"Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare— the people they had met travelling; then people who couldn't add a row of figures or speak a coherent sentence. The little man Helen had consented to dance with at the ship's party, who had insulted her ten feet from the table; the women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs out of public places—
—The men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real snow. If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited, February 1931
"To the politician and administrator laissez-faire was simply a principle of the insurance of law and order, with the minimum cost and effort. Let the market be given charge of the poor, and things will look after themselves...
Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; [Joseph] Townsend insisted that they were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required.
The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism [Dissertation on the Poor Laws]. The improvidence (lacking personal responsibility) of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. (born to be vile?) Also what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor? "For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?"
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944
"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one (I would in 2019 now say either) party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers.
That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."
Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, 2003
“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”
C. S. Lewis
The financial spokesmodels were unnerved with the rally in gold today, which was in no doubt due in some part to the weakness of the Dollar, and the stress on the physical supply with the return of China to business from their long holiday week.
As noted previously there is a relative scarcity in the 'free float' of physical gold, and the tricks and forced exchanges, and soft confiscations from other countries can only go so far in the face of a steady, almost unrelenting, demand for the real thing. With leverage of paper to bullion in the gaming markets estimated at 100 to 1, a disruption in the flow of physical supply could be rather impressive.
The concern of the financial commentators was that it is unusual for gold to rally in what appears to be a safe haven move, but with stocks also rising. Always the stock market, for this crowd. That is their major concern, their first priority. The system is God, and damn the people whom it was designed to serve and support.
Chart-wise, gold has begun to flesh out a new cup, which if it succeeds in cmpleting the formation, and if it manages subsequentlyt to break out, will target $1550 at a minimum measuring objective on the chart.
As I noted in some posts over the holiday weekend, the long bear market in gold, which was sustained by managed selling of physical gold by central banks in order to manage the market has clearly ended around 2007. The price of gold began to rally a few years earlier in anticipation of this sea change in selling and accumulation by the major players.
And so now, after a long consolidation which has followed the first leg of the new bull market, the price of gold appears to be attempting to begin its second leg, and move to take out the prior highs. Let's see if it can maintain its momentem to the rim of the cup, so to speak. At that point a retracement is often customary. Perhaps a retracement now would not be unusual after a long quick run.
Longer term a higher price in gold is likely to be accompanied by social disruption and political uncertainty as one might expect on an examination of history. Gold provides a safe harbor in troubled times. And we do seem to be lurching towards some perversely desired rendezvous with destiny, taking it to the limit, so to speak.
If by some miracle of providence we could have what a good person might wish for, rather than what they might see coming despite all their efforts, our grandchildren might not be tempted to damn us for our willful foolishness and careless pride.
We can take comfort in the undeniable fact that the future is an elusive mix of possibilities and probabilities, and that the eventual outcome is, in the final analysis, largely unknown but in the hands of Providence, as well as our own.
But beware the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.
Have a pleasant evening.
