Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lions, and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

 

"Unequal enforcement of the law will distort and destroy any capitalist society, and we may be witnessing just such a downward spiral in the financial sector.  Capitalism is not an abstract idea.  It is an economic system with a distinct set of underlying principles that must exist in order for the system to work.  One of these principles is equal justice.  In its absence, parties will stop entering into transactions that create overall wealth for our society.  Justice must be blind so that both parties — whether weak or powerful — can assume that an agreement between them will be equally enforced by the courts.

There is a second, perhaps even more fundamental, reason that equal justice is essential for capitalism to work.  When unequal justice prevails, the party that does not need to follow the law has a distinct competitive advantage.  A corporation that knowingly breaks the law will find ways to profit through illegal means that are not available to competitors.  As a consequence, the competitive playing field is biased toward the company that does not need to follow the rules.

The net result of unequal justice is likely to be the destruction of the overall wealth of our society.  I don’t mean the wealth of individuals; I mean the total wealth of goods and services that are the benefits of healthy competition.  To the extent that unequal justice prevails, entities that are exempt from the laws will, in all likelihood, be more profitable than law abiding competitors.  Then they use their profits to further weaken competitors by using their illegal profits to further build their businesses at the expense of competitors.  All of this business building activity is based on a foundation of sand, and ultimately the entire industry — or even the larger economy — becomes distorted.  The 'rogue' company gains power, changes markets, and destroys direct and indirect competitors because it is playing by different rules."

Bruce Judson, For Capitalism to Survive, Crime Must Not Pay, April 12, 2012
 

"Back in December of 2012, when it was proved in U.S. court that billions of dollars of drug money had been laundered through HSBC and yet somehow it was also found that HSBC was NOT guilty of laundering and neither was anyone in the bank, there was an outcry.  Who in the bank knew about this? Evidence uncovered by investigations into HSBC’s activities revealed, 'senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity.'

In the UK it was noted that during the time the laundering was going on, the chief executive of HSBC in 2003 who then became its chairman in 2006, was Lord Green, who is now the UK trade minister. So obviously no great concern to get to any truth about HSBC, in the hierarchy of the UK establishment.

Senator Elizabeth Warren asked, 'So what does it take? How many billions of dollars do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?'

Warren’s question, ‘What does it take?’ was finally answered by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in March 2013, when he told the U.S. Judiciary Committee that the Justice department had decided not to pursue any criminal prosecution of HSBC.  The U.S. Justice Department felt it could not criminally prosecute the bank because a criminal conviction would mean the bank would lose its license to bank in the US which would kill it and a whole range of other institutions, which the bank relies on to buy its debts and its investment products would be prohibited from doing so as soon as the bank was deemed to be criminal.

Twenty-eight banks are officially above the law and WILL NOT be criminally prosecuted no matter what they do.  Remember that’s not me saying this.  It is the U.S. Department of Justice saying it.

Not only twenty-eight banks but all their senior executives, chairman/woman and board members.  It would be very difficult to find a senior person in a bank to be criminally guilty but yet not find the institution guilty. So we could compile a list of people who are now, at least as concerns any financial and professional actions, also above the law.

When we say a bank is above the law, not only should we remember that this means specific people are above the law (at least in how they make money) but we should also remember that this also means the assets in those banks are above the law. This means if a banks does things which are illegal but lucrative – such as laundering money in order to get the use of those laundered billions to then use them as, lets say, capital to underpin loans or for speculating, for example, and by doing those illegal things it makes out sized profits for its shareholders and staff, that money, those profits are also above the law.

Since the bank and its senior staff are above the law and breaking the law is profitable, a) no one has an interest to say no, b) shareholders and staff will directly benefit from breaking the law. They will make more money by participating in law breaking or by investing in a bank which is law breaking. They will, in fact have an interest making sure it continues."

Golem XIV, The Twilight of Justice, March 2013

"Let your love be sincere.   Hate what is evil, and hold on to what is good.   Love one another with with the love of a family.   Be an example in showing respect to others.  Do not be neglectful in your service, but enthusiastic in spirit, as a servant of the Lord.  Rejoice in hope; be patient in suffering, and faithful in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, and provide hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who provoke you.  Pray for them, and do not curse them.   Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another.   Do not be arrogant, but associate with the humble.  Do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but have a regard for what is good in the sight of all.  If it is possible, as best as you can, live peaceably with all.   Friends, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the judgement of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will do justice, says the Lord.'”

Romans 12:9-19

 

Stocks managed to extend their rally and edged a little higher.

This has the hallmarks of a squeeze on those who took cash or short positions as a result of the new hostilities in the Mideast.

VIX continues to wallow with its MACD histogram now at a low for the year.

Gold and silver endured a major bear raid this morning, no doubt led by the bullion banks and their cronies.  

The Banks are the dreadnoughts in the ongoing financial and currency wars.

Speaking of gold, analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs believes that the People's Bank of China is covertly buying large amounts of gold in preprartion for a change in the global monetary structure. You can read the full article here.

