Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Lords of Madness, Bribery and Blackmail

 

“Americans had built themselves a world of speculative pipe dreams. That world was inhabited, not by people who had to be convinced, but by people who sought excuses for believing.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, 1967

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be with the coming of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up until the very day that Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came, and swept them all away. And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”

Luke 17:26-27, 37

"One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.  These are people who have been vigilantly on the lookout for something to be offended by, and found it.

Quite a lot of what passes itself off as dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own (selfish) choices.  Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective."

Timothy Kreider, We Learn Nothing, June 2012

"‘Woe to you, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. On the outside you appear righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. You snakes, you brood of vipers.'"

Matthew 23:23-33

"Financial Predators, on the other hand, are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals. They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy. Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive. Financial Predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars. They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."

Russ Alan Prince, Unmasking Financial Predators, Forbes 2017

"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir


The American oligarchy of money and power is becoming increasingly audacious.

By audacious is meant that it operates more openly, more brazenly, and more lawlessly, using force and fraud, bribery and blackmail, to achieve its own selfish objectives.

They are able to bend US foreign and domestic policy of the country to their will in ways that seem almost baffling and self-destructive to the casual, non-partisan observer.   

These are the ways of the madness possessing the minds of those who serve it.

Stocks rolled higher today since the Fed did not do or say anything untoward to spoil the party.

VIX of course fell.

Gold soared as the reality of the opera buffa in the halls of power and money is increasingly exposed for the farce without a sustainable foundation that it is becoming.

Silver took it on the chin for whatever reason, probably related to the goon squad of financial interests that run the US markets and the lack of international challengers in the markets that gold seems to energize.

This is going to end badly.   And they do not care.

I have had an abiding feeling that an object lesson in consequence is forthcoming.  How we will react to it will determine our near term future.

Many other nations have stood in such situations before, and not so long ago that we cannot remember.

Have a pleasant evening.

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.