Bread and Roses: The Lawrence Massachusetts Textile Strike of 1912

"What connects two thousand years of genocide (and the abuse of human rights)? Too much power in too few hands."

Simon Wiesenthal

People forget, and too often the schools and the media fail to remind us, that even within our own history reforms such as the eight hour work day, basic workplace safety, and the end to abusive child labor were won in a long and determined struggle, not only with ballots, but too often with great personal sacrifice and even blood.

Yes there is no doubt that regulation can go too far, and become counterproductive. But simple dispensing with it based on the romantic notion of naturally efficient markets has a long history of terrible human rights abuses.

This is why unrestricted globalization is always going to be in a problematic dynamic relationship with individual and national freedom and choices. 'Globalization' can be used as a soft coup d'etat against national laws and principles of government, ie. democracy with a Bill of Rights and certain compacts between the leaders and the governed.

If, for example, the US were still constituted as 'part free and part slave owning,' one can easily imagine how that would imbalance the determination of the freedoms of many who hold themselves together within a common monetary and fiscal union. Indeed, this is one of the great weaknesses of the EU, in that their monetary union advantages some and inflicts hardships on others. The fortunate are, of course, perfectly content with it, and tend to blame the disadvantaged in all the objectifying ways that people have always done throughout history.

The notion that there is some 'invisible hand' sorting out these markets across the globe without human intervention, known as 'rules,' is utopian nonsense that works only in the minds of sophists and apologists for the moneyed interests within their servile economic and too often elitist theories about natural superiority of some over others. Class warfare and colonialism are just other names for the tyranny of the few over the many, the power of might abusing justice and 'right.'

The more probable result of unrestricted trade and multinational arbitrage by powerful and essentially nationless corporate interests is to drive the standard of living and quality of life for the majority of the people down to the lowest common denominator of whatever tinpot dictatorship or repressive oligarchy that chooses to abuses its own people and nature with the abusive use of force.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough Beast, its hour come 'round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919

The Fed did nothing today, and their jawbones must have been fatigued.

Stocks continued in a relatively narrow range.

Gold and silver continued to hover underneath overhead resistance.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.  It just became much more interesting because the ADP private employment report came in today far to the upside.  Details are in the economic news slide below.

Everything seems to be a mixed bag in the news.

Trump is injecting plenty of uncertainty, but the rally of hope for change continues hanging in there.

There is a huge divergence between the 'soft surprises' and 'hard surprises' in the company earnings reports.   The hard data is of course money, and the soft surprises are found in clicks and tricks, and assorted metrics of the non-financial sort.

I have trouble taking a non-haven position in these markets, because I just cannot escape the feeling that we are in for a really serious breakout, one way or another.  But so far, no.

There will be a PET scan tomorrow for the queen to examine her torso, where most of the action has been for the past few years.  It was highly unusual for a colon cancer to move to the brain. The PET is a CAT scan with a couple of barium milkshakes thrown in beforehand to light up the areas of unusual metabolic activity.  Since cancer tends to be 'fast growing' it lights up the chart, along with any other faster growing processes.  Basic chemo is also based on this fact, and the chemicals kill cells as they grow, including cancer and other fast growing cells like hair, etc.

Now you may understand why the goal is to find more 'targeted' treatments like modified T cells that search out and kill the cancer cells, and not kill cells more widely, and make the patients sick, and weaken over time.  But the innovations are coming slowly.

I have been doing a lot more housework, and also have been 'pampering' the queen.  lol  She becomes very physically tired in the afternoon.

Our money and priorities are for the most part elsewhere, disconnected from many of the common realities of most people. This is part of the reason for our historic economic inequalities.  But there is an underlying goodness and kindness that you can find if you look for it, and let yourself become a part of it.  We just forget, because we see so much wickedness and greed, and it gets the most attention.

As William Butler Yeats put it in the aftermath of the first World War, 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'   Perhaps, but these things come and go.  And when it becomes bad enough, people rouse themselves from their torpor, and change comes, one way or another.

That is not what it is to be human.  Most do not even have a genuine understanding of what that means anymore.   They think, well, if Mother Teresa abandoned the poor and ran off to be an investment banker or an actress, well, that would only be human.

We are content to be trousered apes.  We make beasts of ourselves to avoid the pain of seeing what we really serve, and who we are slowly becoming.

At some point, not to become fully human in every sense of the word and to hold on to your humanity is, in the end, the only real tragedy.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - FOMC Rate Decision Tomorrow

Gold and silver moved sharply higher today as the US dollar gave up more of its recent gains.

There was overnight commentary on the large number of Comex deliveries for the February gold contract. The gold does not go anywhere for the most part, but it does get shoved around the plate for leverage.

In other words, at the moment the precious metals are running as a paper cross trade with currencies, with actual bullion playing a minor role at best. While this is not uncommon, it is not exactly in synch with the actual physical supply and demand flows in the Asian markets. When speculation disconnects from the physical markets for long enough, we eventually get a jarring reversion.

Stocks gave it up a little, with Washington and Wall Street getting edgy over Trump and his initial executive actions, as needlessly distorted as some of them might be by the friends of Wall Street in the corporate media. The status quo has ruled the roost in this country pretty well for the past 20+ years. Now that they are not handing down pre-ordained policy outcomes, they are not sure what to do. It is like a guy who has been trading on insider information for years suddenly having to figure out exactly what the markets are saying.

