"Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country's only strong banking laws in the grave. He's the one who rammed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress. Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton's other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society.
Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity. What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation."
Thomas Frank,
Rendezvous With Oblivion, 1 September 2006
"Who can suffer injury by just taxation, impartial laws and the application of the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none? Only those whose accumulations are stained with dishonesty and whose immoral methods have given them a distorted view of business, society and government.
Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes. Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it is more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity."
William Jennings Bryan,
Campaign Speech, Madison Square Garden, 30 August 1906
"We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power, thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would be likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States (first US central Bank) waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands can not yet be forgotten.
The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States. If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war, with an enemy at your doors? The forms of your Government might for a time have remained, but its living spirit would have departed from it."
Andrew Jackson,
Farewell Address, 4 March 1837
"About an hour later, still another one of them insisted, 'Surely, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean.' But Peter said, 'My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.' Just as he was saying this, a cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord, how he had said to him, 'Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.' And Peter went out and wept bitterly."
Luke 22:59-62
Daisy is going to the vet for her annual vaccinations, so I am going to post the charts as they are now, and catch up with any changes tomorrow.
Stocks are mixed.
I suspect we are seeing some end of quarter 'window dressing' going on.
Have a pleasant evening.
