It Makes Me Cry

Yesterday started with a downturn. Bristol Myers Squib (BMY), one of our core Blue Chip holdings, hit an 8 year high, and Coca Cola, the evil producers of sugar water, hit a 52 week high. Telecoms and utilities have been market leaders, and low bond yields continue to really benefit dividend-paying stocks. All of this points to even more of an up market.

Gold hit a record high, and silver is close behind it. The rising silver/gold ratio is good for the stock market. as is the recent rise in retailers. However, the S&P 500 nears its charting test of neckline in a head and shoulders bottom.
The market moved from theoretical Dow tops of 10,910 by 1 p.m., and had hit lows of 10,688 in early morning trading on the first "sell off" before run up.

Both our put and call were profitable! And both are listed as new trades again. The call is overbought, the market is topping, but the bulls have the handle.

Tony Judt in Ill Fares The Land, a superb book, writes:
*We are experiencing the symptoms, without yet knowing it, of collective impoverishment. Over the past 30 years when obsession with wealth began truly shifting in the U.S. And during this same period poverty, alcoholism, obesity became more pronounced than in Central Europe.
What matters is not how affluent a nation may be, but how unequal it may be.
As we used government programs, and Greensberg free credit, and as we pulled billions into Iraq on the planned guise of FEAR, and now throw the same money into Afghanistan, as we allowed the rich to pay less taxes than the poor proportionately, as we freed oil and financial regulations, and as we ate too much we created:

Broken highways, bankrupt cities, collapsing bridges, failed schools......and even as the U.S. now budgets tens of billions of dollars on a futile military campaign in Afghanistan, we fret nervously at the implications of any increase in public spending on social services or infrastrucure."

The fond myth that economic growth brings prosperity for everyone has been unmasked as a myth, and the emergence of China has discredited totally that "strong democracies grow" while totalitarian regimes do not. Tell that to China, or to Halliburton who took their ill won "no bid" dollars and moved their headquarters to Dubai.

Of great interest is that after World War II and up until 1975 the U.S. was fully on the side of what collective government can do, and supported all these "liberal ideas" such as fixing highways, building bridges, and saving money.

When the conservatives today fill us with fear of what the government will do, and misinterpret actions as "big government" or that the debt has been substantially driven up (most still being medicare and Social Security payments) we are given propaganda that it "is okay that 1/4 of our nation is in poverty," and it is BAD that the unemployment rate (this being the big bug used to squash on our windshields) and one man in office for two years is blamed for this entirely.

My question: what happened to the completely free and clear national debt after Clinton left office, and why during that eight years, and not now, was it "okay" to spend?

All the money from our "superiority" wars, where we do nothing to solve terrorism, that's where Clinton's free and clear budget went.
Yet somehow, someone has led us well, by the nose ring, that we are headed into a socialist world.

It makes me cry.