Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pride and the Lust for Power

 

"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

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.  When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure."

Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks To Power, 2013

"The men of the higher circles are not representative men; their high position is not a result of moral virtue; their fabulous success is not firmly connected with meritorious ability. Those who sit in the seats of the high and the mighty are selected and formed by the means of power, the sources of wealth, the mechanics of celebrity, which prevail in their society. Commanders of power unequaled in human history, they have succeeded within the American system of organized irresponsibility."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford Press, 1956

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.   For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984


Pride seeks power to provide substance to its inflated estimation of itself.

It cannot bear the truth, which shines a light on its emptiness.

It cannot admit its weakness, or errors, and so cannot repent and accept forgiveness.

Pride is the gatekeeper of hell.

Stocks were struggling again, ahead of the big release of economic data tomorrow morning.

Silver is being driven by a relentless physical buying that breaks the leveraged paper pricing.

The Central Banks do not have big reserves of silver they can lease out to suppress price, as they do for gold.

JPM has the big silver stash on Wall Street, and the word is that they have pulled it back and are keeping it close to the chest for themselves.

Bitcoin was slammed down again to the bottom of its recent trading range.  $80k is important support, and $70k is critical.

The way in which its market is structured, there was some entities that could be triggered in the unwinding of leverage and forced selling, which is 'bad news.'

Let's see what tomorrow's economic data brings.

Have a pleasant evening.   

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dying In Their Elegance

 

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs.

As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in 'a distant country.' It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1991

'Gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church.  What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church.  Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’.  It inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

From this very general description, we can see that Gnosticism is radically anti-Christian.  Irenaeus, with great perspicacity, understood this, and show it up for what it was.  For him, Christianity is about the divine and spiritual Word becoming flesh and body.  The redemption depends on the real Incarnation, the real suffering on the cross, and the real resurrection of the flesh.  All three of these are a scandal for Gnosticism.

Myth seeks the ascent of man to spirit; the Word of God seeks descent into flesh and blood.  Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness.  Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding.  The revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life.  Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered.  On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Scandal of The Incarnation: Iranaeus Against the Heresies, 1990 

"The glory of God is the human, fully alive; and the human life of a person is to be found in reflecting the glory of God."

Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, AD 180

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. They will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

Well that was interesting.

We had a risk on moonshot yesterday, with the SP 500 making a new high.

And today we had a heavy correction.   

Stock fell heavily.  And I was gratified in my somewhat whimsical large short position which I had put on into the close yesterday.  A trader's instinct smelled a rat.

Donnie got his new all time highs in the market, a sign of his success.

And Bessent and his cronies got to wash and rinse the public.

Ho, ho, ho.  

Gold and silver rallied sharply in the morning, and then gave it back in the afternoon.

The World giveth, and the NY-London kleptoplex taketh it away.

The Dollar had a case of the wiggles.

VIX popped and flopped. 

Bitcoin is its usual bipolar, heavily artificially manipulated self.

All in all, a scene of crony capitalism in decay.

Repentance, forgiveness, thankfulness. 

These are the three great gifts of the cross, illuminated by the resurrection, made possible by the Incarnation, freely given, the most profound abundance that we may ever hope to receive.   

In the end, isn't that all that really matters?   Better to live simply, than to die forever in elegance.

"Fear not, little flock, for your Father delights to give you welcome into His Kingdom."
 Luke 12:32

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All Who Labor For God In a Dark Time

 

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, 1985

"His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all. They are busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them. They are apparently set on no great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do.

Let this be the settled view of all who would promote Christ's cause upon earth. If we are true to ourselves, nothing can really thwart us. Our warfare is not with carnal weapons, but with heavenly. The world does not understand what our real power is, and where it lies. And until we put ourselves into its hands of our own act, it can do nothing against us.  Let all who would labour for God in a dark time beware of any thing which ruffles, excites, and in any way withdraws them from the love of God and Christ, and simple obedience to Him.

Such is the rule of our warfare. We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness ; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer. Heaven and earth shall sooner fall than this rule be reversed; it is the law of Christ's kingdom, and nothing can reverse it but sin."

John Henry Newman, Sermons on the Subjects of the Day, June 13, 1841

"Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by twenty well-documented traits and characteristics.  The most visible are glib/superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self worth, a strong need for stimulation (that is, psychopaths are easily bored) and impulsivity.  However, there are others, which they successfully hide from view, in particular pathological lying, conning, manipulation, a lack of empathy, remorse and guilt.  Over time, one might begin to see examples of irresponsibility, lack of realistic, long-term goals, and their failure to take responsibility for their own actions."

Paul Babiak, Robert Hare, Snakes In Suits, May 9, 2006 

Stocks rallied back from steep losses, finishing into the green at the close.

Gold and silver advanced again sharply, giving back only a little.

The Dollar fell, prompting more bullishness in the metals.

Bitcoin rallied in the last half hour.  Smells like teen spirit.

Odd timing for all this in the depths of December.

Their arrogant ambitions know no shame, or bounds. 

Please try to remember God's creatures, huddling in the cold. 

“At this Christmas when Christ comes, will He find a warm heart? Mark the season of Advent by loving and serving others with God’s own love and concern."

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pirates of the Caribbean

 

"For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money.  It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based.

The official expectation of war also enables men to solve the problems of the economic cycles without resort to political policies that are distasteful to many politicians and to large segments of the American public.  The terms of their long-term solution, under conditions of peace, are hard for the capitalist elite to face.  Some of them, accordingly, have come to believe that the world encounter has reached a point where there is no other solution but war, even when they sense that war can be a solution to nothing.

An expensive arms race, under cover of the military metaphysic, and in a paranoid atmosphere of fright, is an economically attractive business.  To many utopian capitalists, it has become 'the Business Way of Life'.

Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle.  But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its 'inevitability,' want it in order to shift the locus of their problems."

C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1960

"We suspect that shorting gold has come to seem like a riskless proposition as long as there is confidence in the Fed. Synthetic gold is the perfect substance for a carry trade: an easy borrow with very low carrying cost and little upside basis risk. Such a hypothesis, in our opinion, does much to explain the incongruity of a declining gold price while fundamentals for paper currency, and the U.S. dollar in particular, obviously deteriorate; while demand for physical gold has exceeded new mine supply for several years running; and while above-ground 400-ounce .995-gold bars located in London, New York, and other financial capitals (in cohabitation with speculative trading activity in paper markets) have steadily dwindled and disappeared into Asian financial centers reformulated as .9999 kilo bars."

Tocqueville Gold Newsletter 2Q 2015


In their desire to appease Wall Street and the Cheeto bandito, the Fed initiated Döllardämmerung this afternoon. 

Gold and silver soared.  Silver is on an amazing bull run.

Stocks rallied on hopes of the oil of excess liquidity to calm the troubled waters of a faltering economy and pipe dreams of beneficent AI for all. 

VIX fell of course.

The US military seized a Venezuelan tanker in the open sea this afternoon.  They are not even pretending that it is carrying drugs, or threatening the US in any way.

Perhaps this will distract the public, at least for a little while. 

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.