"Beneath some burning, unknown gaze
I feel my very wings unpinned,
And give my name to the abyss
Which waits to claim me as its own.”
Charles Baudelaire, Lament of Icarus
"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."
Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
"And you could say in some respects this 'shadow behind the power' that makes money off war, period, no matter who's the belligerent, makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. And they don't care about what they're doing to the real economy, because they're raking in the dough."
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell
“How you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning. How you have been cut down to the ground, You who laid low the nations. For you said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the most holy on the farthest sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be as God.’
Isaiah 14:12-14
Stocks were lower today on a repricing of risk (again).
The Dollar was sharply higher, along with the VIX, in a risk off move.
Gold and silver were lower, moving inversely with the dollar.
Tomorrow is the Non-Farm Payrolls report, which may move markets.
I am not so sure where the market is going.
Theories abound, including the Fed pivot and the suppport for markets in anticipation of the mid-term elections.
However, we are clearly in a bear market.
And we will remain in one until we start to see higher lows and higher highs.
“I believe 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 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 all part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters."
Kenneth Clark, Civilisation
"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but was wrong in thinking that we can get them for ourselves, without grace."
Simone Weil
"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament. He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted. To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography."
C. S. Lewis
"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 solidarity with all mankind."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."
Fulton J. Sheen
What is civility?
Kenneth Clark, would say that civility is to be cultured, aware and appreciative of the higher things in life, and to be a gentleman in the great English tradition, even as John Henry Newman himself observed, that a gentleman "is one who never inflicts pain."
But as Simone Weil points out so well, that mere humanism as an act of choice, of human will, may not be sufficient to stand up against the great objectifying beasts of our modern age.
What is needed to remain standing against the onslaught of greed and power and vanities and hate is grace. 'Faith alone may make a hero, but love makes a saint.'
And Bonhoeffer makes the final connection, that it is really a matter of respect for God.
Civility is a respect and love and consideration for each person, not as the world and the market may value them, but with respect for the Lord, who has ennobled the human condition by accepting for himself as almighty God in the incarnation, and further, made love of neighbor an imperative to life as his disciple.
There are no two ways about it. The words are there and are unequivocal.
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The markets were embarrassed by the whopper that the wiseguys promoted yesterday about a Fed pivot, again, under the leadership of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Especially in light of the stronger than expected jobs increase shown by the payroll company ADP.
And so today they plummeted.
But the Non-Farm Payrolls report is still a day or so away, so there is still some life left in this most recent wash and rinse.
And stocks finished the day mostly unchanged. For now.
The Dollar rallied and gold and silver retreated a bit.
Show us who you admire and what you serve, and we will know you for what you are.
For a man cannot serve both God and the world, even if they delude themselves with words like greatness and freedom, and profane ideologies that would make vain and selfish beasts of them, destined in their willful ignorance for everlasting darkness.
“Lawlessness has come out of Babylon, that is, from the elders who were to govern the people as judges. They perverted their thinking; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments. How you have grown evil with age. Now have your past sins come to term, passing unjust sentences, condemning the innocent, and freeing the guilty."
Daniel 13:5,9,52-53
"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."
R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900
N’en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n’est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.
"In spite of every sage whom Greece can show,
Unerring wisdom never dwelt below;
Folly in all of every age we see,
The only difference lies in the degree."
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, from Mackay's Madness of Crowds
"This is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin. It is the power of the darkness of the world, and of spiritual wickedness in high places. The only difference is that it is not happening in the past, or in a book, or in some vaguely frightening prophecy— it is happening here and now."
Jesse
The Reserve Bank of Australia only raised rates 25 bp this morning.
And the sages of Wall Street took this as a sign that Aussie is leading the world and that the Fed will shortly be following their lead.
I took it as a sign that we are approaching another sizable wash and rinse.
It does seem to be a recurrent play of our kleptocracy.
And so the spokesmodels and muppets cheered another glorious stock market rally.
