"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."
Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913
"The state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight. The pressure to conform to an authority figure or peer group can cause people to behave in shocking ways.
It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice— certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.
The corridor between Manhattan and Washington is a well-trodden highway for the personalities we have all gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street."
Mike Lofgren, Anatomy of the Deep State
Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity. What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation.
Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, 1 September 2006
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Søren Kierkegaard
Next week we will be having the stock options expiration for May.
Stocks limped weakly throughout the day, with big cap tech providing the brightest spot. Since they are now the core of the bubble, it is only fitting.
Gold and silver continued to chop sideways.
Have a pleasant weekend.
