Financial Corporate Plutocracy... and related quotes

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
Walter Bagehot

Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.
John Adams

I fancy that over-confidence seldom does any great harm -- except when, as, and if, it beguiles its victim into debt.
Irving Fisher

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
Honore de Balzac

It ain't what peope don't know that hurts them. It's what they do know that ain't true.
Will Rogers

We are never deceived; we but deceive ourselves.
Johann Wofgang von Goethe

Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reforem, we are still driving on the same winding road, but this time in a faster car.
Neil Barofsky

The sense of responsibility in the financial community is not small. It is nil.
John Kenneth Galbraith

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a socieity, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat

When I see a bubble, I invest in it.
George Soros

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the U.S. One of the most alarming is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government... recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.
Simon Johnson.

We must break the Money Trust, or the Money Trust will break us.
Louis Brandeis, 1913

What has become of the American nation? Conceived in the vision of liberty and justice for all, we have descended in the clutches of corporate and other special interests to a second-world state defined by K Street instead of Independence Square.
William Gross

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honourably obtained and well used... so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.
Theodore Roosevelt

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban

If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Larry Kersten

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Dr. Martin Luther King

There is nothing so bad that politics can't make it worse.
Thomas Sowell

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln

I'm back!...... maybe

for now, I just wanted to make sure this blogspot was still active

but I'm thinking of making a comeback

why?

for the same reasons i started this blog a year and a half ago...

b/c I think the markets are back to their same old tricks, and some comeuppance is in store

and I want to keep a diary of my investment and economic-related musings

both for my own sake.... to document my thinking and therefore keep it organized and on-track... and thereby avoid groupthink and other traps of the mind

and, frankly, for the sake of providing real-time posts to the outside world, to leave a snail trail that can either ultimately prove that i was on the right track, or, perhaps, prove otherwise, that mr. market does know best, and that i'll need to re-think my analytical process

we shall see

in any case, as for why now, well, if you saw my previous post, which was quite some time ago, you'll know that i've had some mental health issues; those aren't over yet --- it turns out that its pretty hard to unscramble this egg i've got on my shoulders after having scrambled it so thoroughly last year; but i've come a long way; and, not only do i finally feel confident enough for the first time in a long time to test my stability by blogging, but i actually think that framing my thoughts and diarizing, so to speak, helps keep me sane

in any case, as i said, we shall see

cheers,

m