Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Cauldron of Distractions

 

"What is there about the danger of 'moral hazard' that people don't understand? Do highly profitable abuses usually stop by themselves, especially when the punishments assessed are a small cost of the price of doing business? When only a few 'outsider' scapegoats get punished while the enablers and insiders move on to corrupt new and larger circles of society?

Is there any decency and honor left in the media and our government and our businesses and our universities? Most everyone has their price, but we are dismayed to find out how relatively little it can be. How easily the rest go along with a few vocal thought leaders and lose their personal and professional souls. What will it finally take to bring us to our senses?"

Jesse, Report Finds KPMG Culpable in Subprime Bankruptcy, 27 March 2008

"Ask any man, be he of what party he may, what he thinks of the present state of things, and you will find that he expects that a great change, of some sort or other, will take place ere long. He cannot tell you what it will be; he cannot even guess; he is full of fears, and that is all. The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people, have no longer any plausible grounds of hope to hold out. They have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty. What will the state of the country be, then, at the end of the next ten years?..

I will hazard no speculation; nor indeed is it within the power of any man to form any idea of what is likely to happen. But I think, one might venture to say, that the conduct of this government will not change; that, let what party may be in power, the system, as long as it can, will go on; and that it will produce effects that it has already produced. How long the system will last no man can tell. But we may, judging by what it has done in the last ten years, what it will do in each succeeding year.

William Cobbett, The Last Ten Years, Political Register (4 January 1812)

"In our most recent financial crisis we saw both the mispricing of risk in the initial collateralized debt obligations that fed the housing price bubble, and in the aftermath, where much of the consequences of the ensuing financial crisis were allocated to the taxpayers after the fact and without an explicit prior agreement to do so, under duress.

A rather sophistic defense of that approach and subsequent policy was provided by Larry Summers who in September of 2007 wrote an article entitled Beware of Moral Hazard Fundamentalists:

"In the financial arena the spectre of moral hazard is invoked to oppose policies that reduce the losses of financial institutions that have made bad decisions. In particular, it is used to caution against creating an expectation that there will be future 'bail-outs'."

As an aside, when I saw the new 'reform President' bringing in Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulsen, and Larry Summers to key posts in his administration, I suspected that the people's mandate for reform had been deflected, although there was the prior example of FDR bringing in Joe Kennedy to spearhead the SEC.  But, alas, Obama quickly turned out to be no Franklin Roosevelt, but a loyal member of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.

And here we are, SEVEN years later.  Forget 'future bailouts.'  We have what seems to be never-ending bailouts, and subsidies, and special arrangements, and deals benefiting Wall Street, to the detriment of almost everyone else." 

Jesse, Moral Hazard: Selective Justice for Wall Street, 10 September 2014

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Gold and silver caught a little bounce today, after the year end smackdown that many were expecting.

Stocks were wobbly.  The funds are squaring up the books.

Bitcoin is bouncing along a trading range in the high 80's to low 90's.

What would conceivably drive the price higher?   Greater demand perhaps, but for what reason?

VIX continues to wallow in relative complacency.

Chicago PMI came in much higher than expected.  

Let's see how the end of the year rolls in.

I have little optimism for what 2026 will bring.   But I suspect as the wheels start falling off the bus, the powers that be will be handing out soda pop and comic books.  

"They have ignored the abuses of my people.  'Peace, peace!' they say, where there is no peace.  They have acted shamefully, committing many atrocities.  And they are not ashamed, they do not even know how to blush."

Jeremiah 6:14

When things which 'no one could see coming' start to happen, they may gain momentum quickly.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Spirits In a Material World

 

"Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralizing as earth, air and water. Men can employ it as a tool or they can dance around it as if it were the incarnation of a god. If we could let go of our faith in money, who knows what we might put in its place?

The definition of money as the sublime good results in the depreciation of all values that do not pay.  What is moral is what returns a profit and satisfies the judgment of the bottom line.  Freedom comes to be defined, in practice if not in commencement speeches, as the freedom to exploit. 

At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft.

This commercial reading of the text of human nature gives rise to a system that puts a premium on crime, encourages the placid acquiescence in the dishonest thought or deal, sustains the routine hypocrisy of politics and proclaims as inviolate the economic savagery otherwise known as the free market or freedom under capitalism.  Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history off the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor.

The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.  The feasts of consumption sustain the economy, keep up the volume in the stock markets, employ the unemployable, excite the fevers of speculation, and stimulate the passion for political and sexual novelty.

A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being."

Lewis Lapham, Money and Class in America, 1989

"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce, 1947

"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, Financial Times, January 18, 2012

"They are talking about things of which they don't understand. Their certainty is only possible because of their stupidity.”

Franz Kafka, Der Process, 1925

And so we see the paint being slapped on the tape, as the market slides into the end of the year.

Gold and silver were hit hard.  I think the reasons are obvious.

Stocks were wobbly but found some support.

VIX is wallowing.

The Dollar is choppy.

And so we beat forward towards the end of the year, surrounded by darkness, ego, and lies.

Have a pleasant evening.

Flight to Egypt from the Madness of Herod

 

"After the Magi had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and instructed him,  'Arise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt.  Remain there until I tell you. Herod seeks the child to kill him.'  Therefore, he got up, took the child and his mother, and departed that night for Egypt, where they remained until the death of Herod.  This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'

When Herod realized that the wise men had deceived him, he flew into a rage and issued an order to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding area who were two years old or less, in accordance with the information that he had obtained from the wise men.  Thus were fulfilled the words that had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
     lamenting and sobbing bitterly:
Rachel weeping for her children,
     and refusing to be consoled,
because they were no more.”

After the death of Herod, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said,  'Arise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought to kill the child are dead.'  He got up, took the child and his mother, and returned to the land of Israel.

But when Joseph learned that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod in Judea, he was afraid to go there.  After he had been warned in a dream concerning this, he withdrew to the region of Galilee.  He settled in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the Prophets might be fulfilled: 'He shall be called a Nazorean.'”

Matthew 2:13-30

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.  See that you do not neglect or abuse any of these little ones, for amen I say to you, their angels are always in the presence of the face of my father in heaven."

Matthew 18:6,10

"He became what we are, so that he might make us what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria, Against Heresies

"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."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

By their works you will know them, the servants of lies, and madness, and demons.  For they serve their father, the devil, in their devotion to ravage innocence.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Woes of Lawlessness and Pride

 

"You who make wicked judgements, who write oppressive laws to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of their rights, that widows may be your victims, and orphans your prey.  What will you do on the day of reckoning, when the consequences of your sins come from afar?  To whom will you run for protection, and where will you hide your possessions?"

Isaiah 10:1-3

"Woe to you who add house upon house, and join field to field, until you leave no space for others, and you dwell alone in the land.  Woe to those who draw their sin along with cords of their deceit, and are tied to their wickedness with cart ropes, to those who say, ‘Let God hurry; let him hasten his prophecy so that we may see it.  The plan of the Holy One of Israel – let it approach, let it come into view, so that we may know it.'  Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

Isaiah 5:8,18-20

"As Jesus left the temple and was walking away, his disciples came up to him, and in wonder pointed to the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, 'Do you see all these works of men, do you not? Amen, amen, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'”

Matthew 24:1-2

 

The breakout of silver from its long price suppression is amazing.

Have a pleasant weekend.