The rally was broad based with the Russell showing some team spirit.
Let's see what happened.
Gold and silver have rebounded sharply at least, after the heavy-handed price suppression into the recent Comex option expiration.
"Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ And the lawyer answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’
"As you know, this passage above is the introduction to one of the greatest and most memorable of the parables from our Lord's own lips, the story of The Good Samaritan.
Our Lord did not offer us an exemption from sin if we call on His name, but forgiveness, if that request is offered in true repentance, a recognition of our faults, and faith, and an active response to His command to 'go and sin no more.'
It might be better to have been born without any knowledge of His word and His commandments, than to hear His words and then hypocritically parade in them and His sacraments, with intricate invocations of His holy name on your lips, as a call to hatefulness, pride, division, self-justification, and oppression.
I am speaking now, more directly, to those who embrace hatred and spread thoughts of violence and repression, often in the name of God, giving scandal to His faithful on earth.
I am speaking to those who stoke the fires of hatefulness, and violent words, gossip and name calling, insults and hardness towards their brothers and sisters in this world, while cynically asking, Who is my neighbor? Surely not them.
We are a generation made drunk with power, and a perverse individualism that has been foretold for increasingly dark times. Examine your own actions and thoughts and behaviors first. For you will not be called upon to answer for what others do, but what you have done.
May God have mercy on any who provide provocation and false teachings to others, and scandalous examples to their brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, especially because of their willful selfishness, stubborn greed, and foolish pride.
And you know who you are, if you are not already completely dead to the life of the Spirit."
Jesse, 19 January 2015
The markets decided it was time to rally this morning, and used a lightly worse than expected PMI number as a rationale to expect a Fed pause after the next rate increase.
Gold and silver rallied hard and never looked back.
Let's see how long this lasts. Perhaps it will.
Or perhaps it will just be another cycle in the ongoing wealth transfer, the markets' wash and rinse.
There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday that may move the markets one way or another.
“The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologian to swim in without ever touching the bottom. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."
Let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church.
"The privileges of a few do not make common law. To sin is human, to lay snares is diabolical. They fill their houses through the plunder and losses of others, so that the saying of the philosophers may be fulfilled, 'Every rich man is unjust, or the heir of an unjust one.'"
St. Jerome
"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.' The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?' He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"
St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 4th century, based on the commentaries of Origen of Alexandria
Stocks set a new low on the CrashTrak chart, and the lowest low since the initial pandemic lockdown stock collapse.
Gold was flat and silver was slightly higher.
The Dollar was unchanged.
VIX was unchanged but still elevated in the 30's.
Bully has to find a bottom here soon and get stocks turned around or the winds of October may blow a hurricane.
"Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap."
Galatians 6:7
“Then the rich man said, ‘I beg you, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father’s house. For I have five brothers for him to warn, so that they also will not come to this place of desolation and torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them.’
But the rich man again said, ‘No, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead comes back and speaks to them, they will repent.’ And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they listen if someone tells them who has risen from the dead.’”
Luke 16:27-31
"And they treat the wounds of my people falsely saying peace, peace, where there is no peace."
Jeremiah 8:11
“'You that are cursed, depart from me into the eternal darkness prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
Then they will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he answered, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’”
Matthew 25:40-46
"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz
Apparently the Bank of England's grand gesture to stabilize the gilt markets did not have sufficient carry over to help out equities.
Stocks slumped, fairly hard.
The Dollar dropped, just barely hanging on to the 112 handle.
Gold finished flat.
Silver lost ground in sympathy with stocks.
VIX rose.
Stocks are hanging on to a must hold support level.
Bank of America issued a rare downgrade of tech darling Apple.
More and more tech companies are instituting capex cuts and hiring freezes.
The sabotage of a key Russian natural gas pipeline to Europe is a shocking escalation in the proxy war in the Ukraine.
Pray for peace in the world, and mercy for our sins.
LE CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
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Our Daily Prayers
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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