George Orwell
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
US Major General S. D. Butler, War Is a Racket
“Fear and debt. The two most powerful tools of empire.”
John Perkins, The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent."
Dean Baker
“When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”
Yuval Noah Harari
"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."
Jimmy Carter
"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."
Thomas Clement Douglas
Stocks wobbled around today and finally finished lower.
The VIX moved sideways.
Gold and silver managed to hold on to some gains and finished slightly higher.
The Dollar edged a little higher as well.
We have some consumer inflation data coming out on Tuesday that could move markets.
There will be an FOMC rate decision on Wednesday.
And finally we will enjoy be the last index option expiration for the year on Friday.
And where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
Have a pleasant weekend.
