Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Oligarchs and Their Enablers - Gold and Silver Rising

 

"Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a 'two-fisted money grab from banks.'   Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase.”

Pam and Russ Martens, Yellen’s Treasury Hires 5-Count Felon JPM to Look for Fraud, October 11, 2023

"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear.  They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.    Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, 27 January 2009

"A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and/or informational functions of a society have been compromised by a corrupting influence and a fraud, so that they cannot address the situation without implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure including themselves.   The status quo has at least tolerated the corruption and the fraud, if not profited directly from it, and most likely continues to do so."

Jesse, Financial Coup d'Etat and a Credibility Trap, 28 September 2012

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else.

Neil Barofsky, Interview with Bill Moyers, 27 October 2012

 

Here are the updated charts.

Gold and silver put in another solid performance.

The Dollar slid a little lower.

VIX declined further showing the almost complacent optimism in the equity markets.

Earlier today the doctor gave me a green light on the recovery of my eye.    The improvement in the last week has been heartening.  

Have a pleasant evening.

The Unscrupulous Initiative of a Few - Dancing On a Volcano

 

"And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all." 

Tacitus, Histories: Book I, XXVIII, The Murder of Galba

"And what rough beast, its hour come 'round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

"It has been assumed that the old bipolar world would beget a multipolar world with power dispersed to new centers in Japan, Germany (and/or 'Europe'), China and a diminished Soviet Union/Russia.  [This is] mistaken.  The immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar.  It is unipolar...  American preeminence is based on the fact that it is the only country with the military, diplomatic, political and economic assets to be a decisive player in any conflict in whatever part of the world it chooses to involve itself.

If America wants stability, it will have to create it... We are in for abnormal times. Our best hope for safety in such times, as in difficult times past, is in American strength and will— the strength and will to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them."

Charles Krauthammer, The Unipolar Moment, Foreign Affairs, 1990

"It is not a choice between preeminence today and preeminence tomorrow. Global leadership is not something exercised at our leisure, when the mood strikes us or when our core national security interests are directly threatened; then it is already too late. Rather, it is a choice whether or not to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace...

Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.

This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound....the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, September 2000

"Japan, whose claim to power rested exclusively on economics, went into economic decline. Germany stagnated. The Soviet Union ceased to exist, contracting into a smaller, radically weakened Russia. The European Union turned inward toward the great project of integration and built a strong social infrastructure at the expense of military capacity. Only China grew in strength, but coming from so far behind it will be decades before it can challenge American primacy... Today, American military spending exceeds that of the next twenty countries combined. Its navy, air force and space power are unrivaled. Its technology is irresistible. It is dominant by every measure.

The result is the dominance of a single power unlike anything ever seen. American dominance has not gone unnoticed. During the 1990s, it was mainly China and Russia that denounced unipolarity in their occasional joint communiqués. As the new century dawned it was on everyone’s lips.

The third effect of September 11 [2001] was to accelerate the realignment of the current great powers, such as they are, behind the United States...

Multilateralism is the liberal internationalist’s means... (the moral, legal and strategic primacy of international institutions over national interests) and legalism (the belief that the sinews of stability are laws, treaties and binding international contracts)—are in service to a larger vision: an international system in the image of domestic civil society. The multilateralist imperative seeks to establish an international order based not on sovereignty and power, but on interdependence.

The greatest sovereign, of course, is the American superpower, which is why liberal internationalists feel such acute discomfort with American dominance. To achieve their vision, America too—America especially—must be domesticated... This liberal internationalist vision—the multilateral handcuffing of American power—is, as Robert Kagan has pointed out, the dominant view in Europe...to be expected, given Europe’s weakness and America’s power. But it is a mistake to see this as only a European view

Trade agreements with Canada are one thing. Pieces of parchment to which existential enemies affix a signature are quite another. They are worse than worthless because they give a false sense of security and breed complacency. For the realist, the ultimate determinant of the most basic elements of international life—security, stability and peace—is power.

