Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Terrible Visions: To Bear Witness To Power

 

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening.  Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.  As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."

Simone Weil,  Gravity and Grace

"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people."

Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz

"Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
     for your sins have brought you down.
Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord.
     Say to him,
'Forgive all our sins, and graciously receive us,
     so that we may offer you our praises.
 Worldly power cannot save us,
     nor can our warhorses.
Never again will we say to the idols we have made,
     "You are our gods."
No, in you alone
     do the fatherless find mercy.'"

Hosea: 14:1-3

"Banality is a symptom. Men hide behind their cliches."

Eugene Ionesco

"The truth is, there are not two kinds of people. There’s only one: the kind that loves to divide up into gangs who hate each other’s guts. Both conservatives and liberals agree among themselves, on their respective message boards, in uncannily identical language, that their opponents lack any self-awareness or empathy, the ability to see the other side of an argument or to laugh at themselves. Which would seem to suggest that they’re both correct. Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective.”

Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

 Stocks ignored the higher than expected Non-Farm Payrolls Report jobs added, choosing instead to draw some bullish cheer from flat wages and higher than expected unemployment.

But alas, it was just another wash and rinse after all.

What a surprise.

Gold moved higher, further into the record territory.

Silver not so much.  

VIX wallowed between its moving averages.

The Dollar was flat.

The markets seem to be winding up for a move.

I had thought it would be coming today.  

But not quite yet.

The market moving exogenous events are simmering, and at some point will boil over.

We are breaking heaven's heart.

The madness serves none but itself.   No one. 

We must stand to the end and bear witness to the truth, in fear and trembling.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Truth Has Perished, and Is No Longer On Our Lips

 

"This is what I commanded them: listen to my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.  

But they did not obey or pay heed to my words.  Instead they walked in the hardness of evil hearts, and turned their backs to me,and  not their faces.   From the day your ancestors left Egypt until today, I faithfully sent my servants the prophets to them.  Yet they have not listened to me or paid attention; instead they stiffened their necks and proved to be worse than their fathers.  And then you are to say to them, 'This is the nation that did not obey the Lord, their God, or accept correction. Truth has perished. It no longer on their lips."

Jeremiah 7:23-28

"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. Unless we regain our moral bearings our scope for collective action will be lost. The day may soon arrive when money fully owns our politics, markets have utterly devastated the environment, and gluttony relentlessly commands our personal choices. Then we will have arrived at the ultimate paradox: the self-destruction of prosperity at the very moment when technological knowhow enables sustainable prosperity for all."

Jeffrey Sachs, Self-interest, without morals, January 2012

"He will perish for lack of self-restraint; and will be lost because of an abundance of foolishness."

Proverbs 5:23

"Or could it just be that current events and crises bring out and show us who we really are, and hopefully, offer to change us?  The would be masters ever more deceitful, and obsessive greed leads the few into rough hands and dark cellars. Is there not some pathology clearly in evidence with these minor deities on Wall Street?  Sad little boys and broken men become dark spirits, seeking to fill the hole in their beings with things, people, possessions without savor, a wreckage of devices.  And even more sad are the husks and shadows of people drawn along, never at peace, who follow after in their wake, like swirling leaves pulled fitfully with the wind."

Jesse, On Recovery, Reform, and Events of the Day, 23 February 2011

"But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your life will be demanded of you; as for the things you have hoarded, whose will they be?’"

Luke 12:20

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.  The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity... 

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919


Stocks were relieved that Chairman Jay didn't drop any jawbombs in his congressional testimony, and spoke some sweet nothings about rate cuts, so stocks managed to move higher again.

The Dollar dropped on interest rate complacency, and a growing lack of interest from the rest of the world.

Gold and silver moved higher again.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow may move the markets.

It's all about the Benjamins, and their masters are the Fed.

Joe will be giving us the state of the union address tonight.  Bread and circuses.   

Mostly circuses.  False flags, and willful blindness to the Unspeakable.

As for the rest of the world, dancing on a volcano.

“All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.  I can’t even give you hope that it will be different someday— that they’ll come out, and forget death, and lose their technology’s elaborate terror, and stop using every form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level— and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive.”

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Darkness of Worldly Hearts

 

"You have to live in Truth to remain spiritually free.  Life in Truth consists of giving testimony, acknowledging the Truth and defending it in each situation.  Truth never changes.  It cannot be destroyed by any decision or legal act.  Our slavery stems from our surrender to the rule of the lie, our failure to unmask a lie, and to protest against it in everyday life.  Instead of correcting the lie we keep silent, or pretend to believe it is true."

Jerzy Popiełuszko, chaplain of Solidarność

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear.  They simply morph and become more sophisticated: transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.   Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached.  In industrialized nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation's regulations, policies and laws."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, January 2009

"The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors."

Plutarch, The Roman Republic

"The word of God is a living thing, and works among us.  It is sharper than a double-edged sword, and penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, the joints and the marrow; it judges the innermost thoughts and inclinations of every heart.  Nothing in all of creation is hidden from the sight of the Lord.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we will some day give an account."

Hebrews 4:12-13

 

Stocks did a major pop and flop today, after the impressive decline of yesterday.

The pop was probably due to the usual wash and rinse action.  

The flop seems to have been triggered by the stunning plunge in the stock price of NYCB, a New York regional bank.

Otherwise the Dollar fell sharply.

The VIX was generally clueless.

Gold and silver extended their rallies, with gold setting another record high.

Powell will be continuing his song and dance before the Congress tomorrow.

Non-Farm payrolls on Friday could move the markets.

Have a pleasant evening.