SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - WakuWaku Dokidoki

That's Japanese for the incredible feeling of heart pounding excitement-- as you push that pedal to the metal on a really hot new Toyota. 

For a bearish sort it might be the feel of the air rushing over your body as you fall off a cliff, perhaps.

So the bears got a brief thrill today as stocks 'finally' peeled off a second layer of the year end paintjob from just a few weeks ago, and slipped a bit off their Fed blown asset bubble.

The VIX is a bit more understated, coming as it has from almost still life complacency even after last weeks Jobs miss.

Follow through is everything, and so fare we have not yet broken the uptrend on the March SP 500, which is around the numerically important 1800 level.  So the bearish excitement is probably premature, as it has been since the last meaningful correction in 2011.

This weeks economic calendar is included below. It is packed with facts, but only a few market movers in the bunch.

Chartered offered a figure slightly north of $61 Billion for Time Warner after the close.

Have a pleasant evening.

Real News: Hedges and Binney on NSA Policy Part 2

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Credibility Trap: Fatal Web of Lies

From "Bill Moyers World of Ideas" 1994 Interview with ethicist Sissela Bok:

"As a philosopher, Sissela Bok grapples with hard truths – and with hard untruths, as well. Her writings explore the psychology of lying, the consequences of deception, and the perils of keeping secrets. With advanced degrees in both psychology and philosophy, she has taught ethics at Harvard’s Medical School, the Kennedy School of Government, and philosophy at Brandeis University. Her books include Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life and A Strategy for Peace."

Moyers: Can a republic die of too many lies?

Sissela Bok: I think a republic definitely could—especially if the lies are also covered up by various methods of secrecy. If you combine lying and secrecy, and if you also bring in violence so that secrecy covers up for schemes of lying and violence, then I think a republic can die.

I don’t think it’s possible for citizens to have very much of an effect if they literally don’t know what’s going on.

A credibility trap is a condition in which the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud. The leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The influential status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited, at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards them.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it can be seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system.

The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, 'organized hypocrisy.'

Related Reading:

JP Morgan and Madoff: Nesting Dolls of Fraud, Pam Martens

America's Gilded Capital: Losing Democracy to the Predator Class

Chris Hedges: The False Left-Right Paradigm and the Fatal Intransigence of Oligarchies

"In the same way, those who possess wealth and power in poor nations must accept their own responsibilities. They must lead the fight for those basic reforms which alone can preserve the fabric of their societies. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

John F. Kennedy, First Anniversary of the Alliance For Progress

History Lesson

Tsar Nicholas II:   I know what will make them happy. They're children, and they need a Tsar! They need tradition. Not this! They're the victims of agitators. A Duma would make them bewildered and discontented. And don't tell me about London and Berlin. God save us from the mess they're in!

Count Witte:   I see. So they talk, pray, march, plead, petition and what do they get? Cossacks, prison, flogging, police, spies, and now, after today, they will be shot. Is this God's will? Are these His methods? Make war on your own people? How long do you think they're going to stand there and let you shoot them? YOU ask ME who's responsible? YOU ask?

Tsar Nicholas II:   The English have a parliament. Our British cousins gave their rights away. The Hapsburgs, and the Hoehenzollerns too. The Romanovs will not. What I was given, I will give my son.

Rappaport, Last Days of the Romanovs