Authored by Douglas Macgregor via TheAmericanConservative.com,

America’s self-inflicted trouble in Ukraine aggravates our dangerous trouble at home…

The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.

American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.

Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.

Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.

Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.

In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.

Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.

In sum, Washington’s military strategy to weaken, isolate, or even destroy Russia is a colossal failure and the failure puts Washington’s proxy war with Russia on a truly dangerous path. To press on, undeterred in the face of Ukraine’s descent into oblivion, ignores three metastasizing threats: 1. Persistently high inflation and rising interest rates that signal economic weakness. (The first American bank failure since 2020 is a reminder of U.S. financial fragility.) 2. The threat to stability and prosperity inside European societies already reeling from several waves of unwanted refugees/migrants. 3. The threat of a wider European war.

Inside presidential administrations, there are always competing factions urging the president to adopt a particular course of action. Observers on the outside seldom know with certainty which faction exerts the most influence, but there are figures in the Biden administration seeking an off-ramp from involvement in Ukraine. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a rabid supporter of the proxy war with Moscow, recognizes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demand that the West help him recapture Crimea is a red line for Putin that might lead to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.

Backing down from the Biden administration’s malignant and asinine demands for a humiliating Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine before peace talks can convene is a step Washington refuses to take. Yet it must be taken. The higher interest rates rise, and the more Washington spends at home and abroad to prosecute the war in Ukraine, the closer American society moves toward internal political and social turmoil. These are dangerous conditions for any republic.

From all the wreckage and confusion of the last two years, there emerges one undeniable truth. Most Americans are right to be distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. President Biden comes across as a cardboard cut-out, a stand-in for ideological fanatics in his administration, people that see executive power as the means to silence political opposition and retain permanent control of the federal government.

Americans are not fools. They know that members of Congress flagrantly trade stocks based on inside information, creating conflicts of interest that would land most citizens in jail. They also know that since 1965 Washington led them into a series of failed military interventions that severely weakened American political, economic, and military power.

Far too many Americans believe they have had no real national leadership since January 21, 2021. It is high time the Biden administration found an off-ramp designed to extricate Washington, D.C., from its proxy Ukrainian war against Russia. It will not be easy. Liberal internationalism or, in its modern guise, “moralizing globalism,” makes prudent diplomacy arduous, but now is the time. In Eastern Europe, the spring rains present both Russian and Ukrainian ground forces with a sea of mud that severely impedes movement. But the Russian High Command is preparing to ensure that when the ground dries and Russian ground forces attack, the operations will achieve an unambiguous decision, making it clear that Washington and its supporters have no chance to rescue the dying regime in Kiev. From then on, negotiations will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.

Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.

Generations of self-sacrifice ensured ample investment for infrastructure. Each generation inherited and improved on singular aqueducts and cisterns, sewer systems, and the most complex and formidable city fortifications in the world.

Brilliant scientific advancement and engineering gave the empire advantages like swift galleys and flame throwers—an ancient precursor to napalm.

The law reigned supreme for nearly a millennium after the emperor Justinian codified a prior thousand years of Roman jurisprudence.

Yet this millennium-old crown jewel of the ancient world that once was home to 800,000 citizens had only 50,000 inhabitants left when it fell. 

There were only 7,000 defenders on the walls to hold back a huge Turkish army of over 150,000 attackers.

The Islamic winners took over the once magical city of Constantine and renamed it Istanbul. It had been the home of the renowned Santa Sophia, the largest Christian church in the world for over 900 years. Almost immediately, this “Church of the Holy Wisdom” was converted into the then largest mosque in the Islamic world, with minarets to follow.

So what happened to the once indomitable city fortress and its empire?

Christendom had cannibalized itself. Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy fought endlessly. Westerners often hated each other more than they did their common enemy.

In the final days of Constantinople, almost no help was sent from Western Europe to the besieged city.

In fact, 250 years earlier, the Western Franks of the Fourth Crusade had detoured from the Holy Land to storm the supposedly allied Christian City of Constantinople. 

Then they ransacked the city and hijacked the Byzantine Empire for a half-century. Constantinople never quite recovered.

The 14 th-century Black Plague killed tens of thousands of Byzantines and scared thousands more into moving out of the cramped city. 

But the aging and dying empire battled more than the challenges of internal divisions, or an unforeseen but deadly pandemic and the empire’s disastrous responses to it.

