"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.
If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, 'well-balanced,' unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system...
The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous...
The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless."
Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable
When you have allowed sociopaths to erect a system which rewards expediency, cleverness, and winning without regard and respect for human values, fairness, or even common mercy and the dignity of others; a society which views compassion and a sense of justice as a weakness to the point of a dangerous deviancy; a culture in which harshness and crudeness and the abuse of power in pursuit of even more wealth, or of the weak as an enjoyable diversion for the superior, are enshrined with a sign of growing strength the only virtue— with such role models and rewards, what else would you expect the highly educated but spiritually weak-willed and morally ambivalent professionals among you to do?
They will implement and execute to plan, under the cover of playing within the rules of a rigged game, with an efficient and myopically determined focus as they do with all that they undertake. They will march themselves into hell with a deluded sense of pride and high accomplishment.
And where do you think this madness will end?
If the bulls cannot stop the selling, put in a bottom, and turn this around we might be in for something notable.
Hopefully the bulls will be able to get their act together to at least stop the selling as they square up their positions into the holiday.
I have to say that I am not 'feeling the fear' yet and the safehavens are notably quiet.
And it would not take a lot to turn the market higher. A word or two from Trump, or one of his proxies, or the Fed's Jay Powell would likely do the trick.
The risk in that is, of course, that if they give it a go and it does not stick, then after an initial bounce the market may take another leg down with a vengeance. And once the panic sets in, and the real fear selling is underway, it may be too late for jaw-boning to work, even if one if wielding the jawbone of a truly formidable donkey.
I have started to populate the spreadsheets I made in 2000, and last used in 2007, which track the movement of this market and compare it with significant declines from the past.
I have been underestimating the volatility in the NDX using eyeball measures on the chart. One really needs to plug the numbers in.
This is a light trading week. If the bulls cannot turn it on Wednesday or Friday then their hearts may not be in it.
The market is not dominated by 'value investing' but by momentum traders and algos. In that sense it is vulnerable to an outsized move, both up and down.
If there is a 'crash' as I noted some time ago there is little doubt it will be blamed on Trump's trade policies, and to some extent Brexit. This would be a coup for the globalists and freetraders.
They will never acknowledge that the Banks and their Fed willfully allowed an asset bubble to grow, for the third time, in order to continue the transfer of wealth to the top under the guise of investment and asset allocation.
When I dropped my son off at the airport I told him the stock market may crash while he is there, but not to be concerned because I have made provisions.
You may wish to do so as well, even though I still think a crash is a low probability event.
See you tonight.
