Quote:
Originally Posted by 392cobra
Subject: Commentary: Klepto-capitalism
Date: Thursday, March 6, 2008
Commentary: Klepto-capitalism
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- The bursting of the housing bubble, which punctured the credit bubble, was a criminal enterprise at the outset...
...most serious crisis in housing since the Depression....
...But so far no CEO dismissals or cuts in executive compensation, even in banks that misjudged and lost billions...
...kept his $25 million-a-year job. Citigroup is nursing its subprime wounds by preparing to lay off 25,000 employees...
Financial Times European Editor John Thornhill, assessing why top earners in the risk business feel no pain, says, "What rankles are the undeserving wealthy who take risks with other people's money but never suffer the consequences."
...With 6 percent of the world's population, America's prosperity in recent years has been its ability to borrow $2 billion to $3 billion a day from the rest of the world... ...It is, after all, the worst financial crunch since the Great Depression. And talk about "change" won't hack it.
...That can only enhance the Democrats' fortunes in November. New Deal for the 21st century? The stakes are high.
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Fred,
Pretty quiet response you've gotten so far, on a pretty disquieting revelation. Almost like the horror is too great to discuss. Well,
"talk about 'change' won't hack it" anyway.
The above even implies that this may
"enhance the Democrats' fortunes in November". Sounds like "Obama Talk" to me. But Obama is as much of a amateur business manager as GW was ...and how's that working out for us?
[Rant On]
All politics seem to be founded over who-gets-how-much of the pie. That would make sense since wealth is the basis of that which is governed, hence government. A government of rights? The right to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of which money supposedly can't buy ...but truly won't exist without it. The truth of this buying principle is in our DNA.
Wars are fought, almost exclusively, over percieved inequities on pie squabbles, distribution of wealth. Wars might be said to be often caused by religion. But even then, close inspection reveals the insidious
my-piece-is-smaller-than-yours culprit, where one religion enjoys a higher living standard, wealth divided along reverential lines.
Distribution of wealth and war:
The American Revolutionary War: You expect me to pay taxes for what...
The US Civil War: Don't take (free) my cheap help away...
Provisional Irish Republican Army: Hey, all the protestants got the good jobs here...
Nazi Germany: We are so poor and these terrible Jews have all the money...
Everywhere except the ME: Those uncivilized greedy sand people have all the expensive
oil...
It is said that the root of all evil is money. But in simpler terms, I believe it is, and always has been, the distribution of money, the unbalanced distribution of wealth, that inspires all human suffering other than natural disease. We have no known predators other than other humans ...and microbes.
That said, my greatest concern for America was a gradual shift in the power of corporate law, not only in the US, but the world at large. All evolved to unprecedented hierarchy in the name of unimpeded free enterprise. Laws that now allow, even encourage, mortgage and other white collar rip-offs. The wealth is now radically shifting. And the working class ...that's us ...gets the bill. Time to legislate a back up move if it's still possible.
At this point, I trust my government more than I do corporate power. Please, please, more government by-the-people interference. At least I get to vote. As if that helps lately.
It sometimes seems that the next presidential election won't really matter. Our fate is predetermined in various corporate board rooms and the "Hear Ye, Hear Ye!" lobbyists are sent out to the peasantry in congress.
Who's in charge here anyway?
[Rant Off]
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