The last generations of Byzantines had inherited a global reputation and standard of living that they themselves no longer earned.

They neglected their former civic values and fought endless battles over obscure religious texts, doctrines, and vocabulary.

They did not expand their anemic army and navy. They did not reunite their scattered Greek-speaking empire. They did not properly maintain their once life-giving walls.

Instead of earning money through their accustomed nonstop trade, they inflated their currency and were forced to melt down the city’s inherited gold and silver fixtures.

The once canny and shrewd Byzantines grew smug and naïve. Childlessness became common. Most now preferred to live outside of what had become a half-empty, often dirty, and poorly maintained city.

Meanwhile they underestimated the growing power of the Ottomans who systematically pruned away their empire. By the mid-15th century Islamic armies were ready to exploit fatal Byzantine weaknesses.

The Sultan Mehmed II grandly announced the Ottomans were now the real, the only world power. Ascendent Ottoman armies would eventually move on to the very gates of Vienna in an effort to rule all the lands of the ancient Roman empire. 

We should take heed from the last generations of the Byzantines.

Nowhere is it foreordained that America has a birthright to remain the world’s preeminent civilization.

An ascendent China seems eerily similar to the Ottomans. Beijing believes that the United States is decadent, undeserving of its affluence, living beyond its means on the fumes of the past—and very soon vulnerable enough to challenge openly.

Left and Right seem to hate each other more than they do their common enemies.

Like the Byzantines, Americans gave up defending their own borders, and simply shrugged as millions overran them as they pleased.

Our once iconic downtowns, like end-stage Constantinople before the fall, are now dirty, half-deserted, dangerous, and dysfunctional.

America prints rather than makes money, as its banks totter near bankruptcy.

Americans similarly believe they are invincible without ensuring in reality that they are. Our military is more worried about being woke than deadly.

Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create. 

Current woke dogma, obscure word fights, and sanctimonious cancel culture are as antithetical to the past generations of World War II as the last generation of Constantinople was to the former great eras of the emperors Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo.

The Byzantines never woke up in time to understand what they had become.

So far neither have Americans.

John Arnold, a billionaire from Houston, is making a big bet on modernizing the outdated transmission infrastructure in the United States to transport electricity to areas where it is needed, including the distribution of wind and solar energy to towns and cities nationwide for the clean-energy transition. 

Arnold told Bloomberg he has invested “several hundred million dollars” into Houston-based Grid United, a company he co-founded with transmission line developer Michael Skelly, to purchase land, easements, and the necessary permits for constructing electric highways that can stretch hundreds of miles. 

Arnold and Skelly are planning long-haul transmission lines across multiple states on private land that might be very difficult to achieve because failing to win over every landowner could quickly scuttle the entire project. 

“Arnold and Skelly are seeking to break a longstanding challenge in the industry where regulators, utilities, customers and investors are wary of projects that haven’t already secured necessary approvals,” Bloomberg said. 

Adding transmission capacity to the US grid will be critical for the clean energy transition as more demand due to the electrification of the economy comes into play by the end of the decade. 

The current state of the nation’s transmission is rather dire. About 70% of the transmission lines are over 25 years old, and this aging infrastructure makes delivering electricity to where it’s needed more challenging. 

An expanded transmission system will allow for wind, solar, and nuclear power generation (so-called clean energy) to be delivered nationwide more efficiently and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Biden has targeted 100% clean electricity by 2035. 

“We are trying to break this chicken and egg cycle by acquiring the land position first.

“We hope this both compresses the timeline and makes it easier to develop a successful project, but it comes with significantly greater financial risk,” Arnold said. 

Grid United has announced five transmission line projects and has others in the pipeline. Each electric highway costs $1-3 billion and can carry 1.5-3 gigawatts (each gigawatt powers about 200,000 homes). 

The green transition thus far has had a damaging effect on America’s largest power grid. The swift removal of fossil fuel power generation has outpaced the addition of new capacity, leading to concerns about reliability.

Given President Biden’s goal to have most new car sales be electric within the next decade, it would be wise to upgrade the country’s transmission infrastructure. However, when it comes to upgrading power generation, there is an increasing need for next-generation nuclear energy that is on-demand power, unlike solar and wind power, which are unreliable.

Authored by Emily Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The federal government has been using Americans’ income and gun purchases to conduct warrantless tracking and deny Second Amendment rights. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gave salary estimates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the reason to have people’s firearms purchases monitored.

Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), told The Epoch Times that the ATF’s activities “monitoring innocent people” is a serious problem. “Congress needs to rein in this rogue agency by either exercising oversight over it or abolishing the unconstitutional agency altogether,” said Pratt.

These revelations come from new documents, viewed by The Epoch Times which it received from its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The latest production from the FOIA has hundreds of pages—many redacted—showing ATF agents requesting warrantless surveillance by the FBI for lawful reasons such as low salaries, past firearm purchases, and sending “bizarre” messages.

The Epoch Times exclusively reported in January about the FBI’s secret monitoring service that tracks people by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for gun purchases for mere “potential violations of law.”

Too Poor to Buy Guns

According to the documents, a man in Arizona was put into the NICS’s daily monitoring because he has a “reported income” of only $2,839. The ATF agent wrote, “In my experience, someone with this amount of income would not be able to afford 20 firearms.”

An Asian man in Texas was put on the manual background check because the ATF said he has “no work history” which “could possibly indicate” that he is “straw purchasing.”

A special agent in Kansas emailed ATF’s liaison at the NICS to flag two purchasers for “potential trafficking.” The agent wrote: “My targets are purchasing an abundance of firearms without a license or known financial means to obtain the product.”

The FBI’s NICS expert instructed the agent in Kansas on what to include to ensure approval for tracking the suspects. “I would suggest covering the lack of income versus expenditures and also if there is substantial make/model duplication,” wrote the FBI. The ATF agent emailed back with the incomes for each man, acquired by the Kansas Department of Labor.

All the cases in the documents are related to the ATF investigating dealing firearms without a license and straw purchasing, which is buying guns for people prohibited from owning a firearm.

Tracking Income

Gun rights activists say federal law enforcement is missing the mark.

“The poor usually live in areas with the most crime and thus have a strong need to arm themselves heavily,” Pratt said. “So targeting the indigent is simply another avenue for gun grabbers to implement a backdoor gun ban.”

ATF headquarters will not disclose how it acquired the other suspects’ incomes, employment information, and past gun purchases found in the FOIA forms.

“We are unable to discuss specific techniques utilized in criminal investigations,” ATF spokesman Erik Longnecker told The Epoch Times. “ATF utilizes a multitude of legal means in our criminal investigations to protect our communities from violent gun crime.”

Longnecker referred The Epoch Times to the National Tracing Center website for information about “several overt programs such as multiple sales and demand letters that can be helpful in identifying illegal firearms trafficking.”

Buying Too Many Guns

A black man in Florida was monitored daily by the FBI for at least 90 days in 2020 because an ATF agent wrote: “Based on my training and experience, I have not seen a legal firearms purchaser purchase approximately 30 firearms in a 120-day window for their personal collection.”

Read more here…

The White House is already condemning any possible China-brokered peace plan initiative related to Ukraine before it even gets off the ground. Following Beijing confirming on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Moscow on Monday through Wednesday to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin, the Biden administration is expressing concern and alarm over a potentially ‘bad deal’ for Ukraine.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby warned that any unconditional ceasefire would only benefit Putin and his forces as this point. This after it’s also been revealed that Xi is expected to hold a phone call with Ukraine’s Zelensky related to China’s 12-point peace plan. “A cease-fire now is… effectively the ratification of Russian conquest,” Kirby said. “And of course, it would be another continued violation of the U.N. Charter.”

The US is worried that China’s diplomatic intervention and peace plan could result in significant territorial concessions: 

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Friday that an unconditional cease-fire halting Russia’s offensive in Ukraine would legitimize Moscow’s hold on an estimated 17 percent of Ukrainian territory that was taken by force.

This is chiefly in the east, namely the Donbas region, where Russia has been making gains of late and is poised to take the strategic city of Bakhmut. 

But Kirby’s preemptively and outright rejecting any possible ceasefire is at odds with prior repeat US statements that it is solely Zelensky’s decision to make. The White House has lately really promoted the idea that it is not in the background making decisions for Kyiv, but that it’s the Zelensky administration exercising its own sovereign choices concerning war strategy. 

But in this instance of Washington trying to slam the door on Chinese-mediated peace, clearly it puts pressure on Zelensky to do the same. 

