Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Winding Down - That Mourns In Lonely Exile Here

“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox;  that the birth of someone homeless should be celebrated in every home...

The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic, it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away.  It was a place of dreams, come true.”

G.K. Chesterton

Who could have seen this coming, indeed.

This is likely to be a quiet trading week with an upwards drift.

It was 60 degrees here, and I was out cleaning up the yard, wearing shorts. lol

The artificially low volatility in the stock and bond markets is a symptom of the broad mispricing of risks.

Partly this is because the Fed is raising rates in what can best be described as a 'low inflation' environment, while continuing to ride a big tranche of hot money in too few hands that has proven over and again its propensity for corruption and market manipulation.

Now, we here understand why the Fed is actually raising rates. It is so that they can lower them, when their latest asset bubble bursts, again. God forbid that they should go to the root of it, and correct the malinvestments of the bubble economy there.

But the market is reading this, perhaps willfully, as the Fed not being serious about their 2% inflation target. Or their regulatory responsibilities. And their vigilance on wage increases again shows how badly they are managing monetary policy. What is missing from this long, long 'recovery' is well-paying job growth.

Top down stimulus and policy management does not work, and has not worked for the past twenty or thirty years or so. But it serves the one percent. And so it is likely that they and their body servants in the Congress and the Washington bureaucracy will continue to push the envelope on this policy error until something breaks.

There is ample historical precedent for it.

The House voted for the tax bill today.  But their version would not work under Senate rules, so they will have to take another go at it tomorrow.

Apple stock received a 'rare downgrade' today.   The hour is growing late.  Time to take some money off the table and go home.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Bubble Has Awakened - Come and Get It

It looks like the pigmen in Congress and their corporate overlords are going to get their 'tax reform' for Christmas.

Winning...

The various stock and serveral bond markets are in a financial asset bubble, and certain stocks are surging higher in some fairly impressive daily moves based on utter nonsense.

Bitcoin and the various related crypto-currency plays are now a bona fide mania.

I think this tops the valuations of the worst of the gerbil tossing tech stocks in the internet bubble at the turn of the century.

Who wold have thought they could do it again two more times, albeit with the generous assistance of the Fed and the acquiescence of the regulators.

Ski these black diamond slopes at your own risk.

If you are an expert, you don't need any advice from me.

I am just the old guy in the kitchen, baking cookies.  lol.

It is interesting to wonder what will break the bubbles, and if they will start falling in unison, or if one breaks and others get some legs before they too roll over.

We'll never learn.  We should not have bailed them out.  Perhaps we ought to have driven a stake in their collective heart of darkness.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Implications of the Incarnation - Listen, and I Will Tell You a Mystery

"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

“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 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.

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.

Murillo, 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.

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

O Lord, pierce our hardened hearts, and break our chains of pride and self-deception.

Nader Explains the Ongoing Collapse of the Democratic Party

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.  Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.  But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith

The last presidential election was obviously, and by choice of the parties, a contest between the lesser of two evils.  The Democratic candidate was the choice of the party insiders, and the Republican of  people who had just had enough, and were willing to believe the unabashed nonsense of a conman in their desperation.

I think both choices were very unpalatable for slightly different reasons and on different timelines. It was almost a tossup of ugliness, and it was most cynically played by the Democrats. And thereby lost.

Probably my biggest concern is that with a few wins over candidates from the other side who are utterly hopeless and largely unelectable, the Democratic establishment is gong to try and bank on their timeworn losing strategy of going negative and fear-mongering again, without putting forward any solid policy proposals.

Why is this?  Because they are caught in a credibility trap—  if they wish to continue their top down strategy of tight, imperious, DNC insider control of nearly everything that the party does.  And so they can keep their focus, to the exclusion of winning elections, on big donor money and the power which it brings. 

They would therefore continue to neglect the grass roots, leaving it to boot-strapping progressives, and going out of their way not to alienate any of their corporate and uber-wealthy donors by taking any economically populist stands.   And so it may very well be identity politics and Russia, all over again.

But given their obvious inability to govern above the level of a self-obsessed and habitually intoxicated college fraternity, I am  therefore not optimistic for the Republicans either.

And so where does that leave us?

It tends to imply the increasing alienation of the electorate.  And that scenario possesses several less likely but potentially very ugly outcomes.  You can't fool everyone all the time.  And when they finally have had enough, well, there you have it.

Change can come.  But there are a lot of powerful people who are set upon the status quo who will do everything in their power to stop it by any means and for as long as they can.

And this is what leads societies to historically significant moments.