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.

Money Supply Figures: Monetary Inflation But Real Economy Is Dysfunctional

"He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other."

Francis Bacon

The growth in the MZM and M2 money supplies are very strong, almost remarkably so given the very slack growth in employment and GDP.

So why do we not see any serious inflation in prices?  Or real gains in employment for that matter.

As an aside, I think some of the more 'modern'  and aggressively modified measures of price inflation, like chained CPI, do not measure price inflation at all, but the consumer behaviour of product substitution under increasingly trying circumstances as people cope by reducing their standard of living. That is a measure of gradual deprivation, not inflation.

I would like to see a system where no social policy is passed that the leadership of a country does not accept first.  If there is to be austerity, pension cuts, reductions in medical services and food, let them accept it first for the good of the country and an example to their citizens.  I do not say this out of meanness, but charity.  For the double standard with selective justice is the slow and silent killer of oligarchies.

The velocity of money tells part of the story. Please note that those charts below are based on much longer timeframes to show that they are a trend, and not a short term affect of the collapse.

The 'velocity of money' is a calculation that shows the relationship between money supply and real economic activity as a ratio. It is falling to new lows. Some might even use the word 'plummet.' There is lots of new money, but not so much real activity.

The standard economic answer would be that the US is in a liquidity trap, and the recovery will have lags in employment gains.   The money is added, and then recovery follows, with employment showing the longest delay.  The standard remedy would be to create more jobs, artificially if necessary.  But that is not much different than unemployment insurance and programs like food stamps.  It is kind, and sensible, but not sustainable. 

A liquidity trap is described by Keynesian economics as a condition in which injections of money can support zero interest rates, but fail to generate real economic activity.

I think the current situation in the US and UK in particular involves a serious policy error in the failure to address the problems and imbalances that caused the financialization of the real economy, and its subsequent collapse under the weight of malinvestment and corruption.

Aggregate demand is not stimulated because sufficient money does not reach consumers, as it passes through a corrupt and broken financial and political system, being diverted largely to insiders at 'the top.'  Nothing could be more clear than looking at the statistics regarding income inequality.

Any gains by the large middle and lower classes will tend to be short term and illusory, involving more household balance sheet problems and debt until the system is reformed.  Some of this has to do with a policy bias that considers the vast mass of the people as consumers, but not as workers.

Merely adding more financialized money into an unreformed system will further compound the problems, and ultimately force a more significant crisis and change.  This is true whether done does it via more debt issuance or flashier gimmicks like modern monetary totems.

The underlying social tensions can only be ignored by the comfortable for so long.  As a corollary, applying austerity without reform is insanely self-destructive.  The proof of this is forthcoming.

Japan has been able to hold their system together for a protracted period of slack recovery due to their demographics, their industrial policy position in the world economy, and a largely homogeneous and communal society that cares for its own.  The US and the UK will have a shorter half life I am afraid.

The situation is Europe is a bit different, and likely to result in serious dislocations in their organizational fabric fairly soon if some of the problems there are not addressed.  The monetary union without fiscal cohesion is inherently unstable.  Only fraud allowed it to last as long as it did.

There is a possibility that the current policies in the US may succeed if austerity if not applied, and something happens in the currency war to affect the balance of trade.  I am not optimistic  So let's see what happens.

The UK may provide a good counter example to the US  Some new school of economic thought may find some useful data from that, if they can free themselves from the 'say for pay' mentality that currently impairs the public policy discussion in a disgraced profession.