"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 1958
“War, a struggle between 'our people' and 'the enemy,' creates a polarized world in which 'the enemy' is easily objectified and removed from the community of human obligation. What the conservatives conceived of as sufficient measures overlapped with what were for the Nazis scarcely the first steps. Only a minority of nonconformists managed to preserve a beleaguered sphere of moral autonomy that emboldened them to employ patterns of behavior and stratagems of evasion that kept them from becoming killers at all.”
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men, 1992
"It is men who pass away, and the exceptional first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be human, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that plagues were impossible.
They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How could they have given a thought to anything like a plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are plagues."
Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947
"But man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured —
His glassy essence — like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604
"When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality. It is the same perhaps with evil. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty. Once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."
Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce, 1947
Stocks were weak most of the day.
After the bell memory company Micron Technologies beat its numbers and gave good guidance, which sent the stock price rocketing higher.
This in turn lifted in the major indices from the red into the green.
This is a mania.
Gold and silver were hammered again today, ahead of the option expiration for the precious metals futures on Thursday the 25th.
The Dollar edged higher.
VIX fell.
Où sont les neiges d'antan?Where are the snows of yesteryear?
This is a bubble top and the beginning of a bear market.
It lures traders in, chews them up, and spits them out.
Nothing has changed.
Have a pleasant evening.
