The Children of Victorian Britain, In the Heart of Empire

“Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.”

Chris Hedges


"Take up the White man's burden,
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard."

Rudyard Kipling


"For better or worse — fair and foul — the world we know today is in large measure a product of Britain's age of empire. The question is not whether British imperialism was without blemish. It was not. The question is whether there could have been a less bloody path to modernity. Perhaps in theory there could have been. But in practice?

...The policy mix favored by Victorian imperialists reads like something just published by the International Monetary Fund, if not the World Bank: free trade, balanced budgets, sound money, the common law, incorrupt administration and investment in infrastructure financed by international loans."

Niall Ferguson, Empire and The Empire Slinks Back


"To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers."

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations


"First...there is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India, with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold: I say sold, though sometimes they have not been able to deliver according to their bargain. Secondly, I say, that there is not a single treaty they have ever made which they have not broken. Thirdly, I say, that there is not a single prince or state, who ever put any trust in the [East India] Company, who is not utterly ruined; and that none are in any degree secure or flourishing, but in the exact proportion to their settled distrust and irreconcilable enmity to this nation."

Edmund Burke: Speech on Mr. Fox’s East India Bill, Dec. 1, 1783


"Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new...

While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control...

The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

Francis I, Evangelii et Gaudium

David Cay Johnston: The Hunger Games Economy

“All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.

I can’t even give you hope that it will be different someday— that they’ll come out, and forget death, and lose their technology’s elaborate terror, and stop using every form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level— and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive.”

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

As you know The Hunger Games society has been a recurrent theme here for some time.

An elite minority economically oppresses the rest of the nation, using force and fraud to keep the public in line.

The Capitol district is unproductive, effete, and consumed with the self, consumption, fads, status, power, and fashions. And of course the sentimentality and reality televised gore of The Hunger Games themselves.  They are beautiful on the outside, in inwardly filled with every manner of corruption and the bones of their victims.

 

The games are designed to provide the Districts with some hope, but primarily fear.  Anyone may be chosen and destroyed, with debt increasing the odds of being chosen.

Hope and fear.  And what happens when the people lose confidence in a corrupt and manipulative system, and therein lose their hope? 

And may the odds be ever in your favour.

The ‘Hunger Games’ Economy

By David Cay Johnston

December 15, 2014

That our Congress is intent on taking from the many to enrich the few was on full display during passage of the new $1.1 trillion federal spending bill, as five provisions show.

In a Washington run by and for oligarchs, official theft happens suddenly and without warning. No public hearings. No public debate. Instead, as we saw in North Carolina and Wisconsin, it occurs with just abrupt moves to shift power and money from the many to the richest few.

And with little focus by our best news organizations on the consequences for people’s lives, especially if they are in the 90 percent, many people have no idea they just got officially mugged.

The continuing resolution to fund the government was combined with an omnibus spending bill to create a 1,603-page statutory monster called the “cromnibus.” Among the provisions that show how both political parties help corporations pick the pockets of the vast majority, while far too many mainstream journalists help obfuscate the awful truth...

Read the entire article with details here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Once We Were Good

"Do not imagine that these most difficult problems can be thoroughly understood by any one of us. This is not the case. At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day.

Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night."

Maimonides

 

Today was a volatile day in the markets to say the least.  And gold and silver in particular had been taken out and beaten over the last two days by the triumphant US dollar.

 

US equities are probably the best example of this volatile market.  Stocks plunged on the open, rallied back to triple digit gains in the Industrials, and then sold off again into the close.

 

The continuing drop in Oil is creating quite a few concerns with funds, companies, and even nations. 

 

There is almost no doubt in my mind that this is the result of a gameplay with the US and Saudi Arabia, coupled with slack demand from emerging economies like China.  Saudi Arabia is more than happen to maintain high supply levels to spank Putin for the US, and they are also cleaning out the investments in oil production in the more marginal explorations and fracking that depend on higher prices.

 

The big news all day was the plunging Russian rouble, which is under assault on the forex markets by the Western banks, assisting with plunging oil revenues.   Reminders of the Russian default in 1998 were being broadcast, although given that Russia has about 10% debt to GDP that is not much of a sovereign threat. 

 

More likely we would see Russian investments fail and corporate bonds default in emerging market portfolios.  In other words a commercial rather than a sovereign failure which we saw the last time in 1998 when the rouble failed and was reissued.  In contravention to the theories of MMT I might add, as short and selective as their memories seem to be.

 

Jeb Bush is apparently going to be running for President in 2016.  Oh joy, Bush v. Clinton.  Come mister tally man, tally me bananas.

 

FOMC tomorrow.  With the dollar this strong I seriously doubt the Fed will be raising rates anytime soon.  But they might make some noises.

 

This is a currency war.  Never forget it when you are attempting to find sense and surety in this. And we are not necessarily the good guys this time. 

 

I am not sure what is more disheartening.  The shamelessness of the neoliberal thugs, or the pettiness and selfish grasping of the so called intellectual class,  utterly lacking in any moral compass or principle except their own howling in subjective wells of dwindling power, as visions of progressive reform swirl down the sink of forgotten dreams, into the maw of the Beast.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Into the Maw of The Beast

"It was the incarnation of blind insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs: it was the Great Butcher — it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh."

Upton Sinclair

The US stock market was very volatile today, plunging on the open, rallying back to triple digits gains in the Industrials, and then plunging back again into the close.

Yeesh, what next.

I think the currency war and its collateral damage in the oil market is roiling markets.

FOMC tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Matt Taibbi On the Passage of the Spending Bill With Wall St Giveaway By the Senate

A brief word from Matt Taibbi on the passage of the 2015 Spending Bill by the Senate.

Basically, the American People were pushed aside by the Congress to favour JPM and Citigroup who lobbied heavily for public coverage for their gambling on derivatives.

We might expect this from the Republicans, although it is difficult to understand how they can rationalize supporting corporate welfare when they are so tough on entitlements for the poor.  And as for the Democrats...

"If the Democrats actually stood for anything other than sounding as progressive as possible without offending their financial backers, then they would do what Republicans always do in these situations: force a shutdown to save their legislation. How many times did Republicans hold the budget hostage to rescue the Bush tax cuts?

But the Democrats won't do that here, because they're not a real party. They're a marketing phenomenon, a big chunk of oligarchical Blob cleverly sold to voters as the more reasonable and less nakedly corrupt wing of a two-headed political establishment.

So they'll punt on this issue in the name of "maturity" or "bipartisanship," Wall Street will get a nice win, and Hillary Clinton or whoever else is being set up as the Blob candidate on the Democratic side will receive an avalanche of Financial Services donations to stave off Warren (who will begin appearing in the press as an unhinged combination of Lev Trotsky and Spartacus). A neat little piece of business all around. I don't know whether to applaud or throw up."

Read the entire Taibbi article in Rolling Stone here.

Moyers: Democrats Bow Down To Wall Street

The Clintons are the founders of the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.

The Republicans are even more servile in pandering to Big Money, but that is little comfort for the cause of genuine reform.

 

And similarly, Elizabeth Warren calls out the Democratic and Republican leadership for putting the public back at risk for the Banks gambling on derivatives.

 

Related:  Democrats Who Voted For Cromnibus Had On the Financial Contributions Feed Bag

               Senate Passes Spending Bill Including the Wall St Derivatives Package

 

Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street