Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Flight To Fantasy - A Gathering of Vultures

"The failure of normal empathy is central to sociopathy, which is marked by an absence of guilt, intentional manipulation, and controlling or even sadistically harming others for personal power or gratification.”

Bandy Lee


"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man.   Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

G. M. Gilbert


“Once they’re in power, narcissists consolidate their position by firing everyone who challenges them. In their place rise a plague of toadies, opportunists, and enablers equally guided by self-interest and short on scruples.  So you end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity."

Lee Simmons, Stanford Business School


"As in all periods of speculation, men sought not to be persuaded by the reality of things but to find excuses for escaping into the new world of fantasy."

"John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929


“Now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism


"And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”

Luke 17:37

Today's market action was driven by a handful of 'new era' stocks.

In the SP 500, about 350 stocks were in the red.

Gold and silver gained again, despite the persistent price manipulation by the Hedge Funds and the Banks who are gaming the markets even further, now that it appears we are reaching the endgame.

There is a gathering storm.   And like the pandemic, its mark on history may be lasting, and a sign and warning for the next generation.

Lord have mercy on us, and forgive us our rebellious ignorance and our impenetrable pride.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wax On, Wax Off - Thinning Façade of The Recovery™

"Americans once had a coherent and clear understanding of political tyranny, one crafted by Thomas Jefferson and updated for the industrial age by Louis Brandeis.  A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy.  This idea stretched back to the country’s founding.

In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse.  They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal."

Simon and Schuster, Review of Matt Stoller's Goliath


"He who does not shout the truth when he knows it makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers."

Charles Péguy


"The reason America can’t handle the coronavirus is the same reason we can’t do anything else right. We don’t let the people who do the work have any say over how or whether the work is done. American institutions are organized entirely around the short-term horizon of financiers, and these financiers seek to create monopolies and to grab cash by thinning out supply lines and generating hidden risk."

Matt Stoller


“We must speak truth to power, and confront ignorance with facts. But facts are threatening to those invested in fraud.”

DaShanne Stokes


"It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.

Aldous Huxley


"The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."

Jesse, July 2009

Today was neither a risk on or risk off day.

Rather, it was a wax on, wax off day, also known as the old wash and rinse, ahead of the August stock options expiration on Friday.

In simpler terms, the small specs were leaning hard in one direction and the wise guys get to look at what they are holding in their hands.

The financiers spent many millions to buy their current privileged positions, including the long campaign to overturn Glass-Steagall.   And it was worth it.

The Dollar moved higher, reversing its trend.

And gold, silver and stocks all moved lower.

I imagine that those holding options on miners, also known as leverage on leverage, did not have a good time of it.

Well, let's see if the shenanigans will continue for another day, or will change again, based on what the poor beleaguered small specs did today.

The purported precipitant for all this was the FOMC minutes, and their apparent lack of commitment to unbridled money printing for unrestrained capitalism.

Two Fed economist have identified an increase in corporate monopoly power as a key negative trend in the US economy.

They failed to note the tragic overturning of New Deal restraints on the Banking Cartel which occurred in the 1990s and 2000s. The Fed must not speak ill of its masters.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Chug-a-Lug - Hi-de-ho, Wall Street Does a Double Back Flip

Uncle Jay and his Monetary Moonshine

"The Federal Reserve, as one writer put it after the recent increase in the discount rate, is in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.”

William McChesney Martin, Speech to Investment Bankers Association of New York, October 1955


"We're not even thinking about thinking about the consequences of our actions."

Jerome Powell, Chairman, Federal Reserve


"Jukebox and sawdust floor
Sumpin' like I ain't never seen
And I'm just going on fifteen
But with the help of my finaglin' uncle I get snuck in
For my first taste of sin
I said "Lemme have a big old sip"
Brrrrr-bbbb, done a double back flip

Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug
Make you want to holler hi-de-ho
Burns your tummy, don'tcha know
Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug."

Roger Miller, Chug-a-lug

The spokesmodels were gushing with excitement as the SP500 snugged its beer goggles and managed to reach its pre-crash high.

The NDX is already in some alternate universe.

Thanks for the hot money for the recovery, Uncle Jay.

Great success.

Gold and silver responded to the call, as the Dollar continued to slide lower.

The commentary about the precious metals on financial TV is so shallow and badly informed that I think the metals may have quite a bit further to go.

The time to sell will be when even the most purblind Wall Street lounge lizards 'get it.'

Stock market will have its August stock option expiration on Friday.

Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Just Another Sleepy Monday in Summer

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

Harry S. Truman, August 8, 1950


“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

James Madison


"Congress and the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the mandates of the Oligarchy."

Jack London, The Iron Heel


“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself”.

Oscar Wilde

Stocks drifted higher on very light, non-committal algorithmic trading.

Gold and silver gained back some of the smackdown from last week.

The Dollar broke 93 and went out on the lows of the day.

The economy continues to bifurcate on Fed subsidies to the moneyed interests, lacking in all vitality and organic grow as demonstrated by the velocity of money.

There will be a stock market option expiration this week. Maybe this will liven things up.

I am trading very little now in this quiet market. I've made my money for the year, and then some.

I don't want boredom to cause me to give any portion of it back.

I remember one time waiting in a casino for someone that cost me about a thousand dollars. lol

Get right and sit tight.

The stock market is going to correct, and probably quite hard.

It may not happen until the fall, closer to the election or shortly thereafter.

The oligarchy is audacious. And shameless.

Have a pleasant evening.