"A good parson once said that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?"
Edmund Burke
"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
"The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”
Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General
"After dinner, Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: they don’t criticize other insiders."
Elizabeth Warren
Welcome, fun-seekers, to a new week, romping through our empire's great markets of freedom for all, and an ever-expanding series of financial asset bubbles and moral hazards since the mid 1990's.
But fear not, it is surely different this time. All the finest people tell you so.
Today the financial channels were busy presenting the thoughts of the financial elites who were attending the annual Milk'em Conference in Beverly Hills. Most of that they had to say was self-serving nonsense, but that is essentially what they are paid the big bucks to do.
Stocks were showing a bit of strength today, until Benjamin Netanyahu, the PM of Israel, delivered a national address bombshell saying that he had literally tons of proof that Iran had based its nuclear arms deal on a pack of lies. Trumpolini, who presumably had been given a 'heads up' on this, was quick to add, 'see just like I said.'
And so geopolitical risk tumbled back into the markets, at least for the moment. Stocks slumped and gold and silver took back part of the jamjob they had been undergoing from the open in honor of an FOMC/NFP week.
I think it is reasonable to take a highly skeptical stance on quite a few things that we are told these days. The scolding voice of the very important media poobah may say, 'You little upstart, how dare you question our faithful public servants?'
You dare not question them, and they dare not allow it, because they have so much to hide.
To be caught lying used to be a career-ending behaviour among the privileged, but now it seems to be the rule, almost a right of passage. Lying has no consequences. Indeed, it is de rigueur, almost expected, of a public figure. How else could their fellows trust them to be complacent, to do the corrupt thing?
And these days cleverness is passe— the more blatant the lie the better, especially if it is punctuated with some vulgar personal insult to show that you mean business, and are not to be trifled with.
But publicly telling the liars that they are liars is considered highly impolite, and 'not unifying.' Any outsider who dares to tell the elite that they are full of it will provoke alarmed reproaches from their colleagues in the established and the privileged.
After all, the elite are caught in a terrible credibility trap, and the least amount of truth telling sounds like a gunshot in the room. Our established thought leaders in the media will not continue to be insiders, with access to power and big paychecks, if they openly question or allow impertinent questions to be asked of their fellow insiders.
This uneven distribution of power and lack of moral principles is going to end badly. It always does. And that fear of the consequences of justice is shamelessly deployed to cause reform to lose its nerve. Do you recall the arguments that were made to justify the last financial bailout?
Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall. Life will go on.
That will not be the heavens falling, but those who elevate themselves, as if they were our angels, but inside have the very hearts of devils. And the scales of justice will at long last be rebalanced.
Are we not exceptional? Are you not entertained?
Have a pleasant evening.
