Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ornaments

"Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable


"Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison...

He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

John Henry Newman, The Time of Antichrist

Sleepy week.

It is good to be wakeful, watchful, in those things that are most important.  Dark times are on the horizon.  And yet there is always the happiness of the hearth, and home.  And the unexpected dawn.

You know you are getting old:  you fall asleep in the recliner, and when you wake up the dog is standing on your chest, eating the Cheerios off your t-shirt.

Life is a patchwork of light, loving moments, and tender mercies.

One thing I will grant to the financiers and their politicians—  they are rarely too lazy to steal.

Have a pleasant evening.

Aktion T4 - War on the Weak, the Elderly, the Disabled, the Others

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness...

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.   The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism


"One of the primary characteristics of narcissists is their exaggerated sense of entitlement. It's hardly surprising then that so many politicians somehow think they 'deserve' to game the system. After all, from their self-interested perspective, isn't that what the system is for?

In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be their's. So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with. And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything.

Exploiting their privileged position in such a manner hardly leaves them plagued with guilt. In general, guilt isn't an emotion they're prone to. How could they be if they feel entitled to the objects of their desire? In their minds their very ability to attain something must certainly mean it was merited."

Leon F. Seltzer


"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


"There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.”

Lord Acton


“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

William Wilberforce

The systematic murder of the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, the infirm, alcoholics, and social misfits began on the same day that Germany invaded Poland.

The Nazi euthanasia program was modeled on the eugenics programs in the UK and the US, although those programs avoided actual murder in favor of forced sterilization of the feeble, the infirm, alcoholics, and the mentally ill. The purpose was to cleanse the peoples gene pool, also referred to as racial hygeine.

The German program of extermination was carried out not at camps by SS soldiers, but in hospitals and psychiatric asylums by doctors and nurses.

Various experiments with the most efficient means of performing these murders led to the development of the camps with their gas chambers and crematoria.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Winding Down - That Mourns In Lonely Exile Here

“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox;  that the birth of someone homeless should be celebrated in every home...

The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away.  It was a place of dreams, come true.”

G.K. Chesterton

Who could have seen this coming, indeed.

This is likely to be a quiet trading week with an upwards drift.

It was 60 degrees here, and I was out cleaning up the yard, wearing shorts. lol

The artificially low volatility in the stock and bond markets is a symptom of the broad mispricing of risks.

Partly this is because the Fed is raising rates in what can best be described as a 'low inflation' environment, while continuing to ride a big tranche of hot money in too few hands that has proven over and again its propensity for corruption and market manipulation.

Now, we here understand why the Fed is actually raising rates. It is so that they can lower them, when their latest asset bubble bursts, again. God forbid that they should go to the root of it, and correct the malinvestments of the bubble economy there.

But the market is reading this, perhaps willfully, as the Fed not being serious about their 2% inflation target. Or their regulatory responsibilities. And their vigilance on wage increases again shows how badly they are managing monetary policy. What is missing from this long, long 'recovery' is well-paying job growth.

Top down stimulus and policy management does not work, and has not worked for the past twenty or thirty years or so. But it serves the one percent. And so it is likely that they and their body servants in the Congress and the Washington bureaucracy will continue to push the envelope on this policy error until something breaks.

There is ample historical precedent for it.

The House voted for the tax bill today.  But their version would not work under Senate rules, so they will have to take another go at it tomorrow.

Apple stock received a 'rare downgrade' today.   The hour is growing late.  Time to take some money off the table and go home.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Bubble Has Awakened - Come and Get It

It looks like the pigmen in Congress and their corporate overlords are going to get their 'tax reform' for Christmas.

Winning...

The various stock and serveral bond markets are in a financial asset bubble, and certain stocks are surging higher in some fairly impressive daily moves based on utter nonsense.

Bitcoin and the various related crypto-currency plays are now a bona fide mania.

I think this tops the valuations of the worst of the gerbil tossing tech stocks in the internet bubble at the turn of the century.

Who wold have thought they could do it again two more times, albeit with the generous assistance of the Fed and the acquiescence of the regulators.

Ski these black diamond slopes at your own risk.

If you are an expert, you don't need any advice from me.

I am just the old guy in the kitchen, baking cookies.  lol.

It is interesting to wonder what will break the bubbles, and if they will start falling in unison, or if one breaks and others get some legs before they too roll over.

We'll never learn.  We should not have bailed them out.  Perhaps we ought to have driven a stake in their collective heart of darkness.

Have a pleasant evening.