great interest to see the changes for this past reporting week. The cut-off for this week’s report is today at the close of New York trading.

From the usual NY commentator comes the following…”John Reade of UBS (NYSE:UBS) has emerged as the most candid of the bullion bank commentators. This morning of Indian demand he said… ‘UBS is seeing solid Indian jewellery interest and ongoing safe-haven physical investment flows from Europe and the US at the moment. High volatitily increases the risks of any short position in gold…and getting short when India wants gold is never, in our experience, a sensible idea. We hold our one and three month forecasts for gold at US$800/oz.’ Reade also makes a useful comment on the CFTC data in the Commitment of Traders report: ‘net longs fell by 1.2 million ounces to 5.92moz, the smallest since May 2005 and the second smallest since July 2003. But there is one crucial difference between now and other recent lows in the net long position – the size of the gross short position, at 8.12moz, is sizeable and increased by 0.6moz last week. Speculative longs in gold are greatly reduced with some decent sized Comex shorts in evidence’.”

I see that Bloomberg is reporting that China’s gold production for 2008 is expected to be in the neighbourhood of 285-300 tonnes. Iran reported over the weekend that it had converted some of its fiat currency into gold. And in silver news, I received an e-mail from Jeff Clark, Casey Research’s editor for Big Gold, and he had some silver news of note. It a Bloomberg story dated November 3rd, Jim Rogers said that “silver will outperform gold as a hedge against inflation”…”It’s been beaten down horribly.”…”If you put a gun to my head and said you have to buy one, I would buy silver rather than gold.” From your lips…to God’s ears, Jimmy!

In other news I see that Fannie is looking for $13.8 billion. Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are looking for $50B between them…and San Jose, CA has their hand out for $14B!!! And in a CBS story, Chicago’s mayor Daley says “prepare for mass layoffs”. Talking about mass layoffs, Citigroup (NYSE:C)is going to be giving out 50,000 pink slips. The ‘long knives’ are out in the mutual fund industry as well. Merry Christmas to all. And lastly, retail sales fell 10.9% annualized, in the three months ending in October. This is something beyond recession.

click to enlarge

Today’s first story is from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph in London. “Russia has been losing $10B in foreign reserves a week since it snatched South Ossetia and ramped up the new Cold War with nuclear threats.” The article is entitled “Russia’s banal reality lies in between energy superpower and bankrupt state.” (Bankrupt state? How about the USA. – Ed) The story is linked here.

Although the G-20 meeting was a bust, there were a few more stories over the weekend about a return to some sort of gold standard. Here’s one from The Wall Street Journal entitled “Stable Money Is the Key to Recovery: How the G-20 can rebuild the ‘capitalism of the future’ “, and the link is here.

And lastly, here’s an interesting story from yahoo.com about the recovery of ancient gold and silver coins. The tribe is long gone, but its money is still pretty good. I wonder how Federal Reserve Notes would fare after being buried in the ground for over 2,000 years? Just asking. The link is here.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress…but then I repeat myself. – Mark Twain

As I mentioned before, the G-20 meeting amounted to nothing. The US economy and its financial system continue to implode…and there’s no end in sight. Almost every commodity on the planet is hugely oversold, and I still firmly believe that a rally is just around the corner…especially in gold and silver. Will we have to wait until December options expiry on the 20th and first day notice on the 29th are over before that happens? I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough.

And in a final note, I’d like to thank all of my readers who came up and introduced themselves to me at the (now ended) New Orleans Investment Conference. It was great meeting you all…and once again I (and the rest of the good folks that contribute to Casey’s Daily Resource Plus) thank you for taking the time to read our column every morning.

See you tomorrow.

Source: And Then There’s This…Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Well… Nothing has changed since I left you last Wednesday. The awful economic data just keeps piling on, and the dollar gets bid up on safe haven purchases. We did see the Eurozone and Japan announce that they are in a recession… Chris was kind enough to leave me the following, so here’s some more Chris….

“The dollar weakened slightly after the US Industrial production numbers showed a rebound in October. The 1.3% monthly gain sounds great, but it followed September’s drop of 3.7% due to the Gulf Coast hurricanes. After adjusting for the effect of the hurricanes and a strike at Boeing, output dropped .7 percent during each of the past two months. The trend continues to be very weak, and the recession which currently grips the US is now expected to last through 2010.

The US was rescued from the last two recessions by US consumers, who continued to borrow and spend right through the previous slowdowns. But we can’t count on consumers to pull us out of this one. Plummeting home values, dwindling incomes and the near disappearance of credit have proved a potent mixture for the US consumers. The number of personal bankruptcy filings jumped nearly 8 percent in October from September. Filings totaled 108,595, surpassing 100,000 for the first time since the bankruptcy laws were changed in 2005. The number of filings were up nearly 34 percent from October 2007, and are expected to total over 1.2 million for the year.

Not only are bankruptcy filings up, but most filers have much more credit card debt than in years past. A recent study found that the typical family who filed for bankruptcy in 2007 was carrying about 21 percent more in secured debt, and about 44 percent more in unsecured debts like credit cards than those that filed in 2001. Don’t count on US consumers to rescue us this time, so who will? Pelosi and President elect Obama are already talking about increasing government spending to try and borrow and spend our way out, but any stimulus or massive government projects will only add to the overall debt and increase the deficits. We are already being crushed by our debt load, and increasing it won’t be a long term positive for the US. The dollar continues to be propped up by safe haven purchases and the global deleveraging, but this dollar strength can’t continue. Once we return to the underlying fundamentals, the dollar will fall.”

OK… Thanks once again, Chris!

