“For the first time throughout this secular bull run .....we might not witness the stellar performance we have seen over the past 11 years.”

“...between the manipulation and the presidential elections...”

Presidential Elections

The attached NYT article and the Phillip Giraldi commentary make clear that Netanyahu's “in” with Romney is real. The Israel Lobby has a golden opprtunity to consolidate its grip on US foreign policy. Some sort of negative economic development, blamed on Obama, this summer or fall would serve this interest and the Israel Lobby would be in a position to orchestrate it.

Money, Wealth, Price Levels

I am beginning to think that there is something I fundamentally don't understand about money and the markets.

• Why isn't there more inflation?

• Why do low-risk long-term bonds stay at negative real rates of return?

• How bankrupt can the US get without any significant adverse effects? (Except high unemployment and increasing disparity of incomes.) When will (or why doesn't) Kotlikoff's fiscal gap bite?

I think I need to think outside of my box.

Maybe through Plunge Protection buying of the Dow & S&P 500, sharp attacks in thinly traded times of the day, jerking margin requirements higher, Nadler/Gartman/Armstrong talk, etc it is possible to control, over the long term, the average price of a commodity like corn, copper, silver, gold, oil, tin, lumber.

Maybe inflation expectations and interest rate expectations are indeed the only factor.

Maybe the dollar is much less fungible that we think it is. Maybe through SWIFT, economic sanctions, tarriffs, wars, reserve requirements, accounting rule changes, tax revisions, .... the ability of petrodollars or bank trading profits to affect the price of memory chips or lumber or tin is much less than you might think. After all, if

Maybe Exter's Inverted Pyramid explains a lot of this.

Maybe every commodity is different. Price for some can be managed by changes in margin requirements, others (rare earths?) are not.