The future of the unipolar era hinges on whether America is governed by those who wish to retain, augment and use unipolarity to advance not just American but global ends, or whether America is governed by those who wish to give it up—either by allowing unipolarity to decay as they retreat to Fortress America, or by passing on the burden by gradually transferring power to multilateral institutions as heirs to American hegemony. The challenge to unipolarity is not from the outside but from the inside. The choice is ours.

To impiously paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: History has given you an empire, if you will keep it."

Charles Krauthammer, The Unipolar Moment Revisited, The National Interest, Winter, 2002/3


"We now station over half a million U.S. troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on more than 737 military bases spread around the world.  These bases are located in more than 130 countries, many of them presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in the decision to let us in...

The purpose of all these bases is force projection, or the maintenance of American military hegemony over the rest of the world. They facilitate our 'policing' of the globe and are meant to ensure that no other nation, friendly or hostile, can ever challenge us militarily.

The crisis the United States faces today is not just the military failure of Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the discrediting of America’s intelligence agencies, or our government’s not-so-secret resort to torture and illegal imprisonment.  It is above all a growing international distrust and disgust in the face of our contempt for the rule of law.

I remain hopeful that Americans can still rouse themselves to save our democracy. But the time in which to head off financial and moral bankruptcy is growing short. The present book is my attempt to explain how we got where we are, the manifold distortions we have imposed on the system we inherited from the Founding Fathers... Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2006


Nuland: ...So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing [Ukraine regime change] and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, fuck the EU.

Victoria Nuland, US senior diplomat, Robert Kagan, Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call, BBC, 7 February 2014 

 

Please do not imagine that what you read here is some sign that the American people are 'waking up.'  They are not waking up.  They are as confused, divided, manipulated, and distracted as ever, seeing little and loving only themselves.  And I am just an old man, deeply overshadowed by the strength of evil, and the weakness of man.

Perhaps by circumstance, perhaps by design, every impulse to change seems to be easily turned towards the darkness.

These are love letters to the Truth, mimeographed and thrown off balconies, scattered into empty university hallways, hoping that someone might pick one up and read it.  

Sixty years ago the blood-dimmed tide was loosed, and the ceremony of innocence was drowned.

Perhaps change will come.  Perhaps the light will break through at last, and dispel the deepening gloom.  

But if not, God grant that we, who want to love and serve him, will never bow before the gods of evil.

And perhaps that is enough.

Please make a copy of this for yourself, and as many copies as you can and distribute them.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Malignant Narcissism of the Plutocracy

 

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it.  Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and the systems that helped them achieve their status."

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 2016

"Our plutocracy now lives like the British did in colonial India:  ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State, 5 January 2016

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society.  Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia chase wealth and power, and the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011

"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."

E. A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010

"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked.  And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.  That’s what I have a problem with.  And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012


Happy Hunger Games!  And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Stocks tried to rally it up into the green today but alas, they were hammered right down into the close.

The VIX rose.

Yields on Treasuries rose.

This provided some lift for the Dollar.

Gold and silver were sold, right down into the close.

Stock option expiration on Friday.

As Rutger Bregman observed, the Machiavellis have the ultimate secret weapon: they’re shameless.

Wash rinse repeat.

Works just as well for politics as in finance, as long as most people are sleep-walking amnesiacs.

How come no one is talking about blockchain anymore?   Now its AI, all the time.  What will they think of next. 

It will be interesting to see if a US President can run the country from a jail cell.  It worked for Lucky Luciano. 

On a positive note, the sunglasses they give to eye surgery patients are pretty snappy these days.  A heck of a lot better than the boxy pair of plastic punchouts that my father-in-law was sporting.

Great success.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Witness to Injustice - True Nihilism

 

"We cannot speak to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep."

Carl von Ossietzky, editor of Die Weltbühne, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935


"During the years of the Weimar Republic Carl von Ossietzky's political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society.  He was convicted in 1931 of revealing state secrets, the illegal German militarization, and served 18 months in prison.  He was released in 1932.

Ossietzky continued to be a constant warning voice against militarism and Nazism when, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the Nazi dictatorship began.  Ossietzky was one of a very small group of public figures who continued to speak out against the now ruling Nazi Party.

On 28 February 1933, after the Reichstag fire, he was taken by the police and held without trial in Spandau prison.  He was detained afterwards at the concentration camp KZ Esterwegen near Oldenburg.

