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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe “Bankization” of America
The Bankization of America
by Richard Eskow
Published on Friday, August 16, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future Blog
The share of our national income which goes to corporate profit is the highest its been since they started tracking it in 1929, while the share going to people as salary and wages is the lowest. And the percentage of that corporate profit which goes to Wall Street is also the highest on record.
Were becoming a financialized economy. Never before has the manipulation of money counted for so much and the real-world economy of people and consumer goods counted for so little.
SNIP...
Reality Bites
Meanwhile, the real economy the one where people live, and work, and buy things has suffered even as Wall Street and the stock market have boomed. That trend continued this week, too, Wal-Mart announced disappointing sales and lowered its projections. Its Chief Financial Officer observed that The retail environment remains challenging in the U.S. and our international markets, as customers are cautious in their spending.
SNIP...
Financialized
The Federal Reserves data on corporate profits were helpfully compiled by a contributor to the investment site The Motley Fool, who notes that financial profits were 11 percent of total corporate profits in the US back in 1947, the first year these numbers were compiled.
These profits soared in the first decade of the 21st Century. After taking a hit in the crisis of 2008 a crisis which the banking industry caused they rose again and are now at record highs. Their share of total corporate profits has risen from 11 percent to 42 percent, as of the latest report, and the Fed expects them to keep rising.
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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/16
PS: Good night, er, I mean, "luck" when the TPP hits the fan and trickle-down goes into warp drive.
mick063
(2,424 posts)Both politically and economically.
The left will make a comeback not because of the left gaining popular support, but because unchecked capitalism will self destruct. It always does.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The story connects a few dots from the present day back to World War II.
War crime, Yakuza, Secret Government. Why not?
Japans Nuclear Industry: The CIA Link.
By Eleanor Warnock
June 1, 2012, 10:18 AM JST.
Wall Street Journal Blog
Tetsuo Arima, a researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo, told JRT he discovered in the U.S. National Archives a trove of declassified CIA files that showed how one man, Matsutaro Shoriki, was instrumental in jumpstarting Japans nascent nuclear industry.
Mr. Shoriki was many things: a Class A war criminal, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japans biggest-selling and most influential newspaper) and the founder of both the countrys first commercial broadcaster and the Tokyo Giants baseball team. Less well known, according to Mr. Arima, was that the media mogul worked with the CIA to promote nuclear power.
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Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shorikis behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.
SNIP
Mr. Shoriki, backed by the CIA, used his influence to publish articles in the Yomiuri that extolled the virtues of nuclear power, according to the documents found by Mr. Arima. Keen on remilitarizing Japan, Mr. Shoriki endorsed nuclear power in hopes its development would one day arm the country with the ability to make its own nuclear weapons, according to Mr. Arima. Mr. Shorikis behind-the-scenes push created a chain reaction in other media that eventually changed public opinion.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/01/japans-nuclear-industry-the-cia-link/
After President Carter was out of office, it was pretty much full-steam ahead for the Japanese bomb during the Pruneface Ronnie-Poppy Bush years. Hence, Fukushima Daiichi Number 3 and other select Japanese reactors were set up to process plutonium uranium fuels.
United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium
By Joseph Trento
on April 9th, 2012
National Security News Service
The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.
The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology and nuclear materials to be transferred to Japan despite laws and treaties preventing such transfers. Highly sensitive technology on plutonium separation from the U.S. Department of Energys Savannah River Site and Hanford nuclear weapons complex, as well as tens of billions of dollars worth of breeder reactor research was turned over to Japan with almost no safeguards against proliferation. Japanese scientist and technicians were given access to both Hanford and Savannah River as part of the transfer process.
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A year ago a natural disaster combined with a man-made tragedy decimated Northern Japan and came close to making Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, uninhabitable. Nuclear tragedies plague Japans modern history. It is the only nation in the world attacked with nuclear weapons. In March 2011, after a tsunami swept on shore, hydrogen explosions and the subsequent meltdowns of three reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant spewed radiation across the region. Like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan will face the aftermath for generations. A twelve-mile area around the site is considered uninhabitable. It is a national sacrifice zone.
How Japan ended up in this nuclear nightmare is a subject the National Security News Service has been investigating since 1991. We learned that Japan had a dual use nuclear program. The public program was to develop and provide unlimited energy for the country. But there was also a secret component, an undeclared nuclear weapons program that would allow Japan to amass enough nuclear material and technology to become a major nuclear power on short notice.
