What is a proper disposition towards life? It is to accept God as a loving father, who is full of tenderness and forgiveness for us, despite our willful blunders and hardened hearts. He yearns for us, as a father and mother yearn for the return of their most beloved child. It is to accept that we are not lost, we are not abandoned. We are wandering like a wayward child, full of our own headstrong delusions. And our father waits expectantly, calling out for us through the darkness. Jesse, 2018
The US Dollar was stronger today, and therefore the usual currency crosstrade hit was put on the precious metals, which finished lower.
Gold went out on the low for the day, down 1% and silver off 1.5%. Silver gave up the 16 handle, and gold hung on to support below at 1240.
Stocks also had a ranging day, going down sharply on the initial news that the US was intending to increase the amounts of goods under tariff from China to $200 billion.
However, the wiseguys were able to shake off any concerns, and were able to take stocks back up to nearly unchanged, while the rest of the world was watching a very exciting match between England and Croatia.
I know that I was watching. The markets are getting boring when one is watching algos endlessly battle with a few straggling tourists and die hard punters, trying every scheme in the book to skin each other out of a few cents per share.
So far the football match is still on, and I think I will just let this posting go and watch it in overtime.
Need little, want less, and love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Have a pleasant evening.
Postscript: The 'Little Davids' of Croatia have won in overtime.
The big news today was the stunning win of the young underdog team France (7) over Belgium (3) to advance to the finals in the World Cup.
I would imagine that there is joyous celebrating in the streets and cafe's of France tonight.
Tomorrow we will see the big match between England and Croatia.
As for the markets, they were sluggish and contrived, and not particularly interesting.
Tomorrow we may be getting some inflation information,
There may also be some news from abroad, as Trump has arrived in Brussels for his meeting with Nato allies. The man-child will be meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May, in the UK.
And finally, he will be meeting with Russian President Putin in Helsinki on July 16th.
We won't be seeing a stock option expiration until next Friday. I have included the calendar below.
The United States of Amnesia has already lost interest in the trade war apparently.
The Comex gold warehouses in NY look like a morgue, but less lively and certainly less interesting. In Hong Kong they seem to be stocking up for another big physical withdrawal.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Stocks finished higher as the market shrugged off any concerns about trade wars.
Gold and silver finished slightly higher on a weaker dollar.
We will be getting some inflation data with the PPI and CPI later this week.
The Jersey sweet corn from local farms is available now. I guess there is some benefit to this hot summer. The tomatoes still seem to be shipped or from greenhouses though. I meant to ask them about when real field ripened tomatoes would be ready.
I have not planted a garden this year. I am fortunate enough to be able to walk around on his knee and get some yardwork done. Did I mention I love my John Deere lawn tractor? lol. I cut back the hedges, and just use the JD with bagger to chop and clean it all up. No raking for this guy. Autumn leaves? Bring it.
If for some reason what I write displeases you all that much, if we cannot agree to disagree, if you cannot bear to hear even reasoned criticism of something because you are so emotionally invested in it, then it is probably better not to read it here and feel all put out. Can you not bear to know that some people do not agree with you? Well, there seems to be a lot of that going around.
But it is not reasonable to expect me to change my conscience, pervert my own reason, and dishonor my own commitments just to please you or flatter your choices. There are many places where you can obtain that kind of validation, and can find even your basest emotions affirmed, and a catharsis achieved.
But after a time you may not be able to bear reading or hearing anything to the contrary. And that is a story and a sign in itself. I can remember a time during the early days before the Iraq war that I could not bear to watch anything but Fox News, because I wanted to believe so badly in what we were doing, even though it did not make sense, it did not hold together.
I got caught by surprise. I had been known for my skepticism, and had made most of my successes by piercing through the veils of lies in business and the markets. I think I fell for this because we were emotionally vulnerable; 9/11 was not an abstraction for our little town, on a commuter rail line to the City. My wife was caring for children in case their parents did not show up to take them home from school that afternoon.
And with time it was revealed to be a delusion based on falsehoods. And I have an obligation not to allow myself to fall into that sort of self-deceiving trap again. Especially if I wish to continue placing my money in the markets, although that is less of a consideration these days. Now it is all about commitment to something greater than myself.
