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As with most summations it compresses much of the complexity and therefore loses information in the process. I know he is a smart man, and is doing this out of necessity to achieve brevity and conciseness.
He never mentions the various unfunded wars, over 700 global military bases, and out of control health care costs, only glosses over the profound corruption in the bloated financial sector, a culture of greed and selfishness, and the government intrusions into private rights of citizens as a reflexive response to their problem with a credibility trap. How can one allow free discussion, disclosure, and transparency during an ongoing widespread financial fraud that has compromised the political process?
He does not address the international trade regime based on mercantilism and 'free trade agreements,' started in the Clinton Administration, that have become predatory killing fields of the middle class workers and their rights.
But it is a good job given the time constraint, and an excellent starting point for the core of the discussion. The current level of inequality of access to power in the US is perhaps the root of much evil.
If only people have the ability to discuss things rationally, without resorting to slogans and caricatures fed to them by a well funded corporatist propaganda machine.
As Herman Hesse said, "When the suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward." So it is almost a certainty that the pain will become worse before the US moves forward.
But forward into what, only time will tell.
A video of today's Congressional Hearing called by Ron Paul titled “Investigating the Gold: H.R. 1495, the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011 and the Oversight of United States Gold Holdings” is available here.
July is traditionally a big delivery month for silver, and the Comex is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Unless it can obtain a sizable relief of physical bullion at the right price, it faces at least a de facto default in delivery by way of forced settlements. A Brink's customer pulled 1,426,355 oz. out of the Comex eligible warehouse inventory today. It seems as though hardly anyone sees it coming, which is quite interesting in and of itself since the math is fairly straightforward. Your leverage keeps increasing until your financial arrangements implode. And then there is a run on assets that are not there.
Well, let's see what happens, and how the monied interests muddle through the latest series of crises and opportunities to fleece the public on the cheap. There will be no reform until the looters are satiated, and the politicians get paid.
This market is certainly high drama and all that, especially with the fresh revelations that the central bankers have taken it upon themselves to lend out their nation's gold, which was sold for a profit in the market by their private banking cronies. News to some perhaps. But not really. It is just becoming harder for the pimps and pitchmen to pretend not to notice that the water is rising above their ankles, and the last train is pulling out of the station.
I am again including the scenario that shows a bottom here in gold, and the potential path to a new target of 1650. I will not give this one credibility until we are well past expiration.
As always, if there is a general liquidation event all bets are off.
I am getting the uncomfortable feeling that the continual stifling of reform and incessant greed of the pigmen is going to lead to something that looks a little bit more like the French revolution than we might have been expecting. Complacent arrogance is the predominant management and political style amongst the masters of the universe in the Western world. Get for a bonfire of the vanities. Some venues might become decidedly over-toasty for the bankers roasting their marshmallows.
The short position in stocks was useful today, especially coupled with a sale near the depths of the decline and the addition of new metals positions as they threw the miners away. But added a fresh short into the close, as we are hardly out of the woods, just yet.
"How could I have done this? I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. Am I a flawed character?”
“I realized from a very early stage that the financial market is a wholly rigged job. There’s no chance that investors have in this market.”
“It’s unbelievable. Goldman-- no one has any criminal convictions. The whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”
Bernie Madoff
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks."
John Dalberg Lord Acton
"I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others : Might makes right."
Carl Panzram, serial killer
"I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don't know how else to put it. It didn't satisfy me completely so maybe I was thinking another one will. Maybe this one will, and the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see."
Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer
Not all sociopaths wield knives and knotted cords. Some wear suits, and are exceptionally intelligent and articulate, obsessively driven, and are able to use and undermine the law and the rules for their advantage, like weapons. It is never about the win, never about the money. It is about the kill, the expression of their hatred, about elevating themselves with the suffering of others.
Bind, torture, kill. Not only with ropes and knives, but also with power and money, and the subversion of law. Lawlessness is their addiction, their will to power.
In the end what they want is to fill the hole in their being, which has tormented them from childhood, by destroying others, and to differentiate themselves from all those other lower being whom they hold in contempt. They find no commonality with human happiness and the normal life, because of the hatred they have for themselves, and their sense of alienation from all that is human. Their compulsion is to rape and destroy.
When societies become lax and complacent, these sociopaths can possess great political power through enormous sums of unprincipled money. And over time they become almost anti-human, destroyers of all that is good, all that is life, all that offends their insatiable sickness with its goodness. They twist the public against itself, and turn a broad sweep of society into their killing grounds.
This is the undeniable lesson of the last century. There are monsters, and they walk among us.
Interesting bear trap sprung in the afternoon as recycled news on Greece caused a huge reversal in the markets which had been down all day. It was said that the IMF and ECB had reached an agreement on a new bailout for Greece.
Never mind that the government of Papandreou has about the same political track as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and will probably be out on their ear before the end of summer, when the privatisation sale of Greece's public assets is consummated, more or less. If the Greek people do not toss them out on their ear first.
Look for more volatility dead ahead.
"You demagogues are like the fishers for eels;
in still waters they catch nothing,
but if they thoroughly stir up the slime,
their fishing is good;
in the same way it's only in troubled times
that you line your pockets."
Aristophanes, Ἱππεῖς Hippeîs
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"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones.
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.
The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).
It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
Albert Einstein, 1949
The tension between the power and wealth of the few and the rights and liberty of the many therefore requires a continuing commitment to government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A general and pernicious attack upon the obligations of government to regulate and limit the power of the powerful few over the many is the impulse of a nascent tyranny, and the wellspring of treason.
Gold and Silver continue to drift higher. The shares continued to outperform bullion today.
"When they (western central banks) report having 30,000+ tons, that is not true. They may say they still maintain ownership, but they do not have it and they will never get it back. It’s been sold, it’s gone into the market and it’s gone." John Embry
I am back down to a bare gold bullion position, and short the US stock indices. This will be my short term position until I see the stock market bounce and breakout of overhead resistance.
The equity market did not respond well to Bernanke's toothless jawboning today. The average person has not awakened from their slumber, but their sleep is not untroubled. The deception begins to unravel, slowly but surely.
