Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great Masquerade of Evil

 

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.  Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior.   Christians are called to compassion and to action. "

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves.   Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology, which swallowed up the whole of their small lives, allotted them by birth or chance.   They would far rather kill than have to think."

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan

"Foolishness has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.   In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; they did not believe in plagues."

Albert Camus

“Against such foolishness we are defenseless.  Reason falls on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.   Never again will we try to persuade the foolish person with reason, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Stocks traded weakly today on disappointing earnings.

The VIX rose.

The Dollar slipped a little, continuing its sideways chop.

Gold and silver were hit with purposeful selling to keep them with a range.

The Congress is consumed with its petty service to the moneyed interests. 

The geopolitical situation continues to worsen, with intent.

Shall we stop this bleeding? 

Uncle Thug wants you.

Too many are finding a refuge in distracted madness. 

But the madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Age of the Exceptionals

 

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert

"Don't tell yourself that this is just the way it is.  Rather, tell yourself that this is just wrong, and let such incivility stop with me."

Jesse, 27 July 2014

"Demagogues are willing to do or say anything to gain office or to consolidate their power.  Anything that serves to make them more powerful is good enough for them — even if the political system that facilitated their rise should be destroyed in the process. They wreck the informal rules of civility that democracies require to survive."

Daniel Ziblatt

"Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously - sometimes of their religion - insulting references to their friends.  Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance?'

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.
   If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.  Be honest anyway.
    If you find happiness, people may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway.
    Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
     It was never between you and them anyway.”

Mother Teresa


People will often confuse rudeness and incivility with strength and power.   And they use it all too often on victims who are compromised by greater moral constraints, like honor your father an mother, or act with kindness to those who are caught in a web of error and self-indulgence.

When they see that no one punishes them, as may have happened when they were little children, they become emboldened, and increassingly and carelessly abuse those around them, engaging in what are similar to tantrums.  

So called 'trolls' and aggressively haughty people often succumb to this temptation.  Otherwise they fear that they will not receive the same level of attention needed to fill the hollowness left by the self-absorption with which they have crippled their hearts. 

Over time it just becomes a common behaviour, a habit.  And in their disordered personality they think that everyone is just like them, but lacks the will and the power to do it.

Wall Street and Washington are the type A narcissists' natural habitats, but I am sure you have seen examples of this, even in such mundane places as the grocery store or highway, or even in church.  

Stocks were trading weakly today.

Gold and silver remained tightly bound.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX ticked up.

I have to leave early to take our little angel to the vet.  She has a few chronic issues that made her a tough adoption in the first place, but we are overcoming them, slowly but surely.

Good thing the young man has a good income and few expenses.  LOL.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lead Kindly Light - Powell's Hawkish Words Jar Markets

 

“These people honor me with their lips, and offer worship with their words, but their hearts are far from me. Their religion is nothing but the rituals and traditions of men, which they memorize. I will awaken them with one shocking blow after another. Their wisdom will be shown as foolish, and all their cleverness will be made worthless. Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'No one can see us, so who will know?’"

Isaiah 29:13-15

"And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.   But those who stand, firmly to the end, will be saved."

Matthew 24:12

"And the measure for weighing the virtue of things is this: God’s light has come into the world, but some people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.  All who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their sins will be revealed.   But those who do what is right come into the light, so others can see that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

"In a society that worships the self, power is the coin of the realm, where power is to be found in asserting one's own will over others.  And beyond all doubt, kindness and tolerance are to be despised as undermining, weakening the will to power.  In power is to be found the definition of all truth, for it dictates all, and does not bend a knee to any other reality but its own interpretation.  'Might makes right' is written large on the tableau of empire.

We rise in our own esteem by knocking others flat.  And from this flows a cornucopia of all other injustice and abuses.  In rationalizing ourselves by dehumanizing others, we can therein comfortably become monsters.   And some do."

Jesse, 9 January 2015


"Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom
    The night is long and I am far from home.
Here in the dark, I do not ask to see
    The path ahead— one step enough for me,
Lead on, lead on, kindly Light."

Audrey Assad, based on The Pillar of the Cloud by J. H. Newman


Powell said some hawkish 'what if' things today and the markets reacted strongly.

But, as usual, it was a transitory thing.

The Dollar, which plunged intraday shortly after Chair Powell's remarks, rocketed higher after the 3 year note auction.

Gold finished a little higher.  Silver not so much. 

VIX moved lower.

The oligarchy remains exceptionally audacious and war-mongering.

Have a pleasant evening.