Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Well of Deep Politics

 

“C. Wright Mills was among the first to take note of how 'national security' could be invoked by the power elite to more deeply disguise its operations.  Mills wrote in his 1956 masterpiece The Power Elite that America was ruled by those who control the 'strategic command posts' of society—the big corporations, the machinery of the state, and the military establishment.  These dominant cliques were drawn together by their deep mutual stake in the 'permanent war economy' that had emerged during the Cold War.

The crucial task of unifying the power elite, according to Mills, fell to a special subset of the corporate hierarchy—top Wall Street lawyers and investment bankers.   'For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an ‘emergency’ without foreseeable end,' Mills wrote.  

In the view of the Dulles brothers, democracy was an enterprise that had to be carefully managed by the right men, not simply left to elected officials as a public trust.  From their earliest days on Wall Street—where they ran Sullivan and Cromwell, the most powerful corporate law firm in the nation—their overriding commitment was always to the circle of accomplished, privileged men whom they saw as the true seat of power in America.

Carl Jung’s portrait of Hitler is as chilling a picture of psychopathology as you will find.  And Hitler was much more fashionable in the social settings that men like Dulles frequented—in England as well as the United States—than it was later comfortable to admit.  Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who as a young lawyer served with Allen in the OSS, later declared that both Dulleses were guilty of treason.

After the war, Dulles helped a number of notorious war criminals escape via the 'Nazi ratlines' that ran from Germany, down through Italy, to sanctuary in Latin America, the Middle East, and even the United States.

During the Eisenhower administration, the Dulles brothers would finally be given full license to exercise their power in the global arena.  In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality.

Allen Dulles was one of the wiliest masters of secret power ever produced by America.  And his most ambitious clandestine efforts were directed not against hostile governments but against his own.  While serving in multiple presidential administrations, he learned to manipulate them and sometimes subvert them.  The drive for absolute control was the only passion that truly gripped Allen Dulles.  Dulles undermined or betrayed every president he served in high office.

On the weekend of the JFK assassination, Dulles hunkered down for unexplained reasons at a secret CIA facility in northern Virginia known as 'the Farm,' despite the fact that he had been removed from the agency two years earlier.

Under Dulles, American's intelligence system had become a dark and invasive force - at home and abroad - violating citizens' privacy, kidnapping, torturing, and killing at will.  His legacy would be carried far into the future by men and women who shared his philosophy about the boundless authority of the national security system's splendid watchmen.

The CIA was empowered not only to engage in the deadly 'spy versus spy' antics against the KGB that became the stuff of Cold War legend but to subvert democratic governments that were deemed insufficiently pro-American and to terminate these government's elected leaders.

The Allen Dulles story continues to haunt the country.  Many of the practices that still provoke bouts of American soul-searching originated during Dulles’s formative rule at the CIA.  Mind control experimentation, torture, political assassination, extraordinary rendition, massive surveillance of U.S. citizens and foreign allies—these were all widely used tools of the Dulles reign.

These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words.  He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles.  He had been on a satanic quest.  'I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.'  He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner.  These men were 'the grand masters,' he said.  'If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.'  Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. 'I guess I will see them there soon.'

The Devil’s Chessboard seeks to shine a torch down the well of  'deep politics,' as Peter Dale Scott—an important scholar of American power—has termed this underworld of unaccountable authority.  Until we have a full reckoning of the Dulles era and its high crimes, the country cannot find its way forward."

David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, 2015 

"The coming of the lawless will be the work of Satan made manifest in all power and false signs and wonders, and in every wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to accept the love of the truth to be saved.  For this reason, God allows them to have a powerful delusion to believe their own lies, that all those who deny the truth and instead take pleasure in lawlessness will be condemned."

2 Thessalonians 2:7-12 

I was reading The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot over the long weekend.

It is an enlightening look into what we now call the Deep State.  

They had no shame.  None at all.  And very little fear of any consequences. 

Speaking of which, the new centurions of Wall Street were juicing the futures higher in the dull holiday weekend trade, and that enthusiasm carried on to the cash trading today.

Gold and silver were similarly smashed over the weekend.

No surprise there, since today was a futures option expiration on the Comex for precious metals.

VIX slumped as risk assessment was set aside for the MAGAnificent US economy.

The Dollar popped back up a bit.

We may get some follow on action tomorrow.  

I believe Nvidia earnings are out this week.

Things do not look good.  

The looting of the Treasury by the oligarchy accelerates. 

Freedom of speech and assembly is threatened and curtailed to the approving smiles of 'patriots'. 

And the killing and repression of innocents continues. 

But we can surely kick that can down the road, and distract ourselves with passionate words and colorful circuses. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

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.