A Man’s Gotta Know His Own Limitations
Tyler Durden
Mon, 09/14/2020 – 17:00
Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
As I’ve been observing the actions and justifications of men like Jerome Powell, Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Joe Biden and Donald Trump during this self-inflicted global depression, I can’t help but channel the iconic American actor Clint Eastwood and his most famous role – Dirty Harry, when assessing whether they have an understanding of their limitations. If a man doesn’t know his limitations, he can ruin his own life.
When men in positions of immense power don’t know their limitations, they can ruin the world, destroying the lives of millions and propelling the world towards a catastrophic financial collapse and likely global conflict. Our benevolent leaders act as if they know what is best for mankind, when they are actually flailing about blindly, corrupted by their own power and wealth, leading us on a path to destruction, because their immense egos won’t allow them to humbly admit their dreadful mistakes and take corrective actions.
The second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, came out in 1974, with Harry taking on vigilante cops in San Francisco. His lieutenant, played by Hal Holbrook, tries to keep Harry off the case of bad guys being executed by the lieutenant’s squad of dirty cops, using the logic that Harry posed a risk to society by not following proper police and justice procedures.
It’s funny how people in positions of power accuse others of doing what they in fact are doing themselves. In a condescending tone, the lieutenant boasts that he has never had to take his gun out of his holster as he has risen to a rank above Harry’s. The sarcastic response from Harry shows his contempt for those not willing to do the dirty work, keeping the streets safe from criminals:
“You’re a good man lieutenant. A good man always knows his limitations.”
At the end of the movie, after Harry has killed all the vigilante cops, the lieutenant pulls a gun on Harry and smugly tells him he will frame him for the murder of the cops. He then gets into the car Harry had been driving, not knowing Harry had activated a mailbox bomb and tossed it into the back seat. As he slowly drives away, the bomb goes off, killing the lieutenant. Another Dirty Harry happy ending. The movie ends with Harry saying:
“A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
That phrase keeps popping into my mind lately. Watching the world burn while what amounts to leadership bloviates, lies, misinforms, and makes decisions which condemn the masses to a future of poverty, homelessness, violent upheaval, and an economy gutted by reckless central bankers and feckless politicians, is infuriating to critical thinking rational people. I’m constantly baffled by the lack of forethought regarding how actions taken today by leaders, to supposedly alleviate problems created by their previous solutions, will lead to long-term disaster.
I used to blame these decisions on stupidity and incompetence. But I now attribute it to malice of forethought, driven by greed, envy and a sociopathic desire for power and control over others. Those chosen to hold the key positions in government, central banking, and in the media are hand-picked and groomed by shadowy billionaire types whose agenda is to reap riches, hijack the financial system and exercise control over the population.
The year 2020 has revealed the type of men we’ve allowed to control our economy, our government and our lives. We have become a nation of willfully ignorant, technology addicted, moronic dupes, being led down a path to destruction by sociopathic egomaniacal traitors to our country. These men have a high opinion of their intellectual talents and arrogantly believe they know the answers to all the questions and confidently put forth solutions designed to benefit themselves and those they serve – not you.
This is not a new development for mankind. Greed, envy and desire for control have driven a minority of men throughout history. A sociopath has no empathy for other human beings. They have no conscience, therefore have no qualms about lying, stealing, sending men to their deaths for oil or destroying the lives of millions. Their hubris and arrogance always lead to their downfall because they are incapable of the self-reflection necessary to understand their limitations.
There are three men, among many, who history will treat poorly when the story of 2020 is written (depending on who writes it). Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo and Jerome Powell are men with high IQs, large egos, slaves to reputational accolades and used by the billionaires running this planet to implement their plans to control the world. Are they just pawns or active participants in the conspiracy to financially, politically, socially medically and militarily enslave the population of the planet through false narratives and financial engineering designed to impoverish the many and enrich the few?
It’s a question that reverberates through my mind constantly, as I watch in disbelief while these men continually do the exact opposite of what needs to be done to improve the lives of Americans and blatantly lie, misinform, and obscure the truth. Not being a sociopath, it is difficult for me to comprehend what drives men like these. It appears power to rule over others, admiration from the masses, corporate media enhanced status, wealth seeking, an over-inflated opinion of their intellectual talents and an inability to acknowledge their own limitations are their key traits. They have no second thoughts about sacrificing you at the altar of their gods – corporate billionaire oligarchs.
