Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hey Bartender! - Draw a One, Draw a Two, Draw a Three More Glasses of Beer

“A mighty bubble of wealth is blown before our eyes, as empty, as transient, as contradictory to the laws of solid material, as confuted by every circumstance of actual condition, as any other bubble which man or child ever blew before.”

Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost


"They run all away, and cry, 'the devil take the hindmost'."

Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding


"While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great. They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth.

As in the United States in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s, the case for a central bank ultimately to burst that bubble becomes overwhelming. I think it is far better that we do so while the bubble still resembles surface froth and before the bubble carries the economy to stratospheric heights. Whenever we do it, it is going to be painful, however.”

Larry Lindsey, Federal Reserve Governor, September 24, 1996 FOMC Minutes

They know exactly what they are doing by now.

They will go ahead and play dumb and act bewildered when it blows up.

All things considered, they simply don't seem to care.

Stocks closed the end of the second quarter with a bang.

What a surprise.

The paint was barely dry on the tape when stocks managed to keep going higher, led by the usual new era suspects in the tech field.

Gold and silver popped higher as well, with gold finishing around 1799.

Gold has already broken out, but 1800 remains as a 'psychological round number resistance.'

Silver needs to take out 19 and hold it for its own breakout.

I figured that they would let the metals run a bit today, since the markups on their short positions already hit the books.

And so I came in with a levered silver position. Thank you thieves.

The big tickle today was the housing prices number.

Meaningless.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Cui Bono? - The Worst Is Yet To Come

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

Luke 12:1


"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.

I grant, it may be beautiful to look at, as in the instance of the young ruler whom our Lord looked at and loved, yet sent away sad; it may have all the delicacy, the amiableness, the tenderness, the religious sentiment, the kindness, which is actually seen in many in a refined and polished age like this; but still it is rejected by the heart-searching God, because all such persons walk by their own light,  and because they pace round and round in the small circle of their own thoughts and of their own judgments, careless to know what God says to them, and fearless of being condemned by Him, if only they stand approved in their own sight."

John Henry Newman


"The New Atheists (and most ideologues - J) embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists. They propose a route to collective salvation and the moral advancement of the human species through science and reason.

Those who believe in the possibility of this perfection often call for the silencing or eradication of human beings who are impediments to human progress. They turn their particular good into a universal good. They are blind to their own corruption and capacity for evil. They soon commit evil, not for evil's sake but to make a better world.

Reigns of terror are thus the bastard child of the Enlightenment. Terror in the name of utopian ideals would rise again and again in the coming centuries. The danger is the human heart—the capacity we all have for evil. All human institutions with a lust for power give their utopian visions divine sanction.”

Chris Hedges


"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

The way that the stock markets shot higher in the last hour of trading, largely on hot money momentum buying, would make you think that tomorrow is something significant to the wise guys financials, like the end of quarter or something.

Oh yea, it is.

Supposedly the big tickle today was the 'better than expecting' number in pending home sales.

There is an even more impressive number in pending evictions.

Let's see we end tomorrow.

The WHO said that with regard to the pandemic, 'the worst is yet to come.'

That goes double for its economic impacts.

As a reminder this is a holiday-shortened week for trading in the States, compliments of the 4^th of July.

It was just baking hot here today, with no breeze and high humidity. Nice.

I proofread a lengthy journal paper for the young man that took a couple of hours. It gave me an excuse to not work outside.

Serve whom you will.  But know who it is that you serve.  For the wages of sin are death.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Chart - In the Garden of Beasts - Stocks Slouch Towards the End of Quarter

“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


"The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism. The improvidence of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done.   Also, what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor?  "For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?"

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944


"And the brute was given a mouth for uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months."

Revelation 13:5


“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis


"And because of the increase in lawlessness, the love of most will grow cold."

Matthew 24:12

These are certainly confusing and volatile times.

I have a recurring feeling that some revelation will unfold for us before or around Sunday, August 2.

Usually these sorts of things in the market reach their critical points in September and October. But given this is an election year, perhaps it will be a bit earlier.

Stocks failed at any rally attempts and gave it up in a big way in recognition that the coronavirus is not going to obey our wishes or listen to our commands.

Gold and silver gained back ground, with gold putting in one of those yo-yo days that so often follow a Comex expiration.

Personally I am inclined to just sit tight and hang on here, hedging around the core positions perhaps.

Be careful of the lies you ingest; they may give you indigestion.

It is hard enough for us to stand fast and maintain ourselves in this time of the beast.

Let us be even more careful of the lies and hateful things that we may be tempted to repeat to others, especially those for whom we have some responsibilities, who listen to us out of love and respect, for those actions will not be easily forgiven.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bread and Circuses to Distract Us - And the Band Played On

"The Bloomberg article dropped this bombshell nugget on what Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo had spent on share buybacks and dividends since 2017:

“From the start of 2017 through March, the four banks cumulatively returned about $1.26 to shareholders for every $1 they reported in net income, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  Citigroup returned almost twice as much money to its stockholders as it earned, according to the data, which includes dividends on preferred shares.  The banks declined to comment.”

It appears that the Fed has been doing the exact same thing it did during the financial crisis of 2007 to 2010 – hiding the truth from the American people while it makes trillions of dollars in secret loans to the largest Wall Street financial institutions.

And just who is the New York Fed?  It’s one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks but it’s privately owned by multinational corporations, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, whose executives rotate on and off its Board of Directors.  Adding to the insanity of this structure, the New York Fed is the supervisor of these same bank holding companies and it can also create trillions of dollars at the push of an electronic button to make emergency loans to bail out these banks when its supervision proves to have been a dud.

The icing on the cake of this Faustian bargain is that the New York Fed contracts out the operations of its bailout programs to the very banks taking money from the bailouts.  You can’t make this stuff up."

WSOP,  Bloomberg Drops a Bombshell on the Fed’s Big Bank Stress Tests Set for Release Today


“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

Josef Mengele

Stocks were falling over night, again.

They managed to pull up to pretty much unchanged, tradingly weakly on very light volumes most of the day.

And mirabile dictu, they rallied quite briskly on hot money and hot air into the close.

Unless something untoward and inconvenient happens, the wiseguys will likely try to paint the tape green into the end of the second quarter.

Gold and silver made it through the expiration fairly well, and silver even managed to gain back the cheap shot it took yesterday.

The dollar gained a little once again.

The distractions and diversions intended to provide cover for the looting, which historically have been called 'bread and circuses' are running hot and heavy. The masters of distraction are engaging people's worst sides and turning them into useful idiots for the moneyed interests.

Well, there will be hell to pay. It will most likely be 'the mother of all collapses.' But that is for the future.

They know what they are doing. Trump and the Congress know what they are doing. They do not care. They are getting paid.

And so no one can see it coming.

Have a pleasant evening.