“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
"Nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
“It is better to be a child of God than king of the whole world.”
Aloysius Gonzaga
As you most likely have heard by now, the Non-Farm Payrolls Report For May came in quite shockingly low.
Despite a great deal of popular nonsense The Recovery™ is reserved for the one percent.
I had to crack up at one remark this morning that the jobs number is so low because we are at full employment, and therefore there are not any more jobs to be had or people to take them.
Never mind the Labor Participation Rate which is still falling and awful, and average wages which are sluggish.
But nevertheless stocks rallied as expectations of the Fed's raising rates this year more than once or twice have fallen dramatically on the lack of inflation and jobs.
And because of that, the dollar tumbled and gold and silver caught a bid on expectations of more Fed looseness, along with their buddies at the ECB and BoJ.
So what next?
Make no mistake. Stocks are in a bubble now. And the underpinnings in the real economy, despite the rhetoric from the ivory towers and beltway bandits, is just not there. And therefore this inflated paper asset tower is doomed to fail because there is no organic growth to sustain it.
They may bubble on even more, but one look at big cap tech should tell you everything you need to know. They are mispriced for risk, or on the other hand, now priced for stupidity. And the Wall Street denizens wait patiently for the greater fools.
How will the Fed and the government respond to the next financial crisis? What new lies and scapegoats will be forthcoming from the maw of the establishment? What jealous entities are undermining our exceptionalism now?
This is not going to be pretty, especially since there are so many propagandized zealots running around with great expectations fed by their respective demagogic saviours on the polarized right and left. The only genuine reformers and friends of the people are largely friendless in the circles of power and the rat alleyways that surround them.
And the powerful and the wealthy are ascendant, and feeling good about themselves almost to the point of fearlessness. This is the effect of disordered minds, whose judgement has been corrupted by pride, and a lack of self-knowledge grounded in place their true place in the universe.
They do not know themselves, or even what they do not know, being willfully blind.
Exceptional. Our hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Have a pleasant weekend.
