Looking Back to 8 October 2014 - The Empire of Lawlessness

 

Here is a repost of a blog that I wrote in October of 2014. 

 

Sometimes it is good to look back and see what has been.

 

In the spinning of the narrative, one of the goals is to keep people off balance, to hit them from so many directions with so many things that they just become like pieces of driftwood being carried in a powerful stream.

 

 It seems bewildering at times doesn't it?

We forget ourselves, and what we stand for.

Perhaps as this year ends now is a good time to remember.

 

Why this particular post?  It just serves to remind us how long this scam has been running, and how little we have done to change it, divert it.

 

We are divided and distracted, conditioned to tolerate greater outrages against morality and principles.

 

We know what to do.  But doing it is not possible, unless we wrap ourselves in the armor of the love for His sake.  And so most will not remain standing to the end, and will be counted among the fallen. 

Without the protection of love in your heart, you will not stand, no matter how smart or better informed you imagine yourself to be.  

 

You will fall, and not even realize that you have fallen until you are finally shown what you have become, and what it is that you serve.

It's an old and familiar playbook.   

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.  But the one who now restrains it will continue to do so until he is taken away.  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will slay by the breath of his mouth and bring to an end with the splendor of his coming.

The coming lawlessness will be the work of Satan made manifest in all power and false signs and wonders, and in every wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to accept the love of the truth to be saved.   For this reason, God permits them a powerful delusion to believe their lies, that all may be condemned who deny the truth and instead take pleasure in lawlessness." 

 

 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12

 

*******************

 

Gold and silver were under some serious pressure after a mid morning hit that was particularly blatant and clumsy.

The pressure continued steadily most of the day with silver really taking it hard.

The Fed minutes came out around 2 PM, and the equity and the precious metal markets headed north like scalded cats, because of the decidedly dovish flavor of the Fed talk.

Is there anyone, and I mean anyone, who reads what I write here who is surprised by this?   If so, then I must not be doing a very effective job of explaining that The Recovery™ is not yet sustainable, and the Fed must continue 'priming the pump' in a somewhat neurotic attempt to invoke the appearance of growth and vitality where none exists.

And why is this?  Because the system has not been reformed, and the financial sector and the one percent continue to take, by far, the greatest share of this monetary stimulus and shove it into their own tax avoiding pockets, and the public be damned.

After the Fed minutes came out, a few of us crossed emails saying, 'is there any doubt why they hit gold and silver this morning?'

There is almost NO doubt in my mind that the Fed and their Bankster owners are actively managing market perceptions while they continue their failing policies, all in the virtuous name of  'instilling confidence.' 

But a portion of the Rest of the World seems intent on calling their bluff.

Well, let's see what happens.

 

It is far too early to call the 'triple bottom' in place. We must see a breaking of the downtrend of lower highs and lower lows.  But the fundamentals remain in place, and for longer term investors, that is what matters the most.

As for stocks, I have mixed emotions. They are running on Fed money expansions, but the organic growth from the economy really is not there yet.

A true stock market junkie and advisor making their living from stocks will keep reciting the 'stay fully invested' mantra.   I became intimately familiar with this mindset as I chose to liquidate a substantial tech stock portfolio prior to the tech bubble crash of 2000.

I remember the big house broker almost yelling at me to 'stay fully invested, these are good companies!'    I liquidated everything and took my money as far away from that firm and Wall Street as I could manage.

And you know what was said on financial television to these people who had been ruined?  "No one MADE them buy those stocks."

And we saw a similar cycle of run up and crash in 2007-2008.  Many were decimated, but Wall Street continued on, keeping its profits, and socializing its losses to the public trust.  Hi ho.

Neo-liberalism breeds sociopaths.  The markets are gods, and people get what they deserve.  If they are tricked, if they are destroyed, they had it coming because they were stupid and weak.   To each as they deserve, and what they deserve from the strong is subjugation and death.

 

And in less than six months I saw many of my friends who took that sort of advice being virtually ruined, as their stock heavy retirement plans evaporated.  And even if they had held, they may not have gotten back to even in the subsequent bubble, because they would not toss out the losers from their portfolios like the Dow, SP 500 and NDX do in order to maintain the illusion.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

Flight to Egypt and the Slaughter of the Innocents

 

"God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.  If we say, 'We have fellowship with him,' while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.  But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin. 

If we say, 'We are without sin,' we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, 'We have not sinned,' we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

1 John 1:5-10

"There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, and seven that are an abomination to Him. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that plots wicked schemes, feet that run to lawlessness, a false witness who lies about others, and those who sow discord among the people."

Proverbs 6:16-19

"When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.  Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”  Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.  He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious.  He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.  Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loud lamentation;
Rachel weeping for her children,
and she would not be consoled,
since they were no more.

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

Matthew 2:13-19

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Salvator Mundi

 

“Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.  The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority, they don't dare to assert themselves.”

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

"Power will achieve its murderous potential.  It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel, Death By Government

“Exceptionalism— the view that the United States has a right to impose its will because it knows more, sees farther, and lives on a higher moral plane than other nations— was to them not a platitude, but the organizing principle of daily life and global politics."

Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, October 2013

"Exceptionalism is no virtue, no mark of the chosen, but merely the sin of pride, wearing the silks of rationalization and self-delusion. And this is at the root of every fallen angel, every lost soul, and every failing nation."

Jesse, The Will to Power in the Exceptional, March 2015

"They defended him, verbally and physically, every time he committed one of his criminal acts. They went blithely on past the suffering of all the bombing victims, the prisoners in the concentration camps, and the religious persecutors, because a different regime would have meant the end of their power."

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

"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 things that please us, prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

The volume today was very light, with the activity in the markets falling off notably after noon.

There was quite a bit of profit-taking, as the books are squared up for the end of the year.

The Dollar was flat to a little lower.

VIX was higher.

And the metals were painted, as one would expect.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Idols of Crony Capitalism

 

"One of the primary characteristics of narcissists is their exaggerated sense of entitlement.  It's hardly surprising then that so many politicians somehow think they 'deserve' to game the system.  After all, from their self-interested perspective, isn't that what the system is for?   In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be theirs.

So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with.  And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything.  Exploiting their privileged position in such a manner hardly leaves them plagued with guilt.  In general, guilt isn't an emotion they're prone to.  How could they be if they feel entitled to the objects of their desire?  In their minds their very ability to attain something must certainly mean it was merited."

Leon F. Seltzer, Narcissism: Why It's So Rampant in Politics, Psychology Today, December 21, 2011

"As in all periods of speculation, men sought not to be persuaded by the reality of things but to find excuses for escaping into the new world of fantasy."

"John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

“Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.”

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudon

"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.

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

This was a very quiet post-holiday trading day.  

The adults are on vacation, and the juniors are just following a pattern given to them.

I suspect tomorrow will be similar once we get past the first hour or two of trading, unless *something happens*.

The New Year's holiday is next week on Wednesday.   

Gold is forming up what could develop into a symmetrical triangle bullish continuation pattern.

 Let's see what happens.

The markets continue to be heavily weighed upon by mispriced risk.

Have a pleasant evening.