Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Be Always In My Prayers

 

"The shepherds sleep on in the love of themselves, in greed and corruption: they are so drunk with pride that they sleep and do not feel.  They see that the devil, the hellish wolf, carries away the life of grace in them and their subjects, but do not care.  And the whole cause of this is the perverse individuality of self-love. 

Love itself is dying of thirst and hunger for our salvation.  No longer be silent!  Cry out with a hundred thousand voices.  For it is clear that, through silence, the world is ruined, and the Bride of Christ is impaled."

Catherine of Sienna, Lettera 16, A uno grande prelato,

"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."

Aaron Bushnell, 25 February 2024 

“Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed.  Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above.  The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.  By excluding these groups, it limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, 2018

"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control.  As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

Martin Luther King, A Knock at Midnight, 11 February 1962


It is not that they 'don't know.'   It is that they don't care. 

Care enough to see.  Care enough to hear.  Care enough to speak.  Care enough to feel.

Because to do so might require them to do something, deny themselves something, incur some obligation which is a risk, a limitation, a task, an annoyance. 

Love dies not only through hate, but envy, pettiness, indifference, and fear.  

But the devil lurking behind all of them in the darkness is pride. 

Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom
The night is long and I am far from home
Here in the dark, I do not ask to see
The path ahead— one step enough for me
Lead on, lead on, kindly Light.

Stocks were slumping after a wide ranging session on the futures markets, as is customary for a triple witch option expiration these days.

Valuation are cut loose from their moorings in any sort of rational model connected to reality.

The pricing of bitcoin is the emblem of our time, as tulips had been the symbol of a prior market bubble.

Gold and silver had the usual ride as well, finishing up a bit mixed on the day.

The Dollar was choppy as well.

VIX remains largely complacent, hovering around its longer term moving averages.

Our foreign policy is anchored in adolescent, intemperate madness, and the greed and pathology of a few.

You are always in my prayers, as I hope I am also in yours. 

Have a pleasant weekend.   

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Idols of Caesar and the Promises of Christ

 

"Life under a strongman means not simply being lied to but being beset by contradiction and uncertainty until the line between truth and falsehood blurs and a kind of exhaustion settles over questions of fact.  Authoritarianism wants to convince its supporters that nothing is true, that the whole machinery of truth is an intolerable imposition on their psyches, and thus that they might as well give free rein to their fantasies."

Brian Phillips, Rise of the Postmodern Right, November 16, 2016

“The man who discovered the real Hitler was Dietrich Eckart.  We find his presence at every important point in Hitler’s career until Eckart’s death in the last days of 1923.  Eckart literally made Hitler.  And he was closely related with the Thule Society, with the powerful Germanenorden.  In the political field their actions were everywhere a matter of secrecy and covert plotting, always of power politics and sometimes of murder."

Georges Van Vrekhem, Hitler and His God, 2012

“Men lost faith in the state not because Christianity held them aloof, but because the state defended wealth against poverty, fought to capture slaves, taxed toil to support luxury, and failed to protect its people from famine, pestilence, invasion, and destitution. Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came. A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, 1944

"The genius of American power is expressed in the movie The Godfather II, where, like Hyman Roth, the United States has always made money for its partners. America has not turned countries in which it intervened into deserts; it enriched them."

Robert Kagan, American neo-con and husband of Victoria Nuland, July 17, 2003

"Come, I will show you the judgement on the great whore who reaches across many waters. The kings of the earth have given themselves over to her in lust, and have become drunk with the wine of her idolatry."

Revelation 17:1-2


The Fed did nothing with interest rates, as expected by most.

I think they are unlikely to do anything this year, except if the US economy starts collapsing as it did under Covid.

Gold was hit hard, as is customary for an FOMC day, especially one followed by a triple witch option expiration the day after a market holiday.

VIX remains complacent, in the face of an escalating war.

US markets will be closed tomorrow for a Federal holiday.

