Jesse's Café Américain: Stocks and Precious Metals Charts

"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated the warning, but the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from those wisemen who believe it's a joke.”

Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Part 1

"These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world. What have we to do with its gifts and honours, who, having been already baptized into the world to come, are no longer citizens of this? Why should we be anxious for a long life, or wealth, or credit, or comfort, who know that the next world will be every thing which our hearts can wish, and that not in appearance only, but truly and everlastingly? Why should we rest in this world, when it is the token and promise of another? Why should we be content with its surface, instead of appropriating what is stored beneath it?

To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the substance show itself."

John Henry Newman

"They spend their days in prosperity, while sliding down quietly into the abyss. They say to God, 'Leave us alone! We do not want to learn your ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what would we gain by praying to him? Is not the prosperity of the wicked the result of their own efforts, since they have never sought God’s help?'

Their prosperity is not in their own hands, so let the counsels of the rich be far from me. For how often is the lamp of the wicked extinguished? How often does destruction fall on them, the sorrows that God allocates in His righteousness?   How often are they blown like straw with the wind, like chaff swept away in a storm."

Job 21:13-17

"Never be surprised at the crumbling of an idol or the disclosure of a skeleton."

John Dalberg Lord Acton

"The root of it all is in the will to power, the desire of a select few to determine the value of all life, and to define both good and evil, with themselves as the ultimate good. And their handiwork is not life, but a profound emptiness, the abomination of desolation. They never have enough. Not enough money, not enough power, not enough killing. They cannot give life, so they will bring death. They fear weakness and death, so they attempt to be its master. They would be as gods. And in their pride they make themselves, and all those around them, not masters but monsters.

Jesse, Social Darwinism, 17 September 2014

"The Lord is my light and my salvation –
     whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the refuge of my life –
     of whom shall I be afraid?

I believe still that I will see the goodness of the Lord
     in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait upon the Lord."

Psalm 27

Stocks managed to rally higher today after a wobbly start, and held on to their gains.