Our Economy Is Built Around Scams and Pure Greed -- and the Alternatives Are Staring Us in the Face

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/our-economy-built-around-bunch-scams-and-pure-greed-and-alternatives-are-staring-us-face

Wall Street is only one of several financial roach motels in what has become a giant slum of a global economy. Notional “money” scuttles in for safety and nourishment, but may never get out alive. Tom Friedman of The New York Times really put one over on the soft-headed American public when he declared in a string of books that the global economy was a permanent installation in the human condition. What we’re seeing “out there” these days is the basic operating system of that economy trying to shake itself to pieces.

The reason it has to try so hard is that the various players in the global economy game have constructed an armature of falsehood to hold it in place — for instance the pipeline of central bank “liquidity” creation that pretends to be capital propping up markets. It would be most accurate to call it fake wealth. It is not liquid at all but rather gaseous, and that is why it tends to blow “bubbles” in the places to which it flows. When the bubbles pop, the gas will tend to escape quickly and dramatically, and the ground will be littered with the pathetic broken balloons of so many hopes and dreams.

All of this mighty, tragic effort to prop up a matrix of lies might have gone into a set of activities aimed at preserving the project of remaining civilized. But that would have required the dismantling of rackets such as agri-business, big-box commerce, the medical-hostage game, the Happy Motoring scam, the suburban sprawl “industry,” and the higher ed loan swindle. All of these evil systems have to go and must be replaced by more straightforward and honest endeavors aimed at growing food, doing trade, healing people, traveling, building places worth living in, and learning useful things.

All of those endeavors have to become smaller, less complex, more local, and reality-based — rather than based, as now, on overgrown and sinister intermediaries creaming off layers of value, leaving nothing behind but a thin entropic gruel of waste. All of this inescapable reform is being held up by the intransigence of a banking system that can’t admit that it has entered the stage of criticality. It sustains itself on its sheer faith in perpetual levitation. It is reasonable to believe that upsetting that faith might lead to war. After all, a number of places organized as nation-states will be full of angry, distressed citizens clamoring for sustenance and easy answers — and quite a bit of their remaining real capital is stored in the form of things that blow up.

[merrily]

1. Thank you, Occupy Movement for changing the national conversation.

Before Occupy, the conversation was about how much Social Security was going to get cut. After Occupy, it's about the greed and deceitfulness of the plutocrats.

Do you know how much time and money that kind of paradigm shift usually takes? Think of anti-smoking campaigns over decades. And Occupy created a paradigm shift practically on a dime with no money.

Thank you, all of you who slept outdoors for weeks while Mayors had their police harass you, dump your belongings and land some of you in the hospital. Yet, you kept going. Thank you.

[daleanime]

3. +1

[Scuba]

9. +1,000

[Enthusiast]

14. +1 an entire shit load! Geez!

You nailed it.

When I hear someone on DU dumping on Occupy I can hardly believe it. The only problem with Occupy was there were not enough of them. We all should have joined them and made it impossible for the filthy corporate media to ignore us.

[cantbeserious]

2. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

Duplicity and back scratching of entrenched interests.

[daleanime]

4. K&R....

[bananas]

5. " It is not liquid at all but rather gaseous"

It is not
liquid at all but rather gaseous, and that is
why it tends to blow “bubbles” in the
places to which it flows. When the bubbles
pop, the gas will tend to escape quickly and
dramatically, and the ground will be littered
with the pathetic broken balloons of so
many hopes and dreams.

[chervilant]

6. OMG! I wish I could rec this post a GAZILLION times!

The revolution is inevitable. The uber wealthy will have a difficult time adjusting to the outcome, IF they survive...

(Thank you for all of your posts. You are one of the few on this forum that I strive not to miss.)

[aspirant]

7. Solutions?

Make things smaller and local, isn't that Obama enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? Who is pressuring Obama on that and which 2014 candidates campaigned on that?

Local issues; Denton, Texas passed an anti-fracking initiative and the state is ignoring it. Where is the DOJ, ACLU etc. Maui Hawaii passed a anti-GMO measure and the corps are suing to overturn the people.

