"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society. Too many of America's elite— samong the super rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia chase wealth and power, and the rest of society be damned."
Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011
"I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis. They've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform. I think that for some time the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off. They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform."
James Kwak, Bill Moyer's Journal, April 16, 2010
"We now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital."
Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown Univeristy 1976
“While boasting of our noble deeds we're careful to conceal
the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have
nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined,
is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.”
Horace Greeley, On the National Bank Act, 1872
"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."
Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016
"Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes. Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic. It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity. Conscienceless, compassionless and devoid of wisdom, it enervates its votaries while it impoverishes its victims."
William Jennings Bryan, Address at Madison Square Garden, New York, 30 August 1906
How do we know when the Wall Street mouthpieces on financial TV are 'talking their book', a euphemism for lying? Their lips are moving.
As for the purveyors of the message, those paid to spread it? As one of the spokesmodels said to those devastated by the frauds in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble: 'Well, no one made you buy stocks.'
They do not care. Truth and your well-being is not their job. 'Hate the game, not the player.' It's not personal, it's just business.
Right. Keep that one in mind.
Stocks were clobbered again today, as the markets were led lower by the broader market as shown in the Russell 2000.
The Dollar advanced a bit as the ongoing story of a soft landing with imminent rate cuts galore continues to fall apart.
Gold and silver were slightly lower.
VIX rose a bit.
Rough seas ahead as illusions fade.
Have a pleasant evening.
