"All the world marveled at this, and gave their allegiance to the Beast. And they worshiped the serpent, for giving such power to him, as they also worshiped the Beast. 'Who is as great as the Beast?' they exclaimed. 'And who is able to resist him?' And the Beast was allowed to commit great blasphemies against God."
Revelation 13:3-5
As a reminder there is a stock option expiration at the end of this week.
The stock market has been buoyed by whomever, for whatever reasons, since the Trump election last week.
I suspect that it will be running out of gas, about now. But let's wait to see it reach its apogee.
There are some big changes, and likely some shocks coming.
Not a good time for the Fed, which has been in the long term confidence, bubble-blowing game far too many years now.
Let's allow Trump to show his true colours in his appointments. I am trying to ignore most of the rumours, some of which are calculated to alarm people perhaps.
"When is a crisis reached? When questions arise that cannot be answered."
Ryszard Kapuscinski
And it is also when the excessive leverage of a financialized market begins to implode, as the holders of claims discover that they have been the unwitting victims of misrepresented counterparty risks.
I am upgrading my computer and I am going to have to spend a little time on that one, getting some software and applications that are misbehaving sorted out.
The US dollar was on another tear higher today, and so we saw some weakness in the precious metals.
The bonds, especially the longer dated ones, have been getting beaten up of late. No real surprise there as they were caught up in a mispricing of risk, or in plainer words a bubble, for quite some time, compliments of the Fed.
Stocks were mixed to lower, with the usual suspects showing some resilience in the SP, not so much in the NDX which is tech heavy.
This 'flight to risk' which we have been seeing since the election is acting heavy now, and may be coming to an end.
I have taken money out of cash and put it back into the metals, and selectively in the miners, over the past two trading days.
"There are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory — and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah — I won't say Adam and Eve, because they had a less complicated situation — but, at least, back in the days of the flood, there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks...
We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God...
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time— but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
“But now, we are witnessing a transformation— a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume."
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills its prophets, and persecutes God's messengers."
The 'drum major instinct' according to Martin Luther King is the impulse to lead, to be praised, to be the center of attention, to set yourself apart from and above your fellows, and to have more money and power than everyone else.
It can become the destructive impulse to arrogant pride and blind selfishness, and thereby becomes corrosive to society, our relationships, and our personal well being.
And it most certainly can lead politicians and the professional class to dance blithely along the path to their own self-annihilation.
History has proven that.
'But I have been in public service for twenty years! Look what I have done!'
Yes, look around you, and see what you and yours have done.
See the poverty and misery of so many. See your spin, your cynical hypocrisy, and your lawless betrayal of all that you had once believed in, for the pursuit of your own advancement and wealth.
You may have even managed to convince yourself and others that you were doing it for the greater good, while you were becoming a greedy, pathological liar, and everything that you had once despised.
But what does it profit a man...
See what you have done, and the burden that you carry because of it, before it is too late to change it and make amends.
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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