Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Cult of Mammon - Old as Babylon and Evil as Sin

 

"McKinsey advised Purdue how to avoid FDA and pharmacy restrictions. They later advised Purdue on how to enter the market for opioid rescue and treatment medications, because McKinsey knew that people were overdosing and dying and getting sick from OxyContin.  So, McKinsey's fingers are all over this.   It's exactly that, profit at all costs.

McKinsey consultants were about the business of advising their clients on how to make as much money as possible from this deadly epidemic.  It shows a callousness that really is beyond the pale.   The fact that they knew — I mean, they knew how dangerous these opioids were, that they went so far as to try to propose to Purdue how it could pay insurance companies rebates for every patient who O.D.ed on OxyContin is gross.  It's disturbing."

Maura Healey, A Powerful Corporate Consulting Firm Helped to Create the Opioid Crisis

"In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be their's.  So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with.  And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything."

Leon F. Seltzer

"Market Fundamentalism has its own economic orthodoxy that, for the most part, is unquestioningly accepted.  It is an idolatrous religion, because it makes a god out of the Market.  It puts money above all else.  This religion has its own high priests, those economic advisors, corporate executives, and government officials who make the rules and oversee the functioning of the economic system as a whole.  It has its own saints, people who have attained the success that the system promises."

Sharon Delgado, Shaking the Gates of Hell

"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags."

Harvey Cox, The Market As God

"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable.  This is what too few are willing to see."

Thomas Merton

"It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word and thought defying banality of evil.”

Hannah Arendt

"You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”

Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ


This prevalence of self-deception and disregard for truth and ethical considerationss amongst the world's elite is nothing new.  It is the old and cyclical ascendancy of Mammon, which seems to rise in every 'gilded age,'  

It infects the whole of society, and is marked by the rising prominence of disordered minds and hardened hearts, who are drawn into shameless servitude to Moloch and the darkness of this world.

And with the darkness comes madness, and the madness serves none but itself.

Even among the faithful, the taint of the gospel of prosperity has caused the love of many hearts to draw inwards, lose their way, and grow cold with worldly pride and selfishness.

Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked.  Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.

Today was highlighted by economic weakness and uncertainty in Europe and especially in the UK.

As such the Dollar, the douleur du monde, moved sharply higher by comparison and of course the design and weighting of the DX index.

Stocks managed to turn their usual morning slump around and finished a little higher in the green.

Gold and silver were whipped lower again.

Some of the miners were starting to show a little resilience by the afternoon.

Friday will be a stock index option expiration.

Next week on the 25th there will be option expirations for the metals on the Comex.

I watched the HBO documentary, Four Hours at the Capitol, today. 

It was well done and informative.  Well worth watching if you can.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Alarrmmm! - Das Fed

 

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

General Dwight Eisenhower

“In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

George Orwell, 1984

"It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss.  Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it.  The guilt of Hitler and his minions goes beyond all measure.  Retribution comes closer and closer.  But what are the German people doing?  They will not see and will not listen.  Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin.  Victory at any price! is inscribed on their banner.  'I will fight to the last man,' says Hitler— but in the meantime the war has already been lost."

The White Rose, Fifth Leaflet, Munich 1943

"They made us all train for this day.  'To be fearless and proud and alone. To need no one, just sacrifice. All for the Fatherland.'  Oh God, all just empty words.  It's not the way they said it was, is it?  I just want someone to be with.  The only thing I feel is afraid. "

Leutnant Werner, Das Boot

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."

Haile Selassie

Stocks popped and flopped today, but managing to claw back some of their intraday losses.

The metals and miners were mugged again, all in the scheme of things, customary for a stock option expiration week.

The Dollar gained marginally.

The FOMC minutes cheered the risk markets for a short time today, with the lack of hawkish unanimity amongs the participants.

RIP Wolfgang Petersen, director of the classic war movie Das Boot. 

Perhaps we can look forward to a real life financial version of this, Das Fed.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Light on the Road to Damascus

 

“To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.

What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in, and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. What keeps my faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humour. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."

Garrison Keillor

"True freedom is to know what is good, what is the right thing to do, and to have the will to do it, even when it goes against our selfish inclinations. It is to free ourselves from fear and all those things that hold us down, which prevent us from finding and fulfilling our part in the great renewal of creation and the triumph of life over death, of being over nothingness.

The most powerful in the eyes are the world are often the most enslaved, victims of basest passions, servants to the most undeserving and meanest of ambitions, lashing out in their insatiable misery.  With obeisance they serve and nurture the willfulness that delivers them first up to slavery to themselves, and then to darker powers, and finally into the jaws of self destruction.

The paradox of life is that we hate what we fear, but we eventually become what we hate, because it occupies so much of our energy and mind. It makes a place for itself in our hearts. When the adversary of all goodness intertwines his fingers with ours, whispering sweet words of power and fame, of hatreds and passions, he slowly tightens his grip and holds fast, and then we are his."

Jesse, A Light on the Road to Damascus, 26 December 2010

Stocks wobbled back and forth again today.

Gold and silver were under a bit of pressure and slipped back some.

VIX declined slightly in a diffident gesture at risk taking.

Slowly we approach the stormy season of markets.

But for now, complacency reigns, as we approach the option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.