SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - More Low Volume Flim Flam

I do not wish to sound like a broken record, but the markets are clearly marking time until Europe falters, and then they hope the central banks step in with loads of newly printed money which can be used to bail out the bondholders, and which the financiers can channel into a fresh round of speculative excess.

So for now its summertime, and the living is easy.

Neil Barofsky on the Fed and Treasury Anger over Standard Chartered

This is the credibility trap.

Some of it is professional not-initiated-hereism, but quite a bit more is a culture of privilege and practical exemptions for the few who run the system. And professional courtesy with London for both our banks and theirs.

Cronyism and complicity, active or passive, take your pick.

"If you want to understand exactly what's going on here, reread the four or five pages in chapter 1 of my book about my battles with Washington over the FARC case. Exactly the same thing happening here.

They'd rather trash a potentially legitimate case than admit that they were asleep at the switch, especially now after the recent revelations about their failures with LIBOR and HSBC."

Neil Barofsky, speaking about the Standard Chartered affair.

Read the entire story at Business Insider here.

They didn't "fail" to regulate LIBOR. They did not even bother, for whatever motives that you care to impute or infer. They knew what was going on and turned a blind eye to it, just as they are doing with the rigging of the commodity and equity markets.

The incompetence and non-involvement defense is getting a little worn out in this financial scandal.

Casual corruption of the markets is now being accepted as a necessary system overhead, as a tax on the public to support the failed financial system, which is being kept alive to support a kleptocracy of politicians and the monied interests. It is sustained through fraud and force, but has little to do with the real economy anymore.

It is important to get this to understand what is going on.

As Glenn Greenwald describes it so well, the kleptocracy based on class position has become fully rationalized and institutionalized.

"What is radically different about today is not that the rule of law suddenly is not always being applied faithfully, because that has always been true. What is different about today, radically, is that we no longer bother to affirm that principle...

You can often, and I would say more often than not, in leading opinion-making elite circles, find an expressed renouncement or repudiation of that principle...All of these acts entail very aggressive and explicit arguments that the most powerful political and financial elites in our society should not be, and are not, subject to the rule of law because it is too disruptive, it is too divisive, it is more important that we should look forward, that we find ways to avoid repeating the problem...the rule of law is not that important of a value any longer...

The law is no respecter of persons, but the law is also a respecter of reality, meaning if it is too disruptive or divisive that it is actually in our common good, not the elite criminals, but in our common good, to exempt the most powerful from the consequences of their criminal acts, and that has become the template used in each of these instances."

Glenn Greenwald

Lawyers and Banks Offer a Full Range of Elite Criminal Services

There is a two-tiered system of rules, with Liberty and Justice for some.

If you knew how routinely it is marketed, and understood the full extent of it, you would be surprised and angry at the cynical injustice of those who consider that only the 'little people' should bear the burdens for their country and the consequences of their actions.

Do What Thou Will Shall Be the Whole of the Law.

And the demimonde of lawyers, banks, and corrupt politicians may have a pre-packaged solution for you, as long as you have the connections and the means to afford it.

There has always been corruption. But it is rarely as routine and systemic as in the last twenty years. It becomes an open secret.

But many ordinary people are so propagandized by clever PR campaigns and energized by prejudice and hatred that they are no longer able to think. Or it becomes too painful.