Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Whirlwind of Consequences

 

“Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.”

Gore Vidal, Homage to Daniel Shays

"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900

"Character is, in the long run, the decisive factor in the life of individuals and of nations alike."

Theodore Roosevelt

"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.  Moral values are in flux.  The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep.  Trolls walk the American night.  Caesars are stirring in the Forum."

Gore Vidal, Comment, Esquire, July 1961

"At first the love of money, and then of power, began to prevail, and became, as it were, the source of every evil.   For greed subverted honesty, integrity, and other honorable principles, and, instead encouraged pride, inhumanity, contempt for religion, and general corruption. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the heart, and another on the tongue; to consider friendships and disagreements, not by their true worth, but according to their monetary value; and to bear a false face than an honest heart."

Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline

The Advance GDP number came in stronger than expected this morning.

There is an interesting mismatch between the GDP growth rate and the GDP Price index. 

I suspect that this will find some resolution in future revisions, perhaps price higher and growth lower.

But the seeds planted yesterday regarding a protracted period of higher interest rates released the volatility of the markets and provided a nice setup for the corrosive forces of unrestrained financialization.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The Dollar rose sharply.

Gold and silver were hammered.

The major stock indices initially rallied much higher, but then reversed sharply, falling all afternoon and into the close.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Willful pride brings a whirlwind of consequences.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - The Arsenal of Plutocracy

 

"There is no meritocracy:  it's just the 1 percent, and the game is rigged.  We elected Obama to hold the 1 percent accountable.  So why are they still running everything?"

Thomas Frank, Salon, March 16, 2014

"In my view, Democrats will not retain the White House, will not regain the Senate or the U.S. House, will not be successful in dozens of governor races across the country, unless we generate excitement and momentum and produce a huge voter turnout.  With all due respect – and I do not mean to insult anyone here – that turnout, that enthusiasm, will not happen with politics as usual.  The people of our country understand that given the collapse of the American middle class, and given the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality we are experiencing, we do not need more establishment politics or establishment economics.”

Bernie Sanders, Democrat National Committee, August 28, 2015

"Housing, healthcare, child care – costs are out of sight.  Young people are getting crushed by student loans.  Working people are in debt.  Seniors can’t stretch a social security check to cover the basics.  And even families who are OK today worry that it could all fall apart tomorrow.   Here’s the thing: America isn’t going broke.  The stock market is breaking records.  Corporate profits are at all-time highs.  CEOs make tens of millions of dollars.  There’s lots of wealth in America, but it isn’t trickling down to hard-working families like yours.  Does anyone here have a problem with that?  Well, I do too.  People get it: the system is rigged."   (Who was the incumbent President again?)

Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Convention, July 25, 2016

"The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn’t all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn’t accept their assessment.  And then they lost.  Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.
Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue."

Thomas Frank, The Guardian, 9 November 2016

Warmed over Obama-Clinton democrat Biden again.  Seriously? 

Perhaps we can be thankful that the other party has even less character, and is more craven in its self-serving appeals to the worst in us.

The Fed did as it was expected, and the markets were taking it fairly well.

And then Jay Powell said that he did not see the Fed reaching their 2% inflation target until 2025.

Well, the markets did not want to hear that.

Gold and silver managed to bounce back, having taken most of their smackdowns earlier in the week.

The Dollar slumped.

The stock markets slumped, recovered, and then fell back down again.

The VIX fell.  

Smells like teen spirit.

And so we toddle on through a morass of incompetent satraps of the plutocracy.

It seems to be the fashion amongst the Western nations.

Have a pleasant evening.

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.