Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Culture of Delusion and Deceit - Fed Vice Chair Front Running

 

"All men are divided into 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary.'  Ordinary men have to live in submission and have no right to break the law, because, don't you see, they are ordinary.   But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and violate and ignore the law in any way they wish, just because they are extraordinary."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 

 

"The narcissist looks down on everyone and exploits people all of his life.  For many narcissists life is all about money and power.  Getting more and giving less is his motto." 

Linda Martinez-Lewi, Narcissist’s Outrageous Self Entitlement

 

"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments." 

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil 

 

"True narcissists are self-serving and lack integrity.  They believe they’re superior and thus not subject to the same rules and norms.  Studies show they’re more likely to act dishonestly to achieve their ends.  They know they’re lying, and it doesn’t bother them.  They don’t feel shame.”

Charles A. O'Reilly, Stanford University

 

"You should thank God for bank bailouts— absolutely required to save your civilization. So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn't be bitching about a little bailout. You should have been thinking it should have been bigger.   You should thank God the government saved the big banks and their investors.  Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.   Suck it in and cope." 

Charlie Munger, Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2010

 

Stocks rebounded today as the VIX, a measure of perceived risk, fell.

Gold and silver rallied.

The Dollar dropped but managed to hang on to the 94 handle with its fingernails.

Just another day in the 'hood with the hoods.

Adding to the list, it seems Fed Vice Chair Clarida was insider trading Powell's statement on the pandemic.

October is a seasonally riskier month.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And the Love of Most Will Grow Cold - Stocks Still Heading Downtown

 

"Whoever is wise and understanding among you?  Let them show it by their good life, by works done in the gentleness born from wisdom.  But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant or tell lies about the truth.  

Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, nonspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peaceful, considerate, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruit, free from prejudice and hypocrisy."

James 3:13-17

 

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it.  Intellectual regurgitation is prized over independent thought. Voices of the dispossessed, different, and un(formally)educated are neglected regardless of their morality, import, and validity. 

Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status." 

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class

 

“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. Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people." 

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

 

"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

"But 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

 

"The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham!  But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’  But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’” 

Luke 16:30-31

 

Stocks attempted to rally today, but then dropped with the broader stock index leading the way down.  Again.

Thus ends September, with the worst month for stocks since the pandemic began.

Gold and silver were both sharply higher after the most recent slamdown we'll call 'Mini-me.'

The Dollar finished slightly lower but still has a firm grasp on the 94 handle.

I have included the 5 year USD chart so you can see where things stand in the broader context.

And so this is the month end, we should be looking forward to another Non-Farm Payrolls report.

The scandal of dodgy trading by highly placed Fed officials actively trading in the very financial assets that they were shoving around continues to deepen, despite some largely cosmetic damage control.

What is shocking is not that so many are losing their way, although in some cases it is surprising.   

But what is stunning is that they give themselves away for so little, for something and someone so unworthy.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Where Are the Regulators? - Our Audacious Oligarchy

 

"The culture of Wall Street has now completely engulfed the Fed: it’s legal if you can get away with it.

The Fed’s governance and controls to prevent conflicts of interest have been repeatedly criticized by government auditors.  When the GAO conducted an audit of the Fed’s bailout facilities during and after the 2008 financial crash, it found a litany of defects in how the Fed had operated these programs. Among the criticisms were that two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its lending facilities were no bid contracts. 

Worse yet, many of the no-bid contracts went to the very banks that the Fed was bailing out. This is a time when we will find out if SEC Chair Gary Gensler and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland are prepared to step in and properly serve the interests of the American people and restore credibility to the central bank of the United States." 

WSOP, Was Boston Fed President Rosengren Trading with Citigroup’s Money? 

 

"Once they are exposed, transgressions have no refuge but in audacious denials.   And they have accomplices in all those who fear the same disclosures.” 

Tacitus

 

"Impunity is epidemic in America.  The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight.  When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish 'dreamer.'  Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity."

Jeffrey Sachs 2016

 

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not.  And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions.   And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else."

Neil Barofsky

 

"Written by Carmen Segarra, the petite lawyer turned bank examiner turned whistleblower turned one-woman swat team, the 340-page tome takes the reader along on her gut-wrenching workdays for an entire seven months inside one of the most powerful and corrupted watchdogs of the powerful and corrupted players on Wall Street – the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In a nutshell, the whoring works like this. There are huge financial incentives to go along, get along, and keep your mouth shut about fraud. The financial incentives encompass both the salary, pension and benefits at the New York Fed as well as the high-paying job waiting for you at a Wall Street bank or Wall Street law firm if you show you are a team player." 

WSOP, Wall Street's Dark Underbelly, 2019 

 

"Your record gives me grave concern.  Over and over, you have acted to make our banking system less safe.  And that makes you a dangerous man to head up the Fed.  I came to Washington after the 2008 crash to make sure that nothing like that would ever happen again.  And it's why I will oppose your renomination." 

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Comment to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, 28 September 2021

 

Stocks were wobbly, again.

Yields on Treasuries were rising at the longer tend of the curve, supporting a higher Dollar which has now taken the 94 handle quite handily.

Gold ans silver were hit again.

The physical inventories for Comex related trades are now at cautionary low levels.

Time to transfer more physical gold from West to East.

The revelations of abuses in key positions at the Fed are shocking.

Time for a another distraction.    More theater, bread and circuses.

Are you not entertained?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And the Band Played On - Our Audacious Oligarchy

 

"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy.  I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life." 

Jimmy Carter 

 

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.  They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest." 

Henry Wallace, April 1944

 

"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State 

 

"Our future could be one in which continued tumult feeds the looting of the financial system, and we talk more and more about exactly how our oligarchs became bandits and how the economy just can’t seem to get into gear." 

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009

 

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whip their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy— then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.” 

Hunter S. Thompson

 

"But there is a sort of 'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."

Robert Johnson, Audacious Oligarchy

Stocks moved lower again today, and went out near their lows.

Gold and silver were hit hard in the early trading, but managed to take back a good chun of their losses by the close.

The physical kilo bar inventory in Hong Kong is getting rather low again.  

Time to scour more physical out of the ETFs?

The Dollar rose on higher Treasury yields.

Congress engaged in the usual toothless showmanship in discussing the economy in testimony today.

I am sitting all in cash in my short term account now , although I did flip a few miners off the morning bloodbath.

Agnico-Eagle will be acquiring Kirkland Lake in a 'merger of equals (kind of).

The saga of the gambling Fed Presidents continues, and so we have another fine piece from the Martens today here.

Apparently a Fed President was actively placing short term million dollar directional bets, including the SP futures, during the crisis and the bailouts, with pockets full of insider information.

Must have been like shooting fish in a barrel.

And it was all legal so they say, and ethical.   But details are being stonewalled.

All in all not extraordinary, in this attractive but deceitful world of routine abuse of honor, office, power, and the truth.

Have a pleasant evening.