John Dalberg Lord Acton, Letter to Richard Simpson, 23 January 1861
"Banking and corporations have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.
The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities. All these processes result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday."
Carroll Quigley, The Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Georgetown University 1978
"Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance."
Hyman Minsky, The Financial Instability Hypothesis, May 1992
“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability."
Arundhati Roy, War Talk, 2003
“Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery. The mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty, which it regards pleasure; the man and the citizen are swallowed up in the tyrant; and the return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the House of the Dead, 1862
"You shall not offer your children as a sacrifice to the fires of Moloch, and profane the name of your Lord."
Leviticus 18:21
Stocks continued to wobble today, stabilizing a bit into the last hour but still finishing in the red.
VIX rose but then backed off a bit.
The Dollar chopped sideways.
Gold and silver were smacked around as usual.
It is well to remember that the most important precious metals option expiration on the Comex for this yer will be on Monday, the 24th.
These are not regulated markets. There are levels of lawlessness being tolerated because it benefits a rich and powerful few, the public and the health of the economy be damned.
And this is why the Congress and White House continue to twist themselves into knots to cover up and hide the sexual, political, and financial corruption of the Epstein scandal.
And how, over time, we have come to tolerate war crimes including genocide, and extra-judicial murder. We are truly exceptional.
“So much for Caligula the Emperor. The rest of this history must deal with the Monster."
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
Have a pleasant evening.
