Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Privileged Few: Their Myths and Illusions

 

"'Gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’.  It inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

Myth seeks the ascent of man to spirit; the Word of God seeks descent into flesh and blood. Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness. Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding. The revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life. Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of The Incarnation, 180 AD

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3

“We who have so much to do seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking the light.”

Henri Nouwen, Advent Prayer

“The opposite of love is not hate, he said. It’s power. Relationships fueled by a drive for power, where one person seeks dominance over the other, are incapable of producing love.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshaling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it. This Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death.

John Henry Newman, 1890

"Some crazy numbers in here.  Big US Universities are really hedge funds with a side hustle in education. The gulf in pay between the fund managers and the Provost tells you everything you need to know."

Dr. James O'Leary, University College London, 2024


I never really understood until now why the President of Columbia just closed the university to all of their students and faculty. 

They are getting in the way of the university's real business— the serving of money and power. 

Stocks were off to the races today, squeezing the shorts and piling up those gains, going out near the highs.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX fell, as is suitable for a 'risk on' day.

Gold and silver were in rally mode, after the recent sell off into Friday's Non-Farm Payrolls support.

Wow, what a coincidence.

No real data coming out until Wednesday, although earnings reports are still coming in.

The 'very serious people' of the financial and political sectors were gathering for the Michael Milken Global Institute meeting in Beverly Hills.

The mask is really coming off these days, isn't it.  

You may have the privilege of seeing history in the making, as we have not seen for many, many years.

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."   Proverbs 11:2-3

You can forecast things, and fairly well, but when they come true, you still can't quite believe it.

It is hard to overestimate the hypocrisy and lack of decency of the privileged few.

This reminds me a lot of the 1960's.  But I think the music then was better.

And the times, they are a-changin'.  Again.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Principalities and Powers - In Service to the Unspeakable

 

“Our country’s cheerleaders are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalism.   But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us.  There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“The Dulles brothers were not intimidated by mere presidents. When President Franklin Roosevelt pushed through New Deal legislation to restrain the rampant greed and speculation that had brought the country to economic ruin, John Foster Dulles simply gathered his corporate clients in his Wall Street law office and urged them to defy the president. 'Do not comply,' he told them. 'Resist the law with all your might, and soon everything will be all right.'

Dulles undermined or betrayed every president he served in high office.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“During the Eisenhower administration, the Dulles brothers would finally be given full license to exercise their power in the global arena.  In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“What he confessed was this.  He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest.  These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words.  He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. 

'The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted.. . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power.  I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret.  But I was part of it and loved being in it.'

He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  'These men were the grand masters,'  he said.  'If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.'  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup.  'I guess I will see them there soon.'”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

“The opposite of love is not hate, he said. It’s power. Relationships fueled by a drive for power, where one person seeks dominance over the other, are incapable of producing love.”

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in light today.

And stocks and risk assets were cheered by this, and a sustained rally ensued.

Gold and silver were softer as safe havens were tossed aside, but managed to recoup most of their losses.

VIX plummeted as one might expect.

And so we go into the weekend, dancing on a volcano.

If you have never read David Talbot's book you may wish to have a look, or at least watch one of his talks on the subject of the darker corners of the world, where the servants of the unspeakable act in secret.

You will only remain standing in what is coming with His love.   For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fashionable Habits of the Plutocracy

 

"Tyranny becomes a habit, and scenes of suffering, often repeated, render the heart callous. We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”

Lydia Maria Child, 1861

"Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race?  Hardly anyone thinks about that.   It is accepted as fact and put out of mind.  The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal lack of conscience from which they will never, never awake?  It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims.  He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this 'government' which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.  On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.  One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.  True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.  It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.' 

Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice.  Sometimes it means being frustrated.  When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart.  Sometimes it means losing a job— means being abused and scorned.  And I've long since learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ means taking up the cross."

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, April 30, 1967

Why do we have this current state of 'forever war' that has become the norm for the past 40 years or so?  Why are we seeing this violent and hysterical assault on freedom of speech and peaceful protests, not only the most recent examples, but going back to the brutal, bipartisan repression of the Occupy Wall Street moment?

These are the trappings of the industrial-security state, of the lawless plutocracy which now dominates our professional and political class so thoroughly.  

It has not been this bad since the military-industrial complex started persecuting people and murdering key public figures in the 1960's, in order to firmly establish and perpetuate the cold war, and global covert wars of regime change and repression.

This is not sustainable.   The winds of change are gathering strength.  And the powerful few are afraid.

Stocks were under a bit of pressure early on, but found their footing and rallied into the close.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver were under pressure recovered into the close, with silver showing its usual resiliency.  

The demands for silver in high tech industrial applications are fueling increased use of bullion.  And the central banks and the paper constructs of the Banks cannot substitute leverage for the metal in use.

But this is all prelude, to the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow.

“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.”

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1928

Babylon, Babylon.  What are we becoming?

Have a pleasant evening.