Memorial Day 2025

"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

"Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues.  The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries.  It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be,  the greatest,  but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is."

Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight, 1982

“In a democracy dissent is an act of faith.  Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste but its effect, not how it makes people feel at the moment but how it makes them feel and moves them to act in the long run.  Criticism may embarrass the country’s leaders in the short run but strengthen their hand in the long run; it may destroy a consensus on policy while expressing a consensus of values.  There is, or ought to be, such a thing as being too confident to conform, too strong to be silent in the face of apparent error.  Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals of national adulation."

J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, 1966

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Large and Awful Faces From Beyond

 

"The Hitler Party likes to emphasize its uniqueness, and it really should not be measured against conventional yardsticks.   Even if it were to explode into smithereens today, the fact would remain that it recently won fifteen million voters.  Its brutality, loud-mouthedness and brainlessness have acted not as a deterrent but rather as an attraction, and have generated unconditional and subservient followers."

Carl von Ossietzky, Die Weltbühne, January, 1933

"The quiet words of the wise are worth more than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinful man can destroy much that is good."

Ecclesiastes 9:17-18

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder the prophets and abuse those whom God has sent to you as messengers. As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command— but it is made desolate.”

Matthew 23:37-38

"The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.  He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.  Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers. 

In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid.  We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

We permit our jaded intellects to play with drugs of novelty for the fresh sensation they arouse, though we know well there is no good in them, but only wasting at the last.  The real interest of watching the Barbarian is not the amusement derivable from his antics, but the prime doubt whether he will succeed or no, whether he will flourish.  He is, I repeat, not an agent, but merely a symptom, yet he should be watched as a symptom."

Hillaire Belloc, This That and the Other, 1912

“If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.”

G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914


The US will be observing Memorial Day this coming Monday.  The markets will be closed.

Stocks were weak on fresh tariff threats from Trump.

Gold and silver rallied as the Dollar swooned back down to the bottom of the 99 handle again.

There will be a precious metals futures option expiration this coming Tuesday. 

VIX ticked up a bit, but still remains relatively subdued.

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 - Great Blasphemies and Their Bitter Fruit

 

"The humanitarians and civilians should never be paying the consequences of war.  This is a basic principle of humanity.  At the time, this looks like it’s not a war against terrorism anymore.  It seems this is a war against humanity itself.  You cannot be destroying every building.  You cannot be destroying every hospital, every school.   You cannot be targeting humanitarians.  You cannot be targeting children."

Charlie Nash, Aid Workers Were ‘Targeted Deliberately’, Mediaite, 4 April 2024

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

Revelation 13:3-5

"Foolishness is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.  One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.  Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own downfall in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against foolishness we are defenseless.  Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.   In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent.  In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him.  He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.  

Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.  This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome foolishness.  Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it.   Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the foolish person.  The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome foolishness."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1945

"Therefore they shall eat the bitter fruit of their ways, and be gutted by their own schemes. For the foolish turn away from me—to death. For fools are destroyed by their pride and self-satisfaction.”

Proverbs 1:31-33


The hour grows late, and the awful hand of God is moving, slowly but inexorably. 

People will not believe it, until they see.   And then they will be amazed.

Stocks rallied from an early weakness once again, but fell off sharply towards unchanged at the closing hour.

Gold and silver took some selling early on, but held most of their recent gains.

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

VIX did very little.

As Simone Weil well noted, 'Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.'

We might wish to think hard about the direction in which we are facing, and the darkness that is overtaking us while we are looking the other way.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - An Illness of the Mind and of the Spirit

 

“Do not weep for me — weep instead for yourselves and your children.”

Luke 23:28

"The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves.  There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction.  This is a true war-madness, an illness of the mind and the spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world."

Thomas Merton, The Root of War, The Catholic Worker, October 1961

"Right now the US is on the path to a devaluation and a selective default on its debt and currency.  No one can say 'how and when' with certainty.  But surely it seems probable that there is a stop and a stumble in the growth of this mother of credit bubbles somewhere ahead.

Some suggest that devaluation of a sovereign currency no longer has any significance and meaning. Why? Because what would one devalue such a currency against, as it is tied to no external standard?  And so they say that the Dollar is its own standard as the reserve currency of the world.

It is always a mistake to assume that there are no external standards, no dissenting views, that things are merely what we say they are and should be, for everyone. 

The dollar standard is in fact the 'full faith and credit of the United States.'  And if that confidence is broken, the reversion to fundamental 'external' values may be impressive.   Unthinkable?  Every fiat currency that has ever existed has eventually been destroyed, or undergone an significant transformation.  Even the US dollar has undergone evolution and reincarnation in its brief history, and will continue to do so.

The world may choose to create a one world currency, under the control of the Fed and the Central Banks, which is a prelude to One World Government.   This would be one way to extend the existence of a fiat regime.  Kill off all the alternatives, by force.  A regime of the will to last a thousand years, forged in blood, betrayal, and deception."

Jesse, Thinking the Unthinkable, 11 November 2008

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952

"The ultimate purpose of crime is to establish an endless empire. It seeks a state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world thought doomed to annihilation. When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

 

Stocks were their usual wobbly selves in the early trading.

However, around 1:30 there was a longer dated Treasury auction that was not received well by the market.

And so down risk assets went.

Interestingly enough the Dollar bottomed around that time, and then gained back a little of its losses.

Intervention or a 'flight to safety?'   No way to know for sure.

But gold and silver rocketed back to go out near the highs of the day.

VIX ticked up slightly.

The US markets are a mispriced accident waiting to happen.

The talking heads are reassuring.  As they often are, when talking about other people's money.

I sold some of the miners I bought last Friday at fire sale prices.

My allocation to equities was the highest it has been in a very long time.  

And was highly concentrated.

So now it has been reduced to something a little more comfortable, and amenable to hedging.

This afternoon I watched this interview 'Deadly Betrayal' with Jeffrey Sachs and US Air Force Chief Dennis Fritz about the endless wars and American exceptionalism.  

There is some interesting information disclosed which you might find to be illuminating about things that happened then and are happening now, that you won't hear on the mainstream media.

It seemed to fill in some of the blanks I still had from my own intensive reading into these things. 

We have surely have been misled by those gripped with an illness of the mind and of the Spirit.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.