Jeanne d'Arc Escapes From the Cellar

Hello, loyal readers of Screwtape. Sorry about my absence for the last month. I will give you three excuses, and you can decide for yourselves which, if any, of them are true. The first is that Her Majesty unexpectedly called upon me to represent her in a West African conflict zone, and I have needed to spend the last few weeks learning Bambara, improving my Walther-PPK handling, and brushing up on Land Rover maintenance.

The second is that I made GM Jenkins very, very cross indeed, and - for my own good, might I add - needed to spend a while in his coal cellar reflecting on my general attitude towards the silverogosphere, my bloggers-in-arms on other sites, and the over-rated value of sarcasm in a civilised world.

The third is that GM, Warren and I have been too busy preparing for Bilderberg, which we regularly attend as confirmed members of the Illuminati. This year has been especially pressing, given the coming financial apocalypse and all, and it's taken more time out of our busy schedules of whoring, renovating houses and hacking tax records (respectively) than we might otherwise have liked.

You pays your money, and you takes your chances. Anyway, I'm now back, and I'm ready to pwn the kidz like a boss [sorry - I don't know what happened to my more usually conservative diction there...]

Carnage vs. Calm

Well, that's it. It's official. The gold bull is over. Dennis Gartman said so, so it must be true, given his outstanding track record. And Jon Nadler agrees, so it's as good as in the bag. Even the perma-bullish blogosphere is full of doom and gloom.

I'd agree that things feel pretty bad. Gold has made a series of lower highs since it hit $1900 back in September, and silver is still suffering from its broken parabola of 2 May. It's not surprising therefore that last week's plunge on the back of disappointment that the FOMC minutes didn't endorse new quantitative easing measures (i.e. 'QE III') has rendered an already bearish community almost without hope.

But do the charts support the thesis that gold's bull run is over? Are we sitting on the precipice awaiting carnage, with our already red positions about to go scarlet? Or are the charts telling us that nothing unusual has happened, and that all is calm. Let's take a look, and - for fun - let's keep score on the Carnage vs Calm points...

The Victor in the Euro Conspiracy

(Artwork by Warren James, Screwtape Files 2012) 

In the last comments thread, JdA asked Victor The Cleaner what he meant about the 'European conspiracy'. I believe I've been following the story long enough to be able to answer the question, if I may be so bold. It's a long story and not easily summarised, but is easy with this lead in ...