Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Eyeless in Gaza - In the Garden of Beasts

 

"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010

“As though you could use violent, unjust means and achieve peace and justice!  Means determine ends; and must be like the ends proposed.  Means intrinsically different from the ends proposed achieve ends like themselves, not like those they were meant to achieve.”

Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza, 1936

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellaniesm, 1897

"People do not wake up one morning and decide to become monsters that will be reviled by all civilized people throughout history.  They go down that path one small step at a time, one seemingly harmless and practical decision after another.  They are being reasonable, practical, realistic— merely repeating the stories and slogans that 'everyone knows.'  We live in a truly cynical age."

Jesse, It Can't Happen Here: Pride, Power, Exceptionalism, 8 May 2017

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow."

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

"Be not deceived, for God is not mocked.  Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.   If you sow to your flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.   So let us not grow weary of doing what is right, for at the harvest time we will reap, if we do not lose heart."

Galatians 6:7-9

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

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952


As the Roman satirist Juvenal once asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Who will guard the guardians?

Who will dare to judge those who have declared themselves to be the judges of the world? 

The madness serves none but itself.

Stocks were lackluster today, with the SP unchanged and the Nasdaq slightly lower.

Gold was off a bit, and silver rallied quite strongly this morning and gave back a chunk, but still finishing higher.

The Dollar was flat.

VIX popped higher, and held it.

CPI tomorrow.   It *might* move the markets.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Furious and Subtle Contagion

 

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1999

"In all these instances the large multinational bankers were actively supporting both sides.  It is a shocking fact that both British and American banks continued to do business with the Nazis even after the War was well underway, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London."

BBC, Banking with Hitler

"The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 1997

"The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace.  This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world."

Thomas Merton, The Root of War, The Catholic Worker, October 1961

“A clique of US industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy.  I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.  Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.”

William E. Dodd, US Amabassador to Germany, 1933

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small.  It is nearly nil.  Perhaps this is inherent.  In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live.  To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

"You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted. You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you. And so you made yourselves into the Mamelukes of a man who carries on his head responsibility for a hundred thousand murders and who is the cause of the sorrow and the object of the curses of the whole of the world."

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947

Stocks continued moving higher todday.

VIX was mostly unchanged.

Gold declined but silver managed to hold its own.

And so we shuffle off into the weekend.

Have a pleasant one.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Time Is the Wake Up Call?

 

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whip their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy— then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.”

Hunter S. Thompson

“When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”

Timothy D. Snyder, On Tyranny

“When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution.   If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers?  By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

"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

"Where is dignified modesty and a firmness of virtue of any use, now that blasphemy is in power, and justice is ignored, and there is no law but lawlessness, and few make an effort to hold back the wrath of the gods?”

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

US Major General S. D. Butler, War Is a Racket
 
"Satan, who is the lord of this world, has blinded the minds of the fallen. They are unable to see the glorious light of the good news."

2 Corinthians 4:4

What is it going to take?

Lately I seem to sit back after watching the goings on, and ask myself, 'what is it going to take before people realize how absolutely bonkers they have become, and how badly they and their children are being used by the utter swine whom they admire and empower?

And this is certainly not limited to the States, not by a long shot.  It's an historic trend.

Well, that's a speculation for another day.   I am sure future historians will have something to say about it.

Stocks finished unchanged after another day of the old up and down.

The advance is broadening a bit as the high flyers are bumping up against the ludicrous valuations zone.

Gold was off a bit, while silver soared higher, taking back the big heat from earlier in the week.

Wash - rinse - repeat.

VIX drifted lower.

The Dollar was largely unchanged.

Can you feel it coming?   Most cannot see it, but the tension on the tape is there, and the extravagant madness of the powerful is rapidly approaching the unsustainable.

Well as for me, I am basking in my new eyesight which is high def and unbelievably rich in color.

I made a blueberry pie for the young man last night.   For some reason blueberries here have been on sale and are delicious.  I have been having them with yogurt that I made, Icelandic skyr style.

Daisy and I abide.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.