Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Where Sin Abounds, Grace Abounds More

“If a leader allows weariness to so grip the mind that its strength is sapped and reason gives up the reins, if a leader is so overcome by heavy-hearted sleep that he neglects to do what the duty of his office requires— like the cowardly ship’s captain who is so disheartened by the furious din of the storm that he deserts the helm, hides away cowering in some cranny, and abandons the ship to the waves—if a leader does this, I would certainly not hesitate to juxtapose and compare his sadness with the sadness that leads, as Paul says, to hell."

Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ and Final Prayers


“I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: they struggle with the evil inside a human being, inside every human being. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within ourselves.

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Stocks attempted to rally today, but fell off from much of their gains into the close.

Silver held its ground, while gold gave up a little.

The US Dollar finished higher.

The hysteria continues to spread, infecting both with blindness and hatred.   It will find its culmination.

No one will have asked for it, or even seen it coming.  Again.

If anything might tend to discourage my outlook it is the lack of financial reform, and the reassertion of deregulation as a good for its own sake.

Without financial and political reform there will be no change in the long term trends to inequality. And that condition may not cohere into longer term sustainability.

Defy the world with love, and a light will come into your life.   And so you may save the best in yourselves.

Have a pleasant evening.

Silencing Dissident Voices: Consortium News Interviews State Department Whistleblower Peter Van Buren

"In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship."

Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Constitution of the United States, Amendment I


"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

Martin Luther King

"On the premiere edition of Consortium News Radio we speak with Peter Van Buren, a former State Department official, whistleblower and victim of Twitter censorship.

Van Buren speaks about his experiences in Iraq, the critical book he wrote about those experiences and how the Obama State Department eventually attempted to have him tried under the Espionage Act.

This week Van Buren had his Twitter account permanently shut down and seven years of his Tweets wiped from the record. Why? Because he challenged mainstream journalists who contested a Tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald that mainstream reporters support America’s wars and help bring them about.

One corporate journalist decided to silence Van Buren by complaining to Twitter, which, within two days, and with no due process, obliged.

Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, interviewed Van Buren on Wednesday, August 8 for 40 minutes."

You can view the Consortium News website here.

I am sure most of us have forgotten Van Buren, and the other 'whistleblowers, activists, and dissenters' that were prosecuted, and sometimes vindictively persecuted, by Obama/Clinton.

Julian Assange comes to mind as well, among others.  How he has been treated is disgraceful and an abusive use of state power and 'the letter of the law.'   But going forward it will set the tone for freedom of the press for everyone who chooses to say things that are at odds with, or even unflattering to, the prevailing narrative.

Pervastive platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth should be treated like common carriers.   That would relieve them from having to bear the burden of defining what is to be censored and what is not.  This places that burden on the government, subject to all the checks and balances and recourse therein.

It is all too easy for government to pressure private companies to excess, and then point the finger at them, holding them as scapegoats.

And those on both right and left should be able to see the excesses that may be justified by this current climate of hysteria, which truth be told, emanates from the corporate Democrats as much as any of the many excesses of the GOP.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Long Division

"Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided.  Yet time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicted world, we have to adapt to it.  Oddly, this completely unchristian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians.  How can we expect a righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will devote themselves undividedly to a righteous cause?"

Sophie Scholl


"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.

They can only conceive one way of becoming real: cutting themselves off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and other men.  They do not know that reality is to be sought not in division but in unity, for we are ‘members one of another.’ “

Thomas Merton


“In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in His own Person restored the image of God in all.   Through our relationship with the Incarnation we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our familiality with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Stocks closed largely unchanged today.

Volatility as measured by VIX continued to move lower.

Gold and silver moved slightly higher with the Dollar largely unchanged.

Defy the world with love, and a light will come into your life.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Unspeakable - As Old As Babylon

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.   Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates.  The truth is, no one really possesses it."

Simone Weil


"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags. There was a time when people spoke, at least occasionally, of 'inherent worth'— if not of things, then at least of persons.

