Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Between Good and Evil

 

"Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.

There is a tension at the heart of the universe between good and evil.  It’s there: a tension at the heart of the universe between good and evil. Hinduism refers to this as a struggle between illusion and reality. Platonic philosophy used to refer to it as a tension between body and soul. Zoroastrianism, a religion of old, used to refer to it as a tension between the god of light and the god of darkness. Traditional Judaism and Christianity refer to it as a tension between God and Satan. Whatever you call it, there is a struggle in the universe between good and evil.

Now not only is that struggle structured out somewhere in the external forces of the universe, it’s structured in our own lives. 

And in every one of us this morning, there’s a war going on.  It’s a civil war. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  And every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you, telling you to be evil.  It’s going on in your life.  

Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate.  Every time you set out to be kind and say nice things about people, something is pulling on you to be jealous and envious and to spread evil gossip about them.  There’s a civil war going on.  There’s a tension at the heart of human nature." 

Martin Luther King, Unfulfilled Dreams,  3 March 1968

The market is looking to gain some direction from the inflation data tomorrow morning.

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Blood of the Poor - For What Does It Profit a Man

 

"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony.  We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment.  We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits.  We are destroying the Earth as if we are the last generation."

Jeffrey Sachs

"The gold of the rich is the blood of the poor, flowing through the institutions and estates of the propertied few. "

Leon Bloy, as quoted in Pilgrim of the Absolute

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.  Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but was wrong in thinking that we can get them for ourselves, without grace.

The beautiful is the experiential proof that the incarnation is possible.  We must have faith that the universe is beautiful, and that it has a fullness of beauty in relation to each of the thinking beings that actually exist and of all those that are possible.  It is this very agreement of an infinity of perfect beauties that gives a transcendent character to the beauty of the world. 

He is really present in this universal beauty. The love of this beauty proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and goes out to God present in the universe.  The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through the material."

Simone Weil

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway.  It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

Stocks took a run at a rally today, but alas, the attraction of reality was too great for them to achieve escape velocity, and down they fell again to finish off a little lower.

Gold and silver took off higher, with silver putting in some impressive gains after the recent bear raids that took their prices lower, because of course they can, and the bullion banks are not ashamed to do so.

Nvidia jarred tech with some awful earnings, and a few other have also sounded their wake up calls, creative accounting and fanciful metrics notwithstanding.

More inflation data coming out later this week.

The consensus on bubblevision is that we are already in a recession but it really isn't all that bad.

Franz Kafka's The Trial says it all about this attractive but deceitful financial demimonde.

They wish to blot out the glory of God in His creation, because the light of His love shines through the darkness, and exposes the naked emptiness of their souls.

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."  C. S. Lewis

Daisy and I abide.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Payrolls Pops Powell Pivot - Tremors in the Financial Metaverse

 

"The received wisdom is mistaken on how recessions are made.  They are not simply caused by shocks. They are caused by a window of vulnerability in the economic cycle where the cyclical drivers of the economy have weakened to the point where it’s susceptible to a negative shock.  Within that window of vulnerability, virtually any reasonable shock becomes a recessionary shock.  That’s how you get a recession."

Lakshman Achuthan, Economic Cycle Research Institute, June 3, 2019


"We suspect strongly that another trigger event will shake the global financial system to its foundations, and that the Central Bankers are losing a great deal of sleep as they wonder where the Anglo-American financial hegemony has brought them.  This will end badly.  But it will end."

Jesse, 15 June 2008


"So you are lean and mean and resourceful, and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice, because over the years you have become fascinated by how close you can walk without losing your balance."

Richard Nixon


"In the absence of an event, I would expect us to continue on with the status quo, the regular back and forth, wash and rinse rigging of almost every market as the pretenses and facades wear ever more thin.  It is very difficult to forecast a market break.  But it is quite possible to analyze the structure of the market, and to judge it to be inherently unstable and fragile.  'Prone to accidents' if you will.

The political and financial class are way out over their skis, with moral hazard and the colossal winds of hubris at their backs.   It is a question of what exogenous event may trigger the next great crisis, and who will the moneyed interests try to blame."

Jesse, 3 September 2014


"Every market decline has its own specific course of events, but they do tend to have some things in common.   There is generally a build up of conditions that make it the right kind of market, and then some trigger event occurs to set things in motion.  It is much like what occurs in the build up to an avalanche, or a wildfire

And there are the many confrontational hotspots around the world, in the Mideast of course, in the South China Sea, and in the Ukraine among others.

I extend this watch to October, and will keep looking for changes.  I do not expect much to come of this.  This is just a caution, but given a trigger event of sufficient magnitude, this could become a problematic market even during the dog days of Summer.   Our leadership and financial management is just that bad, reckless and irresponsible.

One thing I learned, most painfully, is that the Fed can and will keep an obvious asset bubble going much longer than one might expect, given the lack of a major trigger event.  And they have absolutely demonstrated a disregard for the consequences from doing so several times in the past fifteen years."

Jesse, 1 May 2015


"Having fallen from the eternal, the evil one's desires are endless, insatiable.  Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness.  But the problem is insoluble, always.  He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else.  All he takes, he destroys.  Certainly he rules the material, as he is called the Prince of this World in the gospels."

Denis de Rougemont

As you have probably already heard the Non-Farm Payrolls report came in with a huge upside surprise this morning.

This basically popped the fantasy about the Fed's pivot to dovishness.

And so the Dollar spiked straight up and gold and silver were smacked down.

Stocks cratered and then wobbled back a bit into the close.

I published an update of the CrashTrak profile with some additional historical data this morning.  You can scroll down to see it.

And then I left and spent the rest of the day with Daisy and my son.  And I am very glad that I did.

It looked like the Banksters and their affiliated knuckleheads would be playing tag with the public in the American financial metaverse for the rest of the day.

And they did.

Have a pleasant weekend.