I write what I do because I believe it, and have come to it by thinking for myself, not because I want or get anything from you. I accept nothing from anyone for any of this. I am discharging a pledge I made long ago out of gratitude, and thankful recognition of His tender mercies.
And if that is not enough for a person to speak their mind with reason and careful civility, well then, it is a brave new world we are creating indeed.
"Over the last month I have tried to describe conservative power in Washington, but with a small change of emphasis I could just as well have been describing the failure of liberalism: the center-left’s inability to comprehend the current political situation or to draw upon what is most vital in its own history.
What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years...
When you view the world from the satisfied environs of Washington — a place where lawyers outnumber machinists 27 to 1 and where five suburban counties rank among the seven wealthiest in the nation — the fantasies of postindustrial liberalism make perfect sense. The reign of the 'knowledge workers' seems noble.
Seen from almost anywhere else, however, these are lousy times. The latest data confirms that as the productivity of workers has increased, the ones reaping the benefits are stockholders. Census data tells us that the only reason family income is keeping up with inflation is that more family members are working.
Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. But they won’t on their own. So pressure must come from traditional liberal constituencies and the grass roots, like the much-vilified bloggers...
The more comfortable option for Democrats is to maintain their present course, gaming out each election with political science and a little triangulation magic, their relevance slowly ebbing as memories of the middle-class republic fade."
This guest opinion piece from Thomas Frank in 2006 seems particularly prescient in retrospect today. It provided the name for a newly published collection of his essays.
This first video interview below is also reprise, but it is so insightful, so spot on, that I thought it would be useful to bring it back now ahead of the fall elections. It is from that great series of interviews on Reality Asserts Itself.
How soon we forget, with all the distractions and dog and pony shows served up.
Not that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party will listen to reason. The pay is too good, and they will fight to retain their privileges until the bitter end.
They may begin to fake listening to their own broad base, not just the millionaires, more aggressively. They are good at faking concern and feeling your pain while doing very little.
Change will come only as the Progressives turn the party over on its head from the bottom up, at the primary ballot box and the elections.
Obama was a well polished and timid sell-out, from his first 100 days. But Bill and Hillary were venal carnies from the first. I never voted for either of them. But I have family in Arkansas, and their nature was well established back then.
And may have been proto-fascists too, if you remember the two highest profile law enforcement actions of the Clinton administration: Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Obama was not much better if one recalls the brutal way in which dissent was suppressed under him, with the historic use of Espionage Act, and the coordinated crushing of Occupy movement and just about anyone else who stood against him. Like so many verbally acute figures he was given over to paranoid overreach when words failed.
So whenever a hard core Democrat tells me how awful the Trump voters are, and there are some pretty ugly actors in that crowd, and how tragic it is that they failed the country at the polls, I want them to remember this video.
Make no mistake, Trump is embarrassing, and anyone with a view to history can see the damage he is doing with his dilettante, con man's approach to policy. I forecast that in their anger and frustration people would grab the wrong solution from the shelf, and here it is.
But all things considered, we can thank the arrogant willfulness of Hillary and her corporate stooges for it. The rise of a demagogue almost always owes something to the long term failure of the governing elite to stand up to the predations and depredations of the rich and the heartless. And alas, the GOP sold their souls to the moneyed interests long ago, and are beyond redemption.
Thomas Frank has published a new collection of previously published essays titled Rendezvous With Oblivion. The title comes from a column he wrote for the New York Times in 2006.
A video interview of this new book is included below in the second video. The interview is an update on the state of US politics, and the Democratic Party in particular. The book is a thematic collection of previously published columns.
I think he could have done a bit more with the material in terms of updating and showing how what he has previously said, and foretold, is unfolding.
The Democratic establishment and highly placed party functionaries do not want to change— they are dedicated to their own personal power and control, and all about getting paid off first and foremost.
And their greed is killing us.
Thomas Frank discusses his new book, Rendezvous With Oblivion.
And for good measure, here is a specific discussion of the details of the election blunders and fatal complacency fueled by arrogance and disdain for the common people.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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