America's Deer In The Headlights Moment (Or, Is This The Week Silver Finally Gets Unstuck From The Mid $20s?)

March 29, 2021 / www.silverdoctors.com / Article Link

Like a cargo ship that's stuck in a some canal, or like a soon to be functionally paralyzed US Federal Government, sometimes...

(by Half Dollar) Things always take longer than one thinks.

Case in point: The Ever Given.

The "World's Most Important Cargo Ship", for lack of a better term, is still a thing that's causing global shipping to come to a grinding halt in the Suez Canal.

The ship is stuck much less than before, but it's still stuck.

Regardless, one of the world's largest cargo ships initially got stuck in the Suez Canal on March 23, and the back-up log-jam of cargo ships waiting to move through the canal once the Ever Given is cleared out numbers in the several hundreds.

Here's the point: Last week, a stuck ship was just needing a little nudge and perhaps a slight tug, but that turned into a 48 to 72 hour thing, which morphed into several days of all hands on deck, around the clock, and the ship is still not fully freed, nor has the Suez Canal Authority restarted shipping in the canal.

How long is it going to take before operations return to "normal"?

Things always take longer than one thinks.

Another case in point: The Collapse of the United States.

The Collapse of the United States is the topic of a different article for some other day, but suffice it to say that if one doesn't think that the United States is beyond completely and utterly dysfunctional at this point in time already, here's some food for thought regarding two more layers of complexity that can only contribute our spectacular demise: Income taxes and that dang "infrastructure plan".

Sure, this is a "promoted" Tweet, but think about the subtle implications here without doing anything more than reading the Tweet superficially:

On the one hand, the US Federal government is handing out free money like druken sailors, yet on the other hand, American taxpayers are becoming the victims of identity theft which, among other things, is being used to fraudulently claim unemployment benefits.

Does anybody not see this leading up to the Federal Government as a deer in the headlights, paralyzed when it comes to the entire income tax system in the United States?

Follow-up question: What happens to the deer when it gets run over by our "elected" "leaders" in Washington driving their income tax hikes on the not very rich and driving their racist race-based financial reparations?

Sure, the question is rhetorical, but let me go ahead and spoil it for you: The IRS is either going to have to quadruple in size, at the very least, in its effort to hunt down increasingly worthless currency, or the entire Federal tax system in the United States is going to fail spectacularly.

Which brings me to the Federal Government's upcoming "infrastructure plan".

If the impact of the stimulus, the ID theft, the tax hikes and the reparations on the IRS were not enough, then to seal the deal, which in this case means the Collapse of the United States, the Biden Administration is actively discussing a vehicle mileage tax!

From The Hill (bold added for emphasis and commentary):

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that a tax on how far travelers go looks like a promising way to fund President Biden's infrastructure bill.

Biden said during his first solo press conference on Thursday that he will announce the $3 trillion proposal on Friday in Pittsburgh.

The next day, his Transportation head said a mileage tax could be one way to help pay for the plan.

"I think that shows a lot of promise," Buttigieg said. "If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive."

"The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it's not anymore," he continued. "So, a so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it."

Does anybody not see the absurdity in all of this, and the sheer evilness of it too?

First and foremost, when it comes to being totally evil, this tax would be devastating to low income workers who barely have reliable transportation to get to and from work as it is, and this tax would be devastating to low income workers who are not in the position to work from home, yet the mileage tax wouldn't even matter to a rich person because of alternatives, legal tax loopholes and other reasons.

Secondly, and more importantly, just think for one moment about how restrictive, about how economically destructive, something like a mileage tax that the corrupt opportunist public servant Buttigieg is proposing: It's like the 1000th cut!

That is to say, you pay a sales tax on the purchase of the vehicle, and then, depending on the state that one lives in, you pay to register the vehicle, usually on an annual basis, you pay to inspect the vehicle, usually on an annual basis, you constantly pay for insurance coverage on the vehicle, you pay for taxes on gasoline to fuel up the vehicle, which you also pay for, you pay for maintenance and repairs on the vehicle, some people pay for parking their vehicles, and on top of all of those things, drivers are going to have to pay a brand new Federal tax for every single mile they drive?

Say what?

Where, oh where, Petey Boy, is that extra money to pay a "per-mile tax" going to come from when Americans are already totally broke and living paycheck to paycheck at best?

Follow-up question: If people already spend a quarter of their income on housing, a quarter of their income on food and health, a quarter of their income on utilities and other bills, and a quarter of their income on all of the goodies on offer from the modern day American lifestyle, where exactly is a fifth quarter of income going to come from to pay for transportation?

Meh.

Probably nothing.

Other than the Collapse of America.

One day, too, silver is going to end this "correction" and begin to rally, and while many have been calling for that day for months now, silver still hasn't rallied yet.

Things always take longer than one thinks.

There is a lot of trading week left in the first quarter of 2021, and by a lot, I mean three full days, and during this time, I for one would love for silver to have a final "flushing out of the specs", so to say, that ultimate capitulation, if I may, so that we could get back into rally mode (and so I could selfishly add to my stack at lower prices):

If we do have a final flushing, the question is, just how low will we spike low?

I still do not think we're out of the woods on a spike low just yet:

It would be the most efficient way to fill that gap, but not only that, it would be the Cartel's preferred way.

Gold has faded:

A lot of people have called the bottom in gold, and I'll be the first to admit that I totally blew my early February call of $1700 as gold "traded" in the upper 1600s.

Palladium is downright volatile right now:

Once again it will be important to watch the action in palladium this week.

Also this week, we can look to platinum for signs of a rally or for signs of continued weakness:

We could see continued weakness in platinum, but one must note that platinum is still positive, year-to-date, meaning, the inflationary pressures in the markets and in the economy are real, despite what the "experts" say.

Volatility would be expected in the crude oil markets, however: