"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
"The fact that these foolish people are often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that they are not independent. In conversation with them, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with them as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of them. They are under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in their very being.
Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy the human soul.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison
Each financial bubble and collapse has common characteristics, while having their own peculiar character.
This that we are experiencing now is the third in a series of bubbles that started at the turn of the century.
I suspect it may prove to be the most severe, as compared to the last two.
The crash of 1987 was more of a trading anomaly and glitch in the financial system, similar to the panic of 1907.
I think we are in more of a Crash of 1929 scenario.
Let's take this one as it comes.
And be wary of the power of the well phrased lie, the same lies of the moneyed interests and their enablers and apologists, so often repeated in various forms, that have brought us to where we are today.
