David Cay Johnston: The Monopolists Rule

“You will even read about an insurance company owned by one of America’s most admired billionaires [Buffett] that asked a paralyzed man to die because the cost of keeping him alive was cutting into the insurer’s profits.”

“No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers and erect barriers to fair play. A big reason is that so little of the news, which informs us about the world around us, addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.”

David Cay Johnston

 

Third World America.

Scottish Independence, and the Growing Divide Between the Privileged Classes and the People

What interested me the most in this article is not so much the information it provides on the campaign by the British establishment against the Scottish vote for independence, or the eager participants from the American members of the Anglo-American power clique as well.

Rather it is for the light that this article sheds on the behavior of the enablers of the Anglo-American establishment in the corporate media and the academy, and how rarified their experience of the daily lives of the people has become. It seems almost to be due to an imbalance of character and a fashionable failure of the national perspective. Understandable for the generation that proclaims, 'greed is good.'

As David Brin has remarked, 'It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.'

I hope that whatever the result the vote turns out well for the people of Scotland. They will certainly have problems to encounter, and hardships as a people to overcome. As will we all.

There is a distance growing between the elite classes in America and England and the great majority of the people. It is palpable in the economic policies in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

I am always surprised by how little those pampered princes and princesses within the Beltway or Westminster seem to understand about their own people.  What a caricature the communication and occasional interactions between them has become. Such distance breeds both mistrust and fear. It is becoming a cultural divide. And not just for the leadership itself, but for their vast assemblage of courtiers and sycophants who act as viceroys and interpreters for them.

It does not bode well for the future.

The Guardian

How the media shafted the people of Scotland

Journalists in their gilded circles are woefully out of touch with popular sentiment and shamefully slur any desire for change

By George Monbiot

Tuesday 16 September 2014 15.03 EDT

Perhaps the most arresting fact about the Scottish referendum is this: that there is no newspaper – local, regional or national, English or Scottish – that supports independence except the Sunday Herald. The Scots who will vote yes have been almost without representation in the media.

There is nothing unusual about this. Change in any direction, except further over the brink of market fundamentalism and planetary destruction, requires the defiance of almost the entire battery of salaried opinion. What distinguishes the independence campaign is that it has continued to prosper despite this assault.

 

In the coverage of the referendum we see most of the pathologies of the corporate media. Here, for instance, you will find the unfounded generalisations with which less enlightened souls are characterised. In the Spectator, Simon Heffer maintains that: “addicted to welfare ... Scots embraced the something for nothing society”, objecting to the poll tax “because many of them felt that paying taxes ought to be the responsibility of someone else”.

 

Here is the condescension with which the dominant classes have always treated those they regard as inferior: their serfs, the poor, the Irish, Africans, anyone with whom they disagree. “What spoilt, selfish, childlike fools those Scots are ... They simply don’t have a clue how lucky they are,” sneered Melanie Reid in the Times. Here is the chronic inability to distinguish between a cause and a person: the referendum is widely portrayed as a vote about Alex Salmond, who is then monstered beyond recognition (a Telegraph editorial compared him to Robert Mugabe).

 

The problem with the media is exemplified by Dominic Lawson’s column for the Daily Mail last week. He began with Scotland, comparing the “threat” of independence with that presented by Hitler (the article was helpfully illustrated with a picture of the Führer – unaccompanied, in this case, by the Mail’s former proprietor)...

 

Read the entire article in The Guardian here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Straining

"The first item on my agenda would be to restore democracy to the United States of America by overturning this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

Why do I put that issue first? Why not health care, why not jobs?  Because if you end up with a Congress or with governors or legislatures who are beholden to the billionaire class, we are never going to make progress on any issue that impacts working families.

And in my very strong opinion — and I speak to you as chairman of the veterans committee in the Senate — I do not believe that people fought and died for democracy so that billionaires can buy elections.”

Bernie Sanders

A number of people have remarked upon the ballooning open interest in the silver market on the Comex. When the number of open contracts goes higher on a down movement in price, that is more indicative of short selling than of longs selling their contracts and closing them out, obviously.

I also hear that there was a remarkably large expansion in the inventory of SLV the other day, causing some of wonder at the source of all that silver.

It is difficult to understand what is true and what is not in these markets. And that in itself ought to give you some concern about their veracity.

This decline in character is sad. But this too shall pass.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Within Striking Distance of a New Dow All Time High

"Do you know what you are singing about? You are singing of brotherhood, but in your face you look like you hate everyone. That will show in your music."

Arturo Toscanini

Stocks were in rally mode today as Wall Street looks forward to tomorrow's FOMC decision. Because of the weaker economic data, there were more hopes that the decision would not contain any hawkish language.

I expect the taper to continue on schedule. I do not think that the Fed will do anything new just yet.

After the bell the President tried to reassure the American people that the ebola outbreak in Africa would not spread to US shores, and if it did, it would be quickly quarantined.

