Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In Service to Naked and Arbitrary Power

 

"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made ‘legal.’  Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010

“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods?”

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

"Public opinion has become the object of intensive efforts to control, manage, manipulate, and increasingly intimidate.  In political, military, economic realms, power becomes, in varying degrees, uneasy before the suspected opinions of masses, and, accordingly, opinion-making becomes an accepted technique of power-holding and power-getting.  The minority electorate of the propertied and the educated is replaced by the total suffrage— and intensive campaigns for the vote.

As the scale of institutions has become larger and more centralized, so has the range and intensity of the opinion-makers’ efforts.  The means of opinion-making, in fact, have paralleled in range and efficiency the other institutions of greater scale that cradle the modem society of masses.  Accordingly, in addition to their enlarged and centralized means of administration, exploitation, and violence, the modern elite have had placed within their grasp historically unique instruments of psychic management and manipulation.

The men of the higher circles are not representative men; their high position is not a result of moral virtue; their fabulous success is not firmly connected with meritorious ability.  Those who sit in the seats of the high and the mighty are selected and formed by the means of power, the sources of wealth, the mechanics of celebrity, which prevail in their society.  Commanders of power unequaled in human history, they have succeeded within the American system of organized irresponsibility.

Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal— and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated— and the higher immorality is institutionalized.  It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.

A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal.  Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.

America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology-appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford Press, 1956

"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933


Stocks were parked today, after a week of substantial gains.

Gold and silver rocketed higher, with silver putting in a short-scorching rally.

The Dollar was nominally unchanged.

There are big events on the move behind the scenes.  

For now we only feel their tremors.

And when history unfolds, does it matter?

After even the most shocking of events what remains is the rewriting of history and the forced suppression of dissent from the prevailing narrative. 

For those who manage the conversations and control the evidence, the truth is a very malleable thing— at least for those who would be as gods.

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

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Calm Before Their Exceptional Madness

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically.  They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission.  Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

"Demagogy enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

"The economy - once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance, has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated… The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered… The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965

“Unprecedented state secrecy gave the power elite vastly expanded realms in which to pursue desired political ends. Its dimensions and details obscured by state secrecy, exceptionism—the institutionalized abrogation of the rule of law—allowed for the state to decisively influence politics at key moments in a top-down, authoritarian manner while practices of plausible deniability preserved a degree of democratic legitimacy.

In other words, the power elite’s rise precluded meaningful democracy since major decisions were not to be arrived at through open, informed public debate in which responsible officials and political parties were influenced by a healthy civil society which could allow the informed, prevailable will of the public to become manifest in policy.”

Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, 2022

"Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself.  It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous.  Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."

Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895

The markets were off a bit today, accommodating their recent impressive gains.

Gold and silver were similarly disposed.

Tomorrow is our stock option expiration.

Looking over the world's current crop of exceptional peacocks and pigeons can we not now, at long last, fully understand Hannah Arendt's observations about 'the banality of evil?' 

Let's see where their shenanigans may lead us.  

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Personalities of False and Designing Men - Risk On!

 

“You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind.   Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.  God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity.  But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, 1963

"What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishmen, December 1866

"Three dark personalities, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, have been studied in businesses.  Although the first two share similar traits with psychopathy, such as superficial charm, lying and manipulation, the inability to accept responsibility for their actions, and the complete lack of empathy, guilt and humility, a large body of research has demonstrated that psychopathic individuals are more dishonest, treacherous and destructive than the others.  While all three dark personalities can be bad news for a company, corporate psychopathy is the most dangerous."

Cynthia Mathieu, The Devil Lurks In the Suit, December 2015

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities.   It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.   Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, March 1985

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.  We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.  It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."

Samuel Adams, under pseudonym Candidus, The Boston Gazette, 14 October 1771


The Consumer Price Index data came in soft to in-line this morning, which lit a fire under the bulls, who were eyeing the defensive short positions in the market with a gleam in their eye.

And so the momentum and meme buyers were piling in, trying to grab a piece of the upward momentum which turned out to be a powerful and fairly broad rally.

The Dollar was sold fairly hard, as safe havens were abandoned in order to add to risk profiles.

Gold and silver rallied fairly hard as well, in part in a reaction to the Dollar drop but also because of the pent up buying pressure being fed by physical offtakes, largely in Asia for gold, and industrial usage for silver.

Silver has now met its short term measuring objective of 30 on the chart.

As you might surmise VIX plummeted back down to its recent lows.

There will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.

Maybe not just yet, but a rinse may be lurking in the hearts of those who pull the strings on the markets.

The geopolitical situation grows increasingly fraught with unaccounted risks.

Biden's administration seems fragmented, tactically oriented for the short term to the great dettriment of strategic policy formation. Unless the strategy is to obtain more money and power, and the consequences be damned.

The Republicans are in utter ideological disarray, and morally bankrupt.

The madness serves none but itself.

But the markets are at some new highs, and the devil take the hindmost.   

And funny, but sometimes he does just that.

Have a pleasant evening.