Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Creatures of Unspeakable Horror

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir, 1993

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, posthumous 1951

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children,
      unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’
      and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!
Tell us only things that please us,
      prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

"When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.  The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.  It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas, Canadian legislator

"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all the objective, logical considerations, we find that which goes beyond the merely rational: the struggle against evil, against the servants of the antichrist.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak;  when he yields to the forces of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on and on to the next and to the next, at a furiously accelerating rate."

Die Weiße Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

Stocks were chopping around most of the day, and the cash market went into the close just about unchanged.

After a few stinkers disclosed their financial results after hours the futures turned into the red.

Gold and silver edge a bit lower, as the Dollar chopped sideways to slightly higher.

A good amount of physical gold has left the Hong Kong Comex warehouses over the past two days.

I have sometimes noticed that they bulk up the physical inventories before a major raid on the price of gold in the West, to allow for the buying that comes with the lowered price.

Freedom and justice are under assault by the moneyed interests, as in their willfulness they are often inclined to do.

It is hard to see how easily our 'thought leaders' ignore atrocities and crimes and genocide, as long as we approve of those who are committing them, or are at least being rewarded for our silence.

History will not absolve us.  

We are wrapped in a world of our own illusions.

Judgement is coming.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Staggering Towards Another Minsky Moment - Hiding Out

 

"In particular, over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance."

Hyman Minsky, The Financial Instability Hypothesis

"Twenty-five years ago, when most economists were extolling the virtues of financial deregulation and innovation, a maverick named Hyman P. Minsky maintained a more negative view of Wall Street; in fact, he noted that bankers, traders, and other financiers periodically played the role of arsonists, setting the entire economy ablaze. Wall Street encouraged businesses and individuals to take on too much risk, he believed, generating ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. The only way to break this pattern was for the government to step in and regulate the moneymen.

Many of Minsky’s colleagues regarded his 'financial-instability hypothesis,' which he first developed in the nineteen-sixties, as radical, if not crackpot. Today, with the subprime crisis seemingly on the verge of metamorphosing into a recession, references to it have become commonplace on financial web sites and in the reports of Wall Street analysts. Minsky’s hypothesis is well worth revisiting."

John Cassidy, The Minsky Moment, The New Yorker, 4 February 2008.

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse."

Charles Kindelberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

"Bubbles most often resolve their imbalances irresponsibly and jarringly, with a correction that is sharp and destructive.  It is often triggered by some seemingly trivial event, especially if its predatory mispricing of risk has been allowed to fester for an extended period of time..  How can this be?

Credit cycles explain bubbles in modern finance, but the elite protect themselves and their banks from the effects. Hence, only the middle and working class loses. And this has been the case for many years now. Hence the growing unrest abroad, and the decisions by the electorate at home that seem to puzzle and provoke the very comfortable 'credentialed' class.

The reason for this is quite easy to understand. Those who benefit the most from the bubble both actively and passively help sustain it. They are reluctant to surrender any potion of their enormous advantage and personal gains, even if it might be better for them in the long term."

Jesse, Who Could Have Seen It Coming?, 17 January 2019
 

Stocks continued moving higher in a relief rally from a short term oversold condition.

Without a fresh fundamental reason to continue to rise higher, the correction in the market is probably coming quickly to an end.

Non-Farm Payrolls report for April on next Friday May 3rd will likely affect the markets.

Gold and silver were hit hard early on, as part of the Comex option expiration boogie woogie.

That also may be quickly passing.  Gold achieved a 38.2 Fibonacci retracement early today, and then bounced back to almost unchanged by the close.  

Silver actually posted a gain for the day.

A big chunk of gold took a walk out of the Hong Kong Comex warehouses.  More expected to follow. 

How did the governments of the US, UK, Germany and France become so indifferent to the good of the people who elect them?  

It's quite the fashion these days.

Follow the money.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pillaging for Profits

 

"The financial asset bubbles since the turn of the 21st century have been enabled by four basic instruments of monetary policy error:  Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell.  Whether we will have a third major collapse and crash to follow this latest asset bubble, as a consequence of misguided monetary policy, economic priorities, and bank regulation is not the issue.  The question is, shall we have a system that holds together long enough to have a fourth?"

Jesse, Malice Domestic and Endless Foreign Wars, 31 July 2018

'Malice domestic' from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at the San Diego Exposition, October 2, 1935

"You might think that parking your money in a big bank like JP Morgan Chase would insulate you from fraud. It’s just the opposite. The big banks are the biggest perpetrators of financial fraud – fraud that affects millions of us, either directly or indirectly, on an ongoing basis. 

The banks engage in fraud for two reasons. First, they profit from swindling the public. Second, they can get away with it via a simple technique. They buy off the regulators with promises of enormously lucrative jobs when they leave government service, and they buy off the politicians with huge direct and indirect campaign contributions."

Laurence Kotlikoff, When Banksters Buy Regulators and Prosecutors, Forbes, October 21, 2014

“It's impossible that there could be the plague, because everyone knows that it has vanished from the West. We should not act as though half the town were threatened with death, because then it would be. Yes, everyone knew that, except the dead."

Albert Camus, The Plague

"The essential characteristic of a good and healthy ruling elite, however, is that it views itself not as a function of the monarchy or the commonwealth, but as its very meaning and highest justification, and that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

"It is what a person does is what defiles them. For from within, from the heart, come fraudulent schemes, immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wicked acts, deceit, outrageous behavior, selfishness, slander, arrogant pride, and profane disrespect. All these things come from within, and they are what corrupts them."

Mark 7:20-23

 

Stocks rallied today, in what may reasonably be termed a 'relief rally' from a short term oversold condition.

Gold and silver were sold, as there will be a option expiration for the precious metal futures contracts this coming Thursday the 25^th.

VIX fell.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

We deserve better than this.  But we will not obtain it easily. 

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith

Have a pleasant evening.