A Thought on Recovery, Reform, and Events of the Day

"It is not those who advocate, but those who prevent, stabilizing transfers of purchasing power, who are the true Marxists. These self-styled capitalists do not espouse Marx’s theories, but they do something much worse: They perform them. They behave in precisely the way that Marx expected capitalists to behave. They cripple the American system’s greatest strength — its ingenuity, flexibility, adaptability. They prevent the sort of collective action through which earlier generations proved that capitalism could made be consonant with decent, stable, and broadly prosperous societies. In doing so, they risk proving Marx right."

Steve Randy Waldman said this here and I think he is brilliantly right. This is becoming less a struggle to recovery as it is an obsession with personal greed and the will to power gone horribly wrong, corrosive to social structure through corruption, and veering towards the dangerously self-destructive.

Are fellows like Governor Walker of Wisconsin and his backers the Koch brothers 'performing Marxists?' lol I have often wondered if Greenspan was a Randian fifth columnist leading fiat money to its ideological conclusion, but certainly not a Marxian.

Or could it just be that current events and crises bring out and show us who we really are, and hopefully, offer to change us? Those who hold other people in contempt are ever more contemptible, the would be masters ever more deceitful, and obsessive greed leads the few into rough hands and dark cellars. How much wealth did Mubarak and Gaddafi really need after all? Is there not some pathology clearly in evidence with these man-gods, and even in the minor deities on Wall Street? Sad little boys and broken men become dark spirits, seeking to fill the hole in their beings with things, people, all possessions without savour, a wreckage of devices. And even more sad the husks and shadows of people, never at peace, who follow after in their wake, like swirling leaves pulled fitfully along with the wind.

Hell is truly the inability to feel love, empathy, and compassion, knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

Strange days, I am sad to say. Change is in the wind, and is starting to blow like a hurricane, as cycles come round again.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W. B. Yeats

Both austerity and stimulus will falter in the mire of imbalanced, broken systems and corruption. The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Empire Strikes Back

"You must unlearn what you have learned." Yoda

Did we mention that this is an option expiration week at the Comex? Tomorrow is the day.

Silver was reaching for a definite high note while Uncle Thug was on vacation yesterday. And the sell off in equities helped to shake it back down on profit taking to the strong hands. So far normal market action.

If you do not care for volatility you will not like silver. It is tough to sit it out, because if there is a break in the commercial positions known as a 'commercial signal failure' the price could easily go up several dollars per day.

In this case given the insiders who are short, and the semi-official backing which I suspect they have, I doubt they will fail all at once, but in stages and over time, and so the price will continue to creep higher until the market clears.

SP 500 and NDX March Futures Daily Charts

"To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate."

Jesse Livermore

Well I have to confess to a little more than speculation perhaps, as I read a signal from this market that it had reached bubble territory, and that the 'rally' into option expiration last week was hollow, and went heavily short US stocks into the close on Friday.

Flat now, and waiting for the market to tell us which way next. The support is fairly obvious. I will be looking at the short term indicators later on.  So far we do not have a general 'sell' signal on more than the short term.