My Mother Wasn't White Trash

"At first reading, the story of my mother's life seems like little more than a tragedy. However, it is much more than that. Her story reveals the stark realities of growing up poor. All across Appalachia, there are thousands of women just like my mother working, striving, struggling, just to exist. So many people in Appalachia have broken minds and broken bodies and broken hearts, and they do nothing more than survive because that's all they can do.

It is as popular now as ever to blame poor people for their station in life. Republican politicians love to talk about how poor people could stop being poor if only they made better choices or worked harder. If only they'd stop buying iPhones, they could afford insurance! These assholes - and I do not use that slur lightly - have no clue what it is like to grow up poor. They have no clue how hard it is in many places in the US just to keep the lights on and food on the table.

It is easy for them, from the comfort of their cushy offices and homes, with full bellies and bank accounts, to pretend that poor people like my mother are poor because they are stupid or lazy or ignorant or irresponsible rather than confront the broken systems that perpetuate poverty in Appalachia and all across the US.

Poor people don't contribute to reelection funds, but those who profit from poor people sure do. Therefore, truth be told, most politicians couldn't care less about the plight of the poor. There's so much profit to be made from poor people - think payday loans, high-interest rent-to-own stores, for-profit colleges, and overpriced mobile homes - that politicians and their crony-capitalist donors have a vested interest in keeping them poor."

Joshua Wilkey, My Mother Wasn't White Trash

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - No One Sees, No One Knows

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident...And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way."

Charles Ferguson, Inside Job


“The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”

Neil Barofsky


"The historical evidence is overwhelming. Many societies have done well for a while – until powerful people get out of hand.  This is an easy pattern to see at a distance and in other cultures.  It is typically much harder to recognize when your own society now has an elite less subject to effective constraints and more able to exert power in an abusive fashion.   And given the long history of strong institutions in the United States, it appears particularly difficult for some people to acknowledge that we have serious governance issues that need to be addressed."

Simon Johnson

Stocks largely moved sideways today on weak economic data and a lower dollar.

Precious metals continued to rebound a bit off their recent Non-Farm Payrolls low.

Consequences will be served in the main dining hall, sooner than you might expect.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - I Shall Not Want

"Teach me your way, Lord,
that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your love towards me;
you have delivered me from the depths
and the realm of the dead."

Psalm 86:11-13


"But the Lord stood at my side, and gave me strength, so that the message might be fully proclaimed, so that all might hear.  And I was delivered from the lion's mouth."

2 Timothy 4:17


"I see dead people. They don't know that they are dead. Walking around, like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead. I see them all the time—  they are everywhere;  they only see what they want to see."

Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

More of the same.

VIX is at the low for the year.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Calm Before the Storm

“In truth, however, nothing is inevitable and very little is new. And tech is no more the root of the problem than are trade or globalization. Many of our most vaunted innovations are simply methods -- electronic or otherwise -- of pulling off some age-old profit-maximizing maneuver by new and unregulated means.”

Thomas Frank


“It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.”

Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

Here is some knowledge.

Today was a busy, but a good, day.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Chart - Me and My Baby

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”

Hermann Hesse


"Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities.

But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless."

Jeffrey Kluger


“Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist's need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.”

Donald W. Black, DSM-5 Guidebook

The silliness of these markets and those who enable them make me laugh.

The politicians of the day are almost unbelievable— stylized caricatures of human beings.  If you take them out of their Capitol elements they seem out of place, oddities.

The vanity of the self-important is both sad and amusing.  They are truly clueless.

I would laugh harder if I were much further away.

Even a little problem conquered lifts the spirits and renews our energy.

Today was a good day.

Have a pleasant evening.