"Quite a lot of what passes itself off as dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices. Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective."
Timothy Kreider, We Learn Nothing, 2012
"But there is a sort of 'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."
Robert Johnson, Audacious Oligarchy
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. Or a game, without personal consequences.
The Fed did what was expected with interest rates today which was to stay their course and have a plan to keep raising rates as the economy continues to improve.
Their words were carefully sifted, and after an initial push higher stocks slumped.
The Dollar was interesting as it initially dumped, and then spiked higher into the close.
The bottom line is that nothing has changed.
The 'recovery' continues weakly, with its results and benefits skewed very unevenly towards the top of the income stack.
Today on twitter Ron Insana said that we are not experiencing stagflation, but just the normal economic conditions that appear in a 'late stage recovery.'
What recovery? And for whom? When did that happen? Oh The Recovery™. Riiiight.
The Fed is starting to declare 'mission accomplished' with regard to stimulating inflation to justify their raising rates far enough above the zero bound to give themselves some room for policy actions when their latest asset bubble starts to implode.
The geo-political risks are 'concerning.'
At the end of the day the unresolved corruption and frauds that have become embedded in the system, such that not much would tend to surprise me. We have had a market break earlier this year. And now we are vacillating in a range with lower highs and rising lows, coiling into a wedge.
Scenarios like this will often resolve with some violence, triggered by some trivial-seeming event if it goes on long enough. I am not sure which way, but it does not feel good given the non-economic risks and the utter lack of organic growth in the real median wage.
I have a very open mind for a market dislocation in the second half of this year. And the reaction it may trigger could be rather disconcerting even to hardened corporatist cynics. There is some precedent for this in history.
"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, [corporate media], and lobbying industry."
Charles Ferguson
The establishment media loves to play the red-blue game that has been set up by the corporate oligarchs. The left has their watering holes, and the right has their testosterone pits. And those who find comfort in black and white red-blue treatments of political and social issues will tend to migrate to one or the other, to find comfort among liars and hypocrites who 'say for pay.'
At the highest levels it is really not a red-blue game at all, except when it manifests as a power struggle between what may seem like competing crime families.
We are in a period of historically extreme economic inequality. And it is not some accident, or some act of God, or innocent mistake in economic theories by well intentioned philosopher kings.
Society has been divided into the have-little-or-nothings and the have-most-and-want-all-the-rests. This is both a side effect and a feature of a kleptocracy.
The leading figures of both sides of the aisle and their enablers in the press and the universities are also very aware of their positions in this great divide, where they wish to be, and whom they serve. And they guard their positions quite jealously. We are in a virtualized society managed around positions, connections, and credentials— it's all about access and license.
I get it. One can be led, slowly but surely, to the top of a very high mountain. And from there you are shown the vast material splendours of the world. And you are flattered, and congratulated on having 'made it.' You are special, and not like all the rest.
And you are subtly instructed on what you must do going forward to maintain your special status, your access to power, and your collection of toys, and hosts of flatterers and admirers. I am not speaking figuratively here, but in some cases literally. This happens.
And if you go forward they entangle you, and you come to believe that you deserve it, all of it. And they teach you to secretly despise the good and the innocent and the weak as being naive or bitter, and a drain on your resources— and you are theirs.
Each of us in our own way will have experience some such encounter between good and evil. Some moreso than others. But in every case, the presence of good and evil in this world are not imaginary, or the result of some stomach upset or poor choice in base case economic assumptions.
And the choice of whom to serve, generally made over time, is also real. Most of the time people make it but don't think about it. They find their comfort in illusions and distractions.
Only by the grace of God are we saved from the lion's mouth. I can work for free for the rest of my life, always falling in fear and trembling as a poor servant but always rising, to repay that tender mercy and never really be worthy, but obligated nonetheless.
We know what we must do. His yoke is easy and his burden light. Need little, want less, love more.
"The devil led him to the top of a very high mountain, and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world, arrayed throughout in their vast material splendors. And the devil said to him, 'All of these, with their mighty power and awesome wealth, I will give to you, if you will only fall down and worship me.' And Jesus said, 'Get behind me, Satan, for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and him only will you serve.’ Then the devil left, and angels came to comfort him."
