Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk Off! Rate Cuts! - As Makes the Angels Weep

The God of the Market

"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."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets. 

The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention. The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.

Are you not entertained?  As Egon von Greyerz noted, the next five years are not about winning, but surviving.   So, then let us then proceed."

Jesse, 5 August 2019


“During the Summer of 1929 the stock market was marked by wild swings, violent up and down price movements, that left market participants feeling dizzy and almost exhausted. Whatever may or may not come, now might be an excellent time to take inventory of your finances, and provisions for the future. And you may wish to order your affairs to be more resilient in the face of risks, both hidden and mispriced.”

Jesse, 10 August 2019


“But man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep..”

William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure


"O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.

But if not, even if he does not preserve us, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the images of gold you have set up and commanded us to worship."

Daniel 3:16-18

As a reminder, there will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.

I pray daily that God will give us the light, and the strength, to know His will, and to resist the temptation to join in the hatred, the madness, and the worship of the darkness of this world, that seems to possess so many of our countrymen, day by day.

'But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil.'

Have a pleasant evening.

Ralph Nader: Effecting Change Is Not Impossible— As You Have Been Taught To Think By 'Divide and Rule'

"Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers.  The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust. 

The democracy gap in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the least worst every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the least worst gets worse.

We’re told that we’re a polarized society, right? That’s the way the ruling classes have manipulated people for more than two thousand years:  divide and rule.  And, sure, there are differences between the Left and the Right over reproductive rights, school prayer, gun control, government regulation, and now, immigration.

But on at least two dozen issues you’ll find combined Left-Right support from 75 to 90 percent of the population. You’ll find it on breaking up the big banks; you’ll find it on civil liberties [privacy]; you’ll find it on getting rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism; you’ll find it on criminal-justice reform.  There is huge Left-Right support to crack down on the corporate crooks of Wall Street."

Ralph Nader

How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course

Remember

“We cannot understand Fascism, but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard...because what happened can happen again...For this reason, it is everyone's duty to reflect on what happened...

Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it."

Primo Levi, If This Is a Man

"The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defense. Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition...

There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today... they are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters.

Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology, the inferno could erupt anew anywhere."

Simon Wiesenthal

"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

 

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered...

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning

 

"Upon her recent passing at the age of 76, I took the opportunity to reread Bubby's memoirs. In four different instances, my grandmother had stood—amid the smoke of the crematoriums, the barking dogs, the trampling boots and swinging clubs—on the infamous 'selection line' at the head of which Mengele and his minions stood, pointing left and right, sentencing some to back-breaking labor, and sending others to the gas chambers. In each of those instances, somebody would come along and say or do something that would change Bubby's fate from certain death to tenuous life. In one such incident, she already had been sent to the line of those marked for death when a man appeared as if from nowhere, physically removed her from that line and shoved her into the other, without saying a word.

Indeed, the miracles and the mysteries of the events of those days abound along with the horrors and the tragedies. In contrast to the vile actions of the "Angel of Death" were the noble and heroic actions of many "Angels of Life" who stood ready to risk their own lives for the sake of saving that of a stranger.

It is thanks in no small part to "Angels" like these, who stepped out from behind their own misery and grief to come to the aid of others, that generations now live on to tell the story. How clearly we see the infinite ripple effects of single acts of kindness and compassion, even if accomplished in a split second..."

Yossi Refson, Angels of Light

"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.

The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps.

The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small."

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin 

"This lack of reaction arose partly because many in Germany and elsewhere chose to believe Hitler's claim that he had suppressed an imminent rebellion that would have caused far more bloodshed. Evidence soon emerged, however, that showed that in fact Hitler's account was false...

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour...In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime. 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence...I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, The Garden of Beasts

"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.

What is called 'fellow traveling' [collaboration] was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else and, simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo."

Theodor Adorno

Ralph Nader On the Fed's Gamble, Failed Two Party System, Corporate Power

It would interesting to see some strong third party efforts emerge with progressive agendas.

