“Depart from me, you accursed. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not comfort me.' They answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not care for you?' He answered, 'Truly I tell you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.’” Matthew 25:40-46
"Easy is the descent into hell;
The door to death and darkness stands open, day and night.
But to retrace one's steps, to return once more
to the pure clean air, and cheerfulness and life:
That is our task, that is our true labour."
Vergil, Aeneid
“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
"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues."
Albert Camus, The Plague
Big tech was rocking an rolling higher with the SP 500 keeping up the pace, setting a new all time high.
The VIX held stubbornly where it had been.
The Dollar declined and Treasury yields were flat.
Gold and silver faded a bit along with oil.
The cybercurrencies (aka digital beanie babies) continued to march to tulip land.
And earnings season rears its head once again.
Some heads are rolling today at Credit Suisse, tied to the recent big losses due to hidden risks.
There will be an update on the impact to the bank this weekend.
There are more, but they are preferring to keep silent.
"A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. As I have loved you, so you also love one another. By this all will know that you are Mine, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35
Stocks were on a tear higher today, with the SP 500 setting a new high over 4,000.
Both the SP and the NDX went out on the highs.
The VIX fell to a level we have not seen since March of last year, at the beginning of the pandemic.
Gold and silver bolted higher, both running up to the overhead resistance at 1730 and 25 respectively.
The next upper resistance level will be telling, if we are going to slip into a trading range or break out
The Dollar gave up the 93 handle.
It seems that everyone wants to be the best, because they have a natural desire for acceptance, recognition, and praise.
And in a dark and pathological time such as ours this means that everyone wants to have power. Power becomes the standard of value, the coin of the realm in a deeply fallen world. And in such a perverse world the only virtue is greed.
So they who serve the world with greatness want to be tough, unafraid, quick and intemperate on the attack, and harsh. Yes that is the mark of power, a formidable wielders of weapons.
If by some accident that person may wish at least nominally to serve God, then they too often desire to take up the sword like an avenging angel, and smite those enemies of God, who are all too often those who merely annoy and offend them. This is because their idea of what it is to be a human being has been subtly poisoned by the times; in their broken emptiness they exalt themselves. And all too often that feeling of offense simply becomes a blind hatred of 'the other.'
The will to power hates and despises weakness. Then they are no longer of God, but have given themselves over to the darkness. And they fully become its creature. Those who take up the sword of judgement for their own purposes will die by it, by a pride which is the first of all sins, in a death without redemption.
This is a subtle but very effective snare, a sin wholly against the Spirit. We embrace the world and its values not in our love of it, but in our hatred of it as we see it. This is not service, or greatness, not as it is measured in God's economy. This is a willfulness and a destruction of the self that comes from sin, but that in its own insidious way may encompass many of the trappings of a religion: the ornaments of ritual, and symbols, and all the showiness, the noise and pomp of human office—
but always and remarkably devoid of God's love.
We may love the services and outward manifestations of religion as we prefer them, the old and familiar or the hip and modern, or whatever our personal preference may be, but come to despise the very people, the body of the Church, that gives it life and meaning. We destroy what we have loved because we will to possess, to compel it, not to serve it as God has created it, with love.
Worldly power is a perversion of heavenly power in that it expresses itself in the ability not to create and fulfill life, but to diminish and destroy it. And it exults in what it thinks is its power over life, which is death. How much money, how much power is enough? The will to power is a pathological sickness, that becomes all consuming and insatiable.
Be on your guard always, and do not allow yourselves to be among those simple ones who will be taken in during the dark times, as the love of many grows cold. Stand firmly, but humbly, to the end. And you will have your greatness.
How sad it would be, not to be able to hear the endless song of praise of creation, and the music of the cherubim, as they sing their hymns of love to their Lord. In hell, all love is drowned out by the anger and complaints of the unworthy who can never have enough, and so suffer in an endless desert, devoid of all beauty and love.
Need little, want less, love more. For they who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
"Let us remember the poor, and not forget kindness to strangers; above all, let us love God with all our soul, and might, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. For no part of Creation is left void of Him: He has filled all things everywhere."
Athanasius of Alexandria
"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
"Let us ever bear in mind this divine truth,—the more secret God's hand is, the more powerful—the more silent, the more awful. Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring.
This is what baffles the power of Satan. He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it.”
John Henry Newman
"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horror? I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator. Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise. It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But I have realized they will not succeed. And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”
Sophie Scholl
Gold and silver had their expected bounces off a fairly strong support level on their charts today.
While it will be nice to see if they can hold this level and build up from here, the real question is if gold can break out of the potential trading range with resistance overhead at 1770.
Just look to the left on the chart, to see the last time gold dallied around these levels.
At this point I suspect that silver will continue to follow gold, and that gold will have some inverse correlation to the Dollar.
This is a choppy, highly technical trade. It befuddles most, especially the momentum players, because by its very nature it lacks momentum.
Stocks are grossly overvalued, but they may continue to be so for some time, given the massive amount of money printing, with its distrubtion priorities to those who play with asset prices, a key facet of our financialized eonomcy.
There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report early on Friday morning.
Alas, the money changers and their smirking chimps will not be able to gimmick the markets easily, because they will be closed here in the US for Good Friday. How inconvenient that they may miss an opportunity to steal.
I have included the Comex Clearing Report for the gold April contract, because it has some interesting and somewhat impressive numbers.
Goldman has some interesting in and out action in their own house account.
Is this the reflection of some custodial responsibility, or were their traders just having a day?
On a brighter note, asparagus is now widely available here and quite inexpensive. So tonight we will be having a fresh cream of asparagus soup. I am making it with vegetable broth so it can be eaten on the days of abstinence. Nothing better for a rainy day, with freshly toasted and buttered croutons.
Our prayers each day are for the intentions of our readers, and for all those who visit here this week. Especially we pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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