Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Force and Fraud and Their Alternatives

 

"And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.  I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1978

"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, October 2011

“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands—  like water.   And if he opens his fingers then, he needn't hope to find himself again.  Some men aren't capable of this, but I would be loathe to think your father one of them.”

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, July 1960

"Of this Logos, the Word being eternal, men have proven to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it.  For although all things happen according to this Word, they are like the uneducated who first experience words and deeds.  And as for the rest, they are as unaware of what they do when they are awake, as they are when they are asleep."

Heraclitus, On Nature, ~500 BC

"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."

Thomas More, Utopia, 1516

"Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you, and criticize you, but you never go alone.  Walk with him this morning, and believe in Him, and do what is right, and he'll be with you even until the consummation of the ages.  And the world will look at you, and they won't understand you, but you'll go on anyhow.

I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, But If Not, 5 November 1967


Stocks were wobbly today, and lacked the kind of support they have enjoyed the last few weeks that helped pump some new life into the tariff-plagued bubble.

VIX is wallowing around on the low side.  There was no panic in the tape today.

Gold and silver rocketed back higher today, as they are often wont to do after a Non-Farm Payrolls smackdown.

These guys have no shame and even less accountability.

I think the US is heading towards a disaster, and there is a pronounced lack of adult supervision.   

So it may get quite messy.

But it is what it is.   

China is back from its May holiday.  Their buying will be felt in the markets tomorrow, but I suspect some of their fellows came back a bit early to take some tasty positions in the metals.

This flight to quality may continue to gain momentum, as nations recoil from what they perceive as unpredictable madness.

My goal is to navigate the markets with some success, and that requires me to see things as they are, and not as I might wish them to be.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Great Calling to the Faithful and the Fallen - Lazarus, come forth!

 

"They do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes.  And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.  Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient – they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct."

John Henry Newman, The Religion of the Pharisees, 1835

“Grace without price; grace without cost!  The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.  Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.   Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on traditional concepts.  The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.   Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937

"The ultimate test of discipleship is our willingness to abandon our egos and be carried by a power greater than ourselves."

Robert Barron, 17 May 2024

"But I know in my heart who I love, and that I want to be a part of that love forever, forsaking all else, all material stature and advantage which I now see as a falsehood and thin veneer over a slow demise.  I have chosen, and struggle on to that outcome, one day at a time.  And this is how it is and how it will be for all who have chosen the way.  Love is our destination, but while we are here on earth it can only be a journey, a way of life, as we struggle on, to a holy rest and peace at the last."

Jesse, Obedience Without Love: The Leaven of the Pharisees, 5 April 2017

"A new commandment I give you: that you love one another, as I have loved you.  By this all will know that you are mine — if you love one another.”

John 13:34 John 13:34
"Babylon’s days are numbered. Its time of destruction is coming."

Isaiah 13:22

"And Jesus said, 'Did I not say that if you have faith you will see the glory of God?'  And so they removed the stone.  Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, 'Father, I thank you for hearing me.  I know that you always hear me, but I say this for the sake of the people, so that they may believe that it was you who sent me.'

When he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth.'"

John 11:40=43

"Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth. Your way, Jesus, is the way of the Beatitudes. It does not crush, but cultivates, repairs and protects."

Jorge Mario Bergoglio Francis I, Way of the Cross: Jesus Falls, 18 April 2025

We who are intimate with the world and comfortable in our bondage to it are not His.  We are a His adversaries.

We are called to love Jesus, to love Him and His creation with all our hearts.

The things that steal the love of our neighbor from our hearts make them hard, and dead to His grace. 

All the zeal for the Law and anger for the things that afflict our sensibilities inflamed by pride are not His, but the work of the Adversary.  It is the leaven of the Pharisees.

We are His when we do as He has asked us, out of love in all humility, because He has asked us, so that we may have life with Him.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Powerful Delusions of the Fallen

 

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice.”

Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Preface, 2003

"Despite knowing of God, they refused to honor him as God, or to give Him thanks.  And so they became proud in their thinking, and their foolish hearts became hardened."

Romans 1:21

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.  There is one who restrains it, until he is taken away.  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the words of his mouth, and render him powerless with the wonders of his coming.  

