"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 (I would in 2019 now say either) 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, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers.
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
"The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them... It wasn’t God who was dead. We were."
Ray A., Practice These Principles
“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none act with fear of the gods?”
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life.
But now we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism
Not to put too fine a point on it, we are a people addicted to greed, pride, and power. And like all who have been caught in such a devilish web, we are going to end this, badly.
Stocks rose to new highs, based on the pandering of the Federal Reserve to the moneyed interests.
It is, after all, the fashionable thing to do, since everyone who is anyone is doing it, from the liar-in-chief to the lowest creatures of the beltway and the corporate media. En vogue.
Fed Chair Powell now owns this latest asset bubble, to the same extent that his predecessors going back to Greenspan at least owned theirs.
I would not put all the blame on the Fed, although the wiseguys are likely to pick them as the scapegoats.
I think we are long past the time when illusions could be dismissed as wishful thinking or as acts of naive desperation. Men truly go mad in herds, and come to their senses slowly, one at a time. And some, in their stubborn pride, never will.
There is little doubt in my mind that US stocks are forming a blow off top. The timing is going to be problematic as it always is.
What will trigger the next decline? Likely candidates are the FOMC meeting when they cut the interest rate, and the Street sells the news.
Or the upcoming earnings season, which begins next week, and the many surprises and realities that will be coming out of the dark.
Or some exogenous international event, political or economic, that sends the algos scurrying towards the exits.
But, while the music continues, the financiers and their creatures will keep dancing. For who could have seen it, whatever it is, coming?
Have a pleasant weekend.
