“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."
Bertrand Russell, “Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic?”
This is just too good
“Fed policy specifically has created the biggest wealth gap in the history of our country, and the haves continue to do extraordinarily well, and the have-nots continue to get f*****, which is a word I'm choosing to use, and I have said it repeatedly, that this chasm just continues to get wider, and to a large extent the Fed has been the problem. When you lower rates - you know who wins? The people that own shit, not the people that are basically trying to play by the book. Who gets screwed when inflation starts to get out of control? Not the people that own shit. They think it's a joke. It's the people again on the lower end. They get it on the way in and they get it on the way out.”
A very prescient warning about the repeal of Glass-Steagall, 1999:
Americans are unaware that Congress and the president have just agreed to put us all at extraordinary financial and personal risk.
Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm has struck a deal with Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to knock down all fire walls between banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses. Global financiers are given the green light for ever-greater concentrations of power.
Few remember the reason for those fire walls: to curtail the spread of the sort of panic from one financial segment to another that helped lead to the Great Depression. But today's lust for global giantism has swept aside the voices of prudence; generous financial lobbies have persuaded our leaders that in enormous size there is strength…
Senate Banking Chairman Phil Gramm has struck a deal with Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to knock down all fire walls between banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses. Global financiers are given the green light for ever-greater concentrations of power.
Getting the band back together I see:
Larry Summers is a Systemic Risk
“Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.
After Summers left the Clinton administration, his candidacy for president of Harvard was championed by his mentor Robert Rubin, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was his boss and predecessor as treasury secretary. Rubin, after leaving the Treasury Department—where he championed the law that made Citigroup’s creation legal—became both vice chairman of Citigroup and a powerful member of Harvard’s governing board.
Over the past decade, Summers continued to advocate financial deregulation, both as president of Harvard and as a University Professor after being forced out of the presidency.
During this time, Summers became wealthy through consulting and speaking engagements with financial firms. Between 2001 and his entry into the Obama administration, he made more than $20-million from the financial-services industry. (His 2009 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $17-million to $39-million.)
Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings.
In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world’s leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people’s money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a “full-blown financial crisis” and a “catastrophic meltdown.”
When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a “Luddite,” dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector. (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Alan Greenspan were also in the audience.)
Soon after that, Summers lost his job as president of Harvard after suggesting that women might be innately inferior to men at scientific work.”
The Gramms became a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron Corp.
Dangerous or not, [Wendy] Gramm had done what Enron wanted. And on March 1, 1993, Gramm joined the Enron board, a job that would eventually pay her a total of about $1 million in salary, attendance fees, stock option sales, and dividends.
When asked by the Dallas Morning News about Wendy Gramm's dash for cash between government and the plush carpets of Enron's fiftieth-floor board room, Lay answered a question with a question: "These people that raise these issues, what do they expect these people to do, leave government and go in a monastery or something?"
Wendy Gramm definitely didn't go into a monastery. Instead, she and her husband, Republican U.S. senator Phil Gramm, began feeding at the Enron trough. In the 1993 election cycle, after Wendy Gramm began serving on Enron's board, the company gave more than $25,000 to Phil Gramm's political campaign, and within a few years, Enron had become the arch-conservative's top corporate contributor. Ken Lay would even go on to serve as regional chair of Gramm's failed 1996 bid for the White House.
The Gramms became a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron Corp.
"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next."
- Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 1926
Fed Dependence
Quite a Murderer's Row here, including Ben's future employer Ken Griffin, whom Bernanke was interning with at the time:
"...it is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve--nor would it be appropriate--to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions."
Citadel Intern Ben Bernanke, October 15, 2007
"I love how the rest of us are expected to stop taking airplanes and start eating insect brownies and imitation meat, but these guys are free to melt 50 glaciers just to check out the views from space." - Demetri Kofinas
"The new FOMC member, ex of Goldman..." - Lies, man
"I can understand why Goldman Sachs would want to be included in the conversation about what to do about Wall Street. What I can't understand is why anyone would listen to them."
Steve Eisman, The Big Short
“You might be correct if you thought Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee talked too much. -- Doing the math and excluding the Fed blackout days (no talking before an FOMC meeting), and 43% of workdays in 2025 Goolsbee had a public appearance, or 2.2/week.”
This is amazing…but it all occurred during a period of continually falling rates.
