Stocks And Precious Metals Charts - A Banquet Of Consequences

"Twenty-five years ago, when most economists were extolling the virtues of financial deregulation and innovation, a maverick named Hyman P. Minsky maintained a more negative view of Wall Street; in fact, he noted that bankers, traders, and other financiers periodically played the role of arsonists, setting the entire economy ablaze. Wall Street encouraged businesses and individuals to take on too much risk, he believed, generating ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. The only way to break this pattern was for the government to step in and regulate the moneymen.

Many of Minsky’s colleagues regarded his 'financial-instability hypothesis,' which he first developed in the nineteen-sixties, as radical, if not crackpot. Today, with the subprime crisis seemingly on the verge of metamorphosing into a recession, references to it have become commonplace on financial web sites and in the reports of Wall Street analysts. Minsky’s hypothesis is well worth revisiting."

John Cassidy, The Minsky Moment, The New Yorker, 4 February 2008.

"The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle.Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too."

Stephen Covey

Stocks dove and the precious metals overnight as the Chinese press cast gloom on the rosy predictions coming out of the White House with regard to the China-US trade talks.

And stocks recovered their losses and posted new gains as the White House issued some rosy forecasts about the meeting between Trumpolini and the Chinese Vice-Premier tomorrow.

And so the Dollar and the metals sold off, the metals having an assist from the big shorts on the Comex who sold gleefully into the market, driving the price lower.

But all is not happiness on Wall Street, despite the big drop in the VIX today, and the continuing faith that Desperate Donnie will do whatever it takes to prop the markets in order to uplift his flagging interests and prospects.

And the Street and their assorted enablers and sycophants are edgy, with fears that their easy money good times may be over, if Elizabeth Warren cometh.

Have a pleasant evening.

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