Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Audacious

 

"While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great.   They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth."

Larry Lindsey, Federal Reserve Governor, FOMC Minutes, September 24, 1996

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States...  Recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009

“I recognize that there is a stock market bubble problem at this point, and I agree with Governor Lindsey that this is a problem that we should keep an eye on...  We do have the possibility of raising major concerns by increasing margin requirements.  I guarantee that if you want to get rid of the bubble, whatever it is, that will do it.”

Alan Greenspan,  Federal Reserve Chairman,  FOMC Minutes, September 24, 1996

“When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution.  If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers?   By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”

Yuval Noah Harari

"Confusing a targeted audience is one of the necessary ingredients for effective mind control.  The eternal demagogue will arise anew.  He will accuse others of conspiracy in order to prove his own importance.  He will try to intimidate those who are neither so iron-fisted nor so hotheaded as he, and temporarily he will drag some people into the web of his delusions.  With his emotionalism and suspicion, he will shatter the trust of citizens in one another."

Joost Meerloo M.D., The Rape of the Mind, 2015

Stocks attempted to rally, again.

And then fell again, testing the prior low.

Gold was up slightly while silver fell a bit with the recessionary fears driving stocks.

Inflation and Fed concerns are driving markets, obviously.

The PPI came in a little hot this morning.

CPI tomorrow.

I am holding a little short term gold position but overall I will stick to the high ground.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - It Is a Fraud to Conceal a Fraud

 

"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."

Henri-Frederic Amiel

“The essence of a speculative bubble is a sort of feedback, from price increases, to increased investor enthusiasm, to increased demand, and hence further price increases. Major speculative bubbles, as I argued in Irrational Exuberance, are always supported by some superficially plausible popular theory that justifies them, and that is widely viewed as having sanction from some authority figures. These may be called new-era theories.”

Robert Shiller

"Greed is not good. Greed is a disease, an aberration of simple honest ambition and necessary provision taken to excess. This simple distinction may be lost on a people no longer able to distinguish between virtue and sin, honor and expediency, appetite and gluttony, the means and the ends. Every great religion, every school of philosophy has cautioned throughout history on the perils of unbridled and unregulated greed.

And yet this generation would make a god of it, although they may not understand, or care, what it is that they are doing, and whom it is they serve. And yet they will be held to account for their willfulness, foolishness, and casual disregard for others.

Greed, often in company with hubris and fear, is a handmaiden of the corrupting influence of power and triumph of the will. Greed is contagious, and attacks the very contentment of society at its heart, turning it towards oligarchy and oppression."

Jesse, Greed Is Not Good, 19 December 2010

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

Erich Fromm


Stocks slumped lower, once again today, after yet another attempt to move higher.

The Dollr and the VIX rose.

Gold and silver wallowed a bit.

Inflation data coming out later this week.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Riding the Dragon

 

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small.   It is nearly nil.   Perhaps this is inherent.  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

"Democracy is held captive, not just by money, but by ideas — the ideas that money buys."

William Greider

"How did we get into this mess in the first place?  As in the 1920s, the current 'disturbance' started with a 'mania.'  But manias always have a cause.  If you investigate individually the manias that the market has so dubbed over the years, in every case, it was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset. 

The particular asset varied from one boom to another.  But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and too-low interest rates.

And then of course if monetary policy tightens, the boom collapses."

Brian M Carney, Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War, Oct. 18, 2008

"It is difficult to explain moral hazard to tenured professors or the pampered princes of bureaucracy, who beat the drum with their silver spoons in support of shifting the risk of loss to the public every time that Wall Street falls into one of its own schemes— and blows itself up.

 Unfortunately there is a small but powerful oligopoly of privilege that  believes they are immune to ordinary consequence, and have become addicted to the notion that 'others must pay' for their failures.  Moral hazard comes from rewarding bad behaviour in markets with wristslaps and bailouts.  It is a danger to the economy and to the public."

Jesse, Moral Hazard, 22 March 2008

 

Stocks limped into the open today, and gyrated around during the day.

Same old, same old, same old.

VIX was up along with the Dollar which grabbed the 113 handle back.

Gold and silver pressed lower, giving the coup de grace to those who hung on through the Non Farm Payrolls.

Some big inflation data coming out later this week.

We picked up some in-laws from Ohio from their cruise at the Brooklyn Terminal this Saturday.  And to make a long story short, they brought back Covid from this.   Apparently this cruise line has eliminated the usual mandatory pre-testing and safeguards. With passengers from all over the country.  Nicely done.

The young man has a 102 fever and is fairly laid out in bed, as is my brother-in-law, who is now back in Ohio.  But the variants booster from three weeks ago seems to be serving this old man well so far.   If I didn't know he had tested positive I would just think I was just a bit tired.  But let's see what happens.

Forewarned is forearmed.  

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wash and Rinse, Fait Accompli - The Never-Ending Story

 

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.  No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife - is sure to be noticed.”

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

“'The world says: 'You have needs — satisfy them.  You have as much right as the rich and the mighty.  Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.'  This is the worldly doctrine of today.  And they believe that this is freedom.  The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"It was pride that changed angels into devils; and it is humility that makes men angels.   There never has been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.”

Augustine of Hippo

"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.  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

"The Reserve Bank of Australia only raised rates 25 bp this morning.   And the sages of Wall Street took this as a sign that Aussie is leading the world and that the Fed will shortly be following their lead.  I took it as a sign that we are approaching another sizable wash and rinse.  It does seem to be a recurrent play of our kleptocracy.  And so the spokesmodels and muppets cheered another glorious stock market rally."

Jesse, Prelude to a Wash and Rinse, 4 October 2022


It never seems to get old for them, does it?  

The Jobs Report came in a little better than expected this morning, and so stocks plummeted. 

After rallying madly higher on a similarly contrived rationale earlier this week.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

What a surprise.  Who could have seen it coming?

The Dollar gained again on expectations of higher interest rates.

Gold and silver, as priced in dollars, fell off on Dollar strength.

The VIX rose higher.

What comes next will be a littler more difficult to discover.

So for most of us, a safe place on the higher ground is the place to be.

Especially when lawlessness has such an easy hand on the markets.

Have a pleasant weekend.