by cameron | Apr 6, 2009 | banksters, capitalism
Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout.
I love the term they are using for bankers who deliberately defraud society – “banksters”. Black says the entire financial system is one big ponzi scheme, making Bernie Madoff looking like an amateur and fall guy for the larger crime which involved the entire financial system and governments who allowed them to go unregulated.
Watch.
by cameron | Apr 4, 2009 | capitalism, geopolitics
“(Karl Marx is) the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this.” – Richard Metzger, written on Boing Boing.
I hope the current financial crisis leads to a new generation of people reading Marx and those of us who have read him before should be re-reading him.
As David Harvey says in the below video, the G20 governments are just trying to re-boot the same kind of capitalism we’ve had before which has seen a series of collapses over the last 30 years, each collapse leading to the bankers being bailed out by the taxpayers and walking away scott-free so they can do it all over again, “sticking it to the people”, as Harvey says. Rampant consumerism is to blame for our problems and Marx predicted this 150 years ago. Propping up the old regime isn’t the answer. We need a new model. And we need to start figuring out what that model might be. We need to pressure our leaders to start thinking about it, talking publicly about it, not just propping up the old broken system.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkTMO93Jyp0&hl=en&fs=1]
Read Marx’s DAS KAPITAL along with David Harvey here.
by cameron | Mar 12, 2009 | Atheism, capitalism, Christianity, free will, geopolitics, israel
I did my first (well, first in a long, long time) GDay World Live show on uStream tonight and it was a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone who joined in. I talked for an hour and forty minutes! WTF!?
I talked about:
Free Will
Why Christianity Is Dangerous
Why Capitalism Is Broken
The Israel – Palestine Conflict
You can watch the whole thing below or download it in FLV format.
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/1243094
by cameron | Oct 1, 2008 | capitalism, US politics
On the US bailout, George Monbiot writes:
According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government “is financial socialism, it is un-Americanâ€. The economics professor Nouriel Roubini calls George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke “a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of Americaâ€. Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the deal, calls it “trickle-down communismâ€.
They are wrong. The banking subsidies Congress rejected last night are as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded by Bush and Paulson might be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.
One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the United States is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations like Boeing, IBM and General Electric.
Read more.
by cameron | Sep 17, 2008 | capitalism
The news today that yet another American finance giant, AIG, has been bailed out by their “capitalist” government, led me to wonder how much their “leaders” made out of their destruction.
Martin J. Sullivan, their former CEO (he was fired last June), took home nearly $40 million dollars in compensation in the last five years according to Forbes. He had only been in the job three years. The previous CEO, Maurice R. Greenberg, was asked to resign by the Board in 2005 due to “accounting irregularities”. Charges were brought against him by Eliot Spitzer, then attorney general of New York State, who later became Governor of New York but had to resign when his penchant for high-class hookers hit the press.
Greenberg, by the way, still has a job (currently chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr and Company, a diversified financial services firm) and Business Week said of him in 2002 “But few run their business better than Maurice R. Greenberg of American International Group Inc.”.
This is the reality of American-style capitalism. Fat rich white guys milking the system for their own profit. Then, when their greed leads to the failure of the company, and taxpayers’ money is used to bail the company (and the company’s investors) out of the shit, nobody does a damn thing about it. Will Sullivan or Greenberg face charges? I doubt it.
How long are we going to let it continue?
