Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Peace to Men of Good Will

 

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined."

Isaiah 9:1


"Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) heard Germans troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches.  Messages began to be shouted between the trenches.

The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man's land and exchanged gifts, took photographs and some played impromptu games of football.  They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts.  After Boxing Day, meetings in no man's land dwindled out.

The truce was not observed everywhere along the Western Front.  Elsewhere the fighting continued and casualties did occur on Christmas Day.  Some officers were unhappy at the truce and worried that it would undermine fighting spirit.

After 1914, the High Commands on both sides tried to prevent any truces on a similar scale happening again.  Despite this, there were some isolated incidents of soldiers holding brief truces later in the war, and not only at Christmas."

British Imperial War Museum, The Real Story of the Christmas Truce


"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war.  We are close to Christmas.  There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes– all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.

It’s all a charade.  The world has not understood the way of peace.  What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now?  What shall remain?  Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers.”

Francis I, November 22, 2015


"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell


"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12


It would be a suitable gesture if Russia were publicly to offer a 'Christmas truce' in its conflict in the Ukraine,  from December 25^th to January 7^th, and it would be equally interesting to see if it would be accepted.

The truce would be for caring for the wounded, a respite for the fighters and civilians and other affected parties, but not for the installation and deployment of new weapons systems or fortifications.

In this sort of conflict the interests of the locals can become subordinated to the greater designs and covetousness among their elite, and the greater principalities and powers of the world.

And for this reason there seems to be little hope for an end to the violence and bloodshed.  The people who hope to gain are not among those who suffer for their ambitions.

VIX plummeted.   It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Stocks drifted higher.

The Dollar edged up.

Gold and silver backed off a bit from their recent gains.

Trading will begin to grow even more quiet, especially if there is a lack of exogenous events.

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

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

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Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bank of Japan Roils Markets - Christmas Week Blizzard of 2022

 

“No servant can serve two masters.  For you will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and greed.”

Luke 16:15

"Sweating in his cell in the evening, Göring was defensive and deflated and not very happy over the turn the trial was taking.  We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

'Why, of course, the people don't want war,' Göring shrugged.  'Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece.  Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany.  That is understood.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same way in any country.'"

Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson

"The inability (unwillingness) to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.  What is called 'fellow traveling' was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else and, simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much."

Theodor Adorno

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

The Bank of Japan shocked markets with a change in stance on their bond rates, fueling a rally in the Yen.

And that in turn took the DX Dollar Index lower.

Gold and silver rallied sharply.

Stocks had a ranging day but managed to hold a little bounce after yesterday's drop.

Accuweather warns that the central US is in for a pre-Christmas blizzard later this week. 

Be careful out there and stay warm.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Heal Our Blindness

 

“What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.  And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.  We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.”

Dorothy Day

"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.  The devil is no fool.  He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell.  He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. 

And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis.  And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything."

Thomas Merton

"The world would be better off if people tried to be better.  And people would become better if they stopped trying to be better off.  For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off.  But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off.  And everybody would be what we ought to be if everybody tried to be what we want the other one to be. 

What we give to the poor, for Christ's sake, is what we carry with us when we die." 

Peter Maurin

Stocks slumped in this first trading day of the Christmas holiday week.

Chalk up another leg down, from the howler of a failed rally on the 'CPI news' last week.

Trading was light and a bit lackluster.  I suspect many of the adults have already taken their gains for the year and gone on an extended holiday vacation.

Is Santa going to be walkabout on Wall Street this year?

Almost a quarter million ounces of gold bullion went walkabout from the Comex certified warehouses in Hong Kong. 

The Dollar went sideways.

Gold and silver slipped a bit lower.

The stock bulls would like to find a footing and drift a little higher this week. 

Let's see if reality meets their expectations.

Lord, heal our blindness, pierce our hardened hearts, enlighten our minds, and break the chains of our pride and self-deception, so that we may choose repentance, forgiveness, and life.

Have a pleasant evening.

Will God Dwell With His Creatures on Earth

 

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.

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

"He became what we are, that he might make us what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria

"Our Lord has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world."

Teresa of Avila

"Those of us 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.

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. 

Christmas is a time of life, remembrance, forgiveness, tolerance, and love. And so God bless us, everyone."

Jesse, 16 December 2015

May God open our hardened hearts, that He may dwell among us.