You may have noticed yesterday that Walmart announced that they will be cutting orders because inventories are piling up.  Only the most minimal thought is needed to understand what this means, Americans are shopped out.  If Walmart’s sales have slowed it can only mean that the sales nationwide have slowed.  This is not Saks 5th Avenue or Brooks Brothers announcing slow sales, this is Walmart where the average person goes to get anything and everything they need (or want).

It is also interesting how CNBC handled this news yesterday.  They spun it and twisted the news the best that they could, they even backtracked to say that the news was misunderstood.  Look, slower sales should not be a shock to anyone.  What should be a shock is that when you add up the sales of various stores or the actual sales by state of real estate or private polls of employment…they rarely if ever add up to and equal the “official” numbers released.  They should but they rarely do.

Back in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, Vanderbilt, Carnegie and JP Morgan (as well as anyone else) could just look out their window at the smokestacks to see how business was doing.  Then from the 1920’s until maybe 1990 or so you could track General Motors sales to gauge national business activity.  Now all you need to do is look at Walmart…and they have spoken for anyone willing to listen.  So why do I bring this up?  Because there is supposedly a debate going on as to whether or not the Fed needs to taper, not taper or even monetize more.  Looking at Walmart (the condition of Main St.) things are not going so well.  Looking at the façade of Wall St., the markets are up.  One is not confirming the other.

Is this a surprise?  Does anything today confirm anything else?  We wake up every morning and are “told” what “is and isn’t.”  Not that it makes any sense but it is…because it “is.”  None of what I’ve written so far is breaking news or even great commentary but I have a point here.  We are now 2 years into gold and silver correcting in price with the last 12 months becoming “harsh.”  Some have told me or written to me that I should just stop writing.  That I write because I have an ax to grind or I am talking my book.  I’ve been told that “I am saying the same things I said last year yet gold and silver are significantly lower now than then.”

First, for any reason or any amount of money “Bill Holter” will never write or say anything that he does not believe in.  Second, yes, gold and silver are down.  Do I believe that they should trade at these levels now with huge international demand and in the case of silver…below the global cost of production?  Of course not. Can I or any of the other hard money advocate “make” the metals trade higher?  Again, no.  The only thing that we can do is to tell you the truth or at least the truth as we see it.  Could we foresee 50% of the world’s silver production being sold on an Asian exchange during the thinnest trading of the week on a Sunday night?  No, but, we can tell you that it is not natural, normal or even in the best interest of the seller…if that seller wanted the best price for what they sold.  Unless of course there are ulterior motives.  These “ulterior motives” want and need a lower than “true” market price for the metals.  The only thing to do when someone offers you a product for less than what it costs to produce AND at price levels that were arrived at fraudulently…is to buy as much of it as you can afford!

I/we can only try to tell you the truth as we see it.  No one can or has faulted, proven faulty or even tried to attack “Austrian logic.” The ONLY thing that has been done is to “point” at price.  They can point to the price of the Dow Jones or point to the price of silver and gold and say…”see you are wrong.”  Well yes, for now.  While business conditions suck, unemployment runs rampant, inflation runs 5% over official reports, cash money gets laundered into real estate and metals prices drop while proven and confirmed demand increases and supply decreases…we are wrong.

I will say this, if something doesn’t make “common sense” and unless it is truly rocket science or brain surgery…then it is most probably wrong.  Take advantage now of precious metals pricing that has been manufactured by paper markets rather than true supply and demand.  Will you “make money” within 3 months, 6 months or a year?  Who knows, what I do know is that our Treasury and Federal Reserve are broke and their Ponzi schemes are in the very late stages.  I also know that when the day comes, you will wish that you had more ounces.  Until then, we await some sort of statement from “good cop” Bart Chilton.  Again, common sense tells us that the CFTC could in no way “indict” what has clearly been an “official” operation.