Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As a Testimony to the Nations

 

"Financial predators, on the other hand, are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals.  They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy.  Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive.  Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars.  They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."

Russ Alan Prince, Unmasking Financial Predators, Forbes 2017

"...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.

Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel — an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly. Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy.  So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising.  But that can’t last indefinitely; Americans are getting angry, and even when they’re misguided or poorly informed, people have a deep, visceral sense that they’re being screwed.

I have no problem with people becoming billionaires — if they got there by winning a fair race, if their accomplishments merit it, if they pay their fair share of taxes, and if they don’t corrupt their society.  But that’s not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy.  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

"It is never really between them and you, but between you and yourself, between you and your God.  No act of kindness is wasted.  You store them in your heart, and these are the only things that you will take with you when the day is done.  It is how you rise above the darkness, and become human."

Jesse, Even In a Time of Vanity and Greed, 5 May 2013

"Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap."

Galatians 6:7


Trump sparked the equity markets today with yet another whopper about taking a pause from bombing Iran to work on a peace Memorandum of Understanding. 

More likely this is a courtesy to Elon Musk, who is squeezing out a whopping pig of an IPO tomorrow for SpaceX at a wildly confabulated evaluation of $135 a share, in his never-ending quest to become a trillionaire. 

The Street knows this. They absolutely know what is what about all of it.  Trump and the Congress know that he is lying through his teeth.

They don't care.  They just want to get paid. They all have the same moral sensibility, which essentially none.

"Iran directly rejects Trump's new claim that he reached an agreement to "cancel tonight's strikes" on Iran as baseless, saying no agreement has been approved at all, and all of Trump's words should be disregarded like all his previous 38 times deal-imminent announcements over two months, per Tasnim. A senior Israeli official also tells Channel 12 they are 'not aware of any agreement being reached'."

So, stocks rallied hard after Trump made his 39th announcement of an imminent peace deal.

Gold and silver rallied.  Bitcoin rallied a bit.

VIX fell.

SpaceX is coming out tomorrow.

"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves.  You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”    Thomas More, 1535

And the Band played on. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - To Be Human - CPI Tomorrow

 

"Our money and priorities are for the most part elsewhere, disconnected from many of the common realities of most people.  This is part of the reason for our historic economic inequalities.  But there is an underlying goodness and kindness that you can find if you look for it, and let yourself become a part of it. We just forget, because we see so much wickedness and greed, and it gets the most attention.

As William Butler Yeats put it in the aftermath of the first World War, 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'  Perhaps, but these things come and go.   And when it becomes bad enough, people rouse themselves from their torpor, and change comes, one way or another.

That is not what it is to be human.   Most do not even have a genuine understanding of what that means anymore.  They think, well, if Mother Teresa abandoned the poor and ran off to be an investment banker or an actress, that would only be human.  We are content to be trousered apes.   We make beasts of ourselves to avoid the pain of seeing what we really serve, and who we are slowly becoming.

At some point not to become fully human in every sense of the word, and to hold on to your humanity is, in the end, the only real tragedy."

Jesse, 1 February 2017


"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough Beast, its hour come 'round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919

Stocks were in a mood to move higher today, although the CPI data point tomorrow morning had them on edge.

Gold and silver were hit.

The Dollar slide lower.   Althugh it's funny because if I had just listened to bubblevision I would have thought it moved higher.

The VIX fell.

There will be an index option expiration next week.

If the CPI makes an unexpected print tomorrow we may have some action.

The geopolitical bias in the media is almost astonishing.

I suppose it has always been there, but it is very handed of late it seems.

Perhaps the abomination of desolation draws steadily closer.

Have a pleasant evening.

Even In a Time of Vanity and Greed

"Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things...

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."

Garrison Keillor

I know this is hard to remember, especially with all the ugly selfishness that is so evident these days. And because of the increase in wickedness, among people in high places who provide bad examples, the love of many will falter and grow cold.

It is never really between them and you, but between you and yourself, between you and your God. It is how you rise above the darkness in the world, and become human.

It is fine and necessary to look after your wealth in order to fill the needs of your family. But random acts of kindness will make a difference in your life and in theirs.

No act of kindness is wasted.  You store them in your heart, and these are the only things that you will take with you when the day is done.  You will remember them, and you will be remembered for them, if not in this life, then in the next.

You have a choice. Essere umano. To be human.  Be a light in the darkness to those who wander.



Thanks to Lambert Strether for this.

Flowers grow, even amongst the desolation of empires, and other passing follies.