Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

 

"...to the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."

Edgar Allen Poe, To Helen


“Now all the Athenians as well as the foreigners residing there used their time for nothing else but telling or hearing something new.

Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: 'You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.  For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’  What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.  The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything.

Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.  He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.  For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.  God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.'  When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, 'We should like to hear you on this some other time.'”

Acts 17:22-32


Empires rise, and rage for their time upon the stage of history, and fall, to be forgotten. 

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

Stocks did their usual intraday churn and burn, finishing largely unchanged.

Gold and silver were feeling a bit wobbly, but not overmuch.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX has now fallen, considerably.

Wash cycle is almost done.

"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation.  It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped.  Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." 

Robert Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Speech, Cape Town, South Africa, 6 June 1966

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Father of Lies and His Children of the World

 

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.  The world is crowded with him.  He walks everywhere incognito.  And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate.  The real labor is to remember, to attend— in fact to come awake.  Still more, to remain awake.”

C. S. Lewis

"Franz Neumann’s book Behemoth, details how the Nazi regime came about, how you could have this really advanced, highly educated, industrial society suddenly be ruled by this imperialist, vicious regime – how is this possible?   And when looking at the ways that the economic elites collaborated, the end result is you have the German establishment supporting Nazism basically as a way to crush any leftists that might want a social revolution or serious reforms to German capitalism.”

Aaron Good, American Exception, July 2022

"It is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification.  The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, and justice nothing."

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture for Literature, 1970

"American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy. By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check, 1919

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."

Haile Selassie, Addis Ababa, 1963

"The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population. It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us

"Why do you not understand what I am saying?  It is because you cannot bear to hear my words.   You are from your father, the devil, and you willfully carry out your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand with the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks in accord with his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:43-44

The markets avert their eyes from injustice, brutality, and slaughter, with a self-righteous contempt for those who are weak.   

Power will ultimately achieve its true purpose— it's own destruction in an ignoble end.

Stocks tried to rally, but eventually fell back to close nearly unchanged.

VIX fell again, as it was damn the geopolitics and risk away.

Gold and silver fell back a bit.

The Dollar rose.

The sheer injustice and brutality of the portrayal and disposition of the campus protesters reminds me very much of what it was like to be opposed to the war and support civil rights in the 1960s.  

Its surprising how many of the professional leadership class are on the payroll, happy just to go along to get along, or cowed into silence.

"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler.  And at that moment I actually sensed that it would have been possible to find things out."

Traudl Junge, Hitler's Secretary

Try explaining this to the boss, and not the poseur, when the time comes.

Winning....

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Privileged Few: Their Myths and Illusions

 

"'Gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’.  It inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

Myth seeks the ascent of man to spirit; the Word of God seeks descent into flesh and blood. Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness. Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding. The revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life. Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of The Incarnation, 180 AD

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3

“We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light.”

Henri Nouwen, Advent Prayer

“The opposite of love is not hate, he said. It’s power. Relationships fueled by a drive for power, where one person seeks dominance over the other, are incapable of producing love.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshaling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it. This Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death.

John Henry Newman, 1890

"Some crazy numbers in here.  Big US Universities are really hedge funds with a side hustle in education. The gulf in pay between the fund managers and the Provost tells you everything you need to know."

Dr. James O'Leary, University College London, 2024


I never really understood until now why the President of Columbia just closed the university to all of their students and faculty. 

They are getting in the way of the university's real business— the serving of money and power. 

Stocks were off to the races today, squeezing the shorts and piling up those gains, going out near the highs.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX fell, as is suitable for a 'risk on' day.

Gold and silver were in rally mode, after the recent sell off into Friday's Non-Farm Payrolls support.

Wow, what a coincidence.

No real data coming out until Wednesday, although earnings reports are still coming in.

The 'very serious people' of the financial and political sectors were gathering for the Michael Milken Global Institute meeting in Beverly Hills.

The mask is really coming off these days, isn't it.  

You may have the privilege of seeing history in the making, as we have not seen for many, many years.

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."   Proverbs 11:2-3

You can forecast things, and fairly well, but when they come true, you still can't quite believe it.

