by Andy Hoffman, Miles Franklin:

Following up this week’s “historic market manipulation is setting the stage for catastrophe” theme, here’s how the U.S. PPT/Fed/ESF and the Chinese “national team” responded to dramatic, across-the-board PiMBEEB headlines yesterday. In the U.S.’s case, a dramatic plunge in April construction spending; a May autosales “bloodbath; the downgrade of Illinois to one notch above junk status; and plunging commodities, particularly crude oil. And in China’s case, a dramatic plunge in its May PMI Manufacturing Index, to a recessionary 49.4 reading. Yes, the good old fashioned “dead ringer” – which has been propping the “Dow Jones Propaganda Average” for at least five years; and in China’s case, the two years since the Shanghai Stock Exchange crashed, prompting China’s government to have their own “point of no return” moment – after which, they started manipulating all markets, all the time.

Conversely, mere hours after publishing “ultra-bullish trends in the 5½ year downtrend line war,” Precious Metals did something I literally haven’t seen in years. I.e., come all the way back from steep, Cartel-orchestrated early morning losses to end “strongly” – which I put in quotes, as gold ended up a whopping dollar; whilst silver, which at one point was down nearly $0.30/oz for absolutely no reason other than Cartel naked shorting, ended down $0.01/oz, after being maniacally “DLITG’d,” or “don’t let it turn green’d,” in the day’s final moments. Which the crybaby Cartel of course “fought back” against with a stronger than usual “sixth sigma manipulation proof” raid in the one-hour, ultra-thinly traded “aftermarket,” from 4:00 to 5:00 PM EST; and of course, this morning’s 848th “2:15 AM” raid of the past 968 trading days, leading up to today’s LOL, “all-important” jobs report. Still, die-hard Cartel watchers like myself take note of such things; as trust me, yesterday’s “unusual” PM rebound – as in, the type of thing that hasn’t occurred in at least a decade – meant something.

In this case, it clearly meant inside information of today’s jobs report; which just came out – and frankly, was an unmitigated disaster. Disaster, to anyone that still believes the economy is “recovering” – let alone, expanding; anyone still pretending there’s a such thing as “Trump-flation,” now that the economy, interest rates, the economy, the dollar, and Trump’s campaign promise hopes are simultaneously plunging; and most importantly, a Cartel running out of “ammo” to hold Precious Metal prices at their lowest-ever inflation-adjusted prices, per the principal topic of today’s truly all-important article.

Just 138,000 “jobs” were created in May, versus the “consensus estimate” of 185,000. Not to mention, yesterday’s comically ridiculous ADP jobs number of 253,000 – which frankly, may have put the final nail in the coffin of credibility ADP should never have been given in the first place, due the massive downward revisions its reports typically require, and absolutely ZERO correlation with the BLS’s equally useless reports. And not only did the 138,000 “jobs” – which I put in quotes, because the BLS literally fabricates such numbers out of thin air – come in way below estimates, but they included a 230,000 job birth/death model gain, despite the fact that more small businesses have died since the 2008 crisis, than have been “birthed.” And, I kid you not, a loss of 367,000 full-time jobs. Worse yet, April’s “better than expected” 211,000 job number was revised to just 174,000; whilst March’s 79,000 job fabrication gain was revised down to 50,000.

Next, there’s the horrifying “details,” like the LOL, decline in the “unemployment rate” from 4.4% to a fresh decade-low of 4.3%, solely due to a plunge in the labor participation rate, from 61.9% to 61.7%; i.e, barely above the five-decade low of 61.4% hit last year, as a whopping 608,000 people left the labor force in May alone. Throw in the barely positive “wage gains” – likely, due principally to government-mandated minimum wage increases, that are causing already dying retailers to lay off workers en masse; plus, the fact that manufacturing employment declined; and we’re talking about one of the worst jobs reports in memory. Which, when combined with the aforementioned calamities of other hard data, from retail sales; to construction spending; to factory orders; to this morning’s equally catastrophic, massively worse-than-expected international trade balance report; and one wonders how on Earth we are not printing negative GDP numbers.

Or better yet, why the Fed is even considering rate hikes – like the one projected for later this month with 93% certainty by the markets. Which, if undertaken, would still keep the Fed Funds rate at just 1%; providing little ammo, and even less credibility, for the Fed to utilize when it inevitably is forced to abandon its lie about intending to materially tighten monetary policy, into an environment of “dotcom valuations in a Great Depression Era.” A Great Depression Era, I might add, characterized by skyrocketing, unpayable, unprecedented debt loads – of individuals, to corporations, and sovereign governments themselves. No one more so, than the U.S. government itself!

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