Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After the Bell - A Cross of Iron

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.  We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat.  We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people...

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.   Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

The US has been in a state of continuous war for a little over sixteen years, if you begin with the initial invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The big tickle today was the strength in the Dollar index based on Euro weakness, thanks to Monsieur Draghi.

There was a minor option expiration for gold on the Comex today. I do not think that drove the action in the metals, compared to the big spike in the Dollar.

After the bell we will be seeing some big earnings announcements including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Intel.

CVS Health is in talks to buy Aetna. More consolidation in the health/insurance sector, under the title of 'vertical integration' which is a finer sounding title for 'monopolization.'

I do not know how it is in your area, but around here a few medical conglomerates are buying up all the doctor practices and medical facilities of any size, leaving us with just a handful of behemoth health providers and insurers.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We'll Always Have Paris

"Summers, Geithner, the Council of Economic Advisors and Bernanke strongly guided economic data development and spin to give perception of 'recovery'.    Green shoots turned out to be weeds.  The period from '08 to '16 was incredible in the gymnastics committed to support the recovery narrative.  Yellen, a specialist in labor economics (NOT monetary economics) had large role devising the now failed LMCI.  The Fed abandoned its own new metric for measuring the jobs market (Labor Market Conditions Index) w/i 2 year b/c it was so rife with bogus info.   Crazy.

Harald Malmgren

For whatever reason, and I have some thoughts along those lines, the powers-that-be in American finance and politics are terrified of a decline in the US stock markets, ever since the election of His Donaldship.

And so once again this bloated pig of a market continued to float just above the dangerous waters of correction and disappointment, even one so slight it appears.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the movie Casablanca.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Greed Turns Slowly to Fear - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.   And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice .”

Edward Said


"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus

We may have seen peak hubris, financially speaking, for this time around at least.  There will be others.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Too Much Capital In Too Few Hands

Markets reversed today from this morning's action.

Let's see if this sets a trend, or is merely another inconsequential wiggle.

Have a pleasant evening.

Listen, And I Will Tell You a Mystery

"Listen, and I will tell you a mystery."

1 Cor 15:51

Caravaggio, The Calling of  St. Matthew

“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.

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 there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.

God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it. There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past. They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.

To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed. They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them. If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.

Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me -- still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are--sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Contemplate then yourself, not as yourself, but as you are in the Eternal God. Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around you and in you, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that you are dissolved into the Kingdom of God.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman