Gold, Silver, S&P 500 And NDX Daily Charts - June 9, 2016

"For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to Heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, 'Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!'

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
'Weigh'd in the balance, and found light!'

Jonathan Swift, The Run Upon the Bankers

Gold and silver have come back sharply to the levels that they had occupied before the smackdown related to options expiration.

The resurgence was assisted by the rather shocking Jobs Report that seemed to cool the ardor that the markets had for a Fed rate increase.

I suspect that the Fed will try to squeeze in at least one rate increase before the Presidential elections. I don't think they can do 50 bp but a 25 bp increase might be feasible with the right wording.

June seems a bit of a stretch, but it does leave the door open for another increase should they find a favorable set of data to smooth their way.

In a very real sense the interest rates do not matter all that much. Most of the cheap money is flowing into speculative activities of the same jokers who overturned the financial markets and tanked the real economy in the first place.

This is the price of a failure to reform. This is the outcome when one tries to serve two masters. This is the last stand of a failed ideology in the face of hard reality.

This is not policy, it is the hypocritical nicety that excuses mere looting by the powerful in the aftermath of a crisis.

Negative interest rates are the product of disordered economic thinking. They are the result of an inability to confront the real, more serious problems in the banking system. And so like so many compromises they are producing unintended effects that are actually counter-productive.

And this is why gold and silver are so attractive as a safe haven refuge, and why disordered minds despise them.