Corrente

If you have "no place to go," come here!

Creative Destruction: The Solid Core Behind the Financial Crisis

inna's picture
Submitted by inna on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 2:27pm

Two striking articles on the current financial crisis:

“Creative Destruction: The Solid Core Behind the Financial Crisis” by Chris Floyd:

Do you get it now? The rich and powerful spend years making foolish deals in a market they rigged with the connivance of utterly corrupted politicians on both sides the aisle; their fraudulent scheme finally collapses, exposing them to some of the most horrific financial losses in history....and YOU will have to pay for it. For generations. Not only directly, with the tax money straight from your pocket, but even more so in the further degradation of national life: infrastructure, services, programs, amenities that will be starved or abandoned as even more of the government's money is poured out to shield the wastrel elite from suffering the consequences of their own rapacious folly.
…
Well, there will be none of that now, thank god. Even if a party that was actually committed to the well-being and security of ordinary citizens (a description that of course excludes the ticket of "Wall Street Barry" and "Bankruptcy Bill Joe") were to somehow take power one day, they will be hogtied by the mess left behind by the elite's financial boondoggles and their many wars. They'll be lucky if there is enough spare cash on hand to buy a few sandbags the next time a hurricane turns toward New Orleans, much less address any of the massive civic, social, economic and infrastructural disasters that confront us.

…And “NOW IS THE TIME – THERE IS HOPE” by Michael Ruppert:

If Rothschilds and Rockefellers are taking the same side it is because the entire economic paradigm is threatened. There is good reason to believe it. The Dow has lost almost 10% in just two days. The bailouts are lining up at the door before the Fed goes bankrupt; before our government goes bankrupt. Lehman was ten times bigger than Enron. AIG was much bigger than Lehman. Still to come are Washington Mutual, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, the automakers and the airlines, to name a few. Not all are going to be saved.

There is only one run on the bank taking place. This time it's the Federal Reserve and we know who will get screwed. The Fed and our Treasury are being looted at the one moment in time when we most need them to be full.
…
Today a Rothschild sided with a Rockefeller… They are scared. And John McCain will loot the Fed faster than Barack Obama will. The old paradigm is trying to cash out with our money. Neither candidate will do a damn thing for us. We must do it for ourselves.

0
No votes yet

Comments

BDBlue's picture
Submitted by BDBlue on

Neither party has a clue about how to fix it. At most the GOP is offering to run headlong further into the disaster and the Democrats are offering to put band-aids on gunshot wounds. Do you want to die fast or do you want to die slow?

BTW, has anyone heard Obama (or other Democrats) mention the word "fraud" or "jail" in connection with the clean up of this mess? Just curious. I don't know how you look at this level of fraud - which is how you end up selling nothing for something, somebody at some point knew it really was nothing - and not at some point mention holding the fraudsters accountable. Maybe the State of New York will do it if the Feds won't. How very convenient Elliot Spitzer was discredited right before all of this went down and the FBI is tied up chasing down terrorists in a never ending global war on terrorism. Coincidences, I'm sure.

badger's picture
Submitted by badger on

We live in what James K. Galbraith, several years ago, called the Predator State:

Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.

Our rulers deliver favors to their clients. These range from Native American casino operators, to Appalachian coal companies, to Saipan sweatshop operators, to the would-be oil field operators of Iraq. They include the misanthropes who led the campaign to abolish the estate tax; Charles Schwab, who suggested the dividend tax cut of 2003; the “Benedict Arnold” companies who move their taxable income offshore; and the financial institutions behind last year’s bankruptcy bill. Everywhere you look, public decisions yield gains to specific private entities.

And just to be clear that none of this happened by accident or through the efforts of amateurs or financial newbies, look at the make up of the Lehman and AIG boards (Wikipedia either one): a former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (Feldstein), and highly thought of Wall Street economist (Kaufman), a former chairman of IBM (Akers) or Halliburton (Cruikshank) and others similarly situated.

Those are people who know the difference between responsible finance and predation, and consciously chose to pursue the latter course. Never attribute to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by malice.

The only question seems to be which segment of the predator class will be ascendant after the November election.