"I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 basball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
James Aitken
“The anecdote I was going to share is my wife and I had a really fascinating dinner here last night with several clients, founding clients. A sovereign wealth fund, long only equity chap, long short equity, RV rates and macro and some other interesting folks I won’t mention but great discussion. But the sovereign wealth fund guy, unsurprisingly, has access to some imported people. He was on a call yesterday with a very famous private equity executive who was complaining about tariffs and this, that, and the other, and said, “Yeah, but when I told Donald my share price was down, he told me he didn’t care.” It’s like, mate, you’re missing the point. It’s not about you anymore. It’s not about you Mr. Private Equity Billionaire. It’s actually not about you and you’re going to have to deal with it.”
“My best guess is that yes, all these mega billionaires on Wall Street, they watch their share price, particularly those that have borrowed too much against their share price for tax reasons, and there’s plenty of that, so you wouldn’t want series to fall too much, but I got to say, it’s not obvious to me that this administration cares as much about Wall Street as we would like to believe.”
Cem Karsan
“I've been calling for - this year - a 35% to 45% decline, peak to trough.”
On 60/40 portfolios, and private-equity:
"A 900-point decline ain't what it used to be." - Scott Wapner
Brian Sullivan: “…but I’m investing for the next 3, 5, 10 years…”
Wealthy Buyers Are Backing Out of Multimillion-Dollar Home Deals
On March 1, New York real-estate agent Peter Ocean thought he had reason to celebrate: His clients accepted an offer of $10.25 million for their four-bedroom co-op in Lenox Hill, which had been on and off the market for more than a year, last asking $10.5 million.
Days before the planned contract signing, the buyers even came back to purchase some of the furniture. “They weren’t even going to paint,” Ocean said.
Then came President Trump’s trade war, which sent shock waves through the stock market. Ocean was riding the subway to his office on March 13 when the couple’s agent called to say her client’s stocks were down 25% and the deal was off. “It was like a gut punch,” said Ocean, who then made a “painful” call to his client, who worked in finance before retiring to Florida.
“The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Trump f-ked us,’” Ocean said.
These are a sampling of comments from different registered WSJ readers, who I assume own more stocks than most Americans:
I don't know why the Journal keeps throwing this high end real estate garbage at us.
These whining clowns are so detached from the average American's life it beggars belief. Their gravy train is over.
My efforts to get a Russell Terrier puppy this weekend fell through. It must have been Trump's fault.
A Hundred thousand Americans died from fentanyl last year and I'm supposed to cry that a 4 million apartment sale fell through?
Boo Hoo
Good to hear - prices have been inflated forever and need to come down.
Or some "wealthy" Americans are overextended, buying more house than they can afford.
I honestly could not give a flying F about this...
Nearly a quarter of Tampa Bay apartments owned by private equity, study finds
“Private Equity Stakeholder Project analyzed 121 private equity firms, like Blackstone and Starwood Capital, which own over 8,200 apartment buildings in the U.S. This accounts for 2.2 million units, or about 10% of the country’s total supply.
The Tampa Bay area was highlighted as one of ten metropolitan areas with the largest number of private equity-owned apartment units. The study said 23.4% of all units are owned by those firms. Two other Florida metro areas made the list: Orlando and Jacksonville.”
“the Era of Modern Finance” is code for “the destruction of the middle-class”
Via Trepp:
Net-leased properties on the sales market during the first quarter were being offered at prices resulting in capitalization rates that were higher than the previous quarter. It marked the 12th straight quarter in which asking cap rates had increased, according to Boulder Group.
The average cap rate for properties in the three sectors that the suburban Chicago advisory firm tracks was 7.2% in the latest quarter, up from from 7.18% in the fourth quarter and 7.01% a year ago.
The company tracks properties in the retail, office, and industrial sectors. It found that retail properties had traded at prices resulting in an average cap rate of 6.56% in the first quarter, up from 6.42% a year earlier; offices traded at a 7.8% cap rate, up from 7.6%; and industrial properties traded at a 7.23% rate, up from 7.02%.
‘A new reality began to dawn’: the fall of Saigon, 50 years on
As the 1970s wore on, Ho Chi Minh’s dream of building a country “ten times more beautiful” was foundering in the face of a litany of new disasters — floods, typhoons and new wars with China and Cambodia. Cambodia, like Vietnam, was now under new management — the Khmer Rouge, led by a shadowy elite, who were in the process of starving and murdering perhaps a third of the population, sending thousands of refugees fleeing into Vietnam and Thailand.
