What is gold trying to tell us?

Gold hit a new all-time-high last week to the roaring sound of silence.

It's still surprising to me how little attention and respect gold gets. Typical moneybro advice would be to hold 1-2% of your portfolio in gold. Some, like billionaire Ray Dalio would push that number up to 15%

But the reality is that most portfolios own 0% This would make more sense if most portfolios had 5-15% allocated to Bitcoin, but they don't. They're just raw-dogging fiat like that, which suggests a limited understanding of the current state of markets as pertains to risk and leverage.

What prompted the move in gold? Mallers (below) has valid points, the US debt is out of control as are multiple economic indicators but none of these are new, so I'm thinking it's probably not that.

Magoo has a different theory, it's the growing sense of risk and uncertainty that's driving gold up. Makes sense historically, but what changed last week?

Oh… Kamala just unveiled her economic proposals, you say.

Let't take a peek…

Yikes. Ok, so the NYPost is not a fan, but how biased are they?

A WaPo reporter also went off on Kamala live on CNN? maybe a rogue one-off.

Oh, the whole WaPo editorial board called her proposals communist as well? That can't be good.

So just how bad are her proposals? Before we get into it, just remember the government isn't actually paying for any of this, you are.

• $25,000 Subsidy for First-Time Homebuyers
• $6,000 Child Tax Credit
• Elimination of Medical Debt
• Ban on Price Gouging for Groceries and Food
• Cap on Prescription Drug Costs
• Earned Income Tax Credit Expansion
• Affordable Care Act Subsidies
• Targeting Pharmaceutical Companies

We'll go for the low-hanging fruit and pick on the "price gouging ban". These can make sense in the immediate wake of a disaster (think eartquake, flood, etc) as a temporary measure while a volatile situation stabilizes.

As a general policy they have been tried many times in many places and the invariable result is hunger. It's a braindead idea, if you want a breakdown of how it would play out Robert has you covered below (worth your time):

Not only would it not work, it's based on the erroneous assumption that grocers are "price-gouging" you, reality disagrees.

Don't get me wrong, you're paying quite a bit more for groceries but it's not the grocers / ranchers who are to blame.

Your groceries aren't becoming more expensive; your money is becoming less valuable. —Saifedean Ammous

These two phenomena described in the quote above look and feel the same to the consumer, but the source of the problem is completely different.

When asked how her proposals would be paid for the Unburdened One mostly waved the question away suggesting the programs would pay for themselves.

Talk of "snatching patents" probably didn't help.

My read of gold's message is the market saying Kamala is a threat to an already compromised economy.

Gaslighting

What surprises me is people thinking Kamala could actually win a fair election.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the never-Trump sentiment is strong, we know a lot of people would rather pick a vegetable than he-who-must-not-be-named. And I get it, there's plenty to dislike with Trump.

But outside of the nevertrumpers, I'm not sure Kamala has much more than a chameleonic identity to offer, is that enough to win?

The press —apparently still trying to find its footing with her— went on a "joy" blitzkrieg, but it turned out the word had been previously tainted by the Nazis and their "Strength through Joy" motto, so I doubt they'll be keeping it (would be funny if they did though).

Kamala's situation reminds me of the recent presidential election in Mexico where many upper-class (and all upper-class-wannabes) were POSITIVE their candidate (Xochitl) was going to win because their MX-MSM echo-chamber had gaslight them into believing so.

The result was perhaps the most brutal electoral beating in the country's history, the ensuing cognitive dissonance was a thing to behold.

Speaking of gaslighting, let's chew on the tweet below:

The "something wrong with the way you're measuring" part is not really up for question. Every jobs report for the last year has been substantially revised.

The official inflation numbers are obviously wrong to anyone who bothers to track how much they're actually spending on food, insurance, housing, healthcare, etc.

I'll admit it's hard not to get cognitive whiplash when —at the same time— you have numbers like this

and charts like that:

How much of this is due to a massive wealth-transfer?

So in this age of brazen narrative warfare, anecdotal clips like the one below give me some hope when they show failed attempts at gaslighting —as in Lemon trying to convince a guy "the economy is actually better under Biden".

Or this clip where Colbert tries to paint CNN as objective and his audience unexpectedly burst in laughter at the line.

It's also clear they will pull every trick in the book to get their candidate elected. Will they double down and stick with Kamala after this week's DNC? Stay tuned Komrad!

Crypto-Politik

Remember Kamala's "crypto-reset"? Fuggedaboutit, it's not happening. Her team is mostly the same anti-crypto army that's been in place and now there are rumors of Gentler for Treasury Secretary. If you want the details, Alexander (below) brings the receipts.

Bitcoin will be fine regardless. In fact an "obstructionist" government may do more to accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin by the people than a "permissive" government would.

Surprising no one, last week we found out Vivek holds some BTC

And so does Thailand's new Prime Minister (adorably, her dad has a block-clock in his office)

Price News

When Moon

Why didn't BTC take off alongside gold?

There's been quite a bit of selling pressure from several sides.

And the Mt. Gox distribution is actually not yet done:

His "USA" mention refers to a low-key hilarious move: just after Trump announced his Bitcoin Stockpile plan the US government started selling $1 Billion worth of BTC from their Silk Road stash.

If you want the details on the US Gov's large BTC holdings, what's been sold and what is not, Steven provides the details below:

So, who's been buying? Some of the big boys:

Oh, and they've also been picking up some MicroStrategy

Bitcoin Surfing

Last week Bitcoin reached up and tried to grab the Board ($60.9k) to no avail, it sunk back in the rising Water (which now covers $38.3k through $63.6k)

Dip Fishing

Price could not reclaim the $60-62k channeling it's been ranging in the $56-59k channel instead. A trip down to $50k still possible if there's a good jolt to liquidity or the DNC decides to nominate Commander instead of Kamala.

Calm Chart

I don't see August flipping green, have patience and think of every red candle as a spring being coiled tighter.