"All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"As with almost every reform that I have ever undertaken, most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd slander. Our opponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our methods, acts, and personalities."
Theodore Roosevelt
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
Wendell Berry
"The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this [reform] bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amid the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.
Let us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us: reform, that you may preserve."
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Stocks attempted to rally today, and failed.
Gold and silver finished largely unchanged as the Dollar index drifted lower.
We will be getting the wholesale and consumer inflation numbers this week.
"Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust.
The democracy gap in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the least worst every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the least worst gets worse.
We’re told that we’re a polarized society, right? That’s the way the ruling classes have manipulated people for more than two thousand years: divide and rule. And, sure, there are differences between the Left and the Right over reproductive rights, school prayer, gun control, government regulation, and now, immigration.
But on at least two dozen issues you’ll find combined Left-Right support from 75 to 90 percent of the population. You’ll find it on breaking up the big banks; you’ll find it on civil liberties [privacy]; you’ll find it on getting rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism; you’ll find it on criminal-justice reform. There is huge Left-Right support to crack down on the corporate crooks of Wall Street."
Ralph Nader
How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course
“Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
"When narcissists behave in an exhibitionistic manner they are seeking the same sort of admiration as toddlers, and for the same reasons. They want attention. Some examples include inappropriate dress, talking too loudly, or gesturing in expansive and space-intruding ways.”
Mark Ettensohn
“I know now that one of the characteristics of evil is its desire to confuse.”
M. Scott Peck
“You might as well bang your head into a brick wall if you expect the narcissist to be reasonable, empathetic or human in any way. If you sense or witness any of these traits, there is an ulterior motive. When the narcissist is being nice, it’s because they have something to gain.”
Tina Swithin
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and clever in their own sight,
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine,
and valiant in mixing strong drink,
Who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of justice."
Isaiah 5:20-23
Most politicians have over-sized egos, and tend to bend the rules in service to power when it is convenient. This is why so many ordinary people don't care for them in general. There are a few good ones, but mostly not, especially while they are trying to gain or hold on to power.
But lately the political class has been taking things to a whole new level., and on both sides of the aisle. Although by their words they like to assume the 'high ground' they act like moral midgets. And not to put too fine a point on it— the toddler-in-chief lies with an expansive abandon, and leads the pack with the traits of an outsized narcissistic demagogue, shockingly obvious even in an amoral cesspool like DC.
It is not an easy time for independent minds, and for those who wish to do the right things. And the temptation to submit one's will to escape the pain of thinking is great. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
The VIX futures were in contango today. That means that the nearer term months were at a higher value than the following months. Usually it is the other way around. backwardation, with the futures in the following months gradually increasing in price.
This is a signal that a nearer term and disruptive spike in risk is being expected by a number of traders, and they are seeking protection from it.
If you look at the NDX futures chart below, you can see how every day for the past three days that the futures have slumped heavily lower, recovering a bit in the afternoon while Asia and Europe are asleep, only to drop sharply again the next day, and fail to completely recover.
Stocks may turn around and rally higher from here. But the risk for equities is pronounced.
Gold and silver took a hit today, a post Non-Farm Payrolls punch in the gut. It is what they do.
The dollar was only marginally higher.
Grab something solid and hang on. And be wary of who and what it is that you serve.
Recent history suggests that gold and silver are both putting durable bottoms based on the composition of the positions in the futures market and the extreme of the decline in price.
The dichotomy between gold and silver outflows with both metals in price declines is interesting, to say the least. Physical gold is flowing out of the funds and ETFs, while silver is actually increasing.
It is telling us something about how funds and ETFs might add to their gold holdings when the price declines stop and the bull rally begins anew.
One difference is that the central banks do not have large physical holdings of silver that they are prepared to lease out to private concerns.
The use of this extreme leverage in physical gold in the face of steady buying and competing claims is like combining potassium nitrate and concentrated sulfuric acid.
"You may be sure that no sordid compromises nor carrying of waters on both shoulders will see you through. Those who have the faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray. The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."
Fulton J. Sheen
"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savor of death.
Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!
Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.
This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.
He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
Hatred and greed are the children of pride, the first and most powerful disorder of the mind.
We learn its ways; we begin to imitate them; we blind ourselves; we seek to serve ourselves no matter the cost; we rise in expediency; we go along with the crowd who must surely be right if only by force of numbers; we become sick with passion and vengeance; we put aside our conscience, and do increasingly terrible, awful things, in duty to what we serve; and finally, in the end, we become what we hate— a darkness on the face of the earth.
“He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider, but it was a very corrupting business.”
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
"The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly. Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them... It wasn’t God who was dead. We were."
Ray A., Practice These Principles
“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none act with fear of the gods?”
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death— the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in substantially lower than expected.
Stocks were weak today, but finished off the lows.
Gold and silver were up slightly, and the Dollar was lower.
This week was Golden Week in China. It is a holiday, and their presence in the gold markets was absent. Next week they will be back.
It was a glorious day for working outside, and for watching the baseball playoffs.
Monday is Columbus Day, and the Banks will be closed, but the equity markets will be open.
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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