We know that the Republicans are owned by the monied interests, and that Clinton-Obama leased out the Democrats to them.

The two parties may as well change their names to Big Oil/Defense versus Big Finance, with their only common ground being the ascent of the corporatocracy: all the rights of the individual, few of the restraints and obligations.

Spain Has Its 'Let Them Eat Cake' Moment - Another Milestone Reached

Technically the pampered princess of Spain's elite said, 'screw them all' rather than 'let them eat cake.' She is only saying what most of the Western elite are thinking about 'the problem of the hoi polloi.'

After the brazen theft of customer money by a well-connected financier, I said I was waiting for another shoe to drop, another milestone to be reached on this cycle of history.

I should add that a single instance of something obviously does not make a trend.  It is the trend that is of significance.  Do the perpetrators become emboldened, or does a horror of recognition bring things back into balance?  No one wakes up one morning and decides, "I think I shall become a monster." Evil is a process of abnormality with which one becomes increasingly familiar, accepting,-- comfortable.

The next step in the rise of statism is capital controls, media suppression, and the increased repression of dissent by physical means and censorship. After that is the singling out of certain ethnic and religious groups for 'special treatment,' and campaigns to establish the 'otherness' of select targets. This could also be related to some age or class group, or even the disabled.

And then murder, first occasional and then systematic. It may take the form of starvation, denial of medical treatment, non-elective abortion, or euthanasia at first. Hopefully we will not progress as far on the cycle as any of these latter stage developments.

Here is a note from a friend about a news item that has not penetrated the Anglo-American news media yet.

Spain is implementing its latest austerity package. Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy Raises VAT 3pc in Shock U-Turn

When the Prime Minister Rajoy said to their National Assembly that they must cut benefits to Spain's unemployed, Miss Fabra was apparently caught on video shouting, "Screw them all."

The damage control groups are now trying to explain that Miss Fabra was not saying 'screw them' to the unemployed, who the Prime Minister was talking about, but rather 'the Socialists,' who favor things like benefits for the unemployed.

This is sparking quite a bit of anger in Spain, as one might imagine, which is suffering under very high levels of unemployment and facing further austerity cuts.

Spain's oligarchy appears to be a bit backward and thuggish. Rather than clumsily rigging lotteries and construction projects, they would be better off forming a banking cartel, rigging market prices, and stealing a little from everyone, every day, on every transaction. Then you can be a Very Important Person, dress well, have Congressmen publicly kiss your ring, and still gorge yourself at the trough of public corruption without marring your cufflinks.

In every one of these troubled countries that I examine, although the blame tends to fall on the 'lazy and foolish' many, if one scratches beneath the surface they find a corrupt core of greedy insiders, oligarchs, who have been inflicting economic distortions and pain on the public in the service of their own sense of entitlement.

"It should come as no surprise to anyone that major commercial banks manipulate Libor submissions for their own benefit. The OTC derivatives markets was designed by the big banks, for the big banks, to ensure that as they set up their own private securities exchanges - away from regulatory scrutiny - they could control the interest rate settings. Money center commercial banks did not want the "truth" of market prices to determine their loan rates. Rather, they wanted an oligopolistically controlled subjective survey rate to be the basis for their lending businesses."

David Zervos
Jefferies & Co

That is sophisticated financial corruption. That is progress.

From an erudite friend in Europe:

"Yesterday, after PM Rajoy announced that the government was going to cut the benefits the unemployed receive, a PP congresswoman, Andrea Fabra, daughter of Carlos Fabra, was caught on camera applauding and shouting "Que se jodan" - which translates roughly to screw them all.

Miss Fabra was appointed Parliamentary Advisor at the age of 24, straight out of university. Her father has "won" the lottery at least 7 times, and is under multiple investigations for corruption.

'Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.' France, late 18th century

'Que se jodan!' Spain, early 21st century

At least, back then, they had better manners."