"The Fed can create only paper. Inflation does not create value, it merely masks the rot of economic stagnation, but can do so for several years if the inflation can be concealed artfully. The US has been struggling through a particularly non-productive period for most Americans in terms of real wealth production especially as expressed in the growth of savings, which has been decidedly negative.
In their irresponsible foolishness and greed the Fed and the Bush Administration have managed to transfer more wealth from the many to the few, further impeding any sustained recovery since the health of the economic body has been concentrated in a few parts of questionable productive value.
This is how we coined the term 'Potemkin Economy' many years ago. It is a cruel illusion of the Fed, the Treasury, and their associates in misdirection and deception. For that is what this has been, regardless of motives or intentions. It is a disgraceful episode in our country's history, but this is what happens when one gives themselves over to the rule of fear and greed."
Jesse, The Cruel Deception, 8 July 2008
"In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be men who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul.
Nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' The illusion is dangerous because it encourages terrible fanaticisms. It must therefore be brought under the control of reason. One can only hope that reason will not destroy it before its work is done."
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932
"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their extremes and their illusions.
A seemingly endless parade of infamous tyrants, forgotten viceroys, and faceless bureaucrats always seem to have their roots in the extremity of illusion that rises out of some turmoil of excess, and the throwing off of the restraints of reason. And no people, no organization of people, and no nation is immune or exceptional to this extremity.
The human being is remarkably clever and wonderfully self-deluding in choosing the things that they know are wrong, that they hide both from the world and themselves at first. That they excuse, wrap in exceptionalism, drape in personal exemption and necessity.
Evil is a choice, or more properly a long, gradual succession of choices. And the madness never sleeps, is always open for business. And looking for souls to devour.
It was 'risk on' today as stocks rallied hard all the way into the close, with the futures going out on the highs.
The Dollar chopped sideways, along with the metals slid down towards the bottom of their short term range..
The VIX fell sharply down to a recent low.
Must be an end of month thing, tee-ing up the next wash and rinse perhaps.
We will have the FOMC on Wednesday afternoon.
I go to see the dermatologist for a skin check every year.
I got a call this week from the doctor to tell me that I have a squamous carcinoma on my leg.
Luckily it is early days, and some outpatient surgery will remove it later in November. And hopefully it will provide clear margins.
But still, it is a bit unsettling to get that kind of call, no matter how prepared one might think themselves to be.
Check ups matter. I have seen it work for our good many times. Do not fear them.
Have a pleasant weekend.
