Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In Time of Madness

Cabrera, The Virgin of the Apocalypse

"`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'"

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland


"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson


"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life."

Léon Bloy


"Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis


"Amen I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Matthew 16:18

Fed Chair Jay Powell made dovish sounds in his talk at Jackson Hole today. And the PBOC made some noises about the weakness of the yuan overnight.

No big surprise there since it is clear to informed observers that the Fed is raising rates, not to dampen incipient inflation, but rather to get off their protracted stay near the zero boundary, so they will have the room to make policy decision, eg. interest rate cuts, when their latest financial asset bubble implodes.

And so the dollar slumped, gold and silver took off like scalded cats, and stocks were able to go out near the highs.

We will be closing out the month of August next week, with Friday being the 31^st. So alas, we will have to wait until the following week for the next Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

We will be having a Comex precious metals option expiration on the 28^th. However this contract month is much more significant to silver rather than gold.

It is hard not to conclude that we are caught in a system of unfettered capitalism gone mad.

When you have nothing else that is nice to say, perhaps it is better to say nothing at all.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

The Effects of Rising Sea Levels Today In Dorchester County, Maryland

Mark Blyth: Why People Continue to Believe Stupid Economic Ideas

If you want to read a more rigorous analysis of a where economic principles go wrong, read Benoit Mandelbrot's The Misbehaviour of Markets in which he discusses modern risk models and the efficient market hypothesis that emanate from Fama, Black, Merton and Scholes.

Blyth says that people believe dumb ideas because they don't have anything better.

I think they do so because the professionals are strongly motivated to believe them, and often rewarded to persuade the great mass of people who don't know any better to believe them as well.

How else can we explain the renaissance of economic trickle down theory, which seems to reappear in every new era of economic control frauds and chicanery, and is as great a canard as the natural efficiency of unregulated markets.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Darker Gods of a Low, Dishonest Age

"In the past 5 years the amount of UST's the US needs to roll over every year has risen by nearly 15% CAGR, the while US nominal GDP is just over 2%. A 1200bp gap isn't sustainable for very long, yet the overwhelming consensus [assumption] is that it's sustainable for decades."-

Luke Gromen


"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation, the second is war. Both bring
temporary prosperity; both bring permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and
economic opportunists.”

Ernest Hemingway


"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world.

They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all."

Thomas Merton


"This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper."

T. S. Eliot


"And what rough beast, its hour come 'round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born."

W. B. Yeats

Along with love, darker spirits are moving among us. To whom shall we turn?   This is the critical question for each of us.

And when the unsustainable does not sustain any longer, we might see a bipartisan effort by the moneyed interests to come after what remains of the working class, in an attempt to finally roll back the last traces of the 'New Deal' and make of the public's misery a burnt offering.

If the last Gilded Age is any indication, and if history repeats, they will not stop in their mad quest for everything until blood is flowing and cities are burning,   How easily we forget the past.

These darker gods serve none but themselves.  Their worship is the way of madness, unleashed upon mankind again.

Will the rest of the world stand idly by?  Perhaps not.  Europe, Japan, Russia, China Line Up Against the US

Stocks managed to overcome their earlier losses on impeachment and trade jitters.

Gold and silver gave some of their recent gains back on a stronger US Dollar.

Have a pleasant evening.

Thomas Frank Explains the American Political Landscape To an Australian Gathering

Here is a fairly short, 25 minute overview of the American political landscape that Thomas Frank delivers in The Shaw Address in Australia.

He urges them not to go down a similar path in 'this low, dishonest age.'