"Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a 'two-fisted money grab from banks.' Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase.”
Pam and Russ Martens, Yellen’s Treasury Hires 5-Count Felon JPM to Look for Fraud, October 11, 2023
"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent. Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached."
Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, 27 January 2009
"A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and/or informational functions of a society have been compromised by a corrupting influence and a fraud, so that they cannot address the situation without implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure including themselves.
The status quo has at least tolerated the corruption and the fraud, if not profited directly from it, and most likely continues to do so."
Jesse, Financial Coup d'Etat and a Credibility Trap, 28 September 2012
"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else.
Neil Barofsky, Interview with Bill Moyers, 27 October 2012
Here are the updated charts.
Gold and silver put in another solid performance.
The Dollar slid a little lower.
VIX declined further showing the almost complacent optimism in the equity markets.
Earlier today the doctor gave me a green light on the recovery of my eye. The improvement in the last week has been heartening.
Have a pleasant evening.
