Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dying from Their Lack of Humility

 

"We must always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Elie Wiesel

"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

"What theology, history and common sense have taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie, Le Monde, 5 avril 1956

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.  Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.  Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.  I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world."

Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation, Cape Town, South Africa, 6 June 1966

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation.  Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people."

Martin Luther King, Convocation, Illinois Wesleyan University, 1966

"God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best.  It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. 

The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed.  The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection.  But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way, they had no choice but to reject it.”

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, 1955

"The days are coming when men will go mad, and when they meet a man who has kept his senses, will rise up against him, saying, 'You are mad, because you are not like us.' And I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said, groaning, 'What can get us through such snares?' And then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'”

Anthony the Great, Abbot of Colzim Egypt, and saint, 251-356

The markets are pricing in the expectation of a Fed policy pivot, signaled by a rate cut at their next meeting in September.

The question is whether the cut will be 25 or 50 basis points.

Stocks ranged, finishing just a little lower.

Gold and silver were just slammed in the early trading, with a determined move to run the stops of the speculative traders.

The prices quickly recovered in the aftermath of this blatant trading gambit.

All eyes are turning to the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday, in the hopes that this may illuminate the Fed's future rate decisions.

This is an artificial market—  a construct.

It lack's stability.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Overreach of Power and Privilege

 

"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made ‘legal.’ Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010

“It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.  'They were totally opposed to it,' Born says.  'That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?'"

PBS Frontline, The Warning, October 2009

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom.  The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3

"You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted.  You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you— you, officers of the Crown, all of you.  And so you made yourselves into the Mamelukes of a man who carries on his head responsibility for a hundred thousand murders, and who is the cause of the sorrow and the object of the curses of the whole of the world."

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947

“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned—
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, 1604


 A relatively small minority of insiders and elites are bringing several nations to the brink.

Their pride and sense of entitlement, their worship of privilege and power, is drawing them and their enablers into the abyss.  

And many innocents along with them.

Smells like teen spirit.

Stocks took a deep dive today, as September brings the long-anticipated rinse.

Gold and silver were hit hard, but managed to take back a little as the day wore on.

VIX spiked higher.

The Dollar chopped around, finishing with a minor gain.

Even though stocks rebounded a bit off their deep bottom, prices failed to regain any significant support level.

Risks remain shockingly underweighted.

Geopolitical events continue to loom, but ignored to an almost shocking degree.

How do you know that a Wall Street spokesperson is lying?   Their lips are moving.

How does a Wall Street spokesperson know when they are lying?   They don't care.

They share the same shameless dedication to duplicity as their counterparts in Washington.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Madness and Illusions of the Exceptional

 

"When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality.  It is the same perhaps with evil.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.   As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty.  Once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.  As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."

Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce, 1947

"The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside.'

Where is the wise one?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the debater of this age?  Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?  For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith."

1 Corinthians 1:18-23

"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves.   Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology, which swallowed up the whole of their small lives, allotted them by birth or chance.   They would far rather kill than have to think."

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan, 1926

“For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.  They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’, and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right.  Tell us only the things that please us — prophesy illusions.'"

Isaiah 30:8-10

"There is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power.  There is something among men capable of shaking despotic thrones, and that is the excited and aroused indignation of the whole civilized world."

Daniel Webster, Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, Boston, November 7, 1849


Stocks were pushed higher in the last hours of trading, probably with a view to squeezing out the stops of those who had taken 'insurance' positions ahead of the three day weekend.

US markets will be closed on Monday in observance of Labor Day.

Gold and silver were hit fairly hard.

VIX fell.

The acolytes of power continue dressing up the markets to provide additional glitz to the party of the people, ahead of the November elections.

How can these liars and murderers and their delusional enablers escape judgement?

"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, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism, November 19, 1998

Sowing the wind, to reap the whirlwind.

Have a pleasant holiday weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Black Swans Circling

 

“Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States.

      First, there will be a state of perpetual war.

      Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal ‘executive branch’ of government into a military junta.

      Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.

      Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.”

Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 2005

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937

"It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It's a huge empire. It's been extremely successful. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people."

John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, January 2004

"For those who are determined to be rich fall into temptations and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful passions which drown them in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil, after which some have coveted, and have lost their faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

1 Timothy 6:9-10

After the better than expected GDP economic information this morning, stocks did a moon shot.

VIX wallowed

Gold and silver rallied back.

The Dollar moved a bit higher.

But alas, by the time the afternoon rolled around the pop turned into a flop.

Wash and rinse du jour.

More inflation data out tomorrow.

And forgotten, but not gone, the sorrows of empire continue circling over Eastern Europe and the Middle East, waiting to come home.

Have a pleasant evening.