"McKinsey advised Purdue how to avoid FDA and pharmacy restrictions. They later advised Purdue on how to enter the market for opioid rescue and treatment medications, because McKinsey knew that people were overdosing and dying and getting sick from OxyContin. So, McKinsey's fingers are all over this.
It's exactly that, profit at all costs.
McKinsey consultants were about the business of advising their clients on how to make as much money as possible from this deadly epidemic. It shows a callousness that really is beyond the pale.
The fact that they knew — I mean, they knew how dangerous these opioids were, that they went so far as to try to propose to Purdue how it could pay insurance companies rebates for every patient who O.D.ed on OxyContin is gross. It's disturbing."
Maura Healey,
A Powerful Corporate Consulting Firm Helped to Create the Opioid Crisis
"In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be their's. So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with. And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything."
Leon F. Seltzer
"Market Fundamentalism has its own economic orthodoxy that, for the most part, is unquestioningly accepted. It is an idolatrous religion, because it makes a god out of the Market. It puts money above all else. This religion has its own high priests, those economic advisors, corporate executives, and government officials who make the rules and oversee the functioning of the economic system as a whole. It has its own saints, people who have attained the success that the system promises."
Sharon Delgado,
Shaking the Gates of Hell
"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags."
Harvey Cox,
The Market As God
"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of
The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see."
Thomas Merton
"It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word and thought defying banality of evil.”
Hannah Arendt
"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
This prevalence of self-deception and disregard for truth and ethical considerationss amongst the world's elite is nothing new. It is the old and cyclical ascendancy of Mammon, which seems to rise in every 'gilded age,'
It infects the whole of society, and is marked by the rising prominence of disordered minds and hardened hearts, who are drawn into shameless servitude to Moloch and the darkness of this world.
And with the darkness comes madness, and the madness serves none but itself.
Even among the faithful, the taint of the gospel of prosperity has caused the love of many hearts to draw inwards, lose their way, and grow cold with worldly pride and selfishness.
Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.
Today was highlighted by economic weakness and uncertainty in Europe and especially in the UK.
As such the Dollar, the douleur du monde, moved sharply higher by comparison and of course the design and weighting of the DX index.
Stocks managed to turn their usual morning slump around and finished a little higher in the green.
Gold and silver were whipped lower again.
Some of the miners were starting to show a little resilience by the afternoon.
Friday will be a stock index option expiration.
Next week on the 25th there will be option expirations for the metals on the Comex.
I watched the HBO documentary, Four Hours at the Capitol, today.
It was well done and informative. Well worth watching if you can.
The madness serves none but itself.
Have a pleasant evening.
