Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - La Grandeur Mystérieuse - Payrolls Report on Friday

 

"I get tired of the darkness all around me.  The darkness itself seems to borrow, from the sinners who live in it, the gift of their speech.  I hear its mocking accents.

Oh, what mysteries will be revealed to us later.  How often have I thought that I perhaps owe all the graces showered upon me to the earnest prayers of a little soul whom I shall know only in Heaven.  It is God's will that in this world by means of prayer heavenly treasures should be imparted by souls one to another, so that when they reach their home with the Father they may love one another with a love born of gratitude, with an affection far, far exceeding the most ideal family affection upon earth.  

There we shall meet with no indifferent looks, because all the saints will be indebted to each other.  No envious glances will be seen; the happiness of every one of the saved will be the happiness of all.  Just as the members of a family are proud of one another, so shall we be of our family, without the least jealousy.  Who knows even if the joy we shall experience in beholding the glory of the great Saints, and knowing that by a secret disposition of Providence we have contributed to it, who knows if this joy will not be as intense and sweeter perhaps, than the happiness they will themselves possess.  How I long to dwell in that Kingdom of Love."

Thérèse de Lisieux

"'Who are these people, all dressed in white robes, and where have they come from?' I replied, 'My lord, you are the one who knows.' Then he said to me, 'These are the ones who have survived the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

Revelation 7:13-14

"We all end up serving something or someone, even if it is only ourselves.   And we become defined by what we serve.   Anyone can become a hero or a saint— not flawless, but faltering, not perfect, but persevering, not proud but pushing forward often in fear and trembling, not losing their own way but following the light of righteousness and goodness, even while stumbling and going forward again.   Because everyone can serve, and serve well, if they choose something lasting and worthy."

Jesse, Heroes and Saints, 18 January 2015

"Do you not know that to whom you give yourselves as servants, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?"

Rom 6:16

"In the end the only real tragedy is not to be a saint."

Léon Bloy, La femme pauvre, 1897

The Fed had their interest rate FOMC meeting announcement today. 

They didn't do anything.

Jay Powell had his usual press conference.

He didn't say anything significant.

Markets rallied, taking the VIX back down to the 50 day moving average, which has been a lower bound for the wash and rinse cycle lately.

The Dollar chopped widely but finished unchanged.

Gold was hit and stayed a bit on the low end.

Silver had a wide ranging day with a deep dip lower, but finished unchanged.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Wall Street has forgotten for now about the chaos the West is engendering abroad.

A banquet of consequences awaits.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Into the Storm

 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.  To advertise on a scale which will reach fifty million persons is expensive.  To reach and persuade the group leaders who dictate the public’s thoughts and actions is likewise expensive.

So vast are the numbers of minds which can be regimented, and so tenacious are they when regimented, that a group at times offers an irresistible pressure before which legislators, editors, and teachers are helpless.   It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind."

Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Garry Kasparov

"Many will become addicted to hateful and malicious thoughts and hateful words. Slaves to their desires, they will be ferocious, angry despisers of what is good and right.   With brutal treachery they will act without restraint, bigoted and blinded by clouds of conceit.  They will demand and find their delight in the pleasures of this world, and ignore their need to serve God.  They may act religious, but they want to serve themselves."

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Is was another 'risk-off' day, or more properly, a 'risk doesn't matter' day.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar rose on expectations of a hawkish Fed.

Stocks rose.

Gold and silver were punched fairly hard.

Tomorrow must be an FOMC day.

The US financial sector is the eye of the storm, the very heart of darkness.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Hurricane of Madness

 

"But in truth the whole course of Christianity from the first, when we come to examine it, is but one series of troubles and disorders.  Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.  The Church is ever ailing, and lingers on in weakness.  Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of Truth dim, its adherents scattered.  The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony, as though it were but a question of time whether it fails finally this day or another.

How long will this mystery proceed?   How long will this perishing world be sustained by the feeble lights which struggle for existence in its unhealthy atmosphere?  God alone knows the day and the hour when that will at length be, which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto,—not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion."

John Henry Newman

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.   Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.   Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening.  Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil

"When the business-sharper is the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation; when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the highwayman or burglar — when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.

A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined.  A mob, a moneyed class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other, and hated by the rest of the world; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, wholesale luxury, and monstrous vice.  The hour for reform was surely come.  Who was to be the man?"

A.H. Beesley, The Gracchi Marius and Sulla, 1921

 

The hour for reform has also come to another of the world's unipolar empires it seems.

Who will be the person to effect the reform this time?

Not a soul on the horizon that this political independent can see.

The Republicans have long sold their souls, and the Democrats are happy playing the 'lesser of two evils' while not letting much get in the way of their personal business of getting richer.

It was 'forget about the looming risk' today on Wall Street, also known as a wash in the now familiar wash and rinse cycle of greed and fear.

The Dollar, VIX, and gold all fell.

Silver managed to sustain a rally along with stocks.  

The war in the Mideast is spreading and intensifying, with recalcitrance towards a peaceful resolution firmly set on both sides.

Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday, along with the usual distractions like the ADP and JOLTS reports along the way.

Be mindful of your souls, and of those you love.  For that is what this is all about— and not cheering on your favorite in this hurricane of madness.

Have a pleasant evening.