Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - At the Court of Nero

 

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving.  Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility.  They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2012

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.  It’s the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.  Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944

"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, When the Narcissist Fails, 2 January 2024

"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

Stocks popped and flopped after yet another phony leak about peace negotiations through Barak David at Axios last night.

Oil appears to be attempting to break out.

The 'crack spreads' which are a measure of the difference in price between paper and physical are blowing out on diesel, and to a lesser extent gasoline.

What is unsustainable will not be sustained.

The use of the 'Overton Window' is straining, with the increasing use of force and fraud, to contain the depravity of those who have chosen to serve the darkness.

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”    Martin Luther King, Strength to Love, 1963

Judgement is coming— even for those who do not believe in it, or that the rules apply to them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pantomimes of Empire

 

"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves.  Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology.  They would far rather kill than have to think."

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan, 1926

"I think that a certain relatively small subset of people are predisposed through both nurture and nature to seek to monopolize the public economy by distorting the rules, in order to gain control over the many through the possession of key assets.

It is not a matter of need or survival or even rational economic preference; it is a pathology, a compulsion, an intense neurosis.  We have seen this happen in large companies and in nations where fear and greed become the dominant forces of societal impulse.  The coup de grâce is often the propagation of power to idiot sons and assorted mediocrities and sycophants, although the inherent instability of the principals is not to be discounted as a destructive force. 

This tendency is kept in check by a balanced system of peer pressure, strong cultural mores, and public laws and regulations which tend to suppress unproductive and outright destructive impulses.  But when the acquisitors gain an undue influence in the system then we have an enormous accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and a growing tension between sustainability and collapse. 

The concentration of power tends to increase the probability of uncorrected and self-propagating policy errors. This is why the majority passes laws, sanctions, and reforms to prevent a collapse from recurring when the memory of the disaster and its causes is fresh in their minds. Over time the safeguards are weakened and overcome as the public grows complacent, and the cycle is repeated again as it arises from enduring quirks in the variety of human nature."

Jesse, Inequality and the Credit Crisis, 1 September 2008

“The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. The grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. The mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.”

Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le Mensonge, 1943 


Stocks fell off a bit from their rocket rally of yesterday.

The VIX fell, however, and is not at the low of the year.

The Dollar lost a little bit and fell off the 100 handle.

Gold and silver had a little bounce.   Bitcoin not so much.

Things are still simmering and unsettled in both the Ukraine and the Mideast.

The next few weeks are worth watching closely. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hide Us From the Wrath of the Lamb

 

"He puts an end to wars all over the earth;
      he breaks the bow and snaps the spear,
      and he burns the shields with flames.
'Be still and know that I am God,
      exalted among the nations,
      exalted on the earth.'"

Psalm 46:10-11

"Son of man, you are living among a lawless people.  They have eyes to see, but they do not see, and they have ears to hear, but they do not hear, for they are rebellious by their very nature.

Therefore, son of man, while they see you, pack up your belongings and set off from your home into exile during the day.  Perhaps this will cause them to understand that they are a wayward people.  Bring out your belongings during the day as they are watching, and in the evening, again as they watch, go forth like one who has been driven into exile.

Then, as they continue to see you, dig a hole in the wall and make your way through it.  In their presence, lift your pack onto your shoulder and set out into the darkness.  Cover your face so that you may not see the land, for I have established you as a sign for the house of Israel.

I did what I had been commanded.  In the daytime I brought out my belongings that had been packed for exile, and in the evening I dug through the wall with my own hands.  While they looked on, I set out in the darkness, shouldering my burden.

On the following morning, this word of the Lord was addressed to me: Son of man, did the house of Israel, that rebellious people, not even ask you what you were doing?  Say to them: Thus says the Lord God: This prophecy concerns the prince in Jerusalem and the entire house of Israel living within its territory.  Tell them: I am a sign for you.  As I have done, so will it be done to them.  As captives they will go into exile." 

Ezekiel 12:1-11

"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

In a manner similar to the way in which they jumped into this latest war with Iran without bothering to concoct a pack of lies and sell it to us with the help of a complicit deep state and mainstream media, so they didn't bother to make up a fictitious peace deal to justify today's heavy handed shenanigans.

Stocks rallied with the SP 500 to another all time high.  

A proper tower of Babel it is.

Gold and silver and oil were smacked lower, oil ridiculously so.

I kept looking to see if something happened, or was rumored to be happening.

VIX is now at a low for the year.

I don't think Donny is going to pull the trigger on another attack on Iran.  It would be nuts and pointless, even if Bibi and the Washington war hawks are squawking for it.

But, you never know what frame of mind he'll be in when someone floats the idea.

