Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Weep for Yourselves and Your Children

 

“Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States.

First, there will be a state of perpetual war.

Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal ‘executive branch’ of government into a military junta.

Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.”

Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 2005

"Amen, amen, I say to you, all these things will fall upon this generation.  

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, and stone those who are sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling.  

Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate.  I tell you truly, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Matthew 23:36-39

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and your children."

Luke 23:28

VIX rose, stocks slump.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were mugged.  

This is not the result of Chinese speculation as some have asserted.  These are the imaginative misdirection of days gone by.  This is a NY-London operation of the precious metals pools, the long term manipulation of physical supply and the pricing. They are up against the wall on supply. 

Believe what you want.  A lot of people have done that, and missed the breakout of precious metals.  Nothing could be more obvious.

Things are going to get very real over the next two years.

"There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long.  Stupidity has a knack of getting its way, which we would see if not so wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues."   Albert Camus, The Plague

Trump has figured out that a war with Iran et al. is a no-win situation.   But powerful forces continue to push him in that direction.  And he is facing that age old conundrum of all political figures, the threats or the bribes, while being surrounded by ineffective sycophants. 

Lack of strategic vision, honor, and a sense of consequence are sorely lacking in most of our governing elites.   They rarely face any consequences for their incompetence and corruption, and have consequently developed a remarkably unnatural sense of life in their bubble of entitlement.

This must be fashionable with governments these days, because there is so much of that going around.  

 We learn nothing.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Staged Illusions Masking Arrogant Lawlessness

 

"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world.  They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all.

'I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing. And thus I spend my life admiring the distance between you and me.'"

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 1949

"In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the product and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Its 'educates' the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment. Consumption promises to fill the aching void.

The narcissist divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one hand and the common herd on the other. Narcissistic patients are afraid of not belonging to the company of the great, rich, and powerful, and of belonging instead to the 'mediocre', by which they mean the worthless and despicable rather than average in the ordinary sense of the term.  They worship heroes only to turn against them when their heroes disappoint them.

At the same time that public life and even private life take on the qualities of spectacle, a counter-movement seeks to model spectacle, theater, all forms of art, on reality — to obliterate the very distinction between art and life, and the resulting indifference to the distinction between illusion and reality.

The illusion of reality dissolves, not in a heightened sense of reality as we might expect, but in a remarkable indifference to reality. Our sense of reality appears to rest, curiously enough, on our willingness to be taken in by the staged illusion of reality."

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, 1979

"Then the righteous will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or imprisoned, and visit you?’  And the Lord will say, ‘Amen, amen I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.’"

Matthew 25:33-40

Today is the World Day for the Sick, fittingly observed on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

I spent most of the day in prayer and meditation.  The sick and the poor, of body and spirit, are my abiding preoccupations.

But I did notice the usual dodgy equity market from time to time.

One of AG Bondi's talking points today was to suggest that the rising stock market is more important than the Epstein files.

There is no doubt in my mind that Bessent and his cronies are propping up US stocks and bonds.  And casting shade on alternative investments like gold and silver.

I do not say this lightly.  We've seen this before over the years, and despite the aggressive doubting by spokesmodels and blockheads, we have seen that it is all true.

So, how will this end.

You all have seen the remarkable rise of gold and silver after they broke out of years of artificial manipulation.  Silver in particular was astonished sharp and powerful in its rally.

Now picture this in reverse.  Picture stocks dropping with a similar sharpness and power.

That is what happens when a risk manipulation pool for financial assets fails.

Bitcoin fell but gained a little back off its lows.  It is an accident waiting to happen.  But far be it from me from pointing out the risks there for those who do not wish to hear it.

There is no saving anyone who is determined to be rich without working for it.

If stocks fall in a liquidation panic, then most likely everything will get sold for a time.

If it is a currency panic, then some assets might do exceptionally well.

Trump was meeting with his bosses' representative Benjy today in Washington.  There is little doubt that a discussion of Iran was high on the agenda.  

Netanyahu would like to take the lead in a move to paralyze Iran while the Likud party intensifies its acquisition efforts in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.  

Iran would provide a useful distraction from eroding power and scandal.  But it may cost Trump a large amount of support in the Congress.  Not a good midterm strategy.

It is widely thought that this time Iran will most likely be so measured in their response.  Someone is likely to lose something important that they will miss.  And voters may not take that well.

One possible consequence if that the price of oil and gas to spike. I just filled my heating oil tanks.  It's a Strait of Hormuz thing.  Bought a Costco sized cube of toilet paper.  I don't want to be an alarmist.  I admit to getting cautious in my old age.  lol

The leadership of Europe is acting in a fairly careless manner towards their public and economies. 

There is only one carrier group in the region.  There is a second George W. Bush carrier that has not yet been dispatched.  If it is sent to the Mideast the likelihood of a military action increase.

Difficult times ahead.  Remember that your soul and the souls of those you love are the highest priority.

And as Our Lady said at Lourdes to Bernadette, 'penance, penance, pendance.'  And remember to pray for sinners. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Opera Buffa

 

"I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid."

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock



Just charts tonight.

I was out all day, this market is boring and dumb, and I'm tired. 

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.  So they say.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Soft and Gradual Road Into Hell

 

"The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are very dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their extremes and their illusions.  No people, no organization of people, and no nation are immune or exceptional to this extremity.  Evil is a choice, a long, gradual succession of choices.  And the madness never sleeps, hunting for souls to devour."

Jesse, A Cruel Deception, 28 October 2022

"No doubt it is more comfortable to deliberately wear blinkers that prevent one from seeing the evil done in the discharge of their responsibility— to be unwilling to see that one is defending murder and robbery."

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Executed in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin, 23 January 1945

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the instructions 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 30:9-10

"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.  Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 1942

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel, Mass Murder and Genocide, 1994


The Dollar took a major slip off the 98 handle down to 96.

But VIX fell.  None so blind as those who will not see.

Gold and silver rallied.

Stocks were wobbly.

There is some significant US economic data coming out the next two days, including the slightly delayed Non-Farm Payrolls report.

I will be highly skeptical of all of it.  This is a time when dishonesty is fashionable in Washington.  All the finest and most powerful people wallow in it.

Slowly, gradually, things are falling apart.  There are consequences for incompetence and systematic fraud.

Have a pleasant evening.