Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Leviathan

 

"Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues."

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan


"Beginning in the late 1970s, America's major industries discovered, and began to exploit, a critical weakness in the American national system, one that enabled them to escape or at least soften competitive discipline.  Stated bluntly, they discovered that buying people off was much easier than doing their job properly.  It turned out that American politicians, academics, regulators, auditors, and political parties were highly corruptible.

The structural concentration of American industry has continued over the last thirty years. At the same time, economic power in America also became more concentrated at the individual level, with a small number of households owning the majority of America's financial wealth and providing a high fraction of individual political campaign contributions.  The combined result is that the United States is increasingly controlled by an amoral oligarchy that has progressively corrupted the federal government and the political system, including both political parties.

This political corruption has in turn further entrenched the wealthy and the financial sector, and has now become a major driver of America's economic and social decline.  The wealthy are safe from the effects of this decline, at least for now; indeed, they have benefited from it.   They are also increasingly insulated by parallel, private systems for education, security, infrastructure, and financial services. The absence of significant political or social protest in response to these changes has emboldened them to continue.

At the same time, and in part as a result of these changes, the bottom two-thirds of the American population has become less educated, less informed, less prosperous, angrier, and ever more cynical about its political leadership.  There is good reason for this cynicism.  In their stomachs, most Americans know that their leaders are lying to them and that the system is rigged.  The American people have become increasingly scared, frustrated, and angry.  In this environment it has proven all too easy for politicians, who are so easily hired by America's new oligarchy, to exploit popular anger and fatigue while actually delivering oligarchic policy.

Anyone who has ever lived or worked in a corrupt dictatorship knows what happens. When the system is rigged, when ordinary citizens are powerless, and when whistle-blowers are pariahs at best, three things happen.  First, the worst people rise to the top.  They behave appallingly, and they wreak havoc. Second, people who could make productive contributions to society are incented to become destructive, because corruption is far more lucrative than honest work.   And third, everyone else pays, both economically and emotionally; people become cynical, selfish, and fatalistic.  Often they go along with the system, but they hate themselves for it.  They play the game to survive and feed their families, but both they and society suffer."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America, 2012


The moderns have cultivated a taste for perpetual war, not only for the profit they can find in it, but the power and license it extends to their deceits.  

Deceits which they have come to love, over time, as an end in themselves, as an expression of the will to power.

As he often does Charles Ferguson boldly lays it out there for anyone to plainly read.  

Perhaps this is why no one in the 'establishment' wants anything to do with him and his ideas, or anyone else who casts the current state of affairs to the public with a similar moral clarity.

Stocks were wobbly a bit with another failed rally attempt. 

Gold and silver had the kind of downward pressure that so commonly follows an option expiration, whereby the resolve of the new holders of contracts from in-the-money call options is tested.

 The Dollar rose.

The VIX declined again.  

A posture of complacency is stubbornly maintained to support the attempt to hand off positions in equities to those whom the wiseguys and insiders consider to be greater fools.

The procurers of mispriced risk are, in the closing days of the second quarter, increasingly audacious.

But what will it be like when the music stops?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Demagogues' Playbook

 

"Having squandered trillions on mismanaged wars, tax cuts designed especially for the rich, a gigantic real estate bubble, and massive bailouts for its banks, the United States is confronting major fiscal problems.  At the same time, America's fundamental economic competitiveness has declined severely, as its physical infrastructure, broad-band services, educational system, workforce skills, health care, and energy policies have failed to keep pace with the needs of an advanced economy.

This is not solely, or even primarily, a matter of money; it is a matter of policy and priorities.  In some areas, insufficient government spending is indeed an issue. But in many areas, such as health care, the United States as a society is actually spending far more than other nations, without, however, obtaining the same results.

Politically powerful interest groups have been able to block reform.  These and other groups, including, of course, lobbyists and politicians, have ferociously resisted efforts to improve America's future at their expense.  Meanwhile, both political parties are ignoring, lying about, and/or exploiting the country's very real economic, social, and educational problems.

This process is starting to generate an additional danger: demagoguery.  As America deteriorates, religious and political extremists are beginning to exploit the growing insecurity and discontent of the population.

Presiding over all this is an impressive, though utterly cynical, innovation on the part of American politicians: the political duopoly.  Over the past quarter century, the leaders of both political parties have perfected a remarkable system for remaining in power while serving America's new oligarchy.  Both parties take in huge amounts of money, in many forms—campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving-door hiring, favors, and special access of various kinds.

Politicians in both parties enrich themselves and betray the interests of the nation, including most of the people who vote for them.  Yet both parties are still able to mobilize support because they skillfully exploit America's cultural polarization.  Republicans warn social conservatives about the dangers of secularism, taxes, abortion, welfare, gay marriage, gun control, and liberals.  Democrats warn social liberals about the dangers of guns, pollution, global warming, making abortion illegal, and conservatives.

Both parties make a public show of how bitter their conflicts are, and how dangerous it would be for the other party to achieve power, while both prostitute themselves to the financial sector, powerful industries, and the wealthy.  Thus, the very intensity of the two parties' differences on 'values' issues enables them to collaborate when it comes to money."

Charles H. Ferguson, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America

Stocks managed to pull themselves together and rally a bit higher today.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar fell.

Gold fell in honor of the Comex futures option expiration.

Silver is hanging tough.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Read the extended quote from Charles Ferguson above today.

It may help you to understand some of the things that are going on here in the US.

Probably the same can be said for the UK and most of Europe as well.

It may not change anything that you do.  

Human nature is a funny old thing, fraught with a surfeit of willful foolishness.

But you can never say again that you did not know.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Mind the Gap

 

"Pride hardens the heart against repentance."

John Henry Newman, Conversion of St. Paul


"They do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes.  And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.  Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient; – they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct."

John Henry Newman, The Religion of the Pharisees


"The problem Newman addresses here is with those believers who have grown in the faith, and may exhibit many of its gifts, but stop there without bearing the kind of fruit of which they are capable.   And why do they do this?   Simply because they never grow to fully love Him and His, more than they love their own fears, desires, and selves. 

They always hold some better portion of themselves back and in reserve. They love God as they think that they must only in order to avoid punishment and to be comfortable, while being blinded to their own sinful shortcomings, never fully growing into the love which is the substance and the salvation of their true selves.  They are imbued with the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy and spiritual pride.  And it is the road to a dwindling of the spiritual life, and a gradual erosion of faith as a vital element of our every action."

Jesse, 5 April 2017

The gap to which the header refers is not the infamous gap between what a people think their leaders do in the world, and what they actually have done, and what they are planning to do.  

It is the gap that looms below the price levels here on the SP 500 chart.  And it is a gap that is likely to be filled, sooner or later.

Stocks slumped.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

The VIX rose.

Silver managed to hold a rally higher, while gold attempted to rally but did not hold on.

Tomorrow is an option expiration for the precious metals on the Comex.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Malign forces are at work in the world.  This is always the case as we see throughout history.

But their force and influence waxes and wanes in the hearts of men.  

People forget, and so sometimes foolishness is allowed to prevail.

Try to remain standing in the madness.

Have a pleasant evening.