Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Pack of Ravening Wolves

 

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell, The New Statesman and Nation, August 1937

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it.  Intellectual regurgitation is prized over independent thought.  Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status.

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, 4 April 2016

"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

"When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized. Narcissists change the companies or countries they lead, much like bad money drives out good, and those changes can outlast their own tenure. Divergent voices are silenced, flattery and servility are rewarded, and cynicism and apathy corrode any sense of shared purpose in a culture where everyone’s out for themselves. In the extreme, they can destroy the institution itself."

Lee Simmons, How Narcissistic Leaders Destroy From Within, Stanford Business, April 30, 2020

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles."

Matthew 7:15

 

Stocks did a classic 'pop and flop' today as the intoxication of a ceasefire begins to subside into reality.

Gold and silver managed to hold their ground, and even gain some ground back.

The Dollar continued its slide, and gave up the 98 handle.

VIX is now signalling that a trend change may be near. 

The further one gets away from the natural trendline, the more power and force it requires to sustain a market manipulation. 

And this is why all bubbles and manipulation pools eventually fail.  

The longer they press on from the mean, the worse the eventual correction will become.

The bubbles are underpinned by vapor.

And so a reckoning may be in the card.

Will it be the 'final collapse' or just another setback in the process of wealth transferral?

Only time will tell, since the nature and scope of the 'trigger event' will greatly influence this outcome.

As it was in 2002 and 2008, so it will be again.  Most did not believe it, they did not see it then.

They will never learn, because it does not suit them to change what has for the past 30 years been a veru successful series of control frauds and abuses of the system stemming from the rollbacks of reforms in the 1990s.

And the victims, including their followers in lawlessness, will be sacrificed once again to the idols of pride and greed — deceiving, and being willfully deceived.

The madness is sin, a turning in the wrong direction. And serves none but itself. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Mission Accomplished — with Mirrors and Illusions

 

"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.”

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

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action...Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."

Gore Vidal, Imperial America, 2004

"Donald Trump wasn’t actually a successful businessman at all, not in the normal sense anyway.  He was an economic magician or, in classic American terms, a con man, who regularly ground business after business — a set of casinos, hotels, an airline, and a series of other endeavors ranging from Trump Steaks to Trump Vodka to Trump University — into the dust of bankruptcy or failure.  

What made him such a magician was that, in case after case, his greatest 'business' skill proved to be jumping ship, dollars in hand, leaving those who trusted him, had faith in him, believed in him holding the bag."

Tom Engelhardt, Donald Trump Will Bankrupt America, March 31, 2019

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly."

Proverbs 26:11

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of — and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent — to the detriment of everyone else."

Neil Barofsky, Interview with Bill Moyers, 2012


Mission accomplished!

Let the parades and celebrations begin.

The signs are all there, if you have the will to open your eyes and see them.

Stocks have vaulted back to bubble top highs.

Gold and silver were smashed lower again, along with the Dollar of all things.

Crypto is blooming.

If the world ran on vaporous nonsense, we would have a secure claim to the mother lode.

Breathe deeply of the gasses of our modern oracles. 

Let's see how this plays out.  Maybe it will be different this time.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ripened for the Sacrifice

 

“To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness.  The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body.  The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings.  When asked who he is, his automatic response is that he is a member of a certain tribe or family.  He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die."

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

"The whole town and all its inhabitants are quite drowned in carnival din, masks and confetti.  And on top of that the news of the Reichstag fire.  Dancing on a volcano."

Alban Berg, Letter from Berlin, September 1, 1933

Risk assets were in full rally mode today, with stocks and other bits of bubble stuff going out near the daily highs.

Silver moved up a little, gold trading was heavy to the downside.

The Dollar slumped.

You wouldn't think that Iran had just bombed US bases in Iraq and Qatar, given the defiant buying of risk.

There were no U.S. casualties, President Donald Trump said, as he dismissed the attack as a “very weak response” and said the U.S. was warned by Iran in advance.  “Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

And so the risk markets rallied, because Iran apparently showed restraint, once again.

But this is far from over.  And Iran has not 'gotten it all out of their system.'

There is most likely some Iranian interest in providing a more lasting lesson to the Netanyahu government. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Be Always In My Prayers

 

"The shepherds sleep on in the love of themselves, in greed and corruption: they are so drunk with pride that they sleep and do not feel.  They see that the devil, the hellish wolf, carries away the life of grace in them and their subjects, but do not care.  And the whole cause of this is the perverse individuality of self-love. 

Love itself is dying of thirst and hunger for our salvation.  No longer be silent!  Cry out with a hundred thousand voices.  For it is clear that, through silence, the world is ruined, and the Bride of Christ is impaled."

Catherine of Sienna, Lettera 16, A uno grande prelato,

"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."

Aaron Bushnell, 25 February 2024 

“Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed.  Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above.  The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.  By excluding these groups, it limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, 2018

"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control.  As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

Martin Luther King, A Knock at Midnight, 11 February 1962


It is not that they 'don't know.'   It is that they don't care. 

Care enough to see.  Care enough to hear.  Care enough to speak.  Care enough to feel.

Because to do so might require them to do something, deny themselves something, incur some obligation which is a risk, a limitation, a task, an annoyance. 

Love dies not only through hate, but envy, pettiness, indifference, and fear.  

But the devil lurking behind all of them in the darkness is pride. 

Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom
The night is long and I am far from home
Here in the dark, I do not ask to see
The path ahead— one step enough for me
Lead on, lead on, kindly Light.

Stocks were slumping after a wide ranging session on the futures markets, as is customary for a triple witch option expiration these days.

Valuation are cut loose from their moorings in any sort of rational model connected to reality.

The pricing of bitcoin is the emblem of our time, as tulips had been the symbol of a prior market bubble.

Gold and silver had the usual ride as well, finishing up a bit mixed on the day.

The Dollar was choppy as well.

VIX remains largely complacent, hovering around its longer term moving averages.

Our foreign policy is anchored in adolescent, intemperate madness, and the greed and pathology of a few.

You are always in my prayers, as I hope I am also in yours. 

Have a pleasant weekend.