Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Audacious Oligarchy

"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent. This pattern of government action shows up in all areas of government policy."

Dean Baker

"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked.  And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

"No lie can live forever."

Thomas Carlyle

There is a currency war ongoing.  It's objective is the subjugation of whole peoples, including the domestic public.  In a very real sense it is nationless.

There is an 'audacious oligarchy' of self-defined rulers who move freely between private industry and government, whose primary objective is preserving and furthering their own power and self-interest.

Sheldon Wolin called this 'inverted totalitarianism.' Economist Robert Johnson has called it an 'audacious oligarchy.'  And so have many other responsible economists from Simon Johnson to Jeffrey Sachs.

I do not think that warnings or lessons from history will be sufficient to provoke change. Hubris makes people deaf and blind to consequences.  They will not learn, nor be informed by anything outside their own small circles.

This implies that there will be another financial crisis,  a 'hard stop' in the Western markets. How and when that will occur I do not yet know.

Have a pleasant evening.

BILL MOYERS: And you say that these this oligarchy consists of six megabanks. What are the six banks?

JAMES KWAK: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

JAMES KWAK: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

BILL MOYERS: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

SIMON JOHNSON: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

JAMES KWAK: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis. If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform. I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off. They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

The Financial Oligarcy in the US - Bill Moyer's Journal

Bill Moyers with Bill Black: Chasing Mice While Lions Roam the Campsite

"The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all could have prevented the financial meltdown...We have created the incentive structures that are going to produce a much larger disaster.”

William K. Black

The big thieves hang the little ones.

Anat Admati: Seeing Through the Bankers' New Clothes - The Bullet or the Bribe

"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity...few people have yet considered the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."

George Orwell

The reign of the Banks was reintroduced on the back of, and is sustained by, a major campaign of corruption of the political processes and the public discourse. The decisive moment was the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the further withdrawal of the watchers on the wall by both political parties who have gone along to get along.

The difference in the analogy offered in this talk is that the monied interests are not some semi-benign doddering old emperor who has fallen victim to the flattery of courtiers and the schemes of conmen.  They are a monstrous construction of reckless pride and greed who will work their schemes until the exhaustion and collapse of their prey.

One is foolish to expect them to be ruled by self-control and appeals to reason, given the nature of their pathology.  These are the very types that cause people to organize themselves for their protection.  This is the highest responsibility of government: the promotion of justice, and the defense of all people, including the foolish and the weak, for the common good against thieves, conmen, bandit, foreign armies, and domestic predators.

"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States

The Banks and their associated Corporations continue to extract usurious fees, misprice risk, rig markets, and engage in a variety of soft bribery and extortion.  And it will not end well.  I would like to be more optimistic, but it is discouraging to see how easily the financially powerful have co-opted some sincere reform movements into their willing tools, spouting utopian nonsense.  The shepherds have been struck down, by the bullet and the bribe, and the sheep have been scattered.

The Anglo-American financial system is an accident waiting to happen.  And you can be sure that they are expecting, once again, to dip their beaks deeply into the public pockets when they do. 



h/t Bill Moyers



We are surely not the first generation to face this sort of trial, since it is in the very nature of this fallen world, and the burden of every generation to rise to their particular trials and temptations. If anything we may be notable for our weakness, our lack of faithfulness, our foolish pride, a perverted perspective unworthy of our many gifts, and the stubborn hardness of our hearts too often in the name of our just and loving Lord.

"...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."

J. H. Newman

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Stockman On Crony Capitalism

As I suggested might happen yesterday, the precious metal longs were given a gutcheck today as the price was hit on the NY open.

The housing number this morning was a well-seasonalized canard, from the looks of it.

Below the chart, there is a reprise of Bill Moyers and David Stockman discussing the crony capitalism that is pervasive on the US economic scene, have encompassed both political parties, despite their marketing campaigns and brand differentiation.

Bill Moyers: Deep State Hiding In Plain Sight

"Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.

My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an 'establishment.'

All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched.

Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude."

Mike Lofgren, Anatomy of the Deep State

"Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo."

Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man

David Simon: Our Rigged Political System

David Simon, journalist and creator of the TV series The Wire and Treme, returns to talk with Bill Moyers about the triumph of capital over democracy.

“If I could concentrate and focus on one thing … and start to walk the nightmare back, it would be campaign finance reform” Simon says.

Simon warns that if we don’t fix our broken election system — by getting big money out of elections and ending gerrymandering — we will have reached “the end game for democracy.”

