"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty. Once a certain class of people has been placed by the authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."
Simone Weil, 1947
“They support freedom for themselves and slavery for everyone else, and they use the freedom of the market to disguise this. Economic coercion is just a different form of force.”
Robert Peate
“As long as there are crazed or crafty leaders to play on old fears, a mob will turn cruel.”
Leigh Brackett
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil. And there is perhaps no surer way of infecting ourselves with virulent hatred toward a person than by doing him a grave injustice.”
Eric Hoffer
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not for every man's greed."
Mohandas K. Gandhi
The Non-Farm Payrolls Report came in hot this morning.
One might have thought that this would put a dent in the market, as the number might encourage the hawks among the Fed governors.
But no, stocks went off on a melt up rally to new highs.
The market took the numbers as a sign of recovery, and were trusting in Chairman Powell's tender dovishness with the money spigot.
In the short term perception and the power of leverage is all that matters, especially in an asset bubble.
And gold and silver were also off on a fairly remarkable rally, as the coiling suppression they have been taking on the chin suddenly broke free.
Let's see if gold can hold a breakout over 1800 which has been so psychologically intimidating.
The Dollar was off a bit but managing to hang on to the 94 handle and then some.
There will come a time when you will realize what truly matters in your life, at least at the very end.
Let's hope that this comes sooner for us all, rather than too late, at a time when we can see past all the distractions and false gods of our own passionate obsessions, and still do something about it.
Can you imagine what the realization that it was all simply true as you were told, but did not listen and just pushed aside with other distractions and things, must be like?
The regret must be stunning, almost unimaginable. All else pales before it.
What a loss to bear.
Need little, want less, love more. For this, in the end, is all that matters.
"We are coming apart as a society, and inequality is right at the core of that. When the 90 percent are getting worse off and they’re trying to figure out what happened, they’re not people like me who get to spend four or five hours a day studying these things and then writing about them — they’re people who have to make a living and get through life. And they’re going to be swayed by demagogues and filled with fear about the other, rather than bringing us together.
President Theodore Roosevelt said we shall all rise together or we shall all fall together, and we need to have an appreciation of that.
I think it would be easy for someone to arrive in the near future and really create forces that would lead to trouble in this country. And you see people who, they’re not the leaders to pull it off, but we have suggestions that the president should be killed, that he’s not an American, that Texas can secede, that states can ignore federal law, and these are things that don’t lack for antecedents in America history but they’re clearly on the rise.
In addition to that, we have this large, very well-funded news organization that is premised on misconstruing facts and telling lies, Faux News that is creating, in a large segment of the population — somewhere around one-fifth and one-fourth of it — belief in all sorts of things that are detrimental to our well-being.
So, no, I don’t see this happening tomorrow, but I have said for many years that if we don’t get a handle on this then one of these days our descendants are going to sit down in high-school history class and open a textbook that begins with the words: The United States of America was … and then it will dissect how our experiment in self-governance came apart."
David Cay Johnston, May 2014
"Inequality is a euphemism, a kind of shorthand, for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious, year on year, for the last three decades. And also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious in that same time. This word inequality. It's visible in the ever rising costs of healthcare and college, in the coronation of Wall Street, and the slow blighting of wherever it is that you happen to live.
And you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick, or you read about the lobbying industry that drives Washington DC, or the new political requirement, the new constitutional requirement that every presidential candidate has to be a billionaire's favorite, or a billionaire themselves.
Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street from you loses his house."
Thomas Frank
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony. We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment.
We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits. We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation."
Jeffrey Sachs
Stocks were on another risk on rally today, with the SP and NDX making new highs again.
After the bell some of the big story stocks like Peloton and Uber and Square were getting spanked on their earnings and guidance.
Ed Yardeni assures us that stocks are not rising due to any monetary support from the Fed, but from their wonderful earnings growth.
Like I said yesterday— delusional.
Well in fairness there is a lot of that going around these days.
Gold and silver bounced back, along with the Dollar which took back the 94 handle decisively.
Hmmmm. Now why would these three canaries rise on a risk on day.
Besides the shock from the Bank of England, the bond market's unreliable boyfriend.
"Narcissists are unstable and go through repeated cycles of self-destruction, with other people usually paying the heft of the price. Narcissists tend to be divisive, vindictive, confrontational, aggressive, hate-filled, raging, incoherent, judgment-impaired, and irrational."
Sam Vaknin
"Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries. 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, and lobbying industry.
If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012
“The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over. Provided too that its passions, hatreds, fears are catered to. The grosser, the bigger, the cruder the lie, the more readily is it believed and followed. The mob has no memory; needless to pretend to any truth: the mob is radically incapable of perceiving it: the mob can never comprehend that its own interests are what is at stake.”
Alexandre Koyré, Réflexions sur le Mensonge
“Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.”
Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician
Maybe not so much corrupt in the common sense, but selfish, lacking empathy, and willfully delusional.
The Fed gave the equity markets the sugar-coated message they wanted to hear, and it was artfully done.
And so stocks went on a tear to the upside,with new highs on most of the major indices.
Of note was the strength in the Russell 2000, and the resurgence in the big cap tech sled dogs.
Gold and silver were smacked down early and hard.
If you are trading on momentum and leverage, you probably got blown out of your positions.
But by the end of the day silver was back in the green, and gold had recovered much of its decline, to finish back up near the trading channel it has been climbing.
The dollar slipped off the 94 handle.
I think we are firmly in the delusional stage of the asset bubble now, especially if one considers the NFT and crypto, meme stock and IPO phenomena.
The irrational mask and vaccine antipathy are sign of hysteria, and the mass persuasion of the not so hidden persuaders of the oligarchs, who are operating on longer term agendas of their own.
"This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price.
And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains."
Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009
"Remember that there will be trying times in the last days. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, dishonoring their parents, and ungrateful. To them nothing is sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and despise what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless and proud, and love pleasures of the world more than God. They may talk like they are religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Shun them."
2 Timothy 3:1-5
"And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve."
Martin Luther King, The Drum Major Instinct
"Non serviam."
Lucifer
Serve whom you will, but know who it is that you serve— for that is what you love.
Stocks were reaching for new highs today, with the Russell just clearing the bar with the help of Avis, which had a spectacular one day increase.
Stocks are trading like beanie babies-- or crypto currencies, or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT).
Gold and silver were off a bit.
The Dollar took back the 94 handle.
FOMC tomorrow.
They will probably not do anything directly but their words and intentions may move markets.
Non-Fungible Payroll numbers on Friday.
There is a great deal of volatility under the seemingly calm surface of the major stock indices.
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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