Stocks and Precious Charts - The Beast Stirs

 

"There are children of God and the children of the devil.  Those who do not do what is right and who do not love their brothers and sisters are not the children of God."

1 John 3:10

"The never ending alarms, the never ending phrases, it all produces apathy.  There is so much lethargy in the German people, and so much immorality, and above all so much stupidity."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41

“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.  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

"He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"What is happiness?  The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.  'The weak and the flawed shall perish' is the first principle of our charity.  And one should help them to perish.  What is more harmful than any vice?  Christian love."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

"Why take a government by force when you can delude the public, energize a vocal minority, eliminate a few key leaders of any effective opposition thereby setting an example for any others, and through coercion and soft bribery simply buy it?"

Jesse, A Corporatist Coup d'Etat, 2 August 2012


Stocks were rallying in celebration of the liberation of Venezuela's oil reserves for the friends of crony capitalism.

Gold and silver rose sharply, buoyed by the increasing risks of lawlessness, rising like a phoenix from the decaying corpse of vanity. 

VIX is mesmerized by the wizards of finance.

The dollar took a nose dive, but retains its seat of power.

Bitcoin is bouncing around the upper bound of its recent trading range.

We will be seeing more serious economic news on Wednesday.

The rich man replied, ‘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

What a man sows, so shall he reap. 

And they never see it coming.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Eaters of the Dead

 

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.  It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century."

Alex Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, 1995

"Surveys show that the usual investors in major rallies – pension funds, hedge funds and retail investors – have not been net buyers of equities.  And he says the most likely explanation for this anomaly in the biggest stock market rally since the 1930s is that major investment banks are the anxious buyers. 

'Their buying would appear to be for one of two reasons.  Firstly because they think the authorities will prevail in their (so far unsuccessful) efforts to inflate their way out of debt liquidation; or secondly because they are too big to fail and so can afford to take a huge gamble that enough buying will convince others to rush in and buy their inventory of risk assets at even higher prices.'" 

Leigh Skene, Equity Rally Not Driven by the Usual Investors, Financial Times, April 28, 2010

"Right now the US is on the path to a devaluation and a selective default on its debt and currency.  No one can say 'how and when' with certainty.  Some suggest that devaluation of a sovereign currency no longer has any significance and meaning.  Why?  Because what would one devalue such a currency against, as it is tied to no external standard?  And so they say that the Dollar is its own standard as the reserve currency of the world.

It is always a mistake to assume that there are no external standards, no dissenting views, that things are merely what we say they are and should be, for everyone.  The dollar standard is in fact the 'full faith and credit of the United States.'  And if that confidence is broken, the reversion to fundamental 'external' values may be impressive."

Jesse, Thinking the Unthinkable, 11 November 2008

“Woe to you, learned scribes and the elite— hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all corruption. You outwardly look righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Matthew 23:27-28

"Gold is unique among assets, in that it is not issued by any government or central bank, which means that its value is not influenced by political decisions or the solvency of one institution or another."

Salvatore Rossi, Chief of the Central Bank of Italy, 30 Sept 2013


And that is why gold is the king of assets, par excellence.

Today's market action was, in a word, nonsensical.

Let's see what happens when the adults come back next week.

The young man is on his way back.

I thoroughly enjoyed the company I had for Christmas dinner.  But with five little petri dishes running around, I have understandably contracted a fairly nasty head and chest cold.

Oh the price we grandparents pay.  lol 

Have a pleasant weekend.  

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Somewhere, Deep Down, They Knew the Party Was Over

 

"Wall Street in looking over the wreckage of the week, has come generally to the opinion that high grade investment issues can be bought now, without fear of a drastic decline.  There is some difference of opinion as to whether not the correction must go further, but everyone realizes that the worst is over, and that there are bargains."

New York Herald Tribune, Brokers Recommend Buying Real Bargains, October 27, 1929

"Everything was not fine that spring with the American economy.  It was showing ominous signs of trouble. Steel production was declining.  The construction industry was sluggish. Car sales dropped. Customers were getting harder to find.  And because of easy credit, many people were deeply in debt.  Large sections of the population were poor and getting poorer.

It was this nature of mass illusion. Prices were going up, people bought.  That forced prices up further, that brought in more people.  And eventually, the process becomes self-perpetuating.  Every increase brings in more people convinced of their God-given right to get rich.

