Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Wages of Sin

 

"The issue isn't just jobs.  Even slaves had jobs.  The issue is income, wages, and middle-class opportunities.  Ask a waitress at any café or bar whether she's aware that Bush has been creating new jobs, and she'll say: 'Yeah, I know, I have three of them.'"

Jim Hightower, Bush's Economic Nostrum, August 30, 2006

"Starting around 1980, American society began to undergo a series of deep shifts.  Deregulation, weakened antitrust enforcement.  Money began to play a larger and more corrupting role in politics. America fell behind other nations in education, in infrastructure, and in the performance of many of its major industries.  Inequality increased.  As a result of these and other changes, America was turning into a rigged game—a society that denies opportunity to those who are not born into wealthy families, one that resembles a third-world dictatorship more than an advanced democracy."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012

"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy, 1995

"Why are people so reluctant to believe that sociopaths and narcissists can use the power of the pen to prey on people?  Because they are well spoken and organized?  These are the most dangerous of the emotionally warped with a need to acquire, dominate and control, because they are smarter and more calculating than the impulse murderers, burglars, rapists, thieves, and pedophiles.

The notion that people become naturally good, rational and well-adjusted because they are wearing a suit is ludicrous, especially to anyone who has worked with many of those who move in the upper echelons of money and power.  There will always be those at the extremes.  But for most of us, restoring a sense of justice and order and putting the nation back into some kind of working balance will be high on the priority list, if not for ourselves, then for our families.  The sooner we start, the sooner it will be over.

Jesse, Predator Class, 26 December 2008

“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy.”

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935

“Anyone who has ever lived or worked in a corrupt dictatorship knows what happens. When the system is rigged, when ordinary citizens are powerless, and when whistle-blowers are pariahs at best, three things happen. First, the worst people rise to the top. They behave appallingly, and they wreak havoc. Second, people who could make productive contributions to society are incented to become destructive, because corruption is far more lucrative than honest work.  And third, everyone else pays, both economically and emotionally; people become cynical, selfish, and fatalistic. Often they go along with the system, but they hate themselves for it.”

Charles H. Ferguson, Inside Job, 2010


Stocks rallied today, founded in part by news of another 'breakthrough' in discussions with Iran.

Gold and silver bounced.

Bitcoin held its ground at support and managed to bounce a bit.

We have earnings on deck, which may have some influence on the market at the extremes.

But all in all, the looming global recession and oil shortage is barely given its appropriate risk weighting.

I have seen some very ugly and awful things in my life.  I was a child of the 50's and 60's after all, But the current level of open corruption and hypocrisy in Washington is a disgraceful stain on the country.  

Those who fail to uphold their oaths to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic bear a heavy responsibility.

History will not be kind.  And it ought not to be.  There is no excuse for this.

People of faith must bear witness to the terrible sins against the Spirit being committed by those who cloak themselves in a gospel soaked in money and blood.  They will be reaping the wages of sin.

"You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” 
William Wilberforce, Speech to Parliament, 1791

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Mighty Bubble of Stolen Wealth

 

“A mighty bubble of wealth is blown before our eyes, as empty, as transient, as contradictory to the laws of solid material, as confuted by every circumstance of actual condition, as any other bubble which man or child ever blew before.”

Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost, 1999

"Over the past 30 years the plutocrats have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet.

Like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy. Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs."

Bill Moyers, last episode of Bill Moyers Journal, 30 April 2010

"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State, 5 January 2016

"Special privileges and the use of the taxing power for private gain, these are the twin pillars upon which plutocracy rests. Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes.

Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it is more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity. Conscienceless, compassionless and devoid of wisdom, it enervates its votaries while it impoverishes its victims."

William Jennings Bryan, Speech at Madison Square Garden, 30 August 1906

"For they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency, which requires the elimination of administrative or political barriers capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual quest for the maximisation of individual profit, which has been turned into a model of rationality. They want independent central banks.

And they preach the subordination of nation-states to the requirements of economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of any regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses.

And yet the world is there, with the immediately visible effects of the implementation of the great neoliberal utopia: not only the poverty of an increasingly large segment of the most economically advanced societies, the extraordinary growth in income differences, the progressive disappearance of autonomous universes of cultural production, such as film, publishing, etc. through the intrusive imposition of commercial values, but also and above all two major trends.

First is the destruction of all the collective institutions capable of counteracting the effects of the infernal machine, primarily those of the state, repository of all of the universal values associated with the idea of the public realm. Second is the imposition everywhere, in the upper spheres of the economy and the state as at the heart of corporations, of that sort of moral Darwinism that, with the cult of the winner, schooled in higher mathematics and bungee jumping, institutes the struggle of all against all and cynicism as the norm of all action and behaviour."

Pierre Bourdieu, L’essence du néolibéralisme, (en français), December 1998

Stocks slumped again today despite an early afternoon attempt to take the major indices green.

Gold and silver were slammed lower.

The Dollar grabbed the 99 handle.  It is still chopping within a relatively narrow range however.

VIX wallowed in near complacency, as it is often wont to do.

Bitcoin is hanging on to support a little north of 76k.

The markets seem quiet.   Not in a peaceful way, but in anticipation of an outbreak of uncertainty.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Limit of Tyrants

 

"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

"It was true, the bill was said to be founded on necessity; but what was this?  Was it not necessity, which had always been the plea of every illegal exertion of power, or exercise of oppression?  Was not necessity the pretence of every usurpation?  Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.  It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

William Pitt, Speech, House of Commons, 18 November 1783

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.  The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Frederick Douglass, Emancipation, August 3, 1857

"The liberties of our country are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."