Before long a border war developed with the Khmer Rouge, who had long dreamt of recreating the ancient Khmer empire, launching raids deep into Vietnam, indiscriminately slaughtering hundreds of farmers and their families. Initially, the government played down this conflict with a supposedly “brother” state, hoping territorial disputes could be settled by negotiation. By late 1978 they lost patience and invaded, within a few days overthrowing the Khmer Rouge regime and setting up what was, for all practical purposes, a puppet government.
Why, I asked Vietnam’s foreign minister, Mr. Thach, didn’t you appeal to the UN when you were attacked by the Khmer Rouge, instead of invading?
“We do not have such a high regard for the UN as you do,” he said.
“How so?”
His reply was devastating. “Because during the last 40 years we have been invaded by four of the five permanent members of the security council.”
"It is said to await certainty is to await eternity."
- Jonas Salk, telegram to Basil O'Connor, 1954
(from the book, “Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine”)
From the book, The Jekyll Island Club: Southern Haven for America s Millionaires, by William Barton McCash and June Hall McCash.
“In 1908, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich sponsored a bill to create the National Monetary Commission, which he would chair, to study the nation s financial system and determine what changes might be necessary.
Aldrich was himself a wealthy man whose daughter was married to the nephew of William Rockefeller. He had not at first been convinced of the need for sweeping reforms and a centralized banking structure, but, as the commission continued its work, he changed his mind. He also believed that the counsel of banking experts other than members of the commission was necessary in developing a plan. But the issue was so fraught with controversy, the motives of the representatives of financial institutions so suspect, and the senator himself so vulnerable to charges of conflict of interest that it seemed advisable to act quickly and quietly to avoid negative publicity that might undermine any proposal before it could be judged fairly on its merits.
Encouraged in this endeavor by James Stillman1, who had a fetish for secrecy, Aldrich decided to organize a clandestine meeting of hand-picked advisors, to be held in a location where they would have "plenty of time" and be "free from interruptions."
What better place than Jekyl Island off-season? Thus, sometime shortly after November 11, 1910, Aldrich, the five men he had chosen for the task, and his private secretary set out by train for Jekyl. Henry Pomeroy Davison, one of those selected by the senator, had been vice president of George F. Bakers bank until 1909, when he had joined the firm of J. P. Morgan. Either Morgan, Baker, or Stillman, in all probability, had given them permission to use the island, since none of Aldrich s group was at the time a member of the club.
With Aldrich and Davison came Frank A. Vanderlip, who had replaced Stillman as president of the National City Bank when he had retired the year before to become chairman of the board; Paul Warburg, a senior partner in the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company and one of the country's foremost advocates of banking reform; A. Piatt Andrew, advisor to the monetary commission and assistant secretary of the treasury; and Benjamin Strong, vice president of the Banker s Trust Company, which had been organized by George F. Baker and his associates.
All were highly respected in the financial world. From the outset they maintained absolute secrecy "that would have delighted the heart of James Stillman." Under cover of darkness and posing as duck hunters, the five financiers one by one boarded Senator Aldrich's private railroad car, parked on a siding in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Vanderlip described the situation: "We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told, further, that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time and as unobtrusively as possible to the railroad terminal…Once aboard the private car we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names." Vanderlip and Davison even adopted false first names, calling each other Orville and Wilbur for the famous Wright brothers.
Work began immediately and continued throughout the train ride to Brunswick, where the men were met by the club yacht and taken to the island. Vanderlip's account of the meeting contends that they were cut off "without any contact by telephone or telegraph with the outside." His memory on this score was flawed, for Jekyl, of course, had both telephone and cable service long before 1910. He further gives the impression that they were alone on the island except for "plenty of colored servants." But Captain Clark must certainly have picked them up in the yacht, and on November 18 Ernest Grob arrived to assume his duties. On the other hand, club members had not yet begun to appear, and by the time the Maurices registered on November 29, the financiers may have already departed.
