"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
Gold and silver had a very good follow through on the rally yesterday, going out on the highs even into the after hours trade.
Gold is around 1283 and silver 18.50. A weaker dollar helped, in addition to strong physical buying from India for the festival and wedding seasons.
Stocks were off a bit and the VIX ticked higher, in line with a 'risk off' day that was propelling the safe haven trade in the precious metals.
I see that the Kitco precious metals ticker on the left has been lagging updates badly. I don't know what their problem may be, but I moved that ticker below the two from Nick Laird which while they show the five day price trend also show the most recent price and time for each metal.
While they are showing some good strength, the metals need to keep moving to set the higher highs that may persuade the markets in general that their long sideways consolidation trend is over.
It appears that we will have a very early treatment slot at hospital every day for the next three weeks, so I will be around most afternoons. I am not going to promise to stay awake. lol
"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity, than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Today was a 'risk off' day, although stocks managed to take back much of their losses after the European close.
Gold and silver went out near their highs.
The precious metals are jammed up against overhead resistance.
A breakout from here and a strong closing print that sticks it the breakout and confirms it opens up some interesting possibilities.
“The world says: 'You have needs— satisfy them. You have as much right to it as the rich and the mighty. Do not hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.' This is the worldly doctrine of today.
And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, and for the poor, envy and murder.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The marketeers were massaging perception today, putting up a good front of confidence despite the many, many geopolitical and economic risks.
This smells like a bubble topping. That can take quite a bit of time, or not. It depends on what happens to specifically break the illusion that is driving the hot money to chase mispriced risks.
Gold and silver finished largely unchanged. The Comex is becoming a betting parlor that happens to have a little physical metal in the back room. This is more true for gold rather than silver, given the activities of some parties in Comex silver to use it as a delivery mechanism for their wholesale operations.
I still like gold and silver here, but until they can break out this is an uncertain position on the charts. The formations have not yet activated, but are there waiting to open up. The resistance by the metals bears has been determined, but paper driven.
As I mentioned the other week, the tumor in the queen's brain has come back and is so deeply positioned as to be inoperable So tomorrow we begin radiation treatments every day for three weeks with the goal of eliminating it. It will be a tough go, and I may be late or miss a few postings.
This week we remember the events of one of the most meaningful weeks in all human history. And in this is our freedom, not of the world that seeks to master us, but in spite of it.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge your desires and your greed; rather serve one another, with humility and love. For the entirety of the law is fulfilled in keeping this one commandment: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
Gal 5:13-14
This we have not only forgotten, but mocked and trampled into the dirt. We live in an age when greed has been declared the greatest good, and the measure of the economy and the markets. And so in the name of such false freedom, we may once again make a hell on earth.
"The whole world wants to know about what the hell is happening with us. So let's talk about it. I live in Washington now, and the people I live among have no idea how people live here in the Midwest, not the faintest idea...
The last couple of years here in America have been a time of brisk prosperity according to official measurements, with unemployment down and the stock market up.
For Americans who work for a living however, nothing ever seems to improve. Wages do not grow, median household income is still well below where it was in 2007. Economists have a way of measuring this, they call it the 'labor share of the Gross National Product' as opposed to the share taken by stockholders. The labor share of Gross National Product' hit its lowest point since records were started in 2011, and then it stayed there right for the next couple of years.
In the fall of 2014, with the stock market hitting an all time high, a poll showed that nearly 3/4 of the American public believed that the economy was still in recession, because for them it was.
There was time when average Americans could be counted upon to know correctly whether the country was going up or down, because in those days when America prospered, the American people prospered as well. These days things are different.
Let's look at it in a statistical sense. If you look at it from the middle of the 1930's (the Depression) up until the year 1980, the lower 90 percent of the population of this country, what you might call the American people, that group took home 70 percent of the growth in the country's income. If you look at the same numbers from 1997 up until now, from the height of the great Dot Com bubble up to the present, you will find that this same group, the American people, pocketed none of this country's income growth at all.
