Tag: Jesse’s Cafe Americain

Without Empathy or Remorse: The Psychopath Next Door, In the Office, In the Halls of Power

Guest Post by Jesse

“What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a range in human behaviours. There may be a baseline, but not all are the same.

And this is why theories that assume that everyone has a basic world outlook that is the same like you, that all people have a natural desire to be friendly, helpful, and sharing falter out of either a good nature or from a good maximizing, selflessly reasoning behaviour, falter so badly when applied to the real world.

When a society fails to restrain some of the worst behaviours of those who prey on others in term of power or money, their example serves to bring out the worst in a much larger subset of the population that is marginally sociopathic, weak in their human values.

Bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour, and those who profit by it find ways to justify this through self-serving social and political theories, to themselves and to others.

Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes: Gold Does Not Offer a Safe Harbor Against Financial Crises

Guest Post by Jesse

“Gold has worked down from Alexander’s time… When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory.”

Bernard Baruch

Gold has moved in price from $250 in the year 2000 to $1,350 today.

And given the structure of global supply and demand it is likely to go much higher, unless it becomes a fixed asset in a global monetary system once again and its price becomes set by fiat.  More likely it will be a floating asset.

Don’t buy any, don’t like it. Laugh at the rest of the world who is buying it.  It doesn’t matter.

The flaws in this paper are obvious. A very broad sweep of data over time without sufficient attention to the character and elements of the contexts of the various situations described within can easily be misleading, or be used to ‘prove’ something.

Most assets will smooth out over a long period of time, unless they are artificial constructs,like stock indices which are altered by throwing losers out and putting winners in to achieve a semblance of growth.

Continue reading “Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes: Gold Does Not Offer a Safe Harbor Against Financial Crises”

Plutocracy, Then and Now

Via Jesse

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed?  Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers?  Why else would we all— by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians— be participating in its destruction?

Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit?  By not being radical enough.  Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.

Wendell Berry

Under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.

If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Thomas Jefferson, 16 January 1787

Continue reading “Plutocracy, Then and Now”

The Reckoning

Guest Post by Jesse

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and even murders that we are not going to be held to account.”

Czesław Miłosz

Every man and woman on this earth will die.

Now, this is of course a statement of the obvious. And yet very few really think about it, until something happens to bring that cold statement of reality into an unavoidable focus that they must confront. We are all dying, in our own way and time, from the moment that we are born; but we do our utmost not to think about it.

And this is understandable. Going around constantly thinking about your own mortality would be morbid, a misuse of the time and talent that we have been given on this earth to do things, to create, and love, and to be alive.

Continue reading “The Reckoning”

YOU ARE HERE

“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning 

The chart below was posted by Jesse a few weeks ago. It accompanied a post titled Gathering Storm. He doesn’t specifically refer to the chart, but his words reflect the ominous view of the future depicted in the chart.

“When gold and silver finally are able, through price action, to have their say about the state of Western fiscal and monetary policy actions, it may break a few ear drums and shatter a more than a few illusions about the wisdom and honesty of the money masters. Slowly, but surely, a reckoning is coming. And what has been hidden will be revealed.”

The title of the post and the chart both grabbed my attention and provide a glimpse into the reality of our present situation. The Gathering Storm was the title of Winston Churchill’s volume one history of World War II. Churchill documents the tumultuous twenty years leading up to World War II in The Gathering Storm. The years following World War I, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler were abysmal, but only a prelude to the approaching horror of 65 million deaths over the next six years. What appeared to be dark days in the 1930’s were only storm clouds gathering before a once in a lifetime tempest. In my view we stand at an equally perilous point in history today.

Continue reading “YOU ARE HERE”

Jobs Report Huge Miss at 38,000 Jobs Added, Shrinking Workweek, Stagnant Real Wages

 Guest Post by Jesse

“This election was lost four and five and six years ago and not this year. They didn’t start thinking of the poor old common fellow until they started out on the election tour.

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot.

But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through some poor fellow’s hands.

They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue.”

Will Rogers, 5 December 1932

I said yesterday that ‘I have a hunch that gold and silver are being capped here for a reason.  Maybe.  It’s hard to tell with the non-linear Fed.’

