Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Modern Prometheus - Another Comex Options Expiration

 

"By the late 1970s, after fifteen years in the business, Bob Hare knew what he was looking for when it came to psychopaths.  They exhibit a cluster of distinctive personality traits, the most significant of which is an utter lack of conscience.  They also have huge egos, short tempers, and an appetite for excitement -- a dangerous mix.  

'A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths,' says Bob Hare. 'But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued.  When they get caught, what happens?  A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back.  I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed.'"

Robert Hercz, Psychopaths Among Us


"A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all."

Tacitus


"Many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths are closely associated with a profound lack of empathy and inability to construct a mental and emotional 'facsimile' of another person.  They seem completely unable to 'get into the skin' of others, except in a purely intellectual sense.  They are completely indifferent to the rights and suffering of family and strangers alike.  If they do maintain ties, it is only because they see family members as possessions."

Robert D. Hare, The Charming Psychopath


Stocks managed to oscillate today, not quite sure what to do with their recent outsized gains from last Friday.

Gold and silver were hit lower, in honor of the metals futures options expiration on the Comex.

What a surprise.

The Dollar moved lower slipping off the 104 handle.

I suspect that a cadre of the initiated would like to keep the equity markets moving higher.

The better to eat you with, my dear.

Europe has banned the imports of Russian gold.   A symbolic gesture at best.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Political and Social Continuum - What About the Outliers? Does Sin Exist?

As you may recall I have constructed this model to help me conceptualize the 'continuum' of political and social thought.

One of the motivations for this particular form was to help me to understand why those at the extremes can 'cross over' so easily from one to the other.

And in practice, the two extremes seem identical in many ways.

But I have struggled for some time where a sociopath or psychopath might fit in this scheme of things.

Today it struck me that sociopaths and psychopaths can fit anywhere they like, although given their attraction to power and control over others they would be mostly found at the extremes.

They can move about most easily because they are 'outside the continuum'  and by definition  are exceptionally under-socialized.   For whatever reason, they do not 'fit' within a social structure, but are essentially outliers because of their pathology, the way in which they have rationalized themselves.

They are a mutated form of the self-actualizing person. They may seem quite personally powerful, but inside they are hollow, almost histrionic. They would be products of broken homes, and have marriages of convenience, mostly their own.

The narcissists are often highly verbally acute and talented at using speech, with high IQs.  But the tell is their lack of consistency.  And they thrive in places of upper management where performance and personal responsibility can be rationalized and diffused.  They are corrosive for the long term.

And the same off model status might be said to apply to misanthropes and hermits, the extreme form of self-imposed isolationism. At some point their social maturity has failed. And then there are the many socially immature who have never progressed beyond adolescence most likely because of some trauma or lack of support for their development. They lash out in anger because they know something is missing in their lives.

Politicians and certain types of public figures can be tough to place on this model because they are often poseurs, in that they are motivated primarily by power, and will assume various modes and guises to obtain it. They are most notable for the lack of consistency between their public and private lives, their very disingenuousness.

Indeed their private lives can often be quite distinct from their public reputations, and remarkably so.

I have known many 'driven' figures who from a public face would seem to be quite successful, and often remarkably so. But almost invariably they are unhappy to the point of being miserable, and they spread their misery to their family and all that come close to them. They are broken but functional and for some their obsession gives them a remarkable focus. They are not distracted by sincere feelings and abstract principles such as 'justice.' People are at best trophies to be collected and more often objects to be used and discarded.

Do not get me wrong.  No one is perfect, and the definition of normal is broad given the natural diversity of creation.  And at the end of the day, we are all imperfect and often broken people.  It is how we react to these things that makes us what we are.  Some must struggle more valiantly than others.

I cannot give you a precise definition of 'sin' without reference to personal belief, along with the usual classical references, although I do believe it objectively exists.   I think the best way to explore this is to ask a higher power, sincerely and with some persistence, to show our own sins to us.  And that might prove to be interesting, especially among those who think they are without it and beyond it.

And although I cannot define what normality and sin are, I think I know what hell is.  To paraphrase Dostoevsky, hell is the inability to love and to be loved, even when it is true and freely offered.  That is the terrible curse of Tantalus, and the source of much anger and discontent and oppression in the world.

So there is my slight modification to this model, and my pass at practical psychology for today.

About That Seemingly Irrational Need for Bonuses...

Psychopath: A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

He would sell his mother for an eighth.

He would betray his most solemn promise on a whim.

He was a law unto himself, forcing others to serve his needs.

He would grab society's tit and suck it dry.

He would grasp and tear until he showed them all.

He was beyond good and evil--- He was an American hero.

