"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice, When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure. This is a summons to us to keep the agenda of justice for the vulnerable alive and front and center to maintain a kind of subversive stance toward power.
The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way..."
Walter Brueggemann
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."
John Kenneth Galbraith
“In the eyes of the empire builders men are not men, but instruments.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Fed's minutes were released today. They showed a bias to raising rates in June if the recent economic weakness proved to be transitory.
The question of the Fed's changing their benchmark interest rate is probably a little less significant than the question of what they will be doing with their enormous Balance Sheet. Currently they are rolling the instruments over, but will likely be looking to start capping those renewals of the current holdings.
Removing items from the balance sheet has a less predictable impact on financial assets as compared to interest rates which is easier to hedge.
After the bell the CBO released their new study for the House proposal for 'reformed' healthcare. And the Bloomberg spokesmodels trumpeted it as
good news. In this latest version the budget deficit would be reduced by 198 billion over ten years. Huzzah! Of course one has to accept a lot of assumptions to make that valid.
And only 23 million people would lose their health insurance, instead of 24 million.
Improvement!
Medicaid would be slashed and older people and those who are sick would be paying much higher insurance rates. But at least the tax cuts for the wealthiest would be there as a consolation.
Luckily the Senate isn't going to have any part of this inhuman piece of repugnant trash, which in my opinion disgraces the House GOP for all to see. Have no illusions about these jokers.
The Fed, a servant of the financial system, continues to pursue its dual mandate of inflating financial assets and crushing working people.
People keep waiting for some outrage that will spark an outcry, but slowly but surely the dehumanizing of the republic at the hands of the
ubermenschen continues, in most of the Western countries. It is the fashionable thing to do.
Have a pleasant evening.
