"Since 1998, in our corrupt political system, the private healthcare sector has spent more than $10.6 billion on lobbying and over the last 30 years it has spent more than $1.7 billion on campaign contributions to maintain the status quo. We have the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry right now has 1,500 paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C. to make sure that in some cases we pay 10 times more for the medicine that we need."
Bernie Sanders, September 2022
"Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity. Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view. Impunity is epidemic in America. The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight. When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish 'dreamer.' Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity."
Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity, May 2016
"There is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector. The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry. As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system (including both political parties), government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation.
As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality. Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement. The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth.
The rise of predatory finance is both a cause and a symptom of an even broader, and even more disturbing, change in America’s economy and political system. The financial sector is the core of a new oligarchy that has risen to power over the past thirty years, and that has profoundly changed American life."
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation
Stocks had another ranging day, ending slightly higher.
Gold dropped, under pressure most of the day.
Physical inventories are very thin in Hong Kong.
Silver moved higher, taking back some of its recent decline.
The Dollar chopped sideways.
The VIX receded after the big rise yesterday.
Who do the powerful of this world serve? The simple truth of the matter is this— non serviam. In all things they will not serve any other but themselves.
May God have mercy and forgive us, especially in that moment when we will finally see ourselves as we really are, stripped of all worldly ornaments and illusions, and then know what we have done, and what we have failed to do, with perfect clarity.
Have a pleasant evening.
