Charlie Assparino
In this video you can see the CNBC idiots discussing Goldman Sach’s PR problem without once ever mentioning the billions of taxpayer dollars that were funneled into the company on the sneak via AIG. According to CNBC, GS is perfectly innocent and their critics are simply anti-Semites.

What a bunch of BS. I’ve read a lot of the criticism of GS, and didn’t see a single instance of antisemitism. Maybe it is out there, but I sure didn’t see it.

No Americans
Speaking of racism, in the old days companies would put signs in their window: “Help wanted – No Blacks” or no Irish, or no Jews, or no Italians. Today, IBM has a sign in their window that reads: “No Americans.”

In Zachary Karafool’s Newsweek article which I mentioned yesterday, I find it curious that he felt compelled to bring up IBM’s anti-American hiring policy. As far as I could tell, it was getting practically no press at all, with the media obediently keeping it quiet. And then, a CFR member writes about it in a mainstream news magazine? Curious indeed.

Could it be that our overlords are feeling a little hot under the collar, and feel the need to go on a PR offensive? So, they send out Assparino and Karafool to try and smooth things over?

Can the slithering apologists convince Joe Sixpack that it is OK for Corporate “America” to steal his tax dollars, and ship his job to Asia?

Good luck with that.

Cramer is Revoliting
Here is what Cramer wrote on Monday morning:

“Roubini in an FT article outlines the growing risk of a double-dip recession. Can anyone at least ask the guy why we should believe him when he never saw the recovery coming in the first place? How do people approach any of this with a straight face?”

Cramer acts as if, he himself, has never made a bad call such as this one from August 22, 2008, just weeks before one of the greatest crashes in history:

“I think today’s a real rally. I expect more. The more time we keep ourselves from the July 15 lows the more obvious it will be that my position that those lows will hold will be true. It was a radical proposition when I said it then. It will soon be gospel.”

There he was making an epic idiotic call, and proclaiming it to be gospel! And now he acts as if he is an intellectual titan compared to Roubini. What a delusional pompous ass. I have subscribed to his website for many years, but I will not be renewing. The guy is just revolting.

Note to Cramer: Nobody in the USA got a job. There ain’t no recovery.

Oscar Goes Bulltard
When you see otherwise sensible traders go all bulltard, like Oscar did in this video from Sunday, you can be certain that at least a short-term top is coming soon. Euphoria is almost always a reliable sell signal.

TARP Gap Continues to Loom
Three weeks ago, I mentioned that the QQQQ was up against its TARP gap, and it still is. The Q’s have forayed into the gap, but have been unable to close within it, let alone above it. A proper bull would just gap right back over it, but the Q’s haven’t been able to muster the juice for that. Nevertheless, the Q’s are still within striking distance, and must be watched closely. This is the single most important feature on the current chart landscape.

Zachary Karafool
I was wondering how Zachary Karabell could get published in the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.

After all, what kind of fool would write something like this, as he did in Newsweek:

“This is the new world of global business, one in which the U.S. becomes simply a market among markets, and not even the most interesting one. IBM is one of the multinationals that propelled America to the apex of its power, and it is now emblematic of the process of creative destruction pushing America to a new, less dominant, and less comfortable position.”

Not a patriotic American, that’s for sure.

Then I read Karafool’s Wikipedia page and learned that he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Now it all makes sense.

Karafool is a mouthpiece for our overlords. And he is delivering their message:

“Listen up America: your jobs are being moved to Asia and they ain’t coming back. You are being demoted. You should cheer IBM’s fabulous profits, but they will not hire you, and you will not be able to afford to buy their stock and collect dividends because you will be working at Wallmart for minimum wage selling goods made in China. This is our grand plan for America. Get used to it.”

And you know what? America is getting used to it. The USA is in the process of abdicating its position of global super power.

Here in my upscale neighborhood, Miami Beach, I still can’t see any sign whatsoever of the fabulous economic recovery that the stock market is forecasting. I used to have to go my barber on weekday afternoon’s to avoid the weekend crowd. He is very popular, but now I can just waltz in any time on a Saturday afternoon to get my hair cut without having to wait.

In the strip mall, the Italian restaurant had zero customers for three straight hours last Saturday night. The dog-groomer sometimes just closes up shop and goes home because the fashionable ladies simply aren’t getting their purse dogs groomed as often as they used to. The tanning salon will often go for hours with no customers at all. Tanning used to be very important to the club-kid crowd here. It is also easy to park at this strip mall now because the real estate company that used to clog it up is long gone. And the half-hour wait at the car wash is gone too. Even at formerly peak hours, there is never more than one car ahead of me when there used to be four or five back in 2007.

These businesses are away from the tourist areas and cater mostly to locals. I suppose that they are lucky that they still have their doors open, and are probably doing far better than their counterparts in other areas of the country, but still… There you are surrounded by gleaming luxury high-rise condo buildings filled with rich people, and you can’t sell them a car wash for a lousy $7?

From what I can see, this rally is still a candidate for one of the greatest sucker’s rallies in history.

The market broke into the Box of Bulls today, and halted at the first Fibonacci level (click chart to enlarge):

The SPX came up a little shy of the 1029.21 level at the green arrow on the chart. However, the futures hit their first fib level in their box right on the nose (not shown). You will often see the futures hitting important targets before the SPX itself does.

Now look at the red arrow on the chart at June 11th. As soon as the SPX broke into the Box of Miracles and tagged the first fib level, it went into a month-long correction. The market probably won’t repeat history exactly, but at a minimum, I would expect a drop back to the 1014 area to back-test the breakout.

SPY printed a small double-top on its 1-minute chart at 3:42pm Thursday afternoon. It doesn’t look like much, but I have a feeling that they ran out of shorts to squeeze and switched off the squeeze-bots. Perhaps we will have a narrow-range consolidation day on Friday similar to June 26th or July 17th.

Having impressively filled Monday’s large down-gap already, the QQQQ and IWM still have small gaps left open from last Friday morning. The Q’s need to tag $40.09, and the IWM $57.60. If they can’t do so, the market may need to dive down and see if it can reload some more shorts to feed to the squeeze-bots next week.