"The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, has a rap sheet that rivals that of a crime family — and those crimes show no signs of slowing down. The financial institution is, in effect, a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured banking powerhouse.
The facts backing the above assertions are so strong that two trial attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, wrote a book in which they compared the bank to the Gambino crime family and suggested JPMorgan Chase should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The authors wrote at the time on their website that 'The pattern is clear. JPMorgan Chase has a culture — like the mob — where anything goes so long as it is profitable. This is precisely the kind of pattern of criminal activity that RICO was intended to target.'”
Russ and Pam Martens,
Jamie Dimon's House of Frauds, November 4, 2024
"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving. Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility. They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."
Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012
"Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country's only strong banking laws in the grave. He's the one who rammed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress. Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton's other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. He would have put a huge dent in Social Security too, had the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal not stopped him. If we take inequality as our measure, the Clinton administration looks not heroic but odious.
Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity. What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation."
Thomas Frank,
Rendezvous With Oblivion, 1 September 2006
"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
"They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim."
Paul Babiak and Robert Hare,
Snakes in Suits
“There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.
First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.”
Ryszard Kapuściński,
Writing About Suffering
"The Third Reich did not come to power on the backs of their brutish stormtroopers alone. No, their rise to power was with the active participation of the educated and professional classes: the lawyers, doctors, financiers, teachers, and businessmen, who sought to use that abusive power for their own benefits and careers, and were then consumed in the madness that followed.
The devotion to pride, and the love of self, provokes at first the pettiest of actions, and then anger, and self-deceiving lies, and sickly sweet opiate of self-righteous outrage in our society. It provides an escape from thought, from the grey areas, from the obligations of conscience, and from the fear of being human.
So the harsh words and narrow judgements of the worldly and those driven mad by worldly desire are to be expected for those who do not participate in their narrative. But it is the falling off the faithful, and the petty slights and silent betrayals of friends, that stings the conscious hearts most deeply."
Jesse,
The Love of Most Will Grow Cold, 21 January 2019
The markets pretty much stumbled around today, in the face of two important geopolitical and economic events.
A very close national election will be held tomorrow in the US.
And later this week, the Fed will meet once again, and make a decision and statement about interest rates.
The magic eight ball says, 'check again later.'
So let's see what happens.
Have a pleasant evening.
