A Secret History: The Ku Klux Klan

"The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it."

Simon Wiesenthal


“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

Reinhold Neibuhr


"Keep America American."

Ku Klux Klan slogan from the 1920's

Most nations have things in their past which they wish to forget.

And they obscure them in a mythos, with a false memory of their own self-righteousness.

But to forget them is to invite their return, in words that are echoes of the past, and the objectification of 'the other' as they choose to define them.

Like financial frauds, the sins of the past keep coming back with new names, but the same old words and false propositions.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Failure to Reform

"But there is a sort of 'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top."

Robert Johnson

Audacious oligarchy.

This will not end well.

And a preview of Matt Taibbi and Bill Moyers discussing Why We Can't Let the Banks Off the Hook.

Ignoring such pervasive white collar crimes, which are still ongoing by the way, creates a climate of extreme moral hazard, festering corruption, and teaches felony by example.

I think they give Obama, the regulators, and the Congress far to much credit in ignoring these crimes 'for the good of the system.' It is all about careerism, the credibility trap, and going along to get along.

They cannot reform the system because they are the system, and the political and financial elite are doing just fine with the system the way that it is, thank you very much. They do not want things to change.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Fragility of Vain Illusions

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes — are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. The pageantry of empire, and the fame of irresistible might, are contemplated by the possessor with unmeaning complacency, without a retrospect to the properties which first made him consider them of value.

It is from the cultivation of the most contemptible properties of human nature that discord and torpor and indifference, by which the moral universe is disordered, essentially depend.

So long as these are the ties by which human society is connected, let it not be admitted that they are fragile.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The employment number was worse than expected, and the unemployment rate ticked up.

The equity markets, aka the cash cow entitlement of the one percent, ran higher because of extensive revisions to past months.

This will not end well.