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Money Daily has been providing business and financial market news, views, and coverage on a nearly continuous basis since 2006. Complete archives are available at moneydaily.blogspot.com.
PRIOR COVERAGE:
1/3-1/9/2021
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Radio Silence; Stocks Looking for Lower Open Friday, January 22, 2021, 9:28 am ET Appearances can be misleading. While the military occupation of the District of Columbia (DC) is now winding down, about 7,000 members of the National Guard will remain until the end of January, according to Air Force Maj. Matthew Murphy, a spokesman for the National Guard. Fences around the Capitol, White House and National Mall are still up, even though the inauguration of Joe Biden is over with, having occurred on Wednesday, without incident. Biden is busy signing executive orders, though a few constitutional experts express doubt that they will have any binding effect. In any case, life goes on. Stocks continued to be soft on Thursday and are poised to open sharply to the downside Friday. Dow futures are off more than 200 points with just minutes to go before the opening bell. Gotta run. Enjoy the Show.
At the Close, Thursday, January 21, 2021:
Thursday, January 21, 2021, 9:38 am ET This article is opinion. The views expressed within are not necessarily the views of the author, Money Daily, Downtown Magazine or any of its reporters, editors or publishers or their associates or partners. It's official, though it is illegitimate. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts as president and vice president of the United States. Being that Justice Roberts is a compromised individual incapable of rendering sound judgements and the Biden/Harris ticket won the 2016 presidential election only by using underhanded, illegal, fraudulent means, this presidency is wholly illegitimate. In other words, about half the people who voted in the election - and plenty more who didn't bother to vote - believe it was a fraud, the votes cast for the various candidates were never audited or verified, and the legislatures which sent the electors to the electoral college were blindsided with phony voting records. The US Senate, which is full of scoundrels, thieves, liars, grifters, and common crooks verified the bogus slates of electors not because they believed them to be true but because doing so was expedient towards covering up a boatload of crimes against humanity and the American people who they are sworn to represent, but don't. All of this has been well established in the alternative media, since the mainstream media issues only propaganda and chooses to cover only stories which are palatable to their chosen narrative. The courts - full of judges who can easily be bought off, threatened, or otherwise compelled to render rulings favorable to a chosen side - failed to do their duty to render justice without prejudice, so they're likewise disqualified on any and all moral arguments in terms of fairness, knowledge of facts, equity, or law. Now that it's understood that within the federal government exists a dazzling amount of deceit and corruption, making sense of the new administration's policies and how to deal with them in a fashion beneficial not to them, but to individuals, corporations, trusts, and estates which will be affected can be fleshed out in a logical manner. The overall thrust of the Biden administration's economic policies will be more favorable to the government than to the people. Those policies which are not favorable to individuals may, to a large extent, be favorable to huge, uncontrolled, publicly-held corporations, many of which are listed on the major US stock exchanges. It should be noted that the term "publicly-held corporation" is somewhat of a misnomer, as shares of these corporations are not widely held by the at-large public, but by financial firms, banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, ETFs, and other investment vehicles which are the playthings of extremely wealthy (billionaires) individuals who are mostly shielded by shell corporations designed to evade or inhibit taxation. There is overwhelming evidence that legacy legislation - that which has been on the "books" for years, decades, or longer - has been, as suits its needs, altered, molded, revised, and otherwise distorted to benefit mainly the government or its friendly conspirators. This is easily recognizable by the volumes of legislation, laws, rules, regulations, codes, and citations routinely churned out by congress and agencies operating under it or the executive branch. The US income tax code (Title 26) under which the IRS operates is nearly 17,000 pages long and contains an estimated 5.5 million words. It would take an average reader, reading non-stop, 24 hours a day, more than 16 days to read the entire monstrosity. Understanding it would take orders of magnitude longer, so it would take an individual somewhere around a year to have a comprehensive understanding. Since doing anything 24 hours a day for a year is impossible, even reading the document, taking notes and understanding it all, working on it a mere eight hours a day, would comprise the better part of three years and during that time, congress and various agencies would have added, changed or annotated much of it. The complete US tax code is more than 90,000 pages long. Comprehending all of it would take 20 years or longer. Basically, it's hopeless, but one still cannot argue ignorance of the law as a defense for not paying your taxes properly. Biden's team, with plenty of help from congress, is sure to raise taxes on individuals in a manner which the ordinary working man or woman cannot escape. This is well known and yet another rationale that the general public did not vote for them as doing so would constitute illogical acts in opposition to self-interest. The people who