Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Oligarchy and the Plutocracy - The Metals Rally

 

"Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as 'liberal' or even 'left', Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, 'schooled in postmodernism', as Alex Lantier wrote.
For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings.  They lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, but 'better terms' of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor.  When merged with 'identity politics' and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience.  Mainstream political life in Britain exemplifies this."

John Pilger, The Problem of Greece is not Only a Tragedy: It is a Lie, CounterPunch, Jul 13, 2015

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, October 4, 2011

“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion.  Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree.  Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you.  Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it.  Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society.  It is a modern form of feudalism.”

John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it.  Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status.

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 4, 2016


It was a solid 100°F here today.  Not all that unusual for July.  But it certainly does not encourage one to do yardwork.

For the 2024 election the alternative independent choice is going to be a third party, and probably Robert Kennedy.  The establishment hates and fears him for his independence.  And they smear and try to silence him relentlessly.  That's a pretty good endorsement, because they themselves are unprincipled and corrupt, faithless and venal warmongers.

Our oligarchy is the public face of the plutocracy.   An oligarchy is a government where the public discussion and agenda are significantly controlled by an elite minority.   A plutocracy is a government controlled by a few wealthy individuals.  

So what we have is a government in which an elite, credentialed minority holds most of the power, and serves for pay on the behalf of a wealthy few.

Old as Babylon, evil as sin.

Gold and silver rallied briskly today, going out near the highs.

The Dollar just chopped around.

VIX is still wallowing.

Tech was lower, the SP 500 and the broader market managed to post gains.

Option expiration on Friday.

If you keep in mind that the US is ruled by a credentialed oligarchy, for the benefit of a wealthy few, then a lot of things will make better sense as you  look at them.

Call it 'deep state' if you will, although some dislike this term.  But there is an inner clique of power, that is able to kill presidents, flout the law at will, knock skyscrapers flat, and foment wars of aggression that result in the death of millions — and not be held accountable for any of it.  They deal in illusions.

And you will not able to stand against it, against the allure of power and money, unless you keep and hold fast to the love of God in your heart.

In the end, you will be found applauding the powers of darkness in this world, with blood on your hands, believing in unconscionable evil, and be proud of it.  

You may be miserable in hell, but you will have the company of some of the finest people.

It's a brisk trade in human weakness and folly.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And Then You Are His

 

"And because of the increase in lawlessnes, the love of many will grow cold.  But those who remain standing until the end will be saved."

Matthew 24:12-13

"The days of chastisement are coming, and judgement is at hand. Their sins are many, and their hatred great. They think prophets fools, and the righteous mad.  Even the faithful are deep in their corruption. God remembers, and holds them to account for their sins."

Hosea 9:7-9

"Strive for peace with all, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord, Take care that no one loses the grace of God, and that no bitterness takes root and flourishes, by which many will become corrupted."

Hebrews 12:14-15

“There are only two kinds of people in the end — those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945

"Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth?  No; he offers you baits to tempt you.  He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.  He promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

"Anyone who does not do what is good is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their neighbor."

1 John 3:10

"But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me, so that the message might be fully proclaimed that all the Gentiles might hear. And I was delivered out of the lion's mouth."

2 Timothy 4:17

Stocks came in rallying this morning, for whatever reasons people might wish to ascribe.

Gold held a little bounce, and silver a small decline.

The Dollar similarly held a little bounce.

Economic data this morning gave further reinforcement towards economic weakness.

The VIX wallows in complacency.

A less significant stock option expiration will be this Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Allure of the Beast

 

"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard, for they will hand you over to the courts, and be flogged in their temples. And you will be brought before governors and kings for my sakes, as witnesses to them and to the nations.

But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. You will be hated by everyone for my name. But the one who stands firm to the end will be saved."

Matthew 10:16-22

"Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not.  This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and 'weaponizing' the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents.  The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”

Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 2018

"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength — but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

Léon Bloy

"Those who have faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray.  The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."

Fulton J Sheen

Stocks rallied today, because they were smacked lower yesterday.

They did fall back quite a bit into the close.

