Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, Vol II, July 1837
"To say now that 'No one knew' or 'I was mistaken' or 'I was just doing as I was told' is another in a series of lies and deceptions that have supported one of the greatest frauds in the history of the world.
But this is not history. This episode of fraud is still playing itself out now. And to fail to understand the depth and breadth of this madness is to place oneself in peril, and in the power of those who are twisting the Western economic and political system even now to satisfy their lust for wealth and power.
But it also involved literally thousands of collaborators and enablers, from mainstream media people, economists, analysts, and other thought leaders to politicians and regulators who saw that it was to their advantage to at least passively support this scheme which they knew very well was a fairy tale, a fraud, class warfare by a new name, but were able to hide their own guilty consciences behind self-serving rationalization and the shield of plausible deniability.
It is difficult, even now, to get one's mind around the enormity of it. This is its most powerful weapon. Who could be such monsters, so amoral, so destructively sociopathic? Future generations will regard it as an episode of madness, driven by a few people in a tight circle of self-reinforcing thought, people with remarkably similar cultural and educational backgrounds, driven by a consuming lust for power, that were able to dupe and delude an entire nation made vulnerable by propaganda, a co-opted press, and apathy.
This is when hubris is at its height, and the few feel they have everything to gain and nothing to lose, if only they can gain more power, and therefore become more ruthless. They are trapped in a cycle of fear and greed. The fear provokes the lies and the cover ups, but the greed promotes the extension of the fraud and the theft, requiring even more lies and cover ups. [cf. credibilty trap]
The last vestiges of polite society are often shed as the downfall reaches it final conclusion, at the end, when all is revealed, at last. And so there will be great danger."
Jesse, The Committee to Defraud the World, 31 July 2010
"Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
John Dalberg Lord Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton, 5 April 1887
The wash and rinse continues, as stocks gave back a chunk of the utterly irrational rally that we saw yesterday.
The action appears to be highly 'technical' — a highfalutin game of liar's poker.
Gold held its level, but silver bounced back, against stocks and the Dollar no less.
Let us be mindful that there will be an FOMC meeting tomorrow, with the decision announcement and press conference in the afternoon.
And then on Friday there will be the stock option expiration.
In the background, missiles and assorted weapons are flying around the Mideast.
When you brazenly break a truce, and with a snicker kill your negotiating partners, this is a very special brand of diplomacy.
At some point the situation will escalate, because the more powerful side has no desire for peace.
They are driven by a lust for possessions, and the power to impose broad and uninhibited subjugation.
What a brave new world, that has such people in it.
Have a pleasant evening.
