Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brett and Circuses - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow

"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.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Silver Spoons Breed Trousered Apes - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

"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.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Sorrows of Financialization and Fortunate Sons

"The flaw with The Fed’s model of real earnings growth is that it is not organic growth, but a massive block of sugar.  And a sugar crash invariably follows."

Anthony Sanders


"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong. It's the system...

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean."

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye


"I’ve seen it for years. I’ve seen a media, which has basically ignored the declining middle class, that doesn’t talk about poverty at all, and has no sense of what is going on in the minds of millions of ordinary Americans. They live in a bubble, talk about their world, worry about who’s going to be running 18 years from now for office. Meanwhile, people can’t feed their kids."

Bernie Sanders

Stocks had another wide ranging day, as values attempt to peek out from behind a wall of financialized puffery and fiscalized frothiness.

Gold, silver, and the Dollar both moved higher, as the risk on appetite seemed to temper a little.

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pop Go the Weasels

“To escape the pain caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, and give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace.”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence


"Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring.  This is what baffles the power of Satan.  He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it."

J. H. Newman

He cannot find it because he lacks the faith to see it, and the love to apprehend it.  He is blinded by his pride.

Welcome to October, the month of unexpected falls from heights, and stock market tears.

Stocks were hard charging higher this morning on the news that Canada and the US had come to an agreement on NAFTA II.

But alas, the euphoria wore off in the afternoon, and stocks finished little changed, with the broader small caps getting spanked in particular. Not a good sign for bully.

Gold and silver were lower on the 'risk on' feeling this morning, but recovered quite a bit as the day wore on.

We will be having a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday for the month of September.

And a beautiful early Autumn day it was here, the kind of weather that beckons you outside and away from the hysterics of ideologues and the privileged, pampered professionals.

Hell is a stifling dark room behind a door that is a hardened heart, locked from the inside. 

Have a pleasant evening.

The Problem of Corruption in the Professions and the Pressure to Remain Silent

"This is the Golden Age of fraud, an era of general willingness to ignore and justify the wrongdoings of the rich and powerful, which makes every lie bigger and widens its destructive path.”

Reed Albergotti

There is tremendous pressure on professionals to remain quiet about corruption, sometimes obvious and pervasive, in their own professions.

This video discusses a shocking level of systemic corruption in Canada.

US Debt and the Restraint of a Gold Standard

Although FDR ended the use of gold in domestic circulation as currency in 1933, the US dollar remained on the gold standard until 1971.   The international currency system was formalized by the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.

When Nixon arbitrarily shut the 'gold window' in 1971 the world entered a reserve currency system of fiat dollars, restrained somewhat by the debt markets and floating exchange rates, often called Bretton Woods II.

The existing monetary system is still under development, even though we assume it is well established and settled because of the Pax Americana.

As these things go, its relatively short reign from 1971 does not guarantee its continuing longevity. The inherent instability introduced by having one nation essentially own the reserve currency, and subordinate to its own domestic policy requirements, has not been sufficiently resolved. Certainly not to the satisfaction to the rest of the world, even if it is a jealously guarded privilege.

Related:   The Continuing Endgame For Bretton Woods II and the Role of Gold
                 An Essay Considering the Current Monetary Order and Gold
                 Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar