Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - An Exceptional Decline In Moral Judgement

 

“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty— and all forms of human life.  And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe— the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961

"Narcissism is a psychological condition defined as an obsession with the self. While not all forms of self-love or self-interest are destructive, extreme cases can be very damaging and may be diagnosed as narcissistic personality disorder.  In these instances, the disorder is characterized by a lack of empathy for others, sadistic or destructive tendencies, and a compulsion to satisfy personal needs above all other goals.

Those with severe cases often believe they are naturally superior to others or that they possess extraordinary capabilities. They may have extreme difficulty acknowledging personal weaknesses, yet also have fragile self-esteem. Narcissistic people also frequently believe that they are not truly appreciated, and can be prone to outbursts of anger, jealousy, and self-loathing when they do not get what they feel they deserve."

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, Text Revision. 2022

"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic.   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.  More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them shamelessly, in order to be fashionable and competitive.

I think this also tends to explain the decline of literature in American culture, and the rise of reality shows and the preoccupation with spectacle and extravagance.  Literature calls us out of ourselves in order to fill us with knowledge through the creative impulse, while spectacle merely panders, and flows in to fill the empty and undeveloped voids in our being.

The narcissistic tendency is not something particular (exclusive) to the wealthy, but is a cultural trait, expressed in many ways including an increase in self-absorption and incivility.  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. 

It is the excess of the age we learned that greed is good, screwing everyone is acceptable business practice, that there is no law but their desires, and that most people are inferiors intended to be used by them.  Each success emboldens them to do more, ask for more, expect more as their due.   And eventually they go too far, and fall.  And that is when their own failing, and if you will, sin, can become ours if we do nothing to stop it and to repair it.  Especially in an age in which narcissists and sociopaths,including their enablers, are actively assaulting the public interest and public trust in order to serve their own short term, selfish ends, no matter what the longer term consequences to society as a whole might be."

Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional, 1 October 2012

Today we saw one of those days that often follow on a precious metals futures option expiration, in which those who are holding newly issued contracts as a result of their 'in the money calls' are subjected to a test of their resolve—  commonly referred to as a gut check.

And in general we have now moved to the front month being the December contract, which is the most heavily traded and consequential of the year.

There will also be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday, the last report before a hotly contested national election in the States.

Therefore, let the games begin.  Or at least continue on, but with renewed vigor.

Stocks did their usual alley-oop, rising sharply in the morning, and declined in the afternoon.

The decline itself was orderly, as they say, and fell to some reasonable support level.

So, barring some alarming exogenous event, it appears that the risk market will KBO as Churchill used to say.

Mindful, nonetheless, of some sort of surprise in the payrolls report, to the down or up side.

Like many of us this year's election seems to me particularly dissatisfying, if not alarming.  I am hard pressed to vote for any that have embraced the provocation of aggressive wars, and the enabling and denial of mass murder of innocents.   But I am also discouraged from casting even a protest vote for someone who is also dangerously corrupt, in a slightly different, but more unpredictable and thoroughly pathological way.   By their very nature, decisions of conscience are subjective.

And so, as the shadows lengthen in my own life, is to make a choice so that when some day I am alone on a bed in a room, facing the yawning expanse of the eternal, that I might at least take some comfort that I had done my best in a bad situation, and not thrown it all way for some illusory slogans promising personal comforts and gain.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Has Been Hidden Will Be Revealed

 

"Le temps mûrit toute choses; par le temps toutes choses viennent en évidence; le temps est père de la vérité."   Time ripens all things; through time all things come to light; time is the father of truth.

François Rabelais, Tiers Livre XL

“Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside, but as the completion of a pattern already started.”

Mary Midgley, Myths We Live By

"The word of God is a living thing, and works among us. It is sharper than a double-edged sword, and penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, the joints and the marrow; it judges the innermost thoughts and inclinations of every heart. Nothing in all of creation is hidden from the sight of the Lord. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must some day give an account."

Hebrews 4:12-13


Gold and silver rebounded strongly after the relatively inconsequential option expiration on the Comex. 

Stocks managed to rally and went out near the highs.

Techs stocks will begin to report their numbers.   They are priced for perfection.

The rest of the market is less bubbly.  

We will have a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

US national elections next week. 

Vote your conscience, and let God sort the Übermenschen out with the goats.