"The PBoC is in a hurry to buy enormous amounts of gold, indicating it’s preparing for substantial changes in the dollar-centric international monetary system.  

Based on information from industry sources and my personal calculations, total gold purchases by the Chinese central bank (reported and unreported) in Q3 accounted for 179 tonnes.  Year-to-date the PBoC bought 593 tonnes, which is 80% more than what it bought in the first three quarters last year.  Its total estimated gold holdings are 5,220 tonnes, more than twice what’s officially disclosed at 2,192 tonnes.

The movement towards gold by central banks is showing no sign of slowing down. Mainly the Chinese central bank is on a voracious buying spree since 2022, and it’s obtaining way more metal than what is officially reported."

I think we're going to need a bigger boat.

The big, tectonic changes happen slowly, gradually, and then like an avalanche or earthquake of revelation, all at once.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Images and Shadows - Dueling Jawbones

 

"And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?"

Plato, Republic: Allegory of the Cave

"To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, [Sheldon Wolin, 'Inverted Totalitarianism'] since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: 'inverted totalitarianism,' a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on 'private media' than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events.

It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison of any nation on Earth).

The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the military-industrial complex, which is in charge of superpower. 

The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal.  Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].

One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life [culture wars] so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust.

Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.  Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation.

Toward the end of his study he [Wolin] produces a wish list of things that should be done to ward off the disaster of inverted totalitarianism:  'rolling back the empire, rolling back the practices of managed democracy; returning to the idea and practices of international cooperation rather than the dogmas of globalization and preemptive strikes; restoring and strengthening environmental protections; reinvigorating populist politics; undoing the damage to our system of individual rights; restoring the institutions of an independent judiciary, separation of powers, and checks and balances; reinstating the integrity of the independent regulatory agencies and of scientific advisory processes; reviving representative systems responsive to popular needs for health care, education, guaranteed pensions, and an honorable minimum wage; restoring governmental regulatory authority over the economy; and rolling back the distortions of a tax code that toadies to the wealthy and corporate power.'

It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control. Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin’s analysis will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong."

Chalmers Johnson, A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled, May 16, 2008

Today's market action just made me laugh.

Fed Chairman Jay Powell and His Merry Pranksters did good work to soothe the risk markets today, doing their required 25 bp rate increase, but wrapping it well and tenderly with whispers of all the right dovish nothings.

But alas Yellen, the Iron Banker, responded to the Congress today that there were no formal plans to backstop the entire banking system by insuring all deposits fully.

Which by the way would require an Act of Congress, as if.  

These jokers are too busy trying to take away food relief for the hungry and any hopes for decent healthcare at affordable prices. 

And so after the warm Fed afterglow, the risk markets headed south in what might be termed as a 'fit of pique.'   Or  a 'hissy fit.'

Les enfants terribles of the financial system, the Banks, led stocks lower.

The Dollar dropped.

Gold and silver rallied higher.

VIX rebounded.

Let's see what tomorrow may bring.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wehret den Anfängen - Indicators Flashing Red

"To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: 'inverted totalitarianism,' a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on “private media” than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events.

It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison — 751 per 100,000 people — of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has 'emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation’s political traditions.'

The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization [and deregulation].

Chalmers Johnson, Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled


“Be the person that your dog thinks you are.”

George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans

This is what they call the 'dog days' of summer market trading.

Even the spokesmodels pom-poms were drooping today along with volumes, although they did manage a 'new highs' exclamation after the close.

And yes, stocks were marginally higher on light volumes.

Gold and silver were pretty much unchanged as the Dollar and Bonds moved a tad higher.

What is the old saying of Jesse Livermore? 'Never short a dull market.'

Citibank turned in lackluster results today, with profits based largely on one timers and cost cutting. The banking sector was a drag all day, although Citi managed to gain some ground finally. Go figure.

Gold continues to wind within a symmetrical triangle. Stocks continue to drift higher on lazy algo pumping.

The darkness continues to spread and gain force, as the unspeakable slowly becomes customary, and then finally acceptable.   If you to wish to never see that madness again, then wehret den anfängen, stop it in the beginning. 

I have included two charts immediately below that suggest that a global recession is on the horizon.

I was busy with people working here all day.  I really don't like to have anyone come over and do these things, but sometimes you just have to do it.

I had not expected them to come today, but they called early this morning and said they had a cancellation so would I like to have them come over.   It was ok with me.  I like to get these things done and over.

But besides directing traffic,  I did manage to keep busy with many little things that have been on my 'to do' list, now that most of the big things have been done.

But as you well know, when working outside in this kind of heat and humidity it does not take long before the thought of an ice cold glass of tonic water and lime on ice becomes an almost irresistible attraction.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

AC /on.

Have a cool and pleasant evening.

Bernie Sanders: Concentrated Wealth Is Concentrated Power

"I will never forget, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, came to Congress a few years ago. And this is after the taxpayers of this country bailed them out because of their greed and their illegal behavior.  This is chutzpah.  These guys, after being bailed out by the middle class and working families of this country, after causing incalculable harm, which–the Wall Street crash cost us millions of jobs, people lost their homes, they lost their life savings.

