“Depart from me, you accursed. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not comfort me.' They answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not care for you?' He answered, 'Truly I tell you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.’” Matthew 25:40-46
Stocks were in rally mode today despite the poor economic news out of China over the weekend, or perhaps because of it.
Some of the Streetsweepers noticed that Fed Gov Lockhart did not say 'September' in his latest pronouncement about his bias towards raising rates, barring an economic Armageddon.
Why in particular a three month difference in raising rates off the zero bound by 25 basis points strikes me as odd.
More likely today's rally was a 'just because' excuse to start a new wash-rinse cycle, because after all, the little people were selling into the fears of last week, so it is now time to turn the greediators back on and heat this bubble back up.
This market is so bent that it is hard to be cynical enough about it.
Let's see if they can keep this going, with a little help from Shake Shack after the bell. What an emblem for our financialized economy.
Everyone would like to know when this bubble will end. Timing is difficult. But the 'how' it may look is a little more approachable. For an idea on what it might look like, see the video below.
It is surprising how many people do not know about, have never even heard about, the first victims of the Nazi concentration camps and Euthanasia programs.
The first victims of the Konzentrationslager, concentration camps, were largely the political opposition to Hitler: the Social Democrats, the intellectuals, the communists.
"The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA (Sturmabteilungen; commonly known as Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons—the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy.
German authorities established camps all over Germany on an ad hoc basis to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives. The SS established larger camps in Oranienburg, north of Berlin; Esterwegen, near Hamburg; Dachau, northwest of Munich; and Lichtenburg, in Saxony. In Berlin itself, the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under investigation by the Gestapo, the German secret state police, until 1936."
But as brutal as they were, these first concentration camps were meant to remove and intimidate opposition to the regime. We must never forget how the people of conscience among the German people were cowed into submission, to remove and silence their voices and serve as an example to the rest.
The first victims of mass murder were the disabled, the emotionally impaired, and the unproductive. Hitler personally signed an order to begin the 'mercy killings' of men, women and children who were in state run hospitals and schools, and even in private care. The reason they were murdered is that they were deemed to be too expensive to live, too unrproductive, too much of a drain on the people and the state. This even included people with what today might be considered treatable and transitory mental illnesses such as depression. If you showed the wrong kinds of weakness, you were disposed of, and often brutally by starvation.
Why have most of us never heard about this? For two or three reasons perhaps.
First, of course, is that the weakest, then as it is now, have few to rise up and speak on their behalf against the power of an over-reaching State and the sociopaths among us. Where is the lobby that speaks on behalf of the poor and the disabled, the sick and the defenseless? Yes, the churches and different groups may speak out, but they are easily marginalized and overwhelmed by slogans and insults.
Second, the sad truth is that this first mass killing compromised the greater part of the German professional class: the lawyers, the doctors, the nurses, the economists, the media, and other ambitious placeseekers.
People who knew what was happening either approved or pretended not to see it. It was a very poor career decision to oppose such a policy, especially since as I noted above the most visible opponents of the new regime were being carted off to Dachau starting in 1933.
And German propaganda was weighing heavily from early days on the notion that some people were not fit to live in a society that must be economically and physically tough. They hardened the peoples' hearts, slowly but surely. The needs of 'the State', which was really a gang of self-absorbed sociopaths caught in the will to power and riches, resembling thugs and gangsters, were judged to be the highest priority.
The Nazis believed that male homosexuals were weak, effeminate men who could not fight for the German nation. They saw homosexuals as unlikely to produce children and increase the German birthrate. The Nazis held that inferior races produced more children than 'Aryans,' so anything that diminished Germany's reproductive potential was considered a racial danger.
Of course all of this line of thinking found its full fury in some of the most horrific organized mass killings in human history, primarily of the Jews, and to some extent the Slavs. Although it certainly included other non-Aryan groups like gypsies. It was a terrible and horrible act. It is hard to imagine where and how far it might have gone if it had not been finally stopped.
But people also tend to forget that although there was organized murder on a large scale beyond any question, the camps were also important hubs of slave labor, with the weakest being murdered outright, and the rest slowly worked to death in the war factories and special projects. Always the decisions had a strong economic element of 'practicality.' It was the triumph of utilitarianism and madness.
Like most terrible and horrible acts, it did not begin with a single event, a single decision. It began with a profound intolerance for other people, ideas and dissent; and then, when it found its political footing and felt more confident, it found the will to murder the weakest, the most vulnerable, and those who had no one to speak for them. And its unquenchable thirst for power, money and blood was unleashed. For when all the laws of God and men have been knocked down and flattened, who then can stand when the cold winds blow across the land.
This is how a nation and a people can begin their long and painful descent into barbarism and bestiality: by a program to stifle dissent, and then to use the media and the journals to harden the hearts of the people with fear, and corrupt practical ideas about who is or is not 'worthy of life,' marginalizing the poor, the vulnerable, and the different.
People craft romantic images of themselves and their group as strong and more cunning and ruthless than most, exceptional, like predators entitled to their prey. And so over time they become truly distorted and corrupt, grotesques, and make themselves into beasts.
This is how it is always with the will to power. And in the end it only serves itself, consuming all.
"For thousands of years gold has been, in times of war and crisis, the ultimate store of value and medium of exchange. Gold is virtually indestructible, anonymous, mobile and almost universally acceptable.
In times of crisis and uncertainty the presence of a sizeable gold holding boosts confidence of creditors, not least because gold is the highest quality asset: unlike foreign currencies, it is not a claim on a debtor (bank or government) and therefore does not have the same risk of default in times of crisis."
Staff Report, Bank of England, 1988
The Jobs Report came in weakly, but not enough to deter the Fed which is staunchly in favor of breaking the ribbon on the first rate increase since they instituted an alphabet soup of programs culminating in QE and ZIRP to rescue the financial system and the very wealthy. That must have been their motive, because that is about the only thing that they have accomplished.
The precious metals are being manipulated by a pool. I am not entirely sure who all of the participants may be, but a few of them are hard to miss.
But no matter. These things have happened before. And we know what they look like, and what happens to them over time.
And this instance will be no different. It will enrich some and cause significant damage to many, with the few giving their actions little thought, much less any shame. Such are the works of the selfish and the self-important. It is a phenomenon as old as Babylon and as evil as sin.
“Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.”
Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion
“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
Like so many of our public moments and instruments, such as the financial markets and public figures, the First Republican Primary Debate last night can best be described as 'a spectacle.' But that was clearly its design and intent, from start to finish.
There was never any mention of the risks in the financial markets and reform, except to repeat the hollow slogans of deregulation and the gods of the markets. There was posturing and personal gossip galore. There is less phony pandering to the crowd in a singles bar on a Friday night.
The closing chorus of the Pharisees was almost too much to bear.
I know this is 'politics.' And there has always been exceptional bad behaviour among the rich and powerful.
But at least in my lifetime we are setting the bar lower and lower, in so many ways. I remember Nixon and McCarthy. While we may have feared them for a time, we always knew what they were, and so did they.
Last night was awkwardly boorish, self-consciously shallow, garishly hypocritical, and embarrassing.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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