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"While some of the crowd were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and offerings, he said, 'All that you see here, the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.' Then they asked him, 'Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”
Luke 21:5-7, 37
"Beauty is but a flower,
That wrinkles will devour.
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died, young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us."
Thomas Nashe, A Litany in Time of Plague
"Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu'Anglois bruslerent à Rouen;
Où sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan."
François Villon, Ballade des dames du temps jadis
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Percy Shelley, Ozymandias
"¿Qué fue entonces del rico y de su poderío
de la vanaglorïa, de su orgulloso brío?
Todo ya es pasado y corrió como río;
de todo su pensar fincó él mucho frío.
¿Dó son los muchos años que habemos durado
en este mundo malo, mezquino e lastrado?"
Pedro López de Ayala, Ubi sunt
"Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem."
John Henry Newman, Epitaph
Stocks tried to extend their rally today once again, and failed.
Gold and silver had the correction which we had expected to see.
The wash and rinse must be served.
VIX rose from its recent low.
The Dollar rallied a bit, taking back 108.
It will be interesting to see if the shroud of secrecy that remains over the deaths of America's thought leaders in the 1960's will finally be lifted.
Or if the need to hide the moral indifference that infests our elites will override the search for the truth.
Rather than reveal the deepest secrets, their shills and grifters will gladly distort and destroy them.
It's just business.
Have a pleasant weekend.