And today I think that things are becoming clearer, as suspected.  The Fed needs to raise rates to cool down the economy, in a pig’s eye.  They want to raise rates for their own policy purposes, so they can lower them again when their latest paper asset bubble fails.

The common person may not understand all this, and the lessons from history.  But the ‘experts’ most certainly should understand them, and quite frankly they do.   They may not say so, they may never admit it, they may let themselves be convinced, and even convince themselves and quiet the nagging doubts, but at the end of the day they know exactly what they are doing, what they are abiding, what they are enabling if only by their silent acquiescence.

Thomas Frank: What Happened To the ‘Party of the People’

Via Jesse

“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.

This word inequality. 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, or you read about the lobbying industry that drives Washington DC, or the new political requirement, the new constitutional requirement that every presidential candidate has to be a billionaire’s favorite, or a billionaire themselves.

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. Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer, or the hop content of a beer, while other people will never believe in anything again.”

Thomas Frank

Change is coming. It must come, because the status quo is unsustainable, and has been so for some time.

Continue reading “Thomas Frank: What Happened To the ‘Party of the People’”

And Into the Heart of the Matter

Update from Jesse

Postscript at 6:30 PM: Out of surgery and in Recovery. I am waiting to see her. She will be on the way to the Intensive Care for the weekend.

Surgery in a few hours (2 PM start)

As you probably know by now in your own lives, when a real crisis comes you hurry about, getting information, making the financial and practical arrangements, dealing with the most pressing matters as they come, correcting the little mistakes that cause problems later, comforting and reassuring those who need it, informing those who are in confusion, and doing what you feel that must be done, finding the limits of your ability and then repeatedly pushing them into resistance and the unknown. And this is how our talents become skills.

And then at last, when what can be done is done, you retire to a quiet place, and perhaps a tear or two as there is no shame in this, since after all we are wholly human, and then say ‘thy will be done.’

We do this all the time. This is what it means to be an adult, to be fully human. But it seems that only at certain times do we become aware of it, more acutely conscious of our roles in life as father and mother, husband and wife, loving child and capable professional, friends and lovers.

Always there are the angels, the unexpected people you encounter who have great hearts and helping kindness. And even in our distress, there are encounters when we too can help and comfort someone else in a similar situation. You see them in the waiting rooms, with their mothers and spouses and friends, and you in turn provide some relief and comfort for them. Suffering is a great humanizer and leveler. There is a fraternity of those who come to understand this; they see it in each other’s eyes.

This is when we are most truly human, fully aware of our dependency and vulnerability and our true place in things, of who we really are: sinners, but attempting great things, moving forward in fear and trembling, as best as our lights may lead us.

Have a pleasant weekend.


PRAYERS NEEDED

No need to have this post delve into the existence of God. If you are inclined toward prayer, please say them for Jesse’s wife.

It’s Always Something – No Updates Until Monday.

by Jesse

There will be no updates tonight or tomorrow.

My wife is having emergency surgery tomorrow. Since this condition was detected before any symptoms or damage from the swelling in her brain from a tumor had occurred we are glad for this, although today was distressing and unexpected, a bit of a shock really. A CAT scan detected this yesterday, and an MRI confirmed it today.

This is unusual for the type of colorectal cancer that she has. Typically it reoccurs in the abdomen, which it has done twice now in roughly the same place in the lungs. There were no other traces of it anywhere else. A biopsy will confirm whether this is the same thing or not.

She will be in intensive care until Sunday most likely. I will not be responding to individual emails very often.

Please remember us in your prayers, as we remember you.


MOTHER, SHOULD I TRUST THE GOVERNMENT? (Oldie but Goodie)

Originally Published in June 2013

 

Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they’ll like this song?
Mother, do you think they’ll try to break my balls?
Ooh ah,
Mother, should I build the wall?

Mother, should I run for president?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Ooh ah,
Is it just a waste of time?

