Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On - And Devil Take the Hindmost

 

"Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; Townsend insisted that they (people) were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required.  From this novel point of view, a free society could be regarded as consisting of two races: property owners and laborers.  

The number of the latter (working class) was limited by the amount of food; and as long as property was safe, hunger would drive them to work.  No magistrates were necessary, for hunger was a better disciplinarian than the magistrate.

To the politician and administrator laissez-faire was simply a principle of the insurance of law and order, with the minimum cost and effort.  Let the market be given charge of the poor, and things will look after themselves.

The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism. The improvidence of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. 

Also what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor? 'For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?'"

Karl Polanyi


“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten them.”

George Orwell

It was risk on all the way today as Wall Street decided not to look at the bad news and just start putting some of their excess liquidity to work.

In other words it was technically time for a new wash cycle.

Gold and silver advanced slightly as the Dollar continues to fall.

There will be a futures option expiration for gold on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Cœurs des Cochons

 

"You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all corruption.   You outwardly look righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Matthew 23:27-28


"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 their own souls bare, they may be moved to the sound of beautiful music, to Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them."

Léon Bloy


“The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.  False greatness is unsociable and remote— conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is.”

Jean de la Bruyere


"All the nations which appear in history are necessarily a mixture, for us inextricable, of City of Good and City of Evil.  But what theology, history and common sense have also taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie


"The Lord has told you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
Only this: to do what is right, to show mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8


“We run heedlessly into the abyss, after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées


It started out as a 'risk on' day, but alas, Apple indicated a slowdown in its business with all that entails, and stocks took a turn into the red.

Gold and silver joined the Dollar in giving up some ground.

The wash and rinse consumes all.

The VIX bounced back up again off its lower bound moving average.

There will be a futures options expiration for gold on the Comex this Friday.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Come and See

 

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have relighted the flame within us."

Albert Schweitzer


“The will of God presents itself at every moment like an immense sea that your heart cannot exhaust. There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. 

Leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, and give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace.”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, L'abandon à la Providence Divine


"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age [age 94 c 100 AD).  His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words.  During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.'  

The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?'  He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"

Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, based on the commentaries of Origen of Alexandria


Stocks went on a 'risk on' tear higher, with the VIX dropping down hard to its longer term moving average.

Apparently the concerns about a 100 basis point interest rate increase at the next Fed meeting has receded since the other day.

And surprise, the Fed Inspector General has found nothing amiss with 'Fed governors doing millions of short term transactions in the futures markets for their personal accounts.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Shameless.

Gold slumped again despite the big drop in the Dollar.   Silver rode higher with stocks.

One might suspect a short term bottom is underway, at least until the next Comex options expiration on June 26^th.

Have a pleasant weekend.