Debate on the Trump-Putin Summit Between Cirincione and Greenwald

The original posting with transcript of this debate between Joe Cirincione and Glenn Greenwald about the Trump-Putin Summit can be found here.

Thomas Frank: The Catechism of Tech, Bank, and Globe, Which Is Nothing But an Excuse For an Out-of-Touch Elite

"Back in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt set down his understanding of American political history, in which there were two schools of political belief.

'The liberal party believed in the wisdom and efficacy of the will of the great majority of the people, as distinguished from the judgement of a small minority of either education or wealth.'

What Roosevelt could not foresee was a party system in which the divide fell not between the few and the many, but between the small minority of education and the small minority of wealth. Enlightened technocrats on one side, and resentful billionaires on the other. Get that great majority back together, and they would be unstoppable."

Thomas Frank

In order to change and regain their party's historical mandate, the Democrats have to abandon their patterns of behaviour adopted and set down in the 1990's.

They may have to get rid of their consultants, and most importantly their methods of fund raising almost exclusively among the professional moneyed class with which they closely identify.

And above all, they must take Hillary Clinton and her class of big money politicians aside, and bid them good luck and goodbye.

They must embrace genuine change,  instead of attempting to imitate reform by continually softening their image with professionally applied makeup, and a cynically thin veneer of identity politics and tribalism.

This is how they have managed to avoid discussing this vast inequality of ours, and addressing, with practical solutions rather reframing the questions with diversionary rhetoric, the slow demise of the long ignored working poor and middle class, which is their traditional base, and their party majority.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - On Top of the World - Le Dénouement, à la Chinoise

“On top of the world,
Or in the depths of despair—
Happy alone is the soul that loves."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  Klärchens Lied, aus Egmont

Stocks were on a wild tear higher.

Let's chalk this one up to the words of Fed Chair Jay Powell who sees a strong economy permitting more interest rate increases.

Gold and silver were taken out to the woodshed and beaten lower, with the Dollar slightly higher.

Stocks are putting in another blow off top. Don't try and get in front of them, but this one will end up like the rest.

Our defining character is fraud in the service of Mammon.

And the Deep State is howling a hurricane.

Trumpolini is fortunate in his opposition.  Which is too bad, because he brings out the worst in his followers.  And unfortunately the opposition tries to answer in kind.   Too bad. Darkness cannot defeat darkness.

Little Dolly has been sitting in my lap, shivering with fear, since a cold front bringing thunderstorms has started rolling through. 

As a reminder, there will be a stock options expiration at the end of this week.

And a Comex precious metals option expiration next week on Thursday, the 26th.

The struggle to cover the physical gold withdrawals from the Hong Kong Comex listed warehouses continues. Not to mention the less visible, like Singapore.

There is certainly nothing happening with the gold warehouses in New York.  It is locked down tight, like a morgue.

Gold is flowing from West to East. It is the most striking phenomenon of modern monetary developments. And yet so few see it, and fewer remark on it.

Smells like teen spirit. Or is that desperation? The price action tells us something. What is it?

This is quite a wild party being thrown for us by the elite—   a bonfire of the vanities, we suspect. Part three, le dénouement.

And they all fall down.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Modern Discourse

"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume."

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet


"When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency."

Samuel Johnson


"...in the gross and scope of mine opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet


"She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals: 'I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves.' 'I wonder, Madam,' replied the Doctor, 'that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.'"

Anecdotes of the Revd. Percival Stockdale, Johnson Miscellanies

Today was another sleepy day on the trading markets,  the action characteristic of the dog days of Summer.

Stocks were mixed, with the financials strong, but real world stocks off on weakness in the economy outside of the paper chase.

And so in the balance, it was a mixed to unchanged sort of day.

Netflix announced its earnings.  And it bombed after the bell, and the stock was down sharply. This may affect the stock indices tomorrow given that Netflix is one of the big cap bubble darlings.

How aggressively Wall Street defends the stock price and buys the dip may give us some indication of where we are on this leg of the bust and bubble cycle being produced by lax regulation, hot money injections, and Fed policy errors.

I had the occasion to look into some heated twitter exchanges, starting with one cited by Glenn Greenwald.   And I broke with recent custom and  read some comments sections of web sites that are high volume and popular, and do little to moderate their sites.

And the image of this modern discourse, with truncated comments thrown back and forth with even less content than characters, seems like monkeys throwing feces at one another.

Seriously.  If you step back and look at the quality of conversation, there isn't any, no matter how hard some participants may try to use reason and coherent expression.

Like bad money with good, this modern style of thought exchange tends to predominate, and pushes out more meaningful discussion.

This is our clicks culture, such as it is. And it has been elevated to an instrument of public discussion and policy announcements now with this Administration.  Although I hasten to add that they are all doing it, on both sides of the professional political spectrum, albeit some more gracefully than others, but with the same effects. Fraud is the colors of the day, while truth, such as it may occasionally dare to appear, is led down blind alleys and strangled.

“Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society."

Samuel Johnson

The anticipation and reaction to Trump's visit to Russia is a great example of lots of sound bites being tossed with much heat but little light and less thought.  The Russia hysteria is becoming a genuine cultural phenomenon.  And there are mainstream media outlets that have become virtual sewer pipes for it, that destroy thought and trust, and then are all too ready to blame malevolent foreign powers for the erosion of confidence that follows.

This is nuts.  So why does it thrive?

It thrives because it pays in our systems of metrics and valuations, which are money and power so far above all else that hardly anything else enters into consideration.  We have become so distracted and spin-frenzied that we can only think in sound bites that are tossed around, rise to prominence, and then forgotten.

Even though the public opinion TV shows have become slightly better organized, they are even more cynically motivated feces throwing contests between highly paid talking heads.  Professional tossers if you will.

Speaking of monkeys throwing feces, let's see if Goldman's earnings tomorrow morning can do anything for the financials.

But the thriving financials are largely parasitic and extractive. And they will not help to continue to support the weighty valuations of our modern god of the markets.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.