Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Merry Month of May - Hobson's Choice

"Narcissists gravitate towards professions where they can control people and elicit adulation. They are more likely to work in politics, finance or medicine than in shoemaking...They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.”

Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love


"Lack of accountability is a pet peeve for sure, and also a common problem with narcissists.  Although there are many disturbing factors in the personality of a narcissist, this one is tough to deal with in any relationship.  It’s hard to understand.  What is so difficult about owning up to mistakes when we’re wrong?"

Karyl McBriade, Narcissists Are Not Accountable


"The narcissist looks down on everyone and exploits people all of his life. For many narcissists life is all about money and power. Getting more and giving less is his motto."

Linda Martinez-Lewi, Narcissist’s Outrageous Self Entitlement

The Non-Farm Payrolls report showed a moderate number of jobs added with a continuing weakness in wage growwth.

Stocks were hestitant at first, and then the traders saw that a rally into the weekend would be largely unopposed.

And so equities were able to finish the week largely unchanged.

Near the end of the day one of Obama's trade secretaries was talking on Bloomberg about trade deals like the TPP, and their inevitability and goodness.

And I watched a new performance by Hillary in which she explains why her staunch commitment to capitalism cost her the election, and how she was failed by the voters.

This helped me to remember why, despite what a terrible President that Trumpolini may be, and he is, that I am still glad that Hillary and her Merry Corporate Pranksters are not in office. 

It is not much of an election when your 'choice' is between two different flavors of narcissist from competing crime families.  Especially when both are seeking to sustain a self-destructive, kleptocratic system while doing whatever is required to circumvent and distract from meaningful reform. 

The choice for a lesser of two evils is still evil.  And how much less one is than another is too often just a matter of perspective.

Remember to care for His simplest creatures, and those who are most in need of His mercy.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow - Shopping

Stocks took a big dip lower today, but managed to recover quite a bit of that this afternoon.

There may have been some relief from the lack of screaming headlines from the first day of the US-China trade talks.

Gold and silver gained a bit as the US Dollar gave up some of that short term overbought condition as Noted yesterday.

Tomorrow will be the Non-Farm Payrolls report. The economic calendar with the specific forecasts is included below.

Costco is now delivering groceries for free in my area. I gave it a spin and it worked out remarkably well. All the items were placed on my porch, but in true Costco tradition they were not in a bag or a box. This is going to be handy going forward when I need heavy or very bulky items that I do not feel like dragging from the store to the car, like the 40 lb bag of Audubon bird seed or the six carton pack of organic chicken bullion that I use to moisten the Health Extensions Little Bites Dolly food.  Or the massive cube of paper towels, or the clumsy case of bottled water.

They have opened a new Whole Foods near here in the past month or so.  I have never been to one of these before.  I must say they have an interesting collection of modernistic urban rangers shopping there, at least during the week when I go. What do they call Yuppies these days? I just don't know. Their prices are on the whole ridiculous and the quality does not justify it.

I typically hit the local Shoprite which is fairly day-to-day pedestrian, and a lot of specialty shops for things like meat and prepared foods. And Costco of course for bulk items and Aldi's for low cost value and some specialized German products. But if I am a more upscale, exotic mood I can go to Wegman's and get the same higher quality and selection at much more realistic prices than WF, if I am so inclined, at least on the items I would buy.  Whole Foods selections of sushi and Asian items are rather thin.

For non-food items, non-guy stuff, I buy online from places like Amazon. The queen and I decided long ago that it would be good for our marriage if I never went into Kohls or Bed Bath & Beyond or Marshalls with her. She was a professional, a connoisseur of the selection process (and returning things from a floating inventory of purchases). I would generally hang out in a nearby Lowe's or Home Depot until she called.

I do miss cruising stores with the queen. She knew more about shopping and prices than most Wall St analysts, which is probably why I know so little. She liked to keep me in my place as designated driver and sherpa. We always had fun doing the simplest things.  We had  a collection of favorite stores and little restaurants.

We respected our boundaries. and appreciated our individual areas of expertise.  We always seemed so different but yet so complementary.  My weaknesses were her strengths, and vice versa although she rarely admitted any weaknesses except mice, spiders, yard work, machinery, organized sports, and tools.

And maybe that kind of mutual respect and caring is one element for a long life of happiness and contentment.

Have a pleasant evening.

Collusion: How Central Banks Rigged the World For the Next Financial Crisis

"A crash could prove to be President Trump’s worst legacy. Not only is he -- and the Fed he’s helping to create -- not paying attention to the alarm bells (ignored by the last iteration of the Fed as well), but he’s ensured that none of his appointees will either.

After campaigning hard against the ills of global finance in the 2016 election campaign and promising a modern era Glass-Steagall Act to separate bank deposits from the more speculative activities on Wall Street, Trump's policy reversals and appointees leave our economy more exposed than ever.

When politicians and regulators are asleep at the wheel, it’s the rest of us who will suffer sooner or later. Because of the collusion that’s gone on and continues to go on among the world’s main central banks, that problem is now an international one."

Nomi Prins

One can assume many motivations for the munificent treatment that the Big Banks have received in the US.

The fig leaf is that this was done for 'the sake of the system' wrapped in dollops of fear and uncertainty mixed well with jargon and complexity.   This is the art of the fraud.

We do have the historical example, from a much worse banking crisis in the US during the 1930s, that a thorough reform of the banking system is possible, and significantly less expensive than bailing them and their elite holders out, legally and financially.

The major difference in the handling of each crisis is how the resolution prioritizes the distribution of  financial and legal consequences.

In the 1930s the public and the depositors of the banks were given the highest priority for resolution and future protection.

In the most recent banking crisis it was clearly the banks and their creditors and management who were given the greatest amount of consideration by far.  Indeed, what set this up was a decades long campaign to overturn the last of the safeguards that had been passed in that 1930s crisis, a notably bi-partisan effort greased by hundreds of millions of dollars.

One might take into account the prevailing cultural climate, at the forefront of which is the current political campaign financing system that provides enormous amounts of money for the politicians from the financial class and moneyed interests.

There is also the phenomenon of the emergence of a discrete and significantly more influential and wealthy professional elite as a coherent class, many of whom know each other,  have gone to the same schools, and move back and forth between diverse economic sectors and public office.  And they have significant personal financial entanglements.

This is of more than historical importance. Why?  Because it is all going to happen again, most likely during Trump's term of office.   It makes little difference who is sitting in that White House chair, since Hillary would have certainly would have served the same purposes.  There were other choices that would have been more favorable, but the established two party system would not have any of that.  Nothing personal, but reform would be bad for business.

It would be a monumental mistake to assume that the powers that be will have 'learned anything' from what they have done during the last two financial crises since 1999.  They were not 'asleep at the wheel' then and are not so now.  That is a myth, like the CEO of the failed business who can claim to have little or no involvement in the company which he served for enormous amounts of compensation, as in the case of Enron for example.  Or MF Global.

The thought that this time will be different assumes something very fundamental about their priorities and purposes and how they have changed.

And by all recent accounts and current observations, you are stilll not one of them.   Not the other guy, not 'those people,' but you.  You do not matter to the powerful  And if you think you do, then I am sorry but you are seriously deluded.   And you have a lot of company on both sides of the red-blue divide.