"Our hypothesis was that psychopathic traits are also linked to dysfunction in dopamine reward circuitry," Buckholtz said. "Consistent with what we thought, we found people with high levels of psychopathic traits had almost four times the amount of dopamine released in response to amphetamine."

In the second portion of the experiment, the research subjects were told they would receive a monetary reward for completing a simple task. Their brains were scanned with fMRI while they were performing the task. The researchers found in those individuals with elevated psychopathic traits the dopamine reward area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, was much more active while they were anticipating the monetary reward than in the other volunteers.

"It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they're after," Buckholtz said. Added Zald, "It's not just that they don't appreciate the potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward overwhelms those concerns."

Psychopaths' Brains Wired to Seek Rewards No Matter the Consequences

So let's give deregulation and the efficient markets hypothesis another chance to really maximize the damage.

An entire society built around white punks on dopamine, trapped in the infantile stage of development, allocating resources for the many, the arbiters of utility and worth, from Wall Street to the Congress: this is what America has become.

A Breed Apart Without Conscience - Psychopaths and Systemic Crisis

Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets.  Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky.  They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs.

What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

The majority of people and therefore workplaces are easy prey, because we still want to believe that people are inherently good.  We don't really want to believe that such people exist...Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them.

We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer.

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience

And this is why people must come together, to create a system of laws and transparency, of checks and balances, of objective oversight.

It is difficult to believe that we have to remind otherwise intelligent adults, who might be temporarily, but too often enthusiastically, blinded by some utopian ideology too often crafted by devious intents, that not everyone is good, law-abiding, and honest.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Slowdown in US Manufacturing Stuns the Markets - A Nation of Servants

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool."

Stephen King, Needful Things


"The bully type, the false 'tough,' has been the first to break down under the actual fire of battle.  The quiet, the calm, the determined have made the best soldiers.  Why? Obviously the bully is insecure in himself— he blusters to muster his own courage."

Pearl S. Buck, What America Means to Me


"Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthough. They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.”

Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self-Love


"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere. Probably that has always been the case. Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell


“Crowd-pleasers [demagogues] are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whip their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy— then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.”

Hunter S. Thompson


The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato."

Karl Popper


"A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.

The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits

The end of quarter antics of Wall Street hit a brick wall this morning, when before the bell the ISM Manufacturing Index came in at 47.8%, which was quite a miss, and showed the early signs, not only of slowdown, but contraction. This also reinforced the Chicago PMI which came in with a shockingly low 47.1 on Monday.

And so stocks dumped and gold and silver rallied. The Dollar was marginally lower.

I would not count these jokers out just yet. We have some additional data coming out this week, especially the Non-Farm Payrolls and the ISM Services Index, which may serve to provide the wiseguys some additional courage in their market manipulation.

After all, 'manufacturing' is so much an old economy thing, and services are where we wish to be. A nation of servants ruled over by a few oligarchs and their enablers.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Psychopathia Financialis

“A psychopath can tell what you’re thinking but what they don’t do is feel what you feel. These are people without a conscience.”

Bob Hare

It was 'fear on' as concerns about a Greece default had stocks selling off led lower by the financials. The VIX remained elevated. We will have to see if anything comes out of the G7 or the ECB before Monday.

The Ten Year Treasury hit a record low of 1.91 yield today.

Gold and silver were repeatedly pummeled but remained resilient in the light trading sessions overnight and in the access market this evening. The perception management was painfully obvious.

Although there were many smacking Obama today, it was not clear what he might have offered as a solution to please the Congressional sociopaths on the right, except human sacrifices of the poor, the elderly, the immigrants, and the different. The hyper-polarization of the monied interests has been inflamed by the moral hazard of the bailouts and excuses of the financial sector fraud. These fellows despise conciliation and compromise as weakness.

This is one of those remarkable episodes in history that Americans, Europeans, and Brits might have trouble explaining to their grandchildren.  But ignorance is a familiar excuse. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Children of God, Children of Darkness - Like Tears in the Rain

 

"The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.   For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ten Years After, 1943

“Once they’re in power, narcissists consolidate their position by firing everyone who challenges them.  In their place rise a plague of toadies, opportunists, and enablers equally guided by self-interest and short on scruples.   So you end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity."

Lee Simmons, Stanford Business School

"A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others.  They are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.

They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim. The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits

"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, Nuremberg Diary

“The greatest evil is not done now in sordid dens of crime. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices by quiet men, with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks, who do not need to raise their voice.”

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.   Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"This is how we know who are the children of God and who are the children of Satan: anyone who does not do what is good is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their neighbor."

1 John 3:10

The PPI came in less than forecast.

And that was enough to trigger a powerful counter-rally in stocks.

Otherwise known as a wash and rinse.

Gold and silver rallied strongly.  

Gold bar sales are surging at Costco.  

