Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - First They Come For the Weak

 

"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola, circa 98 AD

"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems ot that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system. The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious hypocrisy.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery."

Jesse, Empires of Illusion: First They Come for the Weak, 31 December 2012

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

John Harrington, Epigrams: Of Treason, 1618


Risks remain dangerously mispriced.

There will be a major stock option expiration on Friday.

The veneer of normalcy which they seek to maintain is growing increasingly thin and unstable.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Option Expiration: For the Love of An Illusion

 

"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent. Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialized nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation's regulations, policies and laws."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, 27 January 2009

"America is caught in a confidence or credibility trap, in which the changes, investigations, and reforms necessary to restore trust to an economy or market are rendered unlikely because doing so would expose a pervasive corruption that the principals fear would destroy the careers of politicians and business people who may have permitted and even appeared to facilitate the control fraud that caused the financial crisis in the first place."

Jesse, America Trapped in a Massive Coverup of Control Fraud and Corruption, 22 January 2011

"Jesus began to speak to his disciples, saying: ‘Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is their hypocrisy.  There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known.  What has been said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what has been whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.

‘I tell you my brothers, do not be afraid of those who can kill the body and after that do no more.  Rather you should fear him who, after your body has been killed, has the authority to cast your soul into hell. Amen, I tell you, fear his judgement."

Luke 12:1-6

There were a number of significantly negative developments over the weekend.

You can read about the war in the Mideast and Ukraine for yourselves.

The AI giants are starting to buckle under the weight of their own outrageously 'optimistic' revenue forecasts and spending.

Statements were issued, and hands were revealed for those who had the eyes to see them.

So why did the markets do what they did today, that is, open significantly lower and then recover throughout the day?

For the same reason that the market insiders have been covering up the problems in the oil and gas markets for months now.

There is money to be made in a control fraud.   And this one has the backing of the power elite.

The biggest stock option expiration of the year is this Friday.

One can cite evidence, and historical examples, and most people will sagely nod their heads as if they understand, and then proceed on to obsessively follow the illusion of being exceptional until they leap as a group of true believers into the abyss.

I saw this in so many heartbreaking ways in 2002.  And again in 2008. 

And we are about to see it again.   And they will not believe it is happening until the deluge sweeps them away.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Spiritual Wickedness in High Places

 

"...further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and noncombatants – will become blurred.   Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces.  And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction.  Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound.

...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. "

The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, September 2000

The Project For a New American Century was a think tank founded in 1997 by Robert Kagan and William Kristol, with John Bolton, Bruce Jackson, and Devon Gaffney Cross as Directors. Robert Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland. PNAC was replaced in 2009 by the 'Foreign Policy Initiative' which was also founded by Kristol and Kagan.

In addition to promoting 'neo-conservative' policies within the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations, the organization issued a major position paper called Rebuilding America's Defenses which you may read about here.

PNAC was a leading proponent for regime change and wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. There is a list of the original signatories and contrbutors on the last page although there is no evidence that they specifically approved of this position paper.

Jesse, Whiling Away the Stabilization Phase, 13 August 2015

"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil.  I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy.  It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants.  A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man.  Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 1947

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

As a reminder there will be a triple witch stock option expiration next Friday.  It could be significant.

Wall Street and the politicians honored the national observance of 9/11 by doing their best to cloak their scheming and conniving for personal gain by draping themselves in the American flag.

Oil fell to 'profit-taking' which was a bunch of baloney.

The situation with energy related products is going to rock the Western economies.  

The war situation is only getting worse, caught in a spiral of escalation. 

Dollar chopped.

Bitcoin held its ground.

VIX fell.

Gold and silver bounced back a bit.

May God have mercy on us.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And Who Then Will Be Able to Stand?

 

"Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

"There seems little question that in 1929 the economy was fundamentally unsound. This is a circumstance of first-rate importance.  In 1929 the rich were indubitable rich.  The figures are not entirely satisfactory, but it seems certain that the five per cent of the population with the highest incomes in that year received approximately one-third of all income.

This highly unequal income distribution meant that the economy was dependent on a high level of investment or a high level of luxury consumer spending or both.  The rich cannot buy great quantities of bread.  If they are to dispose of what they receive it must be on luxuries or by way of investment in new plants and new projects.  Both investment and luxury spending are subject, inevitably, to more erratic influences and to wider fluctuations than the bread and rent outlays of the $25-week workman.  This high bracket spending and investment was especially susceptible, one may assume, to the crushing news from the stock market in October 1929."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929, 1955

"We from our youth up have lived in peace; with no persecution, no terror, no hindrance in serving God. The utmost we have had to endure, is what is almost too trifling for a Christian to mention — cold looks, or contempt, or ridicule, from those who have not the heart themselves to attempt the narrow way.  Our sins are more in number than the hairs of our head; yet even the hairs of our head are all numbered by Him.  He counts our sins, and, as He counts, so can He forgive; for that reckoning, great though it be, comes to an end; but His tender mercies fail not, and His Son's merits are infinite."

John Henry Newman, Present Blessings, 1839

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse."

Charles Kindelberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 1978

"Then the kings of the earth, the nobles, and the military commanders, the rich and the powerful, and all the rest who served hid themselves in caves and sheltered among the rocks of the mountains.  And they implored the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.  For the great day of his wrath has come, and who then will be able to stand?”

Revelation 6:15-17

Gold and silver were hammered.

Stocks fell.

VIX rose sharply.

Bitcoin sold off a bit.

This looked to be some of the big boys starting to raise liquidity. 

This is the pronounced receding of the ocean that precedes certain natural events of magnitude, that strange phenomenon that draws many to the shoreline, only to be engulfed in the relentless tsunami that follows.

Have a pleasant evening.