"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves. You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”
Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ (Gethsemane), Tower of London, 1535
“Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away..”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Poems, City Lights
"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets."
W. H. Auden, Epitaph To a Tyrant
"All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."
"So we may not be that far away from the next bubble bursting, and I could imagine, if I think about policy, what we just talked about, with the end of a recovery cycle, we’ve pumped $4 trillion in this country, $30 trillion globally, into the economy with monetary policy. So that’s tapped out.
We are now using fiscal policy to overheat a late-stage recovery in order to keep the Republicans in office. We are doing nothing to bolster underlying growth with educational reform, infrastructure reform, et cetera."
"I think it’s important in the power of finance and how pervasive this is throughout the economy, this has very little to do with Republicans and Democrats. In fact, some of the key opening doors for finance happened in the Clinton administration."
Rana Foroohar is an associate editor and global business columnist for The Financial Times, and CNN’s global economic analysts. She’s the author of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business.
"If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. But you do not belong to the world, as I have chosen you from it."
John 15:18
Suffering is a means by which God saves us, afflicting us so we do not lapse into vain self-sufficiency, a pride and a perverse individualism that gathers us blindly into ourselves, and separates us from His own. To suffer is how we grow in humility, and conform ourselves to do what He commands, rather than as we may will.
Prayer is how we sustain ourselves in times of both suffering and joy, with humility in this life, as we resort not only to ourselves or to the world, but to all things with God.
And so we find comfort in His will, and the conversations that we keep with His many tender mercies. The world can not see this, and in not seeing does not understand. To the world we are fools.
His consolations and comforts are hidden, delivered to us in quiet moments, heart to heart. And so He gathers us together to Himself, and keeps us safe, and slowly takes us from this world and the dark powers therein, that search endlessly for souls to make their own, and to devour.
Stocks and the precious metals slumped today as yields on US Treasuries climbed. The ten year Treasury yield finished at the highest level since 2011.
This in turn greatly strengthened the US Dollar. Bloomberg characterized this as a 'risk off' reaction to something or other that was not clear. North Korea or Jerusalem? The VIX took a leg higher.
The retail sales number was rather weak, which would not support higher interest rates per se. Although there was an upward revision last month, and Empire Manufacturing did come in a big stronger. All in all a zzzzzz. The SP 500 yield has fallen below the 3 month Treasury yield. And this is just the market to buy stocks for clipping coupons, right? lol.
Perhaps the market has decided that the Fed will be raising rates no matter what the productive economy is doing, which is not all that bad of a bet. Unless there is an economic cataclysm. The Fed seems to be self-absorbed and self-referential to a remarkable degree, having painted themselves into a corner with few places left to hide.
I suspect that gold was in an over-reaction Many punters have noticed gold's tendency to bottom off the NFP-FOMC combination, and probably placed too many weak bets ahead of the curve. Well, that is one possibility at least.
Or maybe the masters of the universe were just having a day. Anything is possible when bullshit reigns.
I just checked and there it is, a stock option expiry this week. The calendar included below. Mary is not normally that big of a month for stock options as I recall.
"On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? - three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? - had become precisely that— Masters of the Universe. There was no limit whatsoever! Bullshit reigns."
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities
Bullshit and faithlessness reign in our amoral wilderness. And you-know-who is the King of the May.
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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