"Time to move the blame to where it really belongs. That means no more coddling banks with bailout billions marked 'secret.' No more allowing their executives lavish bonuses and new corporate jets as if they’ve won the megalottery and not sent the economy down the tubes. And no more apostles of Wall Street calling the shots."
Bill Moyers, Changing the Rules of the Blame Game, Bill Moyers Journal, April 7, 2009
"Over the past 30 years the plutocrats have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. Remember that Citigroup reference to "market-friendly governments" on their side? It hasn't mattered which party has been in power — government has done Wall Street's bidding.
This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy. Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs. Democracy only works when we claim it as our own."
Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal (last episode), 30 April 2010
"That sound of shattered glass you’ve been hearing is the iconic portrait of Jamie Dimon splintering as it hits the floor of JPMorgan Chase. As the Good Book says, 'Pride goeth before a fall,' and the sleek silver-haired, too-smart-for-his-own-good CEO of America’s largest bank has been turning every television show within reach into a confessional booth. Barack Obama’s favorite banker faces losses of $2 billion and possibly more – all because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t trading in exotic financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to regulate.
Once again, doing God’s work — that is, betting huge sums of money with depositor funds knowing that you are too big to fail and can count on taxpayers riding to your rescue if your avarice threatens to take the country down — has lost some of its luster. The jewels in Dimon’s crown sparkle with a little less grandiosity than a few days ago, when he ridiculed Paul Volcker’s ideas for keeping Wall Street honest as 'infantile.'”
Bill Moyers, Are JPMorgan's Losses the Canary in the Coal Mine?, May 16, 2012
"America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up. They (the corporations) are counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They're counting on you to stand at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket.
In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether 'we, the people' is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality - one nation, indivisible - or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others."
Bill Moyers, September 23, 2016
And so we close in on the end of the first half of 2025. And Donnie will be bragging about the stock markets being at new all time highs.
It's no longer Biden's market. Or wars. He owns it now. And all the usual consequences.
The elite don't care. Our rulers are not even concerned. They don't believe in laws, or justice, or plagues.
US markets will be closed next Friday for the Fourth of July.
The market in equities is at a bubble high in my estimation.
Gold and silver were smacked down so the metals bears can minimize their paper losses and maximize their gains.
'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'
And judgement waits.
Have a pleasant weekend.
