Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - From Enemy Occupied Territory

 

"Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil?   Why is He not landing in force, invading it?  Is it that He is not strong enough?  Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when.   But we can guess why He is delaying.   He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.

God will invade.   But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.  When that happens, it is the end of the world.  When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.   God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.   There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not.   Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.  God is holding back to give us that chance.  It will not last for ever."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944

"This is how we know who are the children of God and who are the children of Satan: anyone who does not do what is good is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their neighbor."

1 John 3:10

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and the host of angels with him, he will sit on his righteous throne.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left.

‘Then the Lord will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation 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 invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

‘Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison and go to visit you?” and the Lord will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

‘Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the torments prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was ill and in prison and you did not look after me.”

‘They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or ill or in prison, and did not help you?”  He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

‘Then they will go away to their chastisement, but the righteous will enter into eternal life.’

Matthew 25:31-46


The Fed sat on its hands, as expected.

Powell gave a fairly dovish press conference, dismissing the notion of rate hikes, and also of stagflation.

And the markets took off like a moonshot.

But wonder of wonders, we were treated to an afternoon wash and rinse.

Stocks lost their moonshot in the last hour and dumped back all the way to unchanged with a vengeance.

Gold and silver managed to hold on to some of their gains, but well off their highs.

The Dollar lost some ground.

Bitcoin is wallowing below the 60k level.  

Now on to the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

I can't believe the utter repression being self-righteously leveled at university campuses and the thought police actions of the cancel culture.

This reminds me very much of the McCarthy era.   It is hard for anyone who did not live through it to know how intense the recriminations, name-calling, and hysteria had become.

"Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party of the United States?"

This is America today.  

Left or right, these pin-headed ideologues have no shame, or respect for the law and the Constitution.  

Ever. None. 

It's all about money and power— from the US to the UK, from Germany to France.

These are the household gods of the Western elite.

What are we becoming.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Destruction of Leviathan

 

"What the age needs is not a genius — it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death.  What the age needs is awakening."

Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 20 November 1847

 "So do not fear, I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you, and will help you.   I will uphold you with the firm hand of my righteousness."

Isaiah 41:10

"Most economists are going to be painfully slow to change their thinking, particularly in the US, even after this latest financial crisis of historic proportions.  It is hard to change when one cannot even admit one's mistakes, and the green shoots of a false Spring bring out new hopes that old ways might still work once again.  The status quo often has a powerful grip on the levers of thought leadership, and a social science like economics is especially vulnerable to peer pigheadedness, even when it is shown to be flat out wrong.  One thing which is almost certain is that change will not come from within, but from without."

Jesse, The Federal Reserve School of Monetary Witchcraft and Wizardry, 28 September 2009

"Our Lord has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which He walks to do good.  Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.

Lord, grant that I may always allow myself to be guided by You, always follow Your plans, and perfectly accomplish Your Holy Will.  Grant that in all things, great and small, today and all the days of my life, I may do whatever You require of me."

Teresa of Avila

"Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.  So do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid."

John 14:27

"Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth— that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning. He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road. That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905


The mighty rise and are fallen, but the word and the spirit endure. 

The Employment Cost Index came in higher than expected, and so the selling began.

Stocks fell sharply, going out on the lows.

The Dollar rallied sharply on the bearish outlook for interest rates.  

VIX rose.

Gold and silver received their traditional pummeling ahead of the FOMC meeting.

If you are getting your information from the corporate media you probably have no idea what is really going on.  Except for maybe sports and weather.

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?   Or the Jim Crow South?   Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'   The answer is, you're doing it.   Right now."

Aaron Bushnell

Where are we going Lord?  

What are we becoming?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Supremacy of Power

 

"There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth.  It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other."

Samuel Johnson, Capture of Louisbourg, Idler 20, September 25, 1750

"The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not? The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making."

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert, The God Emperor of Dune, 1981

“Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them — and then, the opportunity to choose.”

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959

"The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their illusions. And no people, no organization of people, and no nation is immune or exceptional to this extremity.  Evil is a choice, a long, gradual succession of choices. And the madness never sleeps, always looking for souls to devour."

Jesse, A Cruel Deception, 28 October 2022

"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one— the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"How are the mighty fallen, and their weapons of war destroyed."

2 Samuel 1:27


They lie, and call it statecraft.   They betray their nation, and call it practical.   They abandon virtue to greed, and call it rational. They foster corruption, and call it necessity. They murder innocents, and call it peace. 

And when they meet their God He will say, 'Depart from me.  I do not know you, workers of lawlessness.'

 Stocks were wobbling around again, stick save into the close.

Gold and silver were marching in place.

The Dollar is down a bit.

So is the VIX.

The FOMC decision on Wednesday and Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday may move the markets.

What are we becoming.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Till Judgement Come

 

"The selling of the Iraq War to the American public was an exploitation of mass gullibility.  Current circumstances give little or no hope that the public response would be much different to the selling of some future untoward war."

Paul Pillar, Selling the Iraq War: Gullibility and Mass Hysteria, March 15, 2023

"If you do not stand firm in the faith, you will not stand at all.”

Isaiah 7:9

"The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion.  It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders."

Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

"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 being reasonable, practical, realistic— merely repeating the stories and slogans that 'everyone knows.' We live in a truly cynical age."

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

"When a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit.  Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry.  The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity.   Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors.  This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide."

Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate, 1952

"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

 

It was a 'risk on' day today.

The Dollar rose.

The VIX fell.

Stocks finished higher after a big gap up open, compliments of Alphabet.

Gold was up a bit, and silver was lower.

The first victim in any period of war is the truth. 

This time is no different.

We had what I hope is our last hard freeze last night.  

So Daisy and I took an afternoon jaunt over to the Great Swamp Greenhouses, which are just southeast of our 'hood.  

They are in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.   As you may recall that is where the second cylinder fell in the radio version of War of the Worlds.

Daisy had some good sniffing opportunities while I was planning out some buys for the vegetable garden.

Even though we are miles away up in the hills, we get an abundance of critters from there, and especially in the winter.  And an abundance of birds.  It is also home to The Raptor Trust.

Spring is in the air.  A tonic for the prevailing hysteria and avalanche of lies and unproven claims.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Through the Looking Glass: The Cult of Power

 

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.   When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure.   

The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks To Power, 2013

"What happens to a society fed a diet of rushed, re-purposed, thinly reported content? Or branded content that is really merchandising — propaganda — posing as journalism?   And what happens when PR turns a profit and the truth goes penniless?"

Bill Moyers, Journalism in the Pressure Cooker of Plutocracy, May 26, 2015

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair.   That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."

Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, 2003 essay

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1895

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  You snakes.  You brood of vipers.  How will you escape being condemned to hell?“

Matthew 23:27-28,33

The cult of power desires to control what you can say and what you can hear, and finally, what you can do.

There has rarely been a more naked display of the power of silencing in this century as there is now.  

It is the domain of oligarchy, of empire, of the so-called power elite.

It is not something that resides in one man, in one Administration.  It has its roots in a system that has steadily become distorted by the lust for power above all going back at least 30 years. 

It seems that the system is no longer capable of producing reform on its own, using its own internal mechanism.  Take a look at the candidates that the system is producing.

If you say things that they do not approve, that they do not wish to be heard, that obstruct their tales of an empire of illusion, the power of the markets will reach out and destroy your ability to be heard, to freely express yourself, to earn a living, and in some cases, even take your freedom.

This is the story of our government, of our campuses, and of the persecution of journalists.  Freedom of speech is crushed under a witch hunt of lies and power politics.  You will see only what they wish you to see, and hear what they wish you to hear.  They tell you that you have no other choice.

All in the name of peace and freedom.

Stocks came in slumping again this morning.

But voila, Alphabet to the rescue.

Stocks ended the day well into the green.

Gold and silver held a little bounce higher.

VIX fell.  

The Dollar dropped.

Non-Farm Payrolls and FOMC next week.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Creatures of Unspeakable Horror

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

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

Philip Kerr, Berlin Noir, 1993

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, posthumous 1951

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children,
      unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’
      and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!
Tell us only things that please us,
      prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

"When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.  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

"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, Canadian legislator

"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all the objective, logical considerations, we find that which goes beyond the merely rational: the struggle against evil, against the servants of the antichrist.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak;  when he yields to the forces of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on and on to the next and to the next, at a furiously accelerating rate."

Die Weiße Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

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

C. S. Lewis

Stocks were chopping around most of the day, and the cash market went into the close just about unchanged.

After a few stinkers disclosed their financial results after hours the futures turned into the red.

Gold and silver edge a bit lower, as the Dollar chopped sideways to slightly higher.

A good amount of physical gold has left the Hong Kong Comex warehouses over the past two days.

I have sometimes noticed that they bulk up the physical inventories before a major raid on the price of gold in the West, to allow for the buying that comes with the lowered price.

Freedom and justice are under assault by the moneyed interests, as in their willfulness they are often inclined to do.

It is hard to see how easily our 'thought leaders' ignore atrocities and crimes and genocide, as long as we approve of those who are committing them, or are at least being rewarded for our silence.

History will not absolve us.  

We are wrapped in a world of our own illusions.

Judgement is coming.

Have a pleasant evening.