Spokesmodels and economists are baffled.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Geopolitical risks continue on in a rolling boil.

They will continue to be ignored - until they can't.

It's a simple concept.  

Stop provoking wars, stop murdering and oppressing the innocent.

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

"The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned...
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

What are we doing?  Who are we becoming? 

How will our children remember us?

And for what?

A bunch of power hungry human husks with empty souls and hardened hearts?

'All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.'

Have a pleasant evening.

Bubble-nomics: The Federal Reserve Balance Sheet and the SP 500

"How could I have done this? I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. Am I a flawed character?

I realized from a very early stage that the financial market is a wholly rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market....It’s unbelievable. Goldman-- no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke."

Bernie Madoff


"Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives, until it finally consumes itself."

Chris Hedges


"I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others: might makes right."

Carl Panzram, psychopath, serial killer

Not much is going to the real economy and the 99 percent, so it has to be going somewhere.

The creation of financial asset bubbles using the power of selective monetary inflation is 'trickle down' at its finest.

But certain assets may blurt out unpleasant truths, if they are allowed to speak.

This is not sustainable. What are they thinking?

Entitlement, indeed.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Snakes and Ladders Economy - Stock Option Expiration on Friday

“Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other.   The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits


"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.  What is more harmful than any vice?  Active pity for all failure and weakness — Christianity."

Friedrich Nietzsche


"I’m not against business, or profits, or becoming wealthy. I have no problem with people becoming billionaires—if they got there by winning a fair race, if their accomplishments merit it, if they pay their fair share of taxes, and if they don’t corrupt their society.   But that’s not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy.

Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked.  And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson

Satan and his Antichrist

"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament. Certainly, he has no choice. He has chosen to have no choice. 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

Stocks wobbled a bit today, while the US Dollar gained.

Gold was off, falling back towards the lower bound of its symmetrical triangle.

Silver managed to add a bit to its recent stealth rally.

There will be a stock option expiration for July this Friday.

Shenanigans are underway, as is usual in our perversely bent financial system.

There was intraday commentary here about the early 20th century program in Germany to kill the elderly, the infirm, the depressed, the mentally and physically disabled, the dissident, homosexuals, and the homeless for the sake of reducing costs and increasing profits.

Don't turn away again and move on. 

Look, and see what The Market demands, what its predators, narcissists, and infantile sociopaths promote, and what you too, in the end, may become.

Without Empathy or Remorse: The Psychopath Next Door, In the Office, In the Halls of Power

"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

There is a range in human behaviours. There may be a baseline, but not all are the same.

And this is why theories that assume that everyone has a basic world outlook that is the same like you, that all people have a natural desire to be friendly, helpful, and sharing falter out of either a good nature or from a good maximizing, selflessly reasoning behaviour, falter so badly when applied to the real world.

When a society fails to restrain the worst behaviours of those who prey on others through the abuse of power or money, their example brings out the worst in a much larger subset of the population. Bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour, and those who profit by it find ways to justify this through self-serving social and political theories.  People who have this weakness in their character are naturally attracted to high profile positions of power.  Psychopaths breed and nurture sociopaths, imitators who are able to extinguish their own empathy and remorse through ideology and excess.

What would you do to protect your children from people like this? Throughout history people have banded together in order to establish and maintain the rule of law against the tyranny of a few.

This is why romantic notions about markets and societies without law and transparent regulation are so harmful. They turn the power of the markets and the laws over to the least scrupulous and self-controlled in a society. This is why any social system without checks and balances, without transparency and restraints, will eventually deteriorate into a dysfunctional system of self-interest and looting.

People are not perfectly rational angels. It is hard to believe that one must say that to an adult audience, but ideology and conditioning can make people blind to their own faults. 'Men go mad in herds, but come back to their senses, one at a time.'

Society is generally based on consumption,  production, and cooperation.  A system that has become tainted by the sickness of the disordered mind and soul is based on debt, coercion and extraction, serving only money, power, and itself.

What then are we to do?

Do not spend your time trying to look into the minds and hearts of others at a distance, saying this one or that one is clearly disordered and evil, calling them out for it. Rather, look first into your own imperfectly human heart, and find the fear, selfishness, envy and greed within.

And with open eyes, having seen this inhuman behaviour for what it is, acknowledge it, bring it under your control, subdue it and extinguish it by having remorse for past wrongs, and a sincere desire to act up to your light, more fully and wholly human, in the future.

Put more simply in the words that echo down the long halls of history, see your sins, acknowledge them, repent and ask for forgiveness, ask for the strength to act up to your light, and then go and sin no more. For if the seeds of wickedness and inhuman behaviour are stilled within you, then the madness that roams the world like a roaring lion will not find a way to steal your humanity and your heart.

And that time is coming, always and again.