Global vs national economy; Why is America's fed issuing our money to bankers for global adventures? Our money needs to stay here and international money needs to be generated in the nations where these giant corps operate.

[RiverLover]

8. One thing we need is to have leaders who will re-instate Glass-Steagall

From the OP~

There is an awful lot that President Barack Obama has to answer for after all this time. But there is almost no public chatter (let alone true debate) about his failure to discipline the banking system. He should have commenced to restructure the biggest banks in January of 2009. He should have proposed through his congressional proxies the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall act. Almost nobody besides Bill Black has remarked on the remarkable record of the SEC under Obama in making no criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, not to mention the stupendous dereliction of Attorney General Eric Holder.

[merrily]

10. Our elected "folks" are about dismantling every last bit of New Deal legislation, not

about reinstating it.

[RiverLover]

13. I've just been reading about that, ie Clinton & AFDC, I've alot to learn. Third Way dems, they're

stealing the democratic party right in front of our blind eyes under the guise of being "Centrists."

[merrily]

22. I'm afraid it's already been stolen*. Question is, can we get it back?

Think of someone who is around 45 years old or younger. He or she never knew a President who was not either Republican or center right--and, before Reagan, Carter was a deregulation guy.

I think we may be able to take back the party, which is at its lowest point since 1928, but only if we don't settle for words alone, or whatever tiny bones we may get thrown. (Lowest point since 1928 as far as Congress, but I think Rs now also control about 70% of state legislatures, too, and most of the gubernatorial offices.)



*Things may not be as they seem in the rear view mirror.

Was the New Deal about helping us just to help us, or was it about preventing the US version of the Russian Revolutions, which had occurred only a few years before 1929?

Was the Great Society about doing away with poverty, once and for all, or was it about staving off a coalition that looked as though it could form among (1) hippies, liberals and other leftists (2) the peaceful civil rights groups and the not so peaceful civil rights groups and (3) the economically disadvantaged?

But, for the sake of this post, let's just say that FDR, HST and LBJ were anxious to help people, period. (And the Cold War was just an oddity?)

[pampango]

26. And the repeal of Taft-Hartley. No other industrial country has such anti-union legislation.

And no other industrial country has such weak unions and struggling middle class.

A peculiar aspect of the Obama years has been the disconnect between the rage of Obama’s enemies and the yawns of his sort-of allies. The right denounces financial reform as a vast government takeover — and lobbies fiercely against it — while the left dismisses reform as symbols without substance. The right accuses Obama of being a socialist stealing the money of hard-working billionaires, while the left dismisses him as having done nothing to address inequality.

On all these issues, the truth is that Obama has done far more than he gets credit for — not everything you’d want, to be sure, or even most of what should be done, but enough so that the right has reason to be furious.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/why-the-one-percent-hates-obama/?_r=0

[Blanks]

11. I like the 'states of matter' analogy...

But unlike some of the other posts on this thread I think the most important sentence is the one about food:

All of these evil systems have to go and must be replaced by more straightforward and honest endeavors aimed at growing food, doing trade, healing people, traveling, building places worth living in, and learning useful things.

We have become a society that seems to believe that if we send our money off to someone who plays with the stock market our wealth will grow - when the reality is that we need to grow the wealth in our own communities. Small communities need to get back to producing an export product and the money that they send off on these retirement Ponzi schemes could be used locally to invest more money in the communities. Investment in things like greenhouses, solar panels on rooftops, beehives etc. Things that can be used locally and the excess sold to increase the wealth of the community.

We listen to politicians talk about creating jobs - when what we need are politicians talking about helping to create small businesses. Each time the cost of fuel rises we experience rises in the cost of food (because it's transported) if we spent more time educating a 'food growing' class - we would all be less dependent on fossil fuels.

[RiverLover]

15. Nice post. True. Just want to add ev time a Bigbox store is built, more small businesses die.

But all that matters is stock prices...

[aspirant]

16. Business coops

If any of this will happen, we need to control our money. The SBA is corrupt with giant corps playing legal word games to get the loans

How about a national credit union, owned and controlled by the depositors, offering online banking and our own credit cards. Let's do business with companies that honor our cards and our principles. Pretty enticing to offer cards at very low interest rates in this market. Plus, we get progressives to deposit funds into The Progressive Credit Union of America and pull away money from these corrupt banksters. This is the place to go for those small coop business loans.

