Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - There's a Slow Train Coming Around the Bend

 

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America.  Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created.  Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage.  And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed.  Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965

“In societies that worship money and success, the losers become objects of scorn. Those who work the hardest for the least are called lazy.  Those forced to live in substandard housing are thought to be the authors of substandard lives.  Those who do not finish high school or cannot afford to go to college are considered deficient or inept.  No system in history has been more relentless in battering down ancient and fragile cultures, devouring the resources of whole regions, pulverizing centuries-old practices in a matter of years, and standardizing the varieties of human experience.

Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals.  The worst forms of tyranny, or certainly the most successful ones, are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness, and the fabric of our lives, as not to be perceived as tyranny.

The guiding principle of ruling elites was— and still is: when change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed.”

Michael Parenti, Democracy For the Few, 1974

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.  And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women?   It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes.  That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow.  A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few, as we have learned to our sorrow."

Judge Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, 21 May 1944

“It's impossible that there could be a plague, because everyone knows that they have 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 for the dead."

Albert Camus, The Plague, June 10, 1947


Stocks managed to hold a little bounce.

They were cheered by this morning's CPI numbers.

Gold and silver enjoyed a small rally.

The Dollar was choppy.

VIX fell.

The physical gold inventory in Hong Kong has hit a new low.

"Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
All non-believers and men-stealers talkin' in the name of religion
And there's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend."

Bob Dylan, Slow Train Coming album,  1979

Have a pleasant evening.