"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
""Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.
Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them. We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer."
Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience
"Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places."
Michael Parenti
"The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."
Walter Brueggemann
Fear can turn to greed in a second, and concerns just melt away n the passion to gamble and not miss out.
The markets *finally* got together and gave us an impressive bear market rally that they were able to take out near the highs.
If all goes well this weekend then we *might* be able to see them extend the gains next week.
All bully has to do is take out that second high on the charts.
And as you might expect the risk averse plays retreated somewhat, such as the Dollar, gold and silver.
Gold and silver took a sharp hit this morning, no doubt with a nod to their Comex option expiration on Monday.
And the meme today was wow, look at that Consumer sentiment number and its implications for inflation expectations.
And besides, the recession is already here and its not so bad, right?
Why, it's practically over already.
Don't ask why, time to buy.
I seem to recall that they said the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
"I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable.
In Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’."
George Orwell, Looking Back On the Spanish War and Other Essays
"The whole town and all its inhabitants are quite drowned in carnival din, masks and confetti. And on top of that the news of the Reichstag fire.
Dancing on a volcano."
Alban Berg, Letter from Berlin, September 1, 1933
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"Never relinquish your ability to love, to love others and to love the truth, whether it be from fatigue, or confusion, careerism or expediency. For in that simple act of the will to love we maintain a critical linkage to our humanity.
The real capitulation of a people to the will to power occurs, not in the mob as one might think, for by then it is an almost forgone conclusion. The guardians of the public conscience are in the professional class, for they are the enablers of a moral voice and caution. They possess a platform and provide an example, and therefore bear a heavier than normal responsibility for speaking for the truth."
Jesse, The Great Temptation and the Rise of the Will to Power, January 1, 2017
Stocks managed to rally despite some weaker economic news early on.
The bulloney boys were cheery today, managing to turn that frown upside down, and the market strategists were out hawking their (be)wares.
The recession was a topic of interest, with the general line being that stocks have already discounted it and now is nearly the time to start putting that cash to work.
I would say that a recession, as concerning as it may be, is among the least of our more serious concerns.
Keep an eye on Europe, and also on the Asian Pacific rim.
Contagion is a very serious concern given the shoddy and poorly regulated nature of our financial system.
But not to worry, after the close the Fed says that all the banks have passed their stress tests. LOL
Time to head for higher ground.
The Dollar was higher, and gold and especially silver were lower.
There will be a Futures options expiration for the metals on Monday the 29th.
Never has so much self-serving baloney been fed to so many by so few.
And they seem to be getting better at it. Bernays would be pleased.
"Few today remember or are even aware that leading members of America’s elite, Corporate America, were busily engaged in planning to overthrow the United States government in 1933."
David Turner, Corporate America's Failed Coup d'Etat, Jerusalem Post, June 17, 2017
"In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.
MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character."
House of Representatives Report, 73d Congress, February 15, 1935.
"Finally, from one of my oldest friends and colleagues in Wash-
ington, to whom I was indebted for past favors, I got confirma-
tion of what I had learned in Newport and New York.
I use the word conspiracy; I really am talking of a plot—a
serious, long-discussed plan to—shall I say—capture the President.
The idea was not to kill him; none of these people was as crazy
as John Wilkes Booth. Nor was it to kidnap him for negotiation,
as had happened in the case of Chiang Kai-shek. Rather, proceeding in the pattern of certain South American revolutions
engineered by the palace guard, the idea was to impose a firm
restraint, for the good of the country.
So what happened? Well, as you know, the President never was
captured by the enemy. Neither was any conspiracy exposed, with
public scandals and punishments.
Of
the industrialists and the social leaders who conspired or went
along, some have died, some have lost power and influence.
Others live in Monaco. We can afford to forget them all.
But at the time the whole affair had a tremendous effect on me;
I lived at high tension for months. I remembered once asking
Goebbels, ‘And how would you destroy the United States?' And
his reply: 'From within.'”
"This perennial classic of political literature remains the only book to document the trading of the American financial establishment with Hitler's Germany in World War II, from Pearl Harbor to V-E Day."
Advert for Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot March 27, 2007
"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The symptoms of fascist thinking can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest."
Henry Wallace, The Danger of Fascism, 1944
"There were a number of Wall Street scions who most infamously associated themselves with Hitler's financiers, and were more than willing to ride the National Socialist tide in Europe for their own benefit come what may, to the extent that they did not stop their activities in supporting the Reich until called out by the government through the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1944.
Why bring that up now? Because that same sort of short term, greedy, amoral thinking is taking the US down a similar path with nations who, while the comparison with Hitler is inappropriate, are certainly no kindred spirits or friends of liberty. The perpetrators will claim ignorance, or victimization, when in fact they have been roundly selling out their country through the blind pursuit of crony capitalism, to the detriment of the people and their country."
Jesse, Currency Wars: Selling The Rope, 7 July 2010
"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see."
Thomas Merton
Crazy talk. Could not happen here. Move along. Nothing to see.
Another day of the endless wash and rinse.
The underpinnings of the equity markets are porous, with the consistency of styrofoam.
"The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."
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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