Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Servants of Blood and Power

 

"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, US Ambassador to Germany, Speech in Berlin, October 5, 1933

"Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think. I may have made an error in judgement — but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million. His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him."

Adolph Eichmann, quoted by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1977

“The last moments before damnation are not often so dramatic. Often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. But he cannot make this knowledge real to himself. Some tiny habitual sensuality, some resentment, the indulgence of some fatal lethargy, seems to him at that moment more important than the choice between total joy and total destruction. 

With eyes wide open, seeing that the endless terror is just about to begin and yet, for the moment, unable to feel terrified, he watches passively, not moving a finger for his own rescue, while the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul.”

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945


Do not be overly concerned about the coming of the beast.

The beast may yet come or not in time, but his servants are already here, aggressively doing his will in their lust for money and power. 

And they are offering prominent seats at a banquet of everlasting suffering and death. 

Stocks rebounded today, although they faded markedly into the close.

Antics for the stock option expiration.

Risks remain mispriced, and the underpinnings of the risk markets are ephemeral. 

Gold and silver were smacked around into the close. 

This is not the normal action of efficient markets.   

The markets reflect the current power elite of the US, which is unprincipled, unstable, and predatory.

So take this into account as you make your short term investment decisions.  Or better yet, don't make them, and take a longer term horizon.

The most important thing is that, when the time of reckoning comes, that you will not be found standing with them.

So let's see what the next, holiday-shortened week, will bring.

I remain defensive, since there are so many potential exogenous events looming on the horizon, and how capricious in their decisions that the powerful have become. 

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 - The Consecration of Lawlessness

 

"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.  Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.  Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich.  Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola, circa 98 AD

"The Press of the United States? Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it. I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel, 1907

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

John Harrington, Epigrams: Of Treason, 1618

"These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words.  He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest:

'I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.'  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were 'the grand masters,' he said.  'If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.'  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. 'I guess I will see them there soon.'

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard, 2015

"The coming of the lawless will be the work of Satan made manifest in all power and false signs and wonders, and in every wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to accept the love of the truth to be saved.  For this reason, God allows them to have a powerful delusion to believe their own lies, that all those who deny the truth and instead take pleasure in lawlessness will be condemned."

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12

“Religion used to be the opium of the people.  To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life.  But 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, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism, NYRB November 19, 1998

It was a decline to cover those gaps in the equity charts, with risk coming off the table.

Gold and silver were sold lower.

The Dollar took back the 100 handle.

VIX came in higher, but declined into the close.

This seems more like a correction and profit-taking, moreso than some other significant event.

But as I remind, we are one trigger event away from a meltdown.

Dick Cheney, practitioner of deceit and war crimes, has passed onto judgement. 

As shall they all. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fall of the Man of Sin

 

"A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship."

Chalmers Johnson, Interview on Democracy Now, February 27, 2007

"History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless.  Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end.  [the US will probably] maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it.  Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2002-03.

It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system, or for military rule or simply for some development we cannot yet imagine.  Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a loss of control over international affairs, a process of adjusting to the rise of other powers, including China and India."

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2007

"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us,"

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2006

"So, what do I suggest probably will happen? I think we will stagger along under a façade of constitutional government, as we are now, until we’re overcome by bankruptcy.  

Bankruptcy would not mean the literal end of the United States, any more than it did for Germany in 1923, or China in 1948, or Argentina just a few years ago, in 2001 and 2002. But it would certainly mean a catastrophic recession, the collapse of our stock exchange, the end of our level of living, and a vast series of new attitudes that would now be appropriate to a much poorer country.  

Once you go down the path of empire, you inevitably start a process of overstretch, of tendencies toward bankruptcy, and, in the rest of the world, a tendency toward the uniting of people who are opposed to your imperialism simply on grounds that it’s yours, but maybe also on the grounds that you’re incompetent at it.  

There was a time when the rest of the world did trust the United States a good deal as a result of the Marshall Plan, foreign aid, things of this sort.  They probably trusted it more than they should have. Today that is almost entirely dissipated At some point, we must either reduce our empire of bases from 737 to maybe 37—although I’d just as soon get rid of all of them.  If we don’t start doing that, then we will go the way of the former Soviet Union." 

Harvey Kreisler, Talking with Chalmers Johnson, Counterpunch, May 6, 2010

"Jesus told this parable to those who were proud of their own righteousness, and looked at others with contempt.

Two men went up to the temple to pray.  One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.  The Pharisee took up his place, and spoke this prayer to himself:  ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or worse, like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and pay tithes on all my income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance, and would not even raise his eyes to heaven.   He simply beat his breast and prayed, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’  

This man, I tell you, went home justified, but the Pharisee did not.  For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Luke 18:9-14 


"Pride leads to destruction, and arrogance goes before a fall."