VIX fell.  Complacency is the order of the day.

The Dollar continued to decline.

Gold and silver had a weak trade, with a little improvement into the close.

One exogenous event is going to tear this bloated, corrupt, and festering market apart.

The scandals and awful surprises keep coming, and people are not quite sure how to react to them.

Except perhaps to close their eyes, embrace the illusion, and yell loudly.

It's the American way.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fire Will Rain

 

"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery.  We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity...  Few people have yet considered the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."

George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb, Tribune, October 19, 1945

"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system.

The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, organized hypocrisy.

Jesse, What Is a Credibility Trap, 18 September 2013

“There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.”

Ryszard Kapuściński, Writing About Suffering, Journal of the International Institute, Fall 1998

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer."

Francis Bacon, Of Truth, 1597

We had steep declines in the major stock indices today, taking back a small chunk of their recent outsized gains.

The Dollar gave up a similar piece of its recent gains from a fairly lofty valuation.

Gold and silver rallied sharply, breaking out of their recent price range.

But what was most remarkable about this day was the complete lack of a sense of risk involved in all this.

The VIX barely moved.

The broader index in the small cap Russell 2000 did not correct.

So let's just call this a rinse, following a thorough wash, following a benign CPI number.

PPI tomorrow.

Our political situation would be funny if it were happening somewhere else.

We get so caught up in it because if we step back and look at what we are doing it would be almost unbearable.

To paraphrase the American author James Baldwin, one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the truth. 

And so we legislate absurdities, and fawn on those who prophesy illusions.

The fire next time.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Blood on Ringed Hands

 

"Their heart is false.
      Now they will pay for their guilt.
God will bring down their altars
      and break their sacred monuments.
For they say,
      'We have no king,
Since we do not fear the Lord,
      the king — what could he do for us?'

Thorns and thistles will grow on their altars.
      Then they will say to the mountains, 'Cover us!'
      and to the hills, 'Fall on us!'”

Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8

"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;  perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken;  struck down, but not destroyed;  always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of the Lord may also be manifested in us.  For while we live we are always being given up to death for his sake, so that the life of the Lord may be manifested in our mortal flesh.  And so we do not lose heart."

2 Corinthians 4:8-16

“Anyone who wishes to follow me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? Or what can he give in regain his life?

The Son of Man will come with his angels, in the glory of his Father.  And he will repay everyone according to what they have done."

Matthew 16:24-27

"No doubt it is more comfortable to deliberately wear blinkers that prevent one from seeing the evil done in the discharge of their responsibility— to be unwilling to see that one is defending murder and robbery."

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Executed, Berlin, 23 January 1945

Powell's reassuring words to the Congress helped to propel the mispricing of risk in the equity markets to new highs.

Tell us what we want to hear.  Prophesy illusions.

Gold and silver initially rallied but then were sat on and held to minor gains.

VIX wallows.

CPI data tomorrow, PPI on Friday.

Our election choices this fall have been dictated by the oligarchs as between dementia and demented.  

Endless fraud, and endless war. 

After the bell:

"Archegos Capital Management founder Sung Kook "Bill" Hwang was convicted of fraud and other charges by a jury in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday at a criminal trial in which prosecutors accused him of market manipulation ahead of the 2021 collapse of his $36 billion private investment firm.  The jury found Hwang guilty on 10 of 11 criminal counts and Patrick Halligan, his Archegos deputy and co-defendant, guilty on all three counts he faced."

and,

"U.S. bank regulators fined Citigroup $136 million for failing to make adequate progress fixing data management issues the agencies identified in 2020, the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday.  The joint enforcement action from the Fed and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) relates to 'insufficient progress' Citi has made fixing data management problems and implementing controls to manage that ongoing risk."

Pride and plunder, fraud and the mispricing of risk, are the prevailing themes of the masters of the universe.  

"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.  Plunder, rape, and murder they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

And our leaders praise the servants servants of Moloch, applauding wildly, with innocent blood on ringed hands.

Until the mountains fall on them.

Have a pleasant evening.