will be hurt the most by Biden's tax hikes will be the middle class, those earning between $20,000 and $150,000 a year, with most of the damage occurring at the upper end of that range. Currently, there are seven tax brackets. Biden's people may want to decrease that down to five, because of science or fairness or some other lame excuse. What they're likely to do is jack up the lower end (currently 12% for people earning between roughly $10,000 and $40,000) to 15 or 18% and then combine the next two brackets ($40,000 to $185,000) into one, at 27 to 30 percent, and after that, everybody pays 34 to 40%. Yes, it's going to be wonderful for the government until they realize the level of straight-up, honest compliance will slip considerably. More people will cheat, hide income, or just refuse. There's likely to be so many people refusing to pay taxes that the IRS won't be able to keep up with the non-filers, late filers or tax protesters. Never mind that no matter how much revenue the government receives in taxes it will never be enough to satisfy their voracious appetite for other people's money. The Biden administration, along with congress, will likely manage to make the fiscal 2020 budget deficit of $3.1 trillion look like child's play. The 2021 deficit is already approaching $600 billion in just the first three months of the fiscal year and that figure does not include the $900 billion recently approved by congress in December's COVID relief bill. President Quid Pro Joe has proposed another $1.9 trillion stimulus package, so once congress gets back to work - ostensibly around or after the Super Bowl (Feb. 7) or the State of the Union (SOTU) speech (Feb 2 or 9) - expect the budget deficit to at least double just on one piece of legislation. Some good news here is that the SOTU speech is expected to be one of the shortest ever, given that aging Joe Biden can't stand upright for more than maybe 30 minutes. There's also a good chance that he might just skip it, being that he's so new to the job. Small businesses, those that remain following the repeated lockdowns and other enterprise-killing restrictions imposed as remedies to the hated (but still non-lethal) coronavirus, will be taxed and regulated to death. Hardest hit will be LLCs, only because they are the most popular form of business entity, but upcoming tax legislation will also negatively affect sole proprietors, partnerships, and small corporations, whether they be C or S or professional corporations. Non-profits are likely to be hoovered up into the corporate tax nightmare because they traditionally have been afforded many loopholes and the Biden administration purportedly can't have that. You may give $100 to a charity, but at least $20 to $40 of it will go to he government by the time Biden's team is done. Any other federal tax that can be raised, will be. That means gasoline tax, FCC tax on cell phones and all those other taxes hidden in your utility bills, insurance policies, cable bills, and so forth will all go up anywhere from 10 to 30 percent. Expect all the various federal, state (let's not forget them), and local taxes to eat up a good 45 to 65% of an individual's income, depending on state and city of residence. After the income taxes, hidden taxes and fees, state sales taxes and property taxes will take another huge chunk. At the top of the heap are the big corporations, to which Biden has raised a middle finger, promising to raise corporate tax rates to 28%. Naturally, there will be various loopholes and exemptions for favored entities. Any company claiming to be "green" or "LGBTQ" will get breaks. The rest will get bricks. And let's not forget that it was Joe Biden who originally helped create legislation to tax seniors via Social Security, and then later to increase that tax. Even though he's a senior citizen himself, Joe doesn't actually like old people, other than as tax slaves. Joe's only interest is in fattening his own wallet, and that's best accomplished by taking it from you. On the bright side, Biden's nominee for Treasury Secretary is former Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen. In addition to loose bowels, Yellen offered loose monetary policy during her stint at the Fed and promises to fulfill her role as chief destroyer of the value of the US dollar with the most dovish fiscal policy in the history of government. She's already advised the president and congress to "go big" on the stimulus package and she recently spooked the markets with talk of 50-year treasury bonds. If Yellen lasts more than a year on the job, she'll be lobbying for UBI (Universal Basic Income) and digital currency (FedCoin) along with negative interest rates. Janet Yellen will be an absolute disaster for the US in terms of fiscal policy. Nobody will want to buy US bonds. The Fed will own them all, which, actually, could be the plan anyway. So, overall, the federal government is going to take a wrecking ball to the US economy while at the same time skimming as much as possible from income producers and wage earners. Advice? Good luck. Anybody who gets a regular paycheck is completely screwed. The money comes right out of your paycheck before you even see it. Own a business? Close it. Thinking of starting a business? Either go all cash or get a frontal lobotomy because you're insane. Investors should also be on the lookout for falling stock prices. They're at record levels already and the Biden administration is out to destroy every aspect of financial prosperity in America, though, admittedly, the stock market may offer some vestige of relief because that's where the oligarchs play. Anybody with the welfare of themselves and/or their family would do well to move to a "red" state with low taxes, out of cities and away from population centers greater than 50,000. Escaping to another country may be a preferred route should one have the ability. Times up here. Gotta go.
