Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Anguish of the Fallen

 

"The goal has been the 'Third Worldization' of the United States:

• an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force;
• a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes;
• the privatization or elimination of human services;
• the elimination of public education for low-income people;
• the easing of restrictions against child labor;
• the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries;
• the breaking of labor unions;
• and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations."

Michael Parenti, Land of Idols, 1994

“Son of man, they have set up idols in their hearts. They cling to the errors that will make them fall into sin. Why should I allow myself to hear them?"

Ezekiel 14:3

"Surface idols are things like money, spouse, children, through which our deep idols seek fulfillment.  For example, money can be a surface idol that serves to satisfy more foundational influences.  Surface idols are things through which our deep idols seek fulfillment.  Some people want lots of money as a way to control their world and life, and such people usually don’t spend much money and they live very modestly. They keep it all safely saved and invested so that they can feel completely save in the world. Others want money for access to social circles and to make themselves beautiful and attractive. These people do spend their money on themselves in lavish ways.

Other people want money because it gives them so much power over others.  In every case, money functions as an idol, and yet because of various deep idols it results in very different patterns of behavior. The person using money to serve a deep idol of control will often feel superior to others and use money to obtain power or social approval. In every case however, money idolatry slaves and distorts lives.

An idol is something we cannot live without.  We must have it.  Therefore it drives us to break rules we once honored, to harm others, even ourselves, in order to get it.  Idols give us a sense of being in control.   Idols control us since we feel like we must have them or life is meaningless.”

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods, 2009

“Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.”

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudon, 1952

"Then the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, and every slave and freedman hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us, and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their judgement has come, and who is able to survive?'”

Revelation 6:15-17

As a reminder, there will be a stock option expiration this Friday.

 

Stocks did their usual boogie woogie, with unsurprising mixed results.

 

The rally is narrowing again.   The SP 500 is working on what could be a triple top.

 

VIX was lower, and is starting to sound a bit of a complacency alarm.

 

The Dollar chopped sideways.

 

The battle over the physical supply of precious metals continues, pitting the banking dreadnoughts of the American financial system against most of the rest of the world.

 

Things are likely to get more and more interesting, and enlightening.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Creatures of the Kleptocracy

 

"The London Gold Pool was the pooling of gold reserves by a group of eight central banks in the United States and seven European countries that agreed on 1 November 1961 to cooperate in maintaining the Bretton Woods System of fixed-rate convertible currencies and defending a gold price of US$35 per troy ounce by interventions in the London gold market.

The central banks coordinated concerted methods of gold sales to balance spikes in the market price of gold as determined by the London morning gold fixing while buying gold on price weaknesses. The United States provided 50% of the required gold supply for sale. The price controls were successful for six years until the system became no longer workable. The pegged price of gold was too low and runs on gold, the British pound, and the US dollar occurred and France decided to withdraw from the pool. The London Gold Pool collapsed in March 1968.

The London Gold Pool controls were followed with an effort to suppress the gold price with a two-tier system of official exchange and open market transactions, but this gold window collapsed in 1971 with the Nixon Shock, and resulted in the onset of the gold bull market which saw the price of gold appreciate rapidly to US$850 in 1980."

Wikipedia, The London Gold Pool

"Let us create a society in which it is easier for people to be good."

Peter Maurin

"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."

Edward 'Steady Eddie' George, Governor Bank of England 1993-2003, from Reg Howe v. BIS, JPM et al.

"God intended things to be much easier than we have made them."

Dorothy Day

"You might think that parking your money in a big bank like JP Morgan Chase would insulate you from fraud. It’s just the opposite.   The big banks are the biggest perpetrators of financial fraud – fraud that affects millions of us, either directly or indirectly, on an ongoing basis.  While they are wrist slaps when properly scaled, you can see the list of 'settlements' made between the government and the big banks here.   These 'settlements,' the aftermath of Wall Street's near production of a second Great Depression, entailed not a single criminal indictment.   The top two repositories of banksters, based on the number of settlements, are Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

The banks engage in fraud for two reasons.   First, they profit from swindling the public.  Second, they can get away with it via a simple technique.   They buy off the regulators with promises of enormously lucrative jobs when they leave government service, and they buy off the politicians with huge direct and indirect campaign contributions."

Laurence Kotlikoff, When Banksters Buy Regulators and Prosecutors, Forbes, October 21, 2014


Gold and silver rebounded sharply from the calculated slamdown of last Friday. So why did they bother? 

