"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct."
Sophie Scholl
"I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably [intentionally and cynically, with plausible deniability aforethought. Jesse] to understand the forces behind the financial crisis. Concepts including rational expectations, market discipline, and the efficient markets hypothesis led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur. Not all economists believed this, but most did."
James K. Galbraith
“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
Franz Kafka, The Trial
"The truly savage and frenetic part of New York, the terrible, cold, cruel part, is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills this street believes that the world will always be the same, that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever.
I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several billion dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness. I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings."
Federico Garcia Lorca, A Poet In New York, October 1929
"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. If the soul ceases to love, it falls into something here below that is nearly equivalent to hell."
Simone Weil
“National Socialism was a revulsion by my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government—against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things, and never had."
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945
And so we finally had the rinse.
Stocks sold off.
Gold and silver had a classic 'smash and grab' in the futures market. I have seen this many times.
They run the futures up in the thin overnight trading running the stops of the shorts.
And then they smack them down, running the stops of the longs.
The Dollar gained back some.
The Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday could be interesting.
The year is swiftly drawing to a close.
I get the impression that I am not playing on the same team as many of our most powerful, and those that follow and serve them.
Killing innocents in the name of justice does not seem particularly noble. But there seems to be a lot of that going around.
The doctor took the stitches out of my eye Friday late. Yikes. Why do they always do this why you are awake. Even with the local numbing it was a little disconcerting.
It made a positive difference. I know longer have the feeling of something like an eyelash in my eye, and my vision is improving on the periphery since the slight warping of the cornea has been relieved.
Thanking God for his loving kindness and tender mercies.
Have a pleasant evening.
