Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Excess and Dissipation

 

"Narcissists gravitate towards professions where they can control people and elicit adulation. They are more likely to work in politics, finance or medicine than in shoemaking. They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.”

Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love

“A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects.  They will be offended by the truth.”

Karla Grimes

"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic.  I do not know if there are more narcissistic individuals in society now, and perhaps there are not.  But I do think that narcissism is much more widely tolerated, rewarded, and even admired now than it would have been in the period of 1930 to 1950 for example.  And that is what makes all the difference.  More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them shamelessly, in order to be fashionable and competitive.

I think this also tends to explain the decline of literature and poetry in American culture, and the rise of reality shows and the preoccupation with spectacle and extravagance.  Literature calls us out of ourselves in order to fill us with knowledge and the creative impulse, while spectacle merely panders, and flows in to fill the empty and undeveloped voids in our being.

One of the common traits of the narcissist is projecting their faults on to others.   Since this person does not serve and love me, and I am without fault, perfect, they must have something wrong with them, or be out to get me.

The narcissistic tendency is not something particular to the wealthy, but is a cultural trait, expressed in many ways including an increase in self-absorption and incivility.   Power expresses itself in the assertion of the will over others, and the cultivation of unrestrained personal power, the triumph of their will, is the lifeblood of the narcissist.  And this is also why they tend to be rather antithetical to democracy.

It is the excess of the age, probably due to the circumstances of fortunate birth and an early childhood in which the young learned that greed is good, screwing everyone is acceptable business practice, that there is no law but their desires, and that most people are inferiors intended to be used by them.   Too often parental approval, acceptance, the most basic love, is made contingent on the buy-in.

Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional, 1 October 2012

“There's a reason narcissists don't learn from mistakes and that's because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one.  It's always an assistant's fault, an adviser's fault, a lawyer's fault.   Ask them to account for a mistake any other way and they'll say, 'what mistake?”

Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door

Stocks continued to chop in a lackluster trade, burdened with concerns about an approaching recession and persistent inflation.

The Dollar strengthened.

Gold and silver continued to search for a bottom, but managed to finished off their lows.

Next week there will be a stock index option expiration.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Inconsolable Riches

 

"Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) is to point out to the Pharisees the danger in which they stand by selfishly hoarding their wealth.  Dives (from the Latin dives; rich man) was a worldling who did not look beyond the good things of this life.  

It is important to observe that nowhere is it suggested that Dives' wealth is ill-gotten nor that Lazarus was his victim.  The sin of Dives is that, cushioned by his lavish life-style, he was simply oblivious to the presence of a beggar at his gate."

 Wilfrid Harrington

“Then the rich man said, ‘I beg you, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father’s house. For I have five brothers for him to warn, so that they also will not come to this place of desolation and torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them.’

But the rich man again said, ‘No, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead comes back and speaks to them, they will repent.’ And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they listen if someone tells them who has risen from the dead.’”

Luke 16:27-31

"They may take on the appearance of righteousness, but deny its redeeming power."

2 Timothy 3:5

"'No man can serve two masters.  He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and mammon.'    The Pharisees, who were money loving and covetous, heard all these things and sneered at him.   And Jesus said, 'You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts.'"

Luke 16:13-14 

Stocks were trading weakly overall today on fresh concerns about regional bank weakness.

The Dollar rallied higher.

Gold, and especially silver, got nailed from their recent highs.

The VIX fell.

The PPI data this morning was not particularly significant.

The numbers of the newly unemployed were higher than anticipated, but this is a volatile and 'noisy' number which should probably not enter into short term trading decisions.

Or not.

The purpose of the wiseguys and their algos is to churn you, in and out of positions.

You may be better off taking modest positions for a longer term and then just leave them alone.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Currency Wars

 

"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further.  A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.  Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it.  It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded.  The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down.  So was the U.K."

Edward 'Steady Eddie' George, Governor Bank of England 1993-2003, from Reg Howe v. BIS, JPM et al.

