The Great Calling to the Faithful and the Fallen - Lazarus, come forth!

 

"They do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes.  And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.  Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient – they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct."

John Henry Newman, The Religion of the Pharisees, 1835

“Grace without price; grace without cost!  The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.  Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.   Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.  When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on traditional concepts.  The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.   Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937

"The ultimate test of discipleship is our willingness to abandon our egos and be carried by a power greater than ourselves."

Robert Barron, 17 May 2024

"But I know in my heart who I love, and that I want to be a part of that love forever, forsaking all else, all material stature and advantage which I now see as a falsehood and thin veneer over a slow demise.  I have chosen, and struggle on to that outcome, one day at a time.  And this is how it is and how it will be for all who have chosen the way.  Love is our destination, but while we are here on earth it can only be a journey, a way of life, as we struggle on, to a holy rest and peace at the last."

Jesse, Obedience Without Love: The Leaven of the Pharisees, 5 April 2017

"A new commandment I give you: that you love one another, as I have loved you.  By this all will know that you are mine — if you love one another.”

John 13:34 John 13:34
"Babylon’s days are numbered. Its time of destruction is coming."

Isaiah 13:22

"And Jesus said, 'Did I not say that if you have faith you will see the glory of God?'  And so they removed the stone.  Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, 'Father, I thank you for hearing me.  I know that you always hear me, but I say this for the sake of the people, so that they may believe that it was you who sent me.'

When he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth.'"

John 11:40=43

"Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush. It is lowly, faithful to the earth. Your way, Jesus, is the way of the Beatitudes. It does not crush, but cultivates, repairs and protects."

Jorge Mario Bergoglio Francis I, Way of the Cross: Jesus Falls, 18 April 2025

We who are intimate with the world and comfortable in our bondage to it are not His.  We are a His adversaries.

We are called to love Jesus, to love Him and His creation with all our hearts.

The things that steal the love of our neighbor from our hearts make them hard, and dead to His grace. 

All the zeal for the Law and anger for the things that afflict our sensibilities inflamed by pride are not His, but the work of the Adversary.  It is the leaven of the Pharisees.

We are His when we do as He has asked us, out of love in all humility, because He has asked us, so that we may have life with Him.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Powerful Delusions of the Fallen

 

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice.”

Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Preface, 2003

"Despite knowing of God, they refused to honor him as God, or to give Him thanks.  And so they became proud in their thinking, and their foolish hearts became hardened."

Romans 1:21

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.  There is one who restrains it, until he is taken away.  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the words of his mouth, and render him powerless with the wonders of his coming.  

The coming of the lawless one is from the power of Satan, with false signs and wonders, and in every wicked deception for those who are perishing, for those who did not accept the love of truth to be saved.  God will send them a powerful delusion so that they may believe the lie, so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have taken pleasure in lawlessness."

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life.”

Léon Bloy, The Pilgrim of the Absolute

"If heaven is seeing and in turn being seen, transformed and made new by the beatific face of pure love in resplendent glory, then hell must be seeing, at last and forever after, their own dark and miserable soul, as it really is, alone."

Jesse, Death By Overdose, 24 February 2015

The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in a little better than expected.  

It was an essentially meaningless number.

But it did provide an excuse for Donald and His Merry Banksters to run the bubble in equity markets back up again.

Donnie sees this as validation of his economic policies.

Wall Street sees it as just another leg of the highly profitable transfer of wealth by inflating financial assets.

Gold and silver were slammed, but the miners even moreso.

I suspect this phase of the precious metals price manipulation is nearing its end, as we often see with the Non-Farm Payrolls event.

VIX is now down to a high likelihood of a risk correction.

The reports from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and other places where the US and its enablers and clients are operating are rather grim.  

The media is highly complicit in turning a blind eye to this.

Money and power are all that matter to the elites in the West, drunk with the opiate of exceptionalism.

They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into hell."
Job 21:13

They think they are neutral, taking no sides, just going along to get along.

The wealthy man was damned not because he abused the beggar Lazarus, but because he did not even condescend to notice him, and the suffering on his doorstep. 

 Moses and prophets could make him see the truth, not even a man who had risen from the dead. Their wisdom did not fit with his biases and ideology of selfishness and pride.

The careless rich man was a self-absorbed intimate of Mammon— and an adversary of the living God. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Limits of Imperial Power and Its Oligarchy

 

"The limit of the Fed's and Treasury's ability to create money is the value and acceptance of the dollar and the bond in open market transactions.

The Weimar government never 'ran out of money.'  Zimbabwe never 'ran out of money.'  And if interest is paid 'in your currency money' you can never fail to service your debt either.  What they did run out of were people willing to take their paper at its intended value, from those who are their sphere of control, their compulsion of legal tender.

It is not clear to me that the dollar has passed the point of no return. But it is obviously unstable, as a bulwark of a corrupted system.  And therefore it is making its holders understandably nervous."

Jesse, Money and The Limits of Empire, 13 February 2011

"A market collapse is nothing but risk-aversion meeting a market that's not priced to tolerate risk.  Buckle up."

John Hussman, April 30, 2025

"If we are indeed in a Minsky Moment, which we think we are, then monetary inflation by the Fed and government intervention without reform will most likely increase the probability of a protracted stagflationary repression in the United States, and possibly lead to civil unrest and an exogenous reform of the system.  An abandonment of the system as it is with a turn to fascism has been the historic choice of Wall Street.  The political lobbying against systemic reform by the Bankers and their sycophants will be intense and as persuasive to the many as most appeals to fear.  However, their reckless advice leads to a trip to the brink of the abyss."

Jesse, Which Way Out of the Minsky Moment, 23 March 2008

"The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal.   Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].

It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control.  Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin’s analysis [Inverted Totalitarianism] will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong."

Chalmers Johnson, A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled, May 16, 2008

"We are imperial, and we are in decline. People are losing confidence in the Empire."

Lawrence Wilkerson, The Travails of Empire, October 8, 2014


The Empire seems to have gone barking mad.  

Is this just a clever game, a negotiating tactic?   

The famous Nixonian 'madman theory' gambit?

Perhaps.  But when coupled with a multipolar world of gathering resistance to the usual economic coercion, in which one of your fundamental supports, the fiat Dollar, is based on trust and confidence, it can prove to be strategically fatal.

We seem to be in a pivotal moment.

Stocks were rallying all day, extending the imperial decree that despite the tariff shocks incoming all is well.

You didn't catch it if you just watch the cash price, but US equity markets futures utterly collapsed into the close and went red.

A disappointment from the Amazon cloud after hours is possible.  There are many possibilities.

Apple is up to bat next, later this evening.

Gold and silver were hammered today, as is customary on the day before a Non-Farm Payrolls report.

To say I think that this was 'technical' trading would be an understatement.

China metals markets will be quiet for the May 1 holiday week.

The Dollar bumped up a little higher.

The VIX is now low enough to suggest that this rally is getting really long in the tooth.

And did I mention that I think this was a dictated rally to put someone's tariff decisions in a less disastrous light?

One can only wonder.

The truth will come out, eventually.  

Be careful where you look and listen, or you may miss it.

See you tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Conmen, Bullies, and Puppetmasters

 

"'A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths,' said Robert Hare.  'But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued.  When they get caught, what happens?  A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back.  I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed.'

Hare has said that if he couldn't study psychopaths in prisons, the Vancouver Stock Exchange would have been his second choice.  Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots.  Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. If you didn't have a conscience, you'd be one too.

Psychopaths love chaos and hate rules, so they're comfortable in the fast-moving modern corporation.  Dr. Paul Babiak, an industrial-organizational psychologist based near New York City, is in the process of writing a book with Bob Hare called When Psychopaths Go to Work: Cons, Bullies and the Puppetmaster. The subtitle refers to the three broad classes of psychopaths Babiak has encountered in the workplace."

Robert Hercz, Psychopaths Among Us, 2001

"When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized.

Narcissists change the companies or countries they lead, much like bad money drives out good, and those changes can outlast their own tenure, O’Reilly says. Divergent voices are silenced, flattery and servility are rewarded, and cynicism and apathy corrode any sense of shared purpose in a culture where everyone’s out for themselves. In the extreme, they can destroy the institution itself.

But the gravest danger posed by such leaders is that their malignant influence guides the behavior and expectations of others — and ultimately shapes the culture of the organization or polity in their own image. Studies of businesses show that self-serving, unethical behavior at the top cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized, or at least normalized.

“Once they’re in power, narcissists consolidate their position by firing everyone who challenges them,” O’Reilly says. In their place rise a plague of toadies, opportunists, and enablers equally guided by self-interest and short on scruples. 'So you end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity. We’ve documented this in a bunch of Silicon Valley tech firms.'”

Lee Simmons, How Narcissistic Leaders Destroy From Within, Stanford Business, April 30, 2020

"Malignant narcissism goes beyond mere self-centeredness.  It goes beyond feeling special.   And it goes beyond feeling superior.  Malignant narcissists lack the capacity for empathy and shame.  They also know this makes them different from others.  But they deeply prize these critical differences. And they hold those not like them in utter disdain. 

Narcissism becomes particularly 'malignant' (i.e. malevolent, dangerous, harmful, incurable) when it goes beyond mere vanity and excessive self-focus. Malignant narcissists not only see themselves as superior to others but believe in their superiority to the degree that they view others as relatively worthless, expendable, and justifiably exploitable.

This type of narcissism is a defining characteristic of psychopathy/sociopathy and is rooted in an individual’s deficient capacity for empathy.  It’s almost impossible for a person with such shallow feelings and such haughtiness to really care about others or to form a conscience with any of the qualities we typically associate with a humane attitude, which is why most researchers and thinkers on the topic of psychopathy think of psychopaths as individuals without a conscience altogether."

George Simon, Malignant Narcissism, December 27, 2013


Stocks sold off on the worse than expected economic data this morning.

But, wonder of wonders, they managed to take back all their losses and rally green into the close.

There were reports of a break in the Ukraine Russia talks, though I doubt anyone in Russia  knows or cares what they are talking about. 

Kind of like the talks that had supposedly occurred on tariffs with President Xi, which he said were imaginary.

Surely this is a sign of the prosperity and magnificence of Empire, which creates its own reality.

The Dollar bounced up to the top of the 99 handle.

VIX fell back to its 50 day moving average.

Gold and silver fell off a bit.

Ending badly.    

Have a pleasant evening.