Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Through the Looking Glass: The Cult of Power

 

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.   When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure.   

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, Truth Speaks To Power, 2013

"What happens to a society fed a diet of rushed, re-purposed, thinly reported content? Or branded content that is really merchandising — propaganda — posing as journalism?   And what happens when PR turns a profit and the truth goes penniless?"

Bill Moyers, Journalism in the Pressure Cooker of Plutocracy, May 26, 2015

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair.   That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."

Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, 2003 essay

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1895

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  You snakes.  You brood of vipers.  How will you escape being condemned to hell?“

Matthew 23:27-28,33

The cult of power desires to control what you can say and what you can hear, and finally, what you can do.

There has rarely been a more naked display of the power of silencing in this century as there is now.  

It is the domain of oligarchy, of empire, of the so-called power elite.

It is not something that resides in one man, in one Administration.  It has its roots in a system that has steadily become distorted by the lust for power above all going back at least 30 years. 

It seems that the system is no longer capable of producing reform on its own, using its own internal mechanism.  Take a look at the candidates that the system is producing.

If you say things that they do not approve, that they do not wish to be heard, that obstruct their tales of an empire of illusion, the power of the markets will reach out and destroy your ability to be heard, to freely express yourself, to earn a living, and in some cases, even take your freedom.

This is the story of our government, of our campuses, and of the persecution of journalists.  Freedom of speech is crushed under a witch hunt of lies and power politics.  You will see only what they wish you to see, and hear what they wish you to hear.  They tell you that you have no other choice.

All in the name of peace and freedom.

Stocks came in slumping again this morning.

But voila, Alphabet to the rescue.

Stocks ended the day well into the green.

Gold and silver held a little bounce higher.

VIX fell.  

The Dollar dropped.

Non-Farm Payrolls and FOMC next week.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bubble

 

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. "

Proverbs 26:11

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else."

Neil Barofsky, 2012 interview with Bill Moyers

"Now why don't you just take it easy, Group Captain, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like."

General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), Dr. Strangelove

"Where are the leaders? Has our political process become so compromised by powerful interest groups and the threat of character assassination that even the best among us will not dare to speak honestly about the solutions that might bring us back to common sense and fundamental fairness?"

Senator Jim Webb, A Time to Fight, 2008

"General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. I was under the impression that I was the only one in authority to order the use of nuclear weapons."

President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove

From Wall Street to the White House, it's all about serving the oligarchy, the 1 percent, while maintaing plausible deniability. 

The market came in broadly expecting a whipsaw, with the FOMC standing pat with dovish verbiage, and then Jay Powell coming in and raining on the parade with skeptical cautions.

No way Zimbabwe Jay.  

Although it must be said that the Street took it much further than he allowed.  It reminded me of a college friend who kept seeing 'signs' from a girl for which he pined, but would not actually approach.

I think it would have been interesting to see the FOMC commentary on bubblevision performed by the voice-over actor from The Curse of Oak Island.

Stocks rallied very hard, parabolically surpassing their bubble peaks.

The Dollar dropped off a cliff.

Gold and silver rallied like rockets.

And there is the second phase of the wash and rinse.

VIX did not drop but marked time in place.

Stock option expiration on Friday.

I can feel the hammer getting closer, and closer, to the retail bulls.  

But give it some time.

This is not sour grapes.   I snagged some serious coin in the  miners today, buying them into this recent pounding down the last two days.  It was just too contrived and cliché.  

Pretty much like all the official 'verbiage' we get these days. 

You know how they ran gold up to a new high, ran all the short stops, and then smashed it down into yesterday?

Patented move.   

And I think they may have the same play in store for stocks.  

But timing and leverage are everything.

Meanwhile, we've got two wars a leaping. 

Changed my mind about not using twitter. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Oligarchs and Their Enablers - Gold and Silver Rising

 

"Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a 'two-fisted money grab from banks.'   Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase.”

Pam and Russ Martens, Yellen’s Treasury Hires 5-Count Felon JPM to Look for Fraud, October 11, 2023

"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear.  They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.    Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, 27 January 2009

"A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and/or informational functions of a society have been compromised by a corrupting influence and a fraud, so that they cannot address the situation without implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure including themselves.   The status quo has at least tolerated the corruption and the fraud, if not profited directly from it, and most likely continues to do so."

Jesse, Financial Coup d'Etat and a Credibility Trap, 28 September 2012

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else.

Neil Barofsky, Interview with Bill Moyers, 27 October 2012

 

Here are the updated charts.

Gold and silver put in another solid performance.

The Dollar slid a little lower.

VIX declined further showing the almost complacent optimism in the equity markets.

Earlier today the doctor gave me a green light on the recovery of my eye.    The improvement in the last week has been heartening.  

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Empire of Lawlessness

 

"We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."

Jimmy Carter

“Fear and debt. The two most powerful tools of empire.”

John Perkins, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

"Over the past 30 years the plutocrats have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding.  This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet.

Millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable.  Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs.  Democracy only works when we claim it as our own."

Bill Moyers, last episode of Bill Moyers Journal, 30 April 2010

"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016

"Special privileges and the use of the taxing power for private gain, these are the twin pillars upon which plutocracy rests.  Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes.

Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it is more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.  It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity.  Conscienceless, compassionless and devoid of wisdom, it enervates its votaries while it impoverishes its victims."

William Jennings Bryan, Speech at Madison Square Garden, 30 August 1906

Stocks went on another wild ride today.

The downgrade of a number of US Banks, including First Republic Bank to 'junk.'

And then there is the ongoing saga of Credit Suisse and the various attempts to pull it back from the abyss to which it has been descending.

But never fear, some well placed rumours and stabilizing buying in the major indices managed to bring stocks back a bit with big cap tech going well into the green.

The Dollar rallied hard to take out the 104 handle again.  Euro-weakness and all that.

Gold and silver took a little bit of a trip themselves with all this volatility.

When they finally break into the light of day the shenanigans that have been ongoing in the highly leveraged, highly secretive precious metals market is going to look like a coronal mass ejection of monetary malfeasance and manipulation.

It's been a long time coming.

The VIX bounced up and then down.

Treasuries are 'trading like penny stocks' was one of the few incisive remarks on financial TV today.

The most nebulous was the bold assertion that blockchain is the remedy for our repetitive banking crises. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Financial Dreadnoughts

 

BILL MOYERS: And you say that this oligarchy consists of six megabanks.   What are the six banks?

JAMES KWAK: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

JAMES KWAK: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

BILL MOYERS: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

SIMON JOHNSON: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

JAMES KWAK: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis.  If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. 

For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform.  I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. 

And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off.  They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

Bill Moyer's Journal, The Financial Oligarchy in the US, April 16, 2010

It was risk on today, as stocks rallied pretty much until the end of the day, going out on the highs.

VIX dropped as one might expect.

The Dollar gave up the 110 handle and more.

Gold and especially silver rallied hard off the recent price suppression.

Silver was kicking butt with both legs.

Let's see is this was just a flash-in-the-pan bear market relief rally or the beginning of a genuine bottom.

There was intraday commentary Authoritarianism of the Utopias.

Have a pleasant evening.