"When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?...
Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end,
Shame serves your life, and does your death attend."
William Shakespeare, Richard III
"Why doesn't 'greed is good' work? Because rather than work harder, a certain portion of the population, not necessarily the most productive and intelligent, will immediately seek rents and extraordinary income obtained by unnatural advantages, by gaming the system, by cheating and coercion, by the subversion of the rule of law, which saps the vitality of the greater portion of the population which does in fact work harder, until they can no longer sustain themselves. And then the lawless few seek to expand their reign of greed, and colonies and empires are born."
Jesse, Modern Economic Myths and The Failure of Financial Engineering, 21 February 2010
"...we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips..."
Shakespeare, Macbeth
"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
The market liked the economic data from this morning, as can clearly be seen on the daily US Dollar chart.
Stocks followed suit, and rallied higher, and went out near those highs.
Gold and silver had also rallied along with everything else, but gave back a little more at the end.
There will be a stock option expiration tomorrow.
VIX continued to fall from its recent high.
I will be very surprised if we do not get a proper wash and rinse out of this, most likely attributed to some geopolitical event that no one could have seen coming.
Except they do. They just don't care.
I also suspect that some who have sold their souls to power and madness are going to falter, and fall in a rather scandalous, spectacular manner.
And no one could have seen that coming either.
Sic semper avaritia.
Have a pleasant evening.
