Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pied Pipers of the Apocalypse

 

"Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and 'weaponizing' the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”

Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert, Dune

"Anyone can be misled by a clever person, and no one likes to readily admit that they have been had. It is a sign of character and maturity to realize this, and admit your were deceived, and to demand change and reform.  But some cannot, even when the facts of the deception are revealed.  The more incorrect that the truth shows them to be, the louder and more strident they become in shouting down and denying reality:  cognitive dissonance.

The more extremely held the views, left or right, the more ardent the self-deception and surrender of individual identity.  Because at the extremes, it is no longer about justice, but about the objectification and irrelevance of the individual, the elevation of ideology over truth, and the dehumanisation and demonisation of 'the other.'"

Jesse, The Economic of Demagogues, 18 June 2012

“What comes out of a person, that is what makes them unclean.  From within people, from their minds and hearts, come wicked thoughts, immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness.  All these evils come from within and they make one unclean.”

Mark 7:20-23

Stocks ended the day in rally mode, spreading that green around to kick off the month of March.

Smells like a wash, preceding a rinse to me.

Next week we will have Jay Powell's testimony to Congress, and of course the Friday Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Gold and silver rallied higher.

They are coming into some important overhead resistance.  

They need to take it out and stick it with several closes to confirm an intermediate trend change.

The Dollar chopped back down.

Have a pleasant weekend.

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 Fall of the Republic - The Oligarchy Is Audacious

 

"According to several reports, the administration is considering Michael Barr for the vice chair of supervision slot.  Barr is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama years who is now the Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.  (Weill was the former CEO of Citigroup, whose merger with Travelers Insurance triggered the end of Glass-Steagall and the beginning of the mega-bank era.)

As assistant Treasury Secretary for financial institutions in the Obama years, Barr was the key right-hand man to Tim Geithner and liaison with Congress on the Dodd-Frank reforms.  Sheila Bair wrote considerably in her memoir of that time about how Barr defended the financial industry from aggressive regulation at every turn, seeking to eliminate strong derivatives regulations, weaken the Volcker Rule that attempted to prevent banks from engaging in risky trading with customer money, and preserve the ability for future bailouts.  He infamously gave the quote to New York magazine that the bill could have broken up big banks if Treasury had agreed to it, but they decided against it.

Barr was also the lead designer of HAMP, the failed foreclosure mitigation program that allowed banks to trap borrowers in predatory schemes.  Barr kind-of sort-of apologized for the failure to stop the foreclosure wave in a 2020 book, saying that the White House should have “acted more forcefully from the start.” He also led the investigation into fraudulent evictions with phony documents, promising things would change within a year. (They didn’t.)"

David Dayen, The Return of Michael Barr


"Impunity is epidemic in America. The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight. When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish 'dreamer.'   The Journal recently opposed the corruption sentence of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for taking large gifts and bestowing official favors — because everybody does it.  And one of its columnists praised Panama for facilitating the ability of wealthy individuals to hide their income from 'predatory governments' trying to collect taxes.  No kidding.

Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity.

Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity, 2016

 

The wiseguys wanted to take stocks up today in a risk on wash cycle, but the bombshell miss by Netflix broke the script, and weighed heavily on the big cap tech stocks.

These are, as you may recall, once again the bloated heart of a 'new era' stock bubble.

Gold and silver bounced.

The Dollar fell back hard from 101 but managed to hang on to the 100 handle fairly well.

A strong Dollar hurts the real economy, but does well for the financiers who can buy up foreign assets on the cheap.

The VIX fell in the spirit of a wash cycle attempt.

This will end.  But it is going to end badly for many. 

You know what to do. It is the same in every age.

But we are such faithless cheats and swindlers that we convince ourselves that we do not, because we do not wish to do what we have been told to do, what has been written on our hearts. 

Greed and pride kill.  But love covers a multitude of sins.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - History Lessons - The Worst Is Yet to Come

"Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come."

George F. Will, June 1 2020


"The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

Louis D. Brandeis


“Now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism


"I see. So they talk, pray, march, plead, petition and what do they get?  Cossacks, prison, flogging, police, spies, and now, after today, they will be shot.  Is this God's will?  Are these His methods?  Make war on your own people?  How long do you think they're going to stand there and let you shoot them? YOU ask ME who's responsible? YOU ask?"

Count Witte to Tsar Nicholas II


“Hate obscures all distinctions.”

C. S. Lewis

Stocks were on a tear today. The Nasdaq is reaching for its previous highs, and a new blow off top.

Gold and silver were hit very hard, in the general pattern of in the markets ahead of a Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Gold held at the support level of its trading channel. Let's see what happens for the rest of the week.

The house accounts of the major players are taking gold contracts.

The real Comex physical market in Hong Kong is very low on inventory.

The New York inventory is a joke.

Where is the rule of law here? Where are those vocal defenders of the Constitution?

And it is not yet even July. But things are proceeding as one might expect.

Don't join in. Remember whom it is that you serve, and how.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And a Haughty Spirit Before a Fall - Lies and Imperial Madness Rising

“To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality


“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”

Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye


"Evil will sometimes seems good to a man whose mind a god is leading to destruction."

Sophocles, Antigone

After the bell 'Alphabet' posted some negative results, such as operating margin, which caused the stock to decline, despite much better than expected earnings.

Like patriotism and honor, earnings are often a very flexible concept in our current financial discourse and halls of political power.

Stocks rebounded this morning, and the metals were under pressure.

This despite the cratering in the newly opened Asian markets after their long lunar new year holiday.

In the interests of preventing panic, lies and associated looting appears to be the order of the day for our guardians of freedom.

But it would be poor form for Trumpolini to have to give his State of the Union as an impeached president with a cratering stock market.

This is going to end badly, make no mistake about that.

As the force of the economy continues to decline, the fraud of its representations and of most public speech will increase, shamelessly.

Have a pleasant evening.