"No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth. We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from falling apart."
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”
Tacitus
“These days, banks have become so big that much of what they do is merely shuffle wealth around, or even destroy it. Instead of growing the pie, the explosive expansion of the banking sector has increased the share it serves itself. Bizarrely, it’s precisely the jobs that shift money around – creating next to nothing of tangible value – that net the best salaries. How is it possible that all those agents of prosperity – the teachers, the police officers, the nurses – are paid so poorly, while the unimportant, superfluous, and even destructive shifters do so well?
The Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition. They’re shameless.”
Rutger Bregman
"Financial predators are usually narcissistic and audacious. They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy. Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive. Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars. They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."
Russ Alan Prince, Forbes
The economic news this morning provided a two stage boost to the risk trade this morning.
The first was the Jobs Report, which came out remarkably strong, but with a somewhat strained reading was viewed as bullish for risk assets, in the less robust gain in wages, as some 'immaculate disinflation.'
That boost was quickly fading, scine even the most cynical refused to believe it.
But at 10 AM the next stage of data, the ISM Manufacturing and to a lesser extent employment came in a bit light, and then we werre off to the races.
My skeptical side tended to view this as the beginning of yet another wash and rinse cycle. Now all we need is for some voice from the Fed, or some additional data, to throw some shade on the story that the Fed will begin to moderate its interest rate tightening.
But on a happy note gold and silver caught a rally bid as well, with the Dollar falling fairly hard.
Let's see how long this lasts.
The circus in the House of Representative continues, the Velvet Insurrection Part Deux.
And the band played on.
Have a pleasant weekend.
