Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Bubble of Privilege

 

"And what is the origin of evil in us but pride?  For 'pride is the beginning of sin.'  And what is pride but the disproportionate desire for power and status?  This happens when we esteem ourselves too high, when the soul turn away from God, the unchanging good it should cling to, and becomes an idol to itself."

Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book XIV,  AD 420

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, children who refuse to listen to the commandments of the Lord. They say to the seers, “Do not see”; and to the prophets, “Do not tell the truth; speak only what we wish to hear - prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:9-10

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

"Why is surprise the permanent condition of the U.S. political and economic elite?  In 2008, when the global financial system imploded, the cry that no one could have seen this coming was heard everywhere, despite the existence of numerous analyses showing that a crisis was unavoidable.  It is no surprise that one hears precisely the same response today regarding the current turmoil in the Middle East.  The critical issue in both cases is the artificial suppression of volatility—the ups and downs of life—in the name of stability.

As Seneca wrote in De clementia, 'Repeated punishment, while it crushes the hatred of a few, stirs the hatred of all.' In the realm of economics, price controls are designed to constrain volatility on the grounds that stable prices are a good thing. But although these controls might work in some rare situations, the long-term effect of any such system is an eventual and extremely costly blowup whose cleanup costs can far exceed the benefits accrued."

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan of Cairo, Foreign Affairs, 1 June 2011 

"A day after Moscow pummeled the Kyiv region with hundreds of drones — and a powerful new hypersonic missile — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 25 to advise him to pull American diplomatic staff and US citizens out of Kyiv.  Russia has justified its increasing threats citing an attack on a school dormitory in the Russian region of Luhansk last week. Local officials said more than 20 people [students] were killed in the town of Starobilsk."

Mike Eckel, Lavrov Warns US to Evacuate Kyiv, Radio Free Europe 26 May 2026


Today was an option expiration for gold and silver on the Comex.  The June contract is much more significant for gold. 

And so gold was sold down, but bounced back a bit into the close.  We might expect another 'gut punch' to test the resolve of those who held in the money calls, for which they are rewarded with active futures.

Stocks rallied hard on the latest announcement of 'a deal' by the wheeler-dealer-in-chief.

The substance of the 'deal' is vague and varying.  Its intent was to pump the stock market bubble higher.

But it provides an excuse for the stock insiders pool to push prices even higher.

VIX is coiling.

The Dollar is chopping in a channel.

What went largely unnoticed over the holiday weekend is the warning that the Russian Foreign Minister gave to Marco Rubio to evacuate US diplomats and civilians from Kyiv.  A warning like this is required by international law, and is often followed by major military action 24 to 48 hours later.

"Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle. But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its 'inevitability,' want it in order to shift the locus of their problems." C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1960

From Iran to the Ukraine, highly unpopular Western leaders seem determined to push the envelope of war.  And they may well get their wish, although I think most of their citizens want no part of it, but will be carried along with the tide of war and fog of lies.

Have a pleasant evening. 

US Dollar Very Long Term Chart - The Writing Is On the Wall

 

The DXY Index of the US dollar has a weighting against other currencies that made sense in the 1980s. 

It is heavily weighted to the Euro, the Yen, the Loonie, and the Pound.

The Euro replaced the Deutsche Mark, which has recently lost some of its global significance as Europe struggles to find its place in a world of shifting power.

A more useful index based on the current global realities of a new multi-polar world would be more appropriate.

Any new index must include a transnational standard of value such as gold.

"There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value, par excellence."

Charles De Gaulle, President of France, February 4, 1965

"I have always argued that the gold standard of the 19th century was a very effective stabilizer. It kept inflation essentially at zero, and I felt it was critical for the tremendous growth that occurred for the American economy in the latter part of the 19th century. When we went off the gold standard essentially in 1933, we then had to have what we call "fiat money" which is essentially money that is — it's printed paper money. Which unless we restrict the volume of, can be highly inflationary. The type of interest rate regulation that I and indeed most central banks in the last 20 years have been involved in has been to try to replicate the laws and rules that were governing the gold standard."

Alan Greenspan, Chairman Federal Reserve, September 18, 2007

"Gold is unique among assets, in that it is not issued by any government or central bank, which means that its value is not influenced by political decisions or the solvency of one institution or another."

Salvatore Rossi, Chairman Central Bank of Italy, 30 Sept 2013

Why did gold 'fall out of favor amongst the world's central banks in the 1980s and 1990s?  Because gold was an unpalatable restraint on the rise of the United States in its quest for unipolar global hegemony.  It has had to engage in continuing acts of interference and aggression to sustain this strategic leverage, the Petrodollar, and its predatory financial system.  It has even subordinated a large part of its own domestic economy to the concentration of wealth.

That period in history seems to be coming to an end as oil's role as the primary source of energy begins to diminish.  The powerful will resist this stubbornly, and attempt to control the remaining supply of oil while impeding the rise of alternatives. 

It is merely prolonging the inevitable.  Looting by the power elite ensues.  It is still not too late to restore the balance in the system, but the opportunity for endogenous reform is growing short.

The writing is on the wall.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Remembering Who We Are

 

"In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel.  In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches.  The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States.

