24 April 2017

Wages, Productivity, and Inequality


"Inequality is a euphemism, a kind of shorthand, for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious, year on year, for the last three decades. And also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious in that same time.

This word inequality. It's visible in the ever rising costs of healthcare and college, in the coronation of Wall Street, and the slow blighting of wherever it is that you happen to live. And you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick, or you read about the lobbying industry that drives Washington DC, or the new political requirement, the new constitutional requirement that every presidential candidate has to be a billionaire's favorite, or a billionaire themselves.

Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street from you loses his house. Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer, or the hop content of a beer, while other people will never believe in anything again."

Thomas Frank


"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.  Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.  But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.  The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony.

We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment. We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits. We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation."

Jeffrey Sachs


"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultra-wealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."

Charles Ferguson



“There are two visions of America a half century from now. One is of a society more divided between the haves and the have-nots, a country in which the rich live in gated communities, send their children to expensive schools, and have access to first-rate medical care. Meanwhile, the rest live in a world marked by insecurity, at best mediocre education, and in effect rationed health care―they hope and pray they don't get seriously sick.

At the bottom are millions of young people alienated and without hope. I have seen that picture in many developing countries; economists have given it a name, a dual economy, two societies living side by side, but hardly knowing each other, hardly imagining what life is like for the other.

Whether we will fall to the depths of some countries, where the gates grow higher and the societies split farther and farther apart, I do not know. It is, however, the nightmare towards which we are slowly marching.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality


"Psychopaths have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people."

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience



"The worldly treasures you have hoarded will testify against you on the day of judgment.  Listen! Hear the miseries of the workers whom you have cheated through fraud from fair payment."

James 5:4


"Two-thirds of the directors at the New York Fed are hand-picked by the same bankers that the Fed is in charge of regulating.

Today, the United States is No. 1 in corporate profits, No. 1 in CEO salaries, No. 1 in childhood poverty, and No. 1 in income and wealth inequality in the industrialized world.

Today, the top one-tenth of 1% owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The economic game is rigged, and this level of inequality is unsustainable.

We need an economy that works for all, not just the powerful.

I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This country, this great country, belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all."

Bernie Sanders

21 April 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - French Elections and Silver Options Expiration


"They devoted themselves to the teachings and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need.

Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.  And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

Acts 2:42-47


"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

John 13:35


"We are not remote elites or ascetic philosophers, who dwell alone and exile themselves from ordinary human life. We do not forget the debt of gratitude that we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we reject no creature of His hands, though certainly we exercise restraint upon ourselves, lest we make an immoderate or sinful use of His gifts. And so we travel for now with you in the world."

Tertullian


“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Today was a minor options expiration for stocks.  The trading was quiet.

Next Tuesday is a Comex precious metals option expiration that is more significant for silver than for gold, given the activities of the metals in this month's contracts.

The markets are keenly observing the French elections this weekend.

See you on Monday.

Please remember God's creatures, especially those entrusted to your care.  Remember your brothers and sisters, especially the poor both in material wealth and in spirit.

Even an animal will love their offspring because it is their own, and a wicked man loves his possessions because they are his.   True love is to love what is His because it is His, formed of Him, and not because it is ours to possess and do with as we please.

We gain much from fellowship in the world, and this is not a vain thing.   It is one of His greatest gifts to us.  We were made for friendship, formed and born from His very breath in caring and for love.

God is love. Evil then is the absence of caring, the deficiency of love.  As Dostoevsky observed, hell is the inability to love and to be loved in return.  It is to be isolated and cut off from the life that sustains us.

For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul. To choose love over selfishness and pride and possessions is the only trade worth making, because nothing else will endure.

Be a champion for love, if only in the little things of your daily life.  And that being done for His sake is enough.

Have a pleasant weekend.






20 April 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Paper, Numbers, and Dreams


"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States-that is prosperity."

President Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930


"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot.

But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through some poor fellow’s hands.

They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue."

Will Rogers, 5 December 1932


“The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

It was a risk on day, as the algos shook off any concerns and went into 'up mode.'

Big cap tech pushed to a new closing high.

But less noted in the enthusiastic commentary from the spokesmodels for Wall Street, the broader market continues to lag, badly.

The Russell 2000 still is not confirming this move.  I direct your attention to the first chart below.

This greatly undermines the hypothesis that this 'stock rally' is signalling that The Recovery™ is here at long last.

More likely, this is La Bubble Partie Trois.

Smells like another new era, and an inflation in paper financial assets as the Fed and the pampered politicos spread the new monetary wealth—  upwards to the favored few.

And some would give them yet even more freedom to print at will to solve our problems.  And this would make them suddenly virtuous how?

They have created enormous sums of money, and it continues to be misspent on nonsense for the benefit of the sectional monopolies like Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Tech, and The Banks.

There is unrest bubbling under the surface of all of the major Western economies, from the US, to the UK, to France, and even stoic Germany.

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012

Have a pleasant evening.