"Having someone who is the brother of one former president and the son of another run against the wife of still another former president would be sweetly illustrative of all sorts of degraded and illusory aspects of American life, from meritocracy to class mobility.
That one of those two families exploited its vast wealth to obtain political power, while the other exploited its political power to obtain vast wealth, makes it more illustrative still: of the virtually complete merger between political and economic power, of the fundamentally oligarchical framework that drives American political life."
Glenn Greenwald
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away."
Phillip K. Dick
Did you notice that the gains from yesterday were largely erased today? The Fed and the Banks made their point, and the Street managed to squeeze out the Shake Shack IPO.
And so today was back to reality.
The GDP number this morning was quite bad. And I think the chain deflator understated inflation by an appreciable amount, so the real GDP was probably a bit worse. What one hand give back with cheaper oil, and hand scoops out even more for food, rents, and healthcare.
We are in a difficult period. A great deal of bad behavior is being rationalized away, and these things tend to feed upon themselves. It is very hard to know what is real and true, much less whom we can trust. People are generally mistaken at the best of times, but it is worse when it is culturally accepted to lie, with the ends justifying the means.
Change is coming. I am not sure whether it will be for the good or ill. But it will be different. The most important thing is to keep your head when others are losing theirs.
Our parents and grandparents had it no better. I am coming around to the thought that every generation has its own challenges, and too often they are the same old things, human nature being what it is.
Life is difficult. But it has breathtakingly beautiful moments. Even while marching in a concentration camp, enduring suffering we can barely imagine, Victor Frankl was able to obtain a vision of love in the person of his wife, that led to his finally understanding what it means that 'the angels lose themselves in the contemplation of God.'
But in the meantime, we must pay the bills. So lets see what the stock markets to next. as it may be telling.
And keep in mind the 'first things,' the only things that, too long a time to even imagine from now, will be the only things that really mattered. We say this, but we really do not know it, until God wipes our eyes clean with tears.
Have a pleasant weekend.
