“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, 'Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!' But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your life will be demanded of you; as for the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
Luke 12:16-20
"Having fallen from the eternal, the evil one's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always. He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he destroys."
Denis de Rougemont
"Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can be just pushed aside as trivial exceptions.
If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. They are under a spell, they are blinded, their very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.c Here lies the danger of diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, December 1942
"No warning will suffice to powerful fools who, driven mad by hubris and lust for power, weave the hangman's ropes of their own destruction. They preach the necessity of hardness, and practice the circumvention of the law for themselves and their associates in injustice.
But when the reckoning comes for them, as it eventually does, they always seem astonished, but unfortunately never to the point of speechlessness. They will harangue fortune, and all those imaginary enemies who conspired to their downfall, to the bitter end.
The Western elite are in a denial, and a bubble of delusion, so profound that I am concerned that when reality intrudes their reaction will be mishandled, provocative, and likely to hasten a generational change that is already occurring and being fiercely resisted, slowly."
Jesse, Complicity of the Advantaged in the Nakedness of Kings, 19 February 2015
The stock that the world awaited, Nvidia reported a decent beat of the revenue and earnings estimates after hours.
It was enough so that the stock did not sell out, but not enough to boost the stock appreciably.
So stocks overall finished pretty much unchanged today, after some continuing weakness in the earlier trade.
Gold finished unchanged as well, with silver down a bit.
VIX fell.
The US markets continue on pretty much in a bubble of their own, without much of a care.
The US vetoed another UN proposal for a cease fire in Gaza.
It was the sole objection although the UK voted to abstain.
The extradition hearing for Julian Assange in London continues.
Have a pleasant evening.
