Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sweet Dreams - Ship of Fools

"You have to hear all the truth,
Even if they do not like it."

Sebastian Brant, Ship of Fools


"Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded?  Will he not be called by them a star-gazer, someone who speaks foolishness, and a good-for-nothing?"

Plato, Republic


"Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right...
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."

Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the Middle with You


"You'll never find the solution if you don't see the problem."

Gilbert K. Chesterton

And if you don't see any of the problems, well, then all must be well.

The problems are ignored by the many, who lose themselves in distractions and animated outrage and madness.  And reform is ridiculed, cheated, and spurned by the comfortable few, who do not care if the ship is sinking as long as they have first class seats.

The registered, or deliverable gold at these current prices in the Comex warehouses has fallen back to historic lows.  I have included a chart below that is current as of Thursday of last week.  We had a further decline reported today.  I have included that clearing report below as well.

US stocks plunged today as Jay Powell spoke glowingly about the strong economy.  

This sort of skittishness is typically seen in markets that are topping, because of thinly justified, and rather high, valuations that make it difficult for people to be 'investors' rather than speculators for the moment.

This is what the Fed and our regulatory system have created and nutured:  not an efficient capital allocation system, but a casino, and a dodgy one at that.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.

From our oasis to yours, have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

"People say, what is the sense of our small effort?  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.  A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.  Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.  There is too much work to do.

What we would like to do is change the world: make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do.  We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.

We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.  There is nothing that we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.

I am sure that God did not intend that there be so many poor.  The class structure is of our making and our consent, not His.  It is the way we have arranged it, and it is up to us to change it.

Turn off your radio. Put away your daily paper. Read one review of events a week and spend some time reading good books. They tell too of days of striving and of strife. They are of other centuries and also of our own. They make us realize that all times are perilous, that men live in a dangerous world, in peril constantly of losing or maiming soul and body. We get some sense of perspective reading such books. Renewed courage and faith and even joy to live.

Do what comes to hand.  Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. After all, God is with us.  It shows too much conceit to trust to ourselves, to be discouraged at what we ourselves can accomplish.  It is lacking in faith in God to be discouraged.  After all, we are going to proceed with His help.  We offer Him what we are going to do.  If He wishes it to prosper, it will.  We must depend solely on Him.  Work as though everything depended on ourselves, and pray as though everything depended on God."

Dorothy Day

The Fed did exactly what was expected today, at least for normal and rational people who were not rooting for a 'rate cut' while celebrating a booming economy and 'full employment.'

The Dollar gained, and gold and silver were hit.

Non-farm Payrolls on Friday.

From our little oasis to yours, have a pleasant evening.

A Warning For the Faithful, In Perilous Times

We are now in a great falling away, a time when the gospel of prosperity and a false, ostentatious, and hypocritical observance of the self causes many to lose themselves— and their hearts harden, and the love of most grows cold.

"Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven."

Matt 7:21


"They do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes: if once they did this they would begin to see how much He requires, and they would earnestly come to Him, both to be pardoned for what they do wrong, and for the power to do better.

And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves. For that contracted, defective range of duties, which falls so short of God’s law, is just what they can fulfill; or rather they choose it, and keep to it, because they can fulfill it.

Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient; – they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct, which may befall them.

And such, I say, is the religion of the natural man in every age and place; – often very beautiful on the surface, but worthless in God’s sight; good, as far as it goes, but worthless and hopeless, because it does not go further, because it is based on self-sufficiency, and results in self-satisfaction...

Yes, it is the ignorance of our understanding, it is our spiritual blindness, it is our banishment from the presence of Him, who is the source and the standard of all Truth, which is the cause of this meagre, heartless religion of which men are commonly so proud.

In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, traitors, heady, high-minded having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."

John Henry Newman\


"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

1 Cor. xiii


"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is a pious, hollow hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1


“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees— hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. You outwardly appear righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Matthew 23:27-28


"And they took offense at him."

Matthew 13:57


"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne.  All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing?  When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.’

Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal consumption prepared for the devil and his demons.  For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

And they will go away into eternal darkness without hope, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

Matthew 25: 31-46

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Death By Selfishness - AAPL After the Bell, FOMC Tomorrow

“National Socialism was a revulsion by my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving.   It was the final fruit of the common man's repudiation of 'the rascals'.   Its motif was, 'Throw them all out.'

I fooled myself.  I had to.  Everybody has to.  If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have seen it.   But I didn't want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent.   I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free


"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.   Plunder, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus


"It is always the soul that dies first, even if it's departure goes unnoticed.  And it always carries the body along with it.  Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal.  He dies from preferring the opposite."

Jacques Lusseyran

Stocks were falling sharply earlier in the day, but a steady bid underneath brought them back into the green by the end of the day, led by the SP500.

Gold and silver managed to gain back a little from recent losses thanks in part to continued decline in the Dollar DX Index.

Trumpolini and the corporate Democrats have agreed that $2 Trillion would be a nice size for an infrastructure project.

The key to this exercise is how big of a role, and piece of the rentier action, that the oligarchs can carve out for themselves.

The US inspired/financed/managed coup in Venezuela was heating up today. It's all about the oil.

FOMC tomorrow.  Trumpolini has decided that to celebrate our glorious recovery that the Fed should start the QE program back up, and cut interest rates by 100 basis points.

That is not stimulus.   That is a rescue.  What are they not telling us?   Hint: The Recovery™ is paper thin at best, and a charade.

Apple's earnings are anticipated after the bell. They may be important after the Google miss last night.

A crash is coming. And it could be terrific.

Have a pleasant evening.