Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great American Swindle

 

Personal Copy From My Library

"There was time when average Americans could be counted upon to know correctly whether the country was going up or down, because in those days when America prospered, the American people prospered as well.  These days things are different.

If you look at the middle of the 1930's (the Depression) up until the year 1980, the lower 90 percent of the population of this country, what you might call the American people, that group took home 70 percent of the growth in the country's income. 

If you look at the same numbers from 1997 up until now, from the height of the great Dot Com bubble up to the present, you will find that this same group, the American people, pocketed none of this country's income growth at all.

Our share of these great good times was zero, folks.  The upper ten percent of the population, by which we mean our country's financiers and managers and professionals, consumed the entire thing.  To be a young person in America these days is to understand instinctively the downward slope that so many of us are on."

Thomas Frank, What to Make of the Age of Trump, Kansas City, 6 April 2017

“Based on the value of the stock market compared to GDP, with modifications, this is the most expensive market in American history."

Jeremy Grantham, CNBC Interview, 26 June 2026

"I would say that practically all the financial journals were on the take.  This includes reporters for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Herald-Tribune, you name it.  So if you were a pool operator, you'd call your friend at The Times and say, "Look, Charlie, there's an envelope waiting for you here and we think that perhaps you should write something nice about RCA."  And Charlie would write something nice about RCA.  A publicity man called A. Newton Plummer had canceled checks from practically every major journalist in New York City.

Then, they would begin to — what was called painting the tape. Now, what's happening is the stock goes from 10 to 15 to 20 and now, it's at 20 and you start buying, other people start buying at 30, 40. The original group, the pool, they've stopped buying. They're selling you the stock. It's now 50 and they're out of it. And what happens, of course, is the stock collapses."

Robert Sobel, The Crash of 1929,  PBS Frontline, April 24, 2012

"An investigation later discovered that business journalists for at least eight papers promoted stocks in their writing in return for bribes. The most embarrassing were at the Wall Street Journal. The revelations about the Journal reporters came out during hearings by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in 1932, more than three years later, when Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia produced cancelled checks written to the Journal reporters from publicist A. Newton Plummer. The stories based on the bribes had gone as far back as 1923."

University of North Carolina, History of Business Journalism: 1920s

"I have come to realize that the vast majority of decent, wonderful people, have no idea how they are being hoodwinked day in and day out by the scum of this world. We are lied to, misled, bamboozled, suckered, cheated, misrepresented, conned, manipulated and royally screwed. They take us to the cleaners day in and day out in every way possible. We, the people, pay the price of their cheating, their folly, their lying and their sheer stupidity."

Pierre Rinfret, Parida.com, 2004 (before he passed on in 2006)

"Control frauds in the financial markets are by their very nature conspiratorial in that they involve the suborning of regulators, ratings agencies, exchanges, the media, and legislators to ignore and facilitate misrepresentation that enable white collar crime. They are difficult to prosecute because by their nature they involve twisting the legal into the extra-legal on a broad basis to achieve a particular financial effect, while limiting many specific aspects to the letter of the law, or at least the gray areas. By and large they operate in the shadows, hiding behind secrecy and a general mindset towards short term greed and lapses in ethics. Investigations following the Crash of 1929 and the S&L crisis demonstrated that the existence of such pervasive lapses in stewardship do exist."

Jesse, Control Frauds Extend Bubbles Maximizing Damage, 27 April 2010

"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality.  It is to disguise the reality."

John Kenneth Galbraith, Power and the Useful Economist, 1973


Stocks wobbled around today, as the geopolitical risks raise their ugly heads over the official proclamations and celebrations of peace.

Gold and silver bounced around as usual, finishing higher on the day.

Bitcoin in also bouncing around, stuck for now on the lower end of its intermediate trading range.

VIX of course fell.

We can't have any disappointments for Donnie's big 250th anniversary celebration of himself. 

Iran and Russia may not have gotten the memo.

If you are getting your news from any of the ideologically/financially aligned mainstream news channels, you will have no idea what is going on, and what is coming your way. 

I can remember an online acquaintance tell me in the aftermath of 9/11 and the campaign for go to war on Iraq that he could not bear to watch anything but Fox News.   

I made a promise that if the whole WMD agitprop turned out to be false, I would never watch the mainstream media channels again.   

And it was, and I no longer watch them.  It is not news, it is performative art for pay.  And the 'financial' channels are the worst of them.

So we move into the holiday-shortened trading week to come.   

