Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Mother of Harlots and Abominations

 

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809

"And where is the magnificent Emperor Nero now, ubi sunt, immortal god and lord of the world, but a memory, returned to the earth and dust, to live no more.  Perhaps he is now to be found only as a bit of dirt beneath the fingernails of some little child, to be plucked out and thrown away with a 'tut tut' by a doting mother.

The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome.  And so the mighty rise and are fallen, but the Word and the Spirit endure."

Jesse, The Word and the Spirit Endure, 18 March 2016

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.  When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure.  This is a summons to us to keep the agenda of justice for the vulnerable alive and front and center to maintain a kind of subversive stance toward power.

Early on in the gospel traditions, the power elite in Jesus’ society who were colluding with the Roman Empire, recognized him as a threat and began to conspire to kill him.  I think he was presented in the gospel narratives as being a huge threat to the established order of the Roman Empire... Jesus became a reference point for much of the hostility and resistance to the power of the empire because he refused to accommodate it, and told another story of reality that the empire could not co-opt.

The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann, Speak Truth to Power, June 26, 2014

“'The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, adorned with riches, holding in her hand a golden cup full of idolatry and the impurities of her lawlessness; and on her forehead was written a name of mystery: 'Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth’s abominations.'"

Revelation 17:4-6

"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 it 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 perishing because they refused to love 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

Stocks dumped today, as the wash and rinse continues, to the tune of mispriced risks and war drums.

Gold and silver soared, with the silver futures contract tagging 35 intraday.

Gold has clearly broken out, and set a new all time high.

There is no gold kilo report from Hong Kong, because the CME has decided that they had to close shop and leave town.   Too physical for their papery tastes it seems.

VIX kicked back up a bit.

The Dollar continued to decline.

Tomorrow there will be an FOMC meeting with the usual press conference with Chairman Jay to follow.

The outlook is cloudy, with a chance of shenanigans.

I came in fairly short this morning, and then closed them out as the morning decline seemed to wane.  I went into the close flat, no positions short term, and will wait to see what happens tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - CME Discontinuing a Number of Gold Contracts

 

I was out and about most of the day.

Just charts tonight.

I will note that there was no update on the physical gold in CME associated warehouses in Hong Kong.

You may have seen the notice that CME is discontinuing a number of gold contracts including their gold kilo contracts.

Effective immediately, Commodity Exchange, Inc. (“COMEX” or “Exchange”) delisted the Gold Kilo Futures, London Spot Gold Futures, London Silver Spot Futures, and Cleared OTC London Gold Forwards (collateral margin) contracts...  As a result of the delisting, information regarding the Contracts has been deleted from the CME Group website.

Are they no longer able to keep up with the offtake of gold there?

This strategic retreat is one way to avoid the soft default of a 'failure to deliver.'

Curiouser and curiouser.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Is Truth?

 

“There was a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen, and who lived each day in luxury.   At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, who was covered with sores.  As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his sores.

Finally, the poor man died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham.  The rich man also died and was buried, and his soul went to the place of the dead. There, in torment, he saw Abraham in the far distance with Lazarus at his side.

The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have some pity!  Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.  I am in anguish in these flames.’

But Abraham said to him, ‘My son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing.  So now he is here being comforted, and you are in anguish.  And there is a great chasm separating us.  No one can cross over to you from here, and no one can cross over to us from there.’

Then the rich man said, ‘Please, Father Abraham, at least send him to my father’s home.  For I have five brothers, and I want him to warn them so they don’t end up in this place of torment.’

But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them.  Your brothers can read what they wrote.’

The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’

But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:19-31

"The sin of the rich man in the parable of Lazarus was not that he had been given great wealth, even though has no gratitude, and thinks that it is all because of his own merits.   No, his sin is that he allowed his preoccupation with worldly possessions to blind himself to the suffering of Lazarus, his poor brother, who sat every day on his doorstep.  And he gave him nothing.

It was only in the torment of the afterworld that the rich man's eyes were opened, and looking across the great gulf finally sees holy Abraham and Lazarus.  And the first thing that the rich man does is to beg for comfort for himself, and ask for favors.  He feels no repentance, never once saying that he is sorry.  For even as his eyes were opened, his heart remained hardened, and firmly in the grip of his sins.    His sins were the chasm that separated them;  the door to his torment was locked from the inside.

