“Behold, God’s dwelling is with mankind;
he will dwell with them.
They will be his people,
and he will be their God,
God-with-them.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and there will no longer be death.
Neither will there be any mourning or crying or pain,
for the old order has passed away.”
Revelation 21:3-4
Recent history suggests that gold and silver are both putting durable bottoms based on the composition of the positions in the futures market and the extreme of the decline in price.
The dichotomy between gold and silver outflows with both metals in price declines is interesting, to say the least. Physical gold is flowing out of the funds and ETFs, while silver is actually increasing.
It is telling us something about how funds and ETFs might add to their gold holdings when the price declines stop and the bull rally begins anew.
One difference is that the central banks do not have large physical holdings of silver that they are prepared to lease out to private concerns.
The use of this extreme leverage in physical gold in the face of steady buying and competing claims is like combining potassium nitrate and concentrated sulfuric acid.
"You may be sure that no sordid compromises nor carrying of waters on both shoulders will see you through. Those who have the faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray. The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."
Fulton J. Sheen
"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savor of death.
Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!
Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.
This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.
He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
Hatred and greed are the children of pride, the first and most powerful disorder of the mind.
We learn its ways; we begin to imitate them; we blind ourselves; we seek to serve ourselves no matter the cost; we rise in expediency; we go along with the crowd who must surely be right if only by force of numbers; we become sick with passion and vengeance; we put aside our conscience, and do increasingly terrible, awful things, in duty to what we serve; and finally, in the end, we become what we hate— a darkness on the face of the earth.
“He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider, but it was a very corrupting business.”
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
"The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them... It wasn’t God who was dead. We were."
Ray A., Practice These Principles
“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none act with fear of the gods?”
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death— the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in substantially lower than expected.
Stocks were weak today, but finished off the lows.
Gold and silver were up slightly, and the Dollar was lower.
This week was Golden Week in China. It is a holiday, and their presence in the gold markets was absent. Next week they will be back.
It was a glorious day for working outside, and for watching the baseball playoffs.
Monday is Columbus Day, and the Banks will be closed, but the equity markets will be open.
"I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent of the crimes. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."
Traudl Junge
“There is no middle ground anymore. There’s no standard. If you like Trump, you watch Fox. If you don’t like Trump, you watch CNN or MSNBC, or read The Times.”
Seymour Hersh
"You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.”
Jack London, The Iron Heel
It was a risk off day, as bonds sold off globally, and yields rose higher.
Stocks were in a swoon, just a day after the new highs.
Gold and silver lost a bit along with the Dollar. Go figure.
Non-Farm payrolls report for September.
If the number comes in weakly they will blame Hurricane Florence. If it comes in strongly they will credit Trump's tax cuts. And the news will be fixated on the latest from the pathological liars in DC.
It is as if there are any number of alternate universes, with individuals proudly crying out in wanton disappointment and impotent outrage from within deep wells of subjectivity. And no one cries louder than those who have the most. Greed knows no satisfaction, no bounds.
There must be a God, otherwise people would have no one to love them.
"Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."
Adlai Stevenson
“A sociopath is one who sees others as impersonal objects to be manipulated to fulfill their own narcissistic needs without any regard for the hurtful consequences of their selfish actions.”
R. Alan Woods
"You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy.”
Jack London
"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
G. M. Gilbert
Stocks were off to the races, again, this morning as the economic data came in better than expected as expressed in the ADP private employment report and the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index.
It was a 'risk on' day, so gold and silver were off a bit and Treasuries were monkey hammered.
The Dollar moved higher on expectations that the US economy is both exceptional and transcendent.
There is a new movie being released into theaters called The Trump Prophecy. It is the product of some of the students at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and an evangelical movement that believes that Trump is God's chosen one. And those who criticize him are the servants of Satan.
There is some scriptural precedent for this. Did not the Israelites, during their long and arduous travel through the desert, succumb to temptation and worship worldly power in the form of a golden ass?
Did I mention a couple years ago that we were entering a period of hysteria? You are going to just love what comes next... Yikes!
The Big Tickle this week will be the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, if it should occur as Mr. Turtle of the Senate has so ordained, and of course the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.
In the end, it is better not to be numbered with the proud and the powerful, but among the humble and the holy— His sheep. This is the iron rule, and great irony and contradiction of the world, in God's economy.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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