“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way. Blessed are they who love their brothers and sisters as much when they are sick, as when they are well and of service. And blessed are they who love their brothers and sisters as well when they are far away, as when they are close. When you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received, but only what you have given.” Francis of Assisi
"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse."
Charles Kindelberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
"The loveliest of the Devil's tricks is to make you believe that he does not exist."
Charles Pierre Baudelaire
"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
Gold and silver rebounded sharply, with several of the mining stocks showing outsized one day gains.
Newmont Mining was a good example.
Stocks themselves struggled with big cap tech leading the way lower.
VIX was higher.
The Dollar fell, hanging on to the 96 handle by its fingernails.
"In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition. They’re shameless.”
Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History
"In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere, incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.
C. S. Lewis
"The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that."
Walter Brueggemann
“These days, banks have become so big that much of what they do is merely shuffle wealth around, or even destroy it. Instead of growing the pie, the explosive expansion of the banking sector has increased the share it serves itself. Bizarrely, it’s precisely the jobs that shift money around – creating next to nothing of tangible value – that net the best salaries. How is it possible that all those agents of prosperity – the teachers, the police officers, the nurses – are paid so poorly, while the unimportant, superfluous, and even destructive shifters do so well?”
Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists
These jokers are shameless.
I am sorry I did not buy even more heavily on that big dip.
Yes this has always been a facet of the markets.
But in 25 years it has rarely been more brazen.
I hope you did not get whipsawed out of your positions.
Let's see what fresh shenanigans tomorrow may bring.
In such a fragile system, agility and flexibility is the name of the game.
Physical gold inventory levels continue to fluctuate in Hong Kong.
"Another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation.
These are free of political controls and social responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society.
They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.
The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital."
Professor Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series 3, 1976
"Money is power. And those who control the money, if they have the will for it, can use it as a means to incredible power, to create debt, and to control it, thereby controlling the debtors, both as individuals, as communities, as regions, and whole nations.
This is the story of global trade deals, the Dollar, and the foul marriage between politics, money, and central banking. The more discretion and secrecy that is granted to those who create money and debt, the more vulnerable is the freedom of the people."
Jesse, 4 May 2015
"Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison! Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?
No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform. This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you.
He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them. He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
"Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the shaking knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
‘Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible judgement. He will come and preserve you.’
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
in the haunts of jackals reeds and papyrus will grow.
A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God’s people;
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
Isaiah 35:3-10
"Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine
jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings."
William Arthur Ward
"Christmas is more than a time of joy and gift-giving and receiving presents. It is a time to recall our blessings and to gain strength in the grace of our friends and bosom of our families and loved ones. And above all it is a time to remember that greatest, almost incomprehensible gift in all history, how our Lord made himself as us, as we are in our true selves, and came to us in the flesh, the incarnation of selfless love.
And thereby those who are no longer present in body at the Christmas hearth may still be there in spirit with us, as we will some day be with them. Not bound up in crippling self-pity, not immobilized by faceless fear, not fleeting as a merely morose remembrance, but to be there vitally in our lives as our good angels, reminding us that the Christmas spirit is to be found, as Charles Dickens noted, in 'active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance.'
This is how we may not only honor and cherish their memory, but actually live again in love with them.
What greater gift could we possibly desire to receive, than the ability to do good, to persevere in love, and to thereby live in the love of those for whom we care and who care for us, always? That gift is there, if only we will not shut the door of our hearts, and be open to it.
Repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness.
It is not always easy to act on our light, because at times our love is clumsy and awkwardly done, and can even turn back against us when we serve it out of selfish expectations. But if we never stop trying to serve it in the true Christmas spirit, for the right reasons, then it will light a fire in our hearts."
Jesse, 16 December 2015
Just another day in Scam-land, with stocks rallying and then dumping into the afternoon.
The markets seem to be stuck here on a never-ending wash and rinse cycle.
The one percent must be paid.
Gold and silver were a little higher in this roller-coaster of risk perception.
A big chunk of physical gold took a hike out of the Hong Kong warehouses.
Wax on, wax off.
The Dollar was a bit higher as well.
VIX rose, bouncing off its moving averages.
The markets will be watching to see what the Fed does, and especially says, on Wednesday.
There will be the last big option expiration for the year this week on Friday.
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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