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 - Sweet Nothings - Nothing Personal, It's Just Business

 

"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.  I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.  If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand.  It is much worse to consider this calm, 'well-balanced,' unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder.  He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative.  He had a profound respect for system.

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing.  We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people.  We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction.  And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous.

The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless." 

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable 

 

"One of the primary characteristics of narcissists is their exaggerated sense of entitlement.  It's hardly surprising then that so many politicians somehow think they 'deserve' to game the system.  After all, from their self-interested perspective, isn't that what the system is for?  In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be theirs.  So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with.  

And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything.  Exploiting their privileged position in such a manner hardly leaves them plagued with guilt.  In general, guilt isn't an emotion they're prone to.  How could they be if they feel entitled to the objects of their desire? In their minds their very ability to attain something must certainly mean it was merited." 

Leon F. Seltzer

 

"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean." 

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

And so we had another FOMC announcement today.

The Fed is clearly teeing up a tapering of their bond purchases.

I think the focus will be on the September Jobs Report.

Gold was a little lower on the cross Dollar trade.

Silver edged up a bit with stocks, which rallied.

The market is trying to have this both ways.

I think the downside risks for equities will remain pronounced though to November.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quad Witch Tomorrow, Comex Metals Option Expiry Next Week

Moloch, God of Wealth and Child Sacrifice

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

C. S. Lewis


"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning


“The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe

Stocks managed to close nearly unchanged today, although there was still a fairly impressive range from top to bottom in the futures markets.

Gold closed lower, while silver managed a little rally.

The Dollar DX Index rally is amazing, a clear example of a flight to safety continuing. At the close it was hovering around 102.78.

Surgical masks are of limited effectiveness, mostly to prevent someone who is already affected from spreading the coronavirus by coughing or sneezing.  N95 masks, however, are effective and are worn by healthcare professionals who are working with patients.  But they are in short supply, which is shameful.  And are not necessary for most people, if they are practicing physical distancing and hand and surface washing.

Keep in touch with each other, and encourage and help one another. And for those who are so inclined, pray for each other.

The Madness serves None but Itself

The usual suspects and con men are mocking peoples' efforts to protect themselves and their families, often because they are negatively affecting the stock market.  Really?

And there are those who would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, in order to maintain their own exorbitant worldly privileges.

You might use this as an opportunity to see the quality and character of people who are speaking to you, where they are standing, whether knowingly or foolishly or hysterically.   Be careful what you allow into your minds, or even worse, what you spread around to your friends and family.

People whose hearts are sickened and minds are disordered enjoy shocking and manipulating other people.  It gives them a feeling of worth, and power.  And some of these jokers thrive on sensationalism and panic, without caring what damage they may do, in order to obtain 'clicks' and thrills.

And dare we say it, there are those who traffic in fear and hatred and lies, in order to manipulate people to maintain their power over them.   This is the great lesson we have seen from the aftermath of the Crash of 1929.

There is no need to panic. We have seen worse than this, or at the least our parents and grandparents have. And we will endure.  Act sensibly and responsibly, and keep your eyes on the prize.

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

Have a pleasant evening, and stay safe.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk Off! Rate Cuts! - As Makes the Angels Weep

The God of the Market

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy.

These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets. 

The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention. The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.

Are you not entertained?  As Egon von Greyerz noted, the next five years are not about winning, but surviving.   So, then let us then proceed."

Jesse, 5 August 2019


“During the Summer of 1929 the stock market was marked by wild swings, violent up and down price movements, that left market participants feeling dizzy and almost exhausted. Whatever may or may not come, now might be an excellent time to take inventory of your finances, and provisions for the future. And you may wish to order your affairs to be more resilient in the face of risks, both hidden and mispriced.”

Jesse, 10 August 2019


“But man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep..”

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure


"O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.

But if not, even if he does not preserve us, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the images of gold you have set up and commanded us to worship."

Daniel 3:16-18

As a reminder, there will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.

I pray daily that God will give us the light, and the strength, to know His will, and to resist the temptation to join in the hatred, the madness, and the worship of the darkness of this world, that seems to possess so many of our countrymen, day by day.

'But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil.'

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In the Garden of Beasts - Developing Gold Chart Formation Targets 1550

"Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare— the people they had met travelling; then people who couldn't add a row of figures or speak a coherent sentence.  The little man Helen had consented to dance with at the ship's party, who had insulted her ten feet from the table; the women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs out of public places—

—The men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real snow.   If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited, February 1931


"To the politician and administrator laissez-faire was simply a principle of the insurance of law and order, with the minimum cost and effort. Let the market be given charge of the poor, and things will look after themselves...

Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; [Joseph] Townsend insisted that they were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required.

The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism [Dissertation on the Poor Laws].  The improvidence (lacking personal responsibility) of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. (born to be vile?)  Also what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor? "For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?"

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944


"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one (I would in 2019 now say either) party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers.

That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."

Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, 2003


“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

The financial spokesmodels were unnerved with the rally in gold today, which was in no doubt due in some part to the weakness of the Dollar, and the stress on the physical supply with the return of China to business from their long holiday week.

As noted previously there is a relative scarcity in the 'free float' of physical gold, and the tricks and forced exchanges, and soft confiscations from other countries can only go so far in the face of a steady, almost unrelenting, demand for the real thing.  With leverage of paper to bullion in the gaming markets estimated at 100 to 1, a disruption in the flow of physical supply could be rather impressive.

The concern of the financial commentators was that it is unusual for gold to rally in what appears to be a safe haven move, but with stocks also rising. Always the stock market, for this crowd.  That is their major concern, their first priority. The system is God, and damn the people whom it was designed to serve and support.

Stocks did back off markedly into the close after a rather robust showing during the day. We must put our best foot forward for the rest of the world after all.  And at the end of the day, we can relax the charade a bit, and pocket the grift.

Chart-wise, gold has begun to flesh out a new cup,  which if it succeeds in cmpleting the formation, and if it manages subsequentlyt to break out, will target $1550 at a minimum measuring objective on the chart.

As I noted in some posts over the holiday weekend, the long bear market in gold, which was sustained by managed selling of physical gold by central banks in order to manage the market has clearly ended around 2007.   The price of gold began to rally a few years earlier in anticipation of this sea change in selling and accumulation by the major players.

And so now, after a long consolidation which has followed the first leg of the new bull market, the price of gold appears to be attempting to begin its second leg, and move to take out the prior highs.  Let's see if it can maintain its momentem to the rim of the cup, so to speak.  At that point a retracement is often customary.  Perhaps a retracement now would not be unusual after a long quick run.

Longer term a higher price in gold is likely to be accompanied by social disruption and political uncertainty as one might expect on an examination of history.  Gold provides a safe harbor in troubled times.  And we do seem to be lurching towards some perversely desired rendezvous with destiny, taking it to the limit, so to speak.

If by some miracle of providence we could have what a good person might wish for, rather than what they might see coming despite all their efforts, our grandchildren might not be tempted to damn us for our willful foolishness and careless pride. 

We can take comfort in the undeniable fact that the future is an elusive mix of possibilities and probabilities, and that the eventual outcome is, in the final analysis, largely unknown but in the hands of Providence, as well as our own.

But beware the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.

Have a pleasant evening.