Anthony Fauci has been a government bureaucrat in charge of the U.S. infectious diseases department for the last thirty-six years. You can only last that long in one position by pleasing those who matter. In a rational world his performance over the last year would be considered disastrous, since his organization failed to see the pandemic coming, ignored it when the WHO and China conspired to cover it up, had absolutely no plans in place to combat it, downplayed the threat into early March, told people masks were useless (they are) before demanding the whole nation mask up, used the ridiculous Neil Ferguson model predicting 2 million deaths to convince the country to lockdown, has continuously provided conflicting advice, and has contributed greatly to the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
He is clearly a tool of the left as he is a big fan of Hillary Clinton and does the bidding of Bill Gates on the need for a vaccine for a flu that will not kill 99.9% of all Americans. He clearly loves the limelight, appearing on dozens of TV shows every week, as his bureaucrat ego grows in proportion to the accolades he receives from the corporate media and the sheep who worship at the feet of the lockdown cult. He portrays himself as a scientist following the facts. He wasn’t lying about masks back in March.
The CDC’s own literature prior to the pandemic said masks are useless in stopping the spread of viruses, because they are. If he was a real scientist following the data, he would humbly admit Sweden was right all along, with no lockdown, no mandatory masking, no school shutdowns, and developing herd immunity as the infection rate reached 20%. The vulnerable (old and those with pre-existing conditions) should have quarantined and the young and healthy should have gone on with our lives. He is too proud and agenda driven to ever admit he was appallingly wrong. His guidance during this pandemic has been as accurate as his pitching.
Fauci and his acolytes have convinced the masses masking protects them as a way to exercise control and conformity, testing the limits of governmental authority. Compliance with the tyrannical dictates of governors and health “experts” (who are uniformly unhealthy looking) is a test run for further mandates and forced vaccines. For doing his part on behalf of Gates and the other billionaire oligarchs, Fauci will reap riches, with book deals, positions on drug company boards, speaking fees at healthcare conferences and TV appearances.
Fauci’s inability to realize his limitations and/or his moral failing as a supposedly neutral scientist have led to death and economic destruction on a far greater scale than if he had admitted what he did not know and didn’t fear monger the nation into a complete shutdown. The suicides, riot death and destruction, undiagnosed cancer and heart disease deaths, mental health epidemic, millions of jobs lost and hundreds of thousands of small business closures are real blood on his hands.
Andrew Cuomo is a particularly vile character whose enormous ego is so inflated it convinces him to write a book in the midst of the pandemic about what a stupendous job he did by having the largest number of Covid-19 deaths in the nation, by far, and murdering thousands of nursing home residents by purposely directing infected patients back into the nursing homes. I wonder how a man like this can sleep at night, with that many corpses on his conscience. But there is the answer.
Sociopaths have no conscience. Cuomo is so arrogant and self-loving; he actually believes he’s done an outstanding job. He believes he’s earned his position of governor when he rode the coattails of his daddy’s name recognition. He married a Kennedy (who he eventually divorced) and asked journalists how it would play, before proposing. He is nothing more than an ambitious self-promoting climber, willing to do anything to get ahead. Some animals are more equal than others when it comes to masking.
As with the other left-wing governors (Murphy, Wolf, Witmer, Newsome), Cuomo became intoxicated with the power he assumed during this pandemic. Governors are essentially figureheads during normal times. They rarely impact the day to day lives of their constituents. But, with the panic induced by medical “experts” and Trump buying into the end of the world scenarios from purposely faulty models, governors and mayors throughout the country assumed almost dictatorial power to control our lives, with threats of imprisonment or fines for not following their authoritarian decrees. They have had no legislative or judicial checks on their illegal mandates.
Cuomo was clearly inebriated with the attention he got from his daily briefings, copying Trump’s daily updates. He invoked a draconian lockdown, blamed the Feds for all his shortfalls, invoked fear among the populace rather than portraying the required stoicism, rational consideration of risks, and fortitude in the face of uncertainty. This maniacal blowhard has the gall to take a victory lap and ridicule other governors when his death count is twice any other state and three times as high as the states he has scorned.
If this man was capable of self-reflection, he would be on his knees begging forgiveness from thousands of families for his fatal error of putting infected patients into nursing homes, sentencing thousands of seniors to death. Instead he glories in the accolades of the left-wing media, who ignore his disastrous decisions, and support his claims Trump is to blame. Even though lockdowns have proven to be the wrong solution, Fauci proclaims Cuomo’s actions as an outstanding response to the pandemic.
