Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Easy the Descent Into Darkness

 

"Easy is the descent into darkness.
      The door to hell stands open, day and night.
But to retrace one's steps, to return once more
      to the pure clean air, and cheerfulness and life:
That is the task, that is our true labour."

Vergil, Aeneid

"To whom can I give warning?
      Who will listen when I speak?
Their ears are closed,
      and they cannot hear.
They scorn the word of the Lord.
      They don’t want to listen at all.

From the least to the greatest,
      their lives are ruled by greed.
From prophets to priests,
      they are all frauds.
They offer superficial treatments
      for my people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace
      when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their disgusting actions?
      Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush.
Therefore, they will lie among the slaughtered.
      They will be brought down when I punish them, says the Lord."

Jeremiah 6:10-11,13-16

"And I saw a white horse, its rider having a bow, and there was given to him a crown, and he went forth overcoming not in righteousness, but that he may conquer."

Revelation 6:2

 

Stocks traded weakly ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow, and a weekend of escalating conflicts.

Gold and silver were hit early and hard with selling, but managed to climb back and regain their levels.

VIX is just swinging in the wind.

This might be an interesting weekend.

The servants of Moloch stalk the land, spreading darkness and lawlessness.

I almost cannot believe the things that I am seeing.

So many have closed their ears and eyes, and remain blithely trusting, seduced by the voices of madness, unprepared.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Reap the Whirlwind

 

“Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Poems, City Lights

"Financial Predators, on the other hand, are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals. They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy. Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive. Financial Predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars. They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."

Russ Alan Prince, Unmasking Financial Predators, Forbes 2017

"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

Hosea 8:7

 

Stocks were slumping today, but managed to gather themselves and push higher into the close.

In this grand game of force and fraud, perception management is everything.

Gold and silver are holding their own, even as the Dollar moved higher.

Non-Farm Payroll report coming at the end of this week.

The dogs of war are unleashed and playing havoc in the Mideast and eastern Europe.

History will not absolve us.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Time Is the Father of Truth

 

"Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the surface. Although the stated intention of political leaders and economic policymakers is to stabilize the system by inhibiting fluctuations, the result tends to be the opposite. These artificially constrained systems become prone to 'Black Swans' — that is, they become extremely vulnerable to large-scale events that lie far from the statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.

Such environments eventually experience massive blowups, catching everyone off-guard and undoing years of stability or, in some cases, ending up far worse than they were in their initial volatile state. Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems."

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan of Cairo, Foreign Affairs, May 2011

"Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise."

Alan Greenspan, Congressional Testimony on Regulation of OTC Derivatives, 24 July 1998

"We hypothesize that, having learned from the misadventures of the 1960s, the policy elites, well-versed in the practice of financial engineering and market manipulation, would have seen no need to dump stocks of government gold reserves onto the market, 1960s style, to keep the price in check.  Instead, synthetic gold, sourced in pyramids of credit extended to bullion bankers by central banks with little or no claim on physical substance, have provided a more efficient, better-camouflaged form of intervention. COMEX synthetic gold and related over-the-counter derivatives are traded in macro strategies implemented by hedge funds, high-frequency trades, and commodity funds in pair trades with interest-rate, currencies, equity futures, or even more exotic offsets. The volumes traded are huge, and bear little resemblance to actual flows of physical metal."

Tocqueville Gold Newsletter 2Q 2015

"Le temps mûrit toute choses; par le temps toutes choses viennent en évidence; le temps est père de la vérité."
Time ripens all things; with time all things come to be evident; time is the father of the truth.

François Rabelais


The long awaited invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army shook the markets back into reality.

What a surprise.

The usual safe harbors saw activity as gold, silver, and the Dollar all rallied.

Risk assets like stocks slumped.

This is just an opening round in what appears to be a serious confrontation, stoked by ideological sociopaths and neo-cons.

Free speech comes under renewed assault, as the fog of war descends, and the false narratives of power are repeated shamelessly.

"Secrecy is completely inadequate for democracy, but totally appropriate for tyranny."

Malcolm Fraser, former PM of Australia

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Reckless Arrogance, Shameless Greed

 

“Pride is the beginning of sin. It was pride that changed angels into devils; and it is humility that makes men angels. There never has been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.   It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell, Review of Bertrand Russell's Power, 1939

“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none act with fear of the gods?”

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

"No warning will suffice to powerful fools who, driven mad by hubris and lust for power, weave the hangman's ropes of their own destruction.  They preach the necessity of hardness, and practice the circumvention of the law for themselves and their associates in injustice.   But when the reckoning comes for them, as it eventually does, they always seem astonished, but unfortunately never to the point of speechlessness.  They will harangue fortune, and all those imaginary enemies who conspired to their downfall, to the bitter end.  The Western elite are in a denial, and a bubble of delusion, so profound that I am concerned that when reality intrudes their reaction will be mishandled, provocative, and likely to hasten a generational change that is already occurring and being fiercely resisted, slowly."

Jesse, Complicity of the Advantaged in the Nakedness of Kings, 19 February 2015

"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: the struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942


Stocks were ranging broadly today, with noticeable losses in the early afternoon. 

But they found a 'footing'  and managed to rally back to post some gains by the close.

Look for more instances of this to occur, until at least the November election.

For we are in a time of managed perceptions, and the willful prophesying of illusions.

Gold and silver were sold lower, in anticipation of the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Markets in China will be closed for the rest of this week for their 'Golden Week' holiday.

VIX continues to price in fantasy. 

If the lawless will strangle the truth, and murder innocents, rigging markets requires no exceptional effort.

Have a pleasant evening.