"The general hypothesis I have put forward over a period of time at this café is that with the spike in the price of gold up to $1900, the central banks of the West became greatly concerned, and opted for a lower price, and a more orderly rise.   And so the price of gold was smacked down into a trading range between $1540 and $1780 through the various price and market operations of some central and bullion banks in what we can think of as a gold pool.

As you may recall, the great sea change was that central banks turned from being net sellers to net buyers of gold, slowly over a ten year period from 2000-2010 approximately.   This change of policy was not uniform, but driven largely from the emerging and re-emerging nations.  It ought not to surprise us.  No fiat currency has survived for so long in historical terms, and even fewer as the world's reserve currency, unless backed by an unassailable empire.  They will fall to Triffin's Dilemma, and the decay of power to self-serving and short-sighted corruption.

Forces similar to those that are working against the EU monetary union, without a comprehensive political union, are working against the dollar global reserve currency, on a much larger and slower paced scale.  This is why a global currency issued and controlled by one central entity tends to presume (and aspire to) a one world governance, or at least a cohesive governance of a rather large piece of it. It is not incidental to their financial goals.

The gold pool can rehypothecate and leverage physical gold by multiples into paper, and outright create it with naked short selling.  And they can sell this paper in bulk at whatever they wish in the markets which they control.  And they can use positional advantage and their media to bully boy anyone who dares to question this into silence.  But they cannot print gold bullion and deliver it to Asia (et al.), which quite frankly does not care what they say.

In general this is what is referred to at the divergence between the paper and physical gold markets.   It is what happens when 'semi-official' forces endeavor to set an artificially low price in a market that involves some physical commodity which is in a somewhat limited supply.   It tends to become more limited as a result.

But the supply of paper gold is not limited in the short term, especially where things like position limits and leverage are given the wink and a nod behind a wall of opaque obfuscation.  

So this is why I think things will unravel in a manner similar to the London Gold Pool's operation which sought to set and maintain an artificially low price.   How exactly this will unravel is a matter of much conjecture.  I doubt it will break at the source of the paper gold, given the power the insiders have over the rules and information there.  Rather, there is more likely to be a strain at some physical delivery source that will cause the current pool to back up the price higher to some more sustainable level.  What that will be I cannot say.

What is driving this current dynamic is what is called the 'currency war,' which is shorthand for a difference of opinion amongst the world powers over the existing global currency trade regime."

Jesse, 22 January 2014

“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

Tacitus

"Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise."

Alan Greenspan, Congressional Testimony, July 24, 1998

Paper gold is a derivative, an often non-collateralized claim that may not be available from a counterparty in the present moment.  In the NY-London markets gold is estimated to be traded at a leverage of over 100 to 1, with the individual paper chits called gold having a very ephemeral attachment to any underlying physical bullion, bearing a significant burden of unallocated risk.

As noted fund manager Kyle Bass observed, 'The [gold] exchange is a fractional reserve exchange, and they think that price will solve everything.'

By its very nature a fiat currency is a projection of political and economic force.  And as it expands beyond reasonable bounds, confidence and volition may waver, and force and fraud and compulsion will increase.

False flags of war can be economic policy (too often a euphemism for greed and lust for power) as well as diplomacy by other means.

Sometimes when things are happening that don't seem to make sense, it may be a lack of a general understanding of the bigger picture, the players and the issues and motivations behind the scenes, that is the cause of our confusion.

And often normal, hard-working human beings are not able to fully comprehend the sort of petty vanity and greed that motivates the hubris of prominent servants of the darkness of the world.

Stocks were rallying for whatever rationale this morning after a fairly predictable consumer price dataset this morning.

The Dollar plunged on the news as you can see from the first chart below.

Sometimes looking at things cross markets is the only way to see what is happening.

Producer price index tomorrow.

There are geopolitical flash points are the world, any of which could provoke a serious exogenous event effect on the world financial markets.

Some of this may be by intent.  But most often it can be explained by pride, greed, and lack of foresight, which are often close companions in human political arenas and worldly affairs.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood alone, but against principalities and powers, and the rulers of darkness of this world, and wickedness in high places.

Recklessly wicked and destructive things, which the normal human being finds it almost inconceivable to consider.

Have a pleasant evening.