Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rough Waters Ahead

"All this wiggle-waggle of the gold price below or around $1600 is simply the result of official efforts to delay the appearance of $2,000+ gold.

That is the big event ahead, whose appearance will have deep psychological impact on markets, because the establishment of $2000+ gold will reinforce the idea that gold has still much higher to go."

Hugo Salinas-Price

Central Banks Stand Ready to Combat Greek Market Storm

And to provide advance notice of what is coming to their banking friends?


Tomorrow is stock option expiration, an important quad witch expiry as well.

The FOMC meets next week, and the Greek people have an important election on Sunday that may have some impact on their stance towards an austerity deal.

Today Egan-Jones downgraded France to BBB+ with outlook negative.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the Anglo-American banking cartel is deeply interested in acquiring key European assets on the cheap. This will not stop until the means of executing their trading gambits are removed.

This is a new and more brutal phase of the currency war.

Find something you can believe in and feel comfortable with within reason, and then stick with it until you succeed or are proven wrong. And if wrong, then do not be afraid or ashamed to change.

The only certainty we have is that 'this too shall pass.' But there are some things that remain when all other things pass away, and it is good to be mindful of them in our every day lives, conducted quietly while the greater events of the world unfold and then pass by. Sometimes it seems confusing in all the hysteria and 'fog of war,' but we have a guide to which our eyes can always turn, the pillar and the cloud that leads our way through the wilderness.

"Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in this perplexing world, we must be right in doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly with our God, in denying our wills, in ruling our tongues, in softening and sweetening our tempers, in mortifying our lusts; in learning patience, meekness, purity, forgiveness of injuries, and continuance in well-doing."

J. H. Newman

"The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims."

Henri J. M. Nouwen

"Please, Lord, teach us to laugh again; but, God, don't ever let us forget that we have cried."

Bill Wilson

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Old Whipsaw Ahead of Quad Witching Expiration

"Those that have so much power over others as to be able to oppress them have seldom so much over themselves as not to oppress."

Matthew Henry

There was some profound whipsawing in the stock futures market today as rumours were spread liberally by trading desks attempting to exit positions and square their books ahead of tomorrow's big option expiration and the exogenous events of the next five days.

Blaming the Victim and Other Biases and Their Use by the Predator Class To Subvert the Unwary

It is an occasional human fault to get pulled into the habit of 'blaming the victim.'

Most people do not do it regularly, except in the case of some uninformed prejudice or in response to misinformation.

But some people seem to do it more often and sometimes habitually. Why is that?

As we might imagine, nothing can make a certain type of person feel better about themselves than attributing the misfortune of another to foolishness or stupidity. Since a similar misfortune has not happened to them, they must therefore be a superior type of person, and not the ordinary person that they fear they might be who just happened to get lucky.

In my experience this 'distancing' of oneself from the rest of humanity is at the root of much of the bad behaviour that can become institutionalized into the corruption of an organizational structure that eats at the fabric of society.

Sometimes people do engage in serial risky behaviour that leads them into trouble.  It seems as though everyone knows at least one person who gets themselves into a bad situation by acting foolishly and recklessly. Sometimes it is caused by mental illness, alcoholism or some other negative influence. Everyone can think of someone who 'brought it on themselves.' And our imaginations can extend that instance quite easily and broadly.

We can use these few anecdotal examples to blame the victims unjustly on a more general and uninformed level. And we often fall into this bias on the prompting of con men and sociopaths of the predator class who use it to justify their own criminal actions and personal injustice. They are not burdened with empathy for their victims, and even delight in their misfortune. But they must find ways to make their actions more acceptable to society as a whole that normally does have such concerns for equity and justice.

Personal exceptionalism is rooted in pride, and is the antithesis of the old saying, 'There but for the grace of God go I.'

Those MF global customers? They had it coming because they should have known better. Those people who lost money in the stock market? Well, no one MADE them buy those fraudulent paper assets that professionals recommended to them. That family who lost their home to foreclosure because the father was severely injured by sickness or accident? They should have planned better and taken more precautions.

In its extreme example, the subornation of human caring becomes a form of madness, the 'demonization of the other.' That whole group/class/race/nation of people who are being mistreated, brutalized, cheated, starved, and even murdered? It is unfortunate of course, but they are lazy/cheap/stupid/dirty/sneaky/different/subhuman and so they had it coming. But we are not like that so we are doing well and even prospering.

But these are just thoughts from my own direct experience.  Here is a systematic and more thorough analysis that I found to be interesting.

Blaming the victim – why do we do it? For example, are rape victims responsible for what happens to them? Are victims of car crashes or other accidents responsible for what happened to them? These are the kinds of questions we examine as we look at the strange human tendency to blame the victim.

Here is the concept map for the biases discussed in this show:

Download Podcast here.

Source: Blaming the Victim and Other Biases

Attribution Map Quiz

1: Fundamental Attribution Error
•“people do what they do because of the kind of people that they are, not because of the situation they are in”
•“people tend to underestimate external influences when explaining other people’s behavior”

2: Actor/Observer (bias) Difference
•“Whereas we are very likely to find internal causes for other people’s behavior, we tend to look …to the situation to explain our own behavior”
•Example: in a murder trial, the prosecution will call the person a murderer, defense will focus on the difficulty of the person’s life at the time or their childhood, characteristics of the person murdered. “That person drove my client to do what he/she did”

3. Self-serving Attribution (bias): while we tend to take credit for our successes (attribute success to internal causes), we blame our failures on external causes
•I earned an A, my professor gave me a C
•Why? Because it threatens our self esteem to think that failures were caused by something about ourselves
•Example: sports – when a team wins, they attribute it to talent or skill, when they lose, they attribute it to bad luck, poor playing conditions, bad calls from the umpires rather than “I didn’t train hard/study hard enough”, “Our team wasn’t as good”
•It feels bad to attribute our failures to ourselves

4. Optimism bias: “good things are more likely to happen to oneself than to others and bad things are less likely to happen to oneself”
•A kind of “defensive attribution”
•Why do we tend to hold this belief? Because the world is a scary, unpredictable place and that makes us feel anxious. The only way to feel a little better is to believe that it couldn’t happen to me. “I would have acted differently”, “That wouldn’t happen to me because…”I would make different decisions”

5. Belief in a Just World: bad things happen to bad people, “or at least to people who make mistakes, poor choices, etc.” thus, bad things won’t happen to me because I wouldn’t make those mistakes.
•“the belief in a just world keeps anxiety-provoking thoughts about one’s own safety at bay” Aronson, et. al.
•when the world seems chaotic or dangerous, this is anxiety provoking. so we attempt to reassure ourselves by blaming the victim

Allen Stanford Sentenced to 110 Ten Years in Prison For Ponzi Scheme

Breaking news...

High living Texas banker Sir Allen Stanford, often referred to as 'the other Madoff,' was sentenced today to 110 years in prison for the Ponzi scheme he operated by selling fraudulent certificates of deposit issued by his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd., and sold in the U.S. by his Houston-based securities firm, Stanford Group Co.

The US Justice Department had referred to Mr. Stanford as 'a ruthless predator responsible for one of the most egregious frauds in history.'

The reigning champions who currently hold the title for ruthless-financial-predators-responsible-for-THE-most-egregious-fraud-in-history could not be reached for comment, as they prepared to leave for their weekend vacation homes in the Hamptons, according to their Personal Assistants at the New York Federal Reserve.