Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - They Walk in Darkness

 

"And the judgement is this, that God’s light has come into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light when their actions are evil. For those who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their lawlessness will be revealed. But those who live in the truth come into the light, so that it can be seen that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

“If we go as far as we can into the darkness, regardless of the consequences, I believe a midnight truth will free us from our bondage to violence and bring us to the light of peace.”

James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

"Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so. But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses.  There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.  So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walks in darkness knows not whither he goes.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness."

Vermont C. Royster, In Hoc Anno Domini, December 24, 1949

"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil.   For avarice subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general venality.  Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.  These vices first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterward, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became the most rapacious and insupportable."

Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline


Trading volume was very light today as most of the adults left by noon, if they bothered coming in at all.

Gold and silver fell back a bit.

The Dollar moved higher.

VIX fell to its near term low.

The US markets will be closed tomorrow in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.

The markets will be open until 1 PM on Friday.   

Trading should be very light excepting some exogenous event.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Silence

 

"I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator.   Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.  It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy.   But I have realized they will not succeed.  And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl

“During the Cold War this country has become frankly a warfare state built on affluence, a power structure in which the interests of big business, the obsessions of the military, and the phobias of political extremists both dominate and dictate our national policy.  It also seems that the people of the country are by and large reduced to passivity, confusion, resentment, frustration, thoughtlessness and ignorance, so that they blindly follow any line that is unraveled for them by the mass media.”

Thomas Merton, Cold War Letters, 1968

"What is unrecognized about JFK's presidency, which then makes his assas­sination a false mystery, is that he was locked in a struggle with his national security state. That state had higher values than obedience to the orders of a president who wanted peace.

There is nothing so threatening to systemic evil as those willing to stand against it regardless of the consequences. It’s unbelievable— or we’re supposed to think it is— that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons.  It’s unspeakable. 

Our collective denial of the obvious, in the setting up of Oswald and his transparent silencing by Ruby, made possible the Dallas cover-up.  The success of the cover-up was the indispensable foundation for the subsequent murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government—and in ourselves.  The unspeakable is not far away."

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

"Those who dared to break the conspiracy of silence risked consequences more severe than the assassination of one’s character.  Dr. Crenshaw said he 'reasoned that anyone who would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor.'”

Charles A. Crenshaw, with Hansen and Shaw, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, 1992


What, indeed, would they not be willing to do, how many innocents would they not be willing to sacrifice, what hapless and gullible nations would they not be willing to seduce and plunder, given the heady opiates of power and money and winning, in their Faustian bargain with the rulers of darkness of this world?  

And when they stand before the risen Christ, and He shows them the blood of His lambs,  and His own holy wounds, will they say, 'It was nothing personal.  We did what had to be done. Everyone was doing it. It was strictly business.'

Stocks managed to rise again in complacent holiday week trading.

VIX declined.

The Dollar declined.

Gold and silver struggled but in the end showed only a small decline.

The US markets will be closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

They will be nominally open for a half day on Friday, with all the adults on holiday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Damned, Not for the World, But For So Little

 

"Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. Faustus had advanced beyond the level of a scarlet sinner — he was a conscious follower of the Prince of Darkness.  For what does it profit a man— but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace?

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.

It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, 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.

The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

"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.  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.  We must take it or leave it."

C. S. Lewis, 1944

"Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my father in heaven."

Matthew 7:21-23

The economic data this morning was apparently good for the US Dollar and not so good for Europe.

So the Dollar soared, and interest rates on US Treasuries climbed.

The broad stock market, such as the Russell 2000 and the SP 500 sold off hard.  

The Tech heavy Nasdaq 100 managed to climb into the green.

Gold and silver were hit hard.

What do we make of this?

The market moves were so out of proportion to the data that it seems more like a hangover from last week's market moving expiration and end of quarter.

Since the brinksmanship of the House brat pack has passed without effect once again, we may be receiving a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Let's see where they are going with all these.

I can only express disappointment that once again the corporate Democrats have felt our pain, but done little to nothing to promote financial or market reforms.  

Disappointments all around really.  But such are the times.

When you think back on things that were very important to you at the beginning of your career, or in college or high school, do you now see in retrospect how inconsequential and relatively trivial and unimportant these things were?

And when you stand at the end of your life, without embellishment or ornament or baggage, before the unfailing eye of eternity and judgement, what then do you think will matter to you most?  

Have a pleasant evening.