Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Currency Wars: The Fog of the Great Reset

 

BREAKING: Iran launches a surprise ballistic missile attack against US bases in Jordan, with loud explosions heard near US Muwaffaq Salti Air Base moments ago.  A US official says no attacks took place, despite multiple ballistic missiles entering Jordanian airspace, meaning the US is once again not going to respond to the latest Iranian attack.  The US has still not responded to the surprise attack on Kuwait 2 days ago.

For the first time in the war, Iran has just launched the Qasem Basir medium-range anti-ship ballistic missile, firing several of them from Isfahan toward vessels under US Navy escort in the US-backed southern Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, per multiple initial reports.  Several flights are now being put on hold in UAE airspace following the launches from Isfahan, likely targeting US-backed Gulf ship-to-ship oil transfers.

Iran launches anti-ship cruise missiles from southern Iran toward US Navy vessels in the Gulf of Oman, the first time in 3 months, as opposed to oil tankers or commercial ships, per initial reports.

Israel says in a dramatic shift in its assessment, Israel is now preparing for the absolute possibility that Iran will renew the war in the near future, per Channel 14.

Iran has been launching multiple waves of anti-ship cruise missiles and Shahed-136 drones from Sirik, southern Iran, in the past few hours, toward vessels under US Navy escort in the US-backed southern Omani corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, per initial reports.

Iran has directly warned the US that it would launch "a large-scale Iranian attack" on Israel, in response to any Israeli offensive on the Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon where Iran's IRGC military personnel are located alongside Hezbollah fighters, per Reuters citing 3 senior officials briefed on the message.

The Israeli military has already occupied swathes of Lebanese territory south of the Ali al-Taher ridge and has publicly identified the ridge as one of its "primary operational focuses," signalling it will proceed with the plan of destroying it in the coming weeks.

The Hormuz Letter, From the Last 24 Hours on X, 4 September 2026
 

The mispricing of risk in the US markets is truly remarkable. Washington spins its confabulations, and the oligarchs and their enablers continue looting the nation's capital. The long term outlook is pain.

VIX is complacent.

The Dollar chopped a tad higher.

Gold, silver and bitcoin gave back a bit of their recent gains.

The wiseguys are trying to make a stand on the price of oil at the rim of the 'cup and handle' on the chart around 92-93.   

As a reminder Monday September 7 is the Labor Day holiday in the US.  All markets will be closed. 

The reckless disregard the power elite have for their own country is just astonishing until you realize that they do not consider themselves to be Americans, but a superior transnational class.

“Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority.  They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization.”   Jack London, The Iron Heel

Reform will come.  And it will be messy. 

Their delusion clouds their minds that they may believe their lies, and thereafter be judged in their lawlessness. 

Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked.  

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Knight, Death, and the Devil

 

"Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater."

Alvin Smith, George Washington Carver: Man of God, 1961

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.  These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Stephen Miller, CNN Interview, 6 January 2026

"Do you desire to be great?  make yourselves little.  There is a mysterious connexion between real advancement and self-abasement.  If you minister to the humble and despised, if you feed the hungry, tend the sick, succour the distressed; if you bear with the froward, submit to insult, endure ingratitude, render good for evil, you are, as by a divine charm, getting power over the world and rising among the creatures.  God has established this law.  Thus He does His wonderful works.

His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all.  They are busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them.  They are apparently set on no great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do: they seem to fail.  Nay, even as regards religious objects which they themselves profess to desire, there is no natural and visible connexion between their doings and sufferings and these desirable ends; but there is an unseen connexion in the kingdom of God. They rise by falling.

Let this be the settled view of all who would promote Christ's cause upon earth.  If we are true to ourselves, nothing can really thwart us.  Our warfare is not with carnal weapons, but with heavenly.  The world does not understand what our real power is, and where it lies.  And until we put ourselves into its hands of our own act, it can do nothing against us.  Till we leave off patience, meekness, purity, resignation, and peace, it can do nothing against that Truth which is our birthright, that Cause which is ours, as it has been the cause of all saints before us.  But let all who would labour for God in a dark time beware of any thing which ruffles, excites, and in any way withdraws them from the love of God and Christ, and simple obedience to Him.

Such is the rule of our warfare  We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness ; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer.  Heaven and earth shall sooner fall than this rule be reversed; it is the law of Christ's kingdom, and nothing can reverse it but sin."

John Henry Newman, The Weapons of Saints, 29 October 1837

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."

G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, December 31, 1910

The Dollar slid off the 99 handle today.

Gold, silver and Bitcoin rallied higher.

Stocks rose sharply for no apparent reason and VIX fell.

We could be in store for a major exchange of missiles and drones around the Straight of Hormuz.

Iran is threatening a major attack on Israel if the IDF proceeds further in Lebanon, as they have promised to do.

Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In the Stillness of the Trees

 

“Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy — which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.  It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help.”

Wendell Berry, What Are People For?, 1990.

“There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.”

Wendell Berry, How To Be a Poet, 2005

“In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.

In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares.  And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers.

Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits.  For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make.  

