Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We Who Are About to Die Salute You

 

"While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great.  They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth.  As in the United States in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s, the case for a central bank ultimately to burst that bubble becomes overwhelming.  I think it is far better that we do so while the bubble still resembles surface froth and before the bubble carries the economy to stratospheric heights.  Whenever we do it, it is going to be painful, however.”

Larry Lindsey, Federal Reserve Governor, FOMC Minutes, September 24, 1996

“I recognize that there is a stock market bubble problem at this point, and I agree with Governor Lindsey that this is a problem that we should keep an eye on.  We do have the possibility of raising major concerns by increasing margin requirements.  I guarantee that if you want to get rid of the bubble, whatever it is, that will do it.”

Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman, FOMC Minutes, September 24, 1996

"Where a bubble becomes so large as to pose a threat the entire economic system, the central bank may appropriately decide to use monetary policy to counteract a bubble, notwithstanding the effects that monetary tightening might have elsewhere in the economy.  But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?  And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?  We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price stability."

Alan Greenspan, Speech to the American Enterprise Institute, December 5, 1996

"As you may recall, Greenspan was taken aside by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin after that 'irrational exuberance' speech. And that was that. The bubble denial by the bankers became vehement, until everything collapsed in 2001. And then it was observed, 'who could have seen it coming?'"

Jesse, It's Always Something, 27 July 2021

"I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk. But I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk."

Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, September 2007

"The most valued characteristic of our system seems to be the willingness of the individual to surrender themselves to the unspeakable— to do whatever they are told to do, say anything that they are told to say, attend whatever institution and join whatever organization that may be required, and to profess anything with fervent conviction that they are told to believe.  And to never, ever violate the secrecy and carefully crafted image of the ruling class.

Whether this servile attitude comes from a total lack of character, a sociopathic obsession with power and money, or on the negative side a susceptibility to sexual or financial blackmail, for example, it just a spectrum of a system that has degenerated into a secretive series of schemes, scams, and cons, hidden behind an official mythology of manufactured stories under a blanket of closely guarded secrecy."

Jesse, The Higher Immorality of the Elite, 25 October 2024

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.  Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful industries.  These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, [corporate media], and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultra wealthy elite.  Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.  Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality.  In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel— an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly.  Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy.  So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012


Irrational exuberance all over again.

And despite what the steady propaganda that is put out by the moneyed interests, who are the beneficiaries by far of these repeating asset bubbles, the corporate world has been not over taken by government.  Rather, it is government that has been taken by the moneyed interests.

This is what the decade long, very well-funded campaign to overturn New Deal regulations, including Glass-Steagall, was all about.

But you cannot reason with those who have replaced thinking with listening to and repeating slogans and well-crafted propaganda.  

So why bother. Follow the money.  And you may find the truth.

Stocks rallied again today, moving to new highs.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar rose.

Bitcoin fell in the usual wash and rinse. 

Gold and silver both rocketed higher.

On an 'ordinary' trading day I would say this looked like a flight to safety. 

However, this was a triple witch stock option expiration day, which we get four times per year.

So for now we'll just mark it up to the short term shenanigans that are so common in US markets today. 

The exogenous risks being ignored by the US markets make my skin crawl.

I just cannot ignore them and look the other way.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are in bubble number three for this time period.  

And there is no doubt that this bubble, like the previous two, is going to end, and badly.

Timing these things is rough, and most will get in too early, plunge in greed, and get skinned in despair.

Don't do that.

Donnie has a lot of executive weight to throw around, and he is clearly not shy about twisting the data and markets to suit his desires.

Are you not entertained? 

Prepare and pray, and keep our own backyards clean.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Contempt for the Truth of the Cross

 

"Then the devil led him up a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying, 'I will give you all this power and their glory, for it is mine, and I can grant it to whomever I please.  All this will be yours, if you will fall down and worship me.'”

Luke 4:5-7

"But we must be completely clear — if nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out—that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed?  Why, if this is a high watermark of our national life, has our speech been vulgarized in this unprecedented way?