The next four years are sure to be interesting.

The FOMC will be announcing their latest rate decision tomorrow. Let's see if the metals can hold close to their most recent upper trendline impact as you can see on the charts.

Most likely is an announcement that the Fed will be slowly winding down some of their reinvestment program as rates continue rising. I am not so sure they will actually do anything except for jawboning.

There seems to be a lot of that going on in Washington these days.

Have a pleasant evening.

February Comex Gold Comes In With a Bang

Deliveries on February Comex Gold contracts came in with a bang.

Silver, not so much.

The customers were disgorging positions, with a huge one coughing it up at JPM.

Let's see if the metals can finally put together a breakout over this stubborn overhead resistance.

As large as this 'delivery' might be for Comex, it is still relatively peanuts compared to the physical markets of Asia.   That is where the action is.

Stock and Precious Metals Charts - The Dark Night of the Soul

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.”

Ian MacLaren


“There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action. All simple souls must admire and respect one another, saying: 'Let us each proceed along our path to the same goal, united in purpose and by means of God's order which, in its great variety, is in us all.'”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade

The Trump trade blinked a bit today, as stocks gave up some of their phenomenal gains on doubts about the presidential ban on visitations from seven countries which had been identified by the prior administrations as high risk locations for terrorists.

While this act was sweeping and lacked finesse, operationally clumsy to say the least, the reaction to it was just about as dramatic, including tears. Well, that's politics in the 21st century. And I am sure we will see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years.

We are going to learn more about ourselves than we may have expected. There is nothing new in this; it is the particular experience of about every other generation and their own 'rendezvous with destiny.' How can we be content when the choices are between the 'lesser of two evils.' They are both evil, and many including me are not happy about it— but it is what it is.

Gold and silver were struggling to make some gains, and ended the sessions largely unchanged. Stocks managed to claws back some of their earlier losses. What a surprise.  The warehouses are pretty much in a lockdown on the Comex.  I find it to be rather uninformative compared to the real markets in Asia which unfortunately are a bit more opaque.

Remember that Wall Street has some seriously large stock IPOs lined up on the runways, and will attempt to hold it together until it can get them off the field and airborne.

Then we will see how the winds may blow.

We are all imperfect and at times broken people, to some extent and in our own ways, even though there are some who cannot admit it, even to themselves.  And we can find commonality not only in our suffering and setbacks, but more importantly in our response to them.  This is our lot.

Whether it may be divorce, drugs, betrayals, heartbreaks, serious illness, deaths in the family, bad deals, or whatever, what matters is what we do with them.  These are the 'talents' that we are given, along with all the skills, friends, hard work and good fortune, and it is our job to make something with them.

If you have never lost you are probably not really playing the game, yet.  Come what may, what matters most is what you do with it, all of what life brings that shapes who you are.  You can try to deny it, to retreat into drugs, alcohol, narcissism, abusive relationships and the like, overloading your sense to dull the pain—  but you can never really escape it.

I have a small painting hanging in my study, that was given to me by a good friend, teacher, and mentor, long passed away many years ago.   He used to say to us, in all of life's confusions, keep your minds and your hearts focused on the one thing in life that never changes, the immanent presence of God in the Incarnation, the 'little white spot.'

So we may as well use it, all of it, all our experiences, to make the best of life for ourselves and especially for other people and His creatures, even if it is only in our simplicity as we are, in our loving acceptance of a higher power that loves us despite our own weakness and imperfections.

If you would have a worthy purpose in life, feed His little ones, the least of these, through whatever small ways and acts of kindness that you can.

Have a pleasant evening.

Drug Prices in the US vs. Canada - The Big Pharma Political Connection of Corporatist Democrats

This is a slide used by Bernie Sanders when he proposed making drug imports from Canada to the US legal.

The proposal was voted down in the Senate 52-46, with a few key Democrats helping overturn Bernie's proposed legislation.

Among those voting against it was the recipient of big pharma campaign contributions Democratic rising star Cory Booker.

Booker used the Big Pharma talking point that 'the bill did not include provisions requiring the protections of the FDA.'

Oh really?  We think that the Canadian government's regulation of medicine is weaker than in the US?   Please, Cory, tell us exactly where they fall down on the job.

And oh by the way, most it not all of those drugs are the same drugs being sold in the US by the same manufacturers, so the point could be moot.  Just allow the imports of drugs the FDA has already approved.

But a real solution, which appears to be far too much for our pampered plutocrats, would be to repeal the US law that prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices as is done by the government health services in Canada. But I would not expect the US political establishment to seriously consider overturning that sweet monopoly deal with the drug companies.

Not as long as Big Pharma can keep holding that SG&A level around 45 percent, compared to 25 percent or less of most other industries.  There is a lot of money being spent there to motivate doctors and lawmakers in the drug industry.

And then there is the 'balance billing' racket where hospitals toss in enormous zingers to your medical bills by using doctors and test labs that are not in your network, for which you get little to no insurance coverage, or insanely high deductibles.  And you have no knowledge of their choice in advance.

New York state has passed a ban on this.  But most other states have not.

The current US healthcare system is like a protection racket.  It is dominated by monopolist behemoths, in the providers and the insurers, and sustained by huge amounts of public relations and their paid functionaries in the media and the Congress.

It is the most expensive healthcare system in the developed nations.  And that is largely due to corruption and a twisting of the laws due to the influence of Big Money in lawmaking and regulation.