At the Close, Wednesday, January 20, 2021:
Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 7:54 am ET With the inauguration of Joe Biden as president less then a day off, investors appeared confident that the United States would fare well enough with an influence-peddling grifter in the highest US office. Putting aside all the stolen election rhetoric, the false flag "storming" of the Capitol building on January 6, and the resultant second impeachment of President Trump, investors sent stocks to reasonable gains, holding out hope for more stimulus and easy money policies from Janet Yellen, who sat for confirmation hearings as incoming Treasury Secretary. Yellen's prepared remarks included a snapshot of her thinking, as she opined, "...with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big." In other words, the lower the interest rate, the more the government should borrow, since paying back any debt is less than a primary concern. Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chairperson, is signaling that Biden's idea to spend nearly another $2 trillion on a stimulus plan is rooted in some Keynesian logic that forgives spendthrifts and rewards the few wealthy open mouths at the spigot of the government fiscal firehose. Transitioning her easy money policies at the Fed over to her new role at Treasury should be child's play for the grandmotherly, ancient economist, who will turn 75 on August 13. Born in 1946, she will celebrate her birthday just two days before the 50th anniversary of President Nixon closing the gold window on August 15, 1971, a fittingly ironic reminder of the profligate ways of the Baby Boomer generation. Yellen might as well be hoisting pom poms as she cheers on the accelerating demise of the world's reserve currency. With intimate ties to many former colleagues over at the Federal Reserve, her loose fiscal policies should dovetail neatly into the Fed's plans to devalue the dollar completely. She's the perfect fit.
At the Close, Tuesday, January 19, 2021:
Sunday, January 17, 2021, 10:19 am ET Let's get right into it. Washington, DC has been turned into a military outpost under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, President Donald J. Trump. In addition to the supposed 25,000 National Guardsmen securing the grounds of the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court and other government buildings, members from other services - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Special Ops, etc. - are on the ground, in the air, on the water around the capitol of the United States of America. There is no doubt that President Trump is in charge though his whereabouts may change by the hour as his security and well-being are of paramount importance. He may be anywhere - Mar a Lago, Camp David, Philadelphia, elsewhere - but more than likely he'll be aboard Air Force One at many junctures over the coming days. Now, the scene in Washington, DC may appear to many to be a military coup, a junta, but it is not. Troops are on the ground as a security measure as the President and the armed forces under his command take back the country from the forces which have occupied it for a very long time. The fences erected around the Capitol, White House, and the National Mall serve a dual function. One is to keep criminals in, the other is to keep imposters out, the main culprit being Joe Biden, the presumed incoming president. Joe Biden will not be inaugurated on January 20, 2021, or at any time after that. The election of November 3, 2020, was won, overwhelmngly, by President Donald J. Trump and there is ample proof of that victory. Democrats and some Republicans in congress conspired to steal the election, to impeach the rightfully-elected President of the United States, and plan on appointing Joe Biden as president. It's not going to happen. More than likely, many of these politicians and criminals will be arrested and tried for various crimes and likely convicted. Major changes are coming to the United States and to the world, so it is best for everybody to stay informed (mainstream media is full of lies and propaganda; it's best to seek out the truth from alternative sources if available) and safe as this process proceeds. With that in mind, markets around the world are certain to be impacted in ways that nobody can accurately predict. Here's what we know: Stocks spent the past week foundering until Friday, when all of the indices took one for the team. Leading the charge downhill were banking stocks, which is surprising, because Citi, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase all reported fourth quarter and full year results Friday before the opening bell. Something big in terms of money and currency is about to come down. Price action in the banking sector is telling.
