Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Plague of Vain and Sickened Shadows

 

"It would take a book of genius to demonstrate this truth, commonplace though it may be, that one must have suffered in order to be capable of love.  Love is an act of the will, but pain is always a prior revelation to that very act, because man has places in his poor heart that do not yet exist — and into these suffering enters so they may have life. This is why martyrdom — the complete acceptance of all possible suffering — instantly precipitates the soul into perfect love, without even passing through the painstaking imitation of penance."

Léon Bloy, Lettres de jeunesse (1870-1893), 1920

"The more selfish you are, the more involved life becomes.  The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all.  It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture."

Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, 1953

"The dazzling and consuming act of pride that transformed the angel of light into an angel and prince of darkness condemned him to an insatiable, and therefore desperate, need to acquire.  Having fallen from the eternal, Satan's desires are endless and insatiable.  Having fallen from pure Being, he seeks to possess.  But the problem is forever insoluble.  For in order to have and possess, it would be necessary to have life, to Be, and he is connected to life no longer.  All he takes into himself he destroys.  And to be sure, he can have it, since he is called Prince of this World in Scripture — but he will never have anything but the things of this world.  He will never regain Heaven, which is properly the soul of this world, and the essence of existence."

Denis de Rougemont, La Part du Diable, Switzerland, 1944

"God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering."

William Nicholson, Shadowlands, 1989

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1991

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable."

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960

"Christ did not overcome pleasure and pain by a sort of stoic insensibility, an inability to feel; he mastered them through the strengthening of his spirit, thus at the same time preserving yet transfiguring our full human sensibility to suffering and our tendency to want to escape from it. His cross means that the spirit is victorious over matter without making matter of no effect, but by transfiguring the material world through the response of a will wholly given to God."

Dimitrios Stăniloae, The Victory of the Cross, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, 1978


Suffering is a means by which God tempers us, refines us, saves us, afflicting us so we do not lapse into vain self-sufficiency. Not to become snared in a pride and a perverse individualism that gathers us blindly into ourselves, and separates us from His grace and His creation. 

To suffer is how to grow in humility, and conform ourselves to do what He commands, rather than what we will.  Sacrifice chastens, and makes people feel their common humanity.  Pride will not permit a proud man to suffer, anything.  

Prayer is how we sustain ourselves in times of both suffering and joy, with humility in this life, as we resort not only to ourselves or to the world, but to all things with God. And so we find comfort in His will, and the conversations that we keep with His grace and many tender mercies. 

The proud servants of the world who are shadows of men can not see this, and in not seeing do not understand. To their darkened hearts those who love are fools.  

God's consolations and comforts to His people are hidden, delivered in quiet moments, heart to heart. And so He gathers His children together, and keeps them safe, and slowly takes them from this sickened world and the shadow people therein, that search endlessly in their insatiable misery for souls to fill their emptiness, and to devour.

"Great God! Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?"  Confederate General James Longstreet

Because it serves the purposes of those empty and selfish creatues who have made themselves into beasts. 

Stocks fell today, from a greatly overbought condition.   The denizens of the Street are defending tech in the NDX, because they wish to have a clear field for landing two massive IPOs later this month.  

SpaceX is absurdly overvalued, but the rules that will compel index funds into forced buying have been distorted just for this final gasp of the AI bubble.  This is a shocking betrayal of fiduciary and regulatory duty.  Not only can they see what is coming, they are acting purposely to make it happen again for their own selfish gains.  

Gold and silver were hit again and the Dollar ticked higher.

The Empire and its dark creatures will not go quietly.  They have escaped the consequences of their behaviour too many times in the past to act with caution, much less honor.  They are emboldened.

But this too will pass.   As they become bolder the mask of their hypocrisy falls away. Their lies, and thefts, and murders become apparent.  

Those who make themselves beasts do well for a time, but then fall away into disgrace and desolation, and are forgotten.  Always.

What we are seeing is the last grasp of the damned. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We Hear a Hundred Thousand Voices Crying

 

"If heaven is seeing and in turn being seen, transformed and made new by the beatific face of pure love in resplendent glory, then hell must be seeing, at last and forever after, their own dark and miserable soul as it really is, alone."

Jesse, Death By Overdose, 24 February 2015

"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things.  I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes.  But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler.  And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge, Im toten Winkel - Hitler's Sekretärin, 2002

"The world would be better off if people tried to become better.  And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off. For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off.  But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off."

Peter Maurin, Easy Essays, The Catholic Worker, 1933

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself to a righteous cause?  What does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

Sophie Scholl, Last Words, Executed February 22, 1943

"When you speak these things, they will not listen. When you call to them, they will not answer. Then declare, 'This is the nation that would not listen to the Lord their God, and would not accept his words. Truth has perished among them, it has disappeared from their mouths. Cut off the hair of your sacred vow and throw it away. Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under His wrath. For the Judeans have done what is evil in My sight.' This is the Lord’s declaration. 'They have set up detestable things in the house that is called by My name — and defiled it.'"

Jeremiah 7:27-30

"The demon's target is not the possessed; it is us the observers — everyone in the house.  The point is to make us despair, to reject our humanity, to see ourselves as beasts, vile and putrescent, without dignity, ugly, unworthy."

William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist, May 1971

Stocks continued to float higher, in Ponzi like technical buying that ignores most if not all risks, both economic and geopolitical.

Gold and silver rallied overnight and then were pushed lower in New York.

Gold has displaced the Dollar as the World's Premier Investment.   I am sure the empire is not pleased.

The Dollar is chopping around.