Credibility Trap: Fatal Web of Lies

From "Bill Moyers World of Ideas" 1994 Interview with ethicist Sissela Bok:

"As a philosopher, Sissela Bok grapples with hard truths – and with hard untruths, as well. Her writings explore the psychology of lying, the consequences of deception, and the perils of keeping secrets. With advanced degrees in both psychology and philosophy, she has taught ethics at Harvard’s Medical School, the Kennedy School of Government, and philosophy at Brandeis University. Her books include Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life and A Strategy for Peace."

Moyers: Can a republic die of too many lies?

Sissela Bok: I think a republic definitely could—especially if the lies are also covered up by various methods of secrecy. If you combine lying and secrecy, and if you also bring in violence so that secrecy covers up for schemes of lying and violence, then I think a republic can die.

I don’t think it’s possible for citizens to have very much of an effect if they literally don’t know what’s going on.

A credibility trap is a condition in which the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud. The leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The influential status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited, at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards them.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it can be seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system.

The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, 'organized hypocrisy.'

Related Reading:

JP Morgan and Madoff: Nesting Dolls of Fraud, Pam Martens

America's Gilded Capital: Losing Democracy to the Predator Class

Bill Moyers: Moral Mondays, North Carolina State of Conflict

Bill Moyers: Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism

Henry Giroux speaks with Bill Moyers about the madness of the Anglo-American system.

Moyers: Wendell Berry On Peaceful Resistance To the Savaging of Life By Reckess Greed

I finally had the time and opportunity to see this interview, and enjoyed it more than I thought I might.

Wendell Berry is a very interesting person, a 'poet farmer.' And he has a fascinating, holistic view of life.

This week on Moyers & Company in a rare television interview, Bill talks to visionary, author and farmer Wendell Berry to discuss a sensible, but no-compromise plan to save the Earth. We also examine the critical role of honey bees in our food supply and the threats they face in The Dance of the Honey Bee. And after the antics in Washington this week, Bill shares his views on the government shutdown.

"To make a living doesn't mean to make a killing, it means to have enough."

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Bill Moyers: Weapons Of Mass Distraction and Bending Towards Justice

Bill Moyers and Lawrence Lessig On Privacy

Moyers: Martin Luther King's Dream of Economic Justice

Theologian James Cone and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch join Bill to discuss Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of economic justice, and how so little has changed for America’s most oppressed.

Links For Saturday, 30 March

"Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive, if only we open ourselves to him."

Francis I, Easter Vigil, 2013

Links For Today

Bill Moyers: The Hypocrisy of 'Justice for All'

David Stockman: We've Been Lied To, Robbed, and Misled (podcast)

Afghan and Iraq Wars To Cost US From $4 to 6 Trillion

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of the Three Strikes Law - Rolling Stone

Inside the Three Strikes Project: An Inmate's Letter - Taibbi

Cyprus Depositors May Have Up to 60 Percent Seized

SAC's Steinberg Gets a Perp Walk - NYT

A Tale of Two Londons - Vanity Fair

Wall St Burden's the Public Debt - Michael Hudson

$600 Million Ponzi Scheme Collapse in North Carolina

Lesser Known Aspect of Currency War and the US Dollar - Rubino

Nation's Only State-Owned Bank the Envy of Wall Street

How G. W. Bush Won the Iraq War - Palast

Median Household Income Down 7% Since Start of Recession

Sheila Bair with Bill Moyers: Big Banks' Greed and Impunity

The Middle Class: Death By a Thousand Cuts - Is Nothing Sacred?

"The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won... Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero."

Bill Moyers


"The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.

Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place? If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.

We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful. It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire."

Cornel West


"Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell...

Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force which turns everything into a commodity. Human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity, that you exploit until exhaustion or collapse...

You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils.

But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is."

Chris Hedges


"The most sacred of the duties of government is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”

Thomas Jefferson

Nihilne sanctum est?

Politicians from both sides of the aisle will swear pious oaths to protect and foster the well being of the middle class.  They will say that their policies and proposals are all designed for its betterment.  And yet the state of the middle class continues to dwindle into despair and disrepair. Why is this?

It is not because of the predominance of a right or left ideology, of taxation and deficits and austerity. It is not because of the re-emergence of a perversion of the gospel, in the predestination of prosperity. We have seen all this before. It is not because in our comfort we have lost the sense of the imperative of common cause.

It is because of the overwhelming corruption of power, and of the cynical amorality of thoroughly modern political managers who worship power and personal wealth as ends unto themselves.   They distract the people with artificially divisive social issues and crises, while robbing them blind.

It is driven by the allure of the cartels, monopolies, and  monied interests, and their corrupt political bargains.  It is a child of the subornation of perjury on a massive scale. It is the unscrupulous servility to power of those who have sworn to uphold and protect the law.   What is truth?  Whatever suits us, whatever we say it is, by whoever has the power and the craft to define 'we.'  It is not the triumph of evil so much as the absence of any sense of the good, of honor, honesty, and of simple common decency.

