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.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Where Are You Going, Lord?

 

“Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone.  In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”

James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

"Modern capitalism is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want.  It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them.  But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need.   Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive."

John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, 1992

"Most politicians couldn't care less about the plight of the poor. There's so much profit to be made from poor people - think payday loans, high-interest rent-to-own stores, for-profit colleges, and overpriced mobile homes - that politicians and their crony-capitalist donors have a vested interest in keeping them poor."

Joshua Wilkey, My Mother Wasn't Trash

"We live in a world where love itself is condemned.  People call it weakness, something to grow out of.  Some are saying: 'Let each one become as strong as he can, and let the weak perish.'  They say that the Christian religion with its preaching about love is a thing of the past. The neo-paganism [of the Nazis] may well cast off love but, in spite of everything, history teaches us that we shall be the victors over this.  We shall not forsake love. Take the days as they come, the good with a grateful heart, and the bad for the sake of those which follow.  I see God in the work of His hands and the marks of His love in every visible thing.   Do not yield to hatred. We are here in a dark tunnel, but at the end, an eternal light is shining for us."

Titus Brandsma, executed at Dachau, 26 July 1942

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth— that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning.   He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road.  That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis

It was a 'risk on' day all the way, with strong rallies in equities.  Stocks went out near their highs.

VIX reflects this new wave of confidence, and continued to fall.  

The ebb and flow of fear and greed is taking back what was lost with the war fears of not too long ago.

Gold finished unchanged, with silver losing a little more ground despite the weakness in the Dollar, which continued to decline, in addition to the strength in equities.

What is this telling us?

It may become much clearer by next week.  Risk may recede from our perception, but it has not gone way.

As you may know I grew up in northeastern Ohio, and most of my friends from earlier days were 'salt of the earth' people, the children of the working class, such as myself. 

I was stunned a few months ago in a phone call to discover that almost all of my buddies from young adulthood after college are gone now.  When you move some distance away and start your own family you naturally tend to lose contact. Many of them worked in the trades, and have passed away. 

So its nice to hear from someone who brings fond memories of pleasant times, my good friend Phil who called unexpectedly.  He was always quick-witted and full of good humor.  We worked together after high school, which at that time was in an aging, if not deteriorating as it is all gone now, section of southeast Cleveland, in an old furniture warehouse next door, a cavernous place, full of opportunities for the kind of carefree fun and camaraderie that make a student's life more passable.

It's nice to be reminded of who we are and how deep our roots go, in sharing memories and laughs, shared experience from times gone by.  It is easy to lose perspective and a sense of your core being, of who you really are and what you believe, swept along in this tumult of events, and endless waves of mind-numbing controversies.  The modern world overwhelms and isolates us with the shallowness of its values, full of illusions and falsehoods, binding us to a wheel of fire shifting quickly between greed and fear.

Family and friends are always important, as well as the institutions that helped to shape us, and sustain us, which often remain there for us, as we travel the world, and through time.  They help us to resist the hate and the madness of the moment, and even if our knees are just a bit more wobbly now, to remain standing firm against the tide.

Such is His loving kindness, and tender mercies. 

Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow, and then into the weekend.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

William Pepper: Another Look at the Assassination of Martin Luther King

"I wound up being the last judge hearing the James Earl Ray matter: Did he in fact assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King?  And had he not died and his local attorney not died in close succession, it would have been my finding that he was not the gunman.  That Remington 760 Gamemaster they’ve got in the Civil Rights Museum is not the murder weapon. It’s not even close."

Judge Joe Brown

This is an interesting report that includes testimony from William Pepper, who is a lawyers, an anti-war journalist and friend of MLK and his family.

He is "noted for his efforts to prove government culpability and the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the King family, in subsequent years. Pepper has also been trying to prove the innocence of Sirhan Sirhan in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy."

I was intrigued by the testimony of a judge in the matter of James Earl Ray who says that it has been proven conclusively that Ray's rifle was not the murder weapon.  He says that he would have ruled to vindicate him based on this.  Judge Brown was removed from the case for 'bias against the prosecution.'

I have not investigated this particular version of events exhaustively and offer it only as something for thought.  It relies heavily on the credibility and veracity of William Pepper and the facts as he has assembled them.

I personally agree with the results of the King family's civil action that James Earl Ray was not a lone gunman in this action.

A transcript of this video is available at The Corbett Report.