One day one day I was walking along
I heard a voice I didn't see no one
the voice to me you know it sounded so sweet
it sounded like Jesus talking to me
and I know, I know I've been changed
I, I know I've been changed lord and I know
I know I've been changed
the angels in heaven done signed my name.
Chris Rodriguez and The Spoon Lady, Angels In Heaven
Spoon Lady certainly puts her heart into her work.
I like the way that the dog casually walks across the 'stage' during their performance.
We live in times of a plague in the human spirit. What then are we to do?
The only way to fill the emptiness of a heart broken by loss or made unquiet by worry is with love, of God and of God in others. Defy the world with love, and a light will come into your life. 'If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.'
Read poetry, comfort the afflicted, make music, care for the weak among His creatures, love beauty, feed the hungry, fall down and get back up, sing songs of joy and thanksgiving, be ready to lend a smile and a helping hand, and always stand with your brothers and sisters, lifting your eyes up to heaven, and shine its light, brightly, into the darkness.
This NY Times Op-Ed quoted below is for the tenth anniversary of the financial crisis, written by three of the men who helped to create it, and intensify its after effects.
With a little help from the like minded who have followed, they have virtually insured a repeat. Bob Rubin, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan should be given an honorable mentions, with a nod to Phil Gramm.
Why publish it now?
There are some slightly ominous signs around in the equity markets, the currency and debt markets, and from the gold and silver markets as noted in the charts below.
So the timing is most likely designed to shift the responsibility for the next crisis from themselves to 'these other guys' who came after them and have ruined their fine work. Just in case.
"Ten years ago, the global economy teetered in the face of a classic financial panic, the most dangerous type of financial crisis. In a financial panic, investors lose confidence in all forms of credit, retreating to the safest and most liquid assets, like Treasury bills. The prices of risky assets collapse, and new credit becomes unavailable, with dire consequences for workers, homeowners and savers.
The seeds of the panic were sown over decades, as the American financial system 'outgrew' [sarcastic emphasis mine] the protections against panics that were put in place after the Great Depression.
Depression-era safeguards, like deposit insurance, were aimed at ensuring that the banking system remained stable, but by 2007 more than half of all credit flowed outside banks. Financial innovations, like subprime mortgages and automated credit scoring, helped millions to buy homes, but they also facilitated unwise risk-taking by lenders and investors.
Most dangerously, trillions of dollars of risky credit were financed by uninsured, short-term funding..."
“The world says: 'You have needs— satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.' This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.”
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
"Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"
Rudyard Kipling
"Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me: for you are the God of my salvation; and I wait for you all the day.
Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and loving kindness, as they have ever been of old."
Psalm 25:4-6
Most people are willful idiots, who forgive themselves everything, and others nothing. I am an unwillful idiot. I am not sure that this is better, or even a marked improvement. But at least I try to have compassion for others because of this small kernel of self-awareness.
Self-awareness is in very short supply these days.
The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in 'better-than-expected' with a headline number of 201,000.
Most ignored the significant revisions lower from the last report in this one. Rolling jobs over from one month to the next is a time honored gimmick in putting a little nicer shade of lipstick on the pig.
The 'household report', as opposed to the well named establishment report, is the one in which actual people are interviewed in what one hopes is a statistically significant manner. And in informational terms it was not very good, at all.
The big tickle was that this 'great' jobs report was going to allow the Fed to raise interest rates later this month at the next FOMC meeting.
Here is a news flash. The Fed is going to raise rates at this next meeting unless the Yellowstone caldera blows its top.
So the dollar rallied and gold was hit. What a surprise. And gold recovered a bit and actually finished marginally unchanged with a .32% decline or thereabouts.
Gold inventories continue to look tight. Silver not so much, although the Banks seem to be hoovering up contracts for their own accounts at these prices.
A cold front came through, and as a result it is cooler but quite humid and a bit cloudy, with leaden gray skies. As sometimes happens on gloomy days, there is a little bit of a hole creeping into my heart.
And so I have been indulging myself as best I can, and keeping busy all day. The young man is coming to visit tonight, and he also informed me that a UPS delivery is coming that requires a signature. So Dolly and I have been keeping watch. I have prepared a jambalaya for him tonight, and it is slow cooking in my Instant Pot, which I like very much.
While waiting I have spared myself watching financial television. They are so obviously reading talking points, especially about the precious metals, that it is fatiguing. And so it is a good day to stay in with a very nice cup of European dark roast coffee, and spend a little time planning ahead.
I ordered a variety of fragrance samples from Le Labo in NY. I will use them to help pick out some gifts later on for some of the female friends and relatives as Christmas presents. They apparently have exceptional lotions on offer.