The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime.  Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify 'togetherness' when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others.

In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security.  The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification.  Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards an excess of caution.”

John F. Kennedy, Speech, New York, September 14, 1960

"Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.  In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.  Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher.  For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.

Crime is contagious.  If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.  Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face."

Louis Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 1928

"Many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity — that is, by Pride.  The devil laughs.  He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride — just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer.  For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."

C.S. Lewis, The Great Sin, Mere Christianity, 1943

"Successful totalitarian rule is precisely that because it allows little variation in its subjects’ intentions—and the Nazi regime was a totalitarian regime par excellence.  When Hitler spoke of the German ‘Volk’ he did not make a suggestion, but a demand: 'if a German, you are a Nazi or a traitor'.

It is crudely general to suggest collective responsibility for the German populace.  It is, however, fair to suggest that those who continued to defend the idea of Germanhood publicly as the war went on — when this had become synonymous with barbarity — were in fact renouncing their humanity for the sake of individual survival and peace of mind."

Panayiotis Demopoulos, Götterdämmerung: Suicide Music and the National Self, May 2014


Because of the Memorial Day Holiday on the 25^th this will be a three day weekend.

Stocks continued their rally despite the unsatisfactory economic and corporate news.

They fell back into the close.

Trump canceled his golf outing and will not be going to his son's wedding this weekend, staying in Washington instead for the holiday.

Israeli media is saying that the course of the Israel-Iran conflict will be decided soon.

It's hard to tell with this crew, as they are given to bluffing, bluster, and lying about even ordinary things.

This could also just be a prelude to an assault on Cuba, to serve as a distraction to the failing strategy with Iran.  The words about Iran may just be the usual fruitless, sociopathic jawboning.

Tulsi Gabbard has resigned today as the US Director of National Intelligence.   One of her highly placed deputies and relative of RFK Jr. has also resigned, in addition to the headline resignation of Joe Kent.  

I am only surprised that she waited so long to resign, given the differences in assessments between US intelligence and the Trump Administration and neocons in the deep state. 

Gold and silver were hit, and then recovered.

These markets are now less than capital allocation with risk and price discovery, and more like a street game of three card monte.

We have fallen into the moral hazard of lawlessness, where financial crimes are overlooked and pardoned, and even murder can be committed by those in power without regard to justice. 

US consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level since I was in third grade.  And that's a long time. 

Monday is Memorial Day.  I can remember when it was called 'Decoration Day.'  

It started shortly after the Civil War in 1868.  It was expanded after WW I to include all those who died in military service.  

It was formalized as the federal holiday we have today in 1968.

As we remember those who sacrificed so much for the freedom that we have had in this country, it is a fitting time to remember who we are, the oaths we have taken, and how we have been called to serve, not ourselves, not any man or class, but the loving commandments of He who has laid the foundations of the world.

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

He died for us, so we can live with Him. 

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Have a pleasant weekend.   

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Miserable Consequence of Obsessive Greed

 

"Dishonor waits on perfidy.  A man should blush to think a falsehood; 'tis the crime of cowards."

Charles Johnson,The Sultaness, 1723

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.  The Government will not assail you.  You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.  You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.'

I am loath to close.  We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

“The commercial world is very frequently put into confusion by the bankruptcy of merchants, that assumed the splendour of wealth only to obtain the privilege of trading with the stock of other men, and of contracting debts which nothing but lucky casualties could enable them to pay; till after having supported their appearance a while by tumultuary magnificence of boundless traffic, they sink at once, and drag down into poverty those whom their equipages had induced to trust them."

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, January 7, 1752

“It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, May 2011

"Risk is once again being spread from the financial sector to the public, which is what Fed Chairman Greenspan had said was one of the objectives of the Fed in their positions on the regulation of complex financial products.  We were assured that the markets were sound, no additional regulation was required, the pensions were adequately funded.  And finally when disaster struck and the facade fell away, that a generation's ransom was required by the banks, in order to heal themselves and avert disaster.

And then they took the money for themselves."

Jesse, A Run On the Funds, 30 August 2009

"But there is a sort of  'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."

Robert Johnson, Oligarchy, Impact 2012

“'The world says: "You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty.  Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.'  This is the worldly doctrine of today.  And they believe that this is freedom.  The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880

"They want you to own nothing. They want you to rent your car, your house, your entire life from them, from a billionaire class that owns everything around you. That's their ideal future, and we can't let them have it."

Graham Platner, Candidate for Senate, May 21, 2026


Stocks slumped today early, and then recovered and closed with a gain. 

This is becoming the signature move of Trump's crooked markets.

Gold and silver were hit early on, and then came back again in the afternoon.

Bitcoin is holding on to support, not going down but not able to lift off of it again.

VIX has fallen down to a level that has been marking a low water mark for complacency of late.

The Dollar is chopping around sideways at 99.

Trading markets in which official lies and front-running prices have become a regular thing are a bit of a challenge.

We should be ashamed of such corruption in the highest places of power in the land.  Even moreso those in professional positions and the media who aid and abet this perfidy.

And for what?  What is worth your soul?  

The surprise is not that it is given away, but that it is given away so cheaply. 

Have a pleasant evening.