“You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason."
Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, 1963
"What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishmen, December 1866
"Three dark personalities, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, have been studied in businesses. Although the first two share similar traits with psychopathy, such as superficial charm, lying and manipulation, the inability to accept responsibility for their actions, and the complete lack of empathy, guilt and humility, a large body of research has demonstrated that psychopathic individuals are more dishonest, treacherous and destructive than the others. While all three dark personalities can be bad news for a company, corporate psychopathy is the most dangerous."
Cynthia Mathieu, The Devil Lurks In the Suit, December 2015
"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, March 1985
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
Samuel Adams, under pseudonym Candidus, The Boston Gazette, 14 October 1771
The Consumer Price Index data came in soft to in-line this morning, which lit a fire under the bulls, who were eyeing the defensive short positions in the market with a gleam in their eye.
And so the momentum and meme buyers were piling in, trying to grab a piece of the upward momentum which turned out to be a powerful and fairly broad rally.
The Dollar was sold fairly hard, as safe havens were abandoned in order to add to risk profiles.
Gold and silver rallied fairly hard as well, in part in a reaction to the Dollar drop but also because of the pent up buying pressure being fed by physical offtakes, largely in Asia for gold, and industrial usage for silver.
Silver has now met its short term measuring objective of 30 on the chart.
As you might surmise VIX plummeted back down to its recent lows.
There will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.
Maybe not just yet, but a rinse may be lurking in the hearts of those who pull the strings on the markets.
The geopolitical situation grows increasingly fraught with unaccounted risks.
Biden's administration seems fragmented, tactically oriented for the short term to the great dettriment of strategic policy formation. Unless the strategy is to obtain more money and power, and the consequences be damned.
The Republicans are in utter ideological disarray, and morally bankrupt.
The madness serves none but itself.
But the markets are at some new highs, and the devil take the hindmost.
And funny, but sometimes he does just that.
Have a pleasant evening.
