Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are.

Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction?

Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.”

Wendell Berry

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

As a reminder, this is a stock market option expirations week.

VIX shows complacency.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

State of the Union Message: Tonight Was the Wish List

Tonight's State of the Union was the 'wish list.'

And there were some very fine and workable ideas contained in that avalanche of possibilities.

Tomorrow begins the hard work of coming up with a 'prioritized list.' 

And the shame is that many of the good ideas are not constrained so much by budget,  or capability, but by special interests and ideologies, and petty jealousies and in-fighting.  

And I hate to say, a growing mindset amongst the powerfully fortunate that if something does not directly benefit them in the short term by increasing their wealth and power, then it must be stopped no matter what, and the rest be damned.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the essence of politics, at its worst in dysfunctional organizations, companies and countries that are set against themselves, in all its inglorious ugliness. And it is a deadly entangling embrace, given the fallen state of the human condition, and the pure damned cussedness of people.

Let the games begin.