Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Grace of Contentment amid the Phantoms of Power

 

"Our world promotes dissatisfaction with our lives.  We are constantly bombarded with newer and better things that will make our lives more complete if only we would obtain them.  If we listen to the world, we will always be comparing the lifestyles and possessions of others with our own, and we will always be dissatisfied.

If our contentment comes from possessions, activities, or other people, these can be altered or removed.  If our contentment comes from our relationship with Christ, there is absolutely nothing that can take that away.

Paul had enjoyed power and status among his people.  He had also been imprisoned and bound in stocks in the depths of a jail cell.  He had stood before a king and been stoned almost to death by an angry mob.  Paul had enjoyed the benefits and pleasures of life, yet he could give them all up and still be filled with the joy of the Lord.  His contentment did not depend on his environment but on his relationship with Christ.

'I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.'
Philippians 4:11

Contentment frees you to enjoy every good thing God has given you.  Contentment demonstrates your belief that God loves you and has your best interest in mind.  Discontent stems from the sin of ingratitude and a lack of faith that God loves you enough to provide for all that you need.  Strive to be grateful for all that God has given you.  A grateful heart has no room for envy."

Henry Blackaby, Contentment

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, 1965

"Greed is not good.  Greed is a disease, an aberration of simple honest ambition and necessary provision taken to excess. It is a sin, a transgression against love.  This simple distinction may be lost on a people no longer able to distinguish between virtue and sin, honor and expediency, appetite and gluttony, the means and the ends.

And yet this generation would make a god of it, although they may not understand, or care, what it is that they are doing, and whom it is they serve. Greed, often in company with hubris and fear, is a handmaiden of the corrupting influence of power and triumph of the will.  Greed is contagious, a disease of the heart, that attacks the very contentment of society, hardening it towards oligarchy and oppression."

Jesse, Greed Is Not Good, 19 December 2010

Stocks were the usual wobbly again, but managed to pull together a rally into the close.

 VIX has continued to decline, and is now once again in the area where this stock bubble rally may be forced to pause.

Gold and silver attempted to rise and then fell back a bit again. 

Did I mention that there is going to be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday?

Have we forgotten the promise of an open, beautiful audit of the holdings of the official US gold reserves?

Appearance versus reality.  

This is the key to all those pampered princes of power who have been rising from the darkness around the world.

Their appearance is all symbol and bluster, fueled by the mystique of passions and hate, reflecting a shallow lack of diligence and substance and competence.

Weighed, and found wanting.

But we have been here before.   

We have seen seemingly irresistible groups which worship the land and the blood, full of fury against the innocent, ready to destroy liberty and all life in a fit of delusional pride.

And they eventually all fall away, unproductive and unworthy, unable to create, only destroy.   

The children of desolation.

Our hope and our salvation lies in a different place, in the calm and loving heart of our Lord.

The sound and fury of the moment is passing, into the dust and the dirt of their vanities, the dry bones and corruption of a fallen world which fill their minds and their hearts. 

The faithful gathered in their thousands, as millions more looked on from afar, to mark the passing of a kind and gentle shepherd, on the very hill where the most powerful man in the world had crucified his predecessor, upside down.

Ubi sunt?  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Spurious Realities and Toxic Delusions of Power

 

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.  Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life. In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned."

Franklin D Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, January 1937

"At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day.  But then our nature and habit draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before.  We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night.

When I have a difficult subject before me—when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude.  I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace."

Moses Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim, The Guide for the Perplexed, 1190

"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."

Philip K. Dick, A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978

"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast. And they worshiped the dragon for giving such power to him. as they also worshiped the Beast. 'Who is as great as the Beast?' they exclaimed.  'Who is able to resist him?'  And the Beast was allowed to commit great blasphemies against God."

Revelation 13:3-5


Stocks came in wobbly, and went up and down in their usual willful way.  

Down they went and a proper selloff was averted, once again, with some obvious propping into the close.

Gold and silver sustained an early smackdown, but in the end gained some ground.

The Dollar fell rather sharply and obviously.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this coming Friday.

Lawlessness and self-dealing is the fashion of the day, with a heavy dose of malignant narcissism. 

Crimes again international law and humanity are defended with duplicity and hypocrisy.  

The Constitution itself is battered by money and the will to power.

How all this will end only God knows.  But these things rarely end anywhere but badly.

History is incredulous at servile lack of decency and willful collaboration in the face of madness.

"Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race?   The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. 

Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?"

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

And yet despite all this, the world though fallen is redeemed. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Servants of Desolation

 

"Hell for all eternity, for so little in exchange.  If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2008

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace.  But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom. The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3

"For to admit that the Reich was a lie, and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools, and Hitler an incompetent creature of evil would be to admit that one was wrong, a failure, and worse, had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil.   To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance.

And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess.   That, and a desire to become beasts, to lose themselves in their mindless fanaticism, and escape the pain of being men.  And so they struck out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkened souls, and showed them that their pride was based on a lie."

Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018

“There are only two kinds of people in the end— those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.  Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate."

Matthew 23:37-38

Stocks turned around their early losses and managed to post a decent rally into the close.

This is all going to end in tears.   Like most of the deceptions of madness.

Gold and silver were smacked lower, silver with some particular vigor, as a 'coda' to the recent futures option expiration on the Comex.   

These fellows are not particularly clever or adept.  

The Dollar bounced back a bit.

The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly calling for a new 'Bretton Woods 2.0' agreement.

I think the BRICs will be an interesting nut to crack on that one, Scott.

But I am sure the imperial dependencies can be counted on to fall into line.

Madness.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - When Nations Go Mad

 

"The differences between us may go all the way down. They may be intending to make a clean sweep of traditional values and start with a new set. What I have called the trousered ape and the urban blockhead may be precisely the kind of man they really wish to produce."

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 1943

"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.  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

"When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality.  It is the same perhaps with evil.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.  As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."

Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce, 1947

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it.”

Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841


We are urged to say nothing untoward about our betters, the Übermensch, who find it their duty to enable and commit cruelty and murder en masse. 

We are further not in any way to make those of refined sensibilities who give themselves over to the beast, to the lust for blood, feel in any way uncomfortable.

Some days I just do not have the words, and so I will say only this. God is not mocked, and what a man sows, so shall he reap.  

Slowly perhaps, but inevitability.

Why don't you speak more plainly?

You cannot hear, because you will your ears closed shut, as your hearts have become hardened.

Stocks rallied again today, no doubt proving somehow that the mad King's tariff strategy is finding approval in the world, or at least in the part of it that counts.

Gold rebounded nicely after yesterday's smackdown.  Silver struggled a bit, as it was an option expiration day for them on the Comex.  But they recovered from it rather nicely by the close. 

Let's see if there is any follow up shenanigans tomorrow.

VIX fell, being suitably anesthetized by the powers of the exchange stabilizers.

Let's see what new madness tomorrow and the weekend bring.

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity."
W. B. Yeats

Have a pleasant evening.