The BIG NEWS today should come in the form of a testimony by Treasury Sec. Paulson, regarding his TARP… This should be interesting folks… You see there is a whispering campaign to withdraw the “blank check” that lawmakers gave to Paulson and Fed Chairman, Big Ben Bernanke, and any attempt to not fully disclose the details of what has been given out to date, or… Any more changing of horses in the middle of the stream, could cause a ruckus. It could also cause the safe haven boys and girls to go “all in” on their safe haven purchases, because, it will be just like last week, when Paulson did change his course for the $700 Billion bailout money, and the blanket of “unknown” was cast upon the markets, and the risk takers ran for the hills.

In other words… The Trading Theme that is in place that rewards the dollar when things look darker in the U.S. will be working overtime, buying dollars…

For the sake of honesty… And not that I’m cheerleading the currencies (I get real tired of this… Recently I’ve had some readers turn on me and accuse me of “knowing nothing” and being nothing more than a “cheerleader”) Come on! Can’t you see the forest from the trees? This is simply telling it like it is… WE have a HUGE deficit problem, and unless you are willing to begin paying taxes that amount to about 75% of your income to pay the deficit down, then we need to get the dollar weaker now, for that’s the only way we’re going to be able to pay down the interest alone on these debt obligations is with a cheaper dollar! So, yes, I push for that dollar to get weaker now, so that the tax obligations of my kids and grand kids aren’t oppressive!

OK, sorry but I had to get that off my chest… So, for the sake of honesty, let’s hope Paulson comes to the lawmakers with a cup of honest, and let the chips fall where they will. Oh! And yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paulson is unlikely to launch new bailout (the used “rescue” but we all know what it is!) programs, saving his unused horde of cash to hand over to the new Treasury Sec. and say, “here you go, spend it wisely, but just between you and me, this isn’t enough to help anything”

Judging from happened in the overnight stock markets, with the risk takers nowhere to be found, the consensus being the overnight markets don’t believe Paulson will deliver the goods, and stocks sold off in Asia and early Europe… I suspect that the U.S. market will take a cue from those overnight markets as well, at least until Paulson talks… And the Dow only has 273.58 points to give before falling below 8,000… UGH!

All those “Safe Haven buyers” must really be “scaredy cats” because as I look at the bond screens, I see that you will get 13 basis points for a 3-month T-Bill, and 80 basis points for a 6-month T-Bill… By the time the broker takes his fee or commission you are left with nothing! So, that’s the same as putting the money under your mattress or stuffing it in coffee cans and burying it in the back yard! And, if you want to talk long notes and bonds… Well, you’ll have to go to the 30-year bond before you can get yield that comes near to covering the inflation rate! Uh-Oh! Negative real earnings for the “safe haven buyers”…

How long can that continue? How long… Can this be going on? How long… Can this be going on? How long are these guys and girls going to accept negative real earnings? That’s the $64 question… But, I have to believe that once these “safe haven buyers” decide that they’ve had enough, the unwinding will go very quickly, and the whiplash we’ll receive from watching yields turn around will hurt!

And, with the unwinding of the “safe haven buys” one would think that the dollar gets put on it ear once again… That is unless there’s a new “hoola-hoop” for investors to move into… But since there’s no “hoola-hoop” to speak of, and probably won’t be, given the fact that the regulators will be scrutinizing “new instruments” to make sure they “don’t get fooled again”…

Did you see the news yesterday that Citgroup plans to cut 50,000 jobs? That’s just awful! And if true, will be the latest jolt to Wall Street! Chief Executive Vikram Pandit addressed employees in a town hall-style meeting Monday morning, giving them the bad news. These job cuts won’t take place overnight… And that they plan to be finished with them by the 3rd QTR of 2009.

The data cupboard today will give us a look at the Producer Price Index (PPI) (wholesale inflation), which is expected to fall from previous printings, as Oil prices have fallen faster than anyone and I mean anyone could have imagined. We’ll also see the TIC Flows (net security purchase by foreigners) for September… This data should see some improvement, but remain well below the figure needed to finance the current account deficit.

Yesterday, Capacity Utilization printed for October, and improved (on first glance, wait for the revision) on September’s revised downward figure of 75.5%… Capacity Utilization has long been a fave piece of economic data of mine due to the fact that it is one of the very few / rare pieces of data that is forward looking. Capacity Utilization weakness was one of the factors I used in calling the recession in the U.S. back in January. Capacity Utilization and the ISM Index (manufacturing)…

So, how about that stirring communiqué’ from the G-20 crowd! I was moved! The chills went down my spine, my eyes filled with tears of joy, it was something to behold! Oh? They didn’t do all that? I must have been dreaming, eh?

What a joke! These leaders from around the world met and didn’t come up with anything other than rhetorical direction only? Fire them all! Throw the bums out! This is ridiculous! It just shows me that they are probably more interested in pointing fingers than actually agreeing to work together to deal with this global problem.

So… Look for more of the Trading Theme today, folks. The deeper, darker, more dangerous clouds are moving back in over the U.S. economy.

Currencies today 11/18/08: A$ .6465, kiwi .55, C$ .8115, euro 1.2635, sterling 1.5040, Swiss .8345, ISK 182, rand 10.2850, krone 7.0180, SEK 8.0425, forint 214.40, zloty 3.0475, koruna 20.4280, yen 96.10, baht 35, sing 1.5270, HKD 7.75, INR 49.65, China 6.8280, pesos 13.22, BRL 2.3215, dollar index 87.07, Oil $54.80, Silver $9.35, and Gold… $736.75

Source: TARP Testimony Today