Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Leaven of the Pharisees - Keeping Up Appearances

 

“Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.

In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative.  It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods. 

Thus I have come to think that the commandment on sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses, along with anxiety and violence.

The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath."

Walter Brueggemann

 

"They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control.  They will be cruel and hate what is good.  They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.  They will act religious, but they will refuse the grace that could make them righteous." 

2 Timothy 3:3-5

 

"Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'" 

Mark 2:27 

"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1

 

Hypocrisy is from the Greek and means acting, or playing a part.

Often people become unbalanced in their priorities, taking something which may be good to an extreme that makes it highly counterproductive for others and themselves.

Ideology often makes people into hypocrites, because they lose sight of the why of things and become obsessed with the what and the how. 

This is why I have shown the chart at the very bottom of this posting that shows a convergence of the far right and the far left, in their disordered sense of priorities.

Bruggerman makes these points about the Sabbath, and to its reason for being, which is our awareness and growth in the love of God above all else.   

This is why our Lord himself said, 'The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'  The Sabbath is for our benefit.

If we take a strict adherence to the law, and lose sight for its reason for being, we can fall into the trap of legalism and hypocrisy.

Many of God laws are primarily for our own growth and development, not because God requires it for Himself, or His justice demands it.     He does not need our suffering, or our denial of things, or other sacrifices.   He does not desire sacrifice for its own sake, but mercy.

The person who becomes obsessed with legalisms loses sight of the reason for these things, and is like the servant who buried their talent in strict observance to what they perceive as a harsh and unreasonable master, and fail to accomplish the purpose of their task, which is to be fruitful in His creation through our actions.

Strict observance without love is an attractive error, because it allows us to believe that we are the best in observing and obeying God, even while we worship something else with our hearts.  It is a mask of self-delusion.

And such rigid and harsh thinking is like leaven, it spreads and permeates the whole.

This is why so often we see the harshest and least loving people wearing the mask of perfect ideologist of both the right and the left.  

They think 'yes I can hate, because I love God or my political party or economic theory just that much.  And so I can negate the other, reduce them to cartoons, and feel very superior to them and their failings.'

And this deadening of self conscience permits even otherwise ordinary people to become part of unspeakable actions and horrors. 

The banality of evil is to think that 'I am just a player of a part, an actor, serving a greater power.'

As old as Babylon, and self-deceivingly evil as sin.

Stocks took a dive in the earlier trading, but managed to come back to unchanged in the quiet trading of the afternoon.

Chairman Powell made some hawkish seeming noises today, which helped to take stocks to their lows. 

Gold and silver rallied after the quad witching option expiration of last Friday.

The VIX continued to fall, to a level that seems low in the short term.

Although it fluctuated in a choppy trade, the Dollar managed to go out near the day highs in the mid 98 level.

Geopolitical events will continue to add uncertainty and risk to the market.

As with the economy and money, things may not be what they seem.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bubble

 

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.  "They were totally opposed to it," Born says.  "That puzzled me.  What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'" 

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves." 

PBS Frontline, The Warning, 20 October 2009
 

"The banks were central to the scheme from the inception as they spent years and many hundreds of millions of dollars to overturn Glass-Steagall to allow this coup de grâce to be delivered to all holders of US dollars."

PBS Frontline: The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall, 8 May 2003


"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States.  One of the most alarming, says a chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government - a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises.  If the IMF's staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation; recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform." 

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, The Atlantic Monthly, May 2009 

 

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

Tacitus

 

Stocks cast aside all concerns about war, pandemics, and debt, and rallied higher, going out on the highs.

Gold and silver were sold, as is traditional for a quad witching stock index expiration.

The Dollar moved a bit higher, gaining a firmer grip on the 98 handle.

It is not so much what the elites and their unspeakable enablers would do to maintain control of the financial system and the economy. 

The real question is, what wouldn't they do? 

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Time's the Next Bailout

 

"Financial institutions such as JP Morgan love to buy derivatives because they are opaque, create fictional income that leads to real bonuses, and when, not if, they suffer losses so large that they would cause the bank to fail, they will be bailed out." 

William K Black 

 

"A synthetic instrument has no real assets.  It is simply a bet on the performance of the assets it references.  That means the number of synthetic instruments is limitless, and so is the risk they present to the economy. Synthetic structures referencing high-risk mortgages garnered hefty fees for Goldman Sachs and other investment banks. They assumed an ever-larger share of the financial markets, and contributed greatly to the severity of the crisis by magnifying the amount of risk in the system. 

Increasingly, synthetics became bets made by people who had no interest in the referenced assets. Synthetics became the chips in a giant casino, one that created no economic growth even when it thrived, and then helped throttle the economy when the casino collapsed." 

Carl Levin, US Senator 

 

“Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad.  Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control.  Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught.  But evil is a completely different creature.  Evil is bad that believes it’s good.”

Karen Marie Moning

 

“Propaganda serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.”

Eric Hoffer

 

It was risk on again today, as stocks shook off their early losses and managed to rally back into the green, and finally went out near the highs.

The SP and NDX are approaching the level of their latest failed rallies.  

This could provide a good test of bully's new resolve to buy.

Gold and silver were higher.

The Dollar and the VIX both fell on the risk appetite for equities.

Quad witching option expiration tomorrow.

Every day we read and hear fresh stories of how the Russian military is experiencing disaster after disaster in the Ukraine.  

Their generals are dropping like flies, soldiers are abandoning their equipment and surrendering in tears, 

Every day it seems as though Russia is on the verge of admitting defeat and surrendering. 

And the Ukraine goes from victory to victory, triumph to triumph.

Just like the economy.

One can only wonder.

Have a pleasant evening.