At the end of 1929, as they celebrated New Year's Eve, all that lay in the future.  Nobody knew that the Great Depression was coming — unemployment, bread lines, bank failures — this was unimaginable.  But the bubble had burst.  Gone was that innocent optimism, the confidence, the illusion of wealth without work.  One era had ended.  They toasted the coming of the 30s, but somewhere, deep down, they knew the party was over."

PBS, The Crash of 1929,

"Since God has accepted you to be among the holy people that He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Make allowances for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must also forgive others.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which brings us all together in harmony.  And let the peace of the Lord rule in your hearts.  For as members of one body you are called to live in peace.  And always be thankful."

Col 3:12-15

 

There was a lot of selling into the year end today.

Most of the 'suits' will be on vacation this Friday.  

We may start getting a clearer picture of the markets next week.

The market will always be there.

The people that you love may not. 

 Have a happy New Year. 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Cauldron of Distractions

 

"What is there about the danger of 'moral hazard' that people don't understand? Do highly profitable abuses usually stop by themselves, especially when the punishments assessed are a small cost of the price of doing business? When only a few 'outsider' scapegoats get punished while the enablers and insiders move on to corrupt new and larger circles of society?

Is there any decency and honor left in the media and our government and our businesses and our universities? Most everyone has their price, but we are dismayed to find out how relatively little it can be. How easily the rest go along with a few vocal thought leaders and lose their personal and professional souls. What will it finally take to bring us to our senses?"

Jesse, Report Finds KPMG Culpable in Subprime Bankruptcy, 27 March 2008

"Ask any man, be he of what party he may, what he thinks of the present state of things, and you will find that he expects that a great change, of some sort or other, will take place ere long. He cannot tell you what it will be; he cannot even guess; he is full of fears, and that is all. The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people, have no longer any plausible grounds of hope to hold out. They have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty. What will the state of the country be, then, at the end of the next ten years?..

I will hazard no speculation; nor indeed is it within the power of any man to form any idea of what is likely to happen. But I think, one might venture to say, that the conduct of this government will not change; that, let what party may be in power, the system, as long as it can, will go on; and that it will produce effects that it has already produced. How long the system will last no man can tell. But we may, judging by what it has done in the last ten years, what it will do in each succeeding year.

William Cobbett, The Last Ten Years, Political Register (4 January 1812)

"In our most recent financial crisis we saw both the mispricing of risk in the initial collateralized debt obligations that fed the housing price bubble, and in the aftermath, where much of the consequences of the ensuing financial crisis were allocated to the taxpayers after the fact and without an explicit prior agreement to do so, under duress.

A rather sophistic defense of that approach and subsequent policy was provided by Larry Summers who in September of 2007 wrote an article entitled Beware of Moral Hazard Fundamentalists:

"In the financial arena the spectre of moral hazard is invoked to oppose policies that reduce the losses of financial institutions that have made bad decisions. In particular, it is used to caution against creating an expectation that there will be future 'bail-outs'."

As an aside, when I saw the new 'reform President' bringing in Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulsen, and Larry Summers to key posts in his administration, I suspected that the people's mandate for reform had been deflected, although there was the prior example of FDR bringing in Joe Kennedy to spearhead the SEC.  But, alas, Obama quickly turned out to be no Franklin Roosevelt, but a loyal member of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.

And here we are, SEVEN years later.  Forget 'future bailouts.'  We have what seems to be never-ending bailouts, and subsidies, and special arrangements, and deals benefiting Wall Street, to the detriment of almost everyone else." 

Jesse, Moral Hazard: Selective Justice for Wall Street, 10 September 2014

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Gold and silver caught a little bounce today, after the year end smackdown that many were expecting.

Stocks were wobbly.  The funds are squaring up the books.

Bitcoin is bouncing along a trading range in the high 80's to low 90's.

What would conceivably drive the price higher?   Greater demand perhaps, but for what reason?

VIX continues to wallow in relative complacency.

Chicago PMI came in much higher than expected.  

Let's see how the end of the year rolls in.

I have little optimism for what 2026 will bring.   But I suspect as the wheels start falling off the bus, the powers that be will be handing out soda pop and comic books.  

"They have ignored the abuses of my people.  'Peace, peace!' they say, where there is no peace.  They have acted shamefully, committing many atrocities.  And they are not ashamed, they do not even know how to blush."

Jeremiah 6:14

When things which 'no one could see coming' start to happen, they may gain momentum quickly.

Have a pleasant evening.