SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Great Emptiness

"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace


"I see dead people. Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."

Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense


"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love...

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it... thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto, not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion."

John H. Newman

Economic news came in weakly this morning with a shocking miss in the Chicago PMI.

The major US stock indices were waffling about today at the end of November, with an undercurrent of weakness, but with prices somewhat sustained by a lack of conviction and therefore without the substance of genuine volume to take them much higher or lower.

The US electoral and political process is becoming almost compelling to watch, not out of any enjoyment or intellectual enrichment, but with a macabre fascination of a natural disaster or a train wreck.

What follows the emptying of oneself, the impulse to give over to the void so as to escape the burden of thought and compassion, the pain of being human?   History suggests that it is an occasion of grace, or a slow descent into madness.

More bread, circuses, and cowbell.

Have a pleasant evening.

Shanghai Gold Exchange Has 54 Tonnes of Gold Withdrawn in the Latest Week

There were 54 tonnes of gold bullion taken off the Shanghai Gold Exchange into mainland China in the latest week.

The second chart shows that the SGE is well on its way to a record year.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Quiet Markets, Cheap Shots - Jobs Report

Hold the presses, there was an actual 'delivery' of gold on the Comex the other day. A customer of JPM let some of their holdings go, and the house account at Nova Scotia swept it up.

Non-Farm Payrolls next week. I have included an economic calendar.

There was intraday commentary here.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Policy Error De Luxe

Years ago when I was a boy programmer we used to have a joke about the big computer systems.

We would say that the systems programmers would get the operating system working just right.  The only problem was when users came on the system on then everything went to hell in a handbasket.

So too it is with many insular specialists like the Fed.  They are virtually owned by the Banks, and have their roots in a very incestuous profession in which the group think is powerfully motivated towards the care and cultivation of the financiers and their money flows and the system that supports them.

Well, I think we can all see what giving more and more power to the Fed as regulators, and unleashing the ability of Big Money to buy politicians by the gross lot has done for us.

And this is why we have so many hard-to-understand things going on with Big Finance, and Big Pharma, and all the other things that are sending the US into a Third World recovery.

Have a pleasant weekend.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

FDR Thanksgiving Proclamation, November 1942

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the greatest of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations


"We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not so small) blessings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


"No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment, to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.

Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty.

To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence.

Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks."

Maltbie Babcock

There are times when we fall to our knees and thank God for all His blessings, and tender mercies.

And there are other times when we arrogantly refuse to bend or bow to anything, and to defer to anyone but ourselves, in a kind of misplaced sense of self-sufficiency and pride.

And then God Himself brings us down to our knees to remind us, in His providence, of who we are, and to teach us how to be grateful for what we have already been given, and those sufferings and misfortunes that His hand has stayed from us.

"It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord."

Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God.

The final months of this year, now almost spent, find our Republic and the nations joined with it waging a battle on many fronts for the preservation of liberty.

In giving thanks for the greatest harvest in the history of our nation, we who plant and reap can well resolve that in the year to come we will do all in our power to pass that milestone; for by our labors in the fields we can share some part of the sacrifice with our brothers and sons who wear the uniform of the United States.

It is fitting that we recall now the reverent words of George Washington, "Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection," and that every American in his own way lift his voice to Heaven.

I recommend that all of us bear in mind this great Psalm:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me I the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Inspired with faith and courage by these words, let us turn again to the work that confronts us in this time of national emergency : in the armed services and the merchant marine; in factories and offices; on farms and in the mines; on highways, railways and airways; in other places of public service to the Nation; and in our homes.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, President of the United States of America, do hereby invite the attention of the people to the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, which designates the fourth Thursday in November of each year as thanksgiving Day’ and I request that both Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1942, and New Year’s Day, January 1, 1943, be observed in prayer, publicly and privately.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this eleventh day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-seventh.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thanksgiving Day Menus

Windsor Hotel, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1883

Plaza Hotel NYC 1899

Gettysburg Hotel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1909