The coming of the lawless one is from the power of Satan, with false signs and wonders, and in every wicked deception for those who are perishing, for those who did not accept the love of truth to be saved.  God will send them a powerful delusion so that they may believe the lie, so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have taken pleasure in lawlessness."

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life.”

Léon Bloy, The Pilgrim of the Absolute

"If heaven is seeing and in turn being seen, transformed and made new by the beatific face of pure love in resplendent glory, then hell must be seeing, at last and forever after, their own dark and miserable soul, as it really is, alone."

Jesse, Death By Overdose, 24 February 2015

The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in a little better than expected.  

It was an essentially meaningless number.

But it did provide an excuse for Donald and His Merry Banksters to run the bubble in equity markets back up again.

Donnie sees this as validation of his economic policies.

Wall Street sees it as just another leg of the highly profitable transfer of wealth by inflating financial assets.

Gold and silver were slammed, but the miners even moreso.

I suspect this phase of the precious metals price manipulation is nearing its end, as we often see with the Non-Farm Payrolls event.

VIX is now down to a high likelihood of a risk correction.

The reports from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and other places where the US and its enablers and clients are operating are rather grim.  

The media is highly complicit in turning a blind eye to this.

Money and power are all that matter to the elites in the West, drunk with the opiate of exceptionalism.

They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into hell."
Job 21:13

They think they are neutral, taking no sides, just going along to get along.

The wealthy man was damned not because he abused the beggar Lazarus, but because he did not even condescend to notice him, and the suffering on his doorstep. 

 Moses and prophets could make him see the truth, not even a man who had risen from the dead. Their wisdom did not fit with his biases and ideology of selfishness and pride.

The careless rich man was a self-absorbed intimate of Mammon— and an adversary of the living God. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Limits of Imperial Power and Its Oligarchy

 

"The limit of the Fed's and Treasury's ability to create money is the value and acceptance of the dollar and the bond in open market transactions.

The Weimar government never 'ran out of money.'  Zimbabwe never 'ran out of money.'  And if interest is paid 'in your currency money' you can never fail to service your debt either.  What they did run out of were people willing to take their paper at its intended value, from those who are their sphere of control, their compulsion of legal tender.

It is not clear to me that the dollar has passed the point of no return. But it is obviously unstable, as a bulwark of a corrupted system.  And therefore it is making its holders understandably nervous."

Jesse, Money and The Limits of Empire, 13 February 2011

"A market collapse is nothing but risk-aversion meeting a market that's not priced to tolerate risk.  Buckle up."

John Hussman, April 30, 2025

"If we are indeed in a Minsky Moment, which we think we are, then monetary inflation by the Fed and government intervention without reform will most likely increase the probability of a protracted stagflationary repression in the United States, and possibly lead to civil unrest and an exogenous reform of the system.  An abandonment of the system as it is with a turn to fascism has been the historic choice of Wall Street.  The political lobbying against systemic reform by the Bankers and their sycophants will be intense and as persuasive to the many as most appeals to fear.  However, their reckless advice leads to a trip to the brink of the abyss."

Jesse, Which Way Out of the Minsky Moment, 23 March 2008

"The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal.   Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].

It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control.  Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin’s analysis [Inverted Totalitarianism] will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong."

Chalmers Johnson, A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled, May 16, 2008

"We are imperial, and we are in decline. People are losing confidence in the Empire."

Lawrence Wilkerson, The Travails of Empire, October 8, 2014


The Empire seems to have gone barking mad.  

Is this just a clever game, a negotiating tactic?   

The famous Nixonian 'madman theory' gambit?

Perhaps.  But when coupled with a multipolar world of gathering resistance to the usual economic coercion, in which one of your fundamental supports, the fiat Dollar, is based on trust and confidence, it can prove to be strategically fatal.

We seem to be in a pivotal moment.

Stocks were rallying all day, extending the imperial decree that despite the tariff shocks incoming all is well.

You didn't catch it if you just watch the cash price, but US equity markets futures utterly collapsed into the close and went red.

A disappointment from the Amazon cloud after hours is possible.  There are many possibilities.

Apple is up to bat next, later this evening.

