"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony. We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment. We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits. We are destroying the Earth as if we are the last generation."
Jeffrey Sachs
"The gold of the rich
is the blood of the poor, flowing through the institutions and estates of the
propertied few. "
Leon Bloy, as quoted in Pilgrim of the Absolute
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but was wrong in thinking that we can get them for ourselves, without grace.
The beautiful is the experiential proof that the incarnation is possible. We must have faith that the universe is beautiful, and that it has a fullness of beauty in relation to each of the thinking beings that actually exist and of all those that are possible. It is this very agreement of an infinity of perfect beauties that gives a transcendent character to the beauty of the world.
He is really present in this universal beauty. The love of this beauty proceeds from God dwelling in our souls and goes out to God present in the universe. The beauty of this world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through the material."
Simone Weil
“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
Franz Kafka, The Trial
Stocks took a run at a rally today, but alas, the attraction of reality was too great for them to achieve escape velocity, and down they fell again to finish off a little lower.
Gold and silver took off higher, with silver putting in some impressive gains after the recent bear raids that took their prices lower, because of course they can, and the bullion banks are not ashamed to do so.
Nvidia jarred tech with some awful earnings, and a few other have also sounded their wake up calls, creative accounting and fanciful metrics notwithstanding.
More inflation data coming out later this week.
The consensus on bubblevision is that we are already in a recession but it really isn't all that bad.
Franz Kafka's The Trial says it all about this attractive but deceitful financial demimonde.
They wish to blot out the glory of God in His creation, because the light of His love shines through the darkness, and exposes the naked emptiness of their souls.
“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." C. S. Lewis
Daisy and I abide.
Have a pleasant evening.
