Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After the Bell - A Cross of Iron

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.  We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat.  We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people...

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.   Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

The US has been in a state of continuous war for a little over sixteen years, if you begin with the initial invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The big tickle today was the strength in the Dollar index based on Euro weakness, thanks to Monsieur Draghi.

There was a minor option expiration for gold on the Comex today. I do not think that drove the action in the metals, compared to the big spike in the Dollar.

After the bell we will be seeing some big earnings announcements including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Intel.

CVS Health is in talks to buy Aetna. More consolidation in the health/insurance sector, under the title of 'vertical integration' which is a finer sounding title for 'monopolization.'

I do not know how it is in your area, but around here a few medical conglomerates are buying up all the doctor practices and medical facilities of any size, leaving us with just a handful of behemoth health providers and insurers.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We'll Always Have Paris

"Summers, Geithner, the Council of Economic Advisors and Bernanke strongly guided economic data development and spin to give perception of 'recovery'.    Green shoots turned out to be weeds.  The period from '08 to '16 was incredible in the gymnastics committed to support the recovery narrative.  Yellen, a specialist in labor economics (NOT monetary economics) had large role devising the now failed LMCI.  The Fed abandoned its own new metric for measuring the jobs market (Labor Market Conditions Index) w/i 2 year b/c it was so rife with bogus info.   Crazy.

Harald Malmgren

For whatever reason, and I have some thoughts along those lines, the powers-that-be in American finance and politics are terrified of a decline in the US stock markets, ever since the election of His Donaldship.

And so once again this bloated pig of a market continued to float just above the dangerous waters of correction and disappointment, even one so slight it appears.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the movie Casablanca.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Greed Turns Slowly to Fear - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.   And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice .”

Edward Said


"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus

We may have seen peak hubris, financially speaking, for this time around at least.  There will be others.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Too Much Capital In Too Few Hands

Markets reversed today from this morning's action.

Let's see if this sets a trend, or is merely another inconsequential wiggle.

Have a pleasant evening.