Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In Lost Carcosa

 

"The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect— this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth― a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”

Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow

“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

Tacitus, Annals

"Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."

White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich 1942

"And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all."

Tacitus, Histories: Book I, XXVIII, The Murder of Galba

"By your stubbornness and hardened heart you are storing up wrath for yourself for the day of the just judgment of God, who will repay everyone according to their works."

Romans 2:5-6

"This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle."

Rust Cohle, True Detective: Season One

"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Plunder, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

 

This morning our mighty debts market mechanism was pricing in a 50% chance of a Fed rate cut in March.

The equity markets were slavering in a corner somewhere.

But after the Fed acted, and Powell spoke, alas, rude reality once again intruded on their fever dreams.

The plaintive whining of aggrieved disappointment from our privileged Wall Street masters was so loud it sounded like a rally for you-know-who. 

Hey, those Fed insider trading accounts need some love too.

The Dollar did a slingshot higher, and ended up with a bit of a gain for the day.

Gold and silver moved lower.

VIX rose.

Wash-rinse-repeat.

Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Step by Step Into the Abyss - The Will to Power

 

"The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.   It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

"Words can be like tiny bits of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed and seem to have no effect, but after a while the toxic effect is there."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End: 1933-1945

"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir

“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

The totalitarian doctrine of the state thus satisfied the various traditional partisans of German reaction: university professors, bureaucrats, army officers, and big industrialists. It was also acceptable to the western world in general.  Totalitarianism also served the practical needs of the moment.   The situation was difficult and Hitler was prompt to use the weapon of the totalitarian doctrine.   The revolution was to proceed in an orderly fashion—in so far as property, the civil service, and the army were concerned."

Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure And Practice Of National Socialism 1933-1944

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas 

"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, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900

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

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1943


One of the hallmarks of the 1930s and the lead up to war was the rise of unprincipled, autocratic leaders who, with the support an influential and ambitious professional class and wealthy patrons, were able to energize the discontent and fears of the public into hate and anger, dehumanizing and desensitizing them, gradually bending them in submission to their will.   

And so the common people of several nations were led step by step into the abyss.

They succeed in part because the average person cannot even begin to comprehend their callous disregard for others, the egoistic certitude of their evil, and the psychopathic pathology of their shamelessness.

Stocks faltered today.   The mispricing of risk, so heavily stoked over the past few months, shook on its tenuous foundations today.

Gold rose, while the Dollar fell.

Tech earnings are coming out this week. 

FOMC tomorrow.   Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

It is hard not to disappoint when expectations are priced to fantasy. 

But sometimes fantasy is actively encouraged, and dissent systematically suppressed, when it supports the shameful ambitions of the wealthy and  powerful.

Have a pleasant evening.

"In the middle of this square on 10 May 1933 National Socialist students burned the works of hundreds of freelance writers, publicists, philosophers and scientists."

Memorial Plaque, Bebelplatz, Berlin

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Idylls of Azrael

 

"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to instruments.

One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father.  Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.   Get away from me, you who practice lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:21-23

"You snakes, you brood of vipers.   How can you speak goodness when you are evil?  From the depths of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good bring forth goodness from their reserves of good, and the evil bring forth evil, from the depths of their treasures wrought in evil."

Matthew 12:34-35

“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.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.   We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case."

John Henry Newman

"The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.  It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.  The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."

Dorothy Day

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.  People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up to the very day Noah entered the ark.  Then the flood came, and swept them all away."

Luke 17:26-27

"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8

When people get angry and fall into a prevailing hysteria, they start believing and doing some remarkably foolish and self-destructive things to those around them, their families, and ultimately to themselves.

The message of the gospel is simple, clear, and straightforward.

But the word that has been planted in most is suffocated by the worries of the world, and seduced by wealth.

God does not need us to assert His justice, for we are not just, or to uphold his righteousness, for we are not righteous.

What we tend to be is proud, posturing, and presumptuous.

The only way to remain standing in this madness is to remember that God has called us to love.

But we make His calling disputatious and complex, because the evil in us loves to hide the light with complexity.

It is a way to blind our eyes and harden our hearts against the words of life.  It is the leaven of the Pharisees.

If the wages of sin are death, there are a few jokers on the world stage acting like they want us to get paid, sooner rather than later.

Stocks rallied hard into the close.

Gold and silver also drove higher.

VIX started out higher and then fell sharply.

Gold continues to leave the Hong Kong warehouses, as gold flows from West to East. 

I will be having a surgery done on my left eye at the end of the week.  Hopefully it will go much better than the right eye.  But I may be out of pocket.

My positions are fairly light in anticipation of being preoccupied during the FOMC on Wednesday and the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.