Bitcoin got smacked lower and is now down around 'must hold' support.

VIX is in la-la land.

I do not like to associate with arrogant bullies, pathological liars, shameless thieves, and those who cheat, and even ravage and destroy, the innocent of all ages.

And I think most people, when they are thinking clearly and for themselves, tend to agree with this.  It's basic humanity and common sense.

This is what makes the things that are going on today, that seem to be tolerated and even encouraged by so many, even among the educated and professional elite, so inexplicable.

We will hear a hundred thousand voices crying out in their pain and misery to heaven. 

Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked.   What a man sows, so shall he reap.

And His just hand is already moving, slowly but surely, among us. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We Who Murder the Prophets and Persecute Saints

 

"Where such a shift in power is in favor of the governing elite, Power can now achieve its potential.  Where the elite also has built-up frustrations regarding those who have lost power, or nonetheless feels threatened by them; where it sees them as outside the moral universe, or where it has dehumanized them; where the outgroup is culturally or ethnically distinct and perceived by the elite as inferior; or where any other such factors are present, 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.  Most democides occur under the cover of war, revolution, or guerrilla war, or in their aftermath."

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government, 1993

“Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them.  They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize in Literature, 1970

“She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things.

She was unfailingly true to an age that was false; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both — she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.”

Mark Twain, Joan of Arc, 1896

"We are all lost. We have burned a Saint!"

Jean Tressart, Secretary to Henry VI of England, May 30, 1431

"I know this now. Every man gives his life to what he believes.  Every woman gives her life for what she believes.  Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing."

Jeanne d'Arc, Trial records, 15 March 1431

The offenses against the Constitution and the waves of lawlessness that we seem to be accepting, if you step back and compare what is happening now and how things were when we were younger, is startling.  The reasons for this are obvious.  They don't even bother to hide it.

Reporter: The DOJ has this new fund — $1.7 billion.  Why should taxpayers pay for the January 6ers?
Trump: Because in my world, loyalty outranks law.  They broke the rules for me, so you pay the bill for them.  That’s the transaction.

Stocks popped and flopped a bit.   

I'm a little surprised they did that well, considering how the wheels are falling off the global political situation and economy.

Gold and silver were hit hard again, but managed to take some of that back into the close.

This past Saturday was the feast day of Saint Joan of Arc.

Her accomplishments are all the more remarkable when we recall that she was executed on 30 May 1431 at age 19. 

This warrior-saint, deserving of all honor, who led the army of France to astonishing victory against fierce opposition.  How would we treat her today? 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - By the Blood of the Risen

 

"The end of all things draws closer.  Therefore be serious and disciplined with your prayers. Above all, be constant in your love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.  Be kind to all without complaining.  Like good stewards of the grace of God in its various ways, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. 

Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Christ.  To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever, amen.

Do not be surprised at the trial by fire that is taking place among you, as though something strange was happening. But rejoice that you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed."

1 Peter 4:7-13

"His stature was still an asset to the regime, however, and Nero put him to work drafting a letter justifying the killing to the Senate. He had to claim that Nero had acted in self-defense against a dangerous woman, but not by celebrating the death of a mother. It did not impress the Senate, though only a hardcore stoic named Thrasea Paetus showed explicit disapproval of the blatant propaganda.

Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. On the one hand, their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies. For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul.

The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”

James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, 2014

"The end result was to be a new Imperial Order, and a New World Empire run by elite, self-perpetuating oligarchies from the leading nations of the earth."

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

"He fell with his face to the earth, as if kissing some one's feet. The silence continued long; then were heard the words of the aged man, broken by sobs, 'Quo vadis, Domine?'

Nazarius did not hear the answer; but to Peter's ears came a sad and sweet voice, which said, 'If you desert my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time.'

The Apostle lay on the ground, his face in the dust, without motion or speech. It seemed to Nazarius that he had fainted or was dead; but he rose at last, seized the staff with trembling hands, and turned without a word toward the seven hills of the city.

The boy, seeing this, repeated as if an echo, 'Quo vadis, Domine?'

"To Rome," said the Apostle, in a low voice. And he returned.

And that same evening he went to the Ostian cemetery to teach and baptize those who wished to bathe in the water of life. And thenceforward he went there daily, and after him went increasing numbers. It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.

But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins. When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, — happiness and love."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905


When great powers fall into the trap of asymmetric wars against highly motivated and entrenched indigenous people, they bleed. 

Stocks managed to extend their rally once again, on more fog and puffery from the Administration on a settlement to the conflict in the Middle East.

And they fell back again on more reports that Iran disavows the things that have been said.

This must surely be the oddest negotiation that I have ever witnessed, or even heard of.

Gold spiked quite hard today around 11:00 AM EDT.   It gave back a some as the day wore on, but managed to hold on to an additional gain.

You may have noticed that when we get this hard selloffs into significant contract months option expirations, after a day or two of additional shenanigans we get a sharp rally back as the equilibrium of the market attempts to reassert itself.    

Silver was content to wallow around.

Bitcoin managed to hold on to support and break its recent decline from a failed breakout attempt. 

VIX is complacent, which is odd but in line with recent fashion in the world of the power elite.

Both the economic and the geopolitical spheres seem rather 'wobbly' these days.  Having a group of pathological liars with the support of sociopaths is not constructive. 

How are so many awful leaders, with strikingly high disapproval ratings, managing to stifle the world's democracies and turn them upside down?  It makes one wonder.

The mighty rise and are fallen, but the word and the spirit endure — by the blood of the Risen.

 Need little, want less, and love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.