Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pied Pipers of the Apocalypse

 

"Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and 'weaponizing' the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”

Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert, Dune

"Anyone can be misled by a clever person, and no one likes to readily admit that they have been had. It is a sign of character and maturity to realize this, and admit your were deceived, and to demand change and reform.  But some cannot, even when the facts of the deception are revealed.  The more incorrect that the truth shows them to be, the louder and more strident they become in shouting down and denying reality:  cognitive dissonance.

The more extremely held the views, left or right, the more ardent the self-deception and surrender of individual identity.  Because at the extremes, it is no longer about justice, but about the objectification and irrelevance of the individual, the elevation of ideology over truth, and the dehumanisation and demonisation of 'the other.'"

Jesse, The Economic of Demagogues, 18 June 2012

“What comes out of a person, that is what makes them unclean.  From within people, from their minds and hearts, come wicked thoughts, immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness.  All these evils come from within and they make one unclean.”

Mark 7:20-23

Stocks ended the day in rally mode, spreading that green around to kick off the month of March.

Smells like a wash, preceding a rinse to me.

Next week we will have Jay Powell's testimony to Congress, and of course the Friday Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Gold and silver rallied higher.

They are coming into some important overhead resistance.  

They need to take it out and stick it with several closes to confirm an intermediate trend change.

The Dollar chopped back down.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dollar Burn and Markets Bubble

 

"Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the surface.

Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to stabilize the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite. These artificially constrained systems become prone to 'Black Swans' — that is, they become extremely vulnerable to large-scale events that lie far from the statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.

Such environments eventually experience massive blowups, catching everyone off-guard and undoing years of stability or, in some cases, ending up far worse than they were in their initial volatile state. Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems."

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan of Cairo, Foreign Affairs 2011

"Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
    Then the charm is firm and good."

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”

Sam Vaknin

"Through a set of economic policies designed to bail out and subsidize failed and often tainted corporate enterprises, while actively promoting a false sense of confidence to support those policies, the public has become exposed, by those very people entrusted to protect them, to dangerously high levels of hidden counterparty risks.  The cautionary functions of the media, the political class, and the regulatory bodies have been routinely directed, distorted, and even silenced for the benefit of a highly compromised and increasingly self-serving elite. 

And this corruption has begun feeding on its own momentum, resulting in increasingly blatant examples of deception, distortion, and outright theft. This is crony capitalism, and its deadly credibility trap."

Jesse, April 2012

Stocks took an early dive on the higher than expected labor costs and lower productivity.

But,never fear, they recovered in the afternoon and finished solidly in the green.

The Dollar rallied on expectations of a more hawkish Fed.  

Gold and silver took a dip and then bounced back to nearly unchanged into the close.

Another tranche of gold bullion left the Hong Kong warehouses.

Russia and China and a few other central banks have been stockpiling gold bullion pretty heavily since about 2006.

The paper claims to physical bullion leverage in the West is estimated to be greater than 100 to 1.

Don't expect the Douleur rentiers to go quietly into that good night.

Have a pleasant evening.


There were some additions to our extended family yesterday, in God's loving kindness and tender mercies.

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.