"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves. You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”
Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ (Gethsemane), Tower of London, 1535
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
Marlon Brando in The Ugly American
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes
"Corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.
Chris Hedges
"An old historian says about the Roman armies that marched through a country, burning and destroying every living thing, They make a solitude, and they call it peace. And so men do with their consciences. They stifle them, sear them, forcibly silence them, somehow or other; and then, when there is a dead stillness in the heart, broken by no voice of either approbation or blame, but doleful, like the unnatural quiet of a deserted city, then they say, It is peace; and then the man's uncontrolled passions and unbridled desires dwell solitary within the fortress of his own spirit."
Alexander Maclaren
"The real cause, the effective one, that makes men lose power is that they have become unworthy to exercise it."
Alexis de Tocqueville
"This is turning into a battle of the titans, although on the surface it is harder to see the stresses building in the global markets."
Last night's gold and silver commentary at Le Café.
"Do not suppose, I pray, that I am offended because you killed your mother, your wife, and your brother; that you burned Rome and send to the darkness all the honest men in your lands.
No, heir of Chaos. Death is the inheritance of men; from you other deeds could not have been expected. But to destroy one's ear for whole years with your poetry, to see your big belly on slim legs whirled about in a Pyrrhic dance; to hear your music, your dramatic orations, your doggerel verses, wretched poet of the suburbs, — is a thing surpassing my power, and it has roused in me the wish to die.
The capitol stuffs its ears when it hears you; the world reviles you. I can blush for you no longer, and I have no wish to do so. The howls of Cerberus, the dog of the underworld, though resembling your music, will be less offensive to me, for I have never been the friend of Cerberus, and I need not be ashamed of his howling.
Farewell, but make no music; commit murder, but write no verses; poison people, but do not dance; be an incendiary, but do not play on a harp. This is the wish and the last friendly advice sent to you by me —
Petronius, Arbiter Elegantiae.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
"I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear...
The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.”
A. Hitler
"And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. This is merely a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the process of transformation, not a precise prediction. Whatever the shape and direction of this revolution in military affairs, the implications for continued American military preeminence will be profound.
As argued above, there are many reasons to believe that U.S. forces already possess nascent revolutionary capabilities, particularly in the realms of intelligence command and control, and long range precision strikes.
Indeed, these capabilities are sufficient to allow the armed services to begin an interim, short-to-medium-term process of transformation right away, creating new force designs and operational concepts – designs and concepts different than those contemplated by the current defense program – to maximize the capabilities that already exist. But these must be viewed as merely a way-station toward a more thoroughgoing transformation."
The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses
"Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their every last mistake,
No matter what."
Seamus Heaney, The Cure At Troy
A Mangled Case of Justice on Wall Street
By Pam Martens
May 8, 2014
On October 10, 2013, bank examiner Carmen Segarra and her attorney, Linda Stengle of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, took on one of the mightiest and interconnected institutions on Wall Street: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They relied on the Federal court system, funded by the taxpayer, and a fair and impartial judge to level the playing field. Things got off to a promising start.
Segarra was a bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a key regulator of Wall Street banks. She charged in her lawsuit that when she turned in a negative assessment of Goldman Sachs, she was bullied and intimidated by colleagues at the New York Fed to change her findings.
When she refused, she was terminated from her job in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises, according to her lawsuit...
Read the entire story here.
"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
“As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. and the deregulation of the derivatives market.”
Matt Taibbi
Today I have signed into law S. 900, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. This historic legislation will modernize our financial services laws, stimulating greater innovation and competition in the financial services industry. America's consumers, communities, and its overall economy should reap the benefits of this Act.
Beginning with introduction of an Administration-sponsored bill in 1997, my Administration has worked vigorously to produce financial services legislation that would not only spur greater competition, but also protect the rights of consumers and guarantee that expanded financial services firms would meet the needs of America's underserved communities. Passage of this legislation by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of the Congress demonstrates that we have met that goal.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act makes the most important legislative changes to the structure of the U.S. financial system since the 1930s. Financial services firms will be authorized to conduct a wide range of financial activities, allowing them freedom to innovate in the digital age.
The Act succeeds in repealing provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act that, since the Great Depression, have restricted affiliations between banks and securities firms. It also amends the Bank Holding Company Act to remove restrictions on affiliations between banks and insurance companies. Finally, it grants banks significant new authority to conduct most newly 'authorized activities through financial subsidiaries.
Removal of barriers to competition will enhance the stability of our financial services system. Financial services firms will be able to diversify their product offerings and thus their sources of revenue. They will also be better equipped to compete in global financial markets...
William J. Clinton, November 8, 1999
“The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed...
This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”
Rutherford B. Hayes, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States
“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.”
John Maynard Keynes
“After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything, and everyone, is fair game.”
Günter Grass
"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."And this aggregation of power and wealth will likely continue until the next financial crisis. Wealth and power are being steadily transferred, as a matter of de facto policy, from the many to a select few in the rise of a new, transnational oligarchy.
Louis D. Brandeis
A virtuous cycle and a vicious cycle (also referred to as virtuous circle and vicious circle) are economic terms. They refer to a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop. A virtuous circle has favorable results, while a vicious circle has detrimental results.
Both circles are complexes of events with no tendency towards equilibrium, at least in the short run. Both systems of events have feedback loops in which each iteration of the cycle reinforces the previous one.
These cycles will continue in the direction of their momentum until an external factor intervenes and breaks the cycle.
"The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.
This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spirit which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.
There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter. I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy adapts and changes, but it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved.
I understand the grief of people who have to endure great suffering, yet slowly but surely we all have to let the joy of faith slowly revive as a quiet yet firm trust, even amid the greatest distress: “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is… But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness… It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Francis I, Evangelli Gaudium
