Misguided Legislation Is Directly Repugnant to the First Amendment

I personally do not boycott the state of Israel, or have any interest in doing so.

However, this proposed legislation, co-sponsored by prominent Democrats and Republicans, is a direct assault on the Constitutional Rights of Americans to express their political beliefs.

It also conflates and dilutes the principled stand against anti-semitism and other forms of prejudice, which I strongly support as you know, with economic and political support for a particular government, its political actions and its domestic and international policies. That too carries its own dangers.

It is shocking that this bill has ever gained the traction that it has.

Well-intentioned legislation that extends civil and/or criminal penalties for or against expressions of political beliefs, without reference to an intrusion on the rights of others under the Constitution, sets a precedent that is very dangerous, within the context of an overall erosion of the rights of the individual.

With the ability of the president to suspend habeas corpus, and the widespread surveillance of citizens without due process, the primacy of the rights of the individual in the United States are under assault by government.

It is long time past to take a stand against the creeping corporatism and statism that continues to diminish the rights of the individual against the power of big money and big organizations.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Try To Keep a Little Grace

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

Paulo Freire


"Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil."

Jerry Garcia

A very quiet trading day today saw stocks drifting higher on light volumes and puffs of fast money liquidity.

Gold and silver were slightly lower on a stronger dollar.

If something occurs to trigger selling, there is so much fluff underpinning this market that we *could* see quite a multi-day selloff. It might look like a big down move, a rally back that fails to set a new high, and then a steeper decline.

I would not look for this to happen in the near term since the volumes are so light. It is more likely in late September to the end of October.

Each day that goes by in this kind of narrowly focused price puffing lessens the significance of the 'trigger event' that will be required to provoke a sharp sell-off.

There is no doubt in my mind that the financiers know this. They just do not care when there is money to be made, by any and all means.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Volcker Rule and Strong Independent Oversight Is Required to Save the Public From the Banks

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.  Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live.  To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it.  So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves.  None rebukes them...

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.  Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.  But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises.

If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup


“As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. and the deregulation of the derivatives market.”

Matt Taibbi


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

Among the policy changes that the Clinton Democrats enabled, in bipartisan partnership with the corporate stooge Republicans who were amassing private fortunes, was to go along with the financial sector's long campaign for financial deregulation and the overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act.

There were also plenty of useful idiots who climbed aboard.  Independent thinking is a difficult burden and a rarity, especially when it runs counter to your own career self-interests.

But as 'populist Democrats' the Wall Street Democrats were able to provide a cover for legislation promoted by the financial class, along with the other courtiers to power and money in politics, universities, and the media, for the benefit of a wealthy few.  In retrospect, one might think of about several hundred million reasons why this happened.

And also why the complicity has continued even until today, almost to the point of absurdly low approval ratings and the implosion of the Democratic party after pivoting from the working public to the wealthy professional class in banking and Wall Street's many ventures in healthcare and technology.

In 1999, on signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley into law, Clinton said, 'This is a day we can celebrate as an American day' and that 'the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate for the economy in which we live' and 'today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down these antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority' and 'This is a very good day for the United States.'

Columbia Journalism Review, Bill Clinton on Deregulation

After enormous bailouts and a near collapse of the global financial system, the Banks are back at it again. They are once more funding a clever campaign, with the help of the silent acquiescence of the mainstream media and those in the disgraced professions, who are more than willing to provide high sounding justifications and willing silence in return for money, access, and position.

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.  Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

When this all goes wrong, the professional elite will claim benign ignorance, again.   And then the conversation will quickly shift to blame the public, whom they hold in utter contempt.  They are particularly cynical with regard to their vocal minority of supporters, who are easily swayed by negative misdirection and cynical ideology into blaming other, weaker victims.

The people are starting to become aware of this. And the wealthy few and their professional elite are resisting reform and change for the better. They like things just the way they are.

Related:

Five Critical Decisions that Led to the Financial Crisis
Pam Martens' Warning About Financial Deregulation in 1998
Brilliant Warning About Rubin's Proposal for Financial Deregulation in 1995
The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall

The Volcker Rule and the London Whale
By Chris Whalen

...Ina Drew was essentially running a hedge fund directed by Dimon and other senior managers, a fund that was largely kept outside of the bank’s risk management and reporting procedures. Consider the bizarre situation in 2011-2012 when counterparties of Iksil facing the JPM commercial bank were unable to make margin calls, but the JPM investment bank was making margin calls on these same counterparties for positions in the very same indexed credit derivatives.

Bruno Iksil has waited for the proverbial concrete to harden over the past few years before coming forward with his latest accusations. This makes it difficult or impossible for Dimon and his lieutenants to change their story now. It will be very interesting indeed to see if anyone from the financial media or even the regulatory community picks up the new trail illuminated by Iksil’s statements.

The episode involving the London Whale illustrates how difficult it is to learn the truth about the inner working of large banks. Big banks profit by exploiting information and conflicts found between the world of credit and the world of securities. Indeed, the CIO's office generated big returns for JPM over the decade or so that Iksil was with the bank.

But the London Whale episode also shows in graphic terms why the Volcker Rule prohibitions against banks trading for their own account need to be preserved and strengthened. There is a fundamental conflict between a bank acting as a lender and trading credit derivatives.

More, if the CEO of a bank – any bank – can short circuit the internal controls of his institution in order to enhance returns with a bet at the credit derivative roulette table, then by definition that bank cannot be safe and sound."

To read the entire article click here.

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the Bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country.

When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin!

You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table)  I will rout you out."

Andrew Jackson, From the original minutes of the Philadelphia bankers sent to meet with the President on February 1834, from Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Standing Before the Nation With Judgement

"And they healed the pain of my people disgracefully, saying 'peace and prosperity,' when there was no peace or prosperity."

Jeremiah 6:12


"Easy is the descent into hell;
The door to death and darkness stands open, day and night.
But to retrace one's steps, to return once more
to the pure clean air, and cheerfulness and life:
That is our task, that is our true labour."

Vergil, Aeneid

The Non-Farm Payrolls came in 'better than expected,' as long as one did not look too closely, and not distinguish between low-paying, part time jobs versus jobs that carry a living wage that would enable further economic expansion.

Judgement and justice are long overdue—  but they are coming.

The highlight for next week will be the Producer and Consumer inflation figures.

I hope you have had a pleasant weekend.

For Friends In Troubled Times

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.

God alone knows the day and the hour when what will at length be, that which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto, not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us.  They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.

And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh.

God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing. You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it. There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past. They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.

To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed. They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them. If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.

Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission— I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me— still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are— sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Contemplate then yourself, not as yourself, but as you are in the Eternal God. Fall down in astonishment at the glories which are around you and in you, poured to and fro in such a wonderful way that you are dissolved into the Kingdom of God.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman


"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