Hysteria Used to Censor Progressive and Counter-Corporate Messaging

"The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”

No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument."

Chris Hedges, Silencing Dissent

This is the logical progression of the credibility trap.

When one has no credible counter-argument to facts and logically framed critiques, the resort is too often to ad hominem attacks, smearing, and suppression up to and including censorship. 

This is the reaction of careerists and ideologues when there is a perceived power imbalance, that is, when they think that they can get away with it.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - FANG'd

"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
doch das Messer sieht man nicht."

Berthold Brecht, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, 1928

The results after the bell last night from the usual big cap tech suspects lit a fire until the Nasdaq 100, as you can see from the chart below.

That is the look of real pain for the big cap tech bears.

There will be an FOMC meeting next week. President Trump has also indicated that he will be naming the next Fed Chair.

And as usual with the beginning of a new month, we will be having a Non-Farm Payrolls Report on Friday November 3.

Have a pleasant weekend.

What Really Happened - How the Democratic Party Establishment Sold Its Soul and Lost the Election

"O, what a tangled web we weave
when first we practise to deceive!"

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion; A Tale of Flodden Field


"Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil."

Jerry Garcia

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - After the Bell - A Cross of Iron

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.  It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.  It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.  We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat.  We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people...

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.   Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 16 April 1953

The US has been in a state of continuous war for a little over sixteen years, if you begin with the initial invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001.

The big tickle today was the strength in the Dollar index based on Euro weakness, thanks to Monsieur Draghi.

There was a minor option expiration for gold on the Comex today. I do not think that drove the action in the metals, compared to the big spike in the Dollar.

After the bell we will be seeing some big earnings announcements including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Intel.

CVS Health is in talks to buy Aetna. More consolidation in the health/insurance sector, under the title of 'vertical integration' which is a finer sounding title for 'monopolization.'

I do not know how it is in your area, but around here a few medical conglomerates are buying up all the doctor practices and medical facilities of any size, leaving us with just a handful of behemoth health providers and insurers.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We'll Always Have Paris

"Summers, Geithner, the Council of Economic Advisors and Bernanke strongly guided economic data development and spin to give perception of 'recovery'.    Green shoots turned out to be weeds.  The period from '08 to '16 was incredible in the gymnastics committed to support the recovery narrative.  Yellen, a specialist in labor economics (NOT monetary economics) had large role devising the now failed LMCI.  The Fed abandoned its own new metric for measuring the jobs market (Labor Market Conditions Index) w/i 2 year b/c it was so rife with bogus info.   Crazy.

Harald Malmgren

For whatever reason, and I have some thoughts along those lines, the powers-that-be in American finance and politics are terrified of a decline in the US stock markets, ever since the election of His Donaldship.

And so once again this bloated pig of a market continued to float just above the dangerous waters of correction and disappointment, even one so slight it appears.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the movie Casablanca.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Have a pleasant evening.