Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Nothing New

"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt."

Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiment

אֵין כָּל חָדָשׁ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ

Nihil sub sole novum.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Their is surely nothing new under the sun, except those who are called and will be held accountable for their labor, under it.

 

Our moderns believe that they have learned to lie, to cheat, and to kill with unsurpassed skill, cleverness, and shamelessness.  

 

They have discovered their will to power.  Or perhaps, the will to power has discovered them.  

 

They think that they have gained some impunity, and have risen above humanity to become as gods.

 

This week will see the last of the May contracts, and the beginning of the active month of June for gold.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - First and Last

“There was a certain rich man who was splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen and who lived each day in luxury. 20 At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus who was covered with sores. As Lazarus lay there longing for scraps from the rich man’s table, the dogs would come and lick his sores.

“Finally, the poor man died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and his soul went to the place of the dead. There, in torment, he saw Abraham in the far distance with Lazarus at his side.

“The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have some pity! Send Lazarus over here to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. I am in anguish in these flames.’

“But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here being comforted, and you are in anguish. And there is a great chasm separating us. No one can cross over to you from here, and no one can cross over to us from there.’

“Then the rich man said, ‘Please, Father Abraham, at least send him to my father’s home. 28 For I have five brothers, and I want him to warn them so they don’t end up in this place of torment.’

“But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them. Your brothers can read what they wrote.’

“The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’

“But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:19-31

 

And so it was then, and is now.

Was yesterday's sharp downdraft in equities just another rinse day in the land of fools and grifters?

 

The global economy has become a deception and then a farce, which will end in tragedy. 

 

And this is because of the greed and self-delusion of a shameless few and their enablers, whose foolishness would make even the angels tremble.

 

It would have been better for them if they had never been born.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - How Unusual: Precious Metals Hit on Option Expiration

"Certainly there were many others as reprehensible and irresponsible as those who played the leading roles. The German people were the victims. The battle, as one who survived it explained, left them dazed and inflation-shocked.    They did not understand how it had happened to them, and who the foe was who had defeated them."

Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse

June is a big, active month for gold on the Comex.

And today was the option expiration for the precious metal June contracts.

Le voilà, comme prévu.

What else might we have expected?  Honesty?  Price discovery?  A market clearing price between users and suppliers?  

These are markets that have been willfully overwhelmed and misdirected by speculation.  There are no fundamentals in The Bucket Shop, just what is essentially full time market rigging, with little to no product changing hands between long term investors and suppliers.

And similarly, like healthy nourishment in a snack cake, so there is still little to no recovery in The Recovery™.  

When the reckoning for this protracted folly and organized plunder finally comes, they will all be so amazed.

 

It is so very modern to think that things are just as we say they are, because we say so.  And nowhere is this psychosis more apparent than in modern economics and money.  

 

 It is the ultimate tyranny of selfishness and egoism, and will last as long as the masters can keep extending their power and their will, crushing all dissent and all others in their path,

 

And then comes the downfall, the sickening plunge, and the moment of terrible lucidity when the music stops.  And the illusion dies.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Rinse Day

 

They don't always put up a billboard with flashing lights, but often enough the next move in the market is pretty well-illuminated for those who are not from out of town.

And so we had the downdraft in stocks today, because of 'better than expected economic data' that 'might cause the Fed to raise rates sooner' rather than later.

Complete and utter baloney, a story for the tourists.

Stocks were jammed up against overhead resistance, and the pros were handing off their inflated shares to the specs and institutions, and positioned themselves for a downdraft.

And so today I covered the 'aggressive' short and took the profit. Maybe we will get more downside, or upside, but it won't be because of any economic news of the mild sort we got this morning.

Durable good are notoriously volatile, and anyone who bases investment decisions off squiggles like this, or the consumer index which is a lagging indicator of the stock market. The housing data was pretty much inline, but housing data these days makes the work of the BLS look good.

So there you are, another day in the Imperial Republic.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Why We Fought: On the Four Freedoms Speech, 6 January 1941

There should be not doubt that the work for the four freedoms was not nearly finished after the end of the Second World War. The rights of minorities, and women, and the working classes took a long time to come, and are still in the process of being fulfilled and protected as the forces of progress and repression, of money and power versus moral principles, ebbs and flows.

But in judging what has gone before us, we ought not to forget the context in which the great lights of history existed and fought.

And before we judge the Roosevelts, Lincolns, and Jeffersons of history too harshly and out of context, as is the fashion for those who would tear down giants to make their own lack of stature and accomplishment less appalling, let us first look at our own times, and our own actions, and judge ourselves first with these same strict measures we would apply so blithely in our ignorance and oversimplified prejudices to others.

Hillary as President: Robert Reich vs. Nomi Prins

I am so very glad that Pam and Russ Martens have written this article below.   I had intended to write something on this topic, and I probably would not have done it nearly so succinctly and so well.

The excerpt below is just a taste of a longer and more interesting piece, and I suggest that you read it.

While the Republicans are temporarily fragmenting along lines of personal ambition and various billionaire special interest groups, the Democrats are continuing to split between the Wall Street and populist progressive wings.   

And The Clintons are the unabashed leaders of the big money wing of the party.  With regard to the most recent series of financial crises, the Clinton's set the stage, and Bush II enacted it.

It seems likely that if unchallenged, the party bosses will be running roughshod over the concerns of the progressive and reform-minded elements of their constituency.

Another election of Bush v. Clinton would be a suitable emblem for the decline of democracy.

The next election, I believe, will be the opening act in an interesting decades long evolution of the American Republic.

Wall Street On Parade
Debating Hillary for President: Robert Reich v. Nomi Prins
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2015

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration and currently Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, is an important voice for tackling income inequality in America by bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, busting up the too-big-to-fail banks, and imposing a securities transaction tax...

Unfortunately, Reich, an otherwise clear-eyed progressive has a deep blind spot. Her name is Hillary Clinton...

There is one person in America who might be able to change Robert Reich’s mind about Hillary before he blows his otherwise stellar work on taming Wall Street with an unwise gambit of getting deeper into the Hillary camp. That person is Nomi Prins, a Wall Street veteran and meticulous researcher on the democracy-shriveling nexus between Wall Street and the Oval Office...

A column by Prins on Hillary Clinton’s Presidential attributes was posted to Paul Craig Roberts’ web site last Friday. It is not the detail-lite version on Rubin. Prins writes:

“When Hillary Clinton video-announced her bid for the Oval Office, she claimed she wanted to be a ‘champion’ for the American people. Since then, she has attempted to recast herself as a populist and distance herself from some of the policies of her husband. But Bill Clinton did not become president without sharing the friendships, associations, and ideologies of the elite banking sect, nor will Hillary Clinton. Such relationships run too deep and are too longstanding…

“Though she may, in the heat of that campaign, raise the bad-apples or bad-situation explanation for Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, rest assured that she will not point fingers at her friends. She will not chastise the people that pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop to speak or the ones that have long shared the social circles in which she and her husband move…”

Read the entire article at Wall Street On Parade here.

Memorial Day 2015

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

John Adams, 1765


"They tell us Sir, that we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power."

Patrick Henry


"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."


Abraham Lincoln, 19 November 1863