Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Desolation of Abomination

 

"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.   The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent.  

In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.  Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.   This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."

Simone Weil

“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

“When you see the desolation of abomination standing where he should not be, let those who seek knowledge understand, then let those in Judea flee to the mountains."

Mark 13:14

Today was the end of May.  And the markets took a wild ride.

Let it suffice to say that these guys are shameless, and increasingly brazen.

And not just in the markets.  

They lie, and fall in love with their lying. 

Have nothing to do with them and their ways.

Non-Farm Payrolls and FOMC next week.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And So For Now We Travel With You in the World

 

The Christian life is a pilgrimage.  At times the road is difficult, and we get lonely.  Sometimes we may become discouraged and consider abandoning the journey.  It is at such times that God will place a friend alongside us.  One of God’s most precious gifts to us is friends who encourage us and lovingly challenge us to 'keep going.'  According to Scripture, a friend is one who challenges you to become all that God intends.

The mark of biblical friends is that their friendship draws you closer to Christ. They 'sharpen' you and motivate you to do what is right. True friends tell you the truth, and even risk hurting your feelings because they love you and have your best interests at heart .

Be careful in your choice of friends.  Jesus did not look for perfect friends, but friends whose hearts were set to follow God.  It is equally important to examine the kind of friend you are to others.  Strive to find godly friends who will challenge you to become the person God desires.  When you have found them, be receptive to the way God uses them to help you become spiritually mature.  Strive also to be the kind of friend that helps others become more like Christ.

Henry Blackaby, Iron Sharpens Iron

We are not remote elites or ascetic philosophers, who dwell alone and exile themselves from ordinary human life.  We do not forget the debt of gratitude that we owe to God, our Lord and Creator.  We reject no creature of His hands, though certainly we exercise restraint upon ourselves, lest we make reckless or sinful use of His gifts.  And so for now we travel with you in the world.

Tertullianus, Apologeticum, Carthage, 197 AD

They devoted themselves to the teachings and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.

Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.  They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.   And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Acts 2:42-47

Stocks were sagging today as the markets squared up for the end of the month, and the PCE inflation data coming out tomorrow morning.

This may move the markets, although the punters seem to be taking the Fed's jawboning a little more seriously.

VIX opened higher again but faded a bit as the day wore on.

Stocks went out near the lows.

The Dollar slumped back. It is all a part of the endless wash and rinse of modern money.

Gold was unchanged, but silver was hit harder by the wavering of risk that brought down stocks.

The pretense to humanity are falling away.  It's almost shocking at times what we have come to tolerate.

We may truly deserve the choice between Trump and Biden.  But we do not have to make that choice.

What all these very exceptional and impressive personages have in common is their lack of empathy for others, and an overwhelming lust for money and power.  

Our professional and moneyed class have deftly shed the constraints of morality and the obligations of duty.  This has always been their tendency, but of late it has become more acceptable, almost fashionable.

Not a good situation.  Most do not understand how perilous the times may be, and they do not want to know it.

But in the end we have each other, and the help of the Lord.  And so we cannot despair.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Masters and Monsters

 

Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing is secret that will not be made known. Whatever has been said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what they have whispered in private will be proclaimed from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do. But fear the one who, after the killing, has the power to cast you into hell.  Fear this one!

Luke 12:1-5

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 real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?

Maximilian Kolbe

The root of it all is in the will to power, the desire of a select few to determine the value of all life, and to define both good and evil, with themselves as the ultimate good.  And their handiwork is not life, but a profound emptiness, the abomination of desolation.   They never have enough.  Not enough money, not enough power, not enough killing.  They cannot give life, so they will bring death.  They fear weakness and death, so they attempt to be its master.  They would be as gods.  And in their pride they make themselves, and all those around them, not masters but monsters.

Jesse, Social Darwinism, 17 September 2014
 

Stocks were hit with selling this morning, and it last in varying degrees throughout the day.

The Dollar rallied in a 'flight to safety' as the VIX rose higher.

Gold and silver were hit early, but silver shook it off and finished roughly unchanged.

Gold dropped a little.  It had the more significant option expiration yesterday, and this may have been the expected 'gut punch' that often follows a major expiration.

Gold was moving in and out even-handedly in the Hong Kong warehouses yesterday.

We'll be getting some GDP data tomorrow morning, and PCE inflation on Friday.

We had some storms roll through yesterday and they brought cooler weather in the 70's with a welcome breeze.  

The garden is all in now and growing well.

The young man is getting married in July, and so Daisy and I will be looking after things for a while.