It is hard to overestimate the hypocrisy and lack of decency of the privileged few.

This reminds me a lot of the 1960's.  But I think the music then was better.

And the times, they are a-changin'.  Again.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Principalities and Powers - In Service to the Unspeakable

 

“Our country’s cheerleaders are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalism.   But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us.  There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“The Dulles brothers were not intimidated by mere presidents. When President Franklin Roosevelt pushed through New Deal legislation to restrain the rampant greed and speculation that had brought the country to economic ruin, John Foster Dulles simply gathered his corporate clients in his Wall Street law office and urged them to defy the president. 'Do not comply,' he told them. 'Resist the law with all your might, and soon everything will be all right.'

Dulles undermined or betrayed every president he served in high office.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“During the Eisenhower administration, the Dulles brothers would finally be given full license to exercise their power in the global arena.  In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“What he confessed was this.  He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest.  These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words.  He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. 

'The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted.. . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  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: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“The opposite of love is not hate, he said. It’s power. Relationships fueled by a drive for power, where one person seeks dominance over the other, are incapable of producing love.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in light today.

And stocks and risk assets were cheered by this, and a sustained rally ensued.

Gold and silver were softer as safe havens were tossed aside, but managed to recoup most of their losses.

VIX plummeted as one might expect.

And so we go into the weekend, dancing on a volcano.

If you have never read David Talbot's book you may wish to have a look, or at least watch one of his talks on the subject of the darker corners of the world, where the servants of the unspeakable act in secret.

You will only remain standing in what is coming with His love.   For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fashionable Habits of the Plutocracy

 

"Tyranny becomes a habit, and scenes of suffering, often repeated, render the heart callous. We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”

Lydia Maria Child, 1861

"Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race?  Hardly anyone thinks about that.   It is accepted as fact and put out of mind.  The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal lack of conscience from which they will never, never awake?  It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims.  He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this 'government' which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.  On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.  One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.  True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.  It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.' 

Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice.  Sometimes it means being frustrated.  When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart.  Sometimes it means losing a job— means being abused and scorned.  And I've long since learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ means taking up the cross."

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, April 30, 1967

Why do we have this current state of 'forever war' that has become the norm for the past 40 years or so?  Why are we seeing this violent and hysterical assault on freedom of speech and peaceful protests, not only the most recent examples, but going back to the brutal, bipartisan repression of the Occupy Wall Street moment?

These are the trappings of the industrial-security state, of the lawless plutocracy which now dominates our professional and political class so thoroughly.  

It has not been this bad since the military-industrial complex started persecuting people and murdering key public figures in the 1960's, in order to firmly establish and perpetuate the cold war, and global covert wars of regime change and repression.

This is not sustainable.   The winds of change are gathering strength.  And the powerful few are afraid.

Stocks were under a bit of pressure early on, but found their footing and rallied into the close.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver were under pressure recovered into the close, with silver showing its usual resiliency.  

The demands for silver in high tech industrial applications are fueling increased use of bullion.  And the central banks and the paper constructs of the Banks cannot substitute leverage for the metal in use.

But this is all prelude, to the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow.

“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.”

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1928

Babylon, Babylon.  What are we becoming?

Have a pleasant evening.

Interlude for a Quiet Afternoon: Why do I blog?

This is a reprise of a posting from July 27, 2011 

I regret using the word 'I' so much, but that is hard to avoid when you are trying to introduce who you are and why you are doing something. 

I had completely forgotten about this, and came across it when I was looking for something else. 

That's one of the benefits of old age.  You are like a traveler in time, but slowly.  And you can look back and see what has gone before.

You can remember places and people vividly, that to the young are just pages in books.  

And you can look back and see what you were like at a different place and time.   Cringe-worthy experience, but it helps to ground you, and remind you why you are standing on the ground that you are.   

And to help you remain standing.

 

A Brief Apologia of Sorts

 Why do I put forward these thoughts? Why don't I charge for it, or take ads? Why don't I do interviews and speak at rallies, and direct a group of followers to promote messages in comments and 'pile on' to those who do not agree with us?

