Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - History Will Not Absolve Us

 

"Acts that are wrong in themselves can be expected to have bad effects of a particular kind that is not just accidental.  Their badness follows from what is wrong in the act itself, so that there is a rational, conceptual link between them and their results.  These consequences are a sign of what was wrong with the act in the first place.  Acts of lying or injustice are themselves expressions of disrespect and untrustworthiness, so they unavoidably call for more of the same.  Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."

Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By, 2003

“The world says: 'You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.' This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations.

Such damage is justified by its corporate perpetrators and their political abettors in the name of the 'free market' and 'free enterprise,' but this is a freedom that makes greed the dominant economic virtue, and it destroys the freedom of other people along with their communities and livelihoods.  We need to confront honestly the issue of scale.  Bigness has a charm and a drama that are seductive, especially to politicians and financiers; but bigness promotes greed, indifference, and damage, and often bigness is not necessary.  There are such things as economic weapons of massive destruction. We have allowed them to be used against us, not just by public submission and regulatory malfeasance, but also by public subsidies, incentives, and sufferances impossible to justify."

Wendell Berry, Compromise, Hell!, September 30, 2004


The ECB hiked its key interest rate by 25 bp to 4% this morning.

Retail sales and PPI came in stronger than expected, boosting the US Dollar.

But nonetheless stocks rallied, on the familiar refrain of 'soft landings.'

The spokesmodels were gibbering the usual bullish songs of selective dissonance.

Did I mention that there is a quad witch option expiration tomorrow?

Wash, rinse, repeat.

This November we will be remembering the 60^th anniversary of the first of the assassinations that set the stage for the decline of the American Republic.

The Latest Declassified Evidence on the Assassination of JFK

How easily we close our unfeeling eyes and forget, drifting senselessly with the tides.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Phantoms and Shadows

 

"For now we see through a glass, darkly— but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known."

1 Corinthians 13:12

"The one desire which should move us should be, first of all, that of seeing Him face to face, who is now hid from us; and next of enjoying eternal and direct communion, in and through Him, with our friends around us, whom at present we know only through precarious and partial channels, which give us little insight into their hearts.

These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world.  To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God."

John Henry Newman, The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life, 23 Oct 1836

"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.  The devil is no fool.  He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell.  He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin.  And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows."

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

"In the famous simile of the cave Plato compares men to prisoners in a cave who are bound and can look in only one direction. They have a fire behind them and see on a wall the shadows of themselves and of objects behind them. Since they see nothing but the shadows, they regard those shadows as real and are not aware of the objects. Finally one of the prisoners escapes and comes from the cave into the light of the sun.

For the first time he sees real things and realises that he had been deceived hitherto by the shadows. For the first time he knows the truth and thinks only with sorrow of his long life in the darkness. The real philosopher is the prisoner who has escaped from the cave into the light of truth, he is the one who possesses real knowledge. This immediate connection with truth or, we may in the Christian sense say, with God is the new reality."

Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.   
Out of the images and the shadows into the truth.

John Henry Newman, Epitaph, 1890

There will be a quarterly quad witch option expiration this Friday.

Stocks rallied.

VIX fell.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were hit.

Just another day in the phantoms and shadows of the fallen republic.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Unconditional Surrender

 

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society.  Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.  These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. 

As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.  In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home.  The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in 'a distant country.'  It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

"The most noble repentance, if a fallen being can be noble in his fall, the most decorous conduct in a conscious sinner, is an unconditional surrender of himself to God—not a bargaining about terms, not a scheming to be received back again, but an instant surrender of himself in the first instance.  He is a runaway offender; he must come back, as a very first step, he is a rebel, and must lay down his arms.

Such must be Christian repentance: First we must set out firmly towards God, not knowing for certain that we shall be forgiven.  Still, for our repentance to be Christian, there must be in it that generous temper of self-surrender, the acknowledgment that we are unworthy to be called any more His sons, the abstinence from all ambitious hopes of sitting on His right hand or His left, and the willingness to bear the heavy yoke of servants, if He should put it upon us."

John Henry Newman, Christian Repentance

There will be a major stock option expiration on Friday.

Disappointments from Oracle and Apple helped lead the tech sector lower.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were hit early and hard, because they can.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Have a pleasant evening.