Samuel Adams, Article Signed 'Candidus,' The Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

"American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy.  By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery; but that misery has its purpose in the scheme of nature.  Something more than a century ago we saw the people driven by just such misery to grope their way into a new order of society; they threw off the chains of hereditary monarchy, and made themselves citizens of free republics."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check, 1919

"God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America 'you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name.  Be still and know that I'm God.'"

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War, Ebenezer Baptist Church, April 30, 1967

I may be wrong, but it appears to me that the US stock market is overdue for a significant correction.

The first chart below shows that margin debt is now at a record. 

Stocks dipped, but came back a bit in the final hours after Europe went home to bed.

This is becoming a familiar pattern.

I had thought that Bessent et al. were pumping the equity market to make the Administration look good.

But as it turns out, the President, and most likely his sycophants, are day-trading stocks, and in some case blatantly front running their own statements.  

I have never seen anything like it, and I have seen quite a bit of corruption in my 70+ years.

Gold and silver took a hit in the early trading, but recovered for gains by the end of the day, again.

VIX declined.

The Dollar is in a fairly narrow trading range.  A longer term view, as is shown below, makes the wiggles fit into a fairly sensible picture of 'maintenance.'

People are preoccupied with Iran, but the war between Ukraine and Russia is heating up.  And it is a powder keg.

Trump issued a statement saying that he has called off the planning military action against Iran for Tuesday, based on request from his Gulf partners.

I think they said they would not permit the US to use its bases in their countries, knowing that a devastating counterattack on their own infrastructure was likely.

Donny is caught in a bit of a stalemate.  And he and his outsized ego are obviously not happy.

"So, what happens in the end?  Difficult to predict.  Each circumstance is different... 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."   Joe Navarro, When Narcissists Fail

Let's see what the rest of this week brings.

There is still time to stock up on essentials that may enter soon enough into short supply, but the window appears to be closing. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Poverty of the Faithful Remnant

 

"To experience means to know facts just as they are, to know in accordance with facts by completely relinquishing one's own fabrications. By pure I am referring to the state of experience just as it is without the least addition of deliberative discrimination.

God is not something that transcends reality, God is the base of reality. God is that which dissolves the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity and unites spirit and nature."

Kitarō Nishida, An Inquiry Into the Good, 1911

“Having found this refuge, the intellect begins to confine itself within the walls of its own beliefs.  In doing so, it constructs an internal framework that conceals and hollows out a more expansive awareness of the mind as a whole.  When this occurs, an incomplete self-awakening — rooted in unawakened ignorance and lacking true awareness — becomes a pitfall. 

Behind the radiance of a self-awakening that has supposedly reached a higher plane, the darkness of ignorance persists in an even deeper form.  Behind the certainty of, and belief in, one’s inner truth, the dark shadow of delusion lingers.”

Nishitani Keiji, The Cold Mountain Poems, trans. Norman Waddell, 2026

"Religion without philosophy is blind; philosophy without religion is vacuous. Philosophy seeks to know the ultimate; religion seeks to live it. Yet for the whole human being, the two must be nondualistically of one body, and cannot be divided. If religion is isolated from philosophy, it falls into ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, or dogmatics. If philosophy is alienated from religion, it loses nothing less than its life."

Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, Collected Works, Tokyo, 1971

"To be enlightened by all things is to cast off the body and mind of yourself as well as all others. No trace of realization remains, and this traceless enlightenment continues on and on endlessly."

Dōgen Zenji, Genjōkōan: Shōbōgenzō, 1233

"True poverty is a state of spiritual nakedness, a total detachment from all self-righteousness, all spiritual security, all claims to merit or holiness.  It is a state of absolute dependence upon God, in which the soul, having lost everything, possesses everything in Him.  It is here, in this poverty, that man regains the eternal being that once he was, now is and evermore shall be.  This is the poverty of the anawim, the poor of Yahweh, who have nothing but their trust in His mercy."

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, 1968

Stocks dumped today in the disappointment following the Trump-Xi Summit, in which no magic solutions to Trump's dilemma with his misconceived Mideast adventures were provided.

Today was the monthly stock market option expiration. The next month's expiration is a triple witch. 

VIX ticked up to the longer term moving average, but it remains subdued, all things considered.

The Dollar rallied back to the top of its intermediate trading range.

Bitcoin dumped, but is still bouncing around at overhead resistance.  I have included a chart that shows this more clearly.

Gold and silver were hit with selling, with silver just getting hammered.  Boys will be boys.

The first chart below reveals how the broader market showed signs of an impending top and decliner well in advance of the 'meme stocks' of The Great Crash of 1929.

Breadth is a crossmarket indicator that seasoned traders will always keep in mind.

If not the NYSE Advance-Decline indicator, one may also keep an eye on the broader indices when a market is floating higher on narrowing leadership.  As we see today.

In the 'Financial Panic' of 2007-2008, the SP 500 made its peak bubble top on October 9.  But the Russell 2000 reached its peak on July 13.  It had already fallen over 10% by the time the financial bubble stocks were topping.

Who could have seen it coming?   If their eyes were closed, they did not.

Bubbles are difficult.  The 'enthusiasm' is infectious, and the relentless push higher inclines people to believe that it will keep going, and going, and going.  And if not, they think they will be able to get out in time.

The Tech Bubble of 2000-2002 was essentially the same with the NDX being the lead sled dog.

There is a little bit of a difference now.  The great bamboozle is being more aggressively and openly supported by the insider traders from the political world, with their acolytes and enablers.

You have to wonder if they were dumping their positions ahead of some event planned for the weekend. This is why it is hard to 'think like a criminal.'  They are not rational, and act not out of their own will but in obedience to the powers of the world. 

They think they would be as gods.  Even as they slide with arrogant indifference into the abyss.

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

Have a pleasant weekend.