The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth.  This alignment destroys the commonwealth — that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community — and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”

Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, 2002

"No doubt there always will be some people willing to do anything at all that is economically or technologically possible, who look upon the world and its creatures without affection and therefore as exploitable without limit.  Against that limitlessness, in which we foresee assuredly our ruin, we have only our ancient effort to define ourselves as human and humane.

Now the two great aims of industrialism—replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy—seem close to fulfillment.  At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny.  Corporate industrialism itself has exposed the falsehood that it ever was inevitable or that it ever has given precedence to the common good. It has failed to sustain the health and stability of human society. Among its characteristic signs are destroyed communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses, and small farms.

Land and people have suffered together, as invariably they must.  Under the rule of industrial economics, the land, our country, has been pillaged for the enrichment, supposedly, of those humans who have claimed the right to own or exploit it without limit. Of the land and community much has been consumed, much has been wasted, almost nothing has flourished.

But this has not been inevitable. We do not have to live as if we are alone."

Wendell Berry, It All Turns on Affection, 2012

The great Kentucky naturalist and writer Wendell Berry has passed away at the age of 92.

Stocks were rebounding a bit today, as our obsessive-compulsive markets cannot bear to look at reality for any length of time, don't you know.

Gold and silver rebounded a bit after their recent smackdown.

VIX fell back down again.  

The Dollar is just happy to chop sideways.

The war in the Mideast is cooking as the US and Iran climb the ladder of escalation.

The consequences of oil scarcity are just beginning to be priced in.  They will stall that reckoning until after the midterm elections if they can. 

It will be interesting to see how far they are willing to go.

I don't know if this is completely accurate, but this fellow who reports it is legit. 

"Former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly met with Trump to inform him that the Iran war was making it impossible to achieve foreign-policy goals, Trump talked exclusively about his ballroom in response, causing Driscoll to resign believing the admin was 'doomed.'”   Dominic MichaelTripi, Post on X, September 2, 2026

Need little, want less, and love more.

For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them. 

Think of it.  A friend of God!

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ashes, Ashes They All Fall Down

 

"If the moderates fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Our generation will have to repent not only for the acts and words of the children of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light."

Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958

"As with many personality disorders, those who are severely flawed of character, but especially the narcissist, when they face public disgrace, when they are outed as criminals or for their misbehavior, or when they fail in a very public way—that is when they become metastable, placing us as family, friends, co-workers, corporations, the public, or a nation in greatest danger.  When things begin to sour for the narcissist, here is what we can expect:

1.  They will falsely claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong.  They will try to first misdirect us or claim there is nothing to the allegations or circumstances.

2.   If evidence is presented, they will seek to have it invalidated or claim that it is false, fake, or a product of vague conspiracies, but most certainly not true.

3.   Any evidence presented, and those that present it will be attacked aggressively and vindictively.  The better the evidence, the more aggressive the attack.  Individuals who are doing the right thing by reporting criminal acts, unethical behavior, or failings are to be discredited, humiliated, hounded, and bullied—not even their families are to be spared if need be.  The narcissist will engage supporters or enablers to simultaneously attack those who offer proof or evidence, even if it embarrassingly exposes their poodle-like behavior as that of spineless sycophants.

4.   Foolproof evidence will be portrayed as false and the result of pettiness, jealousies, bad actors, malicious individuals, negativity, haters, enemies, losers, conspirators, opposition, gain seekers, the faithless, or as we are seeing now in American politics, 'fake news' or 'deep state' actors.  There is always a large constellation of people to blame, the narcissist casts wide to see which vacuous claim resonates, especially with their supporters.

5.   As they lash out with vindictiveness, the malignant narcissist will continue to talk about themselves in glowing terms; irrespective of their actual situation, as they are incapable of introspection, much less contriteness.  They will trumpet their greatness, their real or imagined achievements, their faux infallibility, and even portray themselves as worthy of being revered rather than reviled.

6.   They will seek to find someone to blame for their troubles or downfall, preferably someone that cannot defend themselves.  A scapegoat is always useful and when there is not a real one, one will be invented.  If they are not promoted or fired, it is because a cabal at work was against them. If they cheat their business partners, it was because they deserved it. If the wife gets the kids in a divorce settlement, it is because of her dastardly attorney, not his abominable behavior. If they lose an election it is because of campaign managers, unappreciative voters, trickery, fraud, or some other kind of malfeasance on the part of a conspiracy.  Conspiracies are useful to the narcissist because they conveniently require no evidence.  As they are not married to the truth, they will prattle countless baseless reasons that all point away, never at themselves.

7.   As circumstances become dire, the narcissist will not take any responsibility—ever.  Anything that has gone wrong is the responsibility of others.  They will blame spouses as undeserving of their greatness, ignorant colleagues who just don’t measure up, the disloyal, those who abide by rules and laws because ironically, they abide by rules and laws, or those that just clearly did not understand the very specialness of the narcissist.  Everyone, and I mean everyone from people long gone, to the peripherally connected, to the earthly departed will be blamed for the failure or downfall of the narcissist.  Once more it is never their fault.

