"Edge, Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon — was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-long project that cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability.
Whatever Edge was supposed to be, it became something sinister. The salon played yenta to billionaire money and alpha-male minds, and together, over decades, they all converged on a master philosophy: they were apex predators ordained by nature to exploit and subjugate others. This creed allowed the Edge set to steer intellectual history into its current fascist dead-end. Billionaires really like thinkers who see their exploitation of the weak as a good and natural thing.
With the Epstein files, we’re confronted with exactly what all the Edge men did with the intellectual territory they seized. With their Ivy League posts, their billions, and their blue-ribbon DNA, the would-be intellectuals in Epstein’s circle converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf."
Virginia Heffernan, The Billionaire's Eugenics Project, 13 February 2026
"The children of elites will not succeed because they are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and an automatic ticket to the Ivy League. They will succeed because they have inherited the talent, energy, drive, and resilience to overcome the many obstacles they will face in life. Life is still a struggle for all who hope to have economic and social success. It is just that we can predict who will be likely to possess the necessary characteristics from their ancestry."
Greg Clark, The Economist, 13 Feb. 2013
"To admit that the Reich was a lie and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools and Hitler an incompetent creature, would be to admit that they had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil. To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance. And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride. Pride is the mother of all sin. This is the slow descent into hell. This is the unwillingness to let go of the lie, for the sake of pride and its power, and cling to evil as it draws them into the abyss."
Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018
"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom. The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."
Proverbs 11:2-3
So we toddle on to the first FOMC decision under the new Chair Kevin Warsh tomorrow, and a triple witch option expiration on Friday.
And of course, the signing of the big, beautiful Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran, which has yet to be publicly disclosed, later this week.
I hope it holds and that the interested parties will honor it. But I have to confess that my outlook is cloudy with a chance of false flags and spoilers.
Stocks popped and flopped, with the NDX futures hitting what may prove to be a significant high, barring hyperinflation.
Gold and silver continued to bounce off the recent lows from last week. Let's see how they make it through the FOMC and the triple witch.
I am in gold and silver for the longer term. Nothing has changed since I first made this calculation around 2001.
The dominant parties in the financial wars are evolving, and so the currency wars are ongoing. It seems a lot easier to forecast now in retrospect, than back then, when the wall of worry in precious metals looked more like climbing the Eiger than a walk through Muir Woods.
It's funny how you remember things. I recall a bright sunny spring day with the Queen in Grindelwald I think, many years ago in the late 1980s. We were on our way by car with some friends to visit a restaurant called Piz Gloria on top of the Schilthorn. You may recall having seen it in one of the James Bond films, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
We were standing and watching the towering Jungfrau and the Eiger, when a terrific avalanche came crashing down the mountain. We could hear its roar after a long delay.
The Alps were majestic, and she was so beautiful.
It is so easy, so convenient to forget who you are, and what it means to be human. And to allow your love to grow cold.
"It is such a splendid, sunny day, and I have to go." Sophie Scholl, Munich, February 22, 1943.
See you on Thursday. There is a great deal of work to be done.
Have a pleasant evening.
