"Financial predators are usually narcissistic and audacious criminals. They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy. Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive. Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars. They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations."
Russ Alan Prince, Forbes
"You've taken obvious joy in talking about how the agency will help banks a lot more than it will help consumers, and how upset it must make me. This isn't about me. This is about active duty military. It's about first responders and students and seniors and familiess— and millions of other people who need someone on their side when consumers get cheated. You are hurting real people to score cheap political points."
Elizabath Warren to Mike Mulvaney on the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
"You should thank God for bank bailouts— absolutely required to save your civilization. So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn't be bitching about a little bailout. You should have been thinking it should have been bigger. You should thank God the government saved the big banks and their investors.
Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies. Suck it in and cope."
Charlie Munger
"Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by twenty well-documented traits and characteristics. The most visible are glib/superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self worth, a strong need for stimulation (that is, psychopaths are easily bored) and impulsivity.
However, there are others, which they successfully hide from view, in particular pathological lying, conning, manipulation, a lack of empathy, remorse and guilt. Over time, one might begin to see examples of irresponsibility, lack of realistic, long-term goals, and their failure to take responsibility for their own actions."
Paul Babiak, co-author with Robert Hare of Snakes In Suits
I know, let's pursue a system that lacks regulation, justice, and transparency, and relies on the 'good nature' of some of the greediest and most ruthless elements in its society to make most of the important decisions. And whoever can collect the most dirty money through whatever means gets to be in charge.
The sad truth is that old Charlie is just saying what the rest of his moneyed class and their enablers and courtiers have been thinking and saying to each other for quite a while. They are just not old and dodgy enough to blurt it out publicly.
We are living in a time of a general plague in human morals, and a sickness upon the American soul.
Stocks were choppy today, attempting to recover and find a footing among recent declines. They were not quite able to make it.
Indicators are flashing danger signals for an equity market that is likely mispricing the risks in the credit and consumer markeets.
Former IMF economist Olivier Blanchard addressed a meeting at the Boston Fed, and suggested that if there is another financial crisis and severe recession that the Fed should engage in 'unusual monetary policy' and intervene in the equity markets to buy stocks in order to artificially prop up their prices and further distort credit risk.
Well, he didn't say that last part. But that is what he is really saying, along with the understand that the Fed should provide a more direct subsidy to the wealthiest ten percent and their stock holdings.
And the Boston Fed Chair Mr. Rosengren said that things are just so good that the Fed should start considering 'restrictive' interest rates before something awful like wage inflation can take root.
Gold and silver declined just a bit, along with a weaker Dollar and a lower VIX Clearly, all is well.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Carolinas and Virginia on the approach of Hurricane Florence, which appears to be heading for a direct landfall while strengthening to a robust Category 4. And their are two other hurricanes following this one in their westwardly path across the Atlantic.
Rudy Giuliani is calling for the FBI to investigate the anonymous Op-Ed writer, saying that if they could leak something like this to the Times, then they might leak it to someone else like a foreign power. Sounds like the movie
Minority Report, right?
If these jokers are so good at crime fighting that they can spot crimes before they occur, why don't they do something about the robo-call epidemic. It's a good thing that my home phone is on the government 'Do Not Call' list, because otherwise I might get more than the ten or so fake and fraudulent calls that come in each day. Luckily there is a service that my cable provider offers that pre-empts these fraud calls, and it works. But that's beside the real point, isn't it? Fraud protection and law enforcement is not a privilege, but a right that everyone pays for, but not everyone gets.
A visitor from China noted that our public infrastructure, in particularly the commuter rail systems, are remarkably underdeveloped and in poor condition. Perhaps we should create a Patreon page, and try to fund infrastructure development in the US in this way?
Yeah, but does China have a wall better than ours (as it is some day conceived to be)? Uh, oh yeah they have been there and done that. I've even climbed some restored portions of it. Quite impressive. Trump should make a note of it and its durability.
How about a major national infrastructure and public works program to stimulate well-paying jobs and general pubic productivity as FDR did with the highly success CCA and WPA programs? Oh yeah, I guess we have that, but its virtual or something still rattling around in the corporatist black box of the Beltway.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Have a pleasant evening.