Matthew 4:8-11
Apple is reporting its numbers after the bell, along with a few other tech stocks like Snapchat. Apple has apparently beaten its numbers, and is offering some additional monies for stock buybacks and dividends. Snapchat was getting spanked.
Stocks were weak in the morning, but rallied into the afternoon and the close.
Gold and silver were weak on continuing Dollar strength.
Tomorrow afternoon we will hear the results of the two day FOMC meeting. The Fed is expected to do nothing at this meeting except change some verbage.
There is a record short position in US Treasuries, no doubt from punters betting on the continuing upward push in interest rates, and the corresponding decline in Treasuries prices.
When that many punters lean into one side of a trade you might expect the insiders to give them a gut check, with two for flinching.
Short term the US Dollar is very overbought. Depending on what the Fed says and does tomorrow that could become the basis for some retrenchment.
I spent a pleasant afternoon checking out the new E series of John Deere Lawn Tractors and finally bought one. I am too knackered to keep mowing the yard with the walk behind. My knee is going to take another couple of months to finally heal from the wrestling match I had this past winter with a fallen tree.
Owning a small plot of land and caring for it, maintaining it as a place of tranquil order and peaceful beauty, is one of life's simple but finer pleasures.
The world of the fallen will not love you, or sustain your heart. It will strip your soul bare of happiness and contentment, and devour you. But God resides in an ordered garden, and delights there with the simplest and most humble of His creatures.
"A good parson once said that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?"
Edmund Burke
"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"
PBS Frontine, The Warning
"The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”
Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General
"After dinner, Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: they don’t criticize other insiders."
Elizabeth Warren
Welcome, fun-seekers, to a new week, romping through our empire's great markets of freedom for all, and an ever-expanding series of financial asset bubbles and moral hazards since the mid 1990's.
But fear not, it is surely different this time. All the finest people tell you so.
Today the financial channels were busy presenting the thoughts of the financial elites who were attending the annual Milk'em Conference in Beverly Hills. Most of that they had to say was self-serving nonsense, but that is essentially what they are paid the big bucks to do.
Stocks were showing a bit of strength today, until Benjamin Netanyahu, the PM of Israel, delivered a national address bombshell saying that he had literally tons of proof that Iran had based its nuclear arms deal on a pack of lies. Trumpolini, who presumably had been given a 'heads up' on this, was quick to add, 'see just like I said.'
And so geopolitical risk tumbled back into the markets, at least for the moment. Stocks slumped and gold and silver took back part of the jamjob they had been undergoing from the open in honor of an FOMC/NFP week.
I think it is reasonable to take a highly skeptical stance on quite a few things that we are told these days. The scolding voice of the very important media poobah may say, 'You little upstart, how dare you question our faithful public servants?'
You dare not question them, and they dare not allow it, because they have so much to hide.
To be caught lying used to be a career-ending behaviour among the privileged, but now it seems to be the rule, almost a right of passage. Lying has no consequences. Indeed, it is de rigueur, almost expected, of a public figure. How else could their fellows trust them to be complacent, to do the corrupt thing?
And these days cleverness is passe— the more blatant the lie the better, especially if it is punctuated with some vulgar personal insult to show that you mean business, and are not to be trifled with.
But publicly telling the liars that they are liars is considered highly impolite, and 'not unifying.' Any outsider who dares to tell the elite that they are full of it will provoke alarmed reproaches from their colleagues in the established and the privileged.
After all, the elite are caught in a terrible credibility trap, and the least amount of truth telling sounds like a gunshot in the room. Our established thought leaders in the media will not continue to be insiders, with access to power and big paychecks, if they openly question or allow impertinent questions to be asked of their fellow insiders.
This uneven distribution of power and lack of moral principles is going to end badly. It always does. And that fear of the consequences of justice is shamelessly deployed to cause reform to lose its nerve. Do you recall the arguments that were made to justify the last financial bailout?
Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall. Life will go on.
That will not be the heavens falling, but those who elevate themselves, as if they were our angels, but inside have the very hearts of devils. And the scales of justice will at long last be rebalanced.
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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