I do not know if the end of the world is at hand, as Dostoyevsky said. But this I do know, that these are years of a turning in human affairs which can never be changed again, and that the tyranny of an arrogant civilisation is at an end.

No good can come to a country whose foundations are propaganda and treason — no good to a people which pharisaically and self-righteously shifts the burden of its own sins onto ancient symbols, takes its oath to criminals, and is ready to take any oath and make any contract with Satan.

You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted. You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you. And so you made yourselves into the Mamelukes of a man who carries on his head responsibility for a hundred thousand murders and who is the cause of the sorrow and the object of the curses of the whole of the world.

They defended him, verbally and physically, every time he committed one of his criminal acts. They went blithely on past the suffering of all the bombing victims, the prisoners in the concentration camps, and the religious persecutors, because a different regime would have meant the end of their power.

It does sometimes happen that a would-be great man is allowed to toy with the levers of the gigantic machinery of history. But suddenly the wheels begin to move, faster and faster, and he is thrown into the machinery and crushed. A miserable hysteric may play Alexander the Great before the world for a while. But sooner or later, history comes along and pulls the mask off of his face.

This people is insane. And it will pay dearly for its insanity.  The air of this summer is full of foreboding, and fire and iron must heal what no physician can cure."

Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947

Stocks popped on the overnight and rallied early, but faded in the afternoon.

VIX rose also during the day.

Tomorrow is a triple witch option expiration.

The Dollar rose.

Gold and silver were hit again, but rebounded back.

The holders of miners were sitting pat for the most part it seemed.

Both ends of the political spectrum are rich with extremes in thinking, in their inventive interpretations of reality. 

When the hammer drops, I wonder how some true believers in their selfish fever dreams are going to react, as reality turns their pipe dreams inside out.

Cognitive dissonance is no joke.  Especially for the pathologically self-deceived.

There won't be any talking to them, then as it is not possible now.  

They will have to be healed by fire and iron. 

Sadly, that's the way it is with willful selfishness - a hard ending for a hardened heart.  

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Requiem for Power by Innocents

 

"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

He was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself.  Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words.  He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. 

He then proceeded: 'After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again.  Such is the fate of all men.  Long live Germany, long live Argentina, long live Austria.  I shall not forget them.'  In the face of death he had found the cliché used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick: he was 'elated' and he forgot that this was his own funeral.

Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.   He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.  It was sheer thoughtlessness — something by no means identical with stupidity — that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. 

That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man — that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep instead for yourselves and your children."

Luke 23:28

"The opposite of love is not hate, but callous apathy and uncaring.  And tragedy occurs when such heartlessness is advantaged by careerism, and an ideology that rationalizes unconscionable expediency, sanctioned privation, organized repression, and eventually murder, on a massive scale.  This is not how monsters are created, but how their enablers and supporters are formed. These are not  Hitlers, but little Eichmanns.  And they are abroad again, making and influencing policy on an alarming scale, today."

Jesse, Hitler's Little Eichmanns, 16 January 2013

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."

Thomas Jefferson, A Summary of the Rights of British America, 1774

"According to Traudl Junge the Goebbels’ children sang for Hitler, who was very pleased to hear their song.  This innocent choir of young voices was soon murdered by its very mother, in the bunker, just before the mother herself committed suicide.  There is no academic phrasing suitable enough to describe the incomprehensibility of how mankind can achieve this nonsense, especially at this high level of leadership."

Panayiotis Demopoulos, Götterdämmerung: Suicide Music and the National Self, May 1, 2014

So the Fed cut 25 bps today as expected, although Donnie new appointee opted for a deeper cut, don'cha know.

The chart of the US Dollar below is instructive as to the action in the markets overall.

The Dollar plunged, and gold and silver rallied.  Stocks slumped.

But, and I mean but, the 'invisible hand' grasped the markets by the throats, or some similarly tender region, and drove them the way they wished.

