Jon Stewart's Post-Election Show Wrap Up

Bill Moyers and Tom Engelhardt On America's 'Supersized Politics' and the Age of Spectacle

The Grandeur That Was Rome

"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic. I do not know if there are more narcissistic individuals in society now, and perhaps there are not.

But I do think that narcissism is much more widely tolerated, rewarded, and even admired now than it would have been in the period of 1930 to 1950 for example. And that is what makes all the difference. More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them, in order to be fashionable and competitive.

As an aside, I think this also tends to explain the decline of literature and poetry in American culture, and the rise of reality shows and the preoccupation with extravagance. Literature calls us out of ourselves, ex stasis, in order to fill us with knowledge and the creative impulse, while spectacle merely panders, and flows in to fill the empty and undeveloped voids in our being."

Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional:  The Age of Narcissism

Tom Engelhardt is the founder of TomDispatch.com and author of The End of Victory Culture and co-author, with Nick Turse, of Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare.



The impulse to evil is not the domain of any particular people or time, but a recurrent problem that must be confronted by each generation, and each individual person, in their own way and calling.

There is always the temptation to look upon injustice as insurmountable, and to simply turn away and to wash our hands with the thought that there is no use of trying, and even worse, in a descent into the apathy of relativism and uninvolvement saying, 'what is truth?'

That is the fate of those who who have ceased trying to be human, who have given themselves over to self-absorption, addictions, or despair, who are dying inside, and who when the time comes will make beasts of themselves, to escape the painful fragility of their own insubstantial being.

If there was any good news in the recent elections it is that so many well funded corporate efforts to promote particular candidates and their own agendas failed, despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars in slickly deceptive advertising campaigns.

This was a small victory for the American people, as the sputtering Karl Rove and the more cynical among the corporate interests went down to a general defeat, even as they were unable to accept or even comprehend that not everyone will play the fool for money, all the time.

But the more general problem of the corruption of the political parties by big money remains, and reform is the ingredient without which there will be no progress, and no sustainable economic recovery.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rally Day for the Precious Metals

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Abraham Lincoln

The precious metals had an exceptional rally today,  given that it was in the face of another sharp decline in the equity markets.  This is constructive for the bullish case.

I have closed out the 'short stocks' portion of my stocks-bullion hedged trade today. There may be more downside ahead for equities, but it looks to be a bit overdone, at least in the short term.   I also took some of the bullion positions down as I had taken it to a maximum on that big decline shortly before the US Presidential election.  Now it is at a more comfortable 'running' level.  As always, this is with regard to my 'trading positions' as I do not touch or even look at my long term holdings.  

Gold has moved very nicely through the resistance around 1720 and 'stuck a close' for today over 1730. We *might* see a test of that resistance at 1720, which is now support below the current price. But if this is a handle in a cup-and-handle formation, then that does not matter, and it is playing out very well.  However a clear break above 1800 is key.

The central banks are printing money to rescue the Western banking system. There is an enormous macro event taking place in the global currency as the US dollar reserve currency agreement, in place since World War II, has been changing for at least the past ten or more years, first slowly but soon with increasing speed.

Very few people understand what is happening, even amongst economists. Those who stand against this sort of change will find themselves swimming against a rather powerful secular tide.  There is nothing cyclical about this financial crisis or the economic ills that have accompanied it in the conventional economic sense, unless one wishes to start looking at very long, generational cycles of human wickedness and folly.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Another Down Day

Stocks continued to give it up on price as AAPL is a drag on big tech, and earnings overall appear a bit weak based on sluggish demand.

The problem is not 'uncertainty,' or 'the fiscal cliff.'

The problem with the economy is very weak aggregate demand by the large bulk of consumers who are seeing a very weak median wage, which is a structural problem that has been years in the making.

The problems in the western economies are intimately involved with the global currency war, and a rogue element in the Anglo-American financial system that has wounded the principles of market capitalism with the same old systemic frauds and a foul partnership with the political leadership.

I suspect this stock market downturn has run much of its course by historical standards of elections in which the incumbent wins re-election, but we will have to see if it can find its footing. There are some intense negotiations going on behind the scenes as the monied interests scramble to promote their policy positions.