Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - American Values

 

"Days before his murder, as my father pulled ahead in the California polls, he began considering how he would govern the country.  Days before the California primary, seated next to journalist Pete Hamill on his campaign plane, my father mused aloud about his options. ‘I have to decide whether to eliminate the operations arm of the [CIA] Agency or what the hell to do with it,’ he told Hamill.  ‘We can’t have those cowboys wandering around and shooting people and doing all those unauthorized things.’ 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., American Values 

 

"One day he [RFK] came into my bedroom and handed me a hardcover copy of Camus’s The Plague.  ‘I want you to read this,’ he said with particular urgency. 

I spent a lot of time thinking about that book over the years, and why my father gave it to me. I believe it was the key to a door that he himself was then unlocking. 

It is neither our position nor our circumstances that define us, but our response to those circumstances; when destiny crushes us, small heroic gestures of courage and service can bring peace and fulfillment.  In applying our shoulder to the stone, we give order to a chaotic universe."

 Robert F. Kennedy Jr., American Values

 

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.   They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." 

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 

"But even leaving this crisis aside, there is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector.  The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry. As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system (including both political parties), government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation. 

As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality.  Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement. 

The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth.  This means that criminal prosecution is not just a matter of vengeance or even justice. Real punishment for large-scale financial criminality is a vital element of the financial re-regulation that is, in turn, essential to America’s (and the world’s) economic health and stability. Regulation is nice, but the threat of prison focuses the mind.

In this book, I demonstrate that much of the behavior underlying the bubble and crisis was quite literally criminal, and that the lack of prosecution is nearly as outrageous as the financial sector’s original conduct."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

Stocks were attempting to rally back again today. 

 And early this afternoon in unprepared remarks during a routine Q&A Fed Chairman Powell surprised [shocked] the markets by indicating a change in outlook by the Fed, in terms of speeding up the taper, and in the manner in which they consider inflation as transitory. 

A perfect setup, a drive-by market shock, for those trading 'in the know.'

Stocks tanked.

 The Dollar which had been losing ground rallied sharply, climbing back over 96, but then gave it all up and finished lower by quite bit for the day in the 95 handle.

Gold and silver were hit hard and did not recover even as the Dollar dumped again into the close.

The VIX soared.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Desolate Abomination - Financialization of Nearly Everything

 

"Ordinarily, the financial risk in a market, and hence the risk to the economy at large, is limited because the assets traded are finite.  There are only so many houses, mortgages, shares of stock, bushels of corn, [bars of silver], or barrels of oil in which to invest. 

But a synthetic instrument has no real assets.  It is simply a bet on the performance of the assets it references.  That means the number of synthetic instruments is limitless, and so is the risk they present to the economy...

Increasingly, synthetics became bets made by people who had no interest in the referenced assets. Synthetics became the chips in a giant casino, one that created no economic growth even when it thrived, and then helped throttle the economy when the casino collapsed." 

US Congressman Carl Levin, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks, April 27, 2010

 

"The principal inventors, hustlers , borrowers and culprits were the nation's 15-20 largest and best known financial institutions - including the ones that keep making headlines by demanding more bail-out money from Washington and giving huge bonuses.  These same institutions got much of the early bail-out money and as of December 2008 they accounted for over half of the bad assets written off. The reason these needed so much money is that they government had let them merge, speculate, expand and experiment on dimensions beyond all logic.  

That is why the complicit politicians and regulators have to talk about $100 billion here and $1 trillion there even while they pretend that it's all under control and that the run-amok financial sector remains sound."

Kevin Phillips, The "Disaster Stage" of U.S. Financialization, April 7, 2009

 

"I have chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean?  What kind of peace do we seek?  Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.  Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.  I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace.  But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace."

John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University,  June 10,1963

 

Stocks ripped higher today, as traders reconsidered the as-of-yet unknown impact of the Omicron variation in the covid virus. 

VIX thereby declined, but still remains elevated.

The Dollar was slightly higher.

Gold and silver were under some pressure after rallying overnight.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Read this:  Wall Street Has Deployed a Dirty Tricks Playbook Against Whistleblowers for Decades.

And who could have seen it coming?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Turkey Drop - Non-Farm Payrolls Next Week

 

"Reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can be just pushed aside as trivial exceptions." 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

 

“Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.  Post-truth is pre-fascism."

Timothy Snyder

 

“Religion used to be the opium of the people.  But now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.” 

Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism

 

"Foolishness has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus 

 

Stocks dropped like a rock overnight as word of a new, virulent variation of the coronavirus came out of South Africa.   It has already spread abroad.

The Dollar dropped back to the 96 handle, expelling a great deal of its recent speculative excess.

The VIX rocketed higher.

Gold rallied hard overnight, but was slowly whittled down in the quiet New York trading to unchanged.

When the time comes gold will move like a flood, sweeping all manipulation aside. 

Silver was lower, as it tends to follow equities a little more closely in times of stress.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report next week.

It is a little surprising how strong the current of delusion is running these days.

People lie to themselves, and believe in the lies of swindlers and swine, almost routinely.  

And to quiet their consciences they try to aggressively block out all things contrary to their delusions.

God and nature do not care that you do not care.  And they will not be silenced.

But when things come to their resolution, beware of falling true believers, caught up in their vain gods of pride, and graven images of fear, hate, and malign indifference.

God's mills grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.  Always.

Have a pleasant weekend.