What is a proper disposition towards life? It is to accept God as a loving father, who is full of tenderness and forgiveness for us, despite our willful blunders and hardened hearts. He yearns for us, as a father and mother yearn for the return of their most beloved child. It is to accept that we are not lost, we are not abandoned. We are wandering like a wayward child, full of our own headstrong delusions. And our father waits expectantly, calling out for us through the darkness. Jesse, 2018
Showing posts with label imperial Presidency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imperial Presidency. Show all posts
This is a fairly even handed and thorough review of the facts and defenses offered in the situation before the House.
I thought it might be of interest based on some things that various readers have asked me or commented upon so far.
The case for obstruction of justice is not dealt with here, and is particularly compelling as it so often proves to be. It's not the crime but the coverup and the perjury.
But in all seriousness, the major defense is going to be political. This is going to be the 'so what' defense. When you don't have the law or the facts, just pound the table. Just lie boldly, yell at people, attack them personally, and try to scare them into silence and submission.
So what if Trump did all these things. They are not impeachable, and the GOP in the Senate will not act upon any charges in a suitably judicial manner, because they can.
And they may do so as long as it appears that their base is buying it. If public opinion were to swing against him, the GOP establishment would be on their man like a pack of jackals, as I have stated before. They are unbelievable hypocrites, being politicians.
What's the point? It is useful for you to know what you may be doing, and why you are doing it. Unfortunately in the end it is an assault on justice and the rule of law itself.
And so you can see what others are doing, and are thereby showing who and what they are, and what they are capable of doing and saying to further their own advantages.
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Søren Kierkegaard
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt
"Narcissists are unstable and go through repeated cycles of self-destruction, with other people usually paying the heft of the price. Narcissists tend to be divisive, vindictive, confrontational, aggressive, hate-filled, raging, incoherent, judgment-impaired, and irrational.
Narcissists are liars, confabulators, and miserable failures, although some of them are geniuses at disguising the fact that they are, in fact, losers."
Sam Vaknin
"And because of the increase in lawlessness, the love of most will grow cold."
Matthew 24:12
Stocks took a bit of a dive today, as the weight of mispriced risk and the illusion of economic recovery continues to weigh on the speculative excesses of the markets grown corrupt and inefficient through lack of proper oversight.
Being based on the human profit motive and the principle of selfishness markets in themselves have no basis for being a moral principle. Profit can be obtained through fair means and innovation, but as we have seen can more easily and richly be gained through exploitation and lawlessness.
The campaign to overturn the laws that protect the markets, which served us well for so long, has been determined and well-funded. And it has worked a great deal of damage on the public and the quality of the financial system.
As usual the stocks regained much of their losses in the quiet afternoon.
Gold and silver moved sideways and the Dollar was marginally higher.
I think the charts are fairly clear. The problem is that most other things are not.
The other day I said: "I am certainly no fan of Joe Biden, who has a long record as a corporatist tool. And certainly not of Trump, who I suspect may wish to be impeached, and be remembered by some as a martyr, and spare himself the humiliation of losing badly in the next election."
And I will certainly stand by that as a possibility. But like so many others I may be giving Trump far too much credit as a thinker, and cunning strategist. His strength is his weakness, and he has some distinct flaws that work to his political disadvantage.
Trump is the consummate narcissist, a king among the class of egotists, bullies, and weasels. He does not make occasional mistakes in judgement like most people. He is driven into error by recklessness and pathological excess.
Don't expect things to get any better— they will become progressively worse, until something finally either works, or breaks. And if it breaks, there will be plenty of collateral damage, and much of it among the innocents as well as true believers.
And I hope that the liberal establishment, who expended a great deal of political capital and energy on their own madness that was RussiaGate, will regret their foolishness when they try to surmount their losses and perform an adequate investigation of this genuine abuse of power.
In her day Hillary and her machine seemed to be indestructible and unstoppable— and it fell apart like a house of cards. And when he falters, Trump's 'supporters' are going to descend on him like a pack of jackals.
Trump is not 'good for the markets.' He is not the state, and as President is not above the law, although he thinks that he is. Trump is a symptom of a system that has crept well into disorder and imbalance out of a long buildig sense of hubris and greed.
“Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.”
Mary Midgley
He is corrosive and corrupting, and quite possibly the rope of excess with which the predatory capitalists and their cronies are going to hang themselves.
“Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as 'malice domestic and fierce foreign war.' We are not rid of these dangers, but we can summon our intelligence to meet them.
Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. 'Malice domestic' from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals.
There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at the San Diego Exposition, October 2, 1935
The financial asset bubbles since the turn of the 21st century have been enabled by four basic instruments of monetary policy error: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell.
Whether we will have a third major collapse and crash to follow this latest asset bubble, as a consequence of misguided monetary policy, economic priorities, and bank regulation is not the issue. The question is, shall we have a system that holds together long enough to have a fourth?
Certainly the Fed is not alone in this. But in addition to their power to set short term interest rate targets and engage in open market operations, they are also a singularly powerful banking regulator, wield through this office tremendous power in all the financial asset markets, right down to reserve and margin requirements, and the activities in them of the Banks.
Stocks rebounded somewhat today. Whether this bounce will stick, and increase to allow yet another top in equities is certainly an open question.
It seems probable that the Fed will keep raising their benchmark rate as long as the fig leaf of recovery permits, as they recoil in horror from ZIRP. For they maintain as their highest priority the process itself, and the banking system to which they are beholden.
This is the great challenge of our day. The system has been co=opted by and for the benefit of the few, and the people as a whole are suffering for it.
Gold and silver bounced a little today, as the Dollar shows continued weakness.
Tomorrow we will have the decision of the FOMC.
On Friday we shall be treated to the Non-Farm Payrolls Report.
As an aside, does anyone else know who FDR is describing as 'the greatest writer in history' in the quote above, the person who wrote several centuries ago about 'malice domestic and fierce foreign wars?' I have not been able to find out, and seem to be the only person who uses this quote who even wonders. Let me know if you can discover this person's identity.
Answer: Thanks to astute readership, the author is Shakespeare as one might expect, from Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2.
"...better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further."
And even further, as the definitive answer, we have the admission of an advisor to FDR, Raymond Moley, that the phrase was a conflation that he created in error. As recounted in his book Seven Years:
This reference sent the literati to their Shakespeares, and elicited no small amount of good-natured chaffing. It was, I regret to say, a garbled one, and 1 was responsible for the garbling. Somehow or other, the phrase "Malice domestic, foreign levy"-levy meaning armed force-from Act 3, Scene 2 of Macbeth got mixed up in my mind with the phrase, "Domestic fury and fierce civil strife," from Act III, Scene 1 of Julius Caesar..
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
“I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.”
Samuel Johnson
"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
"A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship...Once you go down the path of empire, you inevitably start a process of overstretch, of tendencies toward bankruptcy, and, in the rest of the world, a tendency toward the uniting of people who are opposed to your imperialism simply on grounds that it’s yours, but maybe also on the grounds that you’re incompetent at it.
It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda."
Chalmers Johnson
Stocks were wobbly today but not dramatically so.
Gold and silver managed to take a little back from their recent losses as the Dollar backed off sharply from its intraday high.
There will be an FOMC meeting next week. There is about a 35% probability of a rate hike at this meeting. We will have to watch the early economic data in the week, especially the PCE, to see if that probability might move a bit.
And on Friday there will be the April Non-Farm Payrolls Report.
"My favorite poet is Aeschylus, who once said: 'And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, almost against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'
What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice to those who still suffer in our country."
Robert F. Kennedy
It is not so much where are you going Lord, but rather, where are we as a people choosing to go. At the moment it appears to be on a darker path, led by fury and passions as old as Babylon and evil as sin. It is an old story. Nevertheless, let us not despair.
Gold has broken out and is holding its level above the high set in the aftermath of the Trump election upset. Silver is holding its level on the 18 handle.
Now gold seems to be consolidating, most likely for the attempt to push higher to take on the intermediate highs and resistance around 1370-1380. More pullbacks to test the breakout are not unexpected.
As you know, myself and others who have done some impressive investigation suspect that the 'free float' of gold in NY and London has become dreadfully thin, thanks to the long campaign to suppress the gold price on the world markets using the paper leverage on the Comex. Physical gold has been flowing to Asia for some time now, in excess of new production.
Why would anyone wish to manipulate the price of gold and silver? On the simplest level it is a way for the financiers to make money. They worship only themselves and their god Mammon. How can anyone suggest that market manipulation is not pervasive in our financial markets across a wide range of instruments? How many scandals and wristslaps does it take to convince someone?