8.   In the process of casting blame, even the most loyal and stalwart will be discarded and denigrated if needed with reptilian indifference.  For the malignant narcissist, there is only the 'good' — those that provide blind, unwavering loyalty and who are useful, and everyone else who is an enemy, useless, and thus 'bad.'  Whether you are in or out, good or bad, is not determined by history, by friendship, sacrifices, or how well you have performed in the past—it is determined by the capricious and selfish needs of the narcissist, and that can change in a moment.

9.   Expect lies to increase and to be repeated exponentially.  They will, even in light of factual evidence to the contrary, lie more profusely and adamantly.  Lies are and always will be the number one tool of the malignant narcissist.  The only difference now is that in facing failure or public ridicule, the lies must increase in frequency and audacity to the point of incredulity.  The narcissist will expect supporters, the unethical, and enablers to lie for them or even create plausible alibis.  That they imperil others by compelling them to lie is the collateral damage the malignant narcissist does as they thrash in despair when they are failing or caught.

10.   And while lies will increase, so too will be the need to devalue others in order to further value themselves.  They will attack everyone and anyone in the most vicious and vindictive ways.  This is when we see their rage come through.  Not just anger, but unbridled rage.  They will say things that shock the conscience and they expect everyone to swallow what they say, much as their enablers do.  The most decent of persons will be attacked, mocked, ridiculed, and turned into a human chew-toy as the narcissist unleashes untethered rage and hatred.  They will dip down into a bottomless cauldron of antipathy and like an arterial spurt, will spew this toxic brew far and wide with metronomic regularity.

11.   The malignant narcissist, lacking guilt or a conscience, is only concerned with respect and not being publicly shamed.  Any kind of public embarrassment will cause them further anger, further rage, further attacks, further unethical comportment, and unprecedented incivility.

12.   If the narcissist is going to be brought down, they will also seek to bring everyone else around them down to vindictively make them suffer.  How the narcissist vilifies, lashes out, or destroys others (spouse, friends, business partners, workmates, the general public) is up to the morbid creativity and depravity of the malignant narcissist, the viable tools they have available, and of course how dire or desperate the situation.  The internet and social media are certainly useful as lives can be ruined with a single tweet.  But so are guns and rifles, poison, and even assassins for hire.  And if they command a country, they can put the security organs or the military to work on their behalf.

13.   In certain situations, as the end nears, the suffering of others is paramount to the malignant narcissist.  It is their way of elevating themselves—sick as that sounds—by malevolently paying back society with even more suffering.  As they lash out, they will show no concern or empathy because they have none.  If others are suffering because of their actions, the narcissist simply does not care.  Lacking a conscience or any kind of remorse, much like Robert Hare’s psychopath, they sleep very well at night while everyone else is anxious, worried, stressed, physically or psychologically traumatizes all the while nervously and justifiably pondering what further malevolence will take place.

14.   As they face failure, arrest, indictment, or dismissal, they will endlessly air their grievances.  Narcissists are natural wound collectors and as such, they have been collecting and nurturing social slights and perceived wrongs just for this occasion.  They will wallow in victimhood claiming they have been relentlessly and needlessly persecuted.  They, of course, expect their attorneys, followers, or enablers to subserviently echo their flatulent claims.

So, what happens in the end?  Difficult to predict.  Each circumstance is different.  Some will kick and flail and disappear for a while, intentionally or thanks to incarceration—biding their time until they can do it all over again.  Others regroup, plan, scheme, and prepare another triumphant entry into the lives of the unsuspecting to victimize them when the opportunity arises.  

Others, unfortunately, will seek to do harm as they face a breakup, a divorce, are fired from a job, are outed for their crimes, or are removed from office.  Others will hound, stalk, or just make life intolerable for those they deem responsible. Their past can often give us insight as to what they might do, but one can never be sure—humans are terribly complex and as with many afflicted with a personality disorder, sensitive to the smallest of unrecognized but catalytic triggers.

In the case of narcissistic cult leaders, the cult members often pay with their lives as they did in Jonestown Guyana when Jim Jones came under investigation.  In interpersonal relationships, violence is always something to be concerned. "

Joe Navarro, FBI Behavioural Analysis Veteran, When the Narcissist Fails, Psychology Today, 2 January 2024


The conflict in the Middle East was heating up quite a bit on the overnight, with even more missiles and drones on the fly. 

And not even rumors of imminent peace deals could stem the realization of risks, long ignored.

Stocks fell.

VIX rose.

The Dollar chopped around.

Bitcoin fell but is hanging on near the top of the intermediate trading range.

Gold and silver were hit hard.  No telling what was driving that one but one might speculate.

Oil rose sharply, as traders lost patience with the ever looming shortages and lack of coherent energy strategy.  There is a 'cup and handle' formation on the US oil futures chart calling out to 116 if activated.

What is concerning me is that none of the primary player/aggressors on the board look to be relenting from their narrowly selfish positions in what history will easily note as a pivotal event in the first half of this century.

Not a statesman or great figure of conscience to be found among these clerks and errand boys for the plutocracy.  

And then there is the Ukraine, whose economy and ability to sustain armed conflict is slowly sliding into the Black Sea. 

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."   Proverbs 11:2-3

The wages of sin are Trump.

Have a pleasant evening.