"Powers of the earth rise and fall; revolutions come in course; great families appear, and are swept away; wise men are in high places, and walk amid the sparks which they have kindled. They feel that they are short-lived, and they determine to make the most of their time. They grasp and push forwards, they are busy and feverish, not only from the feebleness and waywardness of their nature, but from the conviction of their reason, that they have but a short time.
Their aims and desires, their instruments, their goods, their bodies, their souls, are all perishable. They begin to die. Their growth and progress, their successes, are but the first stages of corruption and dissolution. Poor children of time, what are they? They triumph over religion in their day; they insult its ordinances and its ministers; they tyrannize in its Temples, showing themselves that they are gods. They build up their families by rapine and sacrilege; they are wanton when they are not covetous; and, when satiated with pillage, they mutilate and defile what they do not destroy.
We rise in the morning, and, behold, they are all dead corpses. The storm has passed, the morning has broken, the Egyptians are cast on the seashore.
Men of the world, indeed, in proportion as they are active and enterprising, boast of their independence, and are proud of having obligations to no one. But it is the Christian's excellence to be diligent and watchful, to work and persevere, and yet to be in spirit dependent; to be willing to serve."
John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 1836 Nov 13
"Where are the princes of this world, and those who lorded it over the creatures of the earth? Those who made sport of the birds of the air, and hoarded up riches in which they trusted, and for whom there is no limit to their greed, those who schemed to get wealth, and were always anxious about their possessions.
But now there is no trace left of them. They have vanished down into the bowels of the earth, and others have risen to take their place."
Baruch 3:16-19
"And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve."
Martin Luther King, The Drum Major Instinct, February 4, 1968
Stocks were in rally mode today, bouncing back sharply after the listless but nevertheless bloody declines of last week.
Volumes remained subdued.
What a difference a stock option expiration makes.
Gold bounced, but silver took off with stocks.
The Dollar mostly chopped sideways.
The VIX had an outside day with a slight decline.
There will be a precious metals option expiration on the Comex on next Monday the 28th. This expiration is weighted more heavily to silver. Effects of a shenaniganistic nature may appear later this week.
The visit to the specialists was informative and heartening. Surgery will repair the eye and implant a new lens in a different way, and the prognosis is optimistic.
Politics in business is a deadly and potentially destructive mechanism when it favors the worst and most unscrupulously shameless. I have seen it become predominant, virulent, and pompously parasitic.
Politics in academics can be equally harmful in its destruction of knowledge, and propagation of policy errors into the real economy, but is otherwise a slap-fight, a mean-girls opera buffa.
The ghosts of folly and the moneyed interests stalk the hallways and coffee rooms of universities, infest servile papers, give undeserved life to woodenly repetitive policy errors, and on occasion haunt the buffet tables of the Jackson Lake Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Have a pleasant evening.
