Tales From the Dark Side: Ray McGovern

Here is a discussion that covers a variety of topics.

I find it to be fascinating.   It goes well with a drink in the evening when nothing is on the boob tube.

McGovern is a good conversationalist.  He is the kind of guy you might like to have a cup of coffee or a beer with, and just talk—  even if he was not a very knowledgeable former insider.   He and his partner at VIPS, Bill Binney, tend to piss a lot of people off, because they are willing to give voice to unpopular opinions, to it like it is, and back it up with reasoning and facts..   It is a dangerous habit in a time of general deceit.   After all, we kill the prophets, and stone those messengers sent to warn us.

Raymond McGovern (born August 25, 1939) is a former CIA officer turned political activist.  McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement, returning it in 2006 to protest the CIA's involvement in torture.  McGovern's post-retirement work includes commenting on intelligence issues and in 2003 co-founding Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Dance of Drudgeons - Winter Is Here

"[Hillary] Clinton tells Maddow that she [Hillary] was an obstacle to Russia's plan to undermine our democracy, and suggests we should be scared of the Kremlin's grand designs. The lengths these people will go to protect their privilege and deflect from their own failures is staggering, and a real threat...

I've said that Russiagate is an act of elite projection. For example: we hear endless warnings that the Russians seek to undermine confidence in US democracy. But what is the impact of Dem elites, like Clinton, proclaiming that 'the legitimacy of our elections is in doubt'?"

Aaron Maté


"The lady doth protest too much methinks."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet


"In the narcissist's surrealistic world, even language is pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defence, a verbal fortification, a medium without a message, replacing words with duplicitous and ambiguous vocables.

When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others' allegedly malign attention."

Sam Vaknin


“She never forgets a slight, real or imagined.  She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance.  And she is greedy.  Greedy for power, for honour, for love.”

George R. R. Martin, on Cersei Lannister


“It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.”

Voltaire

The question is not who is worse, and who would be the most damaging to the public, the familiar 'lesser of two evils'.   It appears to be a forced choice between competing crime families.

The real question that most independent thinkers have on their minds is: What is wrong with a system that keeps forcing such corrupt, broadly unpopular, and dreadful choices upon us, and what must we do to change it?  Hint: the corrosive and corrupting power of big money and elite establishment exceptionalism as rationale against reform

Stocks were mixed today, as big cap tech, the lead sled dogs on the way up, continue to churn around and presumably consolidate their gains ahead of the next move.

Gold and silver are rangebound.   It is not clear yet which way they might break for the short term.  I can see a case on the charts for another plunge lower from a technical standpoint to shake out the longs and let the wiseguys cash in on their shorts before the next move higher.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Deep Into that Darkness Peering - Risk On

“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree. Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you. Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it.   Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism.”

John Ralston Saul


"Donald Trump is not an anomaly. He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. The creeping corporate coup d’état that began 45 years ago is complete. It has destroyed the lives of tens of millions of Americans no longer able to find work that provides a living wage, cursed to live in chronic poverty.”

Chris Hedges


"Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear.”

Donald Trump

Stocks were in rally mode today, with the SP 500 futures managing to breach the former high at 2917.

But it was not to be, as equities gave up much of their gains into the close.

Gold and silver were off a bit on a stronger dollar.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Sky Is Crying - Storm Warnings

Wall Street, Corporatists, and the Professional Class

"If we set aside the supervisory class and professionals on payrolls, the great underclass is composed of many no better off, with the rest worse off during 10 yrs of so-called 'recovery.'   Wage growth for non-supervisory workers is getting worse, not better, when adjusted for inflation."

Harald Malmgren


"They [the Banks] are less leveraged but have larger balance sheets. The risk is in the gross, not the net.  When times are calm, no capital is needed.  When panic begins, no amount of capital is enough."

Jim Rickards


“And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill.  And they frankly own the place.”

Dick Durbin


“Remember when nurses, caregivers, teachers and students crashed the stock market, wiped out banks, took billions in bonuses and paid no tax?  No, me neither.”

Fuad Alakbarov


“In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth.   Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Stocks were a bit wobbly from the open. But they sold off more decisively in the afternoon when it was announced that Trumpolini would have something to say about China and tariffs after the close.

Gold and silver were gaining a bit on Dollar weakness. This weakness is within a well defined trading range. And gold and silver are also caught in a sideways chop.

I suspect that some event will shake up the precious metals bears one way or the other, and the metals will break higher or lower, and perhaps sharply. It does seem more likely that it breaks higher because of the hugely impressive imbalance of shorts on the Comex, But let's see what the charts show us.

There will be a stock option expiration for September at the end of this week. There will be Comex precious metals option expiration next week.

