Jesse's Café Américain: Stocks and Precious Metals Charts

"Our society resembles an immense machine that ceaselessly snatches and devours human beings and which no one knows how to master. And they who sacrifice themselves for social progress are like persons who try to catch hold of the wheels and the transmission belts in order to stop the machine and are destroyed in their attempts. But the impotence one feels today—an impotence we should never consider permanent—does not excuse one from remaining true to one’s self, nor does it excuse capitulation to the enemy, whatever mask he may wear.

Whether the mask is labelled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains The Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battle-lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers’ enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”

Simone Weil, Reflections on War, February 1945

"The power of a monopoly of the instruments of communication, may be so used as to impoverish and imprison the mind. One idea insinuated into the mind may take possession of it and exercise a hypnotic spell. Two or more ideas are better, but if these are methodically selected to suit the purpose of an authority, they still deny freedom. Whoever determines what alternatives shall be made known to man controls what that man should choose from. He is deprived of freedom in proportion as he is denied access to any ideas, or is confined to any range of ideas short of the totality of relevant possibilities. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether. ”

Ralph Barton Perry, The Humanity of Man, 1956

"People of faith can read the Bible so that almost any perspective on a current issue will find some support in the Bible. That rich and multivoiced offering in the Bible is what makes appeals to it so tempting—and yet so tricky and hazardous, because much of our reading of the Bible turns out to be an echo of what we thought anyway.

And because the reach of the gracious God of the Bible is toward the other, we ought rightly to be skeptical and suspicious of any reading of the Bible that excludes the other, because it is likely to be informed by vested interest, fears, and hopes that serve self-protection and end in self-destruction. Every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry. The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath ”

Walter Brueggemann, Chosen

"Fear not, little flock, for your Father delights to give you His kingdom."

Luke 12:32

The Sabbath is a gift from God, not for its own sake, but for the sake of His children, that in their rest and reflection in righteous obedience to His word they many not so easily fall captive to the endless demands and possessions of Mammon.

Stocks managed to maintain their relative fearlessness, and resisted the impulse to retreat from their recent gains.

VIX fell back again.

The Dollar rose slightly.

Gold and silver were both under pressure.

Who needs a refuge or safe harbor or even forgiveness, when you are the masters of the universe.