Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Tumbling Dice

 

"The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, has a rap sheet that rivals that of a crime family — and those crimes show no signs of slowing down.  The financial institution is, in effect, a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured banking powerhouse.

The facts backing the above assertions are so strong that two trial attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, wrote a book in which they compared the bank to the Gambino crime family and suggested JPMorgan Chase should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).  The authors wrote at the time on their website that 'The pattern is clear. JPMorgan Chase has a culture — like the mob — where anything goes so long as it is profitable. This is precisely the kind of pattern of criminal activity that RICO was intended to target.'”

Russ and Pam Martens, Jamie Dimon's House of Frauds, November 4, 2024

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012

"Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country's only strong banking laws in the grave.  He's the one who rammed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress.  Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton's other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society.  He would have put a huge dent in Social Security too, had the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal not stopped him.  If we take inequality as our measure, the Clinton administration looks not heroic but odious.

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, 1 September 2006

"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016

"They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits

“There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.

First you destroy those who create values.  Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values.  But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.”

Ryszard Kapuściński, Writing About Suffering

"The Third Reich did not come to power on the backs of their brutish stormtroopers alone.  No, their rise to power was with the active participation of the educated and professional classes: the lawyers, doctors, financiers, teachers, and businessmen, who sought to use that abusive power for their own benefits and careers, and were then consumed in the madness that followed.

The devotion to pride, and the love of self, provokes at first the pettiest of actions, and then anger, and self-deceiving lies, and sickly sweet opiate of self-righteous outrage in our society. It provides an escape from thought, from the grey areas, from the obligations of conscience, and from the fear of being human.

So the harsh words and narrow judgements of the worldly and those driven mad by worldly desire are to be expected for those who do not participate in their narrative.  But it is the falling off the faithful, and the petty slights and silent betrayals of friends, that stings the conscious hearts most deeply."

Jesse, The Love of Most Will Grow Cold, 21 January 2019

 

The markets pretty much stumbled around today, in the face of two important geopolitical and economic events.

A very close national election will be held tomorrow in the US.

And later this week, the Fed will meet once again, and make a decision and statement about interest rates.

The magic eight ball says, 'check again later.'

So let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

Listen, and I will tell you a Mystery

 

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

Luke 12:32

“Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.

We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.

And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.

God beholds you.  He calls you by your name.  He sees you and understands you as He made you.  He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses.  He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow.  He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations.  He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms.  He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears.  He looks tenderly upon you.  He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.  You do not love yourself better than He loves you.  You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

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 may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection 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.

Therefore I will trust Him.  Whatever 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.

He does nothing in vain. 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 my future from me — still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are — sinners attempting great things.   Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come.   He can turn all things to our eternal good.  Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.   Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

"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

And then you will know the truth. And the truth will set you free.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All About the Benjamins

 

"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil.  For greed subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their place, encouraged pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general corruption."

Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline

"Please read this article carefully because I’m disclosing for the first time that the U.S. government has given JPMorgan the green light to manipulate the silver market.  This fact explains the shenanigans in the silver market. It answers all the questions and exposes this tawdry affair for all to see.

If my analysis is correct, what does this mean for silver from here?  It will prove to be wildly bullish for the price; maybe not immediately, but on a long term basis.  It sets the stage for the really big move in silver. This overt government interference in the silver market will boomerang at some point, just as every attempt at artificial price setting has failed."

Ted Butler, A Few Questions, One Answer, June 15, 2012

"The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued an order filing and settling charges against JPMorgan Chase & Company (JPM) and its subsidiaries, for manipulative and deceptive conduct and spoofing that spanned at least eight years (back to the time Ted Butler wrote in 2012) and involved hundreds of thousands of spoof orders in precious metals and U.S. Treasury futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange, Inc., the New York Mercantile Exchange, and the Chicago Board of Trade. The order finds that JPM’s illegal trading significantly benefited JPM and harmed other market participants."

CFTC, CFTC Orders JPMorgan to Pay for Spoofing and Manipulation, Washington DC, September 29, 2020

"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further.  A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.  Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it.  It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded.  The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down.  So was the U.K."

Eddie George, Bank of England, as cited in Reg Howe v. BIS, JPM et al., September 1999

As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.  Instead, subtler forms of capture and "legal corruption" exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialized nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation's regulations, policies and laws."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, January 27, 2009

"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the plutocracy.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel


Note that the 'record' settlement with JPM for rigging the precious metals markets announced in 2020 was said to have been conducted for 'at least eight years.'

Ted Butler wrote his letter in 2012.

People burn a lot of memory cells trying to come up with a reason of 'why does the government do this?'

Why were most of the politicians and the authorities, especially in large urban areas, on the take for organized crime in the early part of the twentieth century?

Why do people in  authority turn a blind eye now to brazen financial frauds, murder en masse, and unjust wars of aggression?

It's always fear and greed.  The bullet or the bribe.

It's all about the Benjamins.

Stocks bounced.

Gold and silver fell back a bit further as the Dollar strengthened a little.

The Payrolls report came in shockingly light, thereby cementing the thought of another rate cut from the Fed, further encouraging risk assets.  Why this strengthened the Dollar is beyond me.

Manipulation.  Corruption.  

The truth is there to be seen.  Most will not look, and if looking, will not see.

 It's the oldest story there is. 

"The rich man said, ‘No, Father Abraham!  But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’  But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:19-31

As old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

US national elections next week. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Geometricians of Matter, Without Virtue

 

"Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.  But at the time their own destruction seems impossible to them.  For they do not see that the force in their possession is only a limited quantity; nor do they see their relations with other human beings as a kind of balance between unequal amounts of force.  

Since other people do not impose on their movements that halt, that interval of hesitation, wherein lies all our consideration for our brothers in humanity, they conclude that destiny has given complete license to them, and none at all to their inferiors. 

And at this point they exceed the measure of the force that is actually at their disposal.  Inevitably they exceed it, since they are not aware that it is limited.  And now we see them committed irretrievably to chance; suddenly things cease to obey them.  Sometimes chance is kind to them, sometimes cruel.  But in any case there they are, exposed, open to misfortune; gone is the armor of power that formerly protected their naked souls; nothing, no shield, stands between them and tears. 

This retribution, which has a geometrical rigor, which operates automatically to penalize the abuse of force, was the main subject of Greek thought.  It is the soul of the epic.  Under the name of Nemesis, it functions as the mainspring of Aeschylus's tragedies.  To the Pythagoreans, to Socrates and Plato, it was the jumping-off point of speculation upon the nature of man and the universe.  

Wherever Hellenism has penetrated, we find the idea of it familiar.  In Oriental countries which are steeped in Buddhism, it is perhaps this Greek idea that has lived on under the name of Kharma.  

The Occident, however, has lost it, and no longer even has a word to express it in any of its languages: conceptions of limit, measure, equilibrium, which ought to determine the conduct of life are, in the West, restricted to a servile function in the vocabulary of technics.  We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in their apprenticeship to virtue." 

Simone Weil, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force, 1940 (after the fall of France)

'A true opium of the people is the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.'

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

If the elite can kill their conscience, if they can deny their own immortal souls, will they thereby be able to escape judgment for their betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders?

Don't bother with the truth.  Just prophesy them illusions.

The Street was not happy with the earnings reports from some of the technocracy last night.

And the disappoint with the economic data this morning seems to have been profound.

Stocks were sold --  hard.

Gold and silver were hammered.

VIX rose.

The Dollar initially rallied sharply, but then finally sold off into the close.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow, isn't it?

Happy Halloween.

Have a pleasant evening.