[Blanks]

43. Yes, that's all a part of building wealth in a community.

It seems to me that if you had your money at a small local credit union (and that were a community's primary investment vehicle) then when they put the 'bank' sign out in the yard (as banks frequently do for construction) - you could see what kind of investments your money is involved in. You could frequent the establishment, decide whether you want to switch credit unions if they're making bad loans etc.

One of the issues that I have with these commercials that I see on TV is that they don't really talk about what you're investing in (and with mutual funds it could be anything) but rather the technology used in the trades. To me it looks like just a slick Ponzi scheme, and every couple of years my suspicions are confirmed.

That wouldn't happen if we were buying groceries at a locally grown food market in a store constructed by funds from a small local credit union.

[aspirant]

45. I like local CU's

but they're all across the board on focus. A small community of 10,000 may not even have a CU. A national progressive CU will have a large enough supportive base to fund only our issues. Look at MoveOn,PCCC,DFa etc. and the money they generate as a private company. A least with a CU the shareholders(depositors) are the owners and make the decisions.

[Blanks]

46. Pardon my ignorance, but what is CU?

[aspirant]

47. Sorry, Credit Union, fingers were getting tired.

[Blanks]

48. Sorry, I said it a couple of times. I was just drawing a blank. eom

[Enthusiast]

12. Kicked and recommended!

the medical-hostage game

the higher ed loan swindle

These two are so particularly egregious, unnecessary and damaging to the nation. It's as if these players see the citizen consumer as nothing but a source of profit.

The concept of the good corporate citizen has completely vanished. But turn on any TV channel and hear the Righties® tell us about vanishing personal individual responsibility.

[CanSocDem]

17. At the risk of being rude...

...and I know you get it, but, "...the citizen consumer as nothing but a source of profit." IS the way it is. It is American Culture that objects to silly concepts like public interest.

It's not just the "Righties" but every warm blooded American that is as reluctant to give up their television set as their government is to give up their servitude to industry.


.

[merrily]

21. Here's the thing, though. I never got elected or paid to give up my TV.

They get elected and paid to represent us, not the industry. Granted, there is some divided loyalty built into most agencies in the Executive Branch, but it's supposed to net out for the benefit of the majority of Americans, not the 1%.

[CanSocDem]

24. I appreciate...

...your righteous sense of justice and vision of how things should be, BUT I sometimes marvel at how easy it is to fool the American public. Seriously, you just have to put it on TV....

It's like a placebo culture(no scientific reason it should be working.)


.

[merrily]

25. Do you really appreciate them? Cause it's

coming across like a bad case of unwarranted condescension.

[CanSocDem]

27. Well....

...while I have family and friends who call themselves Americans, I never hesitate to tell them that I personally believe that the American Society is the last barrier to global spiritual evolution. I'm sorry, does that sound condescending...????




.

[merrily]

29. Is that why you chose to post on a board for USians?

I don't think this exchange is headed anywhere productive. Enjoy your imagined superiority.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

18. What an Absolute Load of Crap This Article Is

Only a theater major could write an article this full of histrionics.

This is the economic version of creation "science."

Why don't we see what the people who put in the time collecting the data, crunching the numbers, and delivering the results have to say? I mean, I know it's bad to turn to economists, mathematicians, and statisticians, who actually work in this field 40 hours a week (and up), but imagine what we could learn if we did.

ESTABLISHMENT DATA: Table B-1a. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail, seasonally adjusted

In October 2014, total non-farm employment was just shy of 140,000,000. Scroll down about two-thirds of the page until you get to "Financial activities." These are the occupations beginning with "52" in the NAICS code. Total employment in October 2014 for those occupations was just shy of 8,000,000.

Granted, employment in the goods-producing industries, at a little over 19,000,000, is swamped by employment in the service-providing industries, at over 120,000,000.

But to say that the "Economy Is Built Around Scams and Pure Greed" is just plain nonsense.

