Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Disturbance in the Force

 

"Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups.  So I ask, in my writing, What is real?  Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.  I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power.  They have a lot of it.  And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind."

Phillip K. Dick, How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart, 1978

"To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, [Sheldon Wolin, 'Inverted Totalitarianism'] since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: 'inverted totalitarianism,' a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on 'private media' than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events.

It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison of any nation on Earth).

The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the military-industrial complex, which is in charge of superpower. 

The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal.  Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].

One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life [culture wars] so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust.  Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation.

It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control.  Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin’s analysis will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong."

Chalmers Johnson, A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled, May 16, 2008

 

Markets looked at the economic data this morning, and decided that the Fed is going to be handing out some rate cuts in short order.

And so we saw the reactions to expectations of lower rates.

Stocks rose sharply.

Gold and silver took off, breaking up and out through resistance, and gaining ground all the way into the close.

The Dollar fell.

VIX continued to drift lower.

It was gratifying to see gold and silver breaking out of their recent smothering in a trading range.

Geopolitical matters are forgotten for now.  

Many have noticed the sense of panic setting in among the weavers of the dominant narrative.  Mainstream talking heads and political operatives have been going after the differing voices in the alternative media in some uncharacteristically petty and even forceful means.

Power fades, and those who have profited by it struggle to maintain their unnatural advantages.

But when force and fraud fade way, reality remains.

Have a pleasant evening.

Related:  Saudi Arabia Secretly Buying 160 Tonnes of Gold in Switzerland

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fear Not

 

"If history is what is recorded, then deep history is the sum of events which tend to be officially obscured or even suppressed in traditional books and media.   Important recent deep events include the political assassinations of the 1960s, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and now 9/11.   All these deep events have involved what I call the deep state, that part of the state which is not publicly accountable, and pursues its goals by means which will not be approved by a public examination."

Peter Dale Scott, 9/11, JFK, and War: Recurring Patterns, 2013

"The ultimate purpose of crime is to establish an endless empire.  It seeks a state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world thought doomed to annihilation.   When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

"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.

The world seems to go on as usual.  There is nothing of heaven in the face of society; in the news of the day there is nothing of heaven; in the faces of the many, or of the great, or of the rich, or of the busy, there is nothing of heaven; in the words of the eloquent, or the deeds of the powerful, or the counsels of the wise, or the resolves of the lordly, or the pomps of the wealthy, there is nothing of heaven. 

And yet the Ever-blessed Spirit of God is here; the Presence of the Eternal Son, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh, is with us.  Let us ever bear in mind this divine truth,—the more secret God's hand is, the more powerful—the more silent, the more awful."

John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 4 No 17, 1838

 

A fairly in-line CPI reading seemed to have a delayed reaction in cheering the risk markets higher.

VIX fell.

The Dollar chopped around and finished just about unchanged.

Gold backed off a bit, but silver rose with equities.

PPI tomorrow.

We're in the 'silly season' now as the election approaches.  

Added to that the stresses of our irrational foreign policies is making people abandon reason in the face of the unreasonable. 

But, the madness serves none but itself.

We have our light to follow, and we know what to do.  The best course of personal and financial action is to keep our heads focused on what is true, and let the madness go its own way. 

The madness serves none but itself.

"When humanity has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Fritz Lang said this in his cinema, in 1933, as the society of his time was giving way to madness, and slipping steadily into the abyss.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Devils in the Dominant Narrative

 

"It is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification.   The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, and justice nothing."

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Lecture for Literature, 1970

"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.  At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.  It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it.  Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."

George Orwell, Freedom of the Press

"Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.  We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love one another.  Anyone who does not love is in thrall to death.  Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer.  And you know that no murderer has life eternal residing in him.

Little children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and truth."

1 John 3:13-18

"Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say.  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:43-44

"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.  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.  We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened.  But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen."

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island


Stocks managed to hold a bounce today.

VIX fell, of course.

The Dollar chopped around, but finished mostly unchanged.

Gold and silver are hanging in there.

Gold seems to be in an ascending triangle, which is developing along the lines of a potential continuation pattern.

Tomorrow we get the CPI and PPI the day after.

This may help to resolve a number of things on the charts.

I have seen our leadership perpetrate nasty and undesirable things in my life. 

Most of the time they were truly awful, but hidden with some sense of shame.

Their boldness is growing, and the facades are falling away. 

And they delight with the skill in their lying.

"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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Gathering of Vultures

 

"The historical evidence is overwhelming.  Many societies have done well for a while – until powerful people get out of hand.  This is an easy pattern to see at a distance and in other cultures.   It is typically much harder to recognize when your own society now has an elite less subject to effective constraints and more able to exert power in an abusive fashion.   And given the long history of strong institutions in the United States, it appears particularly difficult for some people to acknowledge that we have serious governance issues that need to be addressed.

We had strong institutions for a long time in this country — including effective checks on the power of bankers.  Many people remember that history and still hold its image in their mind’s eye as they look at modern Wall Street.  It’s time to wake up.  In recent decades we abandoned the governance mechanisms that previously served us well.  Global megabanks have obtained excessive and inappropriate power – the power to take a great deal of risk, with cash for their executives on the upside and huge damage for the rest of us on the downside."

Simon Johnson, Jamie Dimon and the Fall of Nations, May 31,2012

"Give strength to the hands that are tired
      and to knees that tremble with weakness.
Tell all who are discouraged,
      'Be strong. Do not be afraid.
      God is coming to your rescue,
      coming to chastise the oppressor.'”

Isaiah 35:3-4

"For they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency, which requires the elimination of administrative or political barriers capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual quest for the maximisation of individual profit, which has been turned into a model of rationality.  And they preach the subordination of nation-states to the requirements of economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of any regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses."

Pierre Bourdieu, L’essence du néolibéralisme

"Until this moment I think I never gauged the cruelty or recklessness of some conservative economists, politicians and their masters. They have created a wreckage of financial devices and led us on the edge of a societal precipice.  Have they not done enough?  Have they no sense of decency left at long last?

Must they now attempt to define the poor as those who by their nature prefer cheap and shoddy goods, and a lower standard of life, and who are therefore are separate but equal with the wealthy who are genetically compelled (entitled?) to require the finer things in life?  The words of Robert Welch to lowlifes like McCarthy and Cohn still fit after all these years, to those lacking the basic integrity of the schoolyard, who thrive on and generate conflict, and who will say or do almost anything in their pursuit of the will to power."

Jesse, Economists Discover 'Separate But Equal', 20 May 2008

"They asked, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And Jesus said, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”

Luke 17:37


Stocks managed to bounce back today after last week's rough declines.

Gold and silver were higher.

The Dollar was higher.

VIX fell.

The news to watch this week will be the CPI on Wednesday, and the PPI on Thursday.

There seems to be a consensus that the Fed will be making their 'pivot' official, and offer up a rate cut at their next meeting this month.

The debate is whether it will be 25 or 50 bp.

If it is 50 I would expect it to be due to the proximity of the Presidential election, so they will cut big once and then stand aside until after that event.

But let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.