So gold and silver were hammered lower in the late day trade.  What a surprise for an FOMC day.

It's nice to see that the wiseguys have not become too lazy to steal. 

Stocks rallied back to unchanged, and maybe a little gain.

VIX fell.

There will be a triple witch option expiration on Friday.

Not one thing has changed.  

Today was just an exercise in the undermining of what little remains of confidence in the markets and the ruling elite of the US.

What an old-fashioned notion - confidence in oaths and integrity.

Some days I just don't have the words.

As Roger Babson famously noted in September 1929, sooner or later... 

And it will leave a mark.  Probably before Thanksgiving at the outside.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Masterly Bit of Stupidity

 

“Woe to the shepherds, who have been feeding only themselves. You eat the fat, you take the wool, and you slaughter the fattest animal, but you do not feed the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bandaged the injured or brought back the strays or looked for the lost."

Ezekiel 34:1-5

“Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony.  We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment.  We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits.  We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation.”

Jeffrey Sachs, Self-Interest Without Morals Leads to Self-Destruction, Financial Times, 18 January 2012

"Most people do not realize that it was Adam Smith who wrote in The Wealth of Nations the famous characterization of England as a 'nation of shopkeepers.'   He was writing about narrowly mercantile nature of the British Empire and its colonial markets strategy. The exploitation of the Empire's resources and peoples by a few legendary companies is well known.

If one substitutes 'crony capitalists' or 'financiers' for 'shopkeepers' it might well be a decent fit for the latter years of the American Century, which is based on a regime of guns and dollars.  

Why is the American moment running out of steam?  It is probably the failure to move to a non-military based economy after the cold war, and invest the peace dividend into domestic infrastructure and basic technology development for peaceful purposes and the improvement of life, instead of financial legerdemain, economic hoaxes and frauds.  Having fed so well for many years on war, the crony capitalists have had to expand their operations at home again, and create new wars, to maintain their exorbitant privilege.

Jesse, A Nation of Financiers, 12 August 2011

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, March 1985

"The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ten Years After, 1943

"Fear not, little flock, for your Father delights to welcome you into His Kingdom."

Luke 12:32


The West is slowly dying of neglect.  Of the neglect of oaths, of honesty, and of honor.

In the end, its a withering of character through undeserved privilege and gradual compromise with corruption.

This is the way of empire. 

Stocks did a pop and flop ahead of the FOMC rate decision tomorrow.

Stocks, particular big cap tech, is richly valued, with insufficient discounting of risk.

A fairly classic late stage bubble condition.

Gold move higher as the Dollar continued its slide, in anticipation of higher debt and lower rates.

It's a matter of supply and demand, but finally comes down to a failure of faith in credit.

Again, the failure of character in leadership.

It is likely that the Fed will cut 25 bp tomorrow, and make some noise about data dependency.

The precious metals are typically sold on FOMC and triple witch option events, often after a grand run up.  

In the short run the markets are a game of Liar's Poker.  But even liars can overextend themselves.

 Let's see if they can break that pattern this time. 

Our leader is doing his best to compromise the nominal independence of the Fed, such as it is, a creature of the Banks.

This is no anomaly.  He is compromising government end to end, from the courts to foreign policy to the Congress.  Business and the media follow power and money, except for a few exceptional occasions.

There is certainly some historic precedent for all of this.  

And yet this is just the visible manifestation, not the real power behind it all, which resides in the shadows.   It is forbidden to speak of them, and those who stray too close are warned, and then silenced. 

In the short term it is all about the behaviour of the enablers — a willful compromising of conscience, a lack of character and empathy in the professional class, and an inability to love anything more than the lowest of their appetites. 

This too will end, and like rats the hollowed out enablers will scatter.  But the powers of darkness remain.

"In the history of every great catastrophe, you will find that some masterly bit of stupidity sets fire to the oil-soaked rags."

Edwin Lefèvre, The Game Got Them, Everybody’s Magazine 1908

Have a pleasant evening.