Pink Floyd – Mother

The lyrics to Mother had both a literal and figurative meaning for Roger Waters. He was literally describing his overprotective single mother (his father was killed in World War II) building walls to protect him from the outside world. The figurative meaning is Big Mother sending its boys off to war and using fear to control and manipulate the masses. At the time he wrote this song in 1979, the Soviet Union was thought to be at its peak of power and the Berlin Wall represented a boundary between good and evil. Nuclear war was still a looming fear. Waters has always had a dim view of totalitarian states and institutions (English schools). Having seen his Wall Tour performance this past summer at Citizens Bank Park with a diverse crowd of 40,000, ranging in age from senior citizens to teenagers, it seems this song has gained new meaning. He sang a duet with himself from 1980 projected on the Wall and when he sang the lyric, “Mother, should I trust the government?” the entire stadium responded in unison – NO!!! This revealed a truth that is not permitted to be discussed by the corporate mainstream media acting as a mouthpiece for the ruling class. A growing legion of citizens in this country does not trust the government. This is very perceptive on their part.

In part one of this two part series – Hey You – I examined how an invisible government of wealthy, power hungry men have utilized the propaganda techniques of Edward Bernays and lured the American people into a narcissistic, techno-gadget, debt based servitude. Over the last one hundred years they have created a totalitarian state built upon egotism, material goods, and fulfilling our desires through Wall Street peddled debt and mass consumerism. It has been an incredibly effective form of control that has convinced the masses to love their servitude. The ruling oligarchs correctly chose the painless, amusement saturated, soft totalitarianism of Huxley’s Brave New World over the fearful, pain inflicting, surveillance state, house of horrors detailed in Orwell’s 1984.

Continue reading “MOTHER, SHOULD I TRUST THE GOVERNMENT? (Oldie but Goodie)”

They Thought They Were Free

Via Jesse

“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

Continue reading “They Thought They Were Free”

SHOULD YOU BELIEVE THE VAMPIRE SQUID?

I find it fascinating the mainstream corporate media and Wall Street shysters spend SO MUCH time talking down gold and spending an inordinate amount of electronic ink trying to convince the masses that only nutjobs would buy it. I believe less than 2% of people have gold in their investment portfolio, so why the endless articles bashing it?

Newsletter hawkers like Martin Armstrong take every opportunity to shit on gold as an investment. I wonder if he was shitting on it from 2001 through 2011? We don’t know, because he was in prison for investment fraud during most of that time. Fatass Barry Ritholtz is in the same boat. He’s nothing but a failed lawyer pretending to be an investment guru. He’s gleeful when gold falls. It’s because he completely missed a 10 year bull market.

The suppression of gold prices through the paper market since 2011 by the Fed and their Wall Street bank co-conspirators has thus far been successful, but it is fraying at the edges as China continues to accumulate physical gold and pushing the ponzi scheme towards its inevitable conclusion. Soaring gold prices tells the masses central bankers are a fraud, that’s why they are desperate to keep the price capped.

With zero and negative interest rates throughout the world, gold should be skyrocketing. It is showing signs of calling the central banker bluff. Jesse’s comments below should be heeded. The stock market dead cat bounce and the holiday manipulation of gold down $30 will fail. If there is a lesson from the Big Short, do the opposite of what Goldman says to do.


Chart of the Day

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Goldman Says Have No Fear and Buy Our Paper

 

Goldman analyst Jeffrey Currie came out this morning with a ‘sell gold’ recommendation for Ma and Pa Muppet.

I was fortunate enough to hear his explanation for this in his own words on Bloomberg TV, which had touted his gold call about every fifteen minutes all day.

The net summary of Mr. Currie’s forecast is that Goldman’s economists think that there ought to be no fear in the financial paper markets, since there is an historically low chance of a recession, less than fifteen percent, and he sees no real possibility of negative interest rates.

Continue reading “SHOULD YOU BELIEVE THE VAMPIRE SQUID?”

What Are Sanders and Obama Going To Discuss

Guest Post by Jesse
Apparently President Obama and Senator Sanders are going to have an ‘informal one-on-one meeting with no agenda’ and no press today.

This presidential election has really framed up as an attempt at a popular revolt against a Big Money political establishment. And it is fascinating to watch.

Although the mainstream media keeps feigning astonishment, the broader public is clearly seeking two non-establishment candidate who, for better or worse, they think cannot be bought off by Big Money and the revolving door.