What the Epstein files need now is a new Daniel Ellsberg.  They really are that bad.  They will never be willingly released by either party.  Insiders take care of their own and don't criticize each other, as they say in the halls of power. 

Have a pleasant weekend.  

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Time to Come Home

 

"The Lord requires you to act justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8

"The dazzling and consuming act of pride that transformed the angel of light into a prince of darkness condemned him to an insatiable, desperate to acquire. The loss of the wellspring of life gives rise to an essentially inextinguishable thirst. The entire world can not fill the emptiness. Having fallen from the eternal, Satan's desires are endless and insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he seeks to possess. All he takes into himself he destroys."

Denis de Rougemont, Switzerland, 1944

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society.  Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.  These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. 

As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.  In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home.  The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in 'a distant country.'  It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

"All sin, indeed, when repented of, He will put away; but pride hardens the heart against repentance, and sensuality debases it to a brutal nature."

John Henry Newman

"Almighty God lets the sinner go his own way, for He has given to man free-will, and does not want a forced obedience, but an obedience springing from love.  The sinner falls under the dominance of Satan, and becomes the slave of his lowest passions, which are signified by the swine which the prodigal was forced to feed.  But the more he obeys his passions, the more dissatisfied he becomes.  He feels an emptiness and spiritual hunger in his heart which he is powerless to satisfy.  He only knows that he is miserable, and hateful to himself."

Friedrich Justus Knecht, The Prodigal Son, 1910


Turn away from the fatal embrace of your empty desires, your gripes and petty peeves, and come home. 

With loving kindness, in joy and forgiveness, you will be received into the house that has been prepared by your loving father.   

Do not think,  'Forgiven? I can never be forgiven.'  Or in the hardened hearts, 'Forgiven?  I have done nothing wrong.  I only did what was necessary for myself and my family. And I dealt with others in the world with God's own justice as is my right.'

Come home, and be forgiven.   Angels will rejoice and the devils will curse and grind their teeth.

The hour is growing late.  This is the twilight of the gods of the world. 

Time to come home. 

Stocks popped wildly higher in the overnight futures, with the beat in the Micron earnings sparked hopes in an extension of the Tech Bubble part deux, aka AI Über alles.

This on top of 'reasonably good news' on the economy this morning.

Not constructive for the bullish agenda.

Bitcoin has dropped to the bottom of its intermediate trading range.

Gold and silver bounced back a bit on this option expiration day on the Comex.

These expirations often mark bottoms.  We may get another 'gut punch' to test the resolve of those few brave souls who took fresh futures contracts from in the money calls.

VIX went higher.

A ship was stopped by force in the Strait of Hormuz today as it tried to move past the Iranian position through the US recommended southern portion of the channel.

Risks are wildly mispriced.  The tech bubble seems to be topping, judging by all those 'well reasoned' pieces coming out now saying that it isn't.

The numbers don't lie.  But they can be useful accoutrements to embellish the lures of the Wall Street bubblemeisters.

The hour is growing late. This is the twilight of the gods of the world. 

But your soul will still be, even as the stars burn out, and scatter into dust. 

Repent your prodigal heart, and come home.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - To Be Human

"For we are the work God’s hands, created for a life of good works, prepared for us in Christ Jesus, that we may find life in them."

Ephesians 2:10

"There's been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man.  Recently on the campaign trail I told the story of my adoptive dad, Mark Talarico.  Every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn, and then without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn because she was a widow.  My dad never talked about it — he just did it, because that's what a man does.

A man takes responsibility.  A man upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors.  A man does what's right, even when no one is watching.  Here's what real men don't do.  They don't lie and cheat their way through life, sell their soul to the highest bidder, or steal from other people in order to enrich themselves.

Real men serve others.  Weak men serve themselves.  I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man, and I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is."

James Talarico, Candidate for Senator from Texas, June 12, 2026

"The government is intervening in the various markets.  There is little or no question about it, if you accept that actively changing, with intent, the rules, money supply, short term liquidity, interest rates, methods by which key statistics are tallied, spin and other information that might impolitely be called 'propaganda' is manipulating the markets. (With gold now at $912 and silver at $17.48.) 

And often it is. They admit it. The evidence is there.  If you don't know about it you have not been keeping up with current events.  Those who are in-the-know are in denial and hiding, trying to line their pockets and curry favor with whomever they think will be in power next.  Those who don't know are running around waving their hands, shouting slogans and hearing only their own voices, or just ignoring it all getting distracted by whatever happens to be handy.