It is sometimes said that since everything is for sale under the rule of The Market, nothing is sacred.  Does anyone doubt that if the True Cross were ever really discovered, it would eventually find its way to Sotheby's?  The Market is not omnipotent— yet.  But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum."

Harvey Cox, The Market as God


"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable.  This is what too few are willing to see."

Thomas Merton

Stocks were able to enjoy another lackadaisical summer day, with an upwards drift.

What is risk?  Something that can easily be ignored for the day, until it rises up and smacks us in the face.  But while the music plays, the dancing must go on.

Gold and silver caught a little lift on the slightly weaker dollar.   I am not so sure about silver, but gold is going to some day express its determined resistance to being treated like just another fiat currency.

Politics continues to distract and divert the public conversation.   And much of it is somewhat artificial and even arbitrary, and unrelated to the most pressing topic of the day, which is political and economic reform.

The 'lesser of two evils' is a political strategy, an engaging diversion, but not a real choice.

It is a convenient rationale designed to persuade you, the public, to accept one form of evil over another.  And if it is allowed to progress, it can lead an otherwise educated and civilized people to tolerate monstrous things—  and the unspeakable.

Such pride, such perverted justice, such hypocrisy, is as old as Babylon, and as evil as sin.

How then are we to resist, when most even of the faithful may seem to be falling away?

As I, and so many others have found, both recently and in times past, the only way to fill the emptiness of a heart either broken by loss or made unquiet by worry is with love, of God and God in others.  Defy the world with love, and a light will come into your life.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sittin' On Top of the World - Crossroads

It was a solid 97 degrees outside here today, with enough humidity added to make you wish to run back into the house.

These are the 'dog days' of summer, with apologies to Dolly. She and I went to a heavily forested local park in search of shade for our afternoon walk, and took off and played hooky for a while.

And we did not miss much. Stocks were drifting higher on a cloud of complacency, ignoring he trade war, and currency war, and the shootin' wars.

Gold and silver were lower as the Dollar ticked a bit higher.

Facebook stock was up a bit on the news that it was asking Wall Street Banks for financial information on their customers so they can better target products at them together.  Wonderful.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Transparent Gold and Silver Holdings From Funds and Trusts

Gold inventories in trusts and funds declined.   Silver inventories did not.

Even as the prices of both declined.

The largest gold trust is GLD.

Gold is held by HSBC Bank plc (the “Custodian”) in their London vaults on behalf of the GLD Trust.  And temporarily in unallocated accounts managed by subcustodians and bullion banks.

The Bank of New York Mellon, as trustee of the Trust, or the Trustee, and the Custodian have entered into agreements which establish the Trust's unallocated account and the Trust's allocated account, which are described in more detail in FAQs 18 and 19. The Trust's unallocated account is principally used to facilitate the transfer of gold between Authorized Participants and the Trust in connection with the creation and redemption of Baskets (a "Basket is 100,000 shares of the Trust"). The Trust's unallocated account is also used to facilitate the transfer of gold from the Trust for the payment of the Trust's monthly expenses. The Trust's Authorized Participants are the only persons that may place orders to create and redeem Baskets and, in connection with the creation of Baskets, are solely responsible for the purchase and delivery of London Good Delivery Gold Bars.

An unallocated account is an account with a bullion dealer to which a fine weight amount of gold is credited.  The bullion dealer may also be a bank.  Transfers to an unallocated account are made by crediting the number of ounces of gold being deposited to the account and transfers from an unallocated account are made by debiting the number of ounces being withdrawn from the account.  Gold held in an unallocated account is not segregated from the bullion dealer's assets.  Thus, credits to an unallocated account represent only the bullion dealer's obligation to deliver gold and do not constitute ownership of any specific bars of gold."

SPDR GLD Shares FAQs

Only authorized participants can add or redeem from inventories by creating or redeeming baskets of unit shares.

As of the latest quarterly report for GLD, Credit Suisse, Goldman, Sachs & Co., HSBC Securities, J.P. Morgan Securities, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, RBC Capital Markets, Scotia Capital, UBS Securities, and Virtu Financial BD LLC are the only Authorized Participants.