Gold and silver were hammered today, as is customary on the day before a Non-Farm Payrolls report.

To say I think that this was 'technical' trading would be an understatement.

China metals markets will be quiet for the May 1 holiday week.

The Dollar bumped up a little higher.

The VIX is now low enough to suggest that this rally is getting really long in the tooth.

And did I mention that I think this was a dictated rally to put someone's tariff decisions in a less disastrous light?

One can only wonder.

The truth will come out, eventually.  

Be careful where you look and listen, or you may miss it.

See you tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Conmen, Bullies, and Puppetmasters

 

"'A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths,' said Robert Hare.  'But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued.  When they get caught, what happens?  A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back.  I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed.'

Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.  Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots.  Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. If you didn't have a conscience, you'd be one too.

Psychopaths love chaos and hate rules, so they're comfortable in the fast-moving modern corporation.  Dr. Paul Babiak, an industrial-organizational psychologist based near New York City, is in the process of writing a book with Bob Hare called When Psychopaths Go to Work: Cons, Bullies and the Puppetmaster. The subtitle refers to the three broad classes of psychopaths Babiak has encountered in the workplace."

Robert Hercz, Psychopaths Among Us, 2001

"When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized.

Narcissists change the companies or countries they lead, much like bad money drives out good, and those changes can outlast their own tenure, O’Reilly says. Divergent voices are silenced, flattery and servility are rewarded, and cynicism and apathy corrode any sense of shared purpose in a culture where everyone’s out for themselves. In the extreme, they can destroy the institution itself.

But the gravest danger posed by such leaders is that their malignant influence guides the behavior and expectations of others — and ultimately shapes the culture of the organization or polity in their own image. Studies of businesses show that self-serving, unethical behavior at the top cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized, or at least normalized.

“Once they’re in power, narcissists consolidate their position by firing everyone who challenges them,” O’Reilly says. In their place rise a plague of toadies, opportunists, and enablers equally guided by self-interest and short on scruples. 'So you end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity. We’ve documented this in a bunch of Silicon Valley tech firms.'”

Lee Simmons, How Narcissistic Leaders Destroy From Within, Stanford Business, April 30, 2020

"Malignant narcissism goes beyond mere self-centeredness.  It goes beyond feeling special.   And it goes beyond feeling superior.  Malignant narcissists lack the capacity for empathy and shame.  They also know this makes them different from others.  But they deeply prize these critical differences. And they hold those not like them in utter disdain. 

Narcissism becomes particularly 'malignant' (i.e. malevolent, dangerous, harmful, incurable) when it goes beyond mere vanity and excessive self-focus. Malignant narcissists not only see themselves as superior to others but believe in their superiority to the degree that they view others as relatively worthless, expendable, and justifiably exploitable.

This type of narcissism is a defining characteristic of psychopathy/sociopathy and is rooted in an individual’s deficient capacity for empathy.  It’s almost impossible for a person with such shallow feelings and such haughtiness to really care about others or to form a conscience with any of the qualities we typically associate with a humane attitude, which is why most researchers and thinkers on the topic of psychopathy think of psychopaths as individuals without a conscience altogether."

George Simon, Malignant Narcissism, December 27, 2013


Stocks sold off on the worse than expected economic data this morning.

But, wonder of wonders, they managed to take back all their losses and rally green into the close.

There were reports of a break in the Ukraine Russia talks, though I doubt anyone in Russia  knows or cares what they are talking about. 

Kind of like the talks that had supposedly occurred on tariffs with President Xi, which he said were imaginary.

Surely this is a sign of the prosperity and magnificence of Empire, which creates its own reality.

The Dollar bounced up to the top of the 99 handle.

VIX fell back to its 50 day moving average.

Gold and silver fell off a bit.

Ending badly.    

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Grace of Contentment amid the Phantoms of Power

 

"Our world promotes dissatisfaction with our lives.  We are constantly bombarded with newer and better things that will make our lives more complete if only we would obtain them.  If we listen to the world, we will always be comparing the lifestyles and possessions of others with our own, and we will always be dissatisfied.

If our contentment comes from possessions, activities, or other people, these can be altered or removed.  If our contentment comes from our relationship with Christ, there is absolutely nothing that can take that away.

