Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Credibility Trap de Luxe - Are You Not Entertained?

 

"The central bank gold lending market, centered in London, is probably the most secretive financial market in the world, with very little known about its transactions and market structure.  The gold lending market’s opacity is further supported by regulators who protect the secrecy of the central banks, and mainstream financial news agencies whose editorial policies seem to forbid any market investigations, in-depth or otherwise.

It is in the gold lending market that the central banks of the world lend out their gold holdings to commercial bullion banks, where the physical gold is sold and shipped out, and where the central banks then claim to hold interest-earning ‘gold deposits’ with the bullion banks.  These gold-deposits (which are merely a claim on a bullion bank) then mostly roll over short-term, passed around indefinitely between the clubby LBMA cartel of bullion banks, in a totally opaque behind the scenes network. 

The physical gold bars lent out are long gone to Switzerland and the Far East, and the central banks then deceptively claim that they still hold the gold on their balance sheets when in fact all they have is a liability to the bullion banks.   In the middle of this market sits the Bank of England, offering gold custody and storage to other central banks (in the vaults under the Bank of England headquarters in London) and offering gold accounts to the bullion banks concerned." 

Ronan Manly, French central bank and JP Morgan team up to boost Gold Lending 

 

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.” 

Émile Zola

 

"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further.  A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.   Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it.   It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded.  The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down.   So was the U.K." 

Sir Edward George, Governor Bank of England in conversation with Nicholas J. Morrell, of Lonmin Plc, 1999

 

"What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying." 

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

 

The Dollar took a dive today, and lost its grip on the 94 handle.

Gold and silver rallied.

Stocks managed to edge higher in another volatile day.

The VIX dropped.

The mispricing of risk is profound.

Few people love the truth and are willing to serve it.  It has no place in their hearts.

They serve false gods, con men, and themselves, and live in fantasies of superior knowledge and power.

They may become a narcissist, or the banal follower of narcissists.

In any case they have no love in them, no way to love or be loved.

Pride and passionate distractions fill their silence and fragile emptiness.

And it seems that there is little we can do for them except to pray. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - This Is the Credibility Trap - Audacious Oligarchy

 

"Many as are our sins, His grace is greater. Our sins are more in number than the hairs of our head; yet even the hairs of our head are all numbered by Him.  He counts our sins, and, as He counts, so can He forgive; for that reckoning, great though it be, comes to an end; but His mercies fail not, and His Son's merits are infinite."

John Henry Newman 

 

“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation.  Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people." 

Martin Luther King

 

"The dying [repentant] thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed.  The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection.  But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.”

Thomas Merton

 

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.  The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.” 

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

 

"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening." 

Simone Weil

 

These are the three greatest gifts:  repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness.

And the greatest tragedy is to harden our hearts against them, out of fear and pride.

Stocks managed to rally today thanks to the guile of Jay Powell, who played the dove to stimulate the speculative bubble, at least for the day

The Dollar drifted lower.

Gold and silver rallied again off the anticipated bottom for the Non-Farm Payrolls report.

The VIX fell as the risk on sentiment shoved away the fears of risks.

This market is one exogenous event away from a meltfown.

A regional Fed President's comments today dismissing out of hand the question of ethics issues at the Fed were disturbingly disingenuous at best.  

Of course there are no ethical considerations, because their ethics are carefully crafted, self-serving legalisms which enable their audacious and abusive privileges.

And they are shamelessly tolerated by those who are also beneficiaries of this systemic corruption.

"To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it.  So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent.  The foolish thus have the field to themselves.  None rebukes them." 

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

This is the credibility trap in which we find ourselves today. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves.  The moneyed interests and their servants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so.  Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and social and organizational privileges." 

Jesse 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wax On, Wax Off

 

"The privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith 

 

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not.  And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions.  And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else." 

Neil Barofsky, 2012 interview with Bill Moyers

 

"From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find a comfortable foothold.  Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain.  Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned."

Emile Durkheim

 

"He has shown you what is good.  The Lord requires you to act justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." 

Micah 6:8 

 

The wash and rinse continues.

Just charts tonight.    I was out of pocket all day.

Have a pleasant evening.