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

Have a pleasant evening.  See you on Friday.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Twisted Hearts in High Places

 

"Mr. Montagu cannot believe that so extraordinary a man as [Sir Francis] Bacon could be guilty of a bad action; as if history were not made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men, as if all the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions, had not been extraordinary men, as if nine-tenths of the calamities which have befallen the human race had any other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, Vol II, July 1837

"To say now that 'No one knew' or 'I was mistaken' or 'I was just doing as I was told' is another in a series of lies and deceptions that have supported one of the greatest frauds in the history of the world.

But this is not history.  This episode of fraud is still playing itself out now.  And to fail to understand the depth and breadth of this madness is to place oneself in peril, and in the power of those who are twisting the Western economic and political system even now to satisfy their lust for wealth and power. 

But it also involved literally thousands of collaborators and enablers, from mainstream media people, economists, analysts, and other thought leaders to politicians and regulators who saw that it was to their advantage to at least passively support this scheme which they knew very well was a fairy tale, a fraud, class warfare by a new name, but were able to hide their own guilty consciences behind self-serving rationalization and the shield of plausible deniability.

It is difficult, even now, to get one's mind around the enormity of it.  This is its most powerful weapon.  Who could be such monsters, so amoral, so destructively sociopathic?  Future generations will regard it as an episode of madness, driven by a few people in a tight circle of self-reinforcing thought, people with remarkably similar cultural and educational backgrounds, driven by a consuming lust for power, that were able to dupe and delude an entire nation made vulnerable by propaganda, a co-opted press, and apathy.

This is when hubris is at its height, and the few feel they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, if only they can gain more power, and therefore become more ruthless. They are trapped in a cycle of fear and greed. The fear provokes the lies and the cover ups, but the greed promotes the extension of the fraud and the theft, requiring even more lies and cover ups. [cf. credibilty trap] 

The last vestiges of polite society are often shed as the downfall reaches it final conclusion, at the end, when all is revealed, at last. And so there will be great danger."

Jesse, The Committee to Defraud the World, 31 July 2010

"Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

John Dalberg Lord Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887

The wash and rinse continues, as stocks gave back a chunk of the utterly irrational rally that we saw yesterday.

The action appears to be highly 'technical' — a highfalutin game of liar's poker.

Gold held its level, but silver bounced back, against stocks and the Dollar no less.

Let us be mindful that there will be an FOMC meeting tomorrow, with the decision announcement and press conference in the afternoon.

And then on Friday there will be the stock option expiration.

In the background, missiles and assorted weapons are flying around the Mideast.  

When you brazenly break a truce, and with a snicker kill your negotiating partners, this is a very special brand of diplomacy. 

At some point the situation will escalate, because the more powerful side has no desire for peace.  

They are driven by a lust for possessions, and the power to impose broad and uninhibited subjugation. 

What a brave new world, that has such people in it.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Plague of the Unspeakable

 

"When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality.  It is the same perhaps with evil.  As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty.  Once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. 

As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."

Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce, 1947

"Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil.  It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.”

Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, 1959 

"When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent it from lasting. Foolishness has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were exceptional humans: they did not believe in plagues.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be human, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that plagues were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How could they have given a thought to anything like a plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are plagues."

Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947

"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900

"Cherish therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention.  Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.  If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves...for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, US National Archives, 16 January 1787
 

Stocks kicked into rally mode today, as the ongoing conflict in the Mideast looked like it might give the boys of Wall Street a little breathing room.

They wanted to get back what they lost with the sneak attack on Friday.

And, as a reminder there will be a triple witch stock market option expiration on this Friday.

So they may get a little more time to execute their usual script.

Gold was slammed.  Silver not so much.

Bitcoin rallied back.

It was a day for risky assets to shine.

If you watch something like this analysis by Alastair Cooke, you will get a better idea, in plain language, of how a seasoned diplomat and political observer might perceive what just happened.

It is not a good look for the exceptional.  One never participates in shooting people with whom you are negotiating under a flag of truce and parlay, no matter what distasteful lies and unworthy excuses with which you may choose to rationalize it.

I had thought we were a little better than to be complicit in something sordid and dishonorable like this.

These are the fruits of moral hazard. 

"The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: 1933-1945

What are we becoming.

Have a pleasant evening.