Paul had enjoyed power and status among his people.  He had also been imprisoned and bound in stocks in the depths of a jail cell.  He had stood before a king and been stoned almost to death by an angry mob.  Paul had enjoyed the benefits and pleasures of life, yet he could give them all up and still be filled with the joy of the Lord.  His contentment did not depend on his environment but on his relationship with Christ.

'I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.'
Philippians 4:11

Contentment frees you to enjoy every good thing God has given you.  Contentment demonstrates your belief that God loves you and has your best interest in mind.  Discontent stems from the sin of ingratitude and a lack of faith that God loves you enough to provide for all that you need.  Strive to be grateful for all that God has given you.  A grateful heart has no room for envy."

Henry Blackaby, Contentment

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, 1965

"Greed is not good.  Greed is a disease, an aberration of simple honest ambition and necessary provision taken to excess. It is a sin, a transgression against love.  This simple distinction may be lost on a people no longer able to distinguish between virtue and sin, honor and expediency, appetite and gluttony, the means and the ends.

And yet this generation would make a god of it, although they may not understand, or care, what it is that they are doing, and whom it is they serve. Greed, often in company with hubris and fear, is a handmaiden of the corrupting influence of power and triumph of the will.  Greed is contagious, a disease of the heart, that attacks the very contentment of society, hardening it towards oligarchy and oppression."

Jesse, Greed Is Not Good, 19 December 2010

Stocks were the usual wobbly again, but managed to pull together a rally into the close.

 VIX has continued to decline, and is now once again in the area where this stock bubble rally may be forced to pause.

Gold and silver attempted to rise and then fell back a bit again. 

Did I mention that there is going to be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday?

Have we forgotten the promise of an open, beautiful audit of the holdings of the official US gold reserves?

Appearance versus reality.  

This is the key to all those pampered princes of power who have been rising from the darkness around the world.

Their appearance is all symbol and bluster, fueled by the mystique of passions and hate, reflecting a shallow lack of diligence and substance and competence.

Weighed, and found wanting.

But we have been here before.   

We have seen seemingly irresistible groups which worship the land and the blood, full of fury against the innocent, ready to destroy liberty and all life in a fit of delusional pride.

And they eventually all fall away, unproductive and unworthy, unable to create, only destroy.   

The children of desolation.

Our hope and our salvation lies in a different place, in the calm and loving heart of our Lord.

The sound and fury of the moment is passing, into the dust and the dirt of their vanities, the dry bones and corruption of a fallen world which fill their minds and their hearts. 

The faithful gathered in their thousands, as millions more looked on from afar, to mark the passing of a kind and gentle shepherd, on the very hill where the most powerful man in the world had crucified his predecessor, upside down.

Ubi sunt?  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Spurious Realities and Toxic Delusions of Power

 

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.  Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life. In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned."

Franklin D Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, January 1937

"At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day.  But then our nature and habit draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before.  We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night.

When I have a difficult subject before me—when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude.  I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace."

Moses Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim, The Guide for the Perplexed, 1190

"Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...  So I ask, in my writing, 'what is real?'  Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.  I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power.  They have a lot of it."

Philip K. Dick, A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978

"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast. And they worshiped the dragon for giving such power to him. as they also worshiped the Beast. 'Who is as great as the Beast?' they exclaimed.  'Who is able to resist him?'  And the Beast was allowed to commit great blasphemies against God."

Revelation 13:3-5


Stocks came in wobbly, and went up and down in their usual willful way.  

Down they went and a proper selloff was averted, once again, with some obvious propping into the close.

Gold and silver sustained an early smackdown, but in the end gained some ground.

The Dollar fell rather sharply and obviously.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this coming Friday.

Lawlessness and self-dealing is the fashion of the day, with a heavy dose of malignant narcissism. 

Crimes again international law and humanity are defended with duplicity and hypocrisy.  

The Constitution itself is battered by money and the will to power.

How all this will end only God knows.  But these things rarely end anywhere but badly.

History is incredulous at servile lack of decency and willful collaboration in the face of madness.

"Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race?   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 consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?"

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

And yet despite all this, the world though fallen is redeemed. 

Have a pleasant evening.