When our dog Daisy was succumbing to heart disease she had a long gradual decline such that we really did not grasp the full extent of it.   But when we were looking at videos of her even only two years ago the extent of her debilitation was easy to spot.

I was thinking the same thing today when remembering what Trump was like in his first term.

One way or another, either impeachment or 25th amendment or something unanticipated, I do not think he is going to finish his full term of office.   I pray for him of course as I do for all, but I can't blind myself to at least thinking about the implications.

When all is said and done I hope we do not overlook all his enablers, those who will claim they were 'just following orders' while clutching their presidential pardons, and staring down some serious state charges.

Needless to say, the only monument that will remain from all this is the monumental distortion in the markets and global stability and trade.   

Everything I look at and know suggest it is going to fairly memorable. 

"While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great. They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth.  As in the United States in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s, the case for a central bank ultimately to burst that bubble becomes overwhelming.  I think it is far better that we do so while the bubble still resembles surface froth and before the bubble carries the economy to stratospheric heights. Whenever we do it, it is going to be painful, however.”

Larry Lindsey, FOMC Minutes, Fed Governor, September 24, 1996

Today, as compared to the first two bubbles, the government ability to toss billions of dollars in bailouts to corporations and the banks is more limited by the dollar and sovereign debt, despite what some monetary jumbo jugglers might be saying about hypothetical constructs and confabulations.

I have seen that first hand as I operated a business across 120 countries, and read even more about how money dies during the decline of empires and years of profligate abuse and corruption.  It is not pretty. 

"Certainly there were many others as reprehensible and irresponsible as those who played the leading roles.  The German people were the victims. The battle, as one who survived it explained, left them dazed and inflation-shocked. They did not understand how it had happened to them, and who the foe was who had defeated them.  The real collapse of our currency began when it became evident that certain industrial circles were more powerful than the government."

Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse, 1975

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

Have a pleasant evening. 

Related: Serious Instances of Inflation Since WW II

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Gates of Hell Are Terrible to Behold

 

"And he exhorted them with many words and argument saying, 'Save yourselves from this perverse and wicked generation.'"

Acts 2:40

"We are coming apart as a society, and inequality is right at the core of that. When the 90 percent are getting worse off and they’re trying to figure out what happened, they’re not people like me who get to spend four or five hours a day studying these things and then writing about them — they’re people who have to make a living and get through life. And they’re going to be swayed by demagogues and filled with fear about the other, rather than bringing us together.

I think it would be easy for someone to arrive in the near future and really create forces that would lead to trouble in this country.  If we don’t get a handle on this then one of these days our descendants are going to sit down in high-school history class and open a textbook that begins with the words: The United States of America was— and then it will dissect how our experiment in self-governance came apart."

David Cay Johnston, Inequality’s Looming Disaster, Salon May 22, 2014

They will not see. They will not listen. Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin."

The White Rose, Fifth Leaflet, Munich 1943

"The Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true. He is not an agent, but merely a symptom, yet he should be watched as a symptom.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles."

Hillaire Belloc, This That and the Other, 1912

“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside."

Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love, 1999

"No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers and erect barriers to fair play.  A big reason is that so little of the news, which informs us about the world around us, addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.

All this was done under the guise of 'deregulation,' but the harsh truth is that there’s really no such thing.  Everything has rules.  Deregulation is just a disingenuous name for new regulation, too often under rules that favor corporations over their customers.”

David Cay Johnston, The Fine Print, November 2011

"The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not? The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2008

"War is a super-human force that will make an agent of those who foolishly and recklessly believe in their own agency. The last two years, I have been affected by the intersection of the biblical Massacre of the Holy Innocents with the genocide in Gaza. It is the story of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, their lives as refugees and as strangers in a foreign land, and the persecution of refugees and immigrants in our land today."

Matthew Hoh, No Best Case Scenario, December 17, 2025

It was a day for optimistic bounces, as the CPI data came in this morning behind.  

And at least for today the disaster that is looming in the Middle East can be forgotten.

Stocks bounced.

Gold and silver bounced.

The Dollar crept just a little higher to sink its fingernails in the 100 handle.

Bitcoin dropped a bit again.

SpaceX continues its recent rally off the low.  They are reloading after the most recent wash and rinse.

The current market is based on a howler of a new era tech story that ranks right up there with the best of them.  

Even the gerbils they were shooting out of cannons in 2007 had more gravitas and credibility than the numbers which the AI companies and their spokesmodels are shooting at the wall.

Typically on Wall Street the only guys who make money in tech bubble are the suppliers of the picks and shovels, and then even they are eventually pulled under when it all comes crashing back to earth.

But, by all mean, let us blind ourselves in the finest tradition of crash and burn business models.

Until someone roots the moral hazard out of the markets, they will keep coming back for more.

Stock up.  Stack up. 

Run. 

Have a pleasant evening.