"As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be with the coming of the Son of man. In the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, even to that very day in which Noah entered into the ark. They did not know what was happening, even as the flood came and swept them all away." Matthew 24:37-39
“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24-26
The wiseguys managed to goose the stock indices up a bit into the close, but the overall performance of the markets into the year end is not a bang, but a whimper.
Gold and silver are pushing the breakouts.
There will be a Non-Farm payrolls report on Friday.
The trade tensions and government shutdown/dysfunction will continue to weigh on the markets in the coming year. Not to mention the lagging economic health of the broader public.
"Don't be surprised if we see these 1,000-point swings in the Dow. That is our new reality for a while," Mohamed El-Erian said.
Terrific.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
"What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart."
Christina Georgina Rossetti, A Christmas Carol
"And Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'
Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent word to kill all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the magi."
Matthew 2:13-16
Pride and a love of self and of power makes families homeless— and in its rage murders innocents, as it was then and is now.
Stocks attempted to extend the government-sponsored 'rebound rally' today but with only mixed success, as they finished largely unchanged after a solid try to move higher.
Please note from the charts that this retracement rally is now at the 38.2% level on the Fibonacci index.
Next Monday will be a full day trading session, but the markets will be closed on Tuesday for New Year's Day. Monday will be the last trading session of 2018.
Typically the day of New Year's eve is one of light trading, but in this market who can tell.
Gold and silver continued to move higher, planting a solid close as they appear to break out from their intermediate trend higher, from gold's bottom at 1159 in early August.
I have marked some new lines on the charts that may help us to track the price of gold as it climbs 'a wall of worry.'
At some point the 'gold pool' of price management will collapse due to a dearth of physical gold at the current prices. And then we may see a significant price adjustment, as has happened in the past after protracted periods of similar 'management' by the Banks.
There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls Report on Friday.
My son and I have been watching Narcos: Mexico on Netflix this week. It is a very good extension to the series.
At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.
And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was without substance, if not a joke.
Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.
One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.
In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video. And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.
But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.
This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.
We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to money and power.
"Moral hazard is a situation in which one party gets involved in a risky event knowing that it is protected against the risk and the other party will incur the cost. It arises when both the parties have incomplete information about each other."
“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite
“Instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thereby stabilizing the market as a whole.”
Robert Heller, Federal Reserve Board, 1989
“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”
Hannah Arendt
A massive, 'price insensitive' buying program turned stocks around and closed them in the green.
Very impressive.
Some times when you have nothing nice to say, it is better to say nothing at all.
Our 'self-identified elite' on both sides of the ideological spectrum are most often unprincipled, delusional hypocrites, otherwise known as whited sepulchers.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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