“I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.”
Samuel Johnson
"This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men."
John Perkins
"A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship...Once you go down the path of empire, you inevitably start a process of overstretch, of tendencies toward bankruptcy, and, in the rest of the world, a tendency toward the uniting of people who are opposed to your imperialism simply on grounds that it’s yours, but maybe also on the grounds that you’re incompetent at it.
It is time to realize, however, that the real dangers to America today come not from the newly rich people of East Asia but from our own ideological rigidity, our deep-seated belief in our own propaganda."
Chalmers Johnson
Stocks were wobbly today but not dramatically so.
Gold and silver managed to take a little back from their recent losses as the Dollar backed off sharply from its intraday high.
There will be an FOMC meeting next week. There is about a 35% probability of a rate hike at this meeting. We will have to watch the early economic data in the week, especially the PCE, to see if that probability might move a bit.
And on Friday there will be the April Non-Farm Payrolls Report.
Have a pleasant weekend.
