Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Götterdämmerung - Variations on a National Madness

 

"On April 11th 1945, as the Red Army fast-approached Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic gave what might have been its last concert before the end of the war. Albert Speer, who had intervened to save members of the Orchestra from their senseless drafting into the Volksturm, organized a final concert, entitled Konzert für Minister Speer in the Berlin Beethoven Hall, still curiously standing amidst the city’s rubble.

According to most sources as well as popular myth, Speer engineered a move for the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic to the relative peace of Bayreuth, but they chose to remain with their Berliner audiences until the end of the war.  The Orchestra’s final concerts were given in candlelight, under bombing and with Hitler Jugend children offering the exiting members of the audience cyanide capsules for private use, adding to the tragic and conclusive atmosphere of the whole affair.

The people of Berlin, suffering greatly as they were in those last months of the war, might have found the lush Wagnerian orchestral landscape extremely poignant in the face of defeat and the accompanying humiliation, pillaging and rape which they feared it would bring.

The Orchestra went on to give two more concerts, in which the main works were – fittingly – the Deutsches Requiem by J. Brahms and Tod und Verklärung by J. Strauss.  It becomes quite clear from the choice of repertoire that the Orchestra was now playing a funeral march for the entire nation.  This neurosis of being unable to see an alternative future in which the German nation might exist outside of final victory, is best reflected at the infanticide that took place in the bunker by Magda Goebbels.

According to Traudl Junge the Goebbels’ children sang for Hitler, who was very pleased to hear their song. This innocent choir of young voices was soon murdered by its very mother, in the bunker, just before the mother herself committed suicide.  There is no academic phrasing suitable enough to describe the incomprehensibility of how mankind can achieve this nonsense, especially at this high level of leadership."

Panayiotis Demopoulos, Götterdämmerung: Suicide Music and the National Self

"Upon her recent passing at the age of 76, I took the opportunity to reread Bubby's memoirs. In four different instances, my grandmother had stood—amid the smoke of the crematoriums, the barking dogs, the trampling boots and swinging clubs—on the infamous selection line at the head of which Mengele and his minions stood, pointing left and right, sentencing some to back-breaking labor, and sending others to the gas chambers.

Indeed, the miracles and the mysteries of the events of those days abound along with the horrors and the tragedies.  In contrast to the vile actions of the 'Angel of Death' were the noble and heroic actions of many 'Angels of Life' who stood ready to risk their own lives for the sake of saving that of a stranger.  It is thanks in no small part to 'angels' like these, who stepped out from behind their own misery and grief to come to the aid of others, that generations now live on to tell the story.  How clearly we see the infinite ripple effects of single acts of kindness and compassion, even if accomplished in a split second."

Yossi Refson, Angels of Light

"The real conflict is the inner conflict.  Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe


The German people had their music.   We have a confabulation of clickbait websites and talk radio. 

These cacophonies suffocate common sense and conscience, and drive national madness to a fiery abyss.  The will to victory and power becomes an overpowering will to die.

"And they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can stand against it?”     Rev. 13:4

They never believe it is even possible, until the Beast has fallen upon them, holding their throats in its merciless jaws.

"If there are damned souls in hell, it is because men blind themselves."   E. A. Bucchianeri

Stocks were mixed and sluggish today, going out flat or well off the highs.

The VIX continued to fall.  It is getting near the lower bound of recent support.

The Dollar rallied.

Gold and silver both lost ground.  The silver futures holders finally got their gut check.

Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow might move the markets depending on how off forecast it is, to the high or low.

This will be the last payrolls report until the FOMC meets again in September to manage their benchmark interest rate mischief.

Otherwise the adults have already started leaving for the upcoming three day Labor Day weekend.

Statistically September is one of the worst months for US equities.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Repentance, Forgiveness, Thankfulness

 

"The corruption that has become widely tolerated throughout the various upper strata of our society is shocking in its boldness.  And even more shocking is its general acceptability, and too often downright fashionability, among our elite in business and government, and their courtiers and partisans in the various professions.   And it provides a corrosive example and temptation to the public. 

