30 January 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Step by Step Into the Abyss - The Will to Power

 

"The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population.   It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works

"Words can be like tiny bits of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed and seem to have no effect, but after a while the toxic effect is there."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End: 1933-1945

"There are so many ways of escaping from that which one fears, and not the least of these is hatred.”

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda.  It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Garry Kasparov

The totalitarian doctrine of the state thus satisfied the various traditional partisans of German reaction: university professors, bureaucrats, army officers, and big industrialists. It was also acceptable to the western world in general.  Totalitarianism also served the practical needs of the moment.   The situation was difficult and Hitler was prompt to use the weapon of the totalitarian doctrine.   The revolution was to proceed in an orderly fashion—in so far as property, the civil service, and the army were concerned."

Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure And Practice Of National Socialism 1933-1944

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas 

"Power will achieve its murderous potential.  It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1943


One of the hallmarks of the 1930s and the lead up to war was the rise of unprincipled, autocratic leaders who, with the support an influential and ambitious professional class and wealthy patrons, were able to energize the discontent and fears of the public into hate and anger, dehumanizing and desensitizing them, gradually bending them in submission to their will.   

And so the common people of several nations were led step by step into the abyss.

They succeed in part because the average person cannot even begin to comprehend their callous disregard for others, the egoistic certitude of their evil, and the psychopathic pathology of their shamelessness.

Stocks faltered today.   The mispricing of risk, so heavily stoked over the past few months, shook on its tenuous foundations today.

Gold rose, while the Dollar fell.

Tech earnings are coming out this week. 

FOMC tomorrow.   Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

It is hard not to disappoint when expectations are priced to fantasy. 

But sometimes fantasy is actively encouraged, and dissent systematically suppressed, when it supports the shameful ambitions of the wealthy and  powerful.

Have a pleasant evening.

"In the middle of this square on 10 May 1933 National Socialist students burned the works of hundreds of freelance writers, publicists, philosophers and scientists."

Memorial Plaque, Bebelplatz, Berlin


29 January 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Idylls of Azrael

 

"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to instruments.

One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father.  Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.   Get away from me, you who practice lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:21-23

"You snakes, you brood of vipers.   How can you speak goodness when you are evil?  From the depths of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good bring forth goodness from their reserves of good, and the evil bring forth evil, from the depths of their treasures wrought in evil."

Matthew 12:34-35

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.   We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case."

John Henry Newman

"The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.  It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.  The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."

Dorothy Day

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.  People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up to the very day Noah entered the ark.  Then the flood came, and swept them all away."

Luke 17:26-27

"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8

When people get angry and fall into a prevailing hysteria, they start believing and doing some remarkably foolish and self-destructive things to those around them, their families, and ultimately to themselves.

The message of the gospel is simple, clear, and straightforward.

But the word that has been planted in most is suffocated by the worries of the world, and seduced by wealth.

God does not need us to assert His justice, for we are not just, or to uphold his righteousness, for we are not righteous.

What we tend to be is proud, posturing, and presumptuous.

The only way to remain standing in this madness is to remember that God has called us to love.

But we make His calling disputatious and complex, because the evil in us loves to hide the light with complexity.

It is a way to blind our eyes and harden our hearts against the words of life.  It is the leaven of the Pharisees.

If the wages of sin are death, there are a few jokers on the world stage acting like they want us to get paid, sooner rather than later.

Stocks rallied hard into the close.

Gold and silver also drove higher.

VIX started out higher and then fell sharply.

Gold continues to leave the Hong Kong warehouses, as gold flows from West to East. 

I will be having a surgery done on my left eye at the end of the week.  Hopefully it will go much better than the right eye.  But I may be out of pocket.

My positions are fairly light in anticipation of being preoccupied during the FOMC on Wednesday and the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.



26 January 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dancing on a Volcano

 

"Do not fear your enemies.  The worst they can do is kill you.  Do not fear your friends. At worst, they may betray you.  Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent."

Bruno Jasieński, Spiknutí lhostejných, Praha 1958

"We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.  But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life.

That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income.  We see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class."

Henry Giroux, On the Rise of Neoliberalism, 19 October 2014


The precious metals futures options expiration today was rather quiet.

FOMC on Wednesday January 31st and a Jobs Report coming on Friday, February 2nd.

The mispricing of risks in the equity markets remains pronounced.

"The whole town and all its inhabitants are quite drowned in carnival din, masks and confetti.  And on top of that the news of the Reichstag fire.  Dancing on a volcano."

Alban Berg, Letter from Berlin, September 1, 1933
Have a pleasant weekend.