These guys, after getting bailed out, they come to Congress.  They say, you know, what we think Congress should do is you gotta cut Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid.  And by the way, lower corporate tax rates and give more tax breaks to the wealthy. 

That’s power. That’s chutzpah.  We have it all, we can do whatever we want to do.  And I think the power of Wall Street—  you’ve got a half a dozen banks that own over 50 percent, equivalent to 50 percent of the assets in our GDP. 

And we have got to stand up to them."

Bernie Sanders

Financial reform is necessary and essential, but of little interest to the established elite.

And so it receives little attention and even less meaningful discussion.

They will discuss any other distracting issue, event, meaningless squabble and gossip, first.  They will play the fear card, and identity politics, but won't touch the flow of money that helps to make a few and their enablers, unbelievably rich.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.


The source and a transcript for this interview are here.

Summary of Carroll Quigley's Last Public Lecture by Christopher Quigley

Summary of Prof. Carroll Quigley’s
Last Public Lecture Given Months Before He Died:
"The 3rd. Oscar Iden Lecture 1978"
By Christopher M. Quigley B.Sc., M.M.I.I., M.A.

“This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power, in its final stages, results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.

The fundamental, all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.

Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations. These two elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility.

They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday."

Carroll Quigley

In 1978 Professor Carroll Quigley, a few months before he died, gave three lectures at Georgetown University, Washington.  The lecture series was sponsored by a grant from the Oscar Iden endowment.

The genius of Carroll Quigley shone through his three presentations because, as always, he forced his audience to think.  His essays covered the thousand years of the growth of the State in the Western tradition from 976 – 1976. His approach went against the grain of most academics who only taught history in short sound bites.

Quigley believed that you could not understand anything unless you saw the whole, and the essence of his philosophy was that history is logical, i.e. things happen for a reason.  For him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of fundamental human values.

Leaders, rulers and executives who miss this point are prone to make erroneous decisions because their actions will be based on flawed analysis and understanding. The professor saw that American society and Western Civilization were in serious trouble in the late 70’s. In hindsight his final essay The State of Individuals was particularly prophetic and events during the subsequent 32 years have exonerated his controversial conclusions.

In summary this essay stated the following:

Society is an organization of persons and artifacts to satisfy human needs.

Currently our desires are remote from our true needs. Societies are built on needs and they are ultimately destroyed through desires.

Power between the state and the society rests on the ability of the state to satisfy human needs. The state is a good state if it is sovereign and responsible.

There are seven level of culture or aspects of society: military, political, economic, social, emotional, religious and intellectual.

Military: men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their needs only by co-operating within community. The group needs to be defended.
Political: If men operate within groups you must have a method to settle disputes.
Economic: The group must have organizational patterns for satisfying material needs.
Social: Man and women are social beings. They have a need for other people. They have a need to love and be loved.
Emotional: Men and women must have emotional experiences. Moment to moment with other people and moment to moment with nature.
Religious: Human beings have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control and do not fully understand.
Intellectual: Men and women have a need to comprehend and discuss.

Power is the ability in society to meed these eight fore-mentioned human needs.

Community is group of people with close inter-personal relationships. Without community no infant will be sufficiently socialized. Most of our internal controls which make society function have historically been learnt in community. Prior to 976 most controls in society were internal. In the West after 976 due to specialization and commercial expansion controls began to be externalized.

Sovereignty has eight aspects: defence, judicial, administrative, taxation, legislation, executive, monetary and incorporating power.

Expansion in society brings growing commercialization with the result that all values, in time, become monetized. As expansion continues it slows with the result that society becomes politicized and eventually militarized. This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power in its final stages results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of atomised individuals.

The main theme in our society today is [ruthless] competition, and no truly stable society can possibly be built on such a premise.  In the long term society must be based on association and co-operation.

From 1855 Western Civilization has shown signs of becoming increasingly unstable due to: technology and the displacement of labour: increased use of propaganda to brainwash people into thinking society was good and true; an increased emphasis on material desires; the increased emphasis on individualism over conformity; growing focus on quantity rather than quality; increased demand for vicarious satisfactions.

As a result more and more people began to comprehend that the state was not a society with community values. This realisation brought increasing instability.

Another element of the trend towards instability in Western Civilization was the growth in weapon systems that if actually used would ensure total destruction of the planet. This in effect meant that they were effectively redundant.

In addition the expansion of the last 150 years has in essence been based on fossil fuels. The energy which gave us the industrial revolution, coal – oil – natural gas – represented the combined savings of four weeks of sunlight that managed to be accumulated on earth out of the previous three billion years of sunshine.

This resource instead of being saved has been lost. Gone forever never to return. The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.

Medical science and all the population explosions have continued to produce more and more people while the food supply and the supply of jobs are becoming increasingly precarious, not only in the United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using fossil fuels in the corporate structure is the elimination of jobs.

Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations. These two elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility. They have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday.

Today in America there is a developing constitutional crisis. The three branches of government set up in 1789 do not contain the eight aspects of sovereignty. As a result each has tried to go outside the sphere in which it should be restrained. The constitution completely ignores, for example, the administrative power.

As a result the courts, in particular the Supreme court, is making decisions it should not be making. In addition the President, who by the constitution should be easily impeached, has become all powerful to such an extent that the office is now as basically Imperial.

However, to me the most obvious flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the federal government does not have control over money and credit and does not have control over corporations. It is therefore not really sovereign and is not really responsible.

The final result is that the American people will unfortunately prefer communities. They will cop or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into it and say it is a great life but I think otherwise.

Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashed it deserves to. When Rome fell the Christian answer was. “Create your own communities."

Source:  The Oscar Iden Lecture Series Georgetown University Library: Prof. Carroll Quigley

Déjà Vu All Over Again - The Rise of Far Right Authoritarians and Bully Worship

"In Brazil, a far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, came close in Sunday’s national election to winning the 50% of the vote needed to win without a run-off (he received 46.2%), and is now highly likely to prevail on October 28 against his opponent, the liberal Workers’ Party’s Fernando Haddad, who finished a distant second with 29%.

That result, by itself, is stunning, given that Bolsonaro is an undiluted, explicit authoritarian in the model of Duterte and Sisi – one could easily say 'fascist' even using the narrowest and most most rigorous sense of that term – who had been a fringe figure in politics for decades but is now poised to assume the presidency."

Glenn Greenwald, The Stunning Rise of Brazil's Far Right


"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.  It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Probably that has always been the case.  Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking.  Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell


"Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest...

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the [Hitler] regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour...In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime... 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence...I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, In The Garden of Beasts


It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves.  Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.”

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism


"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson

Ralph Nader: Effecting Change Is Not Impossible— As You Have Been Taught To Think By 'Divide and Rule'

"Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers.  The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust. 

The democracy gap in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the least worst every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the least worst gets worse.

We’re told that we’re a polarized society, right? That’s the way the ruling classes have manipulated people for more than two thousand years:  divide and rule.  And, sure, there are differences between the Left and the Right over reproductive rights, school prayer, gun control, government regulation, and now, immigration.

But on at least two dozen issues you’ll find combined Left-Right support from 75 to 90 percent of the population. You’ll find it on breaking up the big banks; you’ll find it on civil liberties [privacy]; you’ll find it on getting rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism; you’ll find it on criminal-justice reform.  There is huge Left-Right support to crack down on the corporate crooks of Wall Street."

Ralph Nader

How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course

Silencing Dissident Voices: Consortium News Interviews State Department Whistleblower Peter Van Buren

"In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship."

Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Constitution of the United States, Amendment I


"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

Martin Luther King

"On the premiere edition of Consortium News Radio we speak with Peter Van Buren, a former State Department official, whistleblower and victim of Twitter censorship.

Van Buren speaks about his experiences in Iraq, the critical book he wrote about those experiences and how the Obama State Department eventually attempted to have him tried under the Espionage Act.

This week Van Buren had his Twitter account permanently shut down and seven years of his Tweets wiped from the record. Why? Because he challenged mainstream journalists who contested a Tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald that mainstream reporters support America’s wars and help bring them about.

One corporate journalist decided to silence Van Buren by complaining to Twitter, which, within two days, and with no due process, obliged.

Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, interviewed Van Buren on Wednesday, August 8 for 40 minutes."

You can view the Consortium News website here.

I am sure most of us have forgotten Van Buren, and the other 'whistleblowers, activists, and dissenters' that were prosecuted, and sometimes vindictively persecuted, by Obama/Clinton.

Julian Assange comes to mind as well, among others.  How he has been treated is disgraceful and an abusive use of state power and 'the letter of the law.'   But going forward it will set the tone for freedom of the press for everyone who chooses to say things that are at odds with, or even unflattering to, the prevailing narrative.

Pervastive platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth should be treated like common carriers.   That would relieve them from having to bear the burden of defining what is to be censored and what is not.  This places that burden on the government, subject to all the checks and balances and recourse therein.

It is all too easy for government to pressure private companies to excess, and then point the finger at them, holding them as scapegoats.

And those on both right and left should be able to see the excesses that may be justified by this current climate of hysteria, which truth be told, emanates from the corporate Democrats as much as any of the many excesses of the GOP.

Neoliberalism and the Rise of Corporate Globalism

Excerpted below is a recent book review of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, by Quinn Slobodian, Harvard University Press.

I have included a link to the entire article which I recommend reading if you wish to know more about how the rise of globalism, corporatism, and neoliberalism may go hand in hand within a reasoned construct.

I could have included much more and still not done justice to the themes and thoughts that it contains.

I found it particularly helpful because it provides a plausible rationale for the continuation of the European Union, despite its malformed integration of a currency union without internal financial integration of debts and transfer payments.  Not to mention its odd admixture of a remote central bureaucracy trumping traditional policy areas within the domain of national sovereignty.

