"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality.
The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed."
John Kenneth Galbraith, Power and the Useful Economist, 1973
"Shanghai Gold will change the current gold market with its 'consumed in the East but priced in the West' arrangement. When China has the right to speak in the international gold market, the true price of gold will be revealed."
Xu Luode, Chairman, Shanghai Gold Exchange, 15 May 2014
"And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all."
Tacitus, Histories: Book I, XXVIII, The Murder of Galba
"This is what a society looks like when the glue that holds it together starts to dissolve. And this is the thrill that pulses through the veins of the well-to-do when they discover that there is no longer any limit on their power to accumulate.
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
"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk. Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets. The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention. The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.
The next five years are not about winning, but surviving."
Jesse, The Men Who Sold the World, 5 August 2019
So the aftermath of the Non-Farm Payrolls report is playing out, but with a little delay for a change up.
It's nice to see that they still care enough to try and hide it, at least in the financial markets.
In politics, not so much. Their lies are becoming increasingly transparent and sloppy. Our erstwhile Administration functionaries lie like a presidential candidate. Or mainstream news commentators.
Stocks took off for a short squeeze today, since nothing in particular blew up in the political and financial worlds.
Gold and silver were slammed hard. But they managed to hold it together and take some of that back.
The Dollar rallied and then fell back again.
I suspect the developments over the rest of this year will be memorable.
I have signed a long term contract fixing my price of electricity, and have filled the oil and gas tanks.
Little things. Like restocking the pantry. It keeps me busy.
'Gradually, and then suddenly', as Papa Hemingway noted.
Beauty is but a flower, that wrinkles will devour.
Brightness falls from the air.
Queens have died, young and fair.
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick. I must die.
Lord have mercy on us.
Have a pleasant evening.