“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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After Ten Years: Our Descent Into Regret

 

"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."

Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.  Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, New Year 1943

"I cautioned you all that we have entered a period of hysteria.  I saw this phase coming years ago.  And here we are.   There is a lot of fear and uncertainty out there.  And it is going to get worse.  It is those who can proceed calmly and with serenity who will pass through this period relatively well, and even if they do suffer some unavoidable misfortune, they can do so without regret."

Jesse, A Plea for Civility, 14 April 2013

"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 it is not as easy to be malicious and foolish all by themselves. Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, in obedience to the petty ideology. They would far rather kill than have to think."

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan, Paris 1926

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
In the end, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them, anyway.”

Mother Teresa

Stocks did another pop and flop again today.

They come in strong from the wee hours of futures trading, bull it up in the morning, and then take their winnings and go home at the end of the day in New York.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I would not criticize anyone who suspects that there is some 'tinkering' being done in the equity markets by the folks with the Exchange Stabilization Fund.   The desire is to keep the markets buoyant into the November elections.

Gold and silver conversely were smacked lower, but then recovered in the days trading and finished up pretty much flat. 

There was a Comex option expiration of the precious metals futures today.  Let's see how they fare the rest of the week.  By far the December futures are the most heavily traded for the precious metals in New York.

VIX ticked up a bit.

The Dollar did a dip and recover of its own.

Israel launched its retaliatory strike against Iran.  It was not particularly successful, as viewed through the fog of war and willful war propaganda which dominates the media.  

I suspect the actual attack was toned down out of respect for the upcoming elections.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Higher Immorality of the Elite

 

“The mainstream media must be considered part of the deep state. Its assumptions, biases, priorities, and defaults are very much a function of the interests of a tiny elite of corporate wealth whose interests the media necessarily serves regardless of this or that outlet’s position along the ever-narrowing spectrum of allowable political perspective.”

Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, June 2022

"This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve.  This is the way ordinary citizens react when they learn that the structure beneath them is crumbling.  And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, June 2018

"Political corruption is one aspect of a more general immorality; the level of moral sensibility that now prevails is not merely a matter of corrupt men. The higher immorality is a systematic feature of the American elite; its general acceptance is an essential feature of the mass society.

Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal-and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated-and the higher immorality is institutionalized. It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.

Despite – perhaps because of – the ostracism of mind from public affairs, the immorality of accomplishment, and the general prevalence or organized irresponsibility, the men of the higher circles benefit from the total power of the institutional domains over which they rule.

Status follows big money, even if it has a touch of the gangster about it. Status follows power, even if it be without background. Below, in the mass society, old moral and traditional barriers to status break down and Americans look for standards of excellence among the circles above them, in terms of which to model themselves and judge their self-esteem.

A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, April 1956

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: Memoir of the Montgomery Boycott, September 17, 1958

"There is probably no greater threat to the faithful than that of the sanctifying of success by worldly measures."

Jesse, Sanctifying Greed, 6 June 2023


I think that some day historians, in their attempt to make a coherent sense of a diversity of actors and events of our time,  may make the case that the most common denominator among the people of power, our Western elite, was not wisdom or virtue or learning or even genuine accomplishments.

The most valued characteristic of our system seems to be the willingness of the individual to surrender themselves to the unspeakable— to do whatever they are told to do, say anything that they are told to say, attend whatever institution and join whatever organization that may be required, and to profess anything with fervent conviction that they are told to believe.  And to never, ever violate the secrecy and carefully crafted image of the ruling class.

Whether this servile attitude comes from a total lack of character, a sociopathic obsession with power and money, or on the negative side a susceptibility to sexual or financial blackmail, for example, it just a  spectrum of a system that has degenerated into a secretive series of schemes, scams, and cons, hidden behind an official mythology of manufactured stories under a blanket of closely guarded secrecy.

Gold, silver, and the Dollar rallied.

VIX rose.

Stocks meandered, finishing weakly for the most part.

The locus of the bubble, big cap tech, made a decent showing.  But it is mostly for  show, with little substance as of yet.

There will be an option expiration for the precious metals on the Comex next Monday the 28^th. 

The average person is busy caring for family and building and growing things, and so they treasure productivity and peace.

The powerful and their elite love chaos, war, uncertainty, injustice, and unrest.  For they gather in lawlessness from the misery of others.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant weekend.