Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Age of the Exceptionals

 

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert

"Don't tell yourself that this is just the way it is.  Rather, tell yourself that this is just wrong, and let such incivility stop with me."

Jesse, 27 July 2014

"Demagogues are willing to do or say anything to gain office or to consolidate their power.  Anything that serves to make them more powerful is good enough for them — even if the political system that facilitated their rise should be destroyed in the process. They wreck the informal rules of civility that democracies require to survive."

Daniel Ziblatt

"Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously - sometimes of their religion - insulting references to their friends.  Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance?'

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.
   If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.  Be honest anyway.
    If you find happiness, people may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.  Do good anyway.
    Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.  Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
     It was never between you and them anyway.”

Mother Teresa


People will often confuse rudeness and incivility with strength and power.   And they use it all too often on victims who are compromised by greater moral constraints, like honor your father an mother, or act with kindness to those who are caught in a web of error and self-indulgence.

When they see that no one punishes them, as may have happened when they were little children, they become emboldened, and increassingly and carelessly abuse those around them, engaging in what are similar to tantrums.  

So called 'trolls' and aggressively haughty people often succumb to this temptation.  Otherwise they fear that they will not receive the same level of attention needed to fill the hollowness left by the self-absorption with which they have crippled their hearts. 

Over time it just becomes a common behaviour, a habit.  And in their disordered personality they think that everyone is just like them, but lacks the will and the power to do it.

Wall Street and Washington are the type A narcissists' natural habitats, but I am sure you have seen examples of this, even in such mundane places as the grocery store or highway, or even in church.  

Stocks were trading weakly today.

Gold and silver remained tightly bound.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX ticked up.

I have to leave early to take our little angel to the vet.  She has a few chronic issues that made her a tough adoption in the first place, but we are overcoming them, slowly but surely.

Good thing the young man has a good income and few expenses.  LOL.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lead Kindly Light - Powell's Hawkish Words Jar Markets

 

“These people honor me with their lips, and offer worship with their words, but their hearts are far from me. Their religion is nothing but the rituals and traditions of men, which they memorize. I will awaken them with one shocking blow after another. Their wisdom will be shown as foolish, and all their cleverness will be made worthless. Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'No one can see us, so who will know?’"

Isaiah 29:13-15

"And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.   But those who stand, firmly to the end, will be saved."

Matthew 24:12

"And the measure for weighing the virtue of things is this: God’s light has come into the world, but some people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.  All who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their sins will be revealed.   But those who do what is right come into the light, so others can see that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

"In a society that worships the self, power is the coin of the realm, where power is to be found in asserting one's own will over others.  And beyond all doubt, kindness and tolerance are to be despised as undermining, weakening the will to power.  In power is to be found the definition of all truth, for it dictates all, and does not bend a knee to any other reality but its own interpretation.  'Might makes right' is written large on the tableau of empire.

We rise in our own esteem by knocking others flat.  And from this flows a cornucopia of all other injustice and abuses.  In rationalizing ourselves by dehumanizing others, we can therein comfortably become monsters.   And some do."

Jesse, 9 January 2015


"Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom
    The night is long and I am far from home.
Here in the dark, I do not ask to see
    The path ahead— one step enough for me,
Lead on, lead on, kindly Light."

Audrey Assad, based on The Pillar of the Cloud by J. H. Newman


Powell said some hawkish 'what if' things today and the markets reacted strongly.

But, as usual, it was a transitory thing.

The Dollar, which plunged intraday shortly after Chair Powell's remarks, rocketed higher after the 3 year note auction.

Gold finished a little higher.  Silver not so much. 

VIX moved lower.

The oligarchy remains exceptionally audacious and war-mongering.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Old As Babylon

 

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

George Orwell

"The system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity.  Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view.  Impunity is epidemic in America.  The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight.

Impunity is not an accidental or incidental defect of American society. It is a system foisted on us by the rich and powerful, and it continues to work its magic.  Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity.

The channels of corruption and secrecy havens are largely owned and operated by the big boys — the United States and the UK — and depend absolutely on the gross impunity that prevails at the highest reaches of power and finance in the United States."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity, 12 May 2016

"'Come, I will show you the judgment on the great harlot who reigns over many waters. The kings of the earth have sinned with her, and the worldly became drunk on the wine of her infamies.' Then he carried me to a deserted place where I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns.  The woman was wearing purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. 

She held in her hand a gold cup that was filled with the abominable and sordid deeds of her harlotry.  On her forehead was written a name, which is a mystery, 'Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.' I saw that the woman was drunk on the blood of the innocent and on the blood of witnesses to righteousness."

Revelation 17:1-6


Today was a reflective day for the markets, as they continued to give up a little risk exposure in equities.

The Dollar and VIX were higher.

Gold was up a bit with silver a little lower.

The market continue to be wobbly.

Biden will be giving his State of the Union message tomorrow night so I think any serious market dislocations are not in the cards, barring some exogenous event.

Have a pleasant evening.