One's best recourse is essere umano, to be human throughout it, perhaps giving the bastards a swift little kick from time to time just to let them know you're still there.

In the meanwhile there are important and interesting questions to investigate as best we can. Its not clear yet exactly which way this thing goes, and the variables interact with one another, and are many more than can listed here: 

• Will our government become a better democratic Republic, Fascist, or Socialist, and the related broader question of the Individual vs. the State.
  
  
• When and how the dollar will be valued and how fiat currencies can be sustained without being destroyed by inflation? (in all history none have succeeded}.
  
  
• How will the world's reserve currency evolve?  Can a greater centralization of power and control be avoided gracefully?  Can freedoms be maintained if it cannot?
  
  
• Will there be a 'moment of clarity' when the failure becomes evident and things move with alarming speed, or will this be a damp fizzling decline into an ignoble whimper.
  

We will continue to explore all these areas with what we hope is a bias to objective analysis and pertinent data, laced heavily with humour, satire, charts, and pictures.  Little by little there will be progress, and the body of knowledge grows, and life is renewed, and creation is made more orderly, and liberty and the spirit are restored."

Jesse, Of Government Intervention, and Why I Write This Blog, 11 July 2008

"I do not ask for your performance and pretense,
       the hypocrisy of festivals and solemn ceremonies.
I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain.
      I do not even notice your finest peace offerings.
Spare me the noise of your hymns and praise,
      I will not listen to the music of your harps.
Instead, let justice flow from you like a river,
     and righteousness in an ever-flowing stream."

Amos 5:21-24

"He became as we are, so we might become what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word, 335 AD

"You have been told what is good, and what the Lord requires of you.  Only do what is right, and  love goodness and mercy, and walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8

Stocks rallied up on the back of yet another big, beautiful peace deal.

I don't think the 'deal is real' but the Street wanted to launch a pig into space, and so they did, lipstick and all.   Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.  Let’s make sure he’s the last.

Gold and silver gained a little, coming off their recent lows earlier this week.

VIX fell down again.  

The Dollar is chopping around in a trading range.  Nothing could be more clear.

Bitcoin failed to take off, and is still stuck at overhead resistance.

There will be a triple with option expiration next Friday.

Let's see what new deals are announce over the weekend to prop the markets up on Monday.

"The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them."  Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs, 12 January 2010

The US is sliding into the kind of country we used to hold up as an example of what we were not, and were so much better and freer.

 It's the new tradition. And Trump is just hatching the egg that the imperial presidents before him have laid.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As a Testimony to the Nations

 

"Financial predators, on the other hand, are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals.  They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy.  Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive.  Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars.  They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."

Russ Alan Prince, Unmasking Financial Predators, Forbes 2017

"...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.

Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel — an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly. Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy.  So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising.  But that can’t last indefinitely; Americans are getting angry, and even when they’re misguided or poorly informed, people have a deep, visceral sense that they’re being screwed.

I have no problem with people becoming billionaires — if they got there by winning a fair race, if their accomplishments merit it, if they pay their fair share of taxes, and if they don’t corrupt their society.  But that’s not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy.  Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked.  And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.  That’s what I have a problem with.  And I think most people agree with me." 

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012

"It is never really between them and you, but between you and yourself, between you and your God.  No act of kindness is wasted.  You store them in your heart, and these are the only things that you will take with you when the day is done.  It is how you rise above the darkness, and become human."

Jesse, Even In a Time of Vanity and Greed, 5 May 2013

"Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap."

Galatians 6:7


Trump sparked the equity markets today with yet another whopper about taking a pause from bombing Iran to work on a peace Memorandum of Understanding. 

More likely this is a courtesy to Elon Musk, who is squeezing out a whopping pig of an IPO tomorrow for SpaceX at a wildly confabulated evaluation of $135 a share, in his never-ending quest to become a trillionaire. 

The Street knows this. They absolutely know what is what about all of it.  Trump and the Congress know that he is lying through his teeth.

They don't care.  They just want to get paid. They all have the same moral sensibility, which essentially none.

"Iran directly rejects Trump's new claim that he reached an agreement to "cancel tonight's strikes" on Iran as baseless, saying no agreement has been approved at all, and all of Trump's words should be disregarded like all his previous 38 times deal-imminent announcements over two months, per Tasnim. A senior Israeli official also tells Channel 12 they are 'not aware of any agreement being reached'."

So, stocks rallied hard after Trump made his 39th announcement of an imminent peace deal.

Gold and silver rallied.  Bitcoin rallied a bit.