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http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128/national-security-news-service/united-states-circumvented-laws-to-help-japan-accumulate-tons-of-plutonium.html
Those of who have seen The World at War series on the tee vee are familiar with the black and white footage and great narrative chronicling the main events and figures of World War II. One of those episodes was entitled "The Bomb" and featured an interview with John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War to President Roosevelt and President Truman.
Here's part of what Mr. McCloy said about the Atomic Bomb the use of which he counseled only as a last resort, after warning Japan to surrender (around 7:30 mark of Part 2):
Besides that, weve got a new force, a new type of energy that will revolutionize warfare, destructive beyond any contemplation. Id said, Id mention the bomb. Mentioning the bomb, even at that late date, in that select group, was like, it was like they were all shocked. Because it was such a closely guarded secret. It was comparable to mentioning Skull and Bones at Yale which youre not supposed to do.
After the war, McCloy was the United States High Commissioner to Germany, administering the U.S. zone of occupation, making him one of the front-line leaders of the Cold War. In that capacity, one of the questionable things he did was to forgive several NAZI industrialists and war criminals.
The great cartoonist Herb Block, HERBLOCK, depicted McCloy holding open a prison door for a NAZI, while in the background Stalin took a photo (if anyone has a copy or link to the cartoon, Id be much obliged). About 15 years later, Mr. McCloy served the nation as a member of the Warren Commission.
While he wasnt a member of Skull and Bones, McCloy certainly worked closely with a bunch of them, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. As a Wall Street and Washington insider, "Mr. Establishment" he was called, Mr. McCloy used the offices of government to centralize power and wealth. That is most un-democratic.
Mother Jones goes into detail:
The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs
How millions in campaign cash and revolving-door lobbying have kept America's atomic arsenal off the chopping block.
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity
Mother Jones
Wed Jun. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Employees of private companies that produce the main pieces of the US nuclear arsenal have invested more than $18 million in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee related federal spending, and the companies also employ more than 95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding, according to a new report.
The Center for International Policy, a nonprofit group that supports the "demilitarization" of US foreign policy, released the report on Wednesday to highlight what it described as the heavy influence of campaign donations and pork-barrel politics on a part of the defense budget not usually associated with large profits or contractor power: nuclear arms.
As Congress deliberated this spring on nuclear weapons-related projects, including funding for the development of more modern submarines and bombers, the top 14 contractors gave nearly $3 million to the 2012 reelection campaigns of lawmakers whose support they needed for these and other projects, the report disclosed.
Half of that sum went to members of the four key committees or subcommittees that must approve all spending for nuclear armsthe House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the Energy and Water or Defense appropriations subcommittees, according to data the Center compiled from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. The rest went to lawmakers who are active on nuclear weapons issues because they have related factories or laboratories in their states or districts.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee this year have sought to erect legislative roadblocks to further reductions in nuclear arms, and also demanded more spending for related facilities than the Obama administration sought, including $100 million in unrequested funds for a new plant that will make plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, and $374 million for a new ballistic missile-firing submarine. The House has approved those requests, but the Senate has not held a similar vote on the 2013 defense bill.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations
It isn't ironic or coincidental. It is the Establishment, the in-group, the Elite, the One-Percent thats pretty much gotten the lions share of the wealth created over the last 50 years. The same group thats pretty much had their fingers on the atomic button ever since the Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as profited from the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and the almost continuous state of war since then. For lack of a better term, I call them the BFEE, or War Party.
PS: The above is an old OP. Unfortunately, as education, the mass media and public discourse are largely in the thrall of capital, it's news to most.
In effect, you are saying that massive oppression is inevitable.
You may be right, but I have to politically fight it.
It is in my soul.
Further, I still believe that the current economic conditions are unsustainable.
I have to.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)It's our nature as Democrats and citizens: We must fight the return of feudalism, oppression and all that is coming with it.
What separates those who don't see things in a similar manner is the idea that they are entitled to be lords over the rest of us, an idea of the monarch's privilege that was legitimized through "science" bought and paid for by those who consider themselves members of the master race.
Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection
by Edwin Black
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
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http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html
As you noted on the thread about the loony left conspiracies not getting locked, some things make privilege very uncomfortable -- in particular, the Truth.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)In fact, GHW Bush, as a U.S. congressman, was so rapturous of the idea that condoms would help to depopulate certain groups of peoples that his colleagues gave him the nickname "Rubbers". George Herbert Walker Rubbers Bush.
snot
(10,524 posts). . . did you mean, trickle up?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Reverse Robin Hood...