How long the surreptitious meeting lasted is uncertain, although the group spent Thanksgiving on the island, where they dined on "wild turkey with oyster stuffing." They worked throughout the day and night, taking only sporadic time out to explore Jekyl and enjoy its delights. Aldrich and Davison were both so taken with it that they joined the club in 1912. Aldrich, in fact, was attracted back the following January in hope of improving his health and remained until March playing bridge, walking on the beach, and conversing with other guests.
Sometime after Thanksgiving, the Aldrich secret committee finished its work and left the island. The banking system that these six men developed became known as the Aldrich Plan. Acting apparently on the advice of Republican President William Howard Taft "to formulate your scheme into a definite bill backed by the Commission," Aldrich pushed forward his measure in 1912, but in the Democratically controlled Congress it died for lack of support, and on March 31 the National Monetary Commission was officially dissolved.
Nevertheless, the Aldrich Plan became the forerunner of the Federal Reserve System, which was established in December 1913 under a Democratic administration.2
Suspicions about a "money trust" in the United States had by then been awakened, and in April 1912, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Banking and Currency was authorized to investigate the matter. Although it came to be known as the Pujo Committee for its chairman, Arsene Pujo, the chief counsel for the investigation, Samuel Untermeyer, would prove to be the more important of the two. Untermeyer was an outspoken critic of big business who was convinced even before the investigation began that, while an illegal "money trust" might not exist, there was "a close and well-developed 'community of interest' and understanding among the men who dominate the financial destinies of our country."
A number of important Jekyl Islanders were called to testify before the committee. George F. Baker, J. P. Morgan, and James J. Hill led the list. Because Stillman was in Europe at the time, he was able to avoid the ordeal. Baker tried to explain the close relationship that prevailed among many banking firms with the simple statement: "We have always tried to deal with our friends rather than people we do not know."
Morgan also testified for two days in a frank and vigorous manner, and his associate, Henry Davison, who had helped draft the Aldrich Plan, appeared as well3. Also summoned before the Pujo Committee was William Rockefeller, who with the same grim determination as Stillman, Morgan, and Baker always sought to shun reporters and maintain his privacy.
Pleading ill health. Rockefeller refused to submit voluntarily to questioning and went into hiding at Rockwood Hall, his estate in North Tarrytown, New York. In truth, he had been suffering for years from a chronic larynx problem that produced periodic coughing spells, spasms, laryngitis, and general debility. His physician, Walter Chappell, contended that it was potentially life threatening. An operation had only partially corrected the condition which flared up anew and rather conveniently as the House subcommittee undertook to investigate his banking connections.
Skeptical about the seriousness of his illness, the Pujo Committee subpoenaed him in October 1912 and sent process servers to Rockwood Hall. They were unable to find him, however; despite their surveillance, he managed to go motoring slumped in back of his car wearing earmuffs and goggles, "so disguised that only those who know him well can recognize him." By the end of December the number of federal deputies searching for Rockefeller had increased from four to forty and was reinforced by men from the Burns and Pinkerton detective agencies. This army of watchers, led by Charles F. Riddell, the House sergeant-at-arms, not only besieged Rockwood Hall and Rockefellers house on Fifth Avenue in New York City, but also staked out the neighboring homes of his daughters Emma McAlpin and Geraldine Dodge.
After personally questioning the maids and housekeeper at the Fifth Avenue residence, Riddell told reporters: "We'll keep him a prisoner in the house, whether he is here or at Tarrytown until he sees fit to come forth and surrender by accepting service." Unknown to Riddell, however, Rockefeller had long since slipped away. The first inkling of his escape came from a reporter in Brunswick, Georgia, whose story, filed on January 2, 1913, appeared in the New York Times the next day. It read: "While process servers…have been watching the New York home of William Rockefeller for weeks, he and his son, William G. Rockefeller with their wives, were on Jekyl Island." Riddell sent members of his staff to Jekyl to investigate the rumor and concluded it was "absolutely unfounded." This assertion amused Emily Maurice who had just received a letter from her sister declaring that "Dad had had the gentleman in question out driving [on Jekyl] all a.m."4 The Rockefellers had arrived secretly and, without registering in the guest book, stayed three weeks in the Sans Souci before sailing away on the yacht Vanadis belonging to club member Cornelius K. G. Billings, who was wintering his world champion racehorses on a farm in Brunswick.