What they accomplished was to break the upward momentum of the precious metals, in order to keep their price 'under control' in heavy demand.  And more importantly it loosened up some of the physical bullion that was being borrowed from certain funds at increasingly higher rates.  

The precious metal complex in New York and London is highly leveraged, and gold is often leased and rehypothecated multiple times.

The collapse of a leveraged scheme like this can result is some serious fireworks in the financial markets.  

Stocks managed to hold on and eke out some gains.

VIX wallowed.

The Dollar ticked up a bit.

 There will be a stock market option expiration this Friday.

Precious metals futures contracts options expiration next week.

Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.  

Often without really making up our minds to be either good or evil.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Blessings and Woes - The Sermon on the Plain

 

"Why do you call out to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do as I ask?  I will tell you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them.  That one is like a person building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built.  But the one who listens and does not act is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation.  When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”

Luke 46-49

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

“Cursed is the man who trusts in men, who trusts in the flesh for their strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For they will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when good comes. They will live in dry wastes in the desert, in a land of salt where no other people live.

Good will come to the one who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is in the Lord. They will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the river. It will not be afraid when the heat comes but its leaves will be green. It will not be troubled in a dry year, or stop giving fruit."

Jeremiah 17:5-8

"The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’  But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed.  Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’  I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 18:11

"The root of all sin is pride, superbia.  I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death.  The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1939

"You felt secure in your wickedness.  You think, ‘No one sees what I do.'  But your so-called wisdom and knowledge have led you astray.  And you believe that, ‘I am the one, no one else matters.’   Disaster will overwhelm you, and you won’t be able to talk it away.  Misfortune will descend upon you, and you won’t be able to buy your way out.   A catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one which you cannot avoid."

Isaiah 47:10-11

‘Blessed are you who are poor,
      for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
      for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
      for you will laugh.
‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you,
      revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.
Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven;
      for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

‘But woe to you who are wealthy,
      for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
      for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
      for you will mourn and weep.
‘Woe to you when all speak well of you,
      for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.'"

Luke 6:20-26

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Time To Come Home

 

"What is a proper disposition towards life?   It is to accept God as a loving father, who is full of tenderness and forgiveness for us, despite our willful blunders and hardened hearts.  He yearns for us, as a father and mother yearn for the return of their most beloved child.It is to accept that we are not lost, we are not abandoned.  We are wandering like a wayward child, full of our own headstrong delusions. 

And our father waits expectantly, calling for us through the darkness.   He sends the spirit out to find us, a light to find our way home to him out of the gloom of the night.  It is to accept that his door is always open, and that he will not abandon us, until he has at last welcomed us into his house.

How do we know what he is doing?  Talk to him.  He is always listening.  He delights in our presence, and notes everything about us, as a loving parent does to a sleeping child.  His love is boundless, but will not overwhelm us.  Because that is how deep his love is for us."

Jesse, Acceptance and Forgiveness, 2 January 2018

"So the greatest of all virtues is love.  It is here that we find the true meaning of the Christian faith.  This is at bottom the meaning of the cross.  The great event on Calvary signifies more than a meaningless drama that took place on the stage of history.  It is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth into time. 

It is an eternal reminder to a power drunk generation that love is most durable power in the world, and that it is at bottom the heartbeat of the moral cosmos."

Martin Luther King, St. Paul’s Letter to the American Churches, November 4, 1956

"The corruption that has become widely tolerated throughout the various upper strata of our society is shocking in its boldness.  And even more shocking is its general acceptability, and too often downright fashionability, among our elite in business and government, and their courtiers and partisans in the various professions.  And it provides a corrosive example and temptation to the public.  That such gaming the system is widely tolerated and accepted does not make it right.  The breaking of oaths is a serious transgression, and there will be an accounting for it, if not in this world then the next.

And sadly it is the partisanship, and the willing gullibility of simple souls given over to the wiles of a skillful persuasion to anger, and willfulness, and hatred, that permits the unscrupulous to prosper.  I have seen otherwise honorable and sincere people do and say some shocking things in service to dark powers in the past few years.   There can be little doubt that the ordinary and the unsophisticated are learning from our cynical and proud elite.  And that scandalous example is their sin as well. It would be better for them to have been thrown into the sea, with a millstone around their necks."

Jesse, Repentance, Forgiveness, the Wellspring of Joy, 22 December 2017


Gold and silver were hit hard, very hard today.

I suspect it was intended to break the upward momentum of the metals, and perhaps more importantly, to ease the pressure on borrowing gold from various places including some of the bigger ETFs, where borrow rates had soared.