As I recently answered to a fellow blogger, because I do not need the money. So why bind myself to some agenda, even if a little, by taking it? I give out of the excess and abundance given to me. Yes, there are definite sacrifices and self-limitations, and they extend to family. And that is sometimes a cause for unease. But the necessities are covered.

Why do I witness to my beliefs, and alienate some worldly and influential people, and even believers with different viewpoints and prejudices, and incur the consequences of diminished opportunity? It limits the acceptability of my message in many sites and areas. You might be surprised, but it does. And it hurts. And the ability to see the ugliness for which people can be capable is discouraging. But then there are the consolations that seem to come, as they are most needed, from the most unexpected sources, the kind word, the occasional graciousness of the spirit.

This is not some incidental thing, it is what I am, it defines me. I am not my own, to do as I will. I owe a triple allegiance to the truth and what is most human, the very pinnacle of existence, by creation, by redemption, and by continuation. If I do not do good when there is a price to be paid that is in reality very slight as these things go, how could I expect to pay the price when the stakes are high?

What is it that I want? I don't want anything. This is why I shun the spotlight. I want neither money nor followers, nor recognition or fame. I want to be a simple, honorable man. Husband and father. And that is work enough for anyone.

What makes me think I can know the Truth? Why do I sound so much like a leftist lately? By the way, I find that particularly ironic, since I am a life long pragmatic conservative in the tradition of Edmund Burke, with a tinge of the libertarian.  It just shows how far things have shifted from center.

I have a scientific mind, so I do not proceed from the assumption that I know the truth in this world, as truth is a never ending journey, a way of life that one never reaches until the very end of this world. So I start at the bottom and slowly, carefully, work up from there, taking things where they lead me, constantly reviewing the landscape, continuously learning, pursuing an ever-retreating horizon, with the occasional view from the peaks.

If I have any fear, if there is any recurrent theme in my energy and my prayer, it is not to mislead people and myself, even unintentionally. I not only do not seek to promote a point of view with the misuse of facts, I beat my own conclusions bloody, almost every day, looking for any weakness and misapprehension, constantly absorbing new data and ideas. I expose myself to a wide variety of thoughts and opinions, almost to exhaustion.

Forecasting the future here is exceptionally difficult because there are so many exogenous, and yet outcome critical, variables. There are powerful forces promoting certain ends for their own benefit, but there are other forces working against them. It is a conflict, and the fronts are not always easily seen through the fog of war.

And so even at best, I know I am not and cannot always be right, so it is never an easy place to be thinking, wrestling with the uncertain and taking its measure, much less acting upon it. But this is where I am, and must be. Going forward, one step at a time, in fear and trembling at my own weakness and insufficiency.

When my site was improbably recognized as among the ten most influential [international financial blogs] by some very kind people, links to pieces on my site dropped off a cliff. Those in the blogosphere probably figured that since I was already 'successful' that there was no need to encourage it, since I was no longer a colleague, but the competition. There is only one competition that counts in these times, and that is to stand for goodness and justice in a terrible class and currency war.

And I also continued to strike out on a line of thinking that people in the financial world and the fortunate may not favor. And so it is not popular. If you want to be popular, tell people what they wish to hear, not what they may need to hear. And the greater a person becomes in the favor of the world, the less tolerant they are of contradiction.

Good fortune and wealth can be a terrible trap, the most ponderous of burdens, because we are so unwilling to let go of them, even a little, as they drag us down into the abyss.

And so the temptation to change my approach, to post hysterical (and not just hysterically funny) headlines and pieces that are misleading, to fan the flames of passion and prejudice become high. I can understand that. Isolation is no picnic, and the crowd has its allure. Everyone desires to be liked. I am human.

And it is because I seek to be truly human that I cannot be otherwise. People seem to have lost their sense, their voice, of humanity. How can I remain silent, when good and innocent people become prey? Who am I to do this, why me?

I do not seek this. At times I wish to run away, to hide in my library or the kitchen, rather than be taken where I do not wish to go. I came to the study of money for a blessing, but I have found a work. And I cannot leave it, because this is where I am meant to be. And so I am here.