Geopolitical risk was apparently off the table today.

It is hard to be too cynical about these markets. Alibaba is on the way.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily And Silver Weekly Charts - Struggling

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

Saul Bellow

The precious metals futures on the Comex were struggling most of the day, with both gold and silver ending just a little higher.

The Comex warehouse activity is not worth mentioning.

Gold is moving from West to East. China is clearly executing some longer term plan with regard to gold and its own fiat money as a reserve currency.

Let's see what happens.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Fight For the Right to Party

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Charles Mackay

Techs were struggling most of the day, as the SP 500 showed some futures driven resilience.

The Empire Manufacturing number came in high side, but the actual Industrial Production came in negative, with last month being revised in half. Go figure.

There will be an FOMC decision on Wednesday. With the Alibaba IPO in play, I don't think we will see the markets fall appreciably unless there is a serious break in the geopolitical stability.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Mark Crispin Miller: Forbidden Thoughts and Fighting For the Truth

Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media studies at New York University. He is known for his writing on American media and for his activism on behalf of media reform. His books include Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Seeing Through Movies, Mad Scientists, a study of war propaganda, and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections. He was a contributor to the documentary 'Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave.'

He graduated from Northwestern University with a BA in 1971, Johns Hopkins University with an MA in 1973, and a Ph.D. in 1977.

He talks overall about certain stories that are not considered to be appropriate for discussion in the mainstream media.  He sees 'conspiracy theory' as a method of shutting down discussion, and traces its use as a rhetorical device to a memo in 1967.

He more specifically discusses the 2000 election of G. W. Bush, and what he considers related stories that are ruled off the table in a presentation to the 911 Architects and Engineers for Truth.

I don't agree with all of his specific issues perhaps, but found his discussion of 'process' in the mainstream media to be interesting.  More often than not the 'discussions' of situations which we are given in the media are often highly uninformative, if not misleading either by omission or intent.

And I also feel that the First Amendment is being tested now as it has been in the past. It seems to be curtailed for individuals who are shuffled off to 'free speech zones' while wealthy corporations are being given privileges that the Constitution maintains for individuals and was not intended for powerful legal constructs that provide limited liability and anonymity.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Le Comité de Salut Public

 

"The tendency of things is, indeed, to make matters worse still. The poor are every year becoming poorer, and more dependent upon those who feast upon their sufferings; while the wealth and power of the realm are annually concentrating in fewer hands, and becoming more and more instruments of oppression.”

John C. Cobden, 1854

Retail sales came in a bit hot today, triggering a 'good news is bad news' selloff in stocks, at least according to the spokesmodels on bubblevision.

The retail sales results were really not all that impressive,  just coming in-line for sales ex-auto. And who the heck knows what adjustments were used to cook up the hot auto sales number?  These one shot numbers are a flash in the pan.

I think the sell off today, ahead of the weekend, is due to the cumulative jitters of the markets, given the drumbeats to war in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and the potential 'Yes' vote in Scotland for independence. 

"The White House is characterizing the U.S. mission against Islamic State militants as a war, similar to the one waged against al-Qaida and its affiliates."

The skeptical part of me wonders if this is the 'wash and rinse' that I suspected they might try to sneak in ahead of the actual Alibaba IPO.   In our economy war is a good thing, to the extent that it is good for business. 

It must be good.  We seems to look for wars all the time, and even in the most unlikely of places, on the suspicion that someone there must be up to no good.   The US did a rather effective stop and frisk with extreme prejudice on Iraq, for example.  They are still trying to get their lives back together. 

And apparently Obama wants to do the same thing to Syria.  We lift things up, and put them down.  And that includes not only tyrants, and vicious rebels, but whole nations and peoples.

So let's see what happens next week.  Besides the FOMC two day meeting, which will provide us their guidance on the afternoon of Wednesday Sept 17th.  A calendar for next week is included below.

Nothing particularly interesting occurred in the Comex warehouses for precious metals yesterday.

In other news of the day, the Fed has just formed the Committee on Financial Stability led by Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer.

When this news came out it reminded me of the (in)famous Comité de Salut Public, or Committee on Public Safety which became the de facto executive government during the worst parts of the French revolution.

I would bear in mind that this unelected committee of the Fed has no standing to make laws, and is part of a private organization which unfortunately has been given too many discretionary regulatory powers by the ideologically crippled, do-nothing Congress.

And in cheerier news, Golem XIV is back from his holiday.   Welcome back.

I am looking forward to hearing more about the momentous vote in Scotland next week as the election day approaches.  So many English nouveau riche and political parvenu of the master class have issued nearly hysterical screeds against it that I know it must be of some importance.

As they advise, we must always 'be afraid, be very afraid.'   And have only a little hope.  After all, government is complex, and these matters are best left to the ruling class.

"Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained."

President Snow, The Hunger Games

Have a pleasant weekend.