Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - War Economy, Whore Economy

 

“Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our [Constitutional] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”

Abraham Lincoln, Letter to William Herndon, 1848

"The selling of the Iraq War to the American public was an exploitation of mass gullibility. Current circumstances give little or no hope that the public response would be much different to the selling of some future untoward war."

Paul Pillar, Selling the Iraq War: Gullibility and Mass Hysteria, March 15, 2023

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1999

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.  If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed — but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 1961

"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. 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, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, 1994

Stocks found a footing and managed to stage a little rally back today.

The Dollar was trying to move higher, but fell back into the close.

Gold and silver gave up some ground, but then both came back into the close as the Dollar fell.

Silver in particular is showing its usual feisty strength, closing again at a high.

VIX fell back and is still complacent.

One event away.   

And Our Merry Pranksters in Washington are like twelve year olds, cranks, and sociopaths with guns.

Have  a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All That Is Required To Serve the Beast Is Do Nothing

 

"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.  Suddenly it all comes to be, all at once.  You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done.  For that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing.  You remember everything now, and your heart breaks.  Too late.  You are compromised beyond repair."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, 1955

"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, 1941

"Their tongues are devious weapons, bent like drawn bows.  With lies rather than truth they have gained power in the land.  They commit one crime after another.  They do not accept me."

Jeremiah 9:3

"Anyone can be misled by a clever person, and no one likes to readily admit that they have been had.  It is a sign of character and maturity to realize this, and admit your were deceived, and to demand change and reform. But some cannot, even when the facts of the deception are revealed. The more incorrect that the truth shows them to be, the louder and more strident they become in shouting down and denying reality. At the extremes, it is no longer about justice, but about the objectification of the individual, the elevation of ideology over truth, and the dehumanisation of 'the other.'"

Jesse, The Economics of Demagogues, 18 June 2012

"So live this way because you are aware of the time, that the hour for you to wake from sleep is now. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, and the day is at hand. So we must throw off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light."

Romans 13:11-12

"One of his heads appeared to have been wounded, but its wound had been healed. The whole world then became fascinated with the Beast, and gave their allegiance to him. And they worshiped the serpent, for giving such power to him, as they also worshiped the Beast. 'Who is as great as the Beast?' they shouted. 'And who is able to resist him?' And the Beast was allowed to speak arrogantly with offensive words, and exercise authority for forty-two months."

Revelation 13:3-5

You have accepted things, things that your father could not even have imagined.

Stocks are wobbly.

Donnie and Bessent keep trying to prop and pop them up with paper thin good news announcements.

Gold and especially silver are speaking some truths.   Silver popped up to 59.50 today until it fell back a bit.

VIX is still a bit on the low side.

One event away from something historic. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Injustice, Perjury, Treachery - Hi Yo, Silver!

 

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."

Demosthenes, Orations Against Philip of Macedon, 4th century BC

"Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities. It does not shock us when they wield a gun. Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning? Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery."

Jesse, A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History, 15 December 2008

"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.  James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications— that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."

George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb, October 19,1945


Gold and silver rallied with silver hitting a new all time closing high. 

Stocks extended their holiday week rally.

VIX is now fallen steadily back down to relative complacency.

Trump wants a permanently high stock market as he says, and Bessent and his cronies are only too eager to place.

This will end badly.  They do not care.

War crimes are fashionable again, in the cults of bully-worship and apartheid nationalism.

We learn nothing. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Remembering on Thanksgiving Day

 

"We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small, and yet really not so small, blessings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice; show patience and consideration to all, for the Lord is always near. Let nothing make you anxious; but with prayer, and by supplication, and with thanksgiving, let your needs be made known unto God; and the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds, in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 4:4-7

"I invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."

Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of Thanksgiving, 3 October 1863

Thank you, Lord, from deep in my heart, for another year with my family and friends here and afar, those who remain with us, and those who wait to embrace us again.  

May we always be generous and forgiving with each other, worthy and unworthy, as you have been to us, in your loving kindness and tender mercy.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

Windsor Hotel, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1883

Plaza Hotel NYC 1899

Gettysburg Hotel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1909

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - By Measures a Slow Descent Into Hell

 

"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.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Comex, and Other Archaic Remnants of Festering Decay

 

“The most ‘worldly’ society I have ever lived in is that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and the unqualified snobbery of both.  

Nothing was so base that most members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to win the favour of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too bad for the aristocracy to practice.  But the class system did not in the least depend on the amount of anyone’s pocket money.

I have already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known.  If Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter.  But where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his place?  As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm.’

All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety.  But all men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being‘outsiders’: a passion insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story.  When the state of society is such that money is the passport to all these prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation.  But when the passport changes, the desires will remain.”

C.S. Lewis, A Reply to Professor Haldane, 1966

"Moloch: any cause to which a dreadful sacrifice is made or destruction is due."

The Chambers Dictionary, 1872


As a reminder, today was the most significant precious metals options expiration of the year on the Comex.

The good thing one might say about the casino known as the Comex is that it is not as unproductive to an industry as that archaic remnant called the LBMA.

Stocks rallied on the 'good news' that peace is at hand in the Ukraine.

Let us hope that this comes to pass.  It was achieved already, in the Minsk agreement for example where both parties were ready to sign, but the West's elite decided it was worth sacrificing a few million more young Ukrainians and Russia to Moloch. 

War is good for business.  And it doesn't take talent to make money from it.  Shamelessness will suffice.

Gold and silver bolted higher as the option expiration passed.  These jokers don't even try to hide it anymore. 

This Thursday is a national holiday of Thanksgiving in the US.  And so there will be nothing posted here after Tuesday.   Maybe something on the sleepy half day of Wednesday if something notable occurs.

Have a pleasant evening.