Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sliding Contentedly into the Abyss

 

"Moral hazard is the probability that a party insulated from risk will behave differently from the way they would behave if fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act with increasing recklessness, literally 'without reckoning." It also encourages the rise to power of the sociopath in the affected organizations.

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.

It is a lesson that the average person learns by the age of twelve and relearns, sometimes spectacularly, at least once in young adulthood. If you do something wrong there can be bad outcomes, and you will pay the price and penalty. Unfortunately there is a small but powerful oligopoly of privilege that is trying to project themselves onto the global stage while believing that 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

"I may have made an error in judgement— but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million. His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him."

Adolf Eichmann

"There is probably no greater threat to the faithful than that of the sanctifying of success with worldly measures. Invariably, when a principled belief aligns itself with the state, and the wealthy, and the powerful, it ends up as lost as if it was suffering persecution."

Jesse, Sanctifying Greed, 6 June 2023


Stocks had the wobbles today, but managed to hang on to their perches.

Gold and silver also marked time in place.

The Dollar fell.

The VIX remains supine.

The FOMC will be making some noises this week Wednesday.

The expectations are for a 50 bp cut.   A 25 bps cut will disappoint.  Doing nothing will shock.

There is an option expiration on Friday.

Big events are in play.  It is stunning to see how little attention they receive.

Our generation is like so many others that have come and gone before us.

We believe in comedians, sociopaths, and charlatans.   

We do not believe in plagues.

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Storm Warnings

 

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, April 2007

“Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred. The dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. They want to be told this publicly. They want to know that those ‘at the top’ are on their side. They want to feel recognized and cultivated. For goodwill to develop and have an impact it must hear this, so that the world does not ridicule it.”

Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations, 1991

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas, Member Canadian House of Commons

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth— that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning. He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road. That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1896

Stocks continued their upward drift today, as complacency in the largesse of the Fed to Wall Street continues to build.

Gold and silver continued their breakout, moving higher.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar fell.

Clearly indications to lower rates amid a slowing economy and lower inflationary pressures.

I took a trip out west of here this morning to Amish country.  

On they way there I stopped at a Costco for gasoline (2.91) and at the entrance there was a display advertising their gold bars for sale.   No surge pricing here.

So as I tuck into some wonderful bakery and prepared foods for the weekend, let's give thanks for favors received.

And also that we might be spared the consequences from the reckless actions of irresponsible politicians and their privileged enablers.

Madness.

Have a pleasant weekend.

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.