Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Careless People, Jerome and Janet

 

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.  These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance.  But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."

Demosthenes

"Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities.  It does not shock us when they wield a gun.  Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning?

Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery."

Jesse, A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History, 15 December 2008

"There are no necessary evils in government.  Its evils exist only in its abuses.  If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States

"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery.  We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.

Few people have yet considered the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."

George Orwell

Stocks did another one day wash and rinse special.

It started with a rocket rally up from the relatively benign CPI data this morning, but fell apart and went deeply into the red by the market close.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver rallied, with a similar volatility to stocks.

VIX is in a fairly tight lower range.

Earnings season kicks off with the Banks on Friday.

It was in the high 80s here today.   More like Summer than Spring.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - An Impasse in Expectations

 

"She was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things. She was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation.”

Mark Twain, Joan of Arc

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.   The Western world has lost its civic courage.  Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, 8 June 1978

"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world. America has developed the world's most competitive market society but has squandered its civic virtue along the way. Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, October 4, 2011

"That is a dirty word in this age of empire, to serve.  Ironically we all end up serving something or someone, even if it is only ourselves.  And we become defined by what we serve.  Anyone can be a hero or a saint, not flawless, but faltering, not perfect, but persevering, not proud but pushing forward often in fear and trembling, not losing their own way but following the light of righteousness and goodness, even while stumbling and going forward again, because everyone can serve, and serve well if they choose something lasting and worthy."

Jesse, Heroes and Saints, 18 January 2015


The secret of courage is to care for something, someone, more than you care for yourself. 

Stocks had another waffling day, seemingly waiting with bated breath for the Consumer Price Inflation data tomorrow.

Earnings season will begin on Friday with the Banks.

Gold and silver rose a little.

The Dollar gave back Monday's gains.

Back and forth, wash and rinse.

The VIX looks to be caught in a tight range.

I suspect something will break soon.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Age of Incessant Selfies - Empire of the Self-Absorbed

 

"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament.   He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted.  To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography."

C. S. Lewis

"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love."

Thomas Merton

"Sorrow can do one of two things to us.  It can make us hard, bitter, resentful, rebellious against God.  Or it can make us kinder, softer, more sympathetic.  It can despoil us of our faith; or it can root faith ever deeper.   It all depends how we think of God."

William Barclay, Commentary on Luke 2:36-40

"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it."

John Henry Newman

"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic.  I do not know if there are more narcissistic individuals in society now, and perhaps there are not.  But I do think that narcissism is much more widely tolerated, rewarded, and even admired now than it would have been in the period of 1930 to 1950 for example.  And that is what makes all the difference.  More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them, in order to be fashionable and competitive. 

Power expresses itself in the assertion of the will over others, and the cultivation of unrestrained personal power, the triumph of their will, is the lifeblood of the narcissist."  

Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional: The Age of Narcissism, 1 October 2012

"The humble live in continuous peace, while in the hearts of the proud are envy and frequent anger."

Thomas à Kempis

And so we are back to business, from the holiest week in the Christian calendar again.

And Wall Street marked it with a fairly clumsy and obvious wash and rinse, from the backwash of the Non-Farm Payrolls report from Friday.

The Dollar edged higher.

Gold and silver struggled a bit but ended all right enough.

There will be some important inflation data on Wednesday, 

Geo-politics are heating up, with the encouragement of those superior beings the Neo-cons.

The west seems in thrall to the sickness unto death.

Hi ho.

Have a pleasant evening.

Rise

 

"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said."

Matthew 28:6


“Awake, O sleeper! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Ephesians 5:14


"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.  

Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providence of God."

John Henry Newman,


"Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection."

Hans Urs von Balthasar


"Then Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though they die will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?'”

John 11:25-26


Your face will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father.

Believe in the resurrection, because He lives in you.

Have a happy Easter.

He is risen.