“Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”
James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
"Modern capitalism is masterful at producing services people don't need and in large part probably don't want. It is brilliant at convincing people that they do need and want them. But it has difficulty turning itself to the production of those services which people really do need. Not only that, it often spends an enormous amount of time and effort convincing people that those services are either unrealistic, marginal or counterproductive."
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, 1992
"Most politicians couldn't care less about the plight of the poor. There's so much profit to be made from poor people - think payday loans, high-interest rent-to-own stores, for-profit colleges, and overpriced mobile homes - that politicians and their crony-capitalist donors have a vested interest in keeping them poor."
Joshua Wilkey, My Mother Wasn't Trash
"We live in a world where love itself is condemned. People call it weakness, something to grow out of. Some are saying: 'Let each one become as strong as he can, and let the weak perish.' They say that the Christian religion with its preaching about love is a thing of the past. The neo-paganism [of the Nazis] may well cast off love but, in spite of everything, history teaches us that we shall be the victors over this. We shall not forsake love.
Take the days as they come, the good with a grateful heart, and the bad for the sake of those which follow. I see God in the work of His hands and the marks of His love in every visible thing. Do not yield to hatred. We are here in a dark tunnel, but at the end, an eternal light is shining for us."
Titus Brandsma, executed at Dachau, 26 July 1942
"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth— that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning. He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road. That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His."
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
It was a 'risk on' day all the way, with strong rallies in equities. Stocks went out near their highs.
VIX reflects this new wave of confidence, and continued to fall.
The ebb and flow of fear and greed is taking back what was lost with the war fears of not too long ago.
Gold finished unchanged, with silver losing a little more ground despite the weakness in the Dollar, which continued to decline, in addition to the strength in equities.
What is this telling us?
It may become much clearer by next week. Risk may recede from our perception, but it has not gone way.
As you may know I grew up in northeastern Ohio, and most of my friends from earlier days were 'salt of the earth' people, the children of the working class, such as myself.
I was stunned a few months ago in a phone call to discover that almost all of my buddies from young adulthood after college are gone now. When you move some distance away and start your own family you naturally tend to lose contact. Many of them worked in the trades, and have passed away.
So its nice to hear from someone who brings fond memories of pleasant times, my good friend Phil who called unexpectedly. He was always quick-witted and full of good humor. We worked together after high school, which at that time was in an aging, if not deteriorating as it is all gone now, section of southeast Cleveland, in an old furniture warehouse next door, a cavernous place, full of opportunities for the kind of carefree fun and camaraderie that make a student's life more passable.
It's nice to be reminded of who we are and how deep our roots go, in sharing memories and laughs, shared experience from times gone by. It is easy to lose perspective and a sense of your core being, of who you really are and what you believe, swept along in this tumult of events, and endless waves of mind-numbing controversies. The modern world overwhelms and isolates us with the shallowness of its values, full of illusions and falsehoods, binding us to a wheel of fire shifting quickly between greed and fear.
Family and friends are always important, as well as the institutions that helped to shape us, and sustain us, which often remain there for us, as we travel the world, and through time. They help us to resist the hate and the madness of the moment, and even if our knees are just a bit more wobbly now, to remain standing firm against the tide.
Such is His loving kindness, and tender mercies.
Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow, and then into the weekend.
Have a pleasant evening.