But secondarily, gold and silver stand as pillars of value, at a time when shaping policy and printing money to benefit a corrupt elite of cronies is the fashion. As a direct result the organic growth of the economy continues to falter thanks to policy errors and a rapacious moneyed class. The Fed and the Bank of England are creatures of the banking system, and have failed miserable in their roles of public servants and sound regulators, which has been a false and almost farcical claim for many years now. The Bankers and their politicians have done nothing to benefit anyone but themselves.
If and when this latest 'gold pool' breaks, as they all must do at some time, we can expect the price of gold to spike higher in a sustained rally as the market seeks to reassert a more realistic clearing price. The rally will be driven by those who realize that the jig is up, and they must scramble to deleverage and cover.
We may experience a severe price test, especially for silver, if the equity market suffers a major selloff. I would most likely sit back and wait for it to find its level, and then come in and buy some more metal in my trading account. Unless the government takes action against them, the metals look ready to perform their traditional roles as safe havens.
"I want to end with the idea that the [unregulated] market is capable of resolving all of our social conflict, fairly and justly. That is the great idea of the 1990's. And we all know now what a crock that is. I think what we need in order to restore some kind of sense of fairness is not the final triumph of markets over the body and soul of humanity, but something that confronts markets, and that refuses to think of itself as a brand."
Thomas Frank
The moneyed class and financiers may yet embrace their traditional penchant for fascism. They have done so, even in our exceptional empire, many more times that we might care to admit. They will hold their privileges with increasing self-righteousness, even at the expense of their own downfall.
I am not yet myself as you might expect. But I will be back more regularly in a few weeks.
Remember to pray for the people affected by the hurricanes. And not only prayer, but actions as well.
But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.
When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one— happiness and love."
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905
"When you serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in times of adversity. Cling to Him, forsake Him not; thus will your future be great. Accept what befalls you; in crushing misfortune be patient. For, as gold is refined by fire, so too are worthy men in the crucible of adversity. Trust God and He will help you. Make straight your ways and hope in Him. You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy. Do not turn away, lest you may fall.
"And I'll leave you with one set of numbers that I found today, which is just an absolute for this whole thing. In 2015, Wall Street Bonuses, not regular compensation, bonuses, seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled $29.4 billion dollars. Total compensation paid to every single person in this country who makes minimum wage totaled $14 billion...
The era of neo-liberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun."
Mark Blyth
"Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.
When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one— happiness and love."
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: The Time of Nero
When historians look back on this period of the last forty years and diagnose what went wrong, they might do worse than to conclude that at the root of it was a general failure of character, from the top down.
The replacing of honor and duty with egoism and greed as the most honored of civic virtues was a long and slow process. It took root and was nurtured in a portion of the population that was served by it during the Reaganomics revolution, but eventually spread to those institutions and groups that had generally provided a bulwark for freedom and justice against the perennial amorality of the greedy.
Although they were certainly not the root cause of it, the Clintons played a prominent role in sealing the deal between the political and the financial class, and throwing the whole thing into a higher gear. They made political corruption, which heretofore had been hidden in the closets, fashionable.
Indeed, it may not be too much to say that they were to soft corruption in politics what Henry Ford was to automobile production. They certainly did not invent it, and were probably not the worst compared to some of their colleagues across the aisle, but they industrialized it, and knocked down the last bastions of public conscience in the process by showing how well greed could pay off while still maintaining some semblance of public respectability.
There will be a three day weekend in the US markets because of President's Day on Monday.
There was some surprisingly good 'soft' data this week in the Philly Fed and Empire Manufacturing reports. Let us see if those translate into good, hard economic numbers.
The crux of the problem is the huge imbalance between corporate power and the ability of worker's to achieve increasing wages. Without increasing wages, broader aggregate demand in the form of consumption cannot be sustained.
It was sustained during a long period of wage stagnation by innovative debt instruments associated with the housing bubble that was greatly encouraged by the financial sector and their servants in the political and professional classes. The fraud which they helped to perpetuate was conscious and pre-meditated. The crafted specific financial offerings towards that purpose.
However, in the aftermath of the housing bubble collapse, the ability and willingness of the average American to go into debt for ordinary consumption is reluctant to say the least. At least half the nation is living paycheck to paycheck with little to no savings.
This is not going to end well or easily as you might expect. However, the elites have been winning for so long, and are so full of themselves, and so firmly committed to their schemes that I think they will finally let the whole thing hit the wall in some way, and then make the people another deal that they cannot refuse, as they had done with the bank bailouts in 2008.
And that is where the right preparations and the willingness to do what is required of this generation will be most important.
No one ever said that it would be easy, or that we would be going to heaven on featherbeds.
