Dow 10,000: A Celebration

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

Team coverage today on Bloomberg by the Money Honeys as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 10,000 intra-day, led by J.P. Morgan, in a move that surely epitomizes the illusions of wealth granted by modern accounting practices.

Can you believe the NYSE had the nerve to prepare new Dow 10,000 hats and distribute them for today? The first time the Dow Industrials crossed 10,000 was in 1999. The last time it closed over 10,000 was in October of 2008, just before the most recent plunge of the collapsing credit bubble.

That does not speak well of equities for the "buy and hold" crowd, which has surely had a wild ride if they have indeed managed to hold on for the last ten years, and ex-dividends and fees and commissions and inflation and a plunging US dollar and soaring commodities are… even.

And all that was required to create this economic miracle was to repeal the Glass-Steagall safeguards created by Congress after the Great Depression, decimating the productive economy, amassing a mountain of debt that can never be repaid, restructuring the Dow Industrials every so often, most recently replacing such inconsequential names as General Motors and Citigroup, and of course the devastation of the US dollar and a general loss of reputation and credibility around the world for justice and liberty.

But look where we have been? But who do you think took us there? Al, Ben, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Sandy Weil, craven economists and the crony capitalists in corporate America and their enablers and dependents in Washington.

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." Abraham Lincoln.

And to what benefit? So that a bunch of pathetic sociopaths can try and fill the hole in their hollow beings with trophy wives and trophy houses, empty titles and hair pieces, extravagant lifestyles with ridiculously overpriced cars and jewelry and ugly art, spoiled idiot children who hate and fear them as they hated and feared their own parents, and the illusion of love and power while making asses out of themselves as a few paid sycophants sing their praises, trodding over corpses on the road to hell.

Oh, bravo. Well done. Surely a light for the ages.