Our share of these great good times was zero, folks. The upper ten percent of the population, by which we mean our country's financiers and managers and professionals, consumed the entire thing. To be a young person in America these days is to understand instinctively the downward slope that so many of us are on."
Thomas Frank, Kansas City Missouri, 6 April 2017
"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent. This pattern of government action shows up in all areas of government policy."
Dean Baker
"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error."
John Kenneth Galbraith
In 2012 I said that such unsustainable social arrangements as we have now are backed by force and fraud. And as the fraud loses its power over time, force must increase, until there is a correction of the system in genuine reform, or an eventual reset.
What shall we blame for the manner in which our economic system has gone wrong? Or will any with a public podium even admit it has gone wrong? After all, what is truth?
Is it a problem of 'fakes news sites' running contrary opinions to the established narrative?
Is it the failure of working people to rise to the occasion and elevate the 'lesser of two evils' to power so that she might further enrich herself and her supporters, whose disappointment and outrage at a missed payday knows no bounds?
Is it the impersonal forces of technology, and trade, and all of the superficially structured but high sounding economic laws that have served to promote almost every abuse of the public good that has been suffered for the past thirty years?
Or perhaps it is time for people of conscience to stop standing idly by while a powerful few are serving themselves the most of our gains, at great cost to others, and to break the silence about where we have gone wrong, and what is needed to be done to correct it.
"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."
“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.
Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.
God alone knows the day and the hour when that will at length be, which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, 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.
God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.
And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is here, ten times more glorious, more powerful, than when He trod the earth in our flesh."
John Henry Newman
As you may have heard by now, the American President decided over dinner in his Domus Aurea to assume the mantle of miles gloriosus, which has proven to be an irresistible temptation for American presidents of the postwar period, who have never personally known war. He ordered a massive cruise missile attack on the Syrian air base which purportedly was the point of origin for a dreadful chemical attack on innocent civilians. And that was that.
This juiced up the flight to safety trade on the overnight with stocks slumping and the metals rallying.
The Jobs Report came in so light this morning that when I first saw the print I thought it was a typo. I was astonished that the markets were seemingly ignoring it. And the Atlanta Fed downgraded its estimate of 1Q GDP to 0.6%. That barely registers a pulse. What the heck?
But luckily the financial spokesmodels and analysts, such as a learned economist from Deutsche Bank, were able to explain that the entire report and the economic data, except for the decline in the unemployment rate, was being discounted due to the weather. Huzzah!
And we are also being plagued by 'bad seasonals' which are a leftover from the crushing economic slump from the first quarter of 2009. Apparently those highly paid professionals and statisticians are like our modern CEOs, who turn out to be disconnected and barely aware of their own business, when things go wrong. What's that? The customer accounts were looted? Hey I just show up for work. That does not mean I was ever involved with anything of substance. We are just illusionists.
I wonder what sort of weather phenomenon will be blamed when that great lumbering pustule of hubris that is Deutsche Bank, and its plug ugly sisters in America and Europe, roll over and sink into the dustbin of excessive leverage and the mispricing of risk. An iceberg?
So the risk perception of the public having been tamed, stocks managed to finish largely unchanged.
The precious metals and the risk trades pretty much gave up all of their gains. How could it be otherwise, since we assured that everything is under control, and that all is well with the status quo, guided as it is by the plutocratic princes and their technocrats.
And if anything stands in our way, we will either drone it or print it out of existence. So there. It is a very attractive alternative.
Silver, which is in a not particularly active month, and for which there is ample supply in the Comex warehouses to back the paper betting, took it particularly hard, barely managing to hang on to the 18 handle.
We are fortunate, perhaps, that the mills of God's justice grind slowly.
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.
It is available for your use at no cost, but with attribution and a link to the original posting.
I make every attempt to respect the rights of others. If you feel that something here has infringed your work please let me know and I will correct it immediately. It is not always easy to determine the status of material posted to the Internet with regard to fair use and public domain.