[zeemike]

23. Nope the article got it right.

It is built around scams and greed.
And the bubble will burst because it is unsustainable and they all know it...but there goal is to own the country including the land where that food and resources are produced...and when there is a crisis with the money the land will be sold to them at fire sale prices or just stolen...and that includes public land which is what privatization is all about.

We are headed for neo fuedalism...and kings will be made, and the rest will be dependent on them for their basic needs.

[bemildred]

32. Would you agree with "mostly scams and rackets and pure greed"? nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

33. No. Not at all. There is zero truth to that.

No, the U. S. economy is not based on "mostly scams and rackets and pure greed."

The article's author is a charlatan.

[bemildred]

34. Zero? Mr. Science now says "zero truth" to that?

And you call him a grandstanding charlatan?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

36. I edited out "grandstanding" for brevity.

Other than that, I certainly did.

[bemildred]

38. Nice chatting with you. nt

[hunter]

35. Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" are Creation Scientists.

The "science" of economics is hugely afflicted with ideological, even religious, biases. Much of it is just as culturally biased, even as absurd, as Sigmund Freud's worst ramblings about psychology.

A numerology can be mathematically complex, statistically consistent within itself, and even generate self-fulfilling "prophesies" if enough politically powerful people simply believe in it.

But physical reality doesn't care what humans believe. If a system is not sustainable it will collapse. Exponential growth always ends, frequently catastrophically.

What the economist commonly calls "productivity" is usually a pretty good measure of the damage being done to earth's environment and the human spirit.

Saying that the "Economy Is Built Around Scams and Pure Greed," is a simplification, but it's not "nonsense."

It struck me again just yesterday as I was listening to Lucy Kellaway of London's Financial Times. The financial guys she was talking about are not in any way scientists or system engineers. Everything they do is built around macho-man bullying, bluffs, scams and pure greed.

http://podcast.ft.com/p/2400

[bemildred]

39. +1. nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

40. Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" {blank}.

Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" beat their wives.

Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" drive over the speed limit.

Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" are cruel to animals.

Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" shout at their kids.

Plenty of "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" run red lights.

[hunter]

41. Oh bother.

If you like, I'll explain.

Creation scientists are not scientists.

Economists, mathematicians, and statisticians are not scientists.

The symbols they manipulate may or may not represent any physical reality.

I was trying to be nice. Often that's mistake.

Some "economists, mathematicians, and statisticians" may also be scientists. but plenty of them are not.

The tools of mathematics and statistics are especially useful in the sciences, just as a language such as English is, but in-and-of-themselves they do not describe physical reality.

I can create mathematically and statistically consistent imaginary universes. I can write a story about a fictional place, and even demand others "believe" in it. But that doesn't make the story real.

[aspirant]

42. The science of statistics is probability, guesses at best

[hunter]

44. Statistics work very well as a descriptive language of the physical universe...

... and are extremely useful in science, medicine, and engineering.

Scientists and engineers with a very solid understanding of statistics built the internet and the computers it runs on.

Financial markets and Economists have grabbed quite a bit of math from the physicists, but the numbers they work with, especially when they measure things in currencies like dollars, are all the consequence of a very complex rhetorical tautology. The math the economists use influences the economy and the rules of the game, and the economy and the rules of the game influences the math the economists choose to use.

Physical reality doesn't work like that. Humans have no power to change the rules of nature. The universe is very big and doesn't care what we think.

[marmar]

19. K/R

[abelenkpe]

20. K&R

[UglyGreed]

28. Ain't that the truth N/T

[L0oniX]

30. Simple version: Everything is bullshit.

[bemildred]

37. Not really a law, but a good heuristic.

"Ninety percent of everything is crap."

To be normal is to be mediocre and uninteresting.

[aspirant]

31. Looking for real solutions,NOW

I'm reading about "kick the bums out" re-instate Glass-Spiegle thru a repub controlled congress (good luck), growing food on land we don't own and specifically what local focus? We need Ideas for now and organize around them. The more we talk in generalities the faster we are gobbled up. Actions not dreams, dreams are wonderful but we urgently must make dreams reality. The need is great, have you noticed people asking for financial help within this community?