And it is marked by the daily subverting of the law as a matter of convenience and comfort to the insatiable few, and the cravenness of their enablers, driven by personal ambition, ignorance, and fear.  It is the will to power, the elevation of the ascendant self and the system that supports it, above all else.  Greed is good.  Whatever works.  And the enemy is all that is not the self, which is the other.

And where there is nothing sacred, the people perish.

Moyers and Wolff: Capitalism Has 'Hit the Fan'

"Even as President Obama’s talking points champion the middle class and condemn how our economy caters to the very rich, modern American capitalism is a story of continued inequality and hardship.

Even a modest increase in the minimum wage — as suggested by the president — faces opposition from those who seem to show allegiance first and foremost to America’s wealthy and powerful."

Bill Moyers, Taming Capitalism Run Wild

A symphony of greed.

I would lay the failure of capitalism, or more properly the lapse of market capitalism into crony capitalism and corporatism, at altar of the triumvirate of the false gods of modern economics: globalization, fiat currencies, and naturally efficient markets.

And of course the fact that it is no longer socially unacceptable to be a lying, cheating conman, as long as you are sucessful at it. Greed is good, and so the achievement of wealth by any means available, as long as you beat the system and don't get indicted, is the epitome of human achievement and worth.

The most insidious trend is the adoption of the 'just-world hypothesis' and a Darwinian rationalization in blaming the victims for the outcome of this flawed set of policies and sanctifying of success.

This will very possibly result in yet another century of turmoil, degradation, and blood.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Failure to Reform

"But there is a sort of 'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."

Robert Johnson

Audacious oligarchy.

This will not end well.

And a preview of Matt Taibbi and Bill Moyers discussing Why We Can't Let the Banks Off the Hook.

Ignoring such pervasive white collar crimes, which are still ongoing by the way, creates a climate of extreme moral hazard, festering corruption, and teaches felony by example.

I think they give Obama, the regulators, and the Congress far to much credit in ignoring these crimes 'for the good of the system.' It is all about careerism, the credibility trap, and going along to get along.

They cannot reform the system because they are the system, and the political and financial elite are doing just fine with the system the way that it is, thank you very much. They do not want things to change.

Bill Moyers: The Senate's $500 Million BiPartisan Corporate Welfare Gift to Amgen

Mitch McConnell Republican from Kentucky, Max Baucus Democrat from Montana, and Orrin Hatch Republican of Utah.

"...we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere. Probably that has always been the case.

Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion..."

George Orwell, Review of Bertrand Russell's Power: a New Social Analysis in Adelphi Magazine, January 1939

Bernanke's Hammer: When You Have a Printing Press, Everything Looks Like a Monetary Transaction

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966

Apparently while Maslow made this saying famous with a more elegant formulation, the original source of the image is from a Mr. Kaplan who wrote his 'law of the instrument' in 1964.

"I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: 'Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.'"

Speaking of boys and their toys, the word that has made its way across the trading desks is that the Fed's put is back on, or more colloquially phrased, while Bernanke keeps printing, certain favored classes of assets can keep going higher, without regard to fundamentals, except for significant event-driven incidents, that will be quickly papered over.

Otherwise, the dips will be shallow and the trend will be maintained.  For how long I do not know, but as the VIX shows, perceived risk is back down to low levels that we have not seen since the growing credit bubble of 2004-2007.

As an aside, before snarky propeller heads with little better arguments to make point out that the Fed does not literally 'print money,' we all know that. It is a degenerate profession that mixes a pretension to lofty equations and high science with the taunts and arguments of the schoolyard, when they act as the politicians' bullyboys.

The pity is that 'the printing press' is not the only instrument at the Fed's disposal.  After all, they are a significant regulator of the banks, and have gained even more power and influence since the financial crisis.  But as might be obvious to most, they are a terribly conflicted regulator, and given to remarkable lapses in judgement.

Monetary inflation without reform is the 'solution' that most favors the monied interests and the financial class given the extractive nature of the system as it is.

The second most favorable policy is 'austerity,' again without serious reform.  One can increase the value of their own pile of ill gotten gains relative to others through either policy.  It is no choice when you can pick the choices you give to the people, all of which are favorable to you.

Unfettered capitalism is remarkably inventive in its ability to transfer wealth and destroy value.  It commoditizes everything, and subordinates all to a place on its hellish balance sheet.

The meme on the financial markets is that there may be shallow pullbacks, or even a greater correction in response to a specific event, such as the 'fiscal cliff,' but the Fed's policy is to target asset inflation once again, through the Too Big To Fail Banks and hedge funds, and their buying of paper at non-market prices.

