Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Hubris of Mediocrities and Madmen

 

"Can a corrupt leader be allied with you –
      a throne that brings on misery by its decrees?
The wicked band together against the righteous
      and condemn the innocent to death.
But the Lord has become my fortress,
      and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
He will repay them for their sins
      and destroy them for their wickedness;
      the Lord our God will destroy them."

Psalm 94:20-23

"The antidote to hubris, to overweening pride, is irony, that capacity to discover and systematize clear ideas."

Ralph Ellison, Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949

"Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
  And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
  No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
  And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart."

George Gordon, Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire (1809)

"Pride goes before disaster,
     and a haughty spirit before a downfall."

Proverbs 16:18

"Of the lessons also gained from the history of mankind is the fact that greed and arrogance, when combined, lead the oppressor to do injustice not only to others, but to himself as well; once this combination of greed and arrogance has misled him into a sense of undefeatable capability and power, as he takes the road of falsehood and aggression, committing the most heinous acts and proceeding from that sick imagination, to fall down the precipice and then into hell."

Saddam Hussein, Speech in Observance of 14th Anniversary of Iran-Iraq War, The Guardian, 8 August 2002

"Hubris as doing or saying things that cause one's victims to incur shame, not in order that one may achieve anything other than what is done, but simply to get pleasure from it."

Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 1, Chapter 9

"The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world."

Václav Havel, Address on Receiving the Open Society Prize Award, 24 June 1999


Stocks managed to eke out another step up in their rally off the recent bottom, compliments of a rosier than expected Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

A stronger Dollar helped to push gold and silver lower, although silver managed to hold up a little better thanks to its correlation with equities.

Gold has now retraced 50% of its most recent rally. 

Let's see if it can find a footing.

There will be an important meeting of the BRICs later this month, that may have implications for the precious metals.

It is hard to take an honest, objective look at things in the world through the fog of war propaganda and the cognitive dissonance of shameless savagery, and not conclude that we have been taken over by mediocrities and madmen.

"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made ‘legal.’  Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010

End this will, but how will this end— and will we be silent?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gradually, and Then Suddenly

 

"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself.  To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality.  It is to disguise the reality.

The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error.  The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise.  Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed."

John Kenneth Galbraith, Power and the Useful Economist, 1973

"Shanghai Gold will change the current gold market with its 'consumed in the East but priced in the West' arrangement. When China has the right to speak in the international gold market, the true price of gold will be revealed."

Xu Luode, Chairman, Shanghai Gold Exchange, 15 May 2014

"And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all."

Tacitus, Histories: Book I, XXVIII, The Murder of Galba

"This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve.  And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate.  Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity.  What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion

"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.  The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.  The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.  

The next five years are not about winning, but surviving."

Jesse, The Men Who Sold the World, 5 August 2019


So the aftermath of the Non-Farm Payrolls report is playing out, but with a little delay for a change up.

It's nice to see that they still care enough to try and hide it, at least in the financial markets.

In politics, not so much.   Their lies are becoming increasingly transparent and sloppy.   Our erstwhile Administration functionaries lie like a presidential candidate.   Or mainstream news commentators.

Stocks took off for a short squeeze today, since nothing in particular blew up in the political and financial worlds.

Gold and silver were slammed hard.  But they managed to hold it together and take some of that back.

The Dollar rallied and then fell back again.

I suspect the developments over the rest of this year will be memorable.

I have signed a long term contract fixing my price of electricity, and have filled the oil and gas tanks.

Little things.   Like restocking the pantry.  It keeps me busy.

'Gradually, and then suddenly', as Papa Hemingway noted.

Beauty is but a flower, that wrinkles will devour.
Brightness falls from the air.
Queens have died, young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick.  I must die.
Lord have mercy on us.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Pyrrhic Madness of Pride

 

"The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination.  The ones who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless.  Peace is not the product of terror or fear.  Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.  Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.  Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.  In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression."

Bishop Oscar Romero, assassinated while saying Mass, 24 March 1980

"It was a civil war of the 1980s, one that pitted leftist revolutionaries against the alliance of countries, oligarchs, and generals that had ruled the country for decades—with U.S. support—keeping peasants illiterate and impoverished.  It was a bloody, brutal, and dirty war.  Peasants were shot en masse, often while trying to flee.  Student and union leaders had their thumbs tied behind their backs before being shot in the head, their bodies left on roadsides as a warning to others.  Many Americans would prefer to forget that chapter in American history; those under the age of 40 may not even be aware of it."

Raymond Bonner, America's Role in El Salvador's Deterioration

"Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power.  For tyrants, the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.  For us, the lesson is that our natural fear and grief must not enable the destruction of our institutions.”

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, 2017

"As had happened in the past, and continues to happen today, repression of peaceful change and justice threatened to bring about the very conditions that the ruling families of the country had feared. These are the fruits of greed and the lust for power, driven to hysteria and violent repression.  And we allow ourselves to be blinded by their lies and propaganda, their myths of our exceptionalism, and our own fear, hate, and willfulness."

Jesse, Remembering the Martyrs El Salvador, 14 October 2018

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977 

 

Stocks took a dive today, after the sugar high of the Non-Farm Payrolls report from last week wore off.

Gold and silver were sold, as an echo of the traditional Non-Farm Payrolls boogie woogie.

Gold and silver *might* be finding a bottom here, as they have often done on such occasions in the past.

As pride and greed take leaders and their people to the abyss, we must use caution not to follow, as tempting as that alternative may be.

As for the people of the way, we can work for the oasis, the small patch of righteousness that survives the fall of the servants of the madness and their fog of hate and lies.

This is the way of the world, and of those who serve the light within it.  It takes a measure of trust in God.

But in the meanwhile, we can take what practical measures as we may.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Those Who Have Lost Their Way

 

“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.

Blessed is the servant who loves their brothers and sisters as much when they are sick and helpless, as when they are well and of service.

Keep a clear eye toward life's end.  And remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received, but only what you have given.”

Francis of Assisi, Fioretti di San Francesco

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

Francis of Assisi


As you have probably heard by now, the US Non-Farm Payrolls report came in much higher than expected this morning.

And the Dollar and risk assets rallied, backed off, and then rallied back into the weekend close.

Gold declined with the Dollar rally, but silver rode the equity rally and gained some ground.

And so we shuffle into the weekend, and the fourth quarter of the year.

We are living in a time of savagery, where the bully is admired, and might makes right.

Let us be mindful of what really matter, so we may remain standing strong in the faith.

And give support and strength to the afflicted, and mark the path for those who have lost their way.

For what does it profit a man...

Have a pleasant weekend.