"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
George Orwell, The New Statesman and Nation, August 1937
"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it. People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it. Intellectual regurgitation is prized over independent thought. Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status.
Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, 4 April 2016
"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."
Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012
"When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized. Narcissists change the companies or countries they lead, much like bad money drives out good, and those changes can outlast their own tenure. Divergent voices are silenced, flattery and servility are rewarded, and cynicism and apathy corrode any sense of shared purpose in a culture where everyone’s out for themselves. In the extreme, they can destroy the institution itself."
Lee Simmons, How Narcissistic Leaders Destroy From Within, Stanford Business, April 30, 2020
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles."
Matthew 7:15
Stocks did a classic 'pop and flop' today as the intoxication of a ceasefire begins to subside into reality.
Gold and silver managed to hold their ground, and even gain some ground back.
The Dollar continued its slide, and gave up the 98 handle.
VIX is now signalling that a trend change may be near.
The further one gets away from the natural trendline, the more power and force it requires to sustain a market manipulation.
And this is why all bubbles and manipulation pools eventually fail.
The longer they press on from the mean, the worse the eventual correction will become.
The bubbles are underpinned by vapor.
And so a reckoning may be in the card.
Will it be the 'final collapse' or just another setback in the process of wealth transferral?
Only time will tell, since the nature and scope of the 'trigger event' will greatly influence this outcome.
As it was in 2002 and 2008, so it will be again. Most did not believe it, they did not see it then.
They will never learn, because it does not suit them to change what has for the past 30 years been a veru successful series of control frauds and abuses of the system stemming from the rollbacks of reforms in the 1990s.
And the victims, including their followers in lawlessness, will be sacrificed once again to the idols of pride and greed — deceiving, and being willfully deceived.
The madness is sin, a turning in the wrong direction. And serves none but itself.
Have a pleasant evening.