7/8 of ALL WEALTH in Human History created since 1981.
Pruneface's budget guru David Stockman must've added up all the GDP and estimated the stuff from the middle ages. Whatever. His real point is that most of THAT has ended up in the pockets of the greedhead plutocrats' pockets.
In 1985, the top five percent of the households the wealthiest five percent had net worth of $8 trillion which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five per cent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980. -- David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=related;photovideo
"In 1985, the top five percent of the households, wealthiest five percent, had net worth of $8 trillion, which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five percent have net worth of $40 trillion," he explained. "The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980." -- David Stockman
SOURCE: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/28/60minutes/main6999906_page4.shtml
And to think there are kids in America who would go to bed hungry every night. If they had one.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)When I was younger, people built things to create wealth. At the same time, these things actually would help make life, in general, better -- from cars and space ships to tractors and washing machines. Hence, the quality of life improved. Nowadays, not so much. When the Big Money boys get theirs, they move it offshore where it's safe or put it into something that makes them money -- not necessarily involve creating a single real thing. Ask Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce: Employees, Drones or Banking?
It's like Danny Dravot and Peachy Carnehan told Rudyard Kipling in John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King":
The less said about our professions, the better, for we have been most things in our time. Weve been all over India, and decided it aint big enough for such as we: Were going to Kaffiristan to be kings. Its a place of war tribes, which is to say, its a land of opportunity for such as we, who know how to train men and lead them into battle. Well say to any chief we can find, do you want to vanquish your foes? Hell say Of course! Well fight for him, make him king, then well subvert that king. Well seize his royal throne and loot the country four ways from Sunday! -- Danny Dravot
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)bhikkhu
(10,716 posts)...while government is tasked with keeping things in balance. When government and business work in balance, you have the best of both worlds - the highest overall living standards, the best outcomes for most individuals, and a healthy business environment.
The article is well done, but its always good to point out, in the midst of misery, where efforts should be directed. Here we have over a decade of outright obstruction in congress to any measure that would allow government to provide a balance. The ACA and last year's tax increases are the best examples of success under Obama, but they've come at the cost of more or less every other thing that might have helped - the American Jobs Act, infrastructure projects, full implementation of the Frank-Dodd reforms, immigration reform, the normal operation of government, etc...
One party works for balance, the other works solely for the top tier.
Safetykitten
(5,162 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)too light weight for my taste but thought it was noteworthy
The whole thing can be reprinted in full.
Chomsky touched on this in today's speech.
financial institutions.
They're mostly devoted to intricate, exotic manipulations with markets. And they're huge. In the United States, financial institutions, big banks mostly, had 40% of corporate profit in 2007. That was on the eve of the financial crisis, for which they were largely responsible. After the crisis, a number of professional economists - Nobel laureate Robert Solow, Harvard's Benjamin Friedman - wrote articles in which they pointed out that economists haven't done much study of the impact of the financial institutions on the economy. Which is kind of remarkable, considering its scale. But after the crisis they took a look and they both concluded that probably the impact of the financial institutions on the economy is negative. Actually there are some who are much more outspoken than that. The most respected financial correspondent in the English-speaking world is Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. He writes that the "out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from the inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid". By "the market economy" he means the productive economy.
There's a recent issue of the main business weekly, Bloomberg Business Week, which reported a study of the IMF that found that the largest banks make no profit. What they earn, according to the IMF analysis, traces to the government insurance policy, the so-called too-big-to-fail policy. There is a widely publicized bailout, but that's the least of it. There's a whole series of other devices by which the government insurance policy aids the big banks: cheap credit and many other things. And according to the IMF at least, that's the totality of their profit. The editors of the journal say this is crucial to understanding why the big banks present such a threat to the global economy - and to the people of the country, of course.
After the crash, there was the first serious attention by professional economists to what's called systemic risk. They knew it existed but it wasn't much a topic of investigation. 'Systemic risk' means the risk that if a transaction fails, the whole system may collapse. That's what's called an externality in economic theory. It's a footnote. And its one of the fundamental flaws of market systems, a well-known, inherent flaw, is externalities. Every transaction has impacts on others which just aren't taken into account in a market transaction. Systemic risk is a big one. And there are much more serious illustrations than that.