Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Arrogance of Power, the Towering Humility of Saints

 

"Criticism may embarrass the country’s leaders in the short run but strengthen their hand in the long run; it may destroy a consensus on policy, while expressing a consensus of values.  There is, or ought to be, such a thing as being too confident to conform, too strong to be silent in the face of apparent error.

Criticism is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals of national adulation.'"

J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966

“Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them. They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize in Literature, 1970

"And so I pray God grant you courage,
All of you who face Him thus,
to act so that these wars may cease,
and be forgotten, storms of the past
so you may live out your days in peace,
loyal to your sovereign King,
And may he return to you the same in kind,
A lord, gracious in everything."

Christine de Pizan, Le Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc, 1429

"Even the little children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth to power. You say that you are my judge. I do not know if you are. But you must take good care not to judge me falsely, because you will put yourself in great danger. I warn you, and if God punishes you for it, I have done my duty by telling you."

Jeanne d'Arc, Trial records, 15 March 1431

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation, Capetown, South Africa, 1966

"Il n’y a qu’une tristesse, la dernière fois, c’est de n’être pas de saints."

Léon Bloy, La femme pauvre, 1897

Tomorrow we will have a precious metals options expiration on the Comex, and an interest rate decision from the Fed.

Yay.

Stocks meandered ahead of the Fed.

VIX is still nearly dormant.

The Dollar chopped its way to unchanged.

Have a  pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lying and Dying for 'Greatness'

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.  The dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred.   People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. They want to be told this publicly.  They want to know that those ‘at the top’ are on their side.  They want to feel recognized and cultivated.  For goodwill to develop and have an impact it must hear this, so that the world does not ridicule it.”

Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.  Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.  Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality;  they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer."

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

"Demagogy enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

"Let's be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price.  And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth— that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning.   He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road.  That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis

 The leadership of the world's democracies is fallen low.  

And it may not have yet reached bottom.

"As Jesus drew near he saw the city, and wept over it saying, 'If only you knew the way for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.  For the days are coming when your enemies will raise a barrier, and encircle and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground, and crush your children within, and will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize this moment of God's mercy.'”

The Dollar was slightly higher, gold and silver finished slightly lower.

The SP 500 made a gain, the NDX not so much.

The Fed will announce it's latest on Wednesday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Husks of the Fashionably Dead - FOMC Next Week

 

“A society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience.   A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal.

People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.  They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite

"I see dead people.  Walking around like regular people.  They don't see each other.   They only see what they want to see.  They don't know that they're dead."

Cole Sear: The Sixth Sense

"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, 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.

All sin, indeed, when repented of, He will put away; but pride hardens the heart against repentance, and sensuality debases it to a brutal nature."

John Henry Newman

"People love the sentimentality of their beliefs, the traditions and tribalism and forms of a self-conception, the good feeling that they get from believing that they are better than and different from the great body of mankind.  We can be wonderfully profane.

But when it comes to applying those higher principles of belief in their daily lives, most people are highly selective, and in general want nothing to do with them, except as it is convenient, and serves their purposes without sacrifice.  And so they become spiritually dead, dried husks of souls that have slowly starved the love from their hearts.  They view themselves as superior, and therefore victims of their inferiors.   They cling to their hypocrisy like a drowning man might cling to an anchor, down to the depths of the abyss."

Jesse, Dead People, Seeing Only What They Want to See, 8 February 2018

Stocks wobbled around again.  The usual rally attempt failed into the close.

Gold and silver were under some pressure.

The Dollar drifted sideways, finishing slightly higher.

VIX fell slightly and remains on the low side for recent history.

There will be a FOMC meeting and rate decision next week.

The market seems to be anticipating a 'neutral' meeting.

Whatever that means.

Need little, want less, love more.   For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.