Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - You Who Murder the Prophets and the Innocent

 

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder the prophets and abuse those whom God has sent to you as messengers.  As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command— but it is made desolate.”

Matthew 23:37-38

"During the years of the Weimar Republic Carl von Ossietzky's political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society. He was convicted in 1931 of revealing state secrets, the illegal German militarization, and served 18 months in prison. He was released in 1932. Ossietzky continued to be a constant warning voice against militarism and Nazism when, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor and the Nazi dictatorship began.

On 28 February 1933, after the Reichstag fire, he was taken by the police and held without trial in Spandau prison.  He was detained afterwards at the concentration camp KZ Esterwegen near Oldenburg. He was visited while in the camp by Swiss historian Carl Jacob Burkhardt, as a representative of the International Red Cross.  Burkhardt described Ossietzky as 'a deadly pale broken creature, who seemed numb, with one eye swollen over, and his teeth broken.'"

Jesse, In memory of Journalist Carl von Ossietzky, 16 June 2012

"Tell my friends that I have come to the end.  I hear my wife tried to visit me.  We cannot speak to the conscience of the world when our own conscience is asleep. 

I only wanted peace."

Carl von Ossietzky, German Journalist, winner in absentia of 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, died after a long brutal imprisonment on 4 May 1938

"Only one who spent the years following the First World War in Germany can fully understand how hard a battle it was that a man like Ossietzky had to fight.  He knew that the tradition of his countrymen, bent on violence and war, had not lost its power.  He knew how difficult, thankless and dangerous a task it was. to preach sanity and justice to his countrymen who had been hardened by a rough fate and demoralizing influence of a long war.  In their blindness they repaid him in hatred, persecution and slow destruction; to heed him and to act accordingly would have meant their salvation and would have been a true relief for the whole world.  It will be to the eternal fame of the Nobel Foundation that it bestowed its high honor to this humble martyr and that it is resolved to keep alive the memory of his work."

Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years, 1956

"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

Stocks wobbled today.

Gold rallied, as the Dollar fell.

Silver moved lower with equities.

VIX rose.

Earnings may dominate the stock market action, with tech and the miners reporting results this week.

It is hard to believe some of the things that are happening, even if one forecasted them, and anticipated them.  What are we becoming?

The moral cowardice of the West is, once again, our shame.

"But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc

 Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Rough Seas Ahead, Mateys

 

"I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder.  I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that."

Captain Edward John Smith, RMS Titanic

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.  These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance.  But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."

Demosthenes

"Monetary and regulatory policy encourage asset bubbles to proliferate.  Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk. Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.   The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention. The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed."

Jesse 5 August 2019, The Men Who Sold the World

“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you may be certain that her desolation is near.  Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are within the city must escape from its boundaries, and those who are in country areas must not return.  For those will be days of retribution when all that is written will come to pass."

Luke 21:21-22

"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues."

Albert Camus, The Plague


Stocks went out near the lows. 

The Dollar was flat.

VIX is on a coffee break.

Gold and silver rallied.  Silver is feisty.

PPI came in hot today but stocks failed to rally with the good 'bad news.'

Markets closed on Monday for President's Day. 

Why so serious?

Have a pleasant weekend.

Fed's Economic Outlook: Steady as She Goes

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Royal Death Pits of Ur

 

"What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path.  You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty.  You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth.  I don't want to understand you.”

Anton Chekhov, The Bet

"You who make wicked judgements, who write oppressive laws, to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor of their rights, that widows may be your victims, and that you may make the orphans your prey— what will you do on the day of reckoning, when the consequences come from afar? To whom will you run for protection, and where will you hide your wealth?"

Isaiah 10:1-3

“In progressive societies the concentration [of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”

Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

“You felt secure in your wickedness. ‘No one sees what I do,’ you think. But your ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ have led you astray. And you so believe that, ‘I am the only one, and no one else matters.’ Disaster will overtake you, and you won’t be able to charm it away. Misfortune will descend upon you, and you won’t be able to buy your way out. A catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one for which you cannot prepare."

Isaiah 47:10-11

 

Our bi-polar market mavens managed to be cheered by the less than robust economic numbers this morning, easing their fears of the restrictive rates of the Fed.

What a surprise.

Stocks went out near their highs.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver rallied.

VIX fell.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Tomorrow will be the stock option expiration.

We are heading into a three day weekend here in the States, with Monday being a holiday in remembrance of the Presidents.

Have a pleasant evening.