The breaking of oaths is a serious transgression, and there will be an accounting for it, if not in this world then the next.  And sadly it is the partisanship, and the willing gullibility of simple souls given over to the wiles of a skillful persuasion to anger, and willfulness, and hatred, that permits the unscrupulous to prosper."

Jesse, Repentance and Forgiveness the Wellspring of Joy, 22 December 2017

“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Adam Smith

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction."

Simone Weil

"Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."

C. S. Lewis, 1944

 

Non-Farm Payrolls report this coming Friday may be a market mover.

It is not so much the report itself, but the implications it has to the actions of the Fed which have been distorting markets, back and forth, for the past 30 years.

Gold is often correlated to the US Dollar.  Especially if you are looking at the price of gold in Dollars, also known as the gold-dollar currency cross.

Some of the correlation is just the relationship of gold and the Dollar to other things, most likely the real interest rates of Treasuries.  But there certainly other factors.   I did some in depth work on this using multivariate regression analysis in the past.

I have tremendous sympathy for the ordinary person, especially the aged, who may not have the resources and support to navigate a truly fragmented and too often greedy, predatory healthcare system.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Damned for the World - Accomplice to Unimaginable Evil

 

“The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.  If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

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

“There are only two kinds of people in the end— those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945

"In the storm the tree strikes deeper roots in the soil; in the hurricane the inhabitants of the house abide within, and rejoice in its shelter.  So by suffering the Father would lead us to enter more deeply into the love of Christ.

Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself.  It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous.

Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."

Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace.  But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom.  The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3

"To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity.  What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'  To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or 'damned ghost' – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940

"The more a thing may disappoint them, the more it may be proven false, the more readily it is debunked and shown to be a falsehood, or even evil, the more strongly some will embrace it, as if by sacrificing their own integrity, and perhaps even their souls, for something so unworthy will silence the criticisms and redeem it. 

For to admit that the Reich was a lie, and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools, and Hitler an incompetent creature of evil would be to admit that one was wrong, a failure, and worse, had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil.  To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance.   And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess.

That, and a desire to become beasts, to lose themselves in their mindless fanaticism, and escape the pain of being men.  And so they struck out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkened souls, and showed them their pride was based on a lie.  Pride is the mother of all sin. This is the descent into hell.  This is the unwillingness to let go of the lie, for the sake of pride and its power, and cling to evil as it draws one into the abyss."

Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018


Stocks were cheered by the weaker than expected JOLTS jobs number this morning, taking it as a portent for the Non-Farm Payrolls number this Friday, and its potential implications for interest rates.

And so they rallied, going out near the highs.

In concert with the drop in Treasury yields the Dollar rather briskly and stayed there.

Gold and silver thereby rose, going out near the highs as well.

How quickly this new optimism can turn on a single number.

We will get the ADP employment number and the second estimate of GDP tomorrow morning.

The ADP number is often out of sync with the Non-Farm Payrolls so it is difficult to estimate how markets might react to a hit or miss.  However, they may take note of something of unexpected proportions, if for no other reason than a wash and rinse, if the market speculators are leaning one way or another.

Below is a piece based on Bonhoeffer's 'Theory of Stupidity.'   You may recall that when I quote it here I use 'foolishness' rather than 'stupidity.'   In English the two words signify a willful and voluntary impairment of intellect, or a natural lack of intellect respectively.   It seems that Bonhoeffer is referring to the former given the context of what he is writing and what was happening.  

A foolishness so profoundly stubborn that it damns itself into the abyss.  It's odd how history rhymes.

It is reminiscent of what G. K. Chesterton called 'national madness' in What Is Wrong With the World, written in 1910.

Fitting for us, in our time of hysteria, audacious oligarchy, exceptional arrogance, delusional meritocracy, and general willful goofiness.

Have a pleasant evening.