For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’, and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right.
Tell us only things that please us— prophesy illusions.

And here it is, our world of monstrous realities, veiled in scolding deceits and thinly spun illusions.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sliding Down Quietly Into the Abyss

 

Easy is the descent into hell;
Its dark doors stand open, night and day.
But to retrace one's steps,
To return to the upper air,
That is the task, that is our labour.

Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid

'Simon, Simon.  Satan has asked to have you, and to sift all of you, like wheat.  But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.  And when you have returned to the faith, you must help to strengthen your brothers.'

Luke 22:31-32

They spend their days in prosperity, and slide down quietly into the abyss.  They say to God, 'Leave us alone!   We do not want to learn your ways.   Who is the Almighty that we should serve him?   And what would we gain by praying to him?  Is not the prosperity of the wicked the result of their own efforts, since they have never sought God’s help?'

Job 21:12-16

The Lord reached down and rescued me;
      he drew me out from raging torrents.
He delivered me from powerful adversaries
      who hated me, and were too strong for me.
They assaulted me in the time of my distress.
      But the Lord sustained me and brought me to safe harbors.
      Because he delights in me, he saved me.

Psalm 18:16-19

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Stocks were wobbling around, but managed to finish the day in the green.

Gold and silver in particular rallied.

VIX rose slightly.

Today was a quiet option expiration on the Comex for Precious Metals.

Most of the work had been done in slamming prices in the days leading up to today.

Sometimes we see another gut punch to test the new longs who were holding call options that were in the money, and have been converted into new futures positions.

Have a pleasant evening.

C. Wright Mills: The Causes of War

 

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts

War is hugely profitable.  It creates so much money because it's so easy to spend money very fast.  There are huge fortunes to be made.  So there is always an encouragement to promote war and keep it going, to make sure that we identify people who are 'others' whom we can legitimately make war upon.

Roger Waters, Concept Tour, Rolling Stone, 23 February 2017

An expensive arms race, under cover of the military metaphysic, and in a paranoid atmosphere of fright, is an economically attractive business. To many utopian capitalists, it has become the Business Way of Life.

In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands.  The expectation of war solves many problems of the crackpot realists; it also confronts them with many new problems.

Yet these, the problems of war, often seem easier to handle.  They are out in the open: to produce more, to plan how to kill more of the enemy, to move materials thousands of miles.  So instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplification of known catastrophe.

They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines.  Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be.  For they still believe that 'winning' means something, although they never tell us what.

The immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it.

Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle.  But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its 'inevitability,' want it in order to shift the locus of their problems.

C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1960

Memorial Day

 

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865

"The selling of the Iraq War to the American public was an exploitation of mass gullibility. Current circumstances give little or no hope that the public response would be much different to the selling of some future untoward war."

Paul Pillar, Selling the Iraq War: Gullibility and Mass Hysteria, March 15, 2023

"The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves.  There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace!  This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world."

Thomas Merton, The Root of War, The Catholic Worker, October 1961

"In all these instances the large multinational bankers were actively supporting both sides. It is a shocking fact that both British and American banks continued to do business with the Nazis even after the War was well underway, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London."

BBC, Banking with Hitler, 1998

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1999

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - To Find One Another Again

 

"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control.  As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.  Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, March 1942

"They defended him, verbally and physically, every time he committed one of his criminal acts. They went blithely on past the suffering of all the bombing victims, the prisoners in the concentration camps, and the religious persecutors, because a different regime would have meant the end of their power."

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?  Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'  The answer is, you're doing it.   Right now."

Aaron Bushnell

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children,
       unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’
      and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!
Tell us only things that please us, prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

"Such unsustainable social arrangements are backed by force and fraud.  And as the fraud loses its power over time, force must increase, until there is an end in genuine reform, or a terrible self-destruction."

Jesse, Credibility Trap, 24 August 2012

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.  The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, God’s dwelling is with us.  He will dwell with them, and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old ways have passed away.'

Then the one who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.'”

Revelation 25:1-5 

It was a generally quiet today in the markets, with a few adults showing up, and leaving early to join the rest on their three day Memorial weekend vacation.

Gold and silver caught a little bounce.

There will be a Comex precious metals futures option expiration on Tuesday.

VIX is wallowing.

In honor of Memorial Day, let us remember the basic freedoms for which so many of our people have given their service, their suffering, and in too many cases their lives.

We seem to have lost our way in this madness and hysteria.  

Let us hope that we can find our way, and one another, again.

Have a pleasant weekend.