Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Those Who Live In Darkness - The Social Contract

"'I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers.  Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’  Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’   No, father Abraham,’ the rich man said, ‘but if someone from the dead appears to them, they will repent.’ 

And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to rise from the dead.’”

Luke 16:27-31


"When the social contract is broken in a civilized society, the leadership is discredited & replaced. One of the costs governments were willing to pay to bailout the banks and save the bankers was upending the social contract. I wonder if the politicians realized the implications for democracy and the rise in partisanship that would result?

It is a shameful reality that scarcely any of our current politicians or newscasters are aware of what the social contract is, much less that severe damage to it was done by people like Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner and Summers.

Even our elite economists seem to have failed to learn or forgotten about the social contract. Such ideas were somehow lost when subject of political economy abandoned in favor of pure economics, especially in US academia."

Harald Malmgren

They have no choice. They have no where else to go. This is a common flaw in the reasoning of the professional ruling elite. It is hubris.

Stocks were having another wide-ranging day, shoved higher and lower by the hot winds of greed and fear.

Greed seemed to prevail, as stocks went out nearer to the highs of the day.

After the bell Facebook announced its earnings. We will have to wait for the conference call to see how those chips may fall, although the Street was cheered somewhat by the initial numbers.

There will be a Non-Farm payrolls report on Friday.

Gold and silver were weakly traded today with the Dollar rising higher, and the split personalities of the market were vacillating between risk on and risk off.

The stores of ounces of physical gold for ready delivery in Hong Kong has dropped to a rather low level again. The registered gold in NY is not very robustly supplied either, at least at these prices.

Have a pleasant evening.

Political Power and The Virus of Fear

Rarely has any story been so distorted for political reasons, so shamefully and shamelessly, since the run up to the invasions of Iraq.

Who is feeding this 'army of military age males'?   Who seeks to undermine the safety of the greatest power on earth?   I was reading some online rubbish from a hysterical blogger who says we should seek out the enablers and take care of them, if you know what that means.

And of course this is from a site that widely tolerates unreasoned hate in its comments section.

Yes, let us not only not help the afflicted.  Let us seek out any good Samaritans, and kill them.

"On Sunday, the caravan paused to rest after a week of walking in oppressive heat through the state of Chiapas and reaching the town of San Pedro Tapanatepec in Oaxaca state.

Throughout the day migrants lined up for plates of tortillas, beans and meat stew that parishioners of the town’s main church, Parroquia San Pedro Apostol, dished out. Women who identified themselves as volunteers from the office of the local municipal president distributed bottles of water from the back of a pickup truck as it inched through the streets, drawing crowds of parched migrants."

These fools.  How dare they advance this military peril against us?   How can they provide food and water to these poor, suffering families and their broods of future rapists and murders, in the disguise of simple children?   Libtard Christian idiots.  Socialists.  Them.  They are all them. and we are their victims.

Because of the law of posse comitatus the 5,200 US Army troops being deployed to the border can only act in support roles for the border police and domestic law enforcement.  Unless of course we declare war on the caravan.  Maybe they have howitzers stashed in their backpacks.   Or we could just suspend the law against military rule in the US in this crisis.

So it is likely just a headline grabbing gesture.

Because it is in the Constitution, Trump cannot merely choose to 'issue an executive order' denying citizenship to anyone born in the US that he does not approve.  It would take the process of law to do this. 

Unless of course the President were to grant himself extraordinary powers, unopposed by the two other branches of government, so that he could deal with this terrible threat.

Where will this go?   How will it end?

“I want to address for a moment some of our political leaders who were here. Ladies and gentlemen, it has to start with you as our leaders. Stop the words of hate. If it comes from you, Americans will listen. You don’t have to follow the prone to evil path. We can also be prone to good. If you decide to take that path, it starts with speech. Words of hate are unwelcome in Pittsburgh.”

Rabbi Jeff Meyers, Tree of Life Synagogue

The stoking of fear and hate ends in the blood of innocents, always.  Over time it spares no one.

Have we learned nothing?  Have we sunk so low that we no longer fear the reproach of civilized people, or the judgement even of God?

We seem to have no shame, no sense of history, no compunction about lying and wallowing in lies, and relatively little enough decency left in our public life.  And after all, it is the midterm elections you know. 

It is all about power and money.   People are just tools, objects, and collateral damage.