I find the current political situation to be as bad as I thought it would be when I forecasted it about ten years ago. The worst is yet to come.
The corruption in the system is becoming much more apparent. The extreme biases in the mainstream media in favor of their particular owner's faction is fairly obvious.
The liberal establishment, in their zeal to excuse themselves and their failure to support the working class, is embracing a kind of McCarthyism with an ease that is almost astonishing in its hypocrisy. The hypocrisy on display at MSNBC is almost as embarrassing as that on Fox News.
That the Wall Street Democrats brought their own political failure on themselves by their strong and enduring pivot to the wealthier urban professionals is something that escapes their consciousness.
And on the other hand, the Republican establishment is gone bananas in their service to greed. I figure if they are able to beat down Trump like the Democrats beat down Bernie, then we are in for a real reckoning.
This is nothing new. Indeed, this resembles the America of the past more than most people realize. Our education is slanted and poor, and our national self-image is a masterpiece of public relations.
The discussing of politics is 'fun' and avoids having to make comments on what is certainly a confusing period in American economics. I try to stay on that topic, especially since so few are actually shedding light on it these days. But truth be told, money and politics are often about power, and nevermore as in times of general corruption, when might makes right. Or at least policy that they call right.
This is the worst, most sluggish 'recovery' we have seen in modern times here. But since it has a bipartisan stamp, it is difficult for some to wrap their politically black and white heads around it.
And I hate to resort to it, but in historical terms what we are seeing is more like a 'class war' from ages long ago than any kind of financial new era. The moneyed class turned the law and the thought leaders framing to their own benefit, and would now do anything they can to keep their ill-gotten gains.
Wrap it up in a credibility trap and tie a bow around it, and here we are.
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
Plutarch
"And I'll leave you with one set of numbers that I found today, which is just an absolute for this whole thing. In 2015, Wall Street Bonuses, not regular compensation, bonuses, seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled $29.4 billion dollars.
Total compensation paid to every single person in this country who makes minimum wage totaled $14 billion...
The era of neo-liberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun."
Mark Blyth
“There may be thunder in Europe but it is in America the lightning will fall.”
"The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.
The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the 'last thing standing' between us and the end of the world.
It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability."
"Those powerful few who use public and private resources to twiddle the markets in the short term, and quite a few other data metrics as well, are giving their brethren who were caught offsides by last night's election a chance to square up and get ready. That's what they do.
They bought the SP 500 futures for stocks, and sold paper gold and silver for the metals.
And they wished to send all the rest of us a message— vote all you like, but we are still in control."
“There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Audacious!
There was intraday commentary on the huge swing in gold from last night to this afternoon here.
There was also some commentary about the surprising sweep for Trump in the elections last night here.
The swing in the US dollar was equally impressive as you can see in the first chart below.
And of course, I have updated my tracking chart of the Imperial Presidents. lol
In keeping with custom, the new President should have roughly 100 days grace in his new position to show his hand. We should be watching his key appointments to the cabinet and agencies very, very carefully.
As you may recall, Obama tipped his hand back in 2008 in the first month or so, and did not even make it to 100 days before it was fairly clear what he was all about: serving Wall Street and the Banks.
I sincerely hope Trump does not work out to be the same. If he disappoints his supporters, I doubt that they will take it nearly as well as the Obama base that just shrugged and took the latest betrayal by the Wall St Democrats in stride. Until yesterday perhaps.
In other words, if the plutocrats let this surprising election win of the presidency and both houses go to their head and do the wrong things in their selfish pride, there will be hell to pay.
I disliked both of the major party candidates almost equally, despite the ardent 'lesser of two evils' argument being promoted once again by the punditry of the status quo.
I chose a third way for myself strictly as an act of conscience. But I suspect quite a few people looked at the situation, and rather than picking the lesser of two evils, they settled this time for the newer.
Along with many other commentators, I have characterized last night's election surprise as Son of Brexit.
There will be more of this sort of dislocating change in the status quo coming. Keep an eye on Europe.
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus
As for gold and silver, I think we saw the impulse to treat them as safe havens fairly clearly last night, no matter what price shaping with the overnight trading that the pigmen may perform. In the short term they are surely able to foster confidence in their shenanigans with our markets and money.
But as we saw clearly in the election surprises this year, after many a Summer dies the swan.
The delivery reports were a non-entity, and the warehouses were a bit of a snooze, with Hong Kong standing out a bit with another big slug of bullion going walkabout.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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