"To enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.' To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or 'damned ghost' – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will." C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940
"Restore our fortunes, Lord,
as streams renew the desert.
Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy.
They weep as they go to plant their crops,
but they sing as they return with the harvest."
Psalm 126
Gold, and to some extent silver, were hit today in a fairly obvious and expected bear raid.
Silver managed to hold its positive close and gold recovered most of the day's decline.
The US Dollar did not cooperate and was lower, so making the price declines stick were a bit difficult.
Stocks were down sharply during the day, but managed to take back most of their losses into the close.
There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.
The 850 year old Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was devastated by fire today. The queen and I visited it some years ago. It is sad to see such an iconic and majestic example of religious art and architecture destroyed.
My mentor, and my son's godfather, had told me the story of his bicycle trip around Europe when he was a young man during the summer of 1939. He had just graduated from college and was taking some time off. He visited the Île de la Cité of course. While he was there he saw workmen piling sandbags around the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle, the smaller church on the island, which has spectacular stained glass windows. He asked the workmen what they were doing, and the workman replied, "C'est la guerre." He caught the boat back to the States shortly thereafterwards.
This was another example of 'the management of savagery.'
I picked the quote for this posting yesterday afternoon. I left it, since it seems fitting.
"This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men."
John Perkins
‘Whatever happens, the [1997 Asian currency] crisis probably signaled the beginning of the end of the American empire and a shift to a tripolar world in which the United States, Europe, and East Asia simultaneously share power and compete for it.’
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, 2004
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."
“I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history. History is ourselves.
I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings, by satisfying our own egos. And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. "
Kenneth Clark, Civilisation
"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world."
Jeffrey Sachs
"Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. That’s almost certainly why the Trump DOJ believes it could get away with indicting him based on a theory that would clearly endanger core journalistic functions: because it hopes that the intense animosity for Assange personally will blind people to the dangers this indictment poses.
But far more important than one’s personal feelings about Assange is the huge step this indictment represents in the Trump administration’s explicitly stated goal to criminalize journalism that involves reporting on classified information. Opposition to that menacing goal does not require admiration or affection for Assange. It simply requires a belief in the critical importance of a free press in a democracy."
Glenn Greenwald
“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Stocks were enthused by the Chinese export data, and the futures were sharply higher in the morning.
It was risk on all the way around, and so the VIX and the Dollar and gold were lower.
As Chalmers Johnson noted, 'Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.'
And no one could have seen it coming.
As previously noted, we are in a time of hysteria, and people are doing and saying some very headstrong things, that may be sowing the seeds for their future troubles. And we may expect a reckoning, one which will be remembered.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
"It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent."
Martin Luther King, A Dark Day In Our Nation, Riverside Church, 30 April 1967
"The metals made it through another Non-Farm Payrolls report reasonably well. I will not be surprised at all to see the gold bulls take a sharp gut check at least once next week."
Jesse, 5 April 2019
"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."
Chalmers Johnson
I think most would agree that today qualifies as a 'sharp gut check' for the gold bulls.
The Dollar was up marginally. Silver was knocked down to the 15 handle.
Stocks were wobbly and weak.
But there are some more IPOs hovering in the wings so as long as volumes stay light the professionals will continue to prepare and maintain the launch pad for the latest round of flying pigs To that end Uber filed its IPO after the close.
Julian Assange was turned over by the Ecudorian government and arrested in the UK today. There is a comment and an illustrative story from history here.
It was funny in a very sad sort of way watching the Hillarians on MSNBC tying themselves into moral knots trying to justify the arrest and detention of Assange, obvious agent of Russia. I could only bear a brief peek or two, because it is a difficult thing to watch grown people debasing themselves so cravenly for money and access to power.
I will be watching to see what, if anything, the current crop of Democratic hopefuls have to say about this. I suspect that most if not all will fall into line under the Lady Pelosi and her minions. I suspect they will be the usual corporatists sell outs— that has been their hallmark since the 1990s. Change is coming, but slowly.
Money and power are powerful drugs, to paraphrase Rick James.
Trumpolini took the CEO defense today, saying he doesn't know anything about Wikileaks. “I know nothing about Wikileaks, it’s not my thing.” It sounded better when the Enron boys claimed they didn't anything about what was happening all around them in their own organizations.
When the president says it— well it can be a little unnerving, But as we all should realize by now, he is not cleaning up the swamp— he is picking the best and juiciest parts and trying to private label them. And going along with all the rest to get along.
Let's see if this smackdown on gold is just a one time thing to clean out the specs who were leaning into their leveraged metals positions and miners, or not.
The backbone of the power of the US, the enabler of its grossly oversized military presence around the world, is the Dollar, or more precisely, the petro-dollar. And to that end, the US tolerates and even nurtures the TBTF banks to help it enforce its financial will, through sanctions and attacks on other currencies.
I think we all understand this, but it is good to keep it in mind when we see things happening that simple graft and the usual soft corruption seem inadequate to explain, like the multi-trillion dollar bailouts and the lack of meaningful prosecution for serious, serial felonies.
Praying for those who disappoint us and let us down, or themselves and their sworn office and obligations down, is difficult. But it can be rather therapeutic if you can do it well, with humility, mindful of your own weakened nature and imperfect actions.
'Only when it's dark enough can you see the stars.'
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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