It also helps to understand the stubborn commitment to global 'trade treaties' by corporate Democrats that tend to elevate international  bureaucracies and rules bodies,  dominated by corporate lobbyists, over the inclinations of their own national electorates. 

Obama's determined slogging for the TPP, even as his intended Democratic successor was being electorally eviscerated for her perceived corporatist elitism, was otherwise inexplicable given his sophistication in managing perceptions.

In this perspective these seemingly obtuse things can be seen as 'features' rather than well-intentioned but naively crafted arrangements containing unintentional flaws.

This review also positions neoliberalism within the context of the development of economic and political thought in the 20th century.  The two are inexorably entwined because, as is well established throughout human history, money is power.

The Boston Review
The Market Police
J. W. Mason

"Globalism in this story is not only, or even primarily, an extension of contacts between people, trade, production. Rather, it is the creation of a set of property rights that, precisely because they span multiple sovereignties, cannot be touched by one government without inviting conflict with another. In this sense it is positively desirable for property claims to cross national borders. Foreign investment, regardless of its value or otherwise for financing production, performs a political function that domestic investment cannot...

Organizing property and production across borders—whether through free trade, protections for foreign investment, currency unions or other devices—does more than limit the power of governments. It also serves, Slobodian writes, “to dissolve the small, discrete collective of mutual identification...in a larger unity.” Hayek spent much of his life searching for “a political model that would undermine the ‘solidarity of interests’ that naturally cohered” among similarly-situated people. Open borders played a critical role here, ensuring that economic interests were never “lastingly identified with the inhabitants of a particular region...

Today, the European Union offers the fullest realization of the neoliberal political vision. There is no sovereign people of Europe; the authority of European institutions rests on a body of law and treaties. The European Union is not a nation, but it is not simply an agreement among nations either. Unlike international agreements, European regulations are directly binding on individuals and not only on the government signing them. In many areas, European regulations and authorities don’t merely constrain, but actually replace, their national equivalents. (This is what makes Brexit so difficult.)

Europe’s incomplete integration—with its confusing mix of powers delegated to Brussels and powers retained by national governments—is often seen as a design flaw. But to Slobodian’s globalists, partial integration is precisely the goal—it means that neither the national nor the international body have the legitimacy and capacity to direct the economy. With no international entanglements, a government is sovereign; with complete integration, sovereignty moves to the higher level. What is wanted is a situation in which some powers but not others are delegated, leaving neither national nor super-national governments able to act outside of circumscribed role...

One might even call this the neoliberal paradox. State power is needed to enforce market relations and property rights, but when it rests on democratic politics, it can easily turn into a vehicle for a broader program of economic planning. So the site of power must be anonymized, hidden from politics—as in the opaque jurisdictional mazes of Europe...

From this point of view, the essential thing about the single European currency is not whatever dubious practical advantages come from having prices across the continent measured in the same units. Rather, it is the creation of the European Central Bank as an ostensibly technical decision-maker, more insulated from democratic politics than any national authority could be."

Read the entire book review at The Boston Review.

Harvard Awards Hillary the Radcliffe Medal For Her Transformative Role In the World

"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well.  Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich.   Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola


"The disempowered want change; those in power want predictability and consistency. The more you can guarantee predictability and consistency to those in power, the more those in power will reward you."

Caitlin Johnstone


“Anyone who deprived her of something she wanted deserved what he got.”

Jim Thompson, The Grifters

And Michelle Obama apparently 'shames' women for not voting for Hillary.   Just cannot understand why the women failed, and let the Democratic leadership down, refusing to accept their qualified guidance.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - No Fear, No Consequences, No Accountability

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes."

Andrew Jackson, On the Second Bank of the United States


"Jim, lad, there be consequences an' then there be consequences.  Devil take 'em all, says I, and pass aft the rum."

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

The Nasdaq managed to close at a new all time high today, with techs leading the way.

The broader measures such as the SP 500 and the Russell 2000 were weaker.

Gold and silver finished off slightly along with Treasuries as it was another risk on day, although the bravado seemed to be getting a bit thin at these levels.

VIX closed at a 24 year low yesterday. The spreads between Junk and the Ten Year have also been narrowing.

Traders seem very confident that the Trump administration is going to be very good for the corporatocracy.

Disney beat on earnings, but missed on revenues and other metrics.

In my estimation, which is by no means a general consensus, the Fed has fomented yet another speculative bubble through a combination of monetary policy errors, not so much in low rates, but in the application of the stimulus which was by no means accidental or unconscious, and more importantly, through a sustained regulatory failure of the most disreputable sort.

And they certainly have had a lot of company in this from both political parties and the government.

If some incident should trigger another financial crisis, it is widely expected amongst the financiers that, once again, the consequences will be visited primarily upon the innocent and their victims.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Role That the Clintons Played in Enabling the 2008 Economic Crisis and Financial Coup d'Etat

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises.

If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup


“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and even murders that we are not going to be judged.”