The smackdown in silver was particularly impressive, coming on a break through the 34 price level.

One of the things you might wish to keep in mind going forward is that the regulatory structure of the US, as bad as it might have been, is getting obliterated now, and it is going to become much worse.

If you panicked and sold at the bottom today, you *might* want to consider that you really ought not to be trading.   This is no knock on you or your intelligence.  It just means that you are like about 90% of the people who are better off investing for the longer term, and doing productive things in the real world.

The Dollar continued to decline.

VIX fell again to what is considered a rather low level these days, as I have indicated on its chart.

Inventory in Hong Kong bounced back a little, but they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The world and those who serve it do not care about you or your family.

To them you are things to be used and thrown away.  At most a statistic.

Your pride will not permit you to accept this, but it is how thing are.  

This I know.   

They want you do die for them.   But there is one who has already died for you.

There is only one who is worthy of your heart. 

That door is always open.  The light shines out to you in the darkness.

So stop wallowing in misery, feeding the uncaring swine.   

Your father loves you, and yearns to welcome you into his house.

Time to come home.

As a reminder, US markets will be closed in observance of President's Day on Monday February 17^th. 

I will see you again on Tuesday.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Cruel Idolatry of Mammon - Reiving of the American Conscience

 

"And Jesus said, 'Isaiah prophesied well about you hypocrites, as it is written:

‘This people honors me with their lips,
      but their hearts are far from me;
  in vain do they worship me,
       teaching as law the commandments of men.’

You neglect the commandments of God, and serve the traditions of men.'”

Mark 7:6-8

"They looked upon the other with lust, and so twisted their thinking, averting their eyes from heaven, and refused to act justly.

How wicked you have grown with time.  Now your lawlessness is coming to light, your false judgements, your harming the innocent, and freeing those who are guilty, although the Lord says do not punish those without blame."

Daniel 13:8-9,52-53

"The Lord says, 'I have seen violence done to the helpless,
      and I have heard the cries of the poor.
I will rise up and rescue them,
       as they have longed for me to do.'
The words of the Lord are pure,
      like silver refined in a furnace,
      and purified seven times over.
Therefore we know the Lord will protect the innocent,
       preserving them from this lying generation, forever.".

Psalm 12:5-7

"You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, 1963


 Dag Hammarskjöld was a famous global figure in his day, a powerful Secretary-General of the UN.  His autobiographical book Markings made a deep impression on this young schoolboy's mind.

Did you know that he may have been murdered, in the same reiving of the American conscience that resulted in the deaths of JFK, RFK, and MLK? 

And for much the same reason— to clear the way for the riches and power of a few from endless war.

You snakes, you brood of vipers.  How will you escape the condemnation of hell?  

That line from the gospel of Matthew has aged remarkably well.  And his chapter 25.

And they'll never see it coming.

Stocks shook off the early surprise in a higher than expected PPI number, and went into rally mode.

And they didn't look back until the close.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver rallied after some initial downward compression.

VIX is not at a recent low, suggesting a modicum of complacency has crept in the moneyed crowd.

Note on the first chart below that the gold inventory in the Comex related Hong Kong warehouses is now at a record low.   

There are many signs of a short squeeze in bullion, both gold and silver.  

And the reassurances by the bullion banking crowd and their courtiers are just as numerous.  And increasingly strident and implausible.

Let's keep an eye on this one.

I was a little puzzled by the rally in risk assets today, along with gold and silver.  

It smells a lot like a wash and rinse heading into a geopolitically risky weekend.

If Israel is emboldened by Western neo-cons to launch a first strike on Iran, it will most likely destroy significant sections of both countries, and cripple the world economy.  The madness serves none but itself.

It is almost shocking to see how clean and modern and absolutely beautiful the infrastructure and urban areas have become in eastern Asia.  Their routine use of technology and the cost of living and quality of service are amazing.  My son the technocrat has recently been in Hangzhou, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.  

Their wealth seems to serve them, the broader public, and not a fortunate few.  

I am the designated Daisy caretaker, but I get photos and refrigerator magnets for my efforts. And the occasional face lick from the pooch.   It's the little things that make life worth living.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Conviction that Power Can Do Anything, and Justice Nothing

 

“When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.

His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, Princeton University, January 30, 2005

"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

"I worry about the future of a nation that would refuse to acknowledge the true causes of the crisis.  A historic opportunity was lost.  America instead chose its poison as its cure, and the second 'Greatest Generation' would never be born.

