Stocks Tread Slightly Higher Amid Quiet News Flow

With news flow at a low point, given Europe and America's traditional vacation seasons, the Olympics in London and the generally-implied blackout of any stories that may paint the current economic picture as anything other than manageable or rosy, stocks were free to rise unfettered over the past two days, though Tuesday's gains were of a larger magnitude than Monday's.

Any stock market gains in the short term serve only the interests of the status quo and their loyalist followers and useful idiots in the furtherance of fiat folly. There are divided camps forming globally, set in their ideals and aspirations over the future of the money, investment and capital formation, which has lately been forming at two extremes: one being that of the very, very rich (and for them, capital formation means only money in their hands) and the other at the extreme fringe edges in black markets, very small business enterprises (micro), alternate currencies and sustainable local economies.

Those on the high end of the income ladder believe they hold all advantage. After all, theirs is the accepted means of conveyance: large, faceless, unaccountable corporations operating on massive scale with tax codes and regulations written to advance their cause and hinder all competition. They also have the blessing of governments, ease of entry into markets and access to nearly unlimited capital.

Playing by their own rules, corporations, as quasi-branches of elite banking and political machines, have every practical advantage over start-up entrepreneurs and small business, excepting some crucial, psychological ones, such as new ideas with appeal to the general public, community awareness and high levels of personalized customer service, often face-to-face and local.

As the debt de-leveraging process continues - over what now appears to be a very long course of possibly eight to twelve years, beginning with the mid-summer of 2008 - corporations on national and global scale will find customer tastes that are slowly changing and evolving, shifting to a preference for smaller and exceedingly local enterprises.

While the corporatists play their numbers games, squeezing out every last drop of revenue and profit from a dwindling supply of discretionary money, they are the few, and the hunted, while the risk-takers outside of the traditional business cycle swell in number and gain strength through diversity, ingenuity and spirit.

In a macro sense, on the surface all seems to be business as usual, though once the facades are peeled away, truths unearthed, hearts and minds changed, there is revealed a noisy war on multiple fronts being waged by rebellious forces of sound money and financial freedom.

It's a process, and it proceeds slowly, quietly in the background, but it is proceeding nonetheless.


Dow 13,168.22, +50.71 (0.39%)
NASDAQ 3,015.86, +25.95 (0.87%)
S&P 500 1,401.34, +7.11 (0.51%)
NYSE Composite 8,023.49, +59.39 (0.75%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,856,287,375.00
NYSE Volume 3,494,027,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3589-1960
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 292-47
WTI crude oil: 93.67, +1.47
Gold: 1,612.80, -3.40
Silver: 28.09, +0.22