"I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of. It was indeed the turning point of my life. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life, and therefore I could see God in everything." Bede Griffiths
It was risk on today as the jobs number came in much better than expected.
You may recall that I said last month that I thought that the jobs reports from then until the elections would be puffed up in order to smooth the way for Hillary.
Volatility (VIX) is at twelve month lows. And Brexit and all the rest of it are just bad dreams.
"The velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically-produced goods and services within a given time period.
In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. If the velocity of money is increasing, then more transactions are occurring between individuals in an economy."
St. Louis Fed
"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation
"If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."
Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup
In other words, what we may be seeing here is a declining 'bang for the buck' or 'the law of diminishing returns' for the massive amounts of liquidity which the Fed has been selectively applying to the financial system using quantitative easing.
How can this be happening?
Does adding even more quantitative easing work? Work for whom?
The 'recoveries' or sparks of real economic activity are growing fainter, and shorter, while the subsequent declines are continuing in length and depth.
One can hardly see the 'jumps' in velocity between the long plunges driven by helicopter drops from the Fed to the one percent, leaving the real economy and the broader public further and further behind.
At what point does the fallacy of endless money printing without consequence begin to 'bite?'
One might fear that the Fed is continuing to add fuel into and around a vehicle that is stuck in a ditch and wrapped around a telephone pole.
And all the elite financiers and their sock puppet politicians can seemingly do is to keep pouring on the gas.
There is a currency war going on. It's perhaps unintended but very real objective is the subjugation of whole peoples, including the domestic public, to a financial and political elite.
It is the child of unrestrained greed and the concentration of power into fewer hands through through the unscrupulous manipulation of money and credit.
Although it may drape itself and its wars in the flag and pious patriotism, in a very real sense it is nationless and raceless.
This is an audacious oligarchy that serves only their own greed and self-interest for power and money.
"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich.
Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus, Agricola
Gold and silver were marking time today ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls Report tomorrow.
It is remarkable, and surprising if you did not know how they think, how little the politicos and the professional class of the Anglo-American elite understand their own cultures and people, especially outside of the NY-Washington metroplex.
Not to mention their abysmal ignorance of and carelessness with the rest of the world when it gets in the way of their selfish desires.
People want respect. And they are not getting it.
You cannot keep giving people no choice, and expect them to keep taking it with a downcast eye and a smile.
The markets got what they expected from the Bank of England this morning, with a 25 basis point cut, and an expansion of QE to include corporate debt.
If the financial system was not corrupt and broken this might mean something. Alas, it is not, so it does not, except for more of the same kind of corporate debt expansion to buy back stocks, boost payouts to the one percent, and build monopolies.
So stocks continued to wind around within a relatively narrow range that has held good for the past 19 trading days.
Tomorrow we get the US Non-Farm Payrolls. An outlier either way *could* shake things up a bit.
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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