"Americans once had a coherent and clear understanding of political tyranny, one crafted by Thomas Jefferson and updated for the industrial age by Louis Brandeis. A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding.
In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal."
Simon and Schuster, Review of Matt Stoller's Goliath
"He who does not shout the truth when he knows it makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers."
Charles Péguy
"The reason America can’t handle the coronavirus is the same reason we can’t do anything else right. We don’t let the people who do the work have any say over how or whether the work is done. American institutions are organized entirely around the short-term horizon of financiers, and these financiers seek to create monopolies and to grab cash by thinning out supply lines and generating hidden risk."
Matt Stoller
“We must speak truth to power, and confront ignorance with facts. But facts are threatening to those invested in fraud.”
DaShanne Stokes
"It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.
Aldous Huxley
"The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."
Jesse, July 2009
Today was neither a risk on or risk off day.
Rather, it was a wax on, wax off day, also known as the old wash and rinse, ahead of the August stock options expiration on Friday.
In simpler terms, the small specs were leaning hard in one direction and the wise guys get to look at what they are holding in their hands.
The financiers spent many millions to buy their current privileged positions, including the long campaign to overturn Glass-Steagall. And it was worth it.
The Dollar moved higher, reversing its trend.
And gold, silver and stocks all moved lower.
I imagine that those holding options on miners, also known as leverage on leverage, did not have a good time of it.
Well, let's see if the shenanigans will continue for another day, or will change again, based on what the poor beleaguered small specs did today.
The purported precipitant for all this was the FOMC minutes, and their apparent lack of commitment to unbridled money printing for unrestrained capitalism.
Two Fed economist have identified an increase in corporate monopoly power as a key negative trend in the US economy.
They failed to note the tragic overturning of New Deal restraints on the Banking Cartel which occurred in the 1990s and 2000s. The Fed must not speak ill of its masters.
Have a pleasant evening.
