The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus
This is a classic "wash and rinse cycle" within a greater uptrend. Whether it may continue to be so could be determined by the new earnings cycle that begins this week, the dilemma that is Europe, or the ongoing political process of financialisation.
Far from being a capital forming mechanism, the US equity market has been allowed to degenerate, once again, into a vehicle largely dominated by frauds and schemes of wealth transferral.
A person might as well brag of making a fortune in the stock market by short term speculation in the same manner that a first rate pickpocket might boast of making a rich harvest in the town square during some public event, distracting by spreading rumours, alarms, and other misdirection.
Having made their wealth in a generational fraud, the oligarchs mean to keep it by any and all means, including beggaring the world if only to make their own fortunes shine brighter.
This is capitalism in decline, as justice fails, or more precisely, is bought into silent partnership. And the killing of conscience in financial things opens a Pandora's box of maladies of the spirit and the madness of hardened hearts.
And there is no finer symbol of this decline than the current electoral contest, which appears but a Hobson's choice between the corruptly lax magistrate and the pre-eminently audacious highwayman.
Nanex: Investors Need to Realize that the Machines Have Taken Over