He was visited while in the camp by Swiss historian Carl Jacob Burkhardt, as a representative of the International Red Cross.  Burkhardt described Ossietzky as 'a deadly pale broken creature, who seemed numb, with one eye swollen over, and his teeth broken.'

Carl von Ossietzky's international rise to fame began in 1936 when, already suffering from serious illness that was not being treated, he was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize after an international campaign of people who hoped to achieve his release through this recognition and honor. 

 The award divided public opinion, and was generally condemned by conservative forces.  The leading conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten argued in an editorial that Ossietzky was a criminal.

He was largely forgotten during the period of favorable international regard for the Third Reich, sparked in part by the propaganda campaign for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the German 'economic miracle.'

Ossietzky died in the Nordend hospital in Berlin-Pankow, still in police custody, on 4 May 1938, of tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps.  In 1938 Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler as their 'Man of the Year.'"

Jesse, In memory of Journalist Carl von Ossietzky, 16 June 2012


"Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?  They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have become."

Acts 7:52


“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love."

Julian Assange, Witnessing


Commodities were slammed today, with oil, gold and silver taking a hard sell-off, purportedly because of a 'disappointment' on Wall Street at the level of Chinese economic stimulus.

Smells like teen spirit.

Stocks themselves were trading weakly despite the much better than expected housing data.

A true opium of the people is the belief that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our lawlessness, our selfishness, and even murders that we are not going to be judged.

Historically the cup is filling,  and this is when we might see a reversal begin to unfold, call it karma, nemesis, fortune, judgement, or natural consequence as you prefer.

But for now, let's see what the rest of the week brings.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Audacious Oligarchy - The Power Elite

 

"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.

People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

The idea of the elite as composed of men and women having a finer moral character is an ideology of the elite.

The American elite does not have any real image of peace — other than as an uneasy interlude existing precariously by virtue of the balance of mutual fright.  The only seriously accepted plan for peace is the fully loaded pistol.  In short, war or a high state of war-preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.

For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end.  Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own.  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.  

The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude.  In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle.  Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America.

These men have replaced mind with platitude, and the dogmas by which they are legitimated are so widely accepted that no counterbalance of mind prevails against them. They have replaced the responsible interpretation of events with the disguise of events by a maze of public relations.

What the main drift of the twentieth century has revealed is that the economy has become concentrated and incorporated in the great hierarchies, the military has become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire economic structure; and moreover the economic and the military have become structurally and deeply interrelated, as the economy has become a seemingly permanent war economy; and military men and policies have increasingly penetrated the corporate economy.

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956

Stocks rallied today, for no particular reason.

The chip sector led stocks higher, based on upgrades from Barclay.

Wash - rinse - repeat.   

Leave your shame at the curb.

Gold and silver were hit hard from the early trading, but managed to take much of it back with gold even finishing in the green.

Looks like a gut check ahead of the Comex precious metals option expiry on the 26^th.

 Different month, same crooked scams.

The US Dollar did nothing.

The VIX did nothing.

We may see some market moving data this week.

FOMC and Non-Farm Payrolls for January coming next week.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Empire of Lawlessness

 

"And he said, ‘This is what I will do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.  There I shall store all my abundance and other treasures and say to myself, 'Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry!'

But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the many things you have acquired, whose then will they be?’ Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasures for himself, but does not have those things that matter most to God.”

Luke 12:18-21

"But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery.  Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of 'No answer.'  It is not the locked door.  It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question.  Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand."

C. S. Lewis

"The root of all sin is pride, superbia.  I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death.  The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God.  In confession comes the breakthrough to the cross."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"'Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become as an innocent, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.  Woe to the world because of things that cause sin. Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come."

Matthew 18:1-12

Stocks slumped hard again today, falling back down to touch support at a lower level, with a little bounce into the close.

Gold and silver pretty much chopped sideways.

The VIX continued to climb off its recent low.

Is the 'rinse' over yet?

Hard to say.  The next major stock index option expiration is not until next Friday.

But I took off my index shorts before the close today.   No need to be greedy.

Let's see what fresh antics tomorrow brings.

Have a pleasant evening.