"Inequality is a euphemism, a kind of shorthand, for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious, year on year, for the last three decades. And also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious in that same time.
It's visible in the ever rising costs of healthcare and college, in the coronation of Wall Street, and the slow blighting of wherever it is that you happen to live. And you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick. Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street from you loses his house."
Thomas Frank,
Listen Liberal
"The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
E.A. Bucchianeri,
Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World
"They [industrialists] were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke."
Charles Dickens,
Hard Times
"You should thank God for bank bailouts. Now, if you talk about bailouts
for everybody else, if you just start bailing
out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture
dies. There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life
is a little harder than it used to be.' At a certain place you've got
to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy.'"
Charlie Munger, September 2010
Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.
Let's see if there is another 'leak' of the data, and a violent burst of likely insider or collusive trading, as we saw with the CPI report on December 13.
Stocks had another volatile day, finishing up a little to the green.
Gold rallied again, and is pushing up against resistance for a breakout attempt.
Silver got nailed with the weakness in stocks.
VIX declined because.
The Dollar slipped a bit.
Have a pleasant evening.
