Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lions, and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

 

"Unequal enforcement of the law will distort and destroy any capitalist society, and we may be witnessing just such a downward spiral in the financial sector.  Capitalism is not an abstract idea.  It is an economic system with a distinct set of underlying principles that must exist in order for the system to work.  One of these principles is equal justice.  In its absence, parties will stop entering into transactions that create overall wealth for our society.  Justice must be blind so that both parties — whether weak or powerful — can assume that an agreement between them will be equally enforced by the courts.

There is a second, perhaps even more fundamental, reason that equal justice is essential for capitalism to work.  When unequal justice prevails, the party that does not need to follow the law has a distinct competitive advantage.  A corporation that knowingly breaks the law will find ways to profit through illegal means that are not available to competitors.  As a consequence, the competitive playing field is biased toward the company that does not need to follow the rules.

The net result of unequal justice is likely to be the destruction of the overall wealth of our society.  I don’t mean the wealth of individuals; I mean the total wealth of goods and services that are the benefits of healthy competition.  To the extent that unequal justice prevails, entities that are exempt from the laws will, in all likelihood, be more profitable than law abiding competitors.  Then they use their profits to further weaken competitors by using their illegal profits to further build their businesses at the expense of competitors.  All of this business building activity is based on a foundation of sand, and ultimately the entire industry — or even the larger economy — becomes distorted.  The 'rogue' company gains power, changes markets, and destroys direct and indirect competitors because it is playing by different rules."

Bruce Judson, For Capitalism to Survive, Crime Must Not Pay, April 12, 2012
 

"Back in December of 2012, when it was proved in U.S. court that billions of dollars of drug money had been laundered through HSBC and yet somehow it was also found that HSBC was NOT guilty of laundering and neither was anyone in the bank, there was an outcry.  Who in the bank knew about this? Evidence uncovered by investigations into HSBC’s activities revealed, 'senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity.'

In the UK it was noted that during the time the laundering was going on, the chief executive of HSBC in 2003 who then became its chairman in 2006, was Lord Green, who is now the UK trade minister. So obviously no great concern to get to any truth about HSBC, in the hierarchy of the UK establishment.

Senator Elizabeth Warren asked, 'So what does it take? How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?'

Warren’s question, ‘What does it take?’ was finally answered by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in March 2013, when he told the U.S. Judiciary Committee that the Justice department had decided not to pursue any criminal prosecution of HSBC.  The U.S. Justice Department felt it could not criminally prosecute the bank because a criminal conviction would mean the bank would lose its license to bank in the US which would kill it and a whole range of other institutions, which the bank relies on to buy its debts and its investment products would be prohibited from doing so as soon as the bank was deemed to be criminal.

Twenty-eight banks are officially above the law and WILL NOT be criminally prosecuted no matter what they do.  Remember that’s not me saying this.  It is the U.S. Department of Justice saying it.

Not only twenty-eight banks but all their senior executives, chairman/woman and board members.  It would be very difficult to find a senior person in a bank to be criminally guilty but yet not find the institution guilty. So we could compile a list of people who are now, at least as concerns any financial and professional actions, also above the law.

When we say a bank is above the law, not only should we remember that this means specific people are above the law (at least in how they make money) but we should also remember that this also means the assets in those banks are above the law. This means if a banks does things which are illegal but lucrative – such as laundering money in order to get the use of those laundered billions to then use them as, lets say, capital to underpin loans or for speculating, for example, and by doing those illegal things it makes out sized profits for its shareholders and staff, that money, those profits are also above the law.

Since the bank and its senior staff are above the law and breaking the law is profitable, a) no one has an interest to say no, b) shareholders and staff will directly benefit from breaking the law. They will make more money by participating in law breaking or by investing in a bank which is law breaking. They will, in fact have an interest making sure it continues."

Golem XIV, The Twilight of Justice, March 2013

"Let your love be sincere.   Hate what is evil, and hold on to what is good.   Love one another with with the love of a family.   Be an example in showing respect to others.  Do not be neglectful in your service, but enthusiastic in spirit, as a servant of the Lord.  Rejoice in hope; be patient in suffering, and faithful in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, and provide hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who provoke you.  Pray for them, and do not curse them.   Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another.   Do not be arrogant, but associate with the humble.  Do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but have a regard for what is good in the sight of all.  If it is possible, as best as you can, live peaceably with all.   Friends, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the judgement of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will do justice, says the Lord.'”

Romans 12:9-19

 

Stocks managed to extend their rally and edged a little higher.

This has the hallmarks of a squeeze on those who took cash or short positions as a result of the new hostilities in the Mideast.

VIX continues to wallow with its MACD histogram now at a low for the year.

Gold and silver endured a major bear raid this morning, no doubt led by the bullion banks and their cronies.  

The Banks are the dreadnoughts in the ongoing financial and currency wars.