I guess destroying the economy of the world financial capital, presiding over a self-imposed mass death event, encouraging BLM and ANTIFA terrorists to riot, murder and destroy businesses, and treating the public like pawns in a political game, constitutes success in Cuomo world. Cuomo’s limitations are many and his talents few, but he would never admit it. Mencken’s words from decades ago have never been truer:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
That brings us to Jerome Powell, the man who sold the world. How could a man with such an undistinguished career of working as an underling on Wall Street and as a mid-level government bureaucrat, become the most important man in the world? As with his two predecessors, Yellen and Bernanke, they all had the mundane unimpressive careers of academics and bureaucrats. None of them distinguished themselves as brilliant thinkers or leaders. They fit Taleb’s description as IYI (intellectual yet idiot).
They all achieved “success” by playing the game, ingratiating themselves to the ruling class, and proving to be pliable tools to those pulling the strings. The reward for doing the bidding of the banking cabal and billionaire oligarchs running the Deep State is fame, media accolades, book deals, positions on boards, outrageous speaking “fees” (aka payoffs) and wealth they never dreamed of. Bernanke made more for giving a one-hour speech at a Bank of America conference than he was paid annually as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Bernanke didn’t allow the creative destruction of capitalism to put a recklessly corrupt organization like Bank of America out of business, and reaped riches for doing so. Powell knows who butters his bread and will be compensated handsomely for saving the Wall Street cabal once again, while throwing Main Street and senior citizens under the bus.
As you can see from the chart below, the Fed Funds rate averaged between 4% and 5% from 1990 through 2008. A senior citizen could get a similar return on a safe money market fund, to supplement their Social Security. But thanks to Bernanke, Yellen and Powell, rates have essentially been zero for over a decade. These actions have benefited their true constituency – criminal bankers, hedge fund managers, wealthy oligarchs, mega-corporations, and politicians.
They have impoverished the middle class, encouraged market speculation rather than capital investment and destroyed the retirements of low-income senior citizens. They are solely responsible for the greatest level of wealth inequality in history. They have created two bubbles (2000, 2008) with their easy money policies which burst, leading to widespread economic destruction. But those bubbles pale in comparison to the world destroying bubble they have created as the “solution” to their last bubble.
Powell and his compadres have created a financial system so fragile that it couldn’t handle interest rates at 2.5%. By handle, I mean the stock market threw a tantrum and the spineless Wall Street lackey Powell did what he was told and started to cut rates in the summer of 2019. Something broke within the fetid rigged machinery of financial market chicanery in September, with overnight repo rates soaring to 10% – a level reflecting the true risk in the markets. Rates reflecting the true market risk are unacceptable to the powers that be. Powell was already doing the bidding of his bosses by lowering rates into the year-end and conducting stealth QE, while denying it was QE.
Powell is not a dumb man. He knows a country cannot run up it’s national credit card without negative consequences at some point – default, currency collapse, hyperinflation, civil chaos, global conflict. It would require a man of courage, fortitude and morality to stand up to the evil forces controlling the systematic pillaging of the nation. Powell is not that man.
His limitations are self-evident, as he has put the country on a path to destruction, while exacerbating the gulf between the Haves (Powell’s people) and the Have Nots (you and me). His monetary machinations have fueled the riots roiling the country, which is possibly exactly what his oligarch superiors desire. If the country is distracted by false narratives about systematic racism, with fighting in the streets, the systematic reaping of the national wealth can go on behind the curtain.
Powell has made a mockery of price discovery by buying up one third of the mortgages in the country, billions in junk bonds of companies that should be bankrupt, and convincing unemployed Robinhood day traders that stocks only go up, because Powell will rescue them if stocks start to drop. After observing the clearly desperate actions taken by Powell to prop up his Wall Street puppeteers, under the cover of a pandemic, one must wonder whether he has been threatened to do so or actually believes his traitorous actions are beneficial to the country.
By lowering rates to zero, expanding his balance sheet by $3 trillion in a matter of months, enabling the Federal government to run $3 trillion deficits, and providing the fuel for an epic stock, real estate, and bond bubble, Powell is solely responsible for the banquet of consequences we will experience. Powell has pushed all his chips on the table. A man of much higher character and intellect than this cowardly Powell character explained what will happen seven decades ago:
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action [1949]
When this Powell-created bubble explodes, there will be many Dirty Harry type characters cracking a wry smirk and saying, “a man’s gotta know his limitations”.
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