Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Beckoning from the Abyss

 

"We have watched the Reichstag burn twice in the last two decades.  If 2008 was a quiet coup in finance, during which Wall Street, in the name of exceptional and emergency circumstances, appropriated vast wealth from ordinary citizens in ways those citizens never fully understood, and therefore couldn’t effectively resist, so 9/11 began a takeover of the commonwealth by intelligence and military leaders, a putsch, unvoted and undiscussed, from which our constitutional rights and our democracy have yet to recover."

Tom Mueller, Crisis of Conscience: Whistleblowing in the Age of Fraud, 2019

“Men lost faith in the state not because Christianity held them aloof, but because the state defended wealth against poverty, fought to capture slaves, taxed toil to support luxury, and failed to protect its people from famine, pestilence, invasion, and destitution.  Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.  A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”

Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, 1944

"The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy.  Powerful corporations are part of the nexus of power around the state, and enjoy the ability to deploy its coercive power, just as the state often exerts its influence through the agency of powerful corporations."

Julian Assange, When Google Met Wikileaks, January 1, 2014

“The man who discovered the real Hitler was Dietrich Eckart. We find his presence at every important point in Hitler’s career until Eckart’s death in the last days of 1923. Eckart literally made Hitler. And he was closely related with the Thule Society, with the powerful Germanenorden.  We now know the atmosphere in which these secret organizations functioned and played a determining role in opposition to the leftist half of the German population. Even in the political field their actions were everywhere a matter of secrecy and covert plotting, always of power politics and sometimes of murder.

This, however, was only the surface of a world rife with religious expectation and steeped in occultism. If the German aspiration is clearly discernible in Dietrich Eckart, so is the occult way in which he tutored his pupil.  Occult here means not only 'hidden'; it refers literally to the practice of the occult sciences."

Georges Van Vrekhem, Hitler and His God, 2012

"Life under a strongman means not simply being lied to but being beset by contradiction and uncertainty until the line between truth and falsehood blurs and a kind of exhaustion settles over questions of fact.  Authoritarianism wants to convince its supporters that nothing is true, that the whole machinery of truth is an intolerable imposition on their psyches, and thus that they might as well give free rein to their fantasies."

Brian Phillips, Rise of the Postmodern Right, November 16, 2016

"When humanity has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

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

Ephesians 6:12

Stocks were troubled today, and finished off a bit.

The Dollar moved higher.

Gold and silver were whacked from the NY open and closed near the lows.

The continuous gold contract from ICE was broken today.   I went with the August contract and hope they will fix this in a day or so.  Silver was unaffected.

VIX rose slightly.

Non-Farm Payrolls may dominate trading this week.

The antinomian cha-cha of the 'efficient markets' perpetual wash and rinse continues.  

Impunity comes from pervasive soft corruption, and the broadly corrosive effects of fashionable self-deceit.

Lawlessness often follows.  Hell, a companion.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fed's Hat Trick

 

Editor’s note:  These remarks were delivered to a meeting of the Texas Lyceum in Austin on April 3, at a debate between University of Texas professor James Galbraith, an Observer contributing writer, and former House Majority Leader Richard Armey.

This is a panel on the crisis. Mr. Moderator, you ask what is the root cause?  My reply is in three parts.

First, an idea.  The idea that capitalism, for all its considerable virtues, is inherently self-stabilizing, that government and private business are adversaries rather than partners; the idea that freedom without responsibility is a viable business principle; the idea that regulation, in financial matters especially, can be dispensed with.  We tried it, and we see the result.

Second, a person.  It would not be right to blame any single person for these events, but if I had to choose one to name it would be a Texan, our own distinguished former Senator Phil Gramm.  I’d cite specifically the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act-the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act-in 1999, after which it took less than a decade to reproduce all the pathologies that Glass-Steagall had been enacted to deal with in 1933.  [It would be amiss not to mention the key enabling roles of Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.  Of course there were many more public faces and even high officials in this fellowship of malfeasance, a prolonged and malignant campaign of corruption and destructive greed. - Jesse]

I’d also cite the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, slipped into an 11,000-page appropriations bill in December 2000 as Congress was adjourning following Bush v. Gore.  This measure deregulated energy futures trading, enabling Enron and legitimating credit-default swaps, and creating a massive vector for the transmission of financial risk throughout the global system. 

Third, a policy.  This was the abandonment of state responsibility for financial regulation: the regulation of mortgage originations, of underwriting, and of securitization.  This abandonment was not subtle: The first head of the Office of Thrift Supervision in the George W. Bush administration came to a press conference on one occasion with a stack of copies of the Federal Register and a chainsaw. A chainsaw. The message was clear.  And it led to the explosion of liars’ loans, neutron loans (which destroy people but leave buildings intact), and toxic waste.  That these were terms of art in finance tells you what you need to know.

The consequence of tolerating this and like behavior is a collapse of trust, a collapse of asset values, and a collapse of the financial system.  That is what has happened, and what we have to deal with now.

James K. Galbraith, Causes of the Crisis, The Texas Observer, May 1, 2009

"Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator.  If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you’ll get.  A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous.

Greenspan presided over not one but two financial bubbles.  After the high-tech bubble popped, in 2000–2001, he helped inflate the housing bubble.  [Yellen and Powell from the Fed for the hat trick bubble three, ongoing. - Jesse]

The administration talked about confidence building, but what it delivered was actually a confidence trick.  If the administration had really wanted to restore confidence in the financial system, it would have begun by addressing the underlying problems—the flawed incentive structures and the inadequate regulatory system."

Jesse, Five Critical Decisions Leading to Our Financial Crisis: Joe Stiglitz Presents His Analysis

hat trick, noun, three achievements of the same kind, especially within a limited period of time (orig. game of cricket)

Stocks moved higher today.

The Dollar rose a bit.

Gold and silver rallied.

The VIX fell.

Besides earnings reports it is likely that the Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday, and the data that leads up to it, are likely to be short term market movers.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great Falling Away

 

"The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the Kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. 

The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy.  But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. 

The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit.  But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit.”

Matthew 13:18-23

"The Lord requires you to act justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8

"Why do you not understand what I am saying?  It is because you cannot bear to hear my words.  You are from your father, the devil, and you willfully carry out your father’s desires.   He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand with the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks in accord with his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:43-44

"Why do you dwell on the splinter in your brother's eye, while failing to see the plank in your own?"

Luke 6:41


How many are eager to rant about the splinters of weakness, addiction, and foolishness in others, and to ignore the planks of greed and hatred and scandalous provocations to anger in their own.

If you have strangled the seed of love in your hearts, you no longer serve the Lord.

You have chosen the door of justice for others, and thereby chosen it as a measure for yourself, rather than the door of His mercy.

Stocks bounced back, after the hammering they had taken yesterday.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Gold and silver bounced back as well.

The Dollar gave back some of its recent gains.

Non-Farm Payrolls report coming up next Friday.

Have a pleasant weekend.