VIX fell.

SpaceX is coming out tomorrow.

"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves.  You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”    Thomas More, 1535

And the Band played on. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - At the Mercy of a Higher Power

 

“Prepare for battles.  Know that you are now on a great stage where all heaven and earth are watching.  But before I come as a Judge with justice, I will first open the door of My mercy.”

Maria Faustina Kowalska, Divine Mercy, Kraków 1938

"You should become resigned to the fact that you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter the service of Splendor. Then you will know what it means to be the friend of God. The Friend of God! I am on the verge of tears when I think of it."

Léon Bloy, Le Désespéré, 1887.

"They have become twisted in their reasoning, and their foolish hearts are darkened."

Romans 1:21

"Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring! This is what baffles the power of Satan. He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it.

Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God. Crafty and experienced as he is, he appears like a child or a fool, like one made sport of, whose daily bread is but failure and mockery, before the deep and secret wisdom of the Divine Counsels. He makes a guess here, or does a bold act there, but all in the dark.

He knew not of Gabriel’s coming, and the miraculous conception of the Virgin, or what was meant by that Holy Thing which was to be born, being called the Son of God. He tried to kill him, and he made martyrs of the innocent children; he tempted the Lord of all with hunger and with ambitious prospects; he sifted the Apostles, and got none but one who already bore his own name, and had been already given over as a devil. He rose against his God in his full strength, in the hour and power of darkness, and then he seemed to conquer.

He brought into the world the very salvation which he feared and hated. He accomplished the Atonement of that world, whose misery he was plotting. Wonderfully silent, yet resistless course of God’s providence! And if even devils, sagacious as they are, spirits by nature and experienced in evil, cannot detect His hand, while He works, how can we hope to see it except by that way which the devils cannot take, by loving faith?"

John Henry Newman, Christ Manifested in Remembrance, 7th May 1837

"Those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed. But at the time their own destruction seems impossible to them. For they do not see that the force in their possession is only a limited quantity; nor do they see their relations with other human beings as a kind of balance between unequal amounts of force.  Since other people do not impose on their movements that halt, that interval of hesitation, wherein lies all our consideration for our brothers in humanity, they conclude that destiny has given complete license to them, and none at all to their inferiors.

And at this point they exceed the measure of the force that is actually at their disposal. Inevitably they exceed it, since they are not aware that it is limited. And now we see them committed irretrievably to chance; suddenly things cease to obey them.  Sometimes chance is kind to them, sometimes cruel. But in any case there they are, exposed, open to misfortune; gone is the armor of power that formerly protected their naked souls; nothing, no shield, stands between them and tears."

Simone Weil, L'Iliade ou le poème de la force, 1939

Stocks did a bit of a 'pop and flop' today after yesterday's selloff.

There are some key IPOs coming out later this month. As always they involve a scandalous manipulation of the rules of the exchanges to benefit a wealthy few.

“Not only did Nasdaq gut its 'seasoning' requirement to allow SpaceX into its index only 15 days after its IPO, it also changed how it adjusts its weighting in the Nasdaq 100 index for 'low-float' stocks.”

Although only those who understand how these things work may understand it, this is a scandal of the highest level. If we had a functioning regulatory office this would not be happening. But this is the naked face of the kleptocracy.

(Note:  later this evening S&P Dow Jones Indices has just officially announced that they will NOT be changing their inclusion rules to make it easier for “MegaCap” companies such as @SpaceX to be fast-tracked into the SP 500. The soonest SpaceX can join the index is June 2027.  I am not sure that this derails the move by the NDX however.) 

Trump is going to be staging a June 14th birthday party for himself.  And he is turning the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States into a tawdry political rally.  

The wages of sin will be paid. 

Bitcoin is on 'must hold' support.  The chart below makes it obvious.

Gold and silver are chopping around with the physical trade in the East and the paper chase in New York and London.

I have read credible estimates that the price of oil is going to spoil Trump's celebrations.

I would not trust AI with anything more important than drawing pictures and editing photos.  It lies, boldly and badly and repeatedly because it cannot be bothered taking the time and effort to think.  It should run for president. 

I will be out of pocket most of tomorrow, and will put up some charts after the close sometime.  I have a surgery coming up in a couple weeks, and they like to prod and probe us old geezers in advance.

As my old godfather used to say:

"Starość nie radość, młodość nie wieczność."

These are words that we all might take to heart.  

And while we still have time to choose, ask to pass through the door of His mercy.

Have a pleasant evening.