Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Lawless and Self-Enslaved

 

“There are only two kinds of people in the end — those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945

"As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command — but it is made desolate.’”

Matthew 23:38

"But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. 

We well we know by bitter experience that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.  I know nothing that I may say can influence you.  You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things.  You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats.  You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the plutocracy.” ”

Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1907 

"We labor and labor and labor for stuff that never satisfies us. The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that, and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us, our humanness."

Walter Brueggemann, Truth To Power, 2013

"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.  I do not mean that they may not wish to come out of hell, but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.  They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940


Fed rate decision next Wednesday afternoon. 

The Dollar slumped down to the 97 handle as the rest of the world is selling hubris.

Gold and silver rocketed higher, with silver punching through $100 and closing above $102.

Gold is knocking on $5,000. 

Stocks tried to extend their rally and then fell back to hold a modest gain.

It did not take much to get VIX wallowing near complacency again.

Donnie's done.  He just doesn't know it yet.  Slowly, and then all at once.

The dogfight that will take place afterwards could be interesting.

We are expecting a major snowstorm here in the northeast this weekend.

Daisy and I are ready.  I washed all the blankets today.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

 

 

Cold Weather Special: Sweet and Sour Meatball Soup

 

This is an old recipe from my godfather who was Prussian/Polish.  My grandmother was German and she had her own similar version.

I have modified the recipe a bit over the years, but here is the basic idea.  Once you get familiar with it free to experiment with things that suit
your taste. 

It is a good cold weather soup.  Süße und Saure Suppe

Into a large pot add four quarts of clear chicken stock.
Add four stalks of celery. If it is green clean the outside
to remove any bitterness.

Add one pound of cleaned pork neckbones. This will add 'richness.'
One or two cloves of garlic.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes.

Remove the bones and celery. I usually take any meat off the bones
and use it in something else, not in the soup. Sometimes the dog gets lucky.

Take 1 pound of ground beef and 1 pound ground pork and 8 to 16 oz.
of plain bread crumbs in a large bowl.  Add one tablespoon celery salt and pepper to taste.
One well diced onion.

Mix in two eggs. If the mixture seems heavy add up to 1/2 cup milk to soften the bread crumbs.
Salt and pepper to taste. A sprinkle of garlic powder if you are of that persuasion.

Bring the stock back up to a boil. Make the meatballs and add them to the stock. Cook them until they float to the top on a slow boil.  Remove them and put them on the side in a bowl.

Add one cup of diced celery, one diced leek, one large potato,
and five or six sliced carrots.
Slice and add one lemon, removing the seeds.
Add one package of cleaned and separated chicken wings or wingettes.  Bring to a slow boil and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Turn the heat down very low.
Add 2 pints of sour cream. 

Add one cup of sugar. Mix lightly without breaking up the carrots and other things in the soup.
Add some stock to the sour cream container and let it cool off.
Add 1/4 cup flour to the stock in the container and mix it well.
Add this back to the soup to thicken it. A rue can also be used. Or cornstarch.

Now taste the soup broth and add sugar to suit your taste. Do not overdo but it should taste slightly sweet.   If it is not sour enough add
some cider vinegar to bring the sourness into balance with the sweetness.

Add back the meatballs and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes. Don't burn.

Add some chopped scallions for color, and ground pepper. Add salt if needed.

Serve in a bowl with a crusty bread.

The meatballs tend to absorb the liquid overnight. Add some chicken stock if needed.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Empire in Decline

 

"When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized.  Narcissists change the companies or countries they lead, much like bad money drives out good, and those changes can outlast their own tenure.  Divergent voices are silenced, flattery and servility are rewarded, and cynicism and apathy corrode any sense of shared purpose in a culture where everyone’s out for themselves. In the extreme, they can destroy the institution itself."

Lee Simmons, How Narcissistic Leaders Destroy From Within, Stanford Business, April 30, 2020

"Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.

God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not.  Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944

"In the days before the flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, even to that very day in which Noah entered into the ark. They did not understand what was happening. And then the flood came, and swept them all away."

Matthew 24:38-39


It seems likely that we have some surprises and revelations coming. 

Stocks attempted to extend their rally today.

VIX fell sharply.

The Dollar continued its slow cascade lower.

Gold and silver rocketed to new highs.

If this doesn't seem to have significance, you may be sleepwalking through life.

I am surprised by how few mainstream economists and financiers are failing to connect the dots.  

They tend to cluster around familiar ideas like birds.  It will take some noise to send them scattering.

"Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice."
Aldous Huxley, The Devil's of Loudon, 1971

Slowly, but surely, the overreach of empire is unraveling.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Nemesis, the Goddess of Retribution, Awaits

 

"So, what do I suggest probably will happen?  I think we will stagger along under a facade of constitutional government, as we are now, until we’re overcome by bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy would not mean the literal end of the United States, any more than it did for Germany in 1923, or China in 1948, or Argentina just a few years ago.  But it would certainly mean a catastrophic recession, the collapse of our stock exchange, the end of our level of living, and a vast series of new attitudes that would now be appropriate to a much poorer country."

Harvey Kreisler, Talking with Chalmers Johnson, Counterpunch, May 6, 2010

"Shanghai Gold will change the current gold market with its 'consumed in the East but priced in the West' arrangement. When China has the right to speak in the international gold market, the true price of gold will be revealed."

Xu Luode, Chairman, Shanghai Gold Exchange, 15 May 2014

"The problem with choosing the lesser of two evils that are distasteful enough is that one has to numb their conscience to do it.  This is what is known as a 'Faustian bargain.' 

But the individual will find that if they choose to make this kind of rotten deal with their own conscience enough times, and put their inner voice aside to make an expedient, practical choice rather than a moral one, and pile lie upon lie to ease the pain of their betrayal, eventually their conscience will fail them when it matters the most. Or they may simply find themselves too compromised to do anything but overtly choose what is objectively wrong or suffer serious personal consequences. They have intertwined their fingers with the power of darkness so deeply that now they are his.

The road to hell is paved, not with one climactic choice, but a long series of increasingly bad choices and lies, that eventually grow into a complete betrayal of duty, and our honour, and our sacred oaths of service."

Jesse, The Lesser of Two Evils, 24 July 2016

"Now you live in a world of hate and fear.  Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.  The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.  You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, 1955

Stocks did a risk on rally that ended a bit flat.

There is little doubt in my mind that these market 'saves' are being conducted by Bessent and the ESF team at the behest of Trump who watches the stock markets as an indicator of his performance.

When the leveraged mispricing of risk collapses we may see something historic.

Gold and silver were under pressure of course.  Trump and crew are crypto people.  It's easier to make money that way.  

Bitcoin bounced back a bit.  As I have long believed I think even more strongly that crypto is a thinly disguised control fraud.

VIX dropped sharply as the Feds came in to pour oil on the troubled waters of Donald's rants in Davos.  I was in Davos many years ago about this time of the year for a pan-European business meeting.  It was damp, and I had an awful head cold.  But the Swiss train service is exceptional.  I love Switzerland, as pricey as it may be.

If you are still a supporter of this latest escalation of constitutional abuse and lawlessness, and murder en masse in the most sadistic manner abroad, that is your choice.  Prior administrations were in a similar vein, but to a lesser degree.  We seem to have reached the breaking point where overreach breaks the system.

But more importantly you have placed yourself outside of the fellowship of the mind and of the Spirit, and become particularly vulnerable to wickedness in high places.   Have no illusions about that.   

Have a pleasant evening.