Czesław Miłosz

As economist Simon Johnson put it so aptly, there was a 'financial coup d'etat' in the States. It was the result of a longer term and well-funded effort as documented by PBS Frontline and others.

People forget all too quickly what has happened, even things that happened less than twenty years ago. Perhaps it is easily forgotten because there are so few counterexamples of honesty and decency these days in government and business to hold up in comparison. The UK and Canada are following in lockstep, as well as the central government for Europe in Brussels.

The Clintons, along with a large group of Republican Congressmen and compliant Democrats, put a 'for sale' sign not only on the Lincoln bedroom as you may recall, but on the rest of the White House and the Capitol, and indeed, the well being of the people of the United States.

They certainly did not do it alone, as it was a bipartisan effort to overturn the protections established in the darker days of the Great Depression. But the money was good, and it was there for the taking, and with it the enormous power to threaten or reward those around them.

And it became the thing to do in Washington and New York, to partner up with big money to take the public for a wild ride, as we have not seen since the beginning of the last century.  Once again capitalism was unfettered, and became the rawest, the worst kind of short sighted and self-dealing 'capitalism' that is more corrosive looting than productive asset allocating.  And so the New York - Washington metroplex enthusiastically engaged in a program of fabulous gains for themselves, and longer term pain for the country.

I do not have to read Robert Scheer's account to understand it;  I saw this happening with my own eyes, almost in slow motion, as one might watch the events leading up to a train wreck.  The actions of the participants were deliberate, and focused solely on amassing enormous fortunes for themselves and their friends, and damn the people and the consequences.

What the Clintons did was not to invent soft graft of political contributions and gratuities, sinecure positions after public office, and ridiculously generous payment for speeches and appearances.  No, what they did was take what had been reviled as the worst of politics in craven service to big corporate interests, which had been largely but not exclusively the hallmark of their political opponents who were well established as servants to the corporate interests, and make it not only acceptable for establishment liberals, but downright fashionable.

Why would the Clintons, that wonderfully privileged and intelligent couple, do such a coarse and craven thing?  One might think of about $130 million reasons offhand.  Is anything just that simple?  And what would you do if you were offered $130 million in easy money for you and your family to make a few key decisions, to look the other way at times, while having no fear of punishment, with all your many sins forgotten, excused, and ignored by a compliant press?

Oh yes, you are an angel and would of course say no, even if the corruption was unrolled slowly, one step at a time.  But what do you think that the fellow next to you would do?   The ones who cut people off in traffic, makes the rules for themselves, wishing to have their own way, to have power and a place at the highest table?

Is this a system likely to be honest, just, and sustainable?  Is it designed for fairness and rewarding the best and most productive behaviour?

And like the utopian efficient market hypothesis, we are expected to believe that the powerful men of Big Money are just men of civic virtue who will give millions upon millions of dollars to politicians and expect nothing but fairness and objectivity in return, even if it is to their own disadvantage as required by justice.

No wonder so many politicians have become little more than marketing projects for Big Money, like brands of toothpaste and soft drinks.  Pick any flavor that you wish, but despite the appearances of difference, they are all owned by just four or five big corporate interests, as is the mainstream media.  Which by the way was enabled by the Clintons overturning the Fairness Doctrine.

A number of the old hands of politics see where this is heading, and have already taken the money and run, some to hide in their studies, to try and create a new legacy for themselves, and others to move to K Street as lobbyists and get filthier rich while it lasts.

But the problem still remains, Once thoroughly corrupted, a system finds it hard to correct itself, especially if the consequences for big rewards are more of an inconvenience than punishment, if there are any serious drawbacks at all.  

The American people seem to be attempting to rouse themselves, to use their right of suffrage to bring about the change, the necessary reform, that has eluded them for quite some time.  Let us hope that this effort will not be squashed in the manner of other protests, such as Occupy Wall Street, have been through almost ruthless and coordinated nationwide public relations campaigns and even violence from the government and the media.

The ‘Clinton Bubble’: How Clinton Democrats Fostered the 2008 Economic Crisis
By Robert Scheer

Since the collapse happened on the watch of President George W. Bush at the end of two full terms in office, many in the Democratic Party were only too eager to blame his administration. Yet while Bush did nothing to remedy the problem, and his response was to simply reward the culprits, the roots of this disaster go back much further, to the free-market propaganda of the Reagan years and, most damagingly, to the bipartisan deregulation of the banking industry undertaken with the full support of “liberal” President Clinton. Yes, Clinton. And if this debacle needs a name, it should most properly be called “the Clinton bubble,” as difficult as it may be to accept for those of us who voted for him.

Clinton, being a smart person and an astute politician, did not use old ideological arguments to do away with New Deal restrictions on the banking system, which had been in place ever since the Great Depression threatened the survival of capitalism. His were the words of technocrats, arguing that modern technology, globalization, and the increased sophistication of traders meant the old concerns and restrictions were outdated. By “modernizing” the economy, so the promise went, we would free powerful creative energies and create new wealth for a broad spectrum of Americans—not to mention boosting the Democratic Party enormously, both politically and financially.

