by Dave Kranzler, Investment Research Dynamics:

“I’m just gonna say it like it is – that was a shit-show.”  Dana Bash, CNN in reference to the “Presidential” debate.   “The debate was a national mortification – ‘shit-show’ was an understatement” – Chris Powell, GATA.

Last night’s debate was nothing short of a complete tragedy:  the tragedy of a collapsing empire.  I saw an ad on one of the financial propaganda cable channels that billed the debate as “The Main Event”  as if it were to be promoted like a championship boxing match.

Politicians and the political environment are nothing more than a reflection of the surrounding system and populace at large.  The entire U.S. system is a shit-show.  The financial markets have become so disconnected from the underlying economic and fiscal reality that it takes several trillion dollars in monetary intervention from the Central Bank to keep them from collapsing.

The stock market’s complete dysfunctionality is represented by the dozens of tech-related “unicorn” type companies that collectively burn billions in cash every quarter and yet have market caps in the tens of billions of dollars.  If anything, Tesla is emblematic of the degree to which the entire U.S. financial and political system is a complete fraud.

And then there’s gold and silver. The mainstream financial media dismissively reported the $920 million dollar fine to be paid by JP Morgan for manipulating the gold market – “it was just some rogue employees ‘spoofing’ the market.”  Spoofing is not the issue.

The gold market  is, and has been for several decades, manipulated systematically at the direction of the BIS to prevent the price of gold rising to a price level vs the dollar that reflects and embodies everything described above. “Spoofing” is nothing. A $920 million fine is the cost of doing business for JP Morgan. The Fed has injected billions into JP Morgan since March. $920 million is not a deterrent – it’s an odd-lot.

The source of the manipulation is, among other devices, the creation of derivatives with a notional value in the trillions to be used in large quantities to push the price of gold lower.  Here’s an example:

Part of the problem is that the mainstream financial media has become nothing more than hand-puppets for the Wall Street operators who pay their compensation by sponsoring their media abortion. They merely print the words fed to them. You’ll note that Investing.com is attributing the sell-off in gold this morning to a “weak dollar.”  Yet yesterday Investing.com told us that the big move higher in gold was attributable to a “weak dollar.”  See what I mean?  Zombie hand-puppets.

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