"Help us, Lord, for no one faithful remains standing;
the righteous have vanished from the children of men.
They tell lies to one another,
and speak with deceiving lips from deceitful hearts.
May the Lord silence all deceiving lips,
and every boastful word, and
Those who think, 'By our eloquence we prevail;
when we speak, who can be our master?'
'Because they plunder the weak, and make the poor suffer,
I will now rise up,' says the Lord;
'I will be a refuge to those who long for it.'
The promises of the Lord are true,
like silver refined in a crucible,
purified seven times.
You, Lord, protect us always;
preserve us from this faithless generation.
On every side the wicked roam;
the shameless are esteemed by the children of men."
Psalm 12:1-9
"Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates. The truth is, no one really possesses it."
Simone Weil
"Wicked men rationalize and give themselves the leeway to attempt and commit all manner of offenses, seeing that the result of that injustice is soon ripe, and offers itself quickly to the their hands, whereas punishment comes later, and long behind the pleasures of their enjoyment."
Plutarch, The Morals
"Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist image with pride, having no fear of reprisal, and his seeming diabolical art of escaping all punishment, would certainly signal that an unnatural individual walked in their midst.
"Yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow the Father of Lies and deception. A life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World
"And so with many other words he warned and pleaded with them saying, ‘Save yourselves from this wicked generation.’"
Acts 2:40
Stocks were trying to keep piling on their gains, but alas, a dodgy Treasury auction and some of the usual hawkish burbling from Joltin' Jay Powell triggered the rinse cycle.
Gold and silver tried to rally but were caught up in the same wave of bipolar pseudo-hawkishness and ended up lower on the day.
VIX rose.
These guys vacillate between greed and fear based on very little or nothing changing from the Fed.
It's part of the great wash and rinse.
Have a pleasant evening.
