Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - When Crimes Become Commonplace

 

“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. But because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.  For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, poor, pitiable, naked, and blind."

Revelation 3:15-17

"The _______ 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 _______ 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?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the _______ does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this government which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, March 1942


There are a number of different governments that one can insert into the blanks above, with surprisingly little difficulty.   

Although one comes instantly to mind, there are a number of very good candidates for a collusion in this fellowship of darkness.

These war crimes, these crimes against humanity, are the shame of our time.  

Moral outrage is used as a weapon, to excuse greater and greater atrocities and offenses that raise a desolation of hypocrisy.

How long can we expect no reckoning, no judgement of God, no rising outrage from the rest of the world. 

We have truly lost ourselves. 

Today was a very boring day in the markets.

The Dollar drifted a little lower, gold and silver a little higher.

VIX is complacent.

Stocks are overvalued and mispriced for risk.

The problem is not that some people wish to give themselves over to lawlessness.

It is the larger number of people who enable them, for mostly selfish reasons. 

It is going to take something significant to waken this cult of complacency.

A common story from history.   

But we never see it coming in our own case.

It doesn't happen to people like us. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Worldly Rule By Force and Fear

 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

"God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.  I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him.  Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.  If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.  My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us.  He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about."

John Henry Newman, Meditations, March 1848

"Be wary of those who cause divisions and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned.  Shun them.  For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites and desires.  And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of many of the innocent and easily led."

Romans 16:17-18

"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, Letters and Papers From Prison

 

Stocks managed to extend their rally.   Netflix beat earnings and raised forecast after the bell.

VIX drifted lower.

Gold and silver struggled to hold their ground.

The Dollar chopped sideways on the 98 handle.

Stock option expiration tomorrow.

Force and fear are the weapons of the oligarchs. 

The unsustainable will not be sustained, both in markets and in the lives of the mighty.

Where are the snows of yesteryear?  

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And the Darkness Has Not Overcome It

 

"And the judgement is this, that God’s light has come into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light because their actions serve evil.  For those who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their lawlessness will be revealed.  But those who live in the truth come into the light, so that it can be seen that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

"There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts.  There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage.  And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life.  What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.'  And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God.  'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'  And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.  So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders."

Vermont C. Royster, In Hoc Anno Domini, December 24, 1949

“These people honor me with their lips, and offer worship with their words, but their hearts are far from me.  Their religion is nothing but the rituals and traditions of men, which they memorize.  I will awaken them with one shocking blow after another.  Their wisdom will be shown as foolish, and all their cleverness will be made worthless.  Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'No one can see us, so who will know?’"

Isaiah 29:13-15

"In a society that worships the self, power is the coin of the realm, where power is to be found in asserting one's own will over others.  And beyond all doubt, kindness and tolerance are to be despised as undermining, weakening the will to power.  In power is to be found the definition of all truth, for it dictates all, and does not bend a knee to any other reality but its own interpretation. In rationalizing ourselves by dehumanizing others, we can therein comfortably become monsters. And some do."

Jesse, 9 January 2015

“I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead.  You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.”

Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro, 1914

"What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

John 1:4-5

The markets had a little thrill ride today, as word of Trump's desire to fire and replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell roiled markets, sending stocks and the Dollar plunging, and gold and silver soaring.

But, as usual, Donnie quickly distanced himself from what he has been clearly engaged with, and things settled back down again.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to replace the mildly independent Powell with a chairman willing to be a one percent interest sycophant.

And, Trump added, he no longer desires to have the support from 'weaklings' who wish to have him fulfill the promise of revealing the material being withheld about l'affaire Epstein.

This is the kind of silliness, in addition to three card monte scams and pyramid schemees that occupy our best and brightest.

And why we, unlike the rising titans of Asia, are not allowed to have nice things.  Like infrastructure.

Option expiration on Friday.

People are starting to wake up.  But those who believe will cling even more tightly to what they cherish and have pledged their souls to serve in this world.  

This is Bonhoeffer's principle of foolishness.  And a biblical story, older than Babylon and marinated in madness.

A faithful light shines in the darkness.  And the darkness has not overcome it. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Baghdad Barbies and the Bubbylonians

 

“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, 1995

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women, 1918

"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.  With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.  American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the KKK type of demagoguery.”

Henry Wallace, The Danger of American Fascism, 1944

“The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.  But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio.  At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.  Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.” 

George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945

"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 did a fairly impressive 'pop and flop' today,' as the rally lost steam at new highs and then properly folded like a house of cards, finishing unchanged or in the red.

The 'tell' for this was the almost shocking lack of breadth in the rally, being driven by program buying in a few stocks that weigh heavily on the NDX and the SP500.

The Dollar rallied during the day trade. 

Gold and silver were smacked down in NY again.  

I don't think the current Administration likes them.   They are disobedient, and implacable in the face of political demands and directives.

Talk to the gram. 

Donnie dealt with the Epstein files controversy by pointing at AG Bondi saying, 'It's up to her.' 

VIX is barely aware of what is going on.

CPI came in on the warmer side this morning.  PPI tomorrow.

America's disastrous economic policies with regard to tariffs are going to bite. 

Bitcoin turned back from its all time high.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday. 

We had some fairly serious flooding here yesterday.  Our particular area is on higher ground, so we were mostly spared, although the lower areas south of us got clobbered. 

I was getting flash flood alerts on my phone, and at one point the State Police advised people to 'stay off the roads.'

Daisy and I sheltered in place on my recliner.   

It's always something,

If you think deeply, you may realize that reality is eternity. 

Have a pleasant evening.