Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After Ten Years: Our Descent Into Regret

 

"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.  Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, New Year 1943

"I cautioned you all that we have entered a period of hysteria.  I saw this phase coming years ago.  And here we are.   There is a lot of fear and uncertainty out there.  And it is going to get worse.  It is those who can proceed calmly and with serenity who will pass through this period relatively well, and even if they do suffer some unavoidable misfortune, they can do so without regret."

Jesse, A Plea for Civility, 14 April 2013

"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because it is not as easy to be malicious and foolish all by themselves. Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, in obedience to the petty ideology. They would far rather kill than have to think."

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan, Paris 1926

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
In the end, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them, anyway.”

Mother Teresa

Stocks did another pop and flop again today.

They come in strong from the wee hours of futures trading, bull it up in the morning, and then take their winnings and go home at the end of the day in New York.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I would not criticize anyone who suspects that there is some 'tinkering' being done in the equity markets by the folks with the Exchange Stabilization Fund.   The desire is to keep the markets buoyant into the November elections.

Gold and silver conversely were smacked lower, but then recovered in the days trading and finished up pretty much flat. 

There was a Comex option expiration of the precious metals futures today.  Let's see how they fare the rest of the week.  By far the December futures are the most heavily traded for the precious metals in New York.

VIX ticked up a bit.

The Dollar did a dip and recover of its own.

Israel launched its retaliatory strike against Iran.  It was not particularly successful, as viewed through the fog of war and willful war propaganda which dominates the media.  

I suspect the actual attack was toned down out of respect for the upcoming elections.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Higher Immorality of the Elite

 

“The mainstream media must be considered part of the deep state. Its assumptions, biases, priorities, and defaults are very much a function of the interests of a tiny elite of corporate wealth whose interests the media necessarily serves regardless of this or that outlet’s position along the ever-narrowing spectrum of allowable political perspective.”

Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, June 2022

"This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve.  This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling.  And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, June 2018

"Political corruption is one aspect of a more general immorality; the level of moral sensibility that now prevails is not merely a matter of corrupt men. The higher immorality is a systematic feature of the American elite; its general acceptance is an essential feature of the mass society.

Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal-and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated-and the higher immorality is institutionalized. It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.

Despite – perhaps because of – the ostracism of mind from public affairs, the immorality of accomplishment, and the general prevalence or organized irresponsibility, the men of the higher circles benefit from the total power of the institutional domains over which they rule.

Status follows big money, even if it has a touch of the gangster about it. Status follows power, even if it be without background. Below, in the mass society, old moral and traditional barriers to status break down and Americans look for standards of excellence among the circles above them, in terms of which to model themselves and judge their self-esteem.

A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, April 1956

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: Memoir of the Montgomery Boycott, September 17, 1958

"There is probably no greater threat to the faithful than that of the sanctifying of success by worldly measures."

Jesse, Sanctifying Greed, 6 June 2023


I think that some day historians, in their attempt to make a coherent sense of a diversity of actors and events of our time,  may make the case that the most common denominator among the people of power, our Western elite, was not wisdom or virtue or learning or even genuine accomplishments.

The most valued characteristic of our system seems to be the willingness of the individual to surrender themselves to the unspeakable— to do whatever they are told to do, say anything that they are told to say, attend whatever institution and join whatever organization that may be required, and to profess anything with fervent conviction that they are told to believe.  And to never, ever violate the secrecy and carefully crafted image of the ruling class.

Whether this servile attitude comes from a total lack of character, a sociopathic obsession with power and money, or on the negative side a susceptibility to sexual or financial blackmail, for example, it just a  spectrum of a system that has degenerated into a secretive series of schemes, scams, and cons, hidden behind an official mythology of manufactured stories under a blanket of closely guarded secrecy.

Gold, silver, and the Dollar rallied.

VIX rose.

Stocks meandered, finishing weakly for the most part.

The locus of the bubble, big cap tech, made a decent showing.  But it is mostly for  show, with little substance as of yet.

There will be an option expiration for the precious metals on the Comex next Monday the 28^th. 

The average person is busy caring for family and building and growing things, and so they treasure productivity and peace.

The powerful and their elite love chaos, war, uncertainty, injustice, and unrest.  For they gather in lawlessness from the misery of others.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lies, Damned Lies, and Fraud

 

"I am writing to alert you to a possible circumstance of fraud and manipulation in your popular ETF, SLV, due to the excessive short-selling of its shares.  Current reports indicate the most recent level of total short sales now exceed 36 million shares.  This is an increase of more than 14 million shares from the previous reported amount.

Publicly-traded ETFs that have specific metal backing are highly unique securities.  Perhaps a small short position may be overlooked on a temporary basis until the metal is deposited in the Trust due to logistical considerations.  But a short position that represents more than 10% of the outstanding shares issued means that many buyers of the shares have no metal backing.  This is clearly not in keeping with the spirit of the prospectus that each share issued be backed by one ounce of silver on deposit with the custodian."

Ted Butler, Open Letter to Larry Fink, CEO BlackRock, April 28, 2011

“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.  Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.”

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, 2004

"This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. And I was one of them."

John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 2004

"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole.  If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."

London Banker, Lies, Damned Lies, and LIBOR, 10 July 2012

"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, 1994


We are advised not to look at things which the empire's elites wish to do, but find inconvenient to be made known.  

And so there is a steady progression in the decline of their morals, from swindles, to frauds, and  lawlessness.

This will not end well, but it will end.  

 They take offense at everything except their greed, but have no shame in their own unrighteousness.

And so when the fall comes, and they are caught up short, they will reach into our pockets for  another bailout. 

Stocks managed to sustain a little bounce, after several days of declines.

Gold and silver rebounded as the Dollar declined.

VIX remains subdued and most likely mispriced.

We are not pricing in the enormous risks being engaged by the madness of the elite.

A reckoning is coming.   I will take no joy in it, because of the number of innocents who will be harmed.

As the empire staggers, one or more of its vassal states will fall first, as a sign and a warning. 

Denial is more likely than reform.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.