"For God will bring to judgment every act and every word, including all we have done in secret, whether it be good or evil."
Ecclesiastes 12:14
"You are a sinful nation, weighed down by lawlessness. A race of corrupt and wicked children, you have forsaken your Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned your backs to him."
Isaiah 1:4
"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."
Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, 1955
"They have ignored the abuses of my people. 'Peace, peace!' they say, where there is no peace. They have acted shamefully, committing many atrocities. And they are not ashamed,
they do not even know how to blush. Therefore they will be among the fallen;
in their time of judgement they shall fall."
Jeremiah 6:14-15
"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
Major General Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935
"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."
Aaron Bushnell, 26 February 2024
"Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven — that is the task, there is the burden."
Virgil, The Aeneid, 19 BC
Stocks were drifting higher on light volumes, in quiet pre-holiday trading.
It is most likely that the trading tomorrow will be light, with some tape-painting, and squaring of positions into the holiday weekend. The market will be open for half a day on Friday, but the adults will all be on holiday.
So unless Bessent and His Merry Pranksters try to pump up the bubble even more it is unlike we will see anything significant. The juniors will be operating a fairly simple template.
Gold and silver were hit a bit, and so was the Dollar, which slipped off the 100 handle.
VIX fell back to its 50 DMA. It may fall a bit further before the correction resumes.
It seems likely that this latest Ukraine peace deal has not been 'written by Russia.' That was a clever propaganda piece to put some pressure on their to accept it, as the US and Ukraine have already done.
The wheels are starting to slowly fall off the US economy. It was already dodgy, and the Trump administration has been doing enormous damage to it with their erratic and eccentric decisions.
'America First' is just a slogan, as hollow as any such simplistic formulations designed to move the public as a mob. It's money and power for the few first and foremost.
Well, this too shall pass. No matter how inevitable, how powerful some human endeavor might seem at the moment, they are all failing by their own measures.
I probably won't write anything until next Monday, maybe something on Friday if I can restrain myself from braving the crowds for shopping on 'Black Friday.'
Have a warm and safe holiday with friends and family.
And for the rest of the world, please carry on without us, and have a very pleasant evening.
