“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925
"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."
Demosthenes, Orations Against Philip of Macedon, 4th century BC
"Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities. It does not shock us when they wield a gun. Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning? Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery."
Jesse, A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History, 15 December 2008
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."
Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832
"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications— that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."
George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb, October 19,1945
Gold and silver rallied with silver hitting a new all time closing high.
Stocks extended their holiday week rally.
VIX is now fallen steadily back down to relative complacency.
Trump wants a permanently high stock market as he says, and Bessent and his cronies are only too eager to place.
This will end badly. They do not care.
War crimes are fashionable again, in the cults of bully-worship and apartheid nationalism.
We learn nothing.
Have a pleasant weekend.