So too, nations that have been blessed can sometimes blind themselves to their excesses and offenses.  And so they misuse their power and wealth and great fortunes, granted to them by God, to oppress and subjugate others, merely to suit their own vain purposes.  They would mount themselves aloft to rule over all.

And in their hardened hearts they hold their rapaciousness high, profanely, as the greatest good, the exceptional—  even as they oppress and plunder and murder.  Until at long last God humbles them, and breaks the backbone of their power.

Let us thank God then, for both our consolations and our trials, which cause us to pause and reflect, and keep a righteous understanding of who we are and whom we serve.  For both good and ill come with the ease of His good Providence, from the endless ocean of His incomprehensible love.

Truly one has come back from the dead and spoken, spoken plainly to we who abuse the weak and murder our prophets, if only we can open our hearts, and listen."

Jesse, The Blind Among the Fortunate, 21 March 2019


'What is truth?' asked Pilate.  And then turned and washed his hands of it.  

Stocks took a healthy bounce back after their recent drubbing.

Relief rallies in bearish markets tend to be violent and impressive- and short lived.

Gold and silver gave up some ground, although gold hit an intraday new all time high, hitting my long term chart objective at 3018.

They did managed to scrape up some gold to add to the physical inventory in Hong Kong.

But the metals remain under pressure on supply and demand.

If this blows up, and the banks come with their hands out for a bailout, I certainly hope they don't get it. But I am less hopeful of this than you might imagine.

VIX of course fell.

The Dollar wallowed what was clearly a risk back on reaction.

Let's see how things develop.

"When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then— he needn't hope to find himself again."

Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons

Lawlessness and the trampling of the truth seems to be the fashion amongst our betters in many places these days.  They seem to be drinking deep of the heavy intoxicant of nihilism.

"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 

The worst lies are the lies that people tell themselves to justify their lawlessness, in order to get whatever it is that they want.  

If I had no hope in God, I would have no hope.

Need little, want less, love more.  

For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Madness and Moral Hazard

 

"Wall Street did not accidentally run a barge aground and leave a small oil slick on the Hudson River. Wall Street did not accidentally release tainted lettuce that sickened a few dozen people. What Wall Street did was intentional and criminal: it financially engineered a toxic subprime house of cards which it knew from its own internal reviews was going to collapse; it then molded the toxic product into inscrutable bundles; it sold the bundles to unsuspecting investors around the globe while making side bets that it would all come crashing down.

Then, after causing the greatest financial collapse in the United States since the Great Depression, Wall Street’s unrepentant scoundrels paid themselves billions of dollars in bonuses with taxpayer bailout funds. The 2007-2009 financial crash was more than the product of greed.  There was both knowing and criminal wrongdoing, but none of those responsible have gone to jail. None of the regulatory gaps that allowed this to happen have been rectified. The biggest Wall Street banks have grown even bigger and remain too-big-to-fail."

Wall Street On Parade, The Power Players Behind Silencing Wall Street Reform, October 18, 2017

"Each time banks fail, by bailing the system out again, we teach our finance sector a lesson: you can safely take too much risk because, when you lose, the taxpayer will pick up the bill. Such a system is destined to fail, but the party can run for a long time."

Simon Johnson and Peter Boone, Economic Donkeys, 19 September 2009

"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. 

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


Today was a risk off day, with the commensurate flight to safety that occurs sometimes when the dawn of reason breaks through the fog of the mispricing of risk.

VIX surprisingly did very little.  This to me is a strong sign that this, at least for now, is a managed unwinding of bubble assets by a select group of relative insiders.

The Dollar rose.

Gold and silver soared.

Gold futures continuous contract tagged the 2999.7 level today before close a few dollars lower.

Silver took out the prior managed resistance and just thrashed it with some authority.

That Gibraltar of safe havens, Bitcoin, fell back down to the 80,000 level.

Like fools, a new meme coin seems to be born every minute, severely diluting the hot money crowd.

Stocks are hitting some 'must hold' levels.  The slow managed decline suggests that we may not be done with this unwinding, flash relief rallies notwithstanding.

To their credit the attempts to halt the Ukraine proxy war is well appreciated by anyone who is not a slavering neocon.  

Otherwise Trump and His Merry Grifters seem to be stressing the global monetary and political system, with what appears to be gratuitous showboating, and not of particular benefit to the broader American public.   

Moral hazard is not a purely economic function.  It applies to those who wield power more generally as well.

Have a pleasant evening.