Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Deceitful Children - One Vast Vision of Imbecility

 

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord. They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’, and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right. Tell us only the things that please us— prophesy illusions.

Isaiah 30:8-10

"It is important to observe that nowhere is it suggested that Dives' wealth is ill-gotten nor that Lazarus was his victim.   The sin of Dives is that, cushioned by his lavish life-style, he was simply oblivious to the presence of a beggar at his gate."

Wilfrid Harrington

"There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity.  The face still smiles while the limbs, literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the body.

These are peoples that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions.  When they give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start or stare at the monster they have brought forth.  They have grown used to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the breath of their nostrils. 

These nations are really in danger of going off their heads en masse; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility, with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with industrious lunatics.  One of these countries is modern England."

G.K. Chesterton, Miscellany of Men, 1912

"In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger, and is at best the object of pity.  The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success.  Success alone justifies wrongs done.

The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standard."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Behold the Man: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, 1998

"I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts."

John 5:41


Stocks paused in their meteoric rise higher.

As a reminder this is all leading up to the FOMC meeting next week, and expectations for a rate cut, or a signal that a rate cut will be forthcoming.

The VIX drifted lower.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver rallied higher, with silver taking back all the ground it had lost and then some.

There are moments in history, in the cycle of human events, when much is asked of us, and the time cries out for a broad and selfless vision, for wisdom and leadership.

And there are times when that call to greatness is answered carelessly, with a preoccupation for narrow ambitions and selfish desires, by frivolous and deceitful children. 

And so here we are. 

This is our history.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Devil Take the Hindmost

 

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression. And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way."

Charles H. Ferguson, Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis, The Guardian, 20 May 2012

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes."

Andrew Jackson, On the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

"This morning on another financial network, more directly beholden by Wall Street interests, Michael Lewis was interviewed, and it was the turn of the anchorpersons themselves to roll out the indignation on behalf of the industry that cuts their paychecks, and variously attack and parse the offending statement, 'the market is rigged.' They had a go at it, and then changed the subject.

But the same anchorperson who compared Wall Street traders to children, who cannot help themselves except to try and break mom's rules, took a different tack this morning. Today we heard that Wall Street traders have no moral imperative, no operative sense of right and wrong. That is, their only task is to make money in whatever way that is possible, even if it means cheating, lying, and even creating false opportunities to defraud other people.

A good trader suppresses any sense of morality and law, except as an obstacle to be overcome. When they cheat and steal it is the fault of the regulators, because they are not smart enough and fast enough to stop them. And these are the same people that we claim should therefore be self-regulating.

But the most shocking thing was that Michael Lewis agreed.

"I don’t regard high-frequency traders as villains. It is like blaming the lion for eating the antelope. They are wired that way. I think the system is screwed up to exploit opportunities, exploit glitches in the system. They’re not wired to say that this is moral or immoral; they aren’t wired to say is this good for the world. They don’t think that way.”

Ah the noble lions. Or perhaps more appropriately jackals, based on how they feed in the dark on the weak. Remember this the next time someone asks a financier for their recommendations on public policy and first principle social issues.

The irony of course is that this description is that of functional sociopaths at best, psychopaths at worst. They are 'wired' to seek self-gratification without regard to moral considerations, conscience, or consequences.

Rather than just saying the market is rigged, the anchors and Michael Lewis agree that the market is now founded on sociopathic behaviour, whose primary directive is to game the system and defraud the other market participants in the most clever ways that they can. Not by producing anything, not by contributing anything real to society, but by being very successful conmen. And all the parties nodded their heads in agreement.

Psychopathy is a medical condition, whereas sociopathy is a learned behavior that is often environmentally born. And it is therefore contagious. Psychopaths just have a natural advantage if they have no conscience or empathy to suppress. Willful moral blindness for selfish ends is an acquired skill, and the domain of the sociopath.

What a hell of a way to set up a critical social system, to seek out and incent sociopathic behavior."

Jesse, Moral Blindness: When Money and Confidence Die It Will Be Televised, 2 April 2014

"The central trait of sociopathy is a complete lack of conscience, which is very difficult for most people to get their heads around, because those of us who do have a conscience can't really imagine what it would be like if we didn't. Most people think that deep down everybody has a conscience, and it turns out that's just not true. -

Usually sociopaths will look down upon us for that very reason - that we're gullible. We're weak. One person told me that he thought he was the only honest person because he would admit that he didn't have a conscience and everybody else was clearly faking it."

Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

"The true alternative is a failure extending over time from the economic to the political system. Just as too few predicted the financial crisis, it may be that too few are today speaking frankly about where a failure to deal with the aftermath may lead. In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work. Or the market system cannot be restored.

There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case."

James K. Galbraith, Why the 'Experts' Failed to See How Financial Fraud Collapsed the Economy, Alternet, May 26, 2010

"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."

Chalmers Johnson
 

And so 'risk on' it was.

Stocks were rising and went out on the highs.

Gold and silver rallied.

The Dollar rose slightly.

VIX fell.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

FOMC next week.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fragility of Empire

 

"The great multinationals are unwilling to face the moral and economic contradictions of their own behavior - producing in low-wage dictatorships and selling to high-wage democracies.  Indeed, the striking quality about global enterprises is how easily free-market capitalism puts aside its supposed values in order to do business.  The conditions of human freedom do not matter to them so long as the market demand is robust.  The absence of freedom, if anything, lends order and efficiency to their operations.

Democracy is held captive, not just by money, but by ideas — the ideas that money buys. Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own."

William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy, 1992

“The downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.”

E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America, 1966

"Throughout the world financial interests have taken control of government and used neoliberal policies to promote their own gain-seeking – financial gains without industrialization or agricultural self-sufficiency. Betting against one’s own currency is more remunerative than making the effort to invest in capital equipment and develop markets for new output. So unemployment and domestic budget deficits are soaring.

The neoliberal failure to distinguish between productive and merely extractive or speculative forms of gain seeking has created a travesty of the kind of wealth creation that Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations. The financialization of economies has been decoupled from tangible capital investment to expand employment and productive powers.

Central to any discussion of financialization is the fact that credit creation has been monopolized in the United States and Britain for their own national gain."

Michael Hudson, The Collapse of the Neoliberal Model, May 2009

"Narcissus so himself, himself forsook,
And died to kiss his shadow in the brook."

William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

Stock did usual thing today, falling in the morning and then coming back to unchanged and even a little green.

VIX rose and then fell back, again.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were slammed ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Perhaps the report will not be so negative, so the wiseguys are doing their usual scams early.

Biden and crew seem to be bent on going out of their way to pick fights with most of the world that is not us.

This is probably inadvisable strategically.

But considering the people involved in the decision making these days, it's not all that surprising.

"When chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools return to their follies.

Have a pleasant evening.