Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bearing Witness - A Culture of Emptiness and Contempt

 

"As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.   The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.  Demeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld. 

You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.  What is truth?  Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing. Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.  It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. 

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” 

 Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny 

 

"Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.  The never ending alarms, the never ending phrases, the never ending hanging out of flags, now in triumph, now in mourning—it all produces apathy.  

There is so much lethargy in the German people, and so much immorality, and above all so much stupidity.  I must make notes even now, I must, no matter how dangerous it is.  That is my professional courage."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years
 

Stocks were digesting their gains today from the latest leg of their bubble this week.

Gold and silver gave up some of their recent gains as well.

Next Tuesday the 26^th there will be an option expiration on the Comex.

People are fleeing from their confusion, and the burden of thought, into indifference and contempt for others.  It is a loss of grounding in reality.  Much of the fear is from phantoms based in obsessive greed and selfishness.

Madness.   And it serves none but itself. 

May God have mercy on us.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Shall We Stop This Bleeding? - Willful Pride, Plagues, and Foolishness

 

“An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it.  'But the facts, my dear fellow,' said his friend, 'the facts do not agree with your theory.'  'Don't they?'  replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, 'then, tant pis pour les faits;' —so much the worse for the facts.” 

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

 

“Against such foolishness we are defenseless.  Reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.   

In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.  Never again will we try to persuade the foolish person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

 

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." 

John Kenneth Galbraith 

 

"Foolishness 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; they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus

 

The story stocks moved higher. The rest of the market not so much. 

Gold and silver moved sideways as the Dollar continued lower. 

No one likes to be a centrist, a non-participant, much less a voice of reason.

You see the folly of both sides, and may incur the anger of both, if you stand for the facts, and the truth as it has been given to you.

Even if you only refuse to join in with the crowd in its madness, especially in times of general hysteria and even often shocking apostasy.

This is what Galbraith, Bonhoeffer, Camus, and Mackay are all speaking about in the quotes above, each in a different context and situation involving speculative bubbles, political extremism cynical ignorance, and minds hardened by unrealistic ideology.

Yes life is filled with gray areas.   But sometimes the voices from the extremes of both sides are filled with madness, sometimes compelling and seemingly overwhelming, popular, irresistible.

You don't have to do this because I say so, and I will not be shocked if you reject such thinking.   I am not doing what I do for you either,  per se.

Standing for what is true, even when it is not easy or convenient, profitable, is the recurrent theme of those who would take up their cross and follow Him,  who stood fast but silent in answer to the cynical observation, 'What is truth?' 

And we know who the father of lies is, and what it ultimately costs to follow the easy path of selfishness and madness.  As Dostoevsky notes, when we lie to ourselves, we lose respect for the turth, and the ability to love.

"And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.   But those who stand, firmly to the end, will be saved." 

Matthew 24:12 

Do what is right and good for your own sake, if not for fear of the consequences at the least, but for the sake of His love.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - O Brave New World - Excess Liquidity Melt Up

 

"Booms start with some tie-in to reality, some reason which justifies the increase in asset values, and then -- and this is the critical feature of speculative mood -- the market loses touch with reality. Once a boom is well started, it cannot be arrested. It can only be collapsed."

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

“As a rule, panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.” 

John Stuart Mill

 

Markets were in a 'melt up' mood today, with just about everything going higher, led by the big cap tech story stocks.

Gold and silver soared as they shook off the price suppression of last week's option expiration. 

The beaten down miners caught a serious bid.  Again, all part of the wash and rinse.

There will be a Comex option expiration for the metals, but not until next week.

I am not a fan of Biden and Harris, who in my estimation are corporate Democrats, beholden to the moneyed interests and Wall Street.

But they are at least competent and not wantonly destructive vulgarians. 

Still, I find it hard to be optimistic for meaningful reform. 

The Fed is the creature of the Banks, and the moneyed interests have the oligarchy well in hand.

Let's see what the first 100 days of this brings.

It will be interesting to see how the post-election saga of Trumpolini unfolds.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great Emptiness - And the Love of Most Will Grow Cold

 

"The Unspeakable.   It is the void that we encounter.  It is the emptiness of the end.  Not necessarily the end of the world, but a theological point of no return, a climax of absolute finality in refusal, in equivocation, in disorder, in absurdity, which can be broken open again to truth only by miracle, by the coming of God. 

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened.  But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen. 

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy.  Those who do not want mercy never seek it.  It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."

Thomas Merton 

"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

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.  Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  

Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind." 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

"Do all without constant arguing and complaining, so that you may be blameless and righteous as children of God, unlike those of this contentious and perverse generation, among whom you may shine like lights to the world, as you hold firmly to the word of life." 

Phil 2:14-16

 

The market observance of Martin Luther King Day was a great opportunity for the wiseguys to slam the futures around, particularly gold and silver. 

In the most quiet trading, at night, gold was smacked down to 1800, and silver to 24.  The purpose of this was to 'run the stops.'

And yet both metals managed to end the day higher.

Stocks were on a tear, with the NDX 100 leading the way higher.

There will be the inauguration of a new president tomorrow.

Most important is the state of your own hearts and soul.  

It is not too late yet to let go of your selfishness and your proud and hardened hearts.

For God is not mocked.  

 Have a pleasant evening.