Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Winter Is Coming

 

“In the middle of winter, I finally learned that there was an invincible summer within me.” 

Albert Camus 

 

“You felt secure in your wickedness.  ‘No one sees what I do,’ you think.  But your ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ have led you astray.  And you so believe that, ‘I am the only one, and no one else matters.’ 

Disaster will overtake you, and you won’t be able to charm it away.  Misfortune will descend upon you, and you won’t be able to buy your way out.  A catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one for which you cannot prepare." 

Isaiah 47:10-11

 

"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us." 

Chalmers Johnson

 

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events.  To some generations much is given.   Of other generations much is expected.  This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

 

The Non-Farm Payrolls number came in very light this morning.

Stocks rallied on expectations that there will therefore be more stimulus coming.

The Dollar rallied a few cents but failed to take back the 91 handle.

Gold and silver held their levels, which is not the usual case on NFP day.

Let's see what the next week brings.

Markets tend to be buoyant and quietly boosted in December.

 Have a pleasant weekend.

The Frenchman Who Wept For His Country

 

Here is an iconic photograph that I have seen in any number of documentaries, generally identified as a Frenchman who weeps for his city as the Nazis march into Paris.

I have always been curious about this photo. I wondered where it came from and who this person was.  It has a certain tragic dignity about it.

Here is what I have been able to discover.

It first appeared in print in Life Magazine in their 3 March 1941 issue on page 29.   This is the photo which I show above and not the more tightly cropped versions that are often used in documentaries.

The caption on the photo.  identifies it as "a Frenchman sheds tears of patriotic grief as the flags of his country's last regiments are exiled to Africa."

So obviously this is not a photo taken in 1940 in Paris, as the French regimental flags had been moved into the south of France in order to preserve them from the surrender.  The flags themselves were not taken to Africa until 1941.

Here is a more commonly available photograph of the same scene.  It is a moment frozen in time.

Marseille sous l'occupation by Lucien Gaillard says that this is a photo of Monsieur Jerôme Barzotti, taken in Marseilles on February 20, 1941.  This is after the Nazi entrance into Paris in June, 1940.

I have not been able to find out anything else about him.  He does look old enough to have fought in The Great War.  Is he even French, or an Italian émigré who had fled the tyranny of Mussolini?  Perhaps he was part of the Barzetti industrial family from Italy, and related to Federico who later founded Barzetti Pastries?  I cannot say.

I wonder how he fared, and if he was able to see the restoration of France and the end of the war.

Why should we even care about him, his risings and fallings, his perplexity and concerns, his fears and sorrows?

Because when the ocean's dry up, and the earth grows cold and dies, as the stars flicker and grow dim in the sky, and creation turns back into dust, Monsieur Barzetti's soul will continue on, vibrantly alive, and his tears will have long been wiped away, by kindly hands bearing tender mercies.

A reader has been kind enough to share this newspaper clipping with us. 

 

And this entry L'homme qui pleure from Wikipedia.

 

The newspaper clipping is from The Decatur Daily Review (Decatur, Illinois), 22 Apr 1949 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Metals Hold Their Gains into the Non-Farm Payrolls Report

 

"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.  That’s what I have a problem with.  And I think most people agree with me." 

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation 

 

"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

Gold and silver moved a bit higher today.

The Dollar edged lower and gave up the 91 handle.

Stocks made a strong attempt to rally, but gave up their gains in the afternoon.

Tomorrow will be the Non-Farm Payrolls repot for November.

Today was a good day to put up the Christmas lights, and give the yard a going over before the rains come this weekend.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wonderland - Non-Farm Payrolls Report on Friday

 

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” 

Garry Kasparov 

 

“While the Senate goes on break during a deadly pandemic, they're telling us peasants to go back to work, because the billionaires need more billions.   

Some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.” 

Oliver Markus Malloy 

 

"There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.   Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.   In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were human: they did not believe in plagues."

Albert Camus, The Plague

 

"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven." 

John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

Stocks were slumping today, in part because of weak ADP jobs number and the record resurgence in Covid cases and hospitalizations in the US.

But in the quiet of the afternoon, they managed to rally themselves, drifting higher to close in the green.

Gold and silver managed to hold and extend their gains.

The Dollar slumped down to the 91 handle.

VIX ticked back up a bit.

Let's see how things shake out with the Payrolls report numbr on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.