When you unleash the madness, the unspeakable, you do not control it—   it controls you.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wax On, Wax Off - In the Garden of Beasts

"The real danger comes from encouraging or inadvertently tolerating inflation and its close cousin of extreme speculation and risk taking, in effect standing by while bubbles and excesses threaten financial markets."

Paul Volcker


"Investors still seem looking for a bounce among consumers but the downturn in housing and autos will remain not only this year but all of 2019 and likely beyond; more sectors to join in slow motion decline of US economy that will evolve into recession."

Harald Malmgren


"What most occupied the attention of the State Department [in 1934] was the outstanding German debt to American creditors. It was a strange juxtaposition. In Germany there was blood, viscera, and gunfire; at the State Department in Washington, there were white shirts [of the wealthy career diplomats and career politicians], Hull's red pencils, and mounting frustration with [Ambassador] Dodd to press America's case [for full payment of the sovereign German debt]...

In Berlin, Dodd was unmoved. He thought it pointless to pursue full payment, because Germany simply did not have the money, and there were far more important issues at stake...

Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest...

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the [Hitler] regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger...

For Dodd, a diplomat by accident, not demeanor, the whole thing was appalling. He was a scholar and a Jeffersonian democrat, a farmer who loved history and the old Germany in which he had studied as a young man. Now there was official murder on a terrifying scale. Dodd's friends and acquaintances, people who had been to his house for dinner or tea, had been shot dead.

Hitler's purge [June 30, 1934] would become known as 'The Night of the Long Knives,' and in time would be considered one of the most important episodes in his ascent, the first act in the great tragedy of appeasement...

This lack of reaction arose partly because many in Germany and elsewhere chose to believe Hitler's claim that he had suppressed an imminent rebellion that would have caused far more bloodshed. Evidence soon emerged, however, that showed that in fact Hitler's account was false...

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour...In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime... 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence...I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, In The Garden of Beasts

Neutron bombs kill broad swaths of human being without inflicting serious collateral explosive damage on physical infrastructure and systems.  Fed monetary policy and GOP fiscal policy are like economic neutron bombs.

The early 'risk on' trade and big acquisition by IBM of Red Hat had the bulls and their spokesmodels all giddy this morning.

Alas, it was not meant to be—  again.

Stocks gave up all their morning gains, and sold off hard, although they did come off the lows of the day as the financial TV carnies pointed out so hopefully.

'What will turn this market around?' they plaintively whined.   'The puppies aren't eating the puppy food.'

Let's see, besides hot money and bullshit, what has been the backbone and mainstay of this 'Trump rally' for a very long time.

US equities will soon be coming out of the 'blackout period' for buybacks of their own stocks, which has been a major and sustaining force of stock price gains in this latest financial asset bubble. Before they were financing these buybacks, designed to hollow out the company's value while enhancing executive option gains, with corporate debt.

 Now they also have a huge grant from the US government in the form of tax cuts in addition to the tax subsidies for executive compensation. The wealth transfers will continue until they can no longer be sustained— because it pays so well for the decisionmakers.

It's a big club—   and you aren't in it.   No matter what political party of economic school to which you proudly pledge your loyalty and proclaim your faithfulness.   You are not counted by them as among the winners.  You are cannon fodder, food for predators, a foolish chunk of meat.

The dollar was up again today, to the higher levels of its recent trading range.   Gold and silver were lower as a consequence, although gold came back a bit on a the big stock sell off.

Before the internet changed everything, people who love books used to go to actual bookstores and search the stacks for those little gems that they would read and add to their collections.

As a long time collector and reader I used to frequent the antiquarian book stores in the Pittsburgh area, where I went to graduate business school,  including a couple located in the very quaint residential Squirrel Hill section to the east of the city.

This is the site of the vicious attack on a group of worshipers in the Tree of Life Synagogue.  It must have been jarring to have this happen in such a quiet and friendly residential neighborhood.  They are all in my thoughts and prayers. 

Have a pleasant evening.

A Time of Monstrous Apathy and Impertinence That Leads to Tragedies

The White Rose
Second Leaflet
Munich, 1942

We will not be silent.

...We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way.

Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserve their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not yet fully achieved its aim as yet!)

All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub- humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought.

Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that.

It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt.

For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all...

Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.



"We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way anyone, created as they are in the image of God. Man's relation to God the Father and his relation to men and women as his brothers and sisters are so linked together that Scripture says: 'He who does not love does not know God' (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against a human being or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to 'maintain good fellowship among the nations' (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all, so that they may truly be children of the Father who is in heaven."

Paul VI, Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965



"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.

Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer