Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bear Raid on Metals and Stock Buying Timed to Release of Fed Beige Book

"Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles and snares of evil.  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  Therefore, take on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand the evil of this day and, at the end of all things, remain standing."

Ephesians 6:11-13


"In the painting, the woman clutches desperately at the knee of the statue, yearning up into its face, which stares down at her remorselessly.  The statue holds out a bag of gold, but the woman ignores the money.  She has moved beyond the love of money, to the love of Mammon himself.  And so she has cut herself off from the love of God, embracing her own destruction."

Museum catalogue, Mammon the God of Worldliness


“A society that loses its sense of outrage is doomed to extinction.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Defining Deviancy Down

Gold was rallying and stocks were lackluster with the US dollar running at multi-year lows this morning.

The Fed released its 'Beige Book' at 2:00 PM. It was full of anecdotes about the tremendous jobs growth and robust economy, with growing labor shortages.  And by implication, wage pressures.

As some noted, we suspect that this was aimed to please twitter man, el hombre naranja, and to justify the next round of interest rate increases.  The Fed is glossing over the significant lapse in the number of employed in the Labor Participation Rate and hand-picking examples.  But they have always been courtiers to power.  Their independence and self-effacing goodness is a fairy tale, a farce.  Unfortunately they are in good company with the other regulators, the pundits, and the politicians.

The labor shortages are for the most part artificial, because employers are not yet engaging in wage increases designed to attract talent, having become accustomed to thirty years of growing productivity and stagnant real wages. 

The moneyed interests and their courtiers like to blame it on laziness, games, and drugs of the unemployed and the poor.  It is not their stealing that condemns them so much, as it is the slandering and dehumanizing of their victims, at home and abroad, to justify themselves.  They steal not only their victims' money, but their humanity.   It would have been better for them if they had never been born.

Do not delude yourselves, and go only to those places where they tell you what you wish to hear.  Where they flatter you with tales of your superiority, compared to these others.  For this is an easy and carefree path, blithely into the abyss.

You know it is wrong, you can feel the unease when you part from these serpents and their soothing reassurances.  But you cannot bear to face the truth, and the lies are smoothly seductive.  Your vanity urges you to imagine yourself to be the real victim of these others, to justify yourself.

Let's see if this is the start of something new, or just the kind of tickle and comfort that the courtiers and careerists to power like to pay to their masters, and the god of the markets.  There is nothing like a good wash and rinse in the market that the boys like better, just ahead of a stock options expiration.  And from the short term overbought and oversold conditions it was a nice opportunity to game the system and pick up some easy profits from the public.

There will be a reckoning, and it may be historic.  But they do not believe in it, they do not think that change or reform is possible.  This is the true opium of the people.

Have a pleasant evening.

When You Thought I Wasn't Looking...

I found a copy of this poem in a little collection of things which she had stashed away. It was one of the queen's 'treasures.'

One time she was watching the little ones, carefree and at play, at the town pool and said, 'It makes it all worth it, doesn't it?'

When You Thought I Wasn't Looking
by Mary Rita Schilke Korzan:

When you thought I wasn't looking
You hung my first painting on the refrigerator
And I wanted to paint another.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You fed a stray cat
And I thought it was good to be kind to animals.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You baked a birthday cake just for me
And I knew that little things were special things.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You said a prayer
And I believed there was a God that I could always talk to.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You kissed me good-night
And I felt loved.

When you thought I wasn't looking
I saw tears come from your eyes
And I learned that sometimes things hurt -
But that it's alright to cry.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You smiled
And it made me want to look that pretty too.

When you thought I wasn't looking
You cared
And I wanted to be everything I could be.

When you thought I wasn't looking - I looked...
And wanted to say thanks
For all those things you did
When you thought I wasn't looking.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - US Dollar Index Falls To Lowest Level Since 2014

"How removed from interactions with ordinary Americans did political elites have to be to plan the 2016 election as a return engagement between the two most famous political dynasties of late twentieth-century America: Bush versus Clinton? Yet the country’s wealthiest citizens committed hundreds of millions of dollars to secure just that outcome. Could they not foresee trouble? Apparently not...

The affluent and the secure persisted with old ways and old names in the face of the disillusionment and even the radicalization of the poorer two-thirds of American society. They invited a crisis. The only surprise was— how surprised they were when the invited crisis happened.

Donald Trump did not create the vulnerabilities he exploited. They awaited him. The irresponsibility of American elites, the arrogance of party leaders, the insularity of the wealthy: those and more were the resources Trump used on his way to power."

David Frum, Trumpocracy

Stocks went on a tear this morning, with new highs being reached.  However, prices started falling back, in the face of some rather large bets being placed with a weighting to the short side.

Gold and silver managed to take another shot at overhead resistance.  They gave up the gains for the most part to finish largely unchanged.

The DX dollar index hit a low of 90.15, a price level not seen since 2014.

Have a pleasant evening.

Martin Luther King Day - Still a Dark Day In Our Nation - King Murdered One Year to the Day After 'Breaking Silence'

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You who murder your prophets, and abuse those whom God has sent as messengers to you.   How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings.  But you would not let me. 

As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command— but it is made desolate.’”

Matthew 23:37-38

"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.  We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

Martin Luther King, A Time to Break the Silence,  Riverside Church, 4 April 1967


"It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced."

Martin Luther King, Riverside Church, 30 April 1967


"Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you and criticize you, but you never go alone, for somewhere I read that 'One with God is a majority,' and God has a way of transforming a minority into a majority. Walk with him this morning and believe in him and do what is right and he'll be with you even until the consummation of the ages.

Yes, I've seen the lightning flash, I've heard the thunder roll, I've felt sin's breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul but I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on, he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone; no, never alone, no, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.

Wherever you are going this morning, my friends, show the world that you're going with truth. You are going with justice, you are going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship.

And the world will look at you and they won't understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but you'll go on anyhow.

But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 November 1967


"And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I would want said?' And I leave the word to you this morning...

If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind."

Martin Luther King, 4 February 1968


“Now the problem is not only unemployment.  Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day?  And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation.  These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income...

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

Martin Luther King, 18 March 1968


"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place.

But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Martin Luther King, 3 April 1968


The next day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, 4 April 1968, exactly one year to the day after his sermon, A Time To Break the Silence.

This was not a coincidence. This was a message.

"It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced."

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam'  30 April 1967

And, some might observe, the sermons given at Riverside Church in April 1967 began his year long march towards the mountain top, and his murder in Memphis in April of the following year.  He was a threat to the moneyed interests, the political establishment, and the captains of industry.

"He’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?  Obama turned sharply and said, 'Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?' That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote."

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst

Are we not exceptional?  Are you not entertained?