And it worked: Traditional banks freed by the dissolution of New Deal regulations became much more aggressive in investing deposits, snapping up financial services companies in a binge of acquisitions. These giant conglomerates then bet long on a broad and limitless expansion of the economy, making credit easy and driving up the stock and real estate markets to unseen heights. Increasingly complicated yet wildly profitable securities—especially so-called over-the-counter derivatives (OTC), which, as their name suggests, are financial instruments derived from other assets or products—proved irresistible to global investors, even though few really understood what they were buying. Those transactions in suspect derivatives were negotiated in markets that had been freed from the obligations of government regulation and would grow in the year 2009 to more than $600 trillion...

Clinton betrayed the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms that capitalism needed to be saved from its own excess in order to survive, that the free market would remain free only if it was properly regulated in the public interest. The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse. The guardians of capitalism’s survival are thus not the self-proclaimed free-marketers, who, in defiance of the pragmatic Adam Smith himself, want to chop away at all government restraints on corporate actions, but rather liberals, at least those in the mode of FDR, who seek to harness its awesome power while keeping its workings palatable to a civilized and progressive society.

Government regulation of the market economy arose during the New Deal out of a desire to save capitalism rather than destroy it. Whether it was child labor in dark coal mines, the exploitation of racially segregated human beings to pick cotton, or the unfathomable devastation of the Great Depression, the brutal creativity of the pure profit motive has always posed a stark challenge to our belief that we are moral creatures. The modern bureaucratic governments of the developed world were built, unconsciously, as a bulwark, something big enough to occasionally stand up to the power of uncontrolled market forces...

Read the entire article with a link to the preceding excerpt from the book here.

Deep State: Inside Washington's Shadowy Power Elite

“Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn’t even compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?”

― Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government


"Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise.

But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."

Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Princeton 2014

"As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition.

But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush,  'the deciders.'

Cultural assimilation is partly a matter of what psychologist Irving L. Janis called groupthink,  the chameleon-like ability of people to adopt the views of their superiors and peers. This syndrome is endemic to Washington: The town is characterized by sudden fads, be it negotiating biennial budgeting, making grand bargains or invading countries. Then, after a while, all the town's cool kids drop those ideas as if they were radioactive.

As in the military, everybody has to get on board with the mission, and questioning it is not a career-enhancing move. The universe of people who will critically examine the goings-on at the institutions they work for is always going to be a small one. As Upton Sinclair said,  'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.'"

Mike Lofgren

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls On Friday

"The existence of cash — a bearer instrument with a zero interest rate — limits central banks’ ability to 'stimulate a depressed economy.'  The worry is that people will change their deposits for cash if a central bank moves rates into negative territory."

Financial Times, The Case For Retiring Another 'Barbarous Relic'

Since the Nikkei bought the Financial Times earlier this year one wonders if they are able to interpret the real meaning of their own editorial policy.  Could anything be more blatantly repugnant than the above?

'Negative rates' is a euphemism for the slow but steady confiscation of all savings, a broader 'bail in.'  It is designed to drive people into financial paper assets and consumption. It is all about the elimination of safe havens, of places to hide from gross incompetence and wealth transfers.

Negative interest rates are the signature moment in the decline of a republic and the rise of corporate feudalism.   They take our wealth at no cost or effort for themselves, and lend it back to us at interest and without risk, being assured of a continuing supply of subsidy from their central Bank.

There will be quite a bit of economic news at the end of the week, including a Non-Farm Payrolls report for the month of August.

Gold is in an interesting position here, as can be seen on the chart.

The Bucket Shop was quiet, except for a small but steady stream of bullion out of their warehouses for both metals.

Have a pleasant evening.

Central Planning and the Inevitable Abuse of Freedom from a Concentration of Wealth and Power

This is a reprise of a blog posting from August 2011

Most students of economics are aware of the tendency of 'perfect competition' to zero economic profit over time, unless there is a continual renewal and reinvention of the business, under the guidance of a wise, insightful, and responsive management. Even the best enterprise involves a risk of loss, the expense of well paid employees, and significantly hard work, all combined with a bit of luck. Little wonder that a minority of businessmen find this arrangement less satisfactory that other alternatives, which unfortunately includes various forms of cheating, if not outright fraud.

And therefore there is a constant tendency of participants in capitalist systems to foster the unreasonable profits of cartels and the stable pricing power of monopolies, natural or otherwise, with a measure of discretionary control over resources and choices, legislation and information, and political and monetary power.

Corporations are merely creatures of the law, and inferior to it. Without it, they don’t exist. What better way to create the supreme monopoly and maintain it in perpetuity than to skew the law in one’s favor?

When corporations obtain an inordinate amount of power over the social fabric of regulation and governance, the creation of an oligarchy distorts the real economy through the accumulation of too much power in too few hands, in the manner of the central planning bureaucracies of the old line communist nations.

