'Monopoly Mayhem: Corporations Win, Workers Lose,' Robert Reich, *New

[appalachiablue]

- 'Monopoly Mayhem: Corporations Win, Workers Lose.' July 7, 2020. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich breaks down how giant monopolies like Amazon, Facebook and JP Morgan Chase are boosting record corporate profits at the expense of workers and consumers. Lacking antitrust enforcement, we're now living in a new Gilded Age, as consolidation has inflated corporate profits, suppressed worker pay, supercharged economic inequality and stifled innovation. Read the full article, https://robertreich.org/

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

1. K&R

I haven't seen anything in years with such a high concentration of truth and common sense.

Thanks

[Warpy]

2. It's kind of a pity he didn't see it at the time

when he was in Clinton's cabinet and might have done some good.

A lot of the people who are caught up in the game (and that's really what it is to them, a game) don't see what's really going on until they've exited it for one reason or another.

Some of us saw all this stuff happening and were appalled and couldn't believe the lack of foresight on the part of our elected officials, including Clinton, who signed the destruction of the Glass-Steagall law that had prevented the banks from becoming gambling institutions, something blamed for the Great Depression.

We're in the last, desperate days of the game. How desperate? The Treasury is just printing trillions of dollars to throw at the corporations in a last ditch attempt to play a few more rounds. To understand why that's a bad idea, take a good look at post WWI Germany.

What Reich fails to see is that a collapse of some sort is now inevitable. When it goes, it will take nearly everything with it.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. re: "...couldn't believe the lack of foresight on the part of our elected officials..."

IMHO, it's often difficult to see the view from the stands while in a huddle on the field.

Having monopolies not treated as the utilities they are is a huge problem.
Banks using our money to better their bottom lines is a problem. My brokerage requires 50% for margin accounts. With banks making speculative loans in a questionable economy their requirements should be even higher.

Stock buybacks are just manipulation and insider trading.

On a humorous note, IMO banks making speculative loans should be required to offer savings accounts paying interest at a percentage determined by the customer's single result at a spin of the roulette wheel, 0 - 36% (no annual or monthly fees, no minimum, $250,000 maximum.)

[appalachiablue]

5. Some influential officials knew well what was coming

with the major changes in the financial world in the 1990s and tried to explain and warn about it. Tragically, the vast number of banks, corporations and governments behind the new policies was too powerful to be stopped. And there was so much money in deregulation, the free market and free trade agreements. American workers didn't have a chance.

To his credit Reich is doing an excellent job of educating people about many of the causal factors and possible remedies to implement in order to avert a complete breakdown of the economy, society and environment in the next few years.
- I hope Bill Clinton is well, he doesn't seem to be around much lately.

- Sir James Goldsmith, European financier discusses the realities of the GATT agreement following NAFTA. PBS, 1994.

- Brooksley Born, Chair of the CFTC understood the dangers of high risk financial derivatives and tried to have them regulated in 1998 but was blocked by Treasury and cabinet officials Greenspan, Levitt, Summers, Rubin and Geithner. Frontline, The Warning, 2009.

[appalachiablue]

6. Reich's giving it his best during this very precarious 'do or die' time.

He's a brilliant economist & excellent communicator, I just wish he got more exposure to the people who really need to hear this but never will because of the mess of US media.

[erronis]

4. Well worth the longish watch. It seems that rank capitalism is not as good as it's been

portrayed ever since I can remember (1950s).

[appalachiablue]

7. Correct, since that period much has gone way downhill for ordinary

people while many others have profited greatly.