"Many as are our sins, His grace is greater. Our sins are more in number than the hairs of our head; yet even the hairs of our head are all numbered by Him. He counts our sins, and, as He counts, so can He forgive; for that reckoning, great though it be, comes to an end; but His mercies fail not, and His Son's merits are infinite."
John Henry Newman
“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people."
Martin Luther King
"The dying [repentant] thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.”
Thomas Merton
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening."
Simone Weil
These are the three greatest gifts: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness.
And the greatest tragedy is to harden our hearts against them, out of fear and pride.
Stocks managed to rally today thanks to the guile of Jay Powell, who played the dove to stimulate the speculative bubble, at least for the day
The Dollar drifted lower.
Gold and silver rallied again off the anticipated bottom for the Non-Farm Payrolls report.
The VIX fell as the risk on sentiment shoved away the fears of risks.
This market is one exogenous event away from a meltfown.
A regional Fed President's comments today dismissing out of hand the question of ethics issues at the Fed were disturbingly disingenuous at best.
Of course there are no ethical considerations, because their ethics are carefully crafted, self-serving legalisms which enable their audacious and abusive privileges.
And they are shamelessly tolerated by those who are also beneficiaries of this systemic corruption.
"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."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
This is the credibility trap in which we find ourselves today.
Have a pleasant evening.
"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves. The moneyed interests and their servants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and social and organizational privileges."
Jesse
