Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Who Could See It Coming

 

"The money of vested interests nullifies genuine voter choice and trust. The democracy gap in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the least worst every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the least worst gets worse.

We’re told that we’re a polarized society, right?   And, sure, there are differences between the Left and the Right over reproductive rights, school prayer, gun control, government regulation, and now, immigration.

That’s the way the ruling classes have manipulated people for more than two thousand years: divide and rule.  

The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door."

Ralph Nader, Crashing the Party, 2007

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil

"The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as 'western civilization,' they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.

Ever since the democratic systems permitted their various courts to give corporations the status of persons, the individual as citizen has been on the defensive. How could it be otherwise? If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is, after all, not a natural state.

It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree. Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you. Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it. Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism. Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet."

John Ralston Saul 

 

Quiet holiday trading with an upward bias, check.

Most of the adults already left for vacation, check.

Gold and silver bounced higher, as the Dollar declined, check.

The Fed heads are trying to dampen the misconceived story of rate cut heaven with a soft landing next year, and no one is listening, check.

Complacency reigns as multiple wars rage, check. 

Control frauds simmering through the financial districts, searching for greater fools, check.

Another Hobson's choice [the necessity of accepting one of two equally objectionable alternatives] on deck for the presidential election next year, check. 

A myopic, self-absorbed elite that cannot seem to see anything other than winning, check.

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Who could have seen it coming.

If we are not too busy with ourselves, fighting and kicking and knocking down the other guy to get something we probably don't need, if we look in quiet places and in the little common but endearing things in life, and yes, even while in the midst of heartbreak and suffering, we can see glimpses of the face of God and his angels, and his loving kindness and tender mercies.

Love is moving, all around us.

Time to come home.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Let Them Live Again With Us in Love

 

"Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the shaking knees.  Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.   He will come with vengeance, with terrible judgement.  He will come and preserve you.’  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.   For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunts of jackals reeds and papyrus will grow."

Isaiah 35:3-7

"Christmas is more than a time of joy and gift-giving and receiving presents.   It is a time to recall our blessings and to gain strength in the grace of our friends and bosom of our families and loved ones.  And above all it is a time to remember that greatest, almost incomprehensible gift in all history, how our Lord made himself as us, as we are in our true selves, and came to us in the flesh, the incarnation of selfless love.

And thereby those who are no longer present in body at the Christmas hearth may still be there in spirit with us, as we will some day be with them.  Not bound up in crippling self-pity, not immobilized by faceless fear, not fleeting as a merely morose remembrance, but to be there vitally in our lives as our good angels, reminding us that the Christmas spirit is to be found, as Charles Dickens noted, in 'active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance.'

This is how we may not only honor and cherish their memory, but actually let them live again in love with us.  What greater gift could we possibly desire to receive, than the ability to do good, to persevere in love, and to thereby live in the love of those for whom we care and who care for us, always?  That gift is there, if only we will not shut the door of our hearts, and be open to it."

Jesse, 16 December 2015

Trading will be light this week as the adults have already left for their vacations, and the juniors are manning the helm.

I'd expect the markets to have a little upward bias, and chopping sideways, with an eye toward any exogenous events.

Valuations are rich and we are in a narrow bubble once again.

The walking back of Powell's somewhat misleading verbiage of last week by various Fed hjeads is not being taken up by the Street.  It's not in their year end script.

Gold and silver had a little bounce higher, as the Dollar chopped sideways.

The narrative for the course of the US economy and Fed actions next year is a risible fairy tale.

Unless something notable happens I will not be posting anything tomorrow night.  I have some obligations in the late afternoon.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Christmas Ceasefire of 1914 - The Mark of Cain

 

"Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches.

The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man's land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts. After Boxing Day, meetings in no man's land dwindled out.

The truce was not observed everywhere along the Western Front. Elsewhere the fighting continued and casualties did occur on Christmas Day. Some officers were unhappy at the truce and worried that it would undermine fighting spirit.  After 1914, the High Commands on both sides tried to prevent any truces on a similar scale happening again."

British Imperial War Museum, The True Story of the Christmas Truce

Even seemingly implacable foes, engaged in massive, bloody conflict, can pause from their deadly engagement and acknowledge their shared humanity, and honor the God whom they both worship, but in different languages and ways.  

And perhaps, even now, those engaged in deadly conflict might pause for a moment, at least, and stop the killing, and encouraging others to engage in senseless devastation, and feeding each other's children to Molech. 

And having paused to allow some relief and assistance to the wounded and homeless and captives,  and due respect and ceremony to the dead, may they turn back to the God of their fathers, and stop worshiping their profane idols of property, and hate, and worldly power. 

For this is the word of God.  And to harden your hearts against His ways, as the leaders of the great powers in 1914 had done, will bring on you and your children the curse of Cain, with all its madness and horrors, and years of devastation and sorrow.

'Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will destroy me.'

You who drink of the foulness of the cup of the darkness of this world know it, in your heart of hearts.  This madness serves none but itself.