"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains
seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all
must be most aware of change in the air - however slight -
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, The Douglas Letters, 1987
"So, no, I don’t see this happening tomorrow, but I have said for many years that if we don’t get a handle on this then one of these days our descendants are going to sit down in high-school history class and open a textbook that begins with the words: 'The United States of America was … and then it will dissect how our experiment in self-governance came apart.'"
David Cay Johnston, Inequality's Looming Disaster, Salon May 22, 2014
"The financial asset bubbles since the turn of the 21st century have been enabled by four basic instruments of monetary policy error: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell. Whether we will have a third major collapse and crash to follow this latest asset bubble, as a consequence of misguided monetary policy, economic priorities, and bank regulation is not the issue. The question is, shall we have a system that holds together long enough to have a fourth?"
Jesse, Malice Domestic and Endless Foreign Wars, 31 July 2018
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977
"This is a very crucial point: there is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."
Ryszard Kapuscinski, Interview: Writing about Suffering, Journal of the International Institute Vol 6 No 1, Fall 1998
"The essential characteristic of a good and healthy ruling elite, however, is that it views itself not as a function of the monarchy or the commonwealth, but as its very meaning and highest justification, and that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
Stocks were a bit choppy today, with a decline, a recovery, and then a failure to hold any gains.
Gold and silver managed to bounce.
The physical gold inventory in Hong Kong is back to the bottom of the bowl again.
And Bitcoin did as well. It's no fun riding a roller coaster that does not climb back up the next hill.
VIX fell.
The Dollar fell.
A bit of the old back and forth, wash and rinse today I suspect.
Consumer inflation information out tomorrow morning.
That may move things around a bit.
Have a pleasant evening.
