Morning Update/ Market Thread 9/13 - Helplessly Hoping Edition…

Good Morning,


Equity futures are close to even this morning after being down overnight. The dollar is flat, bonds are down slightly, oil is higher, gold & silver are higher, and food commodities slightly lower.

The market and the economy continue to rely on manipulations, false rumors, money injections, paper clips, balsa wood, and whatever else the central bankers can come up with to attempt to fool people into believing they have the impossible math under control. They don’t. They certainly don’t in Europe where the nonsense of China bailing out Italy is just another formerly prosecutable offense of manipulation, but in today’s world is not only ignored but championed by our former regulators.

Below you can see how prices yesterday fell out of the flag/ channel, but then “miraculously” recovered just before the close:



Hey, I’ve got a rumor for you… the markets aren’t “free” and they’re not really “markets” either.

Oh wait, that’s not a rumor, that’s fact, sorry.

On one hand Obama says “this recession” is terrible… then on the other we hear how things are improving and that we’re in “recovery.” Sad, the manipulation looks to me an awful lot like an abusive father manipulating a child. But the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index continues to expose the lies for what they are. Here’s Econoalwaysapositiveside:
Highlights
Confidence among small businesses fell for the sixth straight month, down 1.8 points in August to 88.1. The top problem is sales where more firms are currently in a downtrend than an uptrend which in turn is hurting earnings. Expectations for future sales are also in decline. Only five percent of the sample say it's a good time to expand. On the positive side, more firms plan to create new jobs over the next three months and more are reporting unfilled job openings.

Of course the NFIB itself doesn’t pull any punches stating, “Confidence in the future of the economy crashed in August…”

That’s all you need to know, but the NFIB is one of the few truth telling organizations out there so their report is definitely worth a read. Be sure to look at the cover and how low each segment is, and how far they dropped in August:

NFIB Small Business Confidence August

Import and Export Prices continue to be hot as a pistol, even by our false measurements that fail to adjust properly for the true devaluation of our money. Import prices fell .4%, but export prices rose .5%, giving us year over year readings of 9.6% for Export Prices and 13% for Import Prices. Hey, where’s that 2% inflation the “Fed” keeps yammering about? Here’s Econofool:
Highlights
A monthly decline in prices of imported petroleum products pulled total import prices 0.4 percent lower in August, results that should firm consensus expectations for mild readings in tomorrow's producer price report and Thursday's report on consumer prices. Prices for petroleum imports fell 2.1 percent in August which fed through to a 0.9 percent decline for industrial supplies. Year-on-year rates eased slightly in the month, to plus 13.0 percent for total import prices and to plus 43.5 percent for petroleum products. Importantly, price pressures for finished products remain mute, up 0.1 percent for capital goods to a year-on-year rate of plus 1.4 percent and up 0.3 percent for ex-auto consumer goods to a plus 2.0 percent year-on-year rate.

On the export side, a rise in agricultural prices pushed total export prices up 0.5 percent. Agricultural prices rose 2.2 percent in the month. Year-on-year rates are little changed at plus 9.6 percent for total export prices and at plus 23.9 percent for agricultural prices. Export prices for capital goods were unchanged for a year-on-year rate of plus 1.3 percent while consumer goods ex-autos rose 0.2 percent for a year-on-year rate of plus 5.9 percent which, in an isolated sign of price pressure at the finished goods level, is up from 5.7 percent in July for a new record.



Gee, are new records in this data a good thing?

This weekend someone in the Open Thread posted a chart showing the rise in educational debt. Not only another bubble, but abuse of the populace that speaks to the prior articles I wrote on the subject of universities sticking it to the students who wind up debt slaves, while Wall Street "engineers" profits in grotesque endowment funds that are not used for their intended purposes:



Helplessly hoping college students too.

Back to the Boat Show, again come on by if you can!