Today I expect the U.S. government to attempt continuing an easy money policy into the next presidential term—past the meat of the foreclosure crisis, and past the corporate and public financing humps that are upcoming. Junk bonds, incredibly, again are at all-time highs.  Quantitative easing seems to be working for now.  But this is an invalid validation of what America is doing, a Pyrrhic gamble.  As we continue to debase our currency, Bernanke says he is not printing money.  Yet I receive an email every day from the Fed saying we just bought another $7 billion or $8 billion in treasuries, monetizing the debt.  The scope and breadth of quantitative easing raise severe questions about the Treasury’s needs.

Government borrowing of money for the purpose of injecting cash into society, bailing out banks, brokers and consumers, is an easy decision for a population that has not yet learned that short-sighted easy strategies are the route to long-term ruin.  We never quite achieved the catharsis necessary to stoke a deep reevaluation of our wants, needs and fears.

Importantly, the toxic twins—fiat currency and an activist Fed—remain even more firmly entrenched with the financial reforms of last year.  The Federal Reserve, having acquired new powers of regulation, has insisted that nothing in the field of economics or finance was of any help in predicting the crisis—period, no more comments.  It’s a worthless conclusion that guarantees we’ll make the same mistake again and again.

We need better leaders, but frankly this isn’t going to happen.  A problem cannot be solved if it is never acknowledged.  Taxes need to be raised, spending needs to be cut, and loopholes need to be shut if we are to have any hope of returning to a stable base.  Home ownership should not be a policy of the U.S. government.  The banking system needs substantial reform and bank breakups.  Glass–Steagall needs a second run in a strong form. The list of things that won’t happen—but should happen—goes on and on."

Michael Burry, Missteps to Mayhem, Vanderbilt Magazine, September 1, 2011

“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

"This is the legacy of Greenspan and his chairmanship at the Federal Reserve.  Yes, the borrowers are also at fault, and 'no one made them borrow' as the Wall Streeters and their sock puppets like to say at bubble-bust times like these.  But let's not allow the spin to muddy the waters.

It was fraud.  Fraud on a massive and premeditated scale.  Not unprecedented unfortunately.  It was aided and abetted by a host of enablers in the media and the universities.  And at the heart of it all was the Wall Street Banks.

There is madness in crowds, but the genesis of the madness is in those who assemble the crowds, give them weapons, and walk among them whispering—  madness.

Let there be no doubt.  The housing bubble was a financially engineered Ponzi scheme with the Wall Street Banks at the center.  And its not over yet.  They will not, and probably cannot, stop on their own. The banks must be restrained."

Jesse, Housing Madness, 15 April 2008

"Why can you not understand me? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you live to serve your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks from his heart, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:43-44


 I have lived through some interesting times, as have many of you, and our parents and grandparents. 

I remember the cold war, vividly. 

'We Will Bury You' posters of Khrushchev banging the UN podium with his shoe were familiar.

And with this the Red Scare, and the McCarthy era, and the assault on freedom of privacy and speech in the name of patriotism.

In particular I remember the fight against segregation and for equal rights.  

And the protests against the war in Vietnam.  And the 'troubles' in the UK.

And how lonely and wearing a struggle they all were.  

Freedom of speech is under a terrible assault, again.

The great irony is that this time freedom of speech is being undermined with the reasons of the 'woke' culture of the left, who want to control speech for safety and comfort.  

And it is being taken up by the hands of those with power, and the goal of suppressing ideas and movements that they do not like. 

When you sacrifice principles to expediency and comfort, those things eventually turn against you. 

Now we are facing the reality of an oligarchy, that has the money and the power and control of the media and the organizations of thought.

But it all seems like the same old thing.

There are those who are called to stand up, hold their ground, and resist.

And there are those who might support them, or just endure while retaining their humanity.

Even in small and simple ways, seemingly unnoticed, walk with the angels, for His sake and for your own.  And in time, stand with the brightest lights, his heroes, his knights and saints.

But never let your own light go out. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, but lose their soul?  

Stocks did their usual wash and rinse today, after an initial plunge based off a hotter than expected inflation number.

Given these tariffs going into place, we haven't seen anything yet.

Gold did its usual bob and weave, but silver managed to rally and hold it.  

VIX has fallen below its moving averages, once again.

People in the US are cheering the likelihood that foreign policy will change and the proxy in the Ukraine will be coming to an end, at least for them.

But the situation in the Mideast is reaching a rolling boil again.  And murder en masse is in the air.

One thing I can tell you is that it is never really any different.  The names and faces change, but the struggle remains the same.

Have a pleasant evening.