SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts

Stocks pulled back today as the negative divergence of tech over the financially heavy SP 500 gained some traction.

The news about slack auto sales in China is just more evidence of a disjointed world economy.

So far this is just the market exhaling, or back and filling if you prefer.

There are concerns with the proposed ECB bond buying plans, and high expectations for Bernanke's latest model of QE which has yet to hit the showroom floor.

Let's see what happens.

Thoughts For Believers On a Sunday Afternoon - God As Vending Machine

I have some words of caution in particular for the believers in God today.

The struggles of the faithful may provide some false cheer for those who believe in nothing but themselves, and who delight in the failings of those who follow the Way, and those who aspire to God in His vastness, and in the Truth. But that is just another portion of their confusion and delusion. They say, 'see these are not perfect, and this is why I do not believe.' No, that is just another excuse from a hardened heart. The past century alone is dripping with the blood of those who worship nothing but the dark powers of this world, and themselves.

And as for believers who condemn the differences amongst themselves, let them be concerned for themselves. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone at another, because as you judge, so it will be given to you.

We are all sinners, even those of the faithful, who continually stumble and fall, even with the best of intentions. And yet we need not despair, because God is merciful, and sees deeply into our hearts, as He made us.

But there is always a tendency in some of the faithful of God, those Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and those who worship God in other ways, to begin to love the rituals and the mannerisms, the words and status of their faith, the comfortable accoutrements, moreso than what the faith itself represents, and what it commands of us.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself."

And some think of faithfulness to God as a transaction, as if God were merely a vending machine. If I say the right words, if I am born to the right people and worship in the finest buildings, if I pronounce the ritual properly as prescribed, then I am among the faithful, the elect, and I am saved, no matter what else I may do. And all too often that 'saving' implies a worldly prosperity and honors. 

The words and the covenant compel God, since I have called out to Him in accordance with the ritual, as if I were not calling out to the purest being above all else, the Holy Spirit, but pushing buttons on a machine, or summoning a demon to be my personal servant.

Your words will provide what your heart commands.

And this may even include the most zealous, who with grand gestures and exorbitant demonstrations seem to be the most ardent, the first among the faithful. But when one listens to them, their words betray them, because there is nothing of the love of God and of His creation and of their fellows in their words, which are mottled with hash judgements, violence and a defiant hardness of heart.

"Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to Me...Whatever you have not done for the least of these, you have not done for Me."

Be careful of this. This gospel of greed and abuse of the faith is a sin against the Spirit, the one sin which will not be easily forgiven. It is the desecration of the word, and what is most holy.

"And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognised by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.

But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."

Matthew 12:31-37


"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13


"Those who disbelieve after believing, then plunge deeper into disbelief, their repentance will not be accepted from them; they are the real strayers.

Those who disbelieve and die as disbelievers, an earthful of gold will not be accepted from any of them, even if such a ransom were possible. They have incurred painful retribution; they will have no helpers.

You cannot attain righteousness until you give to charity from the possessions you love. Whatever you give to charity, God is fully aware thereof."

Quran 3:90-92


"Love your neighbor as yourself."

Leviticus 19:18

or as Rabbi Hillel said so eloquently,

"That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go and learn it."

Elizabeth Warren: 'The System Is Rigged'

Friday Night: Chris Hedges and Jonathan Haidt on Corporations, Liberals, and Conservatives

"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 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 organized 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, Why Socialism? 1949

While I agree with Einstein's diagnosis of the systemic flaw in market capitalism, which can be addressed by regulatory actions prohibiting monopolies and the abuse of power, I have to note that his follow on endorsement of central planning and socialism makes the same Utopian leap of faith about the natural goodness and rationality of human nature that the proponents of free market capitalism make.

The first video is part of an interesting discussion between Chris Hedges and Jonathan Haidt on the financial crisis at the 92nd Street Y.

Haidt is a psychologist who is doing some fascinating work in examining human values, and has done some interesting testing in the differences between liberals and conservatives, which is included in the second video.

I have to note that Haidt assumes what seems to be a normal distribution, or perhaps rather a distribution of normality, that does not seem to take sociopaths and psychopaths into their proper account. And more generally there is an element of the irrational that seems to introduce the occasional random act into human behaviour that runs contrary to the values of otherwise rational people.

 Like economists, the psychologists sometimes crush the individuality of the person to fit their models a bit.

The concept he presents is not entirely new. Such approaches to human values, including testing not for political preference but for a wider range of measures, go back to the 1970s at least, using six dimensions of perceived value called Order, Physical, Emotional, Scientific, Social, Enterprising. It had some remarkable applications in vocational and therapeutic testing. And there have been other such tests and measures, often with four or five dimensions.

I would also make a distinction between ends and means, between moral values and politics.  For my way of thinking moral values are ends we may hold, and politics, which is what Haidt is describing, are the means to achieve those ideals.

 What Hedges is saying is that we have lost a sense of values, 'the sacred,'  which has been sacrificed on the altar of commerce, led by the high priests of a destructively anti-human economic, almost to the point of psychopathy. And that is the source of his concerns.  And I think that is why he and Haidt talk past one another a bit.  Haidt talks about what he can measure, whereas Hedges is thinking at a level above that.

Hedges also references the way in which people's values can be twisted and manipulated by lies and even propaganda, so that they do things that are unintended and even irrational, outside of their normal value system, as in the objectification of the individual by the stereotype.  Haidt seems to miss that, as it is crushed out of his model.

Haidt's talk is nonetheless thoroughly enjoyable, and his development of his ideas highly entertaining. And you may even go and take his online test, and see how you stack up as a conservative and a liberal and what that really implies. I drew some insights from it, and you may do so as well.