"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.
If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."
Charles Ferguson,
Predator Nation, June 2012
"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 Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016
"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
“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten them.”
George Orwell
Stocks came in a little stronger this morning, but then reversed and turned sharply lower, and went out at the lows of the day as well.
Gold and silver were lower as most everything that was not the Dollar or Treasuries were getting sold.
It resembled a liquidation event, or at least the prologue to one.
Smells like teen spirit.
The Fed spooked the markets that are now pricing in a trio of 50 basis point rate increases this year.
At some point either the Fed or the markets are going to blink.
Let's see what happens.
I'm making the national dish of England for dinner this evening— tikka masala.
Have a pleasant weekend.