BAC Bank of America Corporation: 33.01, -0.98 (-2.88%) Tech stocks took a small hit, led by Apple, (AAPL) (127.14, -1.77 (-1.37%)). Facebook (FB) (251.36, +5.72 (+2.33%)) was up sharply on Friday. Twitter is down about six points, or a little more than 10% since banning President Trump's account and laying waste to over 75,000 accounts. Censorship and declining user base pays, maybe, one assumes. Go figure. Treasury yields were tame. Outflows were modest. Yield on the 10-year note and 30-year bond were each down two basis points over the week, from 1.13% to 1.11% and 1.87% to 1.85%, respectively. Nothing to see there or on the short end, maintaining at the zero-bound. Oil prices are encountering little resistance at $53.83 a barrel for WTI crude. Further price gains are expected for the time being, though geo-political events could swing prices wildly in either direction. Everybody is paying more for fuel at the gas pumps. Bitcoin and Etherium, the two main cryptocurrencies are bouncing around. There's too much uncertainty in global politics and markets currently for institutions and individuals to make meaningful investment commitments. Bitcoin ranged, over the week, between $30,000 and $40,000, currently holding the middle ground around $35-37,000. Etherium (ETH) fared better, dipping down near $900 after ripping as high at $1300. On Sunday morning it is found closer to the highs than the lows, around $1200. Precious metal continue to underperform thanks in no small part to the futures market controllers. Gold, which was as high as $1949.48 (January 5), slumped to $1828.45. It used to be that moeny flowed to gold in times of crisis, though that seems not to be the case, at least in the manipulated, paper markets. Instead, it is being shunned, though dealers will speak otherwise, citing high demand for physical with appropriate premiums attached. Silver was also beaten down. On January 10, it topped out at $27.55 per ounce. It closed Friday at $24.78. Presented below are the most recent prices for commonly-purchased items on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included:
Item: Low / High / Average / Median Finally, there's no shortage of opinion on what's next for America and the world. While the mainstream media (MSM) continues to spew the false prophecies of a Joe Biden presidency, millions of Americans are watching in eager anticipation the days leading up to the scheduled inauguration on January 20. With troops spread out across the District of Columbia, fencing with barbed wire enclosing many locations, there's ample indications that something out of the ordinary is imminent. The second impeachment of President Donald J. Trump is a complete hoax, a sham, nonsense. By the time a trial is commenced in the Senate, the president would be out of office in that case, the conviction or acquittal not binding by any law. The most optimistic outcome, and increasingly likely, is that the troops on the ground will defend the actual, real constitution. They have taken an oath, as has the president. President Trump will restore the Republic, stolen after the Civil War, at various stages between 1870 and 1878. It's best for people to make up their own minds about the direction they wish the country to take and think freely. The mainstream media is not to be trusted. There is an abundance of mis- and disinformation disseminated by the TV networks, the New York Times and Washington Post. Notice how Democrats in congress continually use the word "democracy" as opposed to republic, as in "saving our..." Democrats want to save a democracy, whereas the roots of the American experience and governance are as a constitutional representative republic. Social media has crossed the line on censorship and bearing false witness to millions of users. Their executives should be behind bars rather than lounging in the luxury of their billions. Seek information and do research. Do not accept anything on the airwaves, in newspapers, or on the internet at face value. Verify sources. Think. Keep a close eye on President Trump and his remaining cabinet. Investors and economists might do themselves a favor by watching and listening to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who remains loyal to the president. Ditto for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Until we meet again...
At the Close, Friday, January 15, 2021:
For the Week:
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