They are going to push these markets until they break.  And then loot the wreckage.  

Gaza seems to be the model for modern Neo-colonialism.   

And the Western elite are more like the British rule in colonial India, rather than the elected representatives of the people.   

The US financial system seems to be reaching peak hubris, and is heading for a nasty tumble.

Stocks rallied hard on a 'framework' for a solution to the trade dispute with China.

Gold and silver were hammered with program short selling hitting the miners.

The Dollar fell.

VIX has dropped to a low level.  It could go lower, but its nearing the area of a correction.

Try not to be among the fallen. 

I have been watching the new series based on Stephen King's book The Institute.  

It is classic King, and is very engaging. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

  

Stocks and Precious Metals - Gold and Silver to New Highs - A Sign for the Times

 

"What theology, history and common sense have taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie, Le Monde, 5 avril 1956

"You are a sinful nation, weighed down by lawlessness. A race of corrupt and wicked children, you have forsaken your Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned your backs to him."

Isaiah 1:4

"From the least to the greatest, they are greedy for unjust gains - and from prophet to priest they all deal falsely.  They have treated the suffering of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace’ when there is no peace.  They act shamefully, they bring forth abominations.  And yet they are not ashamed, and do not even know how to blush. In the days of judgement they will stumble, and shall be found among those who are fallen."

Jeremiah 6:13-15

"We have learned nothing, and are emboldened by our willful ignorance. We make beasts of ourselves, to avoid the pain of our lack of humanity. We make a private cult out of our own childlike selfishness, sinning shamelessly against the word and the spirit. We lay down with swine, and call it greatness."

Jesse, 8 October 2021

"And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to rise from the dead.’”

Luke 16:30-31


Still on vacation, but these moves in the precious metals are notable.

Enjoyable, but edgy. 

Gold futures closed at a new all time high of 4322.

Silver rallied higher as well, pegging a close above 53.

VIX spiked.

The Dollar continued to slide. 

Stocks traded weakly with a little rally back in the quiet afternoon.

Stocks are one event away from a notable correction. 

"While they were admiring the temple, adorned with costly stones and offerings, Jesus said, 'All that you see here, the days are coming when there will not be left one stone upon another stone, that will not be thrown down.'"

Luke 21:5

And no one could see it coming.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Deliver Us From Evil

 

"You are not a God who delights in evil,
       the lawless cannot remain in your presence.
The arrogant cannot bear the weight of your gaze;
        you despise all who do evil.
You destroy all who tell lies— 
        the Lord detests the violent and the deceitful."

Psalm 5:5-7

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.  Weep instead for yourselves and your children."

Luke 23:28

"Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests.
       Wail, you ministers of the altar.
Come, pass the entire night in repentance,
        you ministers of my God.
For the house of your God will be deprived
        of even the offerings of grains and wine.
Announce a holy fast;
        proclaim a solemn gathering.
Call the elders
        and all the people of the land
To the house of the Lord, your God,
       and cry out unceasing to Him there.
For the day of the Lord is near,
       coming as a destruction from the Almighty.
       What sorrow will visit you on that day.

Sound the trumpet in Zion
        Raise the alarm on my holy mountain.
Let everyone tremble in fear
        because the day of the Lord is upon us.
It is a day of darkness and gloom,
        a day of thick clouds and deep blackness.
Suddenly, like dawn spreading across the mountains,
        a vast and mighty army appears.
Nothing like it has been seen before
        or may likely ever be seen again."

Joel 1:13-15, 2:1-2

"Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate.’”

Matthew 23:38


I'm still on vacation.   But I thought today called for at least a weekly update. 

Every day I update my charts, and continue to trade for my own account, lightly. 

Was I positioned for this?   

We had a correction today, as the Donald threatened to slap whopping tariffs on China. 

This was in response to China's throttling of rare earth mineral exports to the US.

'Only we get to do that, ' said J. D.    

The Dollar melted.

VIX soared.

Stocks dropped like stones, and went out near the lows.   

But there is still an open gap, notably on the NDX.

This was just a correction today, and long overdue, the bubble having become overextended in the pursuit of a big, beautiful stock market, the best ever seen.

Walt and the ESF decided to just let it slide, the better to skin your with my dear.

Gold and silver held their levels in the selling, with gold putting together a late rally. 

If we get a serious market reversal I have marked target levels on the charts.

We should, by historical standards, get a rally shortly.  If it fails to make a new high, we could be slipping into a crash sequence which I will be following real time.

Have fun.

And a pleasant weekend.