"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.
And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe."
Robert F. Kennedy
"The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the 'last thing standing' between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability."
Thomas Frank, Trump to the White House, and liberals put him there, The Guardian, 9 November 2016
"The end result was to be a new Imperial Order and a New World Empire run by an elite self-perpetuating oligarchies from the leading nations of the earth."
Dr. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p. 860
"The problem was not paper money per se, but the concentration of power and wealth which the abusive use of the paper monetary power had granted to a few powerful individuals and institutions. No system is foolproof when a foolish people will allow the unscrupulous few to operate it in secrecy and without transparency, accountability and the rule of law. And the primary reason we cannot acknowledge the facts of our own situation is that our political and financial class are caught in a credibility trap. They cannot speak the truth without compromising their own personal greed and will to power."
Jesse, Peak Junk, Currency Wars, 11 August 2015
"We believe we are creating the beginning of a new world order coming out of the collapse of the US-Soviet antagonisms."
Brent Scowcroft, Bush's Talk of 'New World Order', The Washington Post, 26 May 1991
"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus,
Agricola
The markets caught a whiff of risk today, which elevated the VIX, and kept stocks subdued for much of the day.
The Dollar chopped sideways.
Gold was under pressure, silver not so much.
There will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.
It is a bit surprising how quickly the masks of respectability are coming off, as the servants of power grow eager to demonstrate their loyalty.
The White Rose, in the Land of the Willfully Blind
Biden and Trump have both been disastrous for the well-being of the American republic.
And yet they seem to be the anointed candidates of the prevailing political duopoly.
There is little fear of justice, and perhaps most tellingly, even less fear of the judgement of God.
These are the times of darkness, ascendant.
Have a pleasant evening.
