Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Old As Babylon

 

"A society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience.  A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal." 

C. Wright Mills 

 

"All of the traditional religions teach that human beings are finite creatures and that there are limits to any earthly enterprise. A Japanese Zen master once said to his disciples as he was dying, 'I have learned only one thing in life: how much is enough.'  

He would find no niche in the chapel of The Market, for whom the First Commandment is 'There is never enough.' Like the proverbial shark that stops moving, The Market that stops expanding dies. That could happen. If it does, then Nietzsche will have been right after all. He will just have had the wrong God in mind."

Harvey Cox, The Market As God 

 

"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.   And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. 

Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. 

 E pluribus unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasures that have been denied the many.  An even more instructive motto, in the light of history made by the Noah Rosewaters, might be: 'Grab much too much, or you'll get nothing at all.'

And Noah begat Samuel, who married Geraldine Ames Rockefeller.  Samuel became even more interested in politics than his father had been, served the Republican Party tirelessly as a kingmaker, caused that party to nominate men who would whirl like dervishes, bawl fluent Babylonian, and order the militia to fire into crowds whenever a poor man seemed on the point of suggesting that he and a Rosewater were equal in the eyes of the law." 

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

Stocks failed to hold their gains after another volatile session.

Gold and silver were hammered to their lows.

The Dollar soared to a multi-year high on interest rate increase  speculation.

AAPL reported decent earnings after the bell.

A nor'easter is bearing down on the metropolitan NY area and New England.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And It Is

 

"The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it's no such thing.  It's boring and it's depressing and it's stupid.  Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over." 

Dean Koontz

 

"Is it that we are that dumb, or they are just that brazen?" 

Jesse, 2008 

 

“I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.” 

 Yogi Berra 

 

"While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great.  They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth.” 

Larry Lindsey, Federal Reserve Governor, FOMC Minutes, September 24, 1996 

 

“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” 

Tacitus

 

“He did not care for the lying at first.  He hated it.  Then later he had come to like it.  It was part of being an insider, but it was a very corrupting business.” 

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

 

And there it is, ladies and gentlemen.   

Another precious metals futures option expiration on the Comex.

Another wash and rinse in the equity markets.

Don't blame Powell.  He is just the messenger, another manservant for Mackie Messer and the moneyed interests. 

Blame all those 'very important people' who tolerate a dirty rotten system in the hopes of getting a little more than they deserve for themselves. 

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wash, Rinse, Repeat - Greed is not a Motivation: It is a Pathology

 

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

Charles Wright Mills, The Power Elite 

 

"There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.” 

 Lord Acton

 

"Through a long indoctrination that starts sometimes in their families, and is often affirmed in their elite schools and with their circle of privileged friends, they learn to rationalize selective moral behaviour not as immoral but as 'the entitlement of success.'  And they are supported by a horde of morally ambivalent enablers who will tell them whatever they wish to hear. 

There are one set of rules for themselves and their friends, and another set of rules for the rest.   Few who actually do evil consciously choose to be evil.  They rationalize what they do in any number of ways, but the deceit often hinges on their own natural superiority, and the objectification and denigration of the others.  We are makers, and they are takers.  They see their own work as having special value and merit, while the actions of the others are inconsequential and unworthy."

Jesse, February 2013 

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; but they cannot understand destitution.  Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them.   They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat." 

Léon Bloy

 

Stocks sold off hard again this morning, but failed in the attempt to turn those pains into gains.

After the bell Microsoft 'beat' its numbers, and to the outrage and indignation of the spokesmodels and the corporate mouthpieces, the market sold it off.

Gold advanaged as the Dollar slid sideways.

Silver struggled again, being pulled along somewhat with the weakness in equities.

FOMC and a Comex precious metals option expiration tomorrow.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God,and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.