Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Whistling Past the Graveyard

 

"The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”

Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving.  Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility.  They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012

"You should thank God for bank bailouts— absolutely required to save your civilization. So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn't be bitching about a little bailout. You should have been thinking it should have been bigger. You should thank God the government saved the big banks and their investors. Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies. Suck it in and cope."

Charlie Munger, Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2010

"We are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble."

Chrystia Freeland, The Rise of the New Global Elite, January 2011

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.  Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy.   These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

Stocks bounced a little from their recent declines.

The Dollar slipped a little, while gold and silver in particular edged up.

PPI tomorrow.

We are sliding into the end of the year.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Prison of the Heart - Driving Miss Daisy

 

"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy, 1995

"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. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, 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

"Progress is a nice word.  But change is its motivator.  And change has its enemies.”

Robert F. Kennedy

"You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died.  Such souls belong here.  Wickedness never rests easily so, in a way, one might almost feel pity for the wicked, for they are destined to live their lives in fear, in a prison of the heart.”

John Connolly, The Infernals


This is being posted early today.

I will be driving our recent rescue stray, Miss Daisy, to the vet, and all things considered won't be back until some time after the close. 

The young man is coming as her emotional support person.

She is a sweet angel, remarkably well-behaved and affectionate. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Empire of Lawlessness

 

"And he said, ‘This is what I will do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.  There I shall store all my abundance and other treasures and say to myself, 'Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry!'

But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the many things you have acquired, whose then will they be?’ Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasures for himself, but does not have those things that matter most to God.”

Luke 12:18-21

"But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery.  Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of 'No answer.'  It is not the locked door.  It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question.  Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand."

C. S. Lewis

"The root of all sin is pride, superbia.  I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death.  The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God.  In confession comes the breakthrough to the cross."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"'Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become as an innocent, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.  Woe to the world because of things that cause sin. Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come."

Matthew 18:1-12

Stocks slumped hard again today, falling back down to touch support at a lower level, with a little bounce into the close.

Gold and silver pretty much chopped sideways.

The VIX continued to climb off its recent low.

Is the 'rinse' over yet?

Hard to say.  The next major stock index option expiration is not until next Friday.

But I took off my index shorts before the close today.   No need to be greedy.

Let's see what fresh antics tomorrow brings.

Have a pleasant evening.