Stocks and Precious Metals Charts -- The Rule of the Forsaken

 

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife - is sure to be noticed.”

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

“'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

"It was pride that changed angels into devils; and it is humility that makes men angels. There never has been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.”

Augustine of Hippo

“Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.”

G. K. Chesterton

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. They will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

 We are frightened by the strength of evil, and the weakness of men.

"Quo vadis, Domine?"

Our masters of the universe apparently discovered their chronic mispricing of risks today, and their reaction was swiftly self-serving.

In other words, we had yet another grand wash and rinse.

The CPI data, which is skewed by the way in which it accounts for housing, as compared to the Fed's favorite measure the PCE, came in a bit high this morning.

And there it was.

Gold and silver sank, as the Dollar rocketed higher.

Finally the continued nagging of Jay Powell that the Fed would not be pivoting dramatically anytime soon was believed.

Stocks dropped like rocks, with all the wax winged demi-gods plunging back towards earth.

VIX rose dramatically.

I came in expecting something like this, but it was certainly impressive in its shamelessness. 

Markets seem to be mimicking our geopolitics in their ruthless destruction of the innocent.

We deserve better than this.  But we are not going to get it, anytime soon.

Crime in the land ruled by the forsaken pays, very well. 

Consequences are for those who believe in something besides their own exceptionalism.

And yet, despite everything, the people of God endure.

Tomorrow is another day.

Have a pleasant evening.

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.