I spent quite a bit of effort getting in touch with my inner-homeowner this weekend and today, taking care of a list of things that have been too long neglected, from lawncare to chimey repair to pruning to light mechanical repairs.

And with much of it done, Dolly and I have snuggled down to wait for the remnants of Hurricane Florence to bring us their rain.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

The Continuing Endgame For Bretton Woods II and the Role of Gold

“Under this system [Bretton Woods II and the petrodollar], the U.S. is running massive current account deficits to be the source of export-led growth for other countries.  To fund this deficit, central banks, particularly those on the Pacific Rim, are buying up dollars and dollar-denominated assets."

Daniel Drezner


"The inability of global leaders to address global current account imbalances now truly threatens global financial stability. Perhaps this was inevitable – the dollar has not depreciated to a degree commensurate with the financial crisis.

Moreover, as the global economy stabilized the old imbalances made a comeback, sucking stimulus from the US economy and leaving US labor markets crippled.

The latter prompts the US Federal Reserve to initiate a policy stance that will undoubtedly resonate throughout the globe. As a result we could now be standing witness to the final end of Bretton Woods 2. And a bloody end it may be."

Tim Duy

Most mainstream economists will fail to acknowledge the pivotal role that physical gold has been playing in the longer term strategies of 'The New Silk Road' nations in this century.  They dare not, even if they see it and believe it. 

The member of the professional class is deeply conflicted, and must guard their comments if they wish to continue to be rewarded by the established power structure.  It compensates them, and provides them access to information, honors, and influence.

This point of failure in the modern contrivance of self-defining monetary value is the point of weakness in the established power structure that dare not be named.  Or if at all, then only dismissively and with derision.

If money is power, then a fiat reserve currency is the whip hand of empire.  And the less constrained that hand may be, then the greater the power to bend history to the singular will of an elite.

Why is gold such a problem?   Because it is playing an obvious role in the longer term strategies of 'The New Silk Road' countries who are no longer willing to act as client states.

The 'float' in physical gold available for refinement and delivery into the markets of Eurasia became deeply stressed about two or three years ago.

The world's central banks became net buyers of gold for their own reserves around 2006, after more than twenty five years of managed sales in support of the Dollar Reserve currency, the reign of the petrodollar, commonly referred to as Bretton Woods II.  After years of steady purchasing, the existing system of gold reserve management has become increasingly unstable.

It is hard to maintain appearances indefinitely.

Behind the scenes, the maneuvering to stabilize the established fiat monetary system has resulted in raids on currencies, and the 'acquisition' of reserves, including those of several nations, by other than transparent market mechanisms.

The desperation to maintain an 'exorbitant privilege' of a fading empire is a powerful force, and drives spending and diplomatic priorities.

This underlying understanding provides a framework, but hardly the sole or complete rationale, for what is occurring today as the economic order established after WW II, and taken to a different level by Richard Nixon, continues to destabilize.

Will gold continue to be a stumbling block and key piece in the global game of chess?   Nothing is inevitable.

How willing are other nations to place their own working classes on the sacrificial block of inequality?   Will the dollar and its financial system pipelines be allowed to suck the liquidty from the emerging markets?   How practical is the aspiration to a type of regime that requires exponential amounts of force to maintain?

How long can a campaign of force and fraud continue before it becomes unsustainable, so unacceptable to the reluctant victims that they rise up against it?

One might speculate that the US' loss of credibility with key allies, and the willful betrayals of potential partners into adversaries, may continue to impede the progress of world government by a narrow elite, and thereby fortunate for those who value individual freedom.

But a lack of honor among thieves and plutocrats is hardly a foundation for long term stability.

Related:  Turkish Banks Sell Gold Reserves Amid Raids on the Lira

America, The Farewell Tour - Ezekiel In the Valley of Dry Bones

"You do not know the working class. But you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class?  You do not live in the same locality with the working class.  You herd with the capitalist class in another locality.

And why not?  It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not menace the established order of society."

Jack London, The Iron Heel


"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice. When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure. This is a summons to us to keep the agenda of justice for the vulnerable alive and front and center to maintain a kind of subversive stance toward power.

Power is the capacity to organize and administer social goods and social access. Truth is the structure of reality that is in the nature of things that cannot be violated by our capacity to administer it. Power can sometimes be administered in harmony with such truthfulness, but very often power is seduced so that it runs contradictory to truth.

The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann, Speaking Truth to Power


“People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."

Václav Havel


“In the eyes of the empire builders men are not men, but instruments.”

Napoleon Bonaparte


"And the Lord asked me, 'Son of man, can these dry bones have life again?'”

Ezekiel 37:3