Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brothers, Blinded By Sin, What Are We Becoming?

 

"You shall not offer children as a sacrifice to the fires of Moloch, and profane the name of your Lord."

Leviticus 18:21

“It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.  Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority, they don't dare to assert themselves.”

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast.  And they worshiped the Serpent for giving such power to him.  'Who is as great as the Beast?' they exclaimed. 'And who is able to resist him?'   And the Beast was allowed to commit great blasphemies against God."

Revelation 13:3-5

"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening.  Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.  Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates.  The truth is, no one really possesses it."

Simone Weil

"Therefore they shall eat the bitter fruit of their ways, and be gutted by their own schemes.  For the foolish turn away from me—to death.  For fools are destroyed by their pride and self-satisfaction.”

Proverbs 1:31-33

"Genocide has been defined as intentional killing by government of people because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or other indelible group membership.  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, Death By Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, 1994

The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’  But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:31

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

C. S. Lewis
 

Stocks were cheered by the relatively benign inflation numbers this morning.

The major indices rallied, and went out near the highs.

VIX fell back again to the 50 DMA.

Gold and silver rallied back a bit.

The Dollar was flat.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Flagrant Evils, Days of Wrath

 

"Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant."

John Henry Newman

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction."

Simone Weil

"Because of your hard and unrepentant hearts you store up wrath for the Day of the righteous judgment of God, who will render then to each according to what they have done."

Romans 2:5-6

"Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself. Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."

Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895

"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."

Václav Havel, Letter to Alexander Dubček, August 1969

"When God will chastise a man, He first of all deprives him of his reason. It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Stocks wobbled lower, and finished near the lows.

Gold bounced a little.  Silver had a dip and then recovered.

Wash and rinse.

VIX is supine.

PCE tomorrow may move the markets.

In foolish pride God's people turn away from His laws.  

They silence His faithful, and their messengers.

His judgement does not sleep forever, and in smoldering wrath bursts forth.

And so it has been, is now, and will be so again.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Charts - Exceptionalism: Daughter of Pride and Delusion

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?  Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'  The answer is, you're doing it.  Right now."

Aaron Bushnell

"They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into hell."

Job 21:13

"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control.  As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

Now the end is at hand.  Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system.  When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when 'it is in the air,' when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off.  After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, March 1942

"I wonder whether people who ask God to intervene openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it or not."

C. S. Lewis 1944

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'get by.'  The ordinary men who just want to be left in peace.  Those who don’t want their lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves.  Those with no sides and no causes.  Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness.  Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies.  Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature.  Those who live small, love small, die small. 

But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe.  Safe?!  From what?  Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. 

I choose my own way to burn.”

Sophie Scholl


US airman Aaron Bushnell, who recently and quite literally chose his own way to burn, asked this question, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?  Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' 

To this one might add, 'What would I do if I was alive during the time of the Antichrist?'

C. S. Lewis made a poignant observation about this in his 1944 observations which were published as a book, Mere Christianity.

"I wonder whether people who ask God to intervene openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it or not."

And many will play their sure thing and cry out on that day, Lord, Lord!  And we have been told what his response will be, depending on who we have followed, and what we have done. 

Exceptionalism.  The daughter of Pride and delusion.  

A sure fire way to reorder our priorities, to achieve the maximum amount of damage and regret.

Oh please, Jesse.  Don't start talking now about the end of time.  That's just a fairy tale.

And one might retort, 'Point taken.  But what about the end of your time?'  Timing aside, that seems like a sure thing.

Stocks managed to hold a bounce today ahead of the incoming economic data for the rest of the week.

Gold and silver took a little hit, very traditional for the day after a Comex option expiration, even a very quiet one.

VIX has now fallen down to its 50 day moving average.

The Dollar was flat.

Let's see what happens, and where we may be going.

Quo vadis, Domine?

Have a pleasant evening.