Guest Post by Jesse
It never really gets old, does it? Evil that is. It just keeps coming back, with different names and faces. But the basic proposition remains surprisingly simple and the same. You cheat, you win, you cash in, and there are no consequences.
Today was a quadruple stock option expiration in US markets.
Stocks were initially smacked lower, but gradually regained most of their losses into the close.
Gold and silver were utterly hammered by the dumping of large numbers of contracts in their futures markets, with a fairly clear intent to drive the prices lower, breaking out of their recent trading range.
The US dollar did not do much. The Chinese Yuan did gain some in value against the Dollar.
Why did these things happen?
Today was a quadruple stock option expiration in US markets.
Those who were playing leverage on leverage, that is, playing positions using stock options on mining companies or even paper gold pools were most likely feeling a bit put off.
Perhaps a stance supporting little to no regulation in the markets and in life in general might be reconsidered when one sees the abuses to which powerful insiders, aka ‘market forces,’ may engage. Some might say that history shows that this is the very reason why men and women combine to create a least some semblance of the rule of law, and not the rule of money and power.
Apparently a small group of civic minded citizens named Kushner, Giuliani, and Mnuchin are urging Trumpolini to grant a presidential pardon to the disgraced junk bond king, Michael Milken.
How come? Is he not completely free now, and living very well, an influential public figure with his own well-attended annual conference? Excepting that he is prohibited from re-involving himself in public financial markets as a part of his plea deal. He was rather guilty, as noted in this 1990 NYT article.
What is the purpose of such a pardon now? I am sincerely curious as to the point. I thought presidential pardons were intended to be clemency for a worthy cause? Or a hefty campaign contributions to the cause. Yeah, that Marc Rich.
Perhaps this blot on the record of one of the well-connected is a reminder of a barbaric past when the law meant something for the professional class. Bad example and all that. Especially when they seem to be back at it all over again. They have a distinct advantage this time— we’ve lost our moral moorings in general, and a number of us have pretty much gone nuts. Barking.
“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
Maybe we are just too forgetful, so easily bored and distracted. So tired of thinking that we are begging to be duped and misled.
Today was a quad witch option expiration in US markets.
Are you not entertained?
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Silver smashed 4%!!! Arrrrgh! Chip
” I thought presidential pardons were intended to be clemency for a worthy cause? ”
Where did yo get that idea?
The President is given absolute power of pardon in any Federal case with no intent or purpose, other than cases of impeachment (he cannot interfere with Congress here), specified by the Constitution.
“The President…shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” – Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution.
Regarding pardons, maybe he’s talking ethics but I think that word is fast losing any sort of meaning.
M C
No one seemed to question the ethics of Obama’s pardons.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons
Why is America so crooked? Can you say bad Joooos, children?
Let’s not pretend that there was an era decades ago where “the law” was administered more justly. When, when J Edgar Hoover was ordering careers destroyed as he was putting on his silk stalkings and prancing around in his office like a faggot? The law is money and power, it’s of the earth, always has been and always will be. At best you get a Pontius Pilot, at least he felt bad for a minute when he was administering the law, unlike most of them.
They’re all Lindsay Grahams, always have been, I say Lindsay Graham because he’s the pure distillation of what not to be in life, as he’s elected by the degenerate hicks in his good “red state.” Talk about pissing in the cistern. Those piss drinking trailer trash fucks down there.
If there ever was a time when the law was administered effectively it was because it was a time when there was less government in general. That would have been pre 1930, and especially pre 1910.
That’s why there’s no such thing as a libertarian vs. a conservative. Libertarians are the only conservatives, the so called “conservatives” are just rubes who think they can shrink the tumor a bit and still be healthy.