John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 1958
"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For greed subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their place, encouraged pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general corruption."
Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, circa 40 BC
“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.”
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, 2004
The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a common measure of inflation, came in as forecast this morning.
And so stocks rallied, morphing into what was clearly a relentless short squeeze, particularly in the heart of bubbledom.
The Dollar rose another 25 cents or so, managing to firmly plant its flag in 106 territory.
A lot of this is due to the utterly inept governance in Europe, moreso than any kind of US government competence.
VIX dropped back down to recent lows, marking the complacency of the exceptional.
I sense another episode of overreach coming for the self-proclaimed elite of the world.
And with that, the inevitable blowback.
But let's see what happens.
Russia has warned its citizens about traveling to the US, and most of its European client states.
I am glad to see Biden and his crew of warmongering hypocrites going. But I just cannot obtain any real hope from the approach of leather apron and his entourage of hollow ghouls of greed.
Horrors tend to come home to roost. And so we must relearn what has been forgotten.
This has been a decent year of trading for me, and I certainly paid the bills, but nothing worthy of high fives and spotlights. It's been a bit of a grind.
It's been a long time since the punting public has taken 'the big hit.'
They may be in for a refresher course in the painful downsides of conmen and careless risk.
I have reached the point where I can no longer bear to watch the financial television channels, even the ones who have nominally been professional and informative in the past.
Rough seas ahead, mateys.
I am looking for some 20 percent declines in prices, centered on the high profile bubble assets. We'll probably see it next year, with a taste of it by March.
But let's see what happens. We might be in for a pleasant surprise.
Have a pleasant evening.
