Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Edgy, Lacking in Wisdom

William Blake, Satan In His Original Glory

"The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it's no such thing.  It's boring and it's depressing and it's stupid.  Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over."

Dean Koontz


“That is, of course, the kind of perspective we expect from mobsters, dictators, and others whose primary regard is for unflinching support, not for allegiance to truth or facts.”

David Cay Johnston


"Wisdom breathes life into her children
and admonishes those who seek her.
He who loves her loves life;
those who seek her will be embraced by the Lord.
But if he fails her, Wisdom will abandon him
and deliver him into the hands of despoilers."

Sirach 4:11,19

Stocks had trouble figuring out what to do with themselves today.

The futures managed to stick another declining day in the face of overhead resistance.

Only the Fed's excess liquidity is keeping this pig afloat now. But they do seem to be determined.

Gold and silver were off a bit as the mispricing of risk continues. VIX was lower and the Dollar was flat.

A gut check ahead of an active month's option expiration is not unexpected, especially after a nice run up and a short term overbought condition.

Have a pleasant evening?

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Consequences - Arrogance On a Collision Course With Reality, Again

Yuri Leonov, Icarus

"As in the past so in the future, the wrong we have done, thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls, no matter whether we turn the world upside down or not.

Our knowledge of good and evil has dwindled with our mounting knowledge and experience, and will dwindle still more in the future, without our being able to escape the demands of ethics. In this utmost uncertainty we need the illumination of a holy and whole-making spirit— a spirit that can be anything but our reason."

Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion


"Be not deceived;  God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap."

Galatians 6:7


"Even great men bow before the Sun; it melts hubris into humility."

Dejan Stojanovic


"But, what creates the most intense surprise,
His soul looks out through renovated eyes."

John Keats


"A crash is a watershed event, generational in its scope, always accompanied by an economic slump of greater than a year, often called a depression rather than a recession. Its effects are measured in years.  It is a furnace in which the national character is tested and tempered, hammered into something different from what had gone before."

Jesse, 2008

The problem we are facing in American polite society is not that there is so much that is bad, but that there is so little that is genuinely good. This is the consequence of the moral imperative of the 'lesser of two evils.'

Stocks were wobbly— again.

One might expect that they have just completed a long run higher, and now stand looking at some formidable upwards resistance.

Gold and silver held steady, while the Dollar slumped a bit.

My cyclical calculations and trend forecasts suggest that July 2020 may be a decisive, if not pivotal, period in our time. I think I may have mentioned this once or twice before.

Have a pleasant evening.

Audacious Oligarchy: The Permanent War State, Corporate Plunder, and Democracy in Chains

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General.  And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

US Major General Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket


"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup


Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"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.  Plunder, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sleepwalking

"Wouldn't it be convenient for the oligarchs if their think tanks could somehow concoct a story, some plausible sounding theory, to persuade a portion of the world's population to hold dollar assets, expecting them to gain in value, even in the face of significant defaults and credit failures and a deteriorating return in GDP growth per marginal dollar debt?   Or even better, getting them to remain fully invested in a series of artificially contrived dollar denominated financial assets that could be selectively 'pulled down' while keeping the overall scheme intact and running.

Bernays would be proud."

Jesse, 16 June 2010


"Growing concentration of power in the US has been under way for decades, and has now reached the point where how our economy and society are managed seems remarkably similar to the dominance of oligarchs in Russia or the role of few wealthy families in the shadows of China's CCP."

Harald Malmgren

Stocks attempted to rally in the new week, and the last of the month of February.

But alas, the early morning pop faded substantially into the afternoon. But they did finish slightly positive to flat.

Gold and silver finished off a bit.

There will be a Comex option expiration at the end of the week.

The Dollar was lower.

A huge windstorm came blowing through our state today.  No, it was not Trumpolini on his way to his golf course in Bedminster, NJ.    It was the tail end of a strong weather system, that took down power lines and tree limbs.

Have a pleasant evening.