and talking my book…
Quotable
“For Lasch, that great underlying problem was clear enough: that by the end of the twentieth century, the American left and right had ‘come to share so many of the same underlying convictions, including a belief in the desirability and inevitability of technical and economic development, that the conflict between them, shrill and acrimonious as it is, no longer speaks to the central issues of American politics’ (23). That is, by the end of the twentieth century the dominant figures in American politics had all become uncritical believers in, and proponents of, the idea of progress.
“Lasch suggests that there are two problems with all this elite genuflection at the altar of progress. First, it both demeans and is disconnected from the values of most Americans, who understand that you can’t have everything, who know that everything costs something, who want stable and satisfying lives for their children, and who have been on the losing end of enough programs of ‘improvement’ to be skeptical about the dogma of progress.”
–Susan McWilliams, “On The True and Only Heaven, 25 Years Later,” Modern Age
Commentary & Analysis
A new dollar view and talking my book…
Below is a chart with Black Swan’s new wave view [aka best guess] on the future path of the US dollar. This chart shows a very broad wedge pattern and it suggests we could see many weeks, or months, of dollar weakness going forward before the final surge in this bull market rally which began back in March 2008—not coincidentally the same day our illustrious government officials decided to “save” Bear Stearns from meltdown.
US Dollar Index Daily: Looking for sell-off into the 93-level before another major rally leg resumes.
Maybe this is a bit of irrational rationales or just “talking my book,” but thinking this:
- If Hillary wins, the dollar will likely catch a bit of a bid and go higher near-term. But I believe it will be short-lived as general dissension in the country which will follow, as many rightfully disdain the Clinton Crime family. Added to that, the realization among any person with a marginal pulse, the mainstream news media is nothing more than an extension of the Democratic National Committee and a strong arm of government propagandist, will leave the US quite divided for some time. This is not the raw material for a strong dollar.
- If Trump wins, the elite will be in shock, similar to what we saw with the Brexit vote. Months of hand-wringing and dire warnings of doom will follow; as we witnessed among the mainstream British press, especially from those “bright lights” at the Financial Timesand The Economist, who should have known better. [For more on this, and why populism is such a dirty word for elites, I suggest an excellent piece which appeared in The New Criterion magazine; Populism, III: Insects of the hour, by Danial Hannan.] Given the blow-back from the powers that be against the serf uprising, it may not be fertile ground for the US dollar for a while.
Back to Lasch (from 1991, The True and Only Heaven):
…our obsession with sex, violence, and the pornography of “making it”; our addictive dependence on drugs, “entertainment,” and the evening news; our impatience with anything that limits our sovereign freedom of choice, especially with the constraints of marital and familial ties, our preference for “nonbinding commitments”; our third-rate educational system; our third-rate morality; our refusal to draw a distinction between right and wrong, lest we “impose” our morality on others and thus invite others to “impose” their morality on us; our reluctance to judge and be judged; our indifference to future generations, as evidenced by our willingness to saddle them with a huge national debt, an overgrown arsenal of destruction, and a deteriorating environment; our inhospitable attitude to the newcomers born into our midst; our unstated assumption, which underlies so much of the propaganda for unlimited abortion, that only those children born for success ought to be allowed to be born at all.
Enjoy the election, if you can.
….related from Larry Edelson: The Trump Win. What to do …
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Jack Crooks
President, Black Swan Capital
