{"id":62143,"date":"2020-07-25T02:15:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T09:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/?p=62143"},"modified":"2025-02-19T08:46:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T16:46:42","slug":"black-coffee-25-july-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/id62143-black-coffee-25-july-2020.html","title":{"rendered":"Black Coffee: Rock Covers Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe …<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.<\/p>\n

After a long wait, silver has finally awakened from its decade-long slumber. On Friday the futures price closed at $22.85; that’s up 15.6% — for the week<\/strong><\/em>. Not to be outdone, the gold futures price ended the week with its highest weekly close<\/a> ever at $1897.50 — not far from its all-time intra-day high of $1923.70 on September 6th, 2011.<\/p>\n

I wonder why.<\/p>\n

Okay … on to the financial commentary.<\/p>\n

We can guarantee cash benefits in any size and any duration you want. What we can’t guarantee is the purchasing power of those cash benefits.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— Alan Greenspan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credits and Debits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credit:<\/strong><\/span> Did you see this? Mortgage delinquencies spiked dramatically<\/a> in April, to 3.5% — that’s from less than 1% in March, when the pandemic started. But, as Wolf Richter points out, “It gets worse; mortgages that are in forbearance and didn’t miss a payment before going into it don’t count as delinquent — they’re reported as ‘current.’ And 8.2% of all US mortgages — or 4.1 million loans — are currently in forbearance.” Uh oh.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Credit:<\/strong><\/span> But, as Charles Hugh Smith notes, “Landlords, banks, local government, employees, and others are depending on enterprises returning to 100% of 2019 revenues. However, as tenants stop paying rent, landlords default on mortgages<\/a>, sending banks into insolvency, leaving local government with less tax revenues and employees with fewer job prospects.” Uh huh. Now who’s going to tell this to the V-recovery cheerleaders?<\/p>\n

Debit:<\/strong><\/span> Meanwhile, the Tesla stock farce<\/a> continues. Tesla is up more than +760% since June 2019, when it was troubled by bankruptcy concerns. Two weeks ago it became the world’s largest automaker. And Tesla’s market cap has grown to over a third of the combined market cap of the US, EU and Japanese auto indices. Frankly, that makes about as much sense as a driving dog. Oh, wait …<\/p>\n