Our society is controlled by sociopaths, predominated by those who work in sales, marketing, financial services, and real estate. There's no way to "drain the swamp", when broader society IS a fucking swamp. Whereas 2008 was the Big Short, 2018 is the Big Long. It turns out Wall Street didn't learn their lesson from the free money bailout...Shocking, I know...
I'm about halfway through reading "Fire And Fury: Signifying The Trump White House". The key takeaway so far is that the Trump White House is run by and for Goldman Sachs. These are the various Goldman alumni who have been actively "draining the swamp" during the past year:
Gary Cohn, Chief Economic Advisor
Steve Bannon, Senior Counselor to the President
Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary
Jared Kushner, Director of Innovation
Dina Powell, Director of Economic Initiatives
Anthony Scaramucci, Director of Communications (briefly)
"Powell, swallowing her doubts, had come on board. That, and the politically risky but high-return gamble that she, aligned with Jared and Ivanka, and working closely with Cohn, her Goldman friend and ally, could take over the White House."
Wolff, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (p. 146).
Wolff, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (p. 146).
To say that this administration is a farce, is a pathetic understatement. Yet again, big money found its way into the White House, this time via the back door of the Republican Convention. Which happens to also be the front door. Regardless of who "won" the election, we know who won the election. The sock puppet of the day, nominated to stand in front of the teleprompter, can in no way halt the corporate vampire squid that has taken over the United States.
In the event, the fact that so many Trumptards got conned evidences the achilles heel of democracy that must be resolved at the end of this multi-decade scam - A populace of serial-conned sheeple systematically dumbed down by junk food and junk culture can in no way protect its own interests.
The most troubling quote from the book so far is this one:
"Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. (There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself, and the gossip squibs on the New York Post’s Page Six.) Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television."
Wolff, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (pp. 113-114).
The most troubling quote from the book so far is this one:
"Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. (There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself, and the gossip squibs on the New York Post’s Page Six.) Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television."
Wolff, Michael. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (pp. 113-114).
Postliterate? Holy fuck, what does that even mean? Who can say that without immediately conjuring up The Idiocracy? Suffice to say, no one will be laughing when the final season of the Apprentice comes to a close, and Big Donny himself finally gets fired.
I often wonder why the overwhelming majority of financial pundits and bloggers who profess to be outside of the realm of corporate media - don't see this ending. Badly. It's because they are all owned in some way or another, and they all have conflict of interest. They're all either actively selling their own brand of bullshit, or they're actively plugging casino investments they themselves are managing for a fee.
Conflict of interest is the key lesson that the Idiocracy DIDN'T learn after 2008 with the Goldman Sachs-led bailout.
Go figure.
That's the final lesson.
Who could publish this shit with a straight face? Other than an industry-owned bag of nothing...
Everybody from the International Monetary Fund to the Bank of Canada have sounded alarm bells on the high level of household debt in Canada, but a new report suggests the situation isn’t all that dire.
"data from National Bank Financial economists Stéfane Marion and Matthieu Arseneau, shows that household debt is not as big a problem as many suggest."
