"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. 'They were totally opposed to it,' Born says. 'That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?'"
PBS Frontine, The Warning, October 2009
"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010
"Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself. It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous. Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."
Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895
“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom. The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."
Proverbs 11:2-3
"For to admit that the Reich was a lie, and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools, and Hitler an incompetent creature of evil would be to admit that one was wrong, a failure, and worse, had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil. To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance. And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess.
That, and a desire to become beasts, to lose themselves in their mindless fanaticism, and escape the pain of being men. And so they struck out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkened souls, and showed them their pride was based on a lie."
Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018
"You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted. You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you.”
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair
“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned...
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”
Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
The wrath of God. What a quaint and barbaric concept for those who would be as gods.
And in this tide of evil, the love of most grows cold.
Stocks powered higher today on relatively light volumes on no news, because they can.
The Dollar moved lower.
The VIX fell again into complacency.
Gold moved a bit higher, silver not so much.
The world is teetering on the precipice of a wider war, driven by those without shame, conscience, or respect for anything higher than themselves.
And many follow, in willful blindness.
How could you? You snakes. You brood of vipers.
Liars and murderers all.
Such is the fatal allure of this attractive but deceitful world.
Have a pleasant weekend.
