war is a racket

War is just a racket.  A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people.  Only a small, inside group knows what it is about.  It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.  If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight....  I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers.  There are only two things we should fight for.  One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.  War for any other reason is simply a racket.

-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC.  1933 speech

market speculation and waste

When the central banks turn the money markets and the capital markets into carry-trade driven casinos... the result is inherently a massive, dead-weight loss to economic output and national wealth.  That's because capital and other economic resources are drastically misallocated to pointless secondary market speculation and pure economic waste....

[A]bsent the inherent checks and balances of the free market, these central bank-enabled casinos do not simply boom and bust randomly;  they do so chronically and predictably.  With the ever-increasing confidence levels developed over the bubble cycles since the early 1990s, an entrenched class of permanent, professional speculators has learned to front-run the maneuvers of our monetary politburo almost perfectly.

-- David Stockman, The Daily Reckoning (April 16, 2014)

The Riddle

I'm the button that's been passed from hand to hand.
I'm the tidal wave in a sea of fear.
I'm the tornado from the fiery holocaust.
I'm the acid rain and the fallout dust....

I'm the supersonic jet with a nuclear payload.
I'm the conscience of the future world.
I'm the mushroom looming in the sky.
I'm the finger on the button, who but I.....

-- Space Ritual (2007)