Speaking of gold, analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs believes that the People's Bank of China is covertly buying large amounts of gold in preprartion for a change in the global monetary structure. You can read the full article here.

"The PBoC is in a hurry to buy enormous amounts of gold, indicating it’s preparing for substantial changes in the dollar-centric international monetary system.  

Based on information from industry sources and my personal calculations, total gold purchases by the Chinese central bank (reported and unreported) in Q3 accounted for 179 tonnes.  Year-to-date the PBoC bought 593 tonnes, which is 80% more than what it bought in the first three quarters last year.  Its total estimated gold holdings are 5,220 tonnes, more than twice what’s officially disclosed at 2,192 tonnes.

The movement towards gold by central banks is showing no sign of slowing down. Mainly the Chinese central bank is on a voracious buying spree since 2022, and it’s obtaining way more metal than what is officially reported."

I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

The big, tectonic changes happen slowly, gradually, and then like an avalanche or earthquake of revelation, all at once.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Blues En Mineur - Obvious Wash and Rinse De Luxe

 

"I write to you from a disgraced profession.  Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis. Concepts including 'rational expectations,' 'market discipline,' and the 'efficient markets hypothesis' led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur.  Not all economists believed this – but most did.

Thus the study of financial fraud received little attention.  Practically no research institutes exist; collaboration between economists and criminologists is rare; in the leading departments there are few specialists and very few students.  Economists have soft-pedaled the role of fraud in every crisis they examined, including the Savings & Loan debacle, the Russian transition, the Asian meltdown and the dot.com bubble.

They continue to do so now.  At a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute in New York on April 17, the closest a former Under Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Fisher, got to this question was to use the word 'naughtiness.' This was on the day that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud."

James K. Galbraith, Why the 'Experts' Failed to See How Financial Fraud Collapsed the Economy, May 16, 2010

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make a man a more clever devil."

C. S. Lewis

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929



Today was a classic 'wash and rinse' on Wall Street, an operation about as simple and obvious as a street game of 'three card monte.'

It is a waste of time and a kind of complicity to try and rationalize it.  

And on the surface many people seem to be asking for it.  

They can't get enough of con men and quackery.

Whacko-ness and hysteria drive out rational judgement.  By design.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Financial Dreadnoughts

 

BILL MOYERS: And you say that this oligarchy consists of six megabanks.   What are the six banks?

JAMES KWAK: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

JAMES KWAK: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

BILL MOYERS: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

SIMON JOHNSON: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

JAMES KWAK: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis.  If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. 

For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform.  I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. 

And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off.  They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

Bill Moyer's Journal, The Financial Oligarchy in the US, April 16, 2010

It was risk on today, as stocks rallied pretty much until the end of the day, going out on the highs.

VIX dropped as one might expect.

The Dollar gave up the 110 handle and more.

Gold and especially silver rallied hard off the recent price suppression.

Silver was kicking butt with both legs.

Let's see is this was just a flash-in-the-pan bear market relief rally or the beginning of a genuine bottom.

There was intraday commentary Authoritarianism of the Utopias.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Aspirations

 

"It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes.  Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers.  Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie.  When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan.  His mouth is the foul maw of Hell, and his power is at bottom accursed.  True, we must conduct a struggle against the Nazi terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.

Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element:  The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course.  Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil.  He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air."

Please distribute this as widely as possible.

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

“"It is very easy to get drunk with hate. Hate is like the glass of whisky which is given to the soldiers before a bayonet charge. Whisky stimulates but does not nourish. Hate is not creative, only love is creative.

No one in the world can change truth.  What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.  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, executed at Auschwitz, 14 August 1941


"The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is all about."

Fulton J. Sheen

 

Stocks tried to shake off the bad earnings report from Snap, which cast doubt on the health of the online advertising milieu.

And some of the big tech regulars are announcing hiring freezes.

Next week the big tech heavyweights will be rolling out their earnings reports.  That may likely set the tone for the week.

And the Fed will be meeting again.   

Gold and silver rose with the continuing Dollar drift lower.

Gold managed to hold on to some of its gains, but silver fell with equities and finished up flat on the week.

Most investors will find it more practical to play the long game with gold and silver, and hold it without leverage for the longer term. 

Wall Street is a corrupting and poorly policed casino.

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

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Almost Time to Head for Higher Ground

 

"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 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, June 2012


"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving.  Too many of America's elites — among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia — have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility.  They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012


“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten them.”

George Orwell

Stocks came in a little stronger this morning, but then reversed and turned sharply lower, and went out at the lows of the day as well.

Gold and silver were lower as most everything that was not the Dollar or Treasuries were getting sold.

It resembled a liquidation event, or at least the prologue to one.

Smells like teen spirit.

The Fed spooked the markets that are now pricing in a trio of 50 basis point rate increases this year.

At some point either the Fed or the markets are going to blink.

Let's see what happens.

I'm making the national dish of England for dinner this evening— tikka masala.

Have a pleasant weekend.