Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Reversals - Non-Farm Payrolls Friday

 

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.  They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.  We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob." 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Second New Deal, 31 October 1936 

 

"From this rather innocuous mention, the little notion of collateral consequences would blossom into the great strangling vine that came to be known after the financial crisis of 2008 by its shorthand: 'too big to jail.'  Prosecutors and regulators were crippled by the idea that the government could not criminally sanction some companies—particularly giant banks—for fear that they would collapse, causing serious problems for financial markets or the economy.   Today’s Department of Justice has lost the will and indeed the ability to go after the highest-ranking corporate wrongdoers.”

Jesse Eisinger

 

"This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men." 

John Perkins 

 

Stocks were down hard this morning, but reversed and rallied into the green for the close.

The Dollar was higher, taking back the 94 handle and then some.

Gold and silver edged higher.

A better than expected ADP payroll number, and optimism about the debt ceiling caused the green shoots of exuberance to break out, anew.

Yay we win again.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

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.

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.

Taibbi: A Whistleblower's Horror Story

"Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind."

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"Flagrant evils cure themselves by being flagrant."

John Henry Newman

If a whistleblower reveals benign 'secrets' of government actions to a domestic reporter in the time honored tradition, they may be prosecuted as 'enemies of the state' under the abusive misuse of the Espionage Act.

 

It was Winston's contention that six week's after refusing to lie in his report to Moody's, Angelo Mozilo personally contacted Winston's supervisor and demanded his termination based on a personal website Winston maintained for his work as a motivational speaker and expert in leadership.

What I find particularly odious in the judgement is that not only will Winston NOT be able to obtain the reward from the jury verdict, which is a legal matter which I understand can be contended.  Although it seems that the appeals court took a fairly aggressive stance in this appeal, to the point of nullifying the jury not on the legal process but on their judgment about the evidence itself.  A copy of that first appeal is downloadable here.

 

The subsequent judgement against plaintiff to pay the costs filed by Bank of America seems excessive if not vindictive to say the least, given that the case itself was a 'close call' at worst.  And then there is the matter of his speaking to Frontline, and engaging in behavior in describing the ongoing frauds at Countrywide that were very embarrassing to Bank of America, and the DOJ itself.  It smells of vindictiveness.

I don't think it is this case alone that is so infuriating, but the context of Wall Street friendly judicial policy in the Obama Administration, and the hypocritical and harsh treatment of whistleblowers in general.   And Taibbi does a fairly good job of bringing these things forwards in his article linked below which I suggest that you read.

Deceit and theft by the privileged is excused and protected, while honesty and innocence are severely punished.    And the great mass of official journalists are silent, so we hear the news about this in a rock 'n roll magazine. 

 

Rolling Stone

A Whistleblower's Horror Story

By Matt Taibbi

18 February 2015

Two years ago this month, Winston was being celebrated in the news as a hero. He'd blown the whistle on Countrywide Financial, the bent mortgage lender that one could plausibly argue nearly blew up the global economy in the last decade with its reckless subprime lending practices.

He described Countrywide's crazy plan to give anyone who could breathe a mortgage in a memorable January, 2013 episode of Frontline called "The Untouchables," a show that caught the eyes of several influential politicians in Washington. The documentary inspired Senate hearings and even the crafting of new legislation to combat too-big-to-jail corruption in the financial world.

Winston was later featured in the New York Times as the man who "conquered Countrywide." David Dayen of Salon described Winston as "Wall Street's greatest enemy."

But today, Winston is tasting the sometimes-extreme downside of being a whistleblower in modern America.

He says he's spent over a million dollars fighting Countrywide (and the firm that acquired it, Bank of America) in court. At first, that fight proved a good gamble, as a jury granted him a multi-million-dollar award for retaliation and wrongful termination.

But after Winston won that case, an appellate judge not only wiped out that jury verdict, but allowed Bank of America to counterattack him with a vengeance.

Last summer, the bank vindictively put a lien on Winston's house (one he'd bought, ironically, with a Countrywide mortgage). The bank eventually beat him for nearly $98,000 in court costs.

That single transaction means a good guy in the crisis drama, Winston, had by the end of 2014 paid a larger individual penalty than virtually every wrongdoer connected with the financial collapse of 2008.

When Winston protested his preposterous punishment on the grounds that a trillion-dollar company recouping legal fees from an unemployed whistleblower was unreasonable and unnecessary, a California Superior Court judge denied his argument — get this — on the grounds that Winston failed to prove a disparity in resources between himself and Bank of America!

This is from the court's ruling:

Plaintiff argues that the disparity in the resources between the individual plaintiff and the defendant Bank of America make it unfair to place the cost of the premium on plaintiff. Plaintiff offered no evidence in support of this argument; it is rejected...

Read the entire story in Rolling Stone here.

Real News: Deep State, Big Lies, Organized Plunder, and the Power of the Moneyed Interests

A new set of interesting conversations with David Cay Johnston about his work as an investigative reporter and writer on the Real News.

This is what the one percent do not wish you to hear or understand. You will not hear this on any prime time news programs. Not even Public Broadcasting will touch this story.

This is how easily the system is manipulated, by design, for those who have the money, means, and the connections. I think Johnston explains it much better than most.

In the upcoming elections, and especially the Presidential elections of 2016, it is highly unlikely that either major party candidate will not be fully vetted and approved by the moneyed interests as a corporate brand, no matter what big time wrestling theatrics are staged to portray them as 'different' and get people worked up about it. This is not a choice; this is just sad.

Try to listen to what Johnston says without knee jerk reactions from the slogans that have been inserted by endless repetition into your thinking by corporate news outlets and think tanks. Try to hear the facts as they are.

The 'deep state' is at the heart of the partnership between private power and the government.

Part 3


Part 4


Part 1


Part 2

Bill Moyers: Deep State Hiding In Plain Sight

"Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.

My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an 'establishment.'

All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched.

Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude."

Mike Lofgren, Anatomy of the Deep State

"Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo."

Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man

Pictures In an Exhibition: Who Profits?

Why keep the median wage low, despite rising profits and productivity?

Whom does an increasingly debt-based economy serve?

Who profits from the status quo?

Pictures in an exhibition of elephantine greed.

Ralph Nader On the Fed's Gamble, Failed Two Party System, Corporate Power

It would interesting to see some strong third party efforts emerge with progressive agendas.

We know that the Republicans are owned by the monied interests, and that Clinton-Obama leased out the Democrats to them.

The two parties may as well change their names to Big Oil/Defense versus Big Finance, with their only common ground being the ascent of the corporatocracy: all the rights of the individual, few of the restraints and obligations.