Credibility Trap: The War On Whistleblowers

“Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.”

John Dalberg Lord Acton

“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both."

James Madison

"There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

John F. Kennedy

It comes down to money and reputations.  It comes down to the personal and narrowly selfish priorities of a powerful and often complacent status quo.

Managers and executives who form close and personally profitable relationships with outside suppliers and money managers seek to drive more and more business to them, even when it may greatly disadvantage their own people and their own organizations. 

They may choose to serve their own pride, their own careers, and too often personal gain above their oaths of office.  And they may go to great lengths to hide mistakes and to ignore and excuse incompetency.

This is the self serving money vortex of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Security, and Big Finance, in partnership with their patrons in the government bureaucracy.

This is the credibility trap.

 The only questions are what do they have to hide, and why?

The US War On Whistleblowers

This documentary is also available on Netflix streaming. 

 

"He was hated and rejected, a man of sorrows, acquainted with the deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care."

Isaiah 53:3


"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,  who kills its prophets and stones those who are sent to help her. How often I would like to have gathered your children in safety, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. And you were not willing."

Matt 23:37

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Cap, Cap, Cap

This was a very quiet trade for the day after a Comex Option Expiration. That in itself was notable.

There are those who claim that there is a 'China Put' under the metals markets here. Well, let's hope so.

As you may know, we are sliding into the Labor Day three day weekend that will mark the end of Summer, and have us looking forward to September which is an active month for Silver, but not for Gold.

The Comex did not bother producing any data for the metals as you can see from the notice below. The warehouse activity was not worth noting from Madame Tussauds-on-the-Hudson, Liar's Poker edition.

Other than that, it was cap, cap, cap.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Days of Summer

These are very lazy, almost languid, markets as the hot weather of Summer has the denizens of the canyons of New York out frolicking in the Hamptons or wherever.

Our local town, which is on a long established commuter rail line into the City, is almost like a ghost town.

But the A-Team will be coming back to the markets next week, after the three day Labor Day weekend.

And they will see an equity market well levitated up to some fairly lofty levels, based on expectations of easing in Europe, and continuing soft money policy out of the Fed. With light volumes, because while Wall Street is thriving, Main Street is barely surviving. Ah, the new normal.

If the massive Alibaba IPO was not coming up in the latter part of September, I would expect the wiseguys to dump this market for about five percent. But there are so few retail buyers in there to be knocked about, they will probably have to home in on the institutions. Otherwise it is a matter of professional courtesy for the Banks not to skin the funds, or at least the bigger ones. Or perhaps not.

I think we have a good shot at going back down to the trendline anyway, in a classic wash and rinse at least once more before the Forty Thieves show up to peddle Alibaba's riches.  They will want to bring it out into a rising market and honestly, how much further do you think the market can go from here?

Incident risk remains highly elevated. This is a 'sponge cake' market, with liquidity possessing a half-life of microseconds. This market has a Panic button wired to a pile of dynamite, and the Yellen Fed is pouring gasoline over it every day.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Statism is Relativism With Reference Only To Itself

"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity.

From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable. ”

Benito Mussolini, Diuturna

That philosophy described by Benito is fiat with a capital 'F.'  

In a fascist or more properly statist regime, the state is above all else.  All values, including money, are whatever we say that they are, to the extent that the state can back them up with whatever amount of fraud and force that are required.  Everything that a tyrant or tyrant state does is legal, because they hold their power as the ultimate source of the law, without the appeal to reasonableness or recourse to equanimity.

This is directly opposed to the principle of a higher justice that is embodied in the rule of law.   There can be no real independent justice if there is no value transcending human power.  If there is no standard of truth, then all ideas are equally meaningless and without inherent value unless backed by power and the will to decree 'let it be done.'  

A trillion dollars may be represented by market tested legal debt, by a finite store of gold, a single platinum coin, or the stalk of a rotting turnip, if we say that it is so.  All of these ideas are equally true says the sophist, and all value is arbitrary, to be decided by the will of the state.

This is the very blueprint for abuse from the extremes of both the left and the right, the statists of the Socio-Political Continuum who see power as the greatest good, whether their perspective is from the left or the right.

The great American innovation was to claim that certain values are self-evident, true without contingency to a counterparty, because they have been endowed as a part of nature by a transcendent power.   They may have made sometimes strong distinctions between human religions and that transcendent power, but the acknowledgement of the subordination of the law to certain higher values is unmistakable.  And because those values did not come from the state, they are 'inalienable' even by the state.

Yes, we can argue about the implications, dimensions and definitions of rights and freedoms.  But we can never cynically dismiss them as did the statists of the 20th century, most of whom also by necessity adopted a state religion, from state atheism to a vague neo-pagan mythology of the blood or some other state sponsored belief that was a tool of their official will.

I know this should be obvious, but it is remarkable how easily people can forget the basis for the great American experiment and the principles that inspired it.  It is the philosophical notion of the legal restraint of power and accountability of government to its source in the people themselves endowed with values and privileged by a power above the state.

Now, one can certainly argue how those standards will be incorporated into the law, and what those standards ought to be in practice.  But it is undeniable that there must be non-arbitrary standards, and that the law is not in any way sufficient to itself.  This is no form of legalism or a religion of the law. 

 

The law itself is answerable to those standards of authority granted by the consent of the governed with the bounds of recognizing that which exists transcendently.

"If there's no God and no life beyond the grave, doesn't that mean that men will be allowed to do whatever they want?'  

'Didn't you know that already?' he said and laughed again. 'An intelligent man can do anything he likes as long as he's clever enough to get away with it."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

And once again, I am not saying that there ought to be a gold standard per se. Not at all. There are many ways to set standards and maintain them, with gold having many of the key characteristics of a good external standard.  And so it can inform us by its historical example.

 

All things can be turned to evil, even inherently good things.  Our system is capable of corrupting almost anything including the word of God itself, and our own Constitution if we allow it.   Our hypocrisy knows few bounds, and our law has too often descended into a mere ritual of legality with little enough reference to justice.

But those things that are transcendent of human power and our pride at least remind us that we are doing evil, and that we are not sufficient unto ourselves as the arbiters of the universe. 

But I will go so far to say that virtually every would-be statist who wishes to set themselves up as an authority by fiat will almost certainly find gold to be troublesome, an impediment, and something to be feared and if possible, controlled.  

Like private conscience, and a belief in a power greater than the power of the state, gold whispers in the silence to us, that something is terribly wrong.

It was a quiet option expiration on the Comex today.  More on that tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.