Riddell's siege was lifted on January 4, when Rockefeller s lawyer finally accepted the subpoena ordering him to testify in Washington on January 13. Still unresolved, however, was the question of whether his health would permit him to appear. Dr. Chappell declared that tension of any sort might trigger a throat spasm and result in Rockefeller's choking to death. The Pujo Committee relented to the extent that it agreed to allow the Standard Oil magnate to testify at Jekyl Island rather than in Washington. The private hearing was set for February 7.
On the scheduled day Pujo, Untermeyer, and a stenographer arrived on the island to represent the committee. Greeted by Rockefellers lawyer, John A. Garver, and the club attorney, A. J. Crovatt, they were ushered into the parlor of his Sans Souci apartment, which was described as "a spacious, unostentatious chamber, at one end of which stood a plain square table covered with green baize. Chairs had been arranged for the party and a large rocker, for use by Mr. Rockefeller, was immediately behind the table. To its right was a small stand on which were Dr. Chappell's instruments and a small box of pills used by Mr. Rockefeller to soothe his throat when threatened with spasms." The room had been prepared like a stage set. Dr. Chappell came in for a brief conference and then went into the adjoining bedroom to bring back Rockefeller, and fthe hearing commenced.
Twelve minutes later, with only four questions having been asked, it ended. Rockefeller, whispering his replies, had a "fit of coughing and trembling which brought sharp warning from his physician that the ordeal must cease or the consequence might be his sudden death." A report the following day elaborated on the scene: It was a violent spasm of the throat. The witness's head had been swaying ominously and the palsey spread over his whole nervous system. He fell back into his chair, coughing. The trembling of his hands and the wagging of his head became more violent and the muscles of his face and neck contracted and expanded spasmodically. Dr. Chappell was at his side in an instant, administering a pill and treatment. Mr. Rockefeller became more quiet, but the physician was determined that the ordeal should go no further.
The Times reporter remarked ironically that "Not a word of information had been gleaned after the six months' chase and final running down of the financier. The only result was a demonstration that the National House of Representatives could reach out its long arm and compel the obedience of any citizen." The intruders into the island sanctuary, Pujo and Untermeyer, came away absolutely convinced that the illness was real, describing Rockefeller's condition to the press as "pitiable" and indicating that it would have been "dangerous and inhuman to go further."5
Even without Rockefeller's testimony, the Pujo Committee was able to submit a report on February 28. The seven Democrats on the committee found, as expected, "an established and well-defined identity and community of interest between the leaders of finance," which had resulted in "great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men"—in short, the money trust they had anticipated.
The Republicans on the committee signed two minority reports contending that the majority report "did not prove the existence of a money trust" in the United States. In spite of their concern over the increasing concentration of power and influence of investment bankers, the committee gave the devil his due and acknowledged "the important and valuable part that the gentlemen who dominate this inner group and their allies have played in the development of our prosperity."6
James Madison, 1788
“Since the general civilization of mankind7, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations: but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism.
If we go over the whole history of ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. If we consider the peculiar situation of the United States, and what are the sources of that diversity of sentiment which pervades its inhabitants, we shall find great danger to fear, that the same causes may terminate here, in the same fatal effects, which they produced in those republics. This danger ought to be wisely guarded against.”
"Space exploration may pull in the talent, but war pays the bills."
"NASA is not some Starship Enterprise on a “mission to seek out new worlds and civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” On the contrary, NASA is the disturbed child of two dysfunctional parents—paranoia and war."
‘NASA was created around the dark genius of a coven of Nazi scientists’
“NASA was formed in 1958 at the height of the Cold War when all advances in space science were spin-offs from the development of more efficient killing machines. The exploration of space itself was directly linked to defense policy.
This is something which many Americans forget, just as they forget that everything from their superb interstate highway system to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was the result of defense policies. Military policies. War.
NASA was created around the dark genius of a coven of Nazi scientists who first tested their designs and discoveries on the civilian population of London during the Blitz. While many may feel that Hancock’s characterization of NASA as a “disturbed child” is overstating the case, the preponderance of men who should have been standing trial for war crimes [were] instead working for NASA in those days…
Clearly, whoever was working with or for NASA in the 1950s and 1960s had to be able to accept the presence—let alone the dominance—of the many Nazis on their team and, as we have seen in previous volumes, those Nazis would not have been able to emigrate safely to the United States much less serve in positions of tremendous prestige and authority if it were not for the unwavering support and material assistance of men like Allen Dulles and Richard Nixon. As unpalatable as this idea seems, and as outrageous as it will appear to many, the facts speak for themselves and are incontrovertible.”
More from Levenda on occult influences throughout history…
“If we review the manuals on psychological warfare as practiced in the Congo in the 1950s, or in Vietnam in the 1960s, we see the politically-correct (“wink, wink, nudge, nudge”) approach to what is, after all, witchcraft and black magic. The same may be said for the manual on remote viewing that was used by the US military as late as the 1980s, and perhaps even more recently than that…
While the agencies may have abandoned the remote viewing programs, they have not jettisoned psychological warfare, which is, after all, an essential weapon in their arsenal. All of these techniques, from psychological warfare to remote viewing, have their origins in occultism. Although we can confidently trace the beginnings of this art to Giordano Bruno and the magicians of the Renaissance, they go back much further in time than that, to the days when occultism, religion, science, art and politics were one, and the chief of state was worshipped as a god and reality determined by the limits of his kingdom; and works of theater were works of ritual; and magic was the context within which science evolved; and works of art were media to communicate directly with sinister forces.
…the most accessible technology for a Western mind would be the theory and practice of ceremonial magic. This, after all, was the method by which Joseph Smith, Jr. talked to angels and looked for buried treasure, founding a new religion in the process. It was also under study by governors, doctors, and clergymen in the early days of Colonial America and provided the atmosphere in which the Salem witchcraft trials took place.
Miscellaneous tomes on magic can be found at the crime scenes of serial murder, and in the libraries of politicians. It was the means by which L. Ron Hubbard jump-started Scientology; and by which Jack Parsons made an important series of contributions to the defense and space programs.
Magic was there when MK-ULTRA began its search for the secrets of the paranormal and interviewed witches and wizards in America and beyond. It is a fascination that has not died with the passage of time, or the passage of laws, whether civil or scientific. If, as Crowley has written, “magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will,” then it has obvious attractions for the politician and the general, type-A personalities whose will is surpassed only by their egos.”
“Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.”
Edward Teller, quoted in “The Martians of Science : Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century”
“We speak in strange terms…of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.”
General Douglas MacArthur’s Farewell Speech given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point, May 12, 1962
Very good interview with James DiEugenio, one of the top experts on the JFK assassination.
“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Ephesians 6:12
What are we doing??
Might we worth checking out my October 2022 post, The Ends Justify The Means
In the footnotes of my previous post, the FDIC stated that Stillman and Rockefeller had “triggered” the Panic of 1901.
For details concerning the meeting on Jekyl see Nathaniel W. Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich: A Leader in American Politics (1930; reprint, New York: Kennikat Press,1971), pp. 384-87; John K. Winkler, The First Billion: The Stillmans and the National City Bank (New York: Vanguard Press,1934), p. 202; Frank A. Vanderlip, From Farm Boy to Financier (New York, D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935), pp. 211,213-16; Paul M. Warburg, The Federal Reserve System: Its Origins and Growth, 2 vols.(1930; reprint, New York: Arno Press,1975), 1:260.
Vincent P. Carosso, Investment Banking in America: A History (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp.139, 145.
Emily Maurice to children, 6 January1913, MP.
“For mention of Rockefeller's throat problems, see NYT, 21 March 1906, October 1911; Almira Rockefeller to Emma Rockefeller, 28 February 1895, WRP. The pursuit of Rockefeller is chronicled in NYT, 20 October, 28, 31 December 1912, 3, 8, 9,12-14, 16, 22-24 January, 4 February 1913; BN, 4-5 January 1913. Rockefeller's testimony is described in NYT, 8-9 February 1913.”
Carosso, Investment Banking, pp. 151, 153.
“On 5 June, Patrick Henry leveled a lengthy attack on the Constitution. This evoked a Federalist rebuttal in general terms by Governor Randolph and James Madison’s point-by-point refutation.” Since I’m trying to find original sources, for what it’s worth it’s unclear to me if Madison spoke on June 5 or June 6.
you can add to the list of Summers' contributions to the corruption of finance his role in the privatizations in Russia in the 90's and the creation of the modern oligarchy
The End of American Exceptionalism has been greatly exaggerated. :)
For jollies, and perspective, see link Hoover memoirs begin Chapter 7 page 61
https://hoover.archives.gov/sites/default/files/research/ebooks/b1v3_full.pdf