My mother taught me to buy things that people really need, but then I just give it to them right away. Which defeats the holiday purpose. So it works out a little better to buy them things that they would really love, but would not ordinarily get for themselves because of cost or whatever reluctance to self-indulgence. I seem to know more people like that than is ordinary in these days of self-indulgence.
There is also a November gift buying roadtrip to Cacao Market by Mariebelle in Greenpoint Brooklyn in the future. This was the queen's award winning destination for chocolate truffles at least in the US. We were there for their opening, and met the wonderful lady herself. Mariebelle has other locations that are closer such as Soho, and much farther away in Japan and Dubai, but this particular location was styled after the store in the movie, Chocolat. And it provides an excuse to visit a few more locations in that area.
As always a good thing to do when one is reading financial material, I put on a selection of travel videos from a current favorite NonstopDan on Youtube, and a few others of a documentary nature about things that I wish to know about, or to do.
As a former international 'road warrior' who hung up his carryon and passport some years ago, it is nice to see what is new in international travel especially with regard to business class. I have to say that Business class has certainly become more luxurious in many cases.
And would have enjoyed that very much. One time I flew all the way around the world heading ever west, with a number of stops along the way over a two week period. I booked the trip through Continental, which was my airline of choice at the time, in addition to a few flag carriers. It was a shame to see them and some others acquired, but that is how things go in a financialized, non-customer focused economy.
And the lounges, like Virgin's 'Clubhouse' at Heathrow 4, seem to be larger and more expansive than when I used to pop in. I am so jealous. lol
I was also reminded of the BA Lounge at JFK, where the Concorde passengers used to wait along with the business and first class passengers. We made the trek there because at that time it was the only 'day flight' from NY to London.
We never did get the much desired upgrade to the Concorde, but the queen enjoyed watching the people, and sampling the goodies there, nonetheless. She was a most companionable traveling partner, who found delight in even the smallest things, and found new things fascinating.
Let's see what new and amazing lows that our ruling elite may strike for our viewing pleasure next week, and the many ways in which they may seek to baffle the world.
“The downward spiral of dumbness in America is about to hit a new low.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Stocks showed continued weakness today, as the euphoria that helped to push prices to their recent highs continued to cool, and profits were taken.
On some days it seems like the only people that are buying stocks are companies doing buybacks and traders trying to skin one another.
Gold and silver showed early strength that faded so that they finished slightly higher to unchanged.
The dollar chopped sideways, slightly lower than yesterday's close.
There was a bump up in the gold in the Comex warehouse in Hong Kong. That usually happens in advance of a big withdrawal when prices are steady. The gold registered for delivery in NY continued to dwindle.
As a reminder there will be a Non-Farm Payrolls Report tomorrow.
I am waiting for an anonymous NYT editorial from someone from the Obama Administration who had opposed the decision to use trillions in taxpayer obligations to bail out the Banks, while 10 million Americans lost their homes, and not one white collar criminal responsible for the massive fraud that caused the crisis was even indicted, as a matter of Eric Holder's DoJ policy. Or from anyone who opposed the sellout of working class Americans to Big Healthcare and Big Pharma.
crickets
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
T. S. Eliot
“I have been to many countries and seen much poverty and suffering. Everywhere I go people tell me of their hardships and struggles, and ask for help, and I give what I can. But of all the countries I have been to, the poorest one I have been to is America. America suffers most from the poverty of loneliness.
Each individual person has been created to love and to be loved— Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian— doesn't matter race, doesn't matter religion. Every single man, woman, child is the child of God, created in the image of God.
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. Not all of us can do great things. But we all can do small things with great love.
I believe God loves the world through us— through you and me.”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Stocks were playing tag with underlying support levels most of the day.
Gold and silver caught a bid on Dollar weakness. They are still playing this on the currency crosses, with little regard to the underlying commodity fundamentals, especially with respect to gold.
Silver is unusually cheap as measured by the gold-silver ratio.
It's a hot, sunny day. I already cut the grass next door earlier today. And managed to avoid the nonsense on television, the two hearings, by watching the baseball game.
I get disappointed with how little I can do. But I am doing better than if I did not try.
“The courage we need is not the fortitude to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job for a boss who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government. It is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and reality of what we are doing in the world and act responsibly to change it.”
Daniel Ellsberg
Ellsberg states that "Assange, as a journalist, cannot be fairly tried under the Espionage Act."
I think the operative word there is 'fairly.'
Such a trial of a journalist, a first in our national experience, would be a watershed moment for freedom of the press, and of journalism in particular.
And further, it would be the start of a war on the press, and of a chilling intimidation on freedom of speech, and an ominous step in the direction of totalitarian government.
How ironic that the 'super-patriots' might be the ones cheering it forward, on the back of the serial expansion of this law by the phoney 'progressive' Obama.
You may find the original posting of this video at Consortium News.
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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