Thomas Frank - What Happened, One More Time - Economic Devastation and Populist Backlash

"The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn’t all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn’t accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.

The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the 'last thing standing' between us and the end of the world.

It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue."

Thomas Frank

The Imperial Presidents From the Fall of the American Republic

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

Plutarch


"And I'll leave you with one set of numbers that I found today, which is just an absolute for this whole thing. In 2015, Wall Street Bonuses, not regular compensation, bonuses, seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled $29.4 billion dollars.

Total compensation paid to every single person in this country who makes minimum wage totaled $14 billion...

The era of neo-liberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun."

Mark Blyth


“There may be thunder in Europe but it is in America the lightning will fall.”

Ambrose Bierce

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Oversold and Overdone

Gold and silver caught a little bounce today off dollar weakness and technically oversold conditions.

And there is the matter of very large physical offtake of bullion in the Shanghai markets, together with a pricing differential that shows the strain on the Western gold pool to sustain these prices.

But we are now in December, and the large open interest on the Comex has been changing hands from speculators and customers to the bullion banks. Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately, the Comex is now becoming more of an anachronism, a price setting tool without a firm foundation in the mechanics of global supply and demand.

This will not end well for many, as these sorts of protracted deceptions almost always do.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts -

The Non-Farm Payrolls report was a mixed bag this morning.

I doubt it will deter the Fed from raising rates 25 to 50 bp. This has been their the imperative of their internal needs for using rates as a tool for some time. They wanted badly to get off the zero bound, ahead of the next recession.

Only fear of the weak recovery and macro events have held them back, largely from a reputational perspective. Never underestimate the craven motives of a seasoned bureaucrat.

Stocks caught a bit of a bounce, primarily as a technical matter into a weekend overshadowed by the vote in Italy and continuing 'populism' in Europe.

Have a pleasant weekend.