There is also a belief, whether it is right or wrong, that the regulators will turn a blind eye to the capping of certain commodities like gold and silver, in the name of managing them as rival currencies.  Even a folk hero like Paul Volcker has previously endorsed this as a policy.

This turning of things upside down is what has been called Rubinomics, the principle that by supporting the buying of certain select instruments such as SP futures ahead of a crisis, one can more efficiently avert a financial problem than by allowing the markets to reflect the fundamentals, and then to clean up the mess afterwards.   It's cheaper and easier he observed.

It is the belief that rather than an instrument of price discovery within the real economy, the financial markets ARE the economy, and will lead rather than follow.  And it has become a form of financial totalitarianism through the manipulation of policy and money.

Robert Rubin articulated this policy perspective while he was the Secretary of the Treasury, and he somehow persuaded Greenspan, then the Chairman of the Fed, to go along with it, shortly after the Maestro had made his famous 'irrational exuberance' speech.  Although it should be noted that Greenspan had already found that tool, and used it.  He merely took it to another level, not as a response to be used to a crisis as in the case of the Crash of 1987, but as a proactive tool of financial engineering.

And this was the genesis of the principles of new Modern Monetary Theory, which in fact is a concept as old as the hills, appearing over again with different names, and the source of much recent misfortune through several Presidencies.

"Notwithstanding anything said or done by the Congress this year, operating through trained surrogates such as Geithner, Summers and others, Robert Rubin is still pulling the economic and financial strings in Washington. The fact that there is a Democrat in the White House almost does not seem to matter. President Obama arguably has a subordinate position to Rubin because of considerations of money."

Chris Whalen, The World According to Robert Rubin

And this is the problem I have with this Modern Monetary Theory that would save the system by placing the ability to simply create money in the hands of the Treasury, to be wielded such titans of sound judgement as Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, and Tim Geithner, with oversight perhaps by those incorruptibles and paragons in the Congress.

I do not like the banking system as it is, as you know if you frequent this Cafe.  The corruption of insider dealings, opaque deals, and unequal justice has displaced the discipline of well run markets.

The system as it is has all the problems, inefficiences, and injustice of a corrupt and self-serving oligarchy. This is not to say that is a grand conspiracy, but rather a series of unfortunate events and human tendencies, aiding the actions of a relative few.

The solution seems obvious, which is to reform the system, to provide for transparency and the rule of law, and a return to regulations and reforms that worked for decades.  And it is not to replace it with some gimmicky solution that has the same faults or worse, that will be used by same rotten, self-serving gang of idiots and careerists.

And this is why I do not even favor something more rigorous like a return to a gold or mixed metal standard now, because with the system as it is, it would surely be used as an instrument of control and repression.  A corrupt system can corrupt all.  Ask the Greeks how an external standard like the euro is working for them.  It has become an instrument of official plunder. 

The thought of the central government having the power to set official gold prices and control inventory, which they most surely would do, makes one shudder. At least in a nominally free market they can provide some refuge against financial engineering, given a wide enough timeframe.

So what about the markets, and such similar financial engineering notions as 'Nominal GDP Targeting."  Well, we can wonder how the Fed might want to actually achieve such a thing, short of going out and buying iPhones and foodstuffs.  Would it be to continually stuff money into the banks and their associated companies and camp followers, and wait for the trickle down effect?

We have seen the result of such an approach in the past.  The 'hot money' seeks beta, and that means financial paper, and frauds like collateralized debt obligations, tied to whatever hapless aspect of the real economy that is convenient, such as housing for example.

And the self same snarky economists will say, 'Where is the inflation?' and point to the very instruments of measurement of inflation that have been distorted and disabled so as not to show it, 'Chained CPI' being the most recent aberration.  And they know full well that in a situation in which the money supply is being expanded selectively and distributed through a relatively narrow source like the biggest banks, the inflation will show up selectively for quite some time, in inflated assets, bonuses and even industries like the tech sector if one can remember back to the 1990's.

I know how tempting it is for 'a little boy with a hammer' to go about pounding everything in sight.  But at some point, the adults have to come and take away that hammer, and restore the instrument to its proper usage in the service of real work and creative, productive activity.

Be careful in this market.  In markets where stocks trade like commodities, the technicals tend to be dominant because the market is a cynical game of supply and demand, squeezes in both directions, divorced from the underlying economic fundamentals. And it has been made worse by the light volumes, as few bystanders want to put their money down on the three card monte table, such as it is.

The pity is that it is strangling the flow of money to the real economy.

Max Keiser interviews Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica about his recent piece in Atlantic magazine, "What's Inside America's Banks?"

I would like to see Mr. Eisinger interviewed on the Bill Moyers show on PBS.

I doubt he could obtain a fair hearing on any mainstream media channel which prefers to stage manage their discussions in the manner of red versus blue.