Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Sky Is Crying - Storm Warnings

Wall Street, Corporatists, and the Professional Class

"If we set aside the supervisory class and professionals on payrolls, the great underclass is composed of many no better off, with the rest worse off during 10 yrs of so-called 'recovery.'   Wage growth for non-supervisory workers is getting worse, not better, when adjusted for inflation."

Harald Malmgren


"They [the Banks] are less leveraged but have larger balance sheets. The risk is in the gross, not the net.  When times are calm, no capital is needed.  When panic begins, no amount of capital is enough."

Jim Rickards


“And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill.  And they frankly own the place.”

Dick Durbin


“Remember when nurses, caregivers, teachers and students crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax?  No, me neither.”

Fuad Alakbarov


“In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth.   Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Stocks were a bit wobbly from the open. But they sold off more decisively in the afternoon when it was announced that Trumpolini would have something to say about China and tariffs after the close.

Gold and silver were gaining a bit on Dollar weakness. This weakness is within a well defined trading range. And gold and silver are also caught in a sideways chop.

I suspect that some event will shake up the precious metals bears one way or the other, and the metals will break higher or lower, and perhaps sharply. It does seem more likely that it breaks higher because of the hugely impressive imbalance of shorts on the Comex, But let's see what the charts show us.

There will be a stock option expiration for September at the end of this week. There will be Comex precious metals option expiration next week.

I spent quite a bit of effort getting in touch with my inner-homeowner this weekend and today, taking care of a list of things that have been too long neglected, from lawncare to chimey repair to pruning to light mechanical repairs.

And with much of it done, Dolly and I have snuggled down to wait for the remnants of Hurricane Florence to bring us their rain.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in God abide in love, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Continuing Endgame For Bretton Woods II and the Role of Gold

“Under this system [Bretton Woods II and the petrodollar], the U.S. is running massive current account deficits to be the source of export-led growth for other countries.  To fund this deficit, central banks, particularly those on the Pacific Rim, are buying up dollars and dollar-denominated assets."

Daniel Drezner


"The inability of global leaders to address global current account imbalances now truly threatens global financial stability. Perhaps this was inevitable – the dollar has not depreciated to a degree commensurate with the financial crisis.

Moreover, as the global economy stabilized the old imbalances made a comeback, sucking stimulus from the US economy and leaving US labor markets crippled.

The latter prompts the US Federal Reserve to initiate a policy stance that will undoubtedly resonate throughout the globe. As a result we could now be standing witness to the final end of Bretton Woods 2. And a bloody end it may be."

Tim Duy

Most mainstream economists will fail to acknowledge the pivotal role that physical gold has been playing in the longer term strategies of 'The New Silk Road' nations in this century.  They dare not, even if they see it and believe it. 

The member of the professional class is deeply conflicted, and must guard their comments if they wish to continue to be rewarded by the established power structure.  It compensates them, and provides them access to information, honors, and influence.

This point of failure in the modern contrivance of self-defining monetary value is the point of weakness in the established power structure that dare not be named.  Or if at all, then only dismissively and with derision.

If money is power, then a fiat reserve currency is the whip hand of empire.  And the less constrained that hand may be, then the greater the power to bend history to the singular will of an elite.

Why is gold such a problem?   Because it is playing an obvious role in the longer term strategies of 'The New Silk Road' countries who are no longer willing to act as client states.

The 'float' in physical gold available for refinement and delivery into the markets of Eurasia became deeply stressed about two or three years ago.

The world's central banks became net buyers of gold for their own reserves around 2006, after more than twenty five years of managed sales in support of the Dollar Reserve currency, the reign of the petrodollar, commonly referred to as Bretton Woods II.  After years of steady purchasing, the existing system of gold reserve management has become increasingly unstable.

It is hard to maintain appearances indefinitely.

Behind the scenes, the maneuvering to stabilize the established fiat monetary system has resulted in raids on currencies, and the 'acquisition' of reserves, including those of several nations, by other than transparent market mechanisms.

The desperation to maintain an 'exorbitant privilege' of a fading empire is a powerful force, and drives spending and diplomatic priorities.

This underlying understanding provides a framework, but hardly the sole or complete rationale, for what is occurring today as the economic order established after WW II, and taken to a different level by Richard Nixon, continues to destabilize.

Will gold continue to be a stumbling block and key piece in the global game of chess?   Nothing is inevitable.

How willing are other nations to place their own working classes on the sacrificial block of inequality?   Will the dollar and its financial system pipelines be allowed to suck the liquidty from the emerging markets?   How practical is the aspiration to a type of regime that requires exponential amounts of force to maintain?

How long can a campaign of force and fraud continue before it becomes unsustainable, so unacceptable to the reluctant victims that they rise up against it?

One might speculate that the US' loss of credibility with key allies, and the willful betrayals of potential partners into adversaries, may continue to impede the progress of world government by a narrow elite, and thereby fortunate for those who value individual freedom.

But a lack of honor among thieves and plutocrats is hardly a foundation for long term stability.

Related:  Turkish Banks Sell Gold Reserves Amid Raids on the Lira

America, The Farewell Tour - Ezekiel In the Valley of Dry Bones

"You do not know the working class. But you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class?  You do not live in the same locality with the working class.  You herd with the capitalist class in another locality.

And why not?  It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not menace the established order of society."

Jack London, The Iron Heel


"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice. When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure. This is a summons to us to keep the agenda of justice for the vulnerable alive and front and center to maintain a kind of subversive stance toward power.

Power is the capacity to organize and administer social goods and social access. Truth is the structure of reality that is in the nature of things that cannot be violated by our capacity to administer it. Power can sometimes be administered in harmony with such truthfulness, but very often power is seduced so that it runs contradictory to truth.

The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann, Speaking Truth to Power


“People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."

Václav Havel


“In the eyes of the empire builders men are not men, but instruments.”

Napoleon Bonaparte


"And the Lord asked me, 'Son of man, can these dry bones have life again?'”

Ezekiel 37:3

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Shockproof and Nearly Shameless - Speaking Truth to the Valley of Dry Bones

Doré, Ezekiel's Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones 

"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible. But isn't that an idea of only minor importance?  Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment?  Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning?

Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horror? I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator.  Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.  It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy.

But I have realized they will not succeed. And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl


"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element:  The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

It is the time of the harvest, and the reaper cuts into the ripe grain with wide strokes. Mourning takes up her abode in the country cottages, and there is no one to dry the tears of the mothers. Yet Hitler feeds those people whose most precious belongings he has stolen and whom he has driven to a meaningless death with lies.

Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course.  Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil.  He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air."

We will not be silent.

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich 1942


"The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me forth by the Spirit, and set me in the middle of a valley; and it was full of bones.  He led me, back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.  And the Lord asked me, 'Son of man, can these dry bones have life again?'”

Ezekiel 37:1-3

The US equity market was being described on the financial tv shows today as 'shockproof.'

At least they did not say that it has reached a permanently high plateau.

Now is a good time, as previously noted, to start watching potential 'trigger events' that will knock this 'risk is dead' thinking into a cocked-hat.

But why be glum? The rains that have made everything sodden and mossy around here appear to be taking a break for the weekend, which promises to be pleasantly warm and sunny. We are fast approaching my favorite time of the year.

Gold and silver were lower today as the dollar 'soared'— back up to the top of the trading range that it has been bouncing within for some time now.

Hysteria is running deep, and with it comes intolerance, and contempt for the other. Not a good time for those who seek to remain standing.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.