The head of the Secret Service was sacked today in light of the latest revelations of incompetence.
A man armed with a knife jumped the fence, ran unimpeded across the lawn, through the unlocked front door, and went to the furthest part of the White House before being challenged and stopped, ten minutes after the President and his girls had walked out of the building.
A number of bullets were fired at the White House from an assault rifle striking it, shattering one of the windows, and no one even knew about it for four days when a maid discovered it.
And now we find that the Service allowed an armed man with a criminal record on the same public elevator with the President, not even knowing he was lethally armed until later when his supervisor asked him to surrender his weapon.
Some suggest that President Obama was being given a message. While that is possible, I never like to attribute to malevolence what can be just as easily attributed to human folly. And we have that in abundance.
The latest revelations about the deference and incompetence that the Fed has been routinely displaying both before and AFTER the financial crisis makes one wonder. As you probably do not recall, I objected strongly to the Fed taking on additional regulatory responsibilities in the aftermath of 2007.
Why? Because the Fed is a private entity, owned by the Banks, cross culturally incestuous in their thinking and career paths, and lacking all the resolution for law enforcement and challenging the status quo. This is exactly what a reformer must be willing and able to do if a system is to be changed.
The world's economy was brought to the brink of the abyss by a group of large multinational Banks engaging in massive control frauds and leverage driven financial distortions. And six years later the Banks are larger, and more leveraged, even more powerful, and doing the same old things all over again.
The wealth gap is grown larger to historic proportions, and the vast majority of all stimulus is flowing into the pockets of the richest few. And the Fed and the government keeps blundering on, taking their cues from the moneyed interests.
And now we are once again off nation building again in the Ukraine and Syria, with rebels who are either crypto fascists or terrorist rebels, while our own infrastructure ages and decays. Our healthcare system lacks all proportion and principled decency.
This is not realpolitik. This is not democracy. This is kleptocracy gone mad with power, grabbing all that they can while they can. This is a willful few pursuing their own whims of money and power. And the English speaking world seems to follow the leaders. Madness.
This will most likely not end well. But it will end. Protect yourselves, and not just your wealth.
"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."Tacitus
Have a pleasant evening.
The Fed believes in preparation, and vigilant regulation. Trust them, and sleep well.
