“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
"I understand why an equality that was founded upon God involved neither contradiction nor disorder. Demagogy enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras
"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."
Thomas Clement Douglas
As you know today was a quad witch in stocks, and shenanigans were expected to be at a high level.
Stocks traded wobbly most of the morning and Europe closed for the weekend quietly.
But around one stocks started dropping precipitously. I happened to be watching the stock futures and noticed the sharp change in trading 'tone' right away. They were dropping steadily and with some conviction on both the SP and the NDX. Something had clearly happened. So I pulled the trigger on a short order I had teed up for the weekend, and went looking.
Bloomberg TV was showing nothing. Even on their news headlines on the right side there was nothing showing except for a headline 'Breaking News' that Walmart was dropping e-cigarettes. The on air discussion was some infotainment discussion about how to play the next rally, yada yada.
I flipped over to Fox Business, which is something I almost never do, and bam, they were showing breaking news that China had just cancelled a visit to Montana to discuss agricultural purchases, and Trump was making noises about what a hard and complete deal he was going to be driving with China. Fox was covering the hell out of the story, and putting it in context with the market decline.
Back to Bloomberg and there was nothing. Even when their most seasoned news pro Mark Crumpton came on with the headlines at 1:30 there was nothing, and nothing on the sidebars.
Finally when she did a review of the markets, which were clearly dropping pretty hard, Scarlet Fu read off a piece of paper that the Chinese had cancelled their Montana meeting, and that some thought this is why stocks were dropping. And while they mentioned it a few more times in the afternoon, it was never really covered as news per se, although Joe Weisenthal had a chuckle about it, when they said that he was watching it.
So I was wondering if this was a real thing, or just some quad witch shenanigans. If so they should say so, not just ignore it.
Well I let it ride, since I wanted to have some short side coverage for my long holdings over the weekend.
But it seemed more than odd. Fox Business scooping Bloomberg on financial news that moves the markets is like the Orioles sweeping a three game series against the Yankees.
Let's see what happens next week. This is where the fog of corruption has descended over the markets.
There will be a fairly important gold option expiration on the Comex on the 25th. October is an active month for gold, not so much for silver.
Stocks went out near to their lows. Gold and silver went out near their highs. The VIX was higher along with the Dollar.
That precious metals market rigging charge, with RICO overtones, against JPM was such a big nothing, like some wiseguys have claimed, that the gold leverage lords of the LBMA just kicked the head of JPM's precious metals desk off their board. Is this like the time Lucky Luciano booted Dutch Schultz out of the Five Families for excessive moral turpitude? QED
And so we had a quiet flight to safety, ninja-style.
Have a pleasant weekend.
