Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Barbarians in the Kitchen - History Will Not Absolve Us

 

Banking today is like playing Russian roulette— with someone else’s head.   With rewards often far outweighing the risks, the sense of responsibility has vanished.   There is a system that pushes you to take risks and a culture that shames anyone who admits errors or weakness.  Nobody ever challenges the front office.  You become part of the fabric of the place.  Then they dispose of you.

Joris Luyendijk, Swimming with Sharks, 2015

"When a society fails to restrain the worst behaviours of those who prey on others through the abuse of power or money, their example brings out the worst in a much larger subset of the population.  Bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour, and those who profit by it find ways to justify this through self-serving social and political theories.  People who have this weakness in their character are naturally attracted to high profile positions of power.  Psychopaths breed and nurture sociopaths, imitators who are able to extinguish their own empathy and remorse through ideology and excess."

Jesse, Without Empathy or Remorse, 13 August 2016

"The barbarian will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.  We sit by and watch the barbarian. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other, 1912

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1971


Soft corruption is growing ever brazen, and pervades the corridors of power in the US.

Ignoring these things gives rise to vocal groups who will use it as an excuse for almost anything, any crime, betrayals, greed, cowardice, and eventually murder, in those public figures that flatter them and fatten their wallet.   

The events of this young century confirm this.   History suggests that is the way to national madness.

I am not sure where we're going, but we're on our way.

Stocks were hammered again today.

The VIX has climbed back up out of the doldrums.

Silver did a moon shot rally, and although beaten back from the highs, still managed to pull out a decent bounce back.

Gold struggled again although some of the miners were showing some life.  Hedges still on.

The Dollar chopped sideways for a slight loss.  How about that?

I hear there will be a stock index option expiration tomorrow.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The Kansas City Fed will be hosting their annual soirée in Jackson Hole on August 24^th.

I wonder if they will have a Sports Book in addition to a bucket shop stock board and big screen ticker?

We are coming up on the 60^th anniversary of the political assassinations in the 1960s and the advent of endless war that changed the course of American history.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Malignant Narcissism of the Plutocracy

 

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it.  Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and the systems that helped them achieve their status."

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 2016

"Our plutocracy now lives like the British did in colonial India:  ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State, 5 January 2016

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society.  Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia chase wealth and power, and the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011

"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."

E. A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010

"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked.  And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.  That’s what I have a problem with.  And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012


Happy Hunger Games!  And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Stocks tried to rally it up into the green today but alas, they were hammered right down into the close.

The VIX rose.

Yields on Treasuries rose.

This provided some lift for the Dollar.

Gold and silver were sold, right down into the close.

Stock option expiration on Friday.

As Rutger Bregman observed, the Machiavellis have the ultimate secret weapon: they’re shameless.

Wash rinse repeat.

Works just as well for politics as in finance, as long as most people are sleep-walking amnesiacs.

How come no one is talking about blockchain anymore?   Now its AI, all the time.  What will they think of next. 

It will be interesting to see if a US President can run the country from a jail cell.  It worked for Lucky Luciano. 

On a positive note, the sunglasses they give to eye surgery patients are pretty snappy these days.  A heck of a lot better than the boxy pair of plastic punchouts that my father-in-law was sporting.

Great success.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gilded Lilies of the Abyss

 

"On television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment.  Everything that makes religion an historic, profound, sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence.   I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether."

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home."

Gore Vidal, Cue the Green God, Ted, The Nation, 1989

“There is nothing so threatening to systemic evil as those willing to stand against it regardless of the consequences.”

James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

"Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger; they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive.  The war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be with the coming of the Son of Man.  People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up until the very day that Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came, and swept them all away.”

Luke 17:26-27


It is easier to repeat slogans that are heard day after day from the well-funded voices of the powers-that-be than it is to take an independent stand for righteousness.  

And it is much easier to bully and abuse the weak, and puff up your pride, than to be a faithful child of God, and maybe even a hero. 

There is a precedent as we may recall.

Be careful where you take a stand, because you may not like with whom you are standing when the music finally stops, and the fat lady screams.

The retail sales numbers came in much stronger than expected this morning.

Overnight the People's Bank of China cut their interest rate 15 bp to 2.5%.

Stocks sold off broadly, for the first 90% down day of SP stocks since April of this year.

Volumes were still a bit light for such a sell-off, but not for our pearl-clutching drama queens. 

Weren't the spokemodels talking up the need for getting in on this big rally last week?

Uh-huh.  Yeah buddy.

The Dollar just chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were off a bit after an initial vigorous sell off.

The VIX rose.

My read on this turns an eye [I still have one that works] towards the stock index option expiration on Friday.

And that same read caused me to put an even bigger hedge on my long positions yesterday afternoon.

I did not take any of those hedges off, and stocks went out on the lows.

Smells like teen spirit.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Have a pleasant evening.