And this is why the standard economic solutions of both stimulus and austerity for normal cyclical excess can be doomed to failure, as they are at this time. The system itself has become distorted and broken, and is badly in need of reform.  Whatever one puts into it will come out badly, and be turned to fruitless purposes, corrupted by the unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the few, the partnership of the Wall Street banks, big media, multinational corporations, and their servants in the government.

The hallmark of a corrupt enterprise is that while it has the power to confiscate and destroy, it cannot create sustainable organic growth and recovery that benefits the broader public.   This may be a private monopoly or collection of monopolies, or a government chartered agency, or a government itself.  The characteristics of all of these can be very similar.  It is merely the details of their legal composition that differ.   

The modern, somewhat romantic theory of naturally efficient markets peopled by inhumanly rational and altruistic individuals is a fairly modern twist on the noble savage ideal of Rousseau, and just as other-worldly and impractical when applied to a modern society. Certainly no one who has driven recently on a modern highway in rush hour could believe it.

Nineteenth century Americans viewed the business trusts as un-American "internationalists, and  heartless, abusive exploiters of the public interest." And rightly so. They looked for relief to the reform of their government, and the power of democracy and the law.  

This struggle of the individual to maintain a balance of power with the organizations, whether they be the corporation or the state, is a recurrent theme, a continuing saga throughout human history.  Big Government and Big Business have both been inimical to human freedom.

Whether such an accumulation of power in a few hands is achieved by the gun and star chamber, or the pen and the bribe, may not matter to the end result, which is a society plagued by corruption, stagnation, and at its end, a growing instability with a resort to physical force and more overt repression on its own people.

Central Planning - It's not Just for Communists Anymore

By Matthew K

23 August 2011

Vancouver, BC

It's been a rough few weeks for the capitalist system, which bestrides the globe like a teetering colossus. Not only has there been stock market turmoil worldwide, and the temporary threat of a US default on its debts, but an esteemed, mainstream economist suggested that Karl Marx was right. In the Wall Street Journal, no less! Karl Marx Was Right

That would be Nouriel Roubini, whose claim to fame came from timely warnings about the US housing bubble and subsequent US stock market collapse.. It is important to note that he only said that Marx was right in that capitalism could collapse on itself,  not that it actually would.

Most people are familiar with the spectacular failures of central planning in the Communist regimes. According to the resurgently fashionable Austrian school of economics, an economy is too complex to be managed by one expert, or even one committee of experts, regardless whether the clubhouse door reads "Politburo" or "Shark Tank."

According to the Austrians, society's fastest path to prosperity consists of allowing every person to decide freely what is in their best interest, with the emphasis on individual transactions.

A biological analogy comes from flocks of birds, schools of fish, and ant colonies, among others. These swarms function extremely well, despite being composed of simple creatures following simple rules, and despite the anarchic lack of a leader directing things. Our own "simple critter rules" in modern society are probably along the lines of "try to get a higher paying job, and pay lower prices for stuff, within the laws of the land, and without making too many enemies."

A business analogy comes from Toyota. Their quality went from hopeless to fearsome by training every employee to be competent enough to figure out how to do their own job better, and then allowing them to do so. If their management tried to dictate how each task was to be done, they might have peaked at early-80’s American car maker quality levels.

In a similar way, they decided not to try to predict the right production levels for each model, colour, and trim. Instead they pre-built enough cars to fill dealership inventory, and each time a customer purchased a vehicle, they would build one more of that same model, colour, and features. In economic nerd speak, they responded to that "market signal". So if 5% of Corolla drivers wanted a green car with deluxe extras, in the long run 5% of Corolla production would consist of deluxe green vehicles.

Since the flaws of central planning and benefits of distributed decision-making occur in the public sector, the private sector, and even in biology, we can generalize that the USSR's economic problem was ultimately that a small group of people would decide how to (mis)allocate most of the country's resources.

In the past thirty years, there's been an immense concentration of wealth -- particularly in Anglo-American countries (the US, UK, us, the Aussies). The US is at the leading edge of this trend, with the top 1% owning 42% of the wealth, or about six times as much as the bottom four fifths of the population, and a significant portion of the means of production and public information (media) and influence over the course of society.

In recent decades Western capitalism has moved towards the central planning model of a relatively small number of people in charge of directing the allocation of resources. This narrowing of perspective has in turn led to policies progressively more disastrous for the moved and the shaken... which was the Soviet denouement.

I have to credit the influence of the thoughtful blog of a well-to-do American entrepreneur and military strategist, and especially this particular posting. Central Planning and the Fall of US Empire

Capitalism's path back from the self-perpetuating central planning will require a more equitable, or at least a less inequitable, distribution of wealth and power, by which to rebuild the middle class and promote decision making based on individual choice and a more widely based entrepreneurial meritocracy. Which is what Roubini was complaining about, in saying that too much wealth was being redistributed from labour to capital.

It would be a terrible irony if Marx was proven correct, and unchecked capitalism destroyed itself by evolving the self-crippling features of a centrally planned communist economy.  One can only hope that we can reform our current market systems before things get worse.