Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sanctifying Greed

 

"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is a hollow hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1

“Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship.  It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.  The celebration of Sabbath is an act of resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.

It summons us to intent and conduct that defies the requirements of a society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses, along with anxiety and violence.  The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath."

Walter Brueggemann

"They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into hell."

Job 21:13

"Kevin Kruse in his book 'One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America' details how industrialists in the 1930s and 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals, socialists and proponents of the New Deal.  These corporatists promoted and funded a brand of Christianity—which is today dominant—that conflates faith with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. 

The rich are rich, this creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and the vulnerable, but because they are blessed.  And if we have enough faith, this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us too.  It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel.  You don’t need to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that out."

Chris Hedges, The Suicide of the Liberal Church, January 25, 2016

"They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control.   They will be cruel and hate what is good.   They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.   They will act religious, but they will refuse the grace that could make them righteous."

2 Timothy 3:3-5

 

There is probably no greater threat to the faithful than that of the sanctifying of success with worldly measures.

Invariably when a principled belief aligns itself with the state, and the wealthy and the powerful, it ends up as lost as if it was suffering persecution.

State oppression is external and easily seen.  Internal corruption is much harder to correct since it can easily be glossed over by the blessings of mammon and material 'success'.

And of course the same applies to the secular character of a country.  Internal corruption and the rise of an oligarchy is a slow but sure poison to all the principles of freedom, more pernicious and insidious than malign intent from another nation.

But external threats are a useful distraction from the evil within.

Stocks rebounded today after their stiff correction yesterday.

And so it was the same with gold and silver, which rallied sharply after the pounding they took yesterday.

Wash and rinse, the endless cycle of markets corrupted by crony capitalism.

The Dollar fell sharply, not holding on as it did yesterday.

VIX fell again.   Our measures of risk have been twisted and smothered.

This too shall pass.   For God is not mocked.  

As a man sows, so shall he reap.  In this life or the next.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Impunity - The Old Wash and Rinse

 

"At bottom, what should you do to avoid being an idiot or a swine?  Merely this: you should do something great, you should become resigned to the fact that you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter the service of Splendor.  Then you will know what it means to be the friend of God.  The Friend of God!"

Léon Bloy

"What we need are not truths that serve us, but a truth that we may serve."

Jacques Maritain

"What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.  And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor in other words, we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.  We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.

This is the month of the Sacred Heart, the symbol of Christ’s love for man.  We are supposed to love as Christ loved, to the extent of laying down our lives for our brothers.  That was the New commandment. To love to the extent of laying down our lives, dying to ourselves.  To accept the least place, to sit back, to ask nothing for ourselves, to serve each other, to lay down our lives for our brothers, this is the strange upside-down teaching of the Gospel."

Dorothy Day

“Then the Lord will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat;  I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink;  I was a stranger and you welcomed me;  I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was held captive and you comforted me.’

Matthew 25:34-36


The smokey haze over the NYC metropolitan area wasn't the only smoke that was being blown around today.

The Dollar chopped to end unchanged.

The VIX fell.

Stocks got hit with tech leading the way lower.

And gold and silver got smashed.

Rinse follows wash.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - It Can't Happen Here

 

"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.

The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.

He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"People do not wake up one morning and decide to become monsters that will be reviled by all civilized people throughout history.  They go down that path one small step at a time, one seemingly harmless and practical decision after another.  They are just being reasonable, practical, realistic— merely following the advice of thought leaders and repeating the stories and slogans that 'everyone knows.'  

For most people it quickly becomes depersonalized, a kind of game.  What clever slogans and high sounding arguments can one memorize, what authorities and books will one reference and quote, and finally, what resolve can a person muster to stubbornly go back and defend the position which they have taken, which most likely has little or nothing to do with logical arguments or reason?

Having freed ourselves from the constraints of truth and morality, we live in a truly cynical age.  My purpose is this— to show us what we are becoming, to expose that which we serve, without any self-righteous illusions."

Jesse, It Can't Happen Here: Pride, Power, Exceptionalism, 8 May 2017

"And then he prompts you what to say, and listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods.  Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his." 

John Henry Newman, In Time of Antichrist

 

Stocks chopped around today finishing largely unchanged.

Gold and silver did a similar slide and chop back to evens.

VIX fell sharply which was a bit of a surprise.

The Russell 2000 was the star of the day led by regional banks. 

Hair of the dog for the eternal Wall Street optimists?

Fitch downgraded the US REIT sector to 'deteriorating.'

The markets will be looking for the inflation data as it comes.

The Fed is on 'pause' but since Australia unpaused today and hiked rates it may be a week stimulant.

Have a pleasant evening.