07 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The King In Yellow


"Love is not easy; it is not our natural state. It seems weak and foolish, and is despicable to the fallen of this world and the next, who by the declaration of their hearts and minds say non serviam, I will not serve."

Jesse, Love Is the Refuge of the Way

Stocks bubbled sideways today, digesting the recent gains, and treading water as additional earnings and economic news comes out.

I have made no secret of it, that the US equity markets seem very fully valued at this point, and are overdue for a stiff correction in the neighborhood of ten percent. That they have not even had a 3 percent correction in quite some time is a testimony to the amount of hot money and speculative froth underpinning them.

Peak hubris. We're there on a number of fronts, socially, financially, and politically. I have not seen anything like this since the tech stock bubble. The housing bubble was much broader and deeper, and much more profound in the levels of its corruption. This one seems more like an 'echo bubble.'   In all three instances the primary actors were the Wall Street financiers, the Banks, and the Fed.

The amount of potentially destabilizing situations geopolitically are daunting, almost breath-taking. I won't bother to list them here, but things in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe are showing signs of heaving the landscape out of place. Domestically things in the US are much more tense under the surface than anything I can remember in many years. The elite are doubling down on their winnings with a kind of race to the oncoming wall of bad karma.

And yet, it is all overlaid with a very devil-may-care mindset, bolstered by the most pernicious type of pride in a culture of death.   All one has to do is to consider the recent choice of leaders from the mainstream political parties:  Lady Macbeth and the narcissist Duc l'Orange.

Gold and silver continue to wind sideways. Bitcoin is an absolute speculative bubble, no doubt about it. It is a kind of tulipmania.

Politically both US parties are betrothed to big money special interests. The Republicans are unabashed and almost feral in their service to Mammon, to the point of being repulsive. The Democrats seek to cover their moral nakedness with the kind of hypocrisy that is the special provenance of the fallen. And fallen is about the best word I can think to describe them. Both of their houses are falling.

There are parallel situations to this in all of the developed countries. The best lack all conviction, and the worst are driven by passionate intensity.

So what is one to do? Perseverance seems to be the order of the day, as it has been so many times in the past. We have seen much worse, even in the past century, as anyone who studies history will know.  Things now may be bad.  In the last century there were madness and horrors.

As we used to commonly say a long time ago, 'keep the faith,' especially in an era of faithlessness and general apostasy. This is our command and our cross—
uphold the light of love in a darkening world.

Have a pleasant evening.




06 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Plus c'est la même chose


Gold and silver bounced back nicely after the Non-Farm Payrolls smackdown.

Stocks managed to eke a little upside today driven mostly by energy.

We are still in earnings season, and misses are leading to stocks being hauled out behind the woodshed and thrashed.

The geopolitical risks are changing from a simmer to what may grow to be a running boil.

The Republicans and Democrats are shameless in their pursuits of personal power and money. It is becoming hard not to notice, unless you are a true believer and willfully blind.   And there are plenty of those kinds of behaviours on display now.

The increase in wickedness has proven contagious to the weak willed and morally ambivalent.   It is almost hard to believe at times as more and more of the nominally principled give up and stand down.  No one can serve two masters.  They will eventually hate the one and love the other, even as they fool themselves and make allowances for their own 'harmless practicality' which is really just expediency.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.




03 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Just Stand


"In our own times we see that politicians raised under neoliberalism are unwilling and unable to effectively use real Keynesian policies: they can’t do stimulus, when they try, they give the money primarily to the rich.

They grew to power by being neoliberals; faced with new times they cannot change. In France we saw the main center-left party (really a neoliberal party) implode because it would just not change, and throughout the West center-left neoliberal parties are dying for just this reason. The world has changed, the people who run those parties cannot change...

Our societies have failed to run themselves acceptably since 2008, and the youngs have no attachment to the status quo since it never ever worked for them. Change is thus not only possible, it is now inevitable."

Ian Welsh, When People and Societies Change

Stocks were rallying off the jobs report.

The American dream is now a nation of low paid bartenders and waitresses, living from paycheck to paycheck, and preyed upon by corporate behemoths in healthcare, housing, and finance.

They are a force of nature, a sleeping giant, that awakened may be filled with a terrible resolve.

And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of many will grow cold. But those who stand firm to the end shall be saved. 

Have a pleasant weekend.





02 November 2017

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Democratic National Committee


The Democratic Party establishment has learned nothing from their failed strategies and electoral disasters, and are still lying and denying over and over with condescending smirks.