The US may also be alarmed at how open Ukraine appears to be in dealing with China. The Hill notes of the latest positive interaction between China and Ukraine: 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday said he spoke with China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, where the two discussed “the significance of the principle of territorial integrity” and underscored the importance of Zelensky’s “Peace Formula” to end Russia’s war, which in part calls for Russia to withdraw its troops from all the territory it occupies in Ukraine.

But from the moment it was unveiled, the US alleged cynical motives behind Beijing’s peace efforts, despite Zelensky hinting he is open to deepened discussion with Chinese leadership.

The Biden administration’s massive support for Ukraine is not cost-free. One of the biggest geopolitical outcomes has been stronger ties between Russia and China not to mention Iran. https://t.co/nzIk89OGaX

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) March 17, 2023

Kirby in his fresh remarks said that Moscow will use any possible ceasefire to solidify gains. Then Russian forces will “basically be free to use that ceasefire to further entrench its positions in Ukraine,” he stated. 

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The last remaining members of an ethics and society team within Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) department didn’t survive a recent round of mass layoffs, according to a report.

The change comes as Microsoft signs a “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment” deal with OpenAI, the startup behind AI-powered image and text generators like DALL-E and ChatGPT, and upgrades its Bing search engine and Edge internet browser to incorporate a “new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT.”

The team, as reported by tech news site Platformer, was tasked to make sure Microsoft’s ethical standards regarding AI were actually reflected in product designs. The team was also reportedly working to identify potential risks posed by integrating OpenAI’s technology into a range of Microsoft products.

The team was at its peak size of 30 members in 2020, according to the report. Following a reorganization in October 2022, however, only about seven people remained. Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI, John Montgomery, told Platformer that there was great pressure from chief technology officer Kevin Scott and chief executive Satya Nadella, who wanted to get “the most recent OpenAI models” into customers’ hands as quickly as possible.

Microsoft still maintains its Office of Responsible AI, which focuses on creating company-wide rules and principles to guide AI development. But employees told Platformer that the ethics and society team was playing a key role in bridging the gap between principles and products.

Microsoft didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it told Platformer that with the ethics team gone, the overall amount of work dedicated to responsibly has increased.

Read more here…

The Chinese government suspended operations at the western-linked auditor Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.’s Beijing office for three months after finding “deficiencies” in its auditing work for China Huarong Asset Management. 

According to Bloomberg, the Chinese finance ministry carried out a thorough assessment of Deloitte’s auditing of bad debt manager Huarong. This evaluation included on-site inspections, personnel interviews, a complete review of documentation, and even a hearing.

The ministry found the big four accounting firm had “serious audit deficiencies” in its work with Huarong between 2014 and 2019. 

When Huarong delayed the release of its annual report in 2021, it triggered a credit crisis that rippled through Asian markets. The firm eventually revealed a staggering loss for the previous year, necessitating a state-backed bailout from Beijing.

Deloitte’s Beijing branch was fined 212 million yuan ($30.8 million) for not properly reviewing Huarong’s assets, overlooking compliance approvals on significant investments, and failing to offer a sense of skepticism during the auditing work on the bad debt manager. The auditors missed several risk control failures and distortions in Huarong’s books.

The suspension and fine of Deloitte’s Beijing office come one month after Chinese authorities reportedly instructed state-owned companies to phase out contracts with western-linked auditors, such as Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and PwC. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Japan on Thursday as Tokyo and Seoul seek to thaw relations, an initiative backed by the US as it seeks to rally its allies in the region against China.

According to Nikkei Asia, the two leaders agreed to bolster cooperation against North Korea and to resume a working-level bilateral security dialogue that has been on a five-year hiatus. Yoon announced the “normalization” of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a pact that allows the two countries to share military intelligence.

In 2019, Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, said Seoul would not be renewing the GSOMIA in response to new export controls Japan imposed on South Korea. The two countries also announced a trade agreement on Thursday that will lift Japanese export controls.

The GSOMIA allows the two countries to share information on North Korean missile tests. “I believe the two countries should be able to share information on North Korea’s nuclear missile launches and trajectories, and respond to them,” Yoon said at a press conference following his meeting with Kishida.

The meeting between Yoon and Kishida marked the first visit between Japanese and South Korean leaders since 2012. “From now on, I would like to open a new chapter in Japan-South Korea relations through frequent visits by both sides that are not tied down by formality,” Kishida said.

Ties between South Korea and Japan have been strained over the Japanese imperial rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The two countries have been working on an agreement to settle a dispute over Korean slave labor during the occupation, although South Korea’s opposition and many others in the country are not happy with a proposal Yoon accepted from Japan.

Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, welcomed the warming of ties and said North Korea and China won’t be happy about the progress. “Our working together not only on the political front, but on the strategic front, on the deterrence front, is what North Korea is scared about. It’s also what China doesn’t want to see happen,” he told CNN.

Japan plans to lift restrictions on exports of key semiconductor materials to South Korea, in a move toward ending a feud that has spanned several years between the two tech powerhouses https://t.co/FXQqFGqg5E

— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) March 16, 2023

US military leaders expect any future war with China also to involve action from North Korea and want to coordinate more with the Japanese and South Korean militaries. Kishida recently announced Japan is doubling its military budget over the next five years as part of a military buildup specifically aimed at China.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We can also predict that the next round of instability will be more severe than the previous bout of instability.

Everyone is in favor of “doing whatever it takes” to “restore financial stability” when the house of cards starts swaying, but funny things happen on the way to “Restoring Financial Stability.” Whatever “emergency measures” are rushed into service to “stabilize” an inherently unstable system resolve the immediate problem but opens unseen doors to new sources of instability that eventually trigger another round of systemic instability that must be addressed with more “emergency measures.”

These unintended consequences proliferate as policy extremes are pushed to new extremes, and “emergency measures” become permanent sources of the very instability they were supposed to eliminate.

As @concodanomics recently observed on Twitter: “A major flaw of finance is that it nearly always mutates the very instruments meant to protect investors into crisis-inducing time bombs.”

Another major flaw in finance is the self-serving pressure applied by politically influential players to “enable innovation,” a.k.a. new opportunities for skims and scams. The usual covers for these “innovations” are 1) deregulation (“growth” will result if we let “markets” self-regulate) and 2) technology (generating guaranteed profits by front-running the herd is now technically possible, so let’s make it legal).

Broadening the pool of punters who can be skimmed and scammed is also a favored form of financial “growth” and “innovation.” “Democratizing markets” was the warm and fuzzy cover story for enabling everyone with a mobile phone to dabble in risk-on gambles with margin accounts (cash borrowed against a portfolio of stocks).

Mixing “innovation,” “democratizing markets” and “deregulation” enabled funny things like the FTX debacle, which admirably displayed every dynamic of our rickety tar-paper-shack of a financial system, a shelter that seems fine on a summer day but starts coming apart as soon as it rains: absurdly transparent influence-buying; Ponzi schemes presented as “innovative finance,” insider dealing, corruption, fraud, malfeasance, shrill proclamations of innocence, etc.

Unintended consequences have their own unintended consequences, a.k.a. second-order effects. So broadening the pool of people who qualified for a jumbo mortgage by lowering lending standards in the mid-2000s sounded very fine and progressive, i.e. “democratizing homeownership,” but handing out jumbo mortgages to uncreditworthy households ended up “democratizing” fraud on such a scale that the ensuing collapse almost took down the entire global financial house of cards.

To backstop the resulting mess, the Federal Reserve bought a couple trillion dollars of mortgage-backed securities and dropped mortgage rates to historic lows. These “saves” ended up (surprise!) inflating an even more extreme housing bubble which is currently popping, as all bubbles eventually do, with the usual devastating results to punters who were swept up in the “fear of missing out” frenzy that inflates bubbles.

In real-time, it’s not that easy to discern how the latest policy “fixes” are creating new perverse incentives and opening new loopholes for insiders to exploit. While we may not have clarity on the specifics, we can confidently predict that the latest policies to “restore financial stability” will create new perverse incentives and open new loopholes which will lead to the next round of panicky instability.

We can also predict that the next round of instability will be more severe than the previous bout of instability. This is what happens when the system starts sliding down the backside of the S-Curve, and doing more of what worked in the past transforms into doing more of what’s failed spectacularly.

The irony is rather rich, isn’t it? The policies rushed into service to “restore financial stability” insure the next round of financial instability will be even harder to stabilize, until the instability undergoes a phase change that puts it out of reach of all stabilization policies.

Yes, the tar-paper shack is full of cracks that are widening as it settles deeper into the swamp, but no worries, we’ve got some financial reports right here we can stuff into the cracks. A few more rounds of “innovation,” “democratizing markets” and policy “saves” and this place will be transformed into a palace, just you wait.

*  *  *

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