Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Even If Someone Comes Back From the Dead

 

"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous.  More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.  The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it.  Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warrior-like virtue, love of country, and faith in an idea.  The aims of life are the best defense against death."

Primo Levi

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

"The ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves— the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them.  The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities."

Theodor Adorno

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

Voltaire

"And Jesus said, 'The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.  Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.  The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all who do evil.'"

Matthew 13:36-40

"We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him."

J. H. Newman

"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

The Jobs Report data this morning was a bit subdued, showing less employment than expected including downward revisions of past numbers.

Most of the adults had already left for their extended holiday weekend, so the market trade was light.

And apparently the word was out, to take the markets lower.

The Dollar soared on hawkish interest rate expections and gold and silver did a whipsaw retreat.

Wash-rinse-repeat.

US markets will be closed on Monday for Labor Day.  

And so nominally ends the summer time of vacation.  

Knowing the right thing to do is mostly obvious.   And so we spend an enormous amount of time and energy convincing ourselves that we do not see it.   Our love grows cold because we smother it.

"And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to come back from the dead.’” Luke 16:31

This is the insidious perversity of sin.   It is the foolishness that springs from pride, the impulse to reject life, and throw our own life away— for a quick thrill and a laugh and a lie.

It is no accident that the mob of January 6th embraced lawlessness with a carnival atmosphere.  And afterwards were stunned when confronted with the consequences of their foolishness.   

Many thought they were just worked up and fooling about, but in the end they were playing for blood—  for deceivers, wicked and unworthy.   It seems to be a recurring theme throughout history, of every twisted justification for a quick personal gain or even mass lawlessness and destruction. 

“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

Some of our finest people are doing it.  In certain circles it has become fashionable, a sign of sophistication, to lie and to cheat, and to mislead others into darkness.  

But people never seem to see the consequences of evil in their own case, until judgement comes, and they are done.

The read words like those above, nod in assent, and then forget and turn away again, in the unthinking service of dark powers.   They are enslaved, but do not see it, they become comfortable in it, and seek to spread it to those who trust and believe in them.

See you Tuesday.

Remember me in your prayers, as I remember you.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

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.