Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Easy the Descent Into Hell

 

“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson

"We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers are no longer solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that they result from the discriminating favor of the Government and are largely built upon undue exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor. As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."

President Grover Cleveland, State of the Union, December 3, 1888

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.  I know nothing that I may say can influence you.  You have no souls to be influenced.  You are spineless, flaccid things.  You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats.  There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the plutocracy.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel

"Easy the descent into hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven - there is the task, there is the burden."

Virgil, The Aeneid

Hate the game, not the player.

The institutions may provide the opportunity, but it is the person who acts on it.  And it is people who warp and corrupt the institutions to make their lawlessness easier, their wickedness seem more acceptable if not fashionable.   They cover their darkness with the fig leaf of a corrupt legality.

And there are also those who say that things have always been and always will be laced with corruption.  It does not excuse one from their participation in it, even if it is passive compliance.  There will always be corruption and evil in the world as long as there are those who are willing to risk damnation for the short term gains from it. 

They comfort themselves with the thought that all the finest people are doing it, and they will not be judged for their crimes.  Surely God, if he even exists, will not harshly judge such an accomplished person as me.  Listen here, don't you know who I am and who I know?

What a sad and shocking experience their eventual reckoning in the judgement of nations will be.  As always they will not believe it, or accept it.  They will rail and cry against it.   And that eternal refusal to accept their just judgement will be their hell, and the hell especially for those who followed and enabled them and their own families into the pit.

Stocks limped along lower today, as the reality of the composure of the markets continues seeming through.

Gold and silver were higher again.

The Dollar slid a little lower.

A little more gold bullion leaked out of the warehouses in Hong Kong.

The lies that pave the way for the ascension of the unspeakable continues.

Need little, want less, love more.  Hide yourself with Christ in his humility.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Passing Through

 

"We should remember that this life is scarcely more than an accident of our being—that it is no part of ourselves, who are immortal; that we are immortal spirits, independent of time and space, and that this life is but a sort of outward stage, on which we act for a time, and which is only sufficient and only intended to answer the purpose of trying whether we will serve God or no. 

We should consider ourselves to be in this world in no fuller sense than players in any game are in the game; and life to be a sort of dream, as detached and as different from our real eternal existence, as a dream differs from waking; a serious dream, indeed, as affording a means of judging us, yet in itself a kind of shadow without substance, a scene set before us, in which we seem to be, and in which it is our duty to act just as if all we saw had a truth and reality, because all that meets us influences us and our destiny.

It is this view of life, which removes from us all surprise and disappointment that it is so incomplete: as well might we expect any chance event which happens in the course of it to be complete, any casual conversation with a stranger, or the toil or amusement of an hour. These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world."

John Henry Newman, The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life, 23 Oct 1836


"He became what we are, that he might make us what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria


"The glory of God is the human being, fully alive; and the humanity of a person is found reflected in the glory of God."

Irenaeus of Lyons


"It is fair to question the notion that our bodies are temporary; in fact, the popularity among Christians of the ‘you are a soul, but you have a body’ sentiment, stripped of any nuance or context, indicates that a robust defense of the theology of the body is needed.  But nothing is more universal than death, and it is understandable that this quotation was, and is, widespread because people want to be assured of their future.  Christians need to be mindful, however, that they are embodied creatures with the promise of an embodied resurrection.  Jesus incarnated in a body and resurrected with a body, so Christians should be careful about minimizing their own."

Hannah Peckham, C. S. Lewis Never Said It


Newman is not denying the reality of our own incarnation, at all.  That would be a danger of falling into a kind of Gnostic or Manichean dualism.  What he is doing is placing us in the context of our relationship with the world itself, which is passing. 

Speaking of 'passing,' former Nasdaq high flier Novavax gave a surprise  'going concern' warning after the bell, which shocked their share price sharply lower, and took the equity futures down as well. 

I think that Novavax is down something like 95% from its 2021 high.

Stocks traded weakly today.

Gold and silver caught a bounce.

A huge 310,000 ounces of gold passed through the Hong Kong warehouses the other day.

Maybe they are using it for balloon ballast?   

Nothing is too fantastic for 'very serious people' to speculate about anymore.

The Dollar edged a little higher.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - God's Eloquent Silence - Blood and Profit

 

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning. 

We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.  We learn nothing because we remember nothing.”

Gore Vidal


"In a predatory economy, the rules imagined by the law and economics crowd don’t apply.  There’s no market discipline.  Predators compete not by following the rules but by breaking them.  They take the business-school view of law: Rules are not designed to guide behavior but laid down to define the limits of unpunished conduct.  Once one gets close to the line, stepping over it is easy.  A predatory economy is criminogenic: It fosters and rewards criminal behavior.

Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class.  The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth.  But it is the defining feature, the leading force.  And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."

James K. Galbraith, The Predator State, May 2006


"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make a man a more clever devil."

C. S. Lewis


"For the moneyed interests, tragedy is a wonderful opportunity, because it greatly increases the lawlessness which they use as a cover and opportunity for their predations and depredations, bringing greater power and personal increase.   Vultures do not produce, but prey on weakness and tragedy. They believe themselves to be the center of all creation, superior and virtually immortal.   Their pride makes them blind."

Jesse, God's Eloquent Silence, 28 June 2018

Stocks had a bounce today after a fairly awful decline last week.

The Dollar declined.

Gold had a bit of a pop, silver slid a little further lower.

What we are seeing today is what happens when people think that they can act as they wish without any consequences.  

It is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Have a pleasant evening.