"Financial predators, on the other hand, are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals. They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy. Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive. Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars. They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."
Russ Alan Prince, Unmasking Financial Predators, Forbes 2017
"...over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.
If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.
Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel — an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly, which I analyze in detail below. Both par- ties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy. So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising. But that can’t last indefinitely; Americans are getting angry, and even when they’re misguided or poorly informed, people have a deep, visceral sense that they’re being screwed.
I have no problem with people becoming billionaires — if they got there by winning a fair race, if their accomplishments merit it, if they pay their fair share of taxes, and if they don’t corrupt their society. But that’s not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy. Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me."
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation, 2012
"It is never really between them and you, but between you and yourself, between you and your God. No act of kindness is wasted. You store them in your heart, and these are the only things that you will take with you when the day is done. It is how you rise above, and become human. To be a light to the world."
Jesse, Even In a Time of Vanity and Greed, 5 May 2013
"Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap."
Galatians 6:7
Trump sparked the equity markets today with yet another whopper about taking a pause from bombing Iran to work on a peace Memorandum of Understanding.
More likely this is a courtesy to Elon Musk, who is squeezing out a whopping pig of an IPO tomorrow for SpaceX at a wildly confabulated evaluation of $135 a share, in his never-ending quest to become a trillionaire.
The Street knows this. They absolutely know what is what about all of it. Trump and the Congress know that he is lying through his teeth.
They don't care. They just want to get paid. They all have the same moral sensibility, which essentially none.
"Iran directly rejects Trump's new claim that he reached an agreement to "cancel tonight's strikes" on Iran as baseless, saying no agreement has been approved at all, and all of Trump's words should be disregarded like all his previous 38 times deal-imminent announcements over two months, per Tasnim. A senior Israeli official also tells Channel 12 they are 'not aware of any agreement being reached'."
So, stocks rallied hard after Trump made his 39th announcement of an imminent peace deal.
Gold and silver rallied. Bitcoin rallied a bit.
VIX fell.
SpaceX is coming out tomorrow.
"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves. You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.” Thomas More, 1535
And the Band played on.
Have a pleasant evening.
