SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Myopia of Empire - On Freedom

"Next week Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to leave the United Kingdom. And polling suggests that support for independence has surged over the past few months, largely because pro-independence campaigners have managed to reduce the 'fear factor' — that is, concern about the economic risks of going it alone. At this point the outcome looks like a tossup.

Well, I have a message for the Scots: Be afraid, be very afraid..."

Paul Krugman, Scotland, What the Heck

Kinnoch: With respect, Mr. Gandhi, without British administration, this country would be reduced to chaos.

Gandhi: Mr. Kinnoch, I beg you to accept that there is no people on Earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.

Brigadier: My dear sir! India *is* British. We're hardly an alien power!

[silence]

You just can't make this stuff up.

There is nothing less attractive than a liberal in service to power.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Related:  A 'Yes' Vote In Scotland Would Unleash the Most Dangerous Thing of All -- Hope.

Yes, this is a fictionalized account of a speech from William Wallace before the Battle of Stirling. So is the famous St. Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V. The sentiments expressed in both are consistent with those struggles.

What is not a fiction is the fire that can burn in men's hearts, the preference for self-rule that they have, the yearning to be free that rises up against continuing repression and the overbearing dominance of distant rulers who do not have the best interests and well-being of their homes and families in mind.

 

Men often will sell other men's liberty, and gladly. But not everyone is willing to sell their children's freedom for money.

 

There is always a risk in change. It is a difficult thing to birth a new nation and to forge it in liberty.

But there is an even greater risk for those who resist peaceful changes to the very end, who make meaningful reform impossible.  Freedom is resilient.  Eventually the fire in men's hearts bursts forth, and the walls of repression, and even the far flung parapets of empires, can fall. 

This is one of the great lessons of history.

The calculating economist says 'be afraid.' But the great people of Scotland, and the ghosts of their fathers and mothers say, 'be free.'

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Abide

Gold and silver had the usual hit today, that was almost perfunctory in its routineness.  That did not make it any less obvious. I am sure that they can rattle off a hundred rationales to support their actions for the good of others. That they happen to benefit is merely incidental.

There is quiet panic in the banks and the boardrooms, make no mistake of that.  Russia has them perplexed.  China has them confused.  The rest of the world holds them in contempt.  Most with eyes open can see their falsehoods. 

Their fabrications grow increasingly transparent.  Force is extended to make up for the weakness of the fraud.  Their empire of deceits are pervasive and fearsome in their shamelessness. 

How and when this will end, no one can say.

For now we must be waitful and watchful.

'At this moment we are the anvil, rather than the hammer.'

There was intraday commentary that may be worth reading.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Age of the Thing

"Greetings citizens.
We are living in the age,
in which the pursuit of all values
other than
money, success, fame, glamour
have either been discredited or destroyed.

money, success, fame, glamour,
for we are living in the age of the thing.

money, success, fame, glamour..."

Macaulay Culkin et al., Party Monster


"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.

The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps.

The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small."

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin

The banality of evil is alive and well in our culture of death, that measures everything in dollars, and values nothing that is human for its own sake, whether it be truth, or beauty, or goodness.

That it is banal does not mean it cannot be noisy.  That it wears a hand tailored suit instead of a uniform does not make it any less vulgar,  capable of causing great misery and destruction.  That it speaks with sophistication or cleverness does not makes its words any less poisonous.  That it will eventually destroy itself in the future does not detract from its power to taint and corrupt in the present.  That it reaches out remotely, by force and fraud, to throttle and kill its victims does not make its hands any less bloody.

Even that consummate anti-human evil on earth did not begin by writing off 47 percent of the people as less than human, as life unworthy of life.  As if any number of human lives could be justified by the godlike delusions of these narcissistic sociopaths.

Markets moved sideways today, with the SP down a bit and the tech heavy NDX up a bit.

Wall Street is rolling out the barrel for the Alibaba IPO.

Consumer Credit growth came in greater than expected.

Have a pleasant evening.