This meeting is an informal one with no set agenda.

Perhaps Obama will share the insight he allegedly had early in his Presidency about reformers as recounted by the ex-CIA whistleblower Ray McGovern.

“He’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for? Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.”

Ray McGovern

Continue reading “What Are Sanders and Obama Going To Discuss”

American Exceptionalism: Endless War, Parasitic Financialisation, Wage Stagnation, and Oligarchy

Guest Post by Jesse

“The financial system itself continues to exhibit dangerous and erratic behavior; the stock market is rigged and Wall Street is a parasitic wealth transfer operation; commodity prices plummet; junk bond defaults double; derivative exposures remain in the dark; community banks are gobbled up; and the holdings of the mega Wall Street banks become ever more concentrated, with just six banks now controlling over 90% of derivatives and 40% of deposits.”

Wall Street On Parade

There will be the usual movement to ‘blame the victims’ in this, the ‘gullible’ American people who do not wish to face the facts.  This is how it always goes, and it works because it is easy to despise the other guy, or just hate ‘the other.’

Most people are busy and working hard to make ends meet. They obtain their view of things from ‘the news media’ for the most part.

When was the last time you saw any rational discussion of any of these charts in a newspaper or on television news program?

And if the ever did present such a chart, it would be to show it and then have a ‘strategist’ from the Democratics and a ‘strategist’ from the Republicans argue about it, relying heavily on spin, emotion, and rhetoric, perhaps backed up with some ‘paid for’ studies funded by oligarchs and their think tanks.

The American people are being fed a steady stream of lies and half-truths from a captive media, and for the most part the privileged achievers keep silent to protect their own interests, to ‘go along to get along.’  They rationalize this by burying themselves in the details of their own professions.

Continue reading “American Exceptionalism: Endless War, Parasitic Financialisation, Wage Stagnation, and Oligarchy”

Silk Road Gold Demand Taking All New Mine Production and More

Guest Post by Jesse

Nick Laird of goldchartsrus.com has provided the latest statistics on the consumption of gold by the ‘Silk Road’ countries.

The monthly demand from these nations as shown below has grown five-fold compared what it was prior to 2008.

In the latest month their total consumption, that is private purchasing and additional to official reserves, was 365 tonnes.

Nick has estimated global production as averaging about 260 tonnes per month.

This represents a shortfall of about 105 tonnes per month to be drawn from existing supplies.

So this is one reason why we have been seeing the existing stocks of gold around the world drawn down to cover the steadily growing demand from these countries.  And as you may recall, the central banks of the world became net buyers of gold around 2008.

Comex has little available stocks in its domestic warehouses compared to this demand, All of the gold in all the warehouses, whether it is for sale or not, if taken and liquidated is just over 200 tonnes as is shown on the report below.

London is a more substantial source of bullion, but is running down it’s supply as we have seen in the ‘gold float’ analysis also included below.

Interestingly enough, the year over year drawdown in the London free float is about 100 tonnes per month.

There is also supply in ETFs and Trusts.  This too has been drawn down steadily, particularly since 2013.

These are not precise figures, but estimates gleaning from public sources.  I suspect the supply numbers are ‘generous’ with regard to the free float and the unemcumbered nature of gold through multiple claims and leasing, but that is conjecture.

But no wonder the Indian government is so anxious to persuade their people to turn their gold into synthetic paper gold, and allow it to be hypothecated.  And no wonder that the Fed told the German government that their gold was temporarily inconvenienced until 2019.  And no wonder Venezuela is being leaned on so heavily to give back the gold that it so recently repatriated so it may be sold.

I wonder what it would take to increase mine production and bring more gold in as scrap and private sales to meet this growing demand.  Higher prices perhaps?

And if so, then perhaps knocking the price down so aggressively, crippling the precious metals mining industry, is not a fruitful idea for the longer term.

Given the current rate of growth in demand and the current state of supply, next year could be interesting.  Still, I never like to underestimate the ‘resourcefulness’ of the central banks, especially when they are operating in relative secrecy.

Continue reading “Silk Road Gold Demand Taking All New Mine Production and More”