by cameron | Mar 24, 2008 | capitalism, Iraq, Uncategorized
I’ve been having a discussion over email with a friend about Barak Obama, based on my post the other day where I said he’s just like Bush (for denying that the USA has caused the terrorist problem by interfering in the government of other countries). My friend forwarded to me an email from Obama’s mailing list where he talks about troop withdrawal, suggesting he’s one of the good guys. I replied:
“Get Out Of Iraq” is an easy story to sell to the American people at the moment. There is enough support for it with enough corporations that he can get away with it. So Obama gets no points for telling that story. And while he continues to deny that America has caused most of the problems they are facing around the world at the moment, I don’t think he can actually change the underlying problems. At the end of the day, Obama works for the same people that Bush or Hillary or McCain does – the rich white guys. And to get power he has to agree to represent their interests just like anyone else. The two-party system in the US (as in Australia) is there to give us the illusion of freedom of choice. But the system is inherently biased to represent the interests of the people with wealth and power. Look at Ron Paul – most people don’t even know he exists. Why? He’s been getting a massive amount of the primary vote. It’s because the media, and his own Republican executive, have completely ignored him. Why? Because he says the things they don’t want people to hear. If you speak the truth, you get ignored. Anyone, including Obama, who is operating inside the system is bound by the same rules. Say what we want you to say. Don’t say anything you’re not allowed to say – or suffer the consequences.
Like this from Ron Paul:
Of course, while the supporters of increased regulation claim Enron as a failure of “ravenous capitalism,” the truth is Enron was a phenomenon of the mixed economy, rather than the operations of the free market. Enron provides a perfect example of the dangers of corporate subsidies. The company was (and is) one of the biggest beneficiaries of Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) subsidies. These programs make risky loans to foreign governments and businesses for projects involving American companies. While they purport to help developing nations, Ex-Im and OPIC are in truth nothing more than naked subsidies for certain politically-favored American corporations, particularly corporations like Enron that lobby hard and give huge amounts of cash to both political parties. Rather than finding ways to exploit the Enron mess to expand federal power, perhaps Congress should stop aiding corporations like Enron to pick the taxpayer’s pockets through Ex-Im and OPIC.
Now, THAT isn’t going to make him many friends in corporate America.
Then my friend asked me why I thought Obama works for the rich, white guys. Here’s why.
It’s simple. Where do you think Obama’s campaign finance is coming from? Poor black people in Louisiana? Let’s see – he’s raised $16 million to date for his campaign. Let see who this came from.
Top Contributors
| 1 |
Goldman Sachs |
$535,678 |
| 2 |
JPMorgan Chase & Co |
$333,337 |
| 3 |
UBS AG |
$306,880 |
| 4 |
Kirkland & Ellis |
$304,264 |
| 5 |
Exelon Corp |
$299,011 |
| 6 |
University of Chicago |
$293,481 |
| 7 |
Lehman Brothers |
$288,197 |
| 8 |
Skadden, Arps et al |
$282,841 |
| 9 |
Sidley Austin LLP |
$279,857 |
| 10 |
Citigroup Inc |
$278,336 |
| 11 |
Harvard University |
$267,541 |
| 12 |
University of California |
$251,194 |
| 13 |
National Amusements Inc |
$237,050 |
| 14 |
Jenner & Block |
$213,907 |
| 15 |
Jones Day |
$212,525 |
| 16 |
Morgan Stanley |
$212,276 |
| 17 |
Google Inc |
$201,107 |
| 18 |
Mayer Brown |
$184,333 |
| 19 |
Credit Suisse Group |
$171,800 |
| 20 |
Citadel Investment Gro |
$171,650 |
This is LITERALLY the list of people he works for. Follow the money, people, follow the money. These people don’t “donate” money to a campaign. They “invest” in it. They expect to get something in return for their contribution.
Let’s look at the top one, Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest investment banks. You have to ask – what would Goldman Sachs want to get for their investment? Healthcare reform? Perhaps. They also have a private equity arm. What are their significant holdings?
Major Assets (GS Group)
- Ayco L.P. – (Financial Advisory)
- Cogentrix Energy (Energy)
- American Casino & Entertainment Properties (Casinos)
- Coffeyville Resources LLC (Refinery)
- Myers Industries, Inc. (Plastic & Rubber)
- USI Holdings Corporation (Insurance & Finance)
- East Coast Power LLC (Energy)
- Zilkha Renewable Energy (Energy)
- Queens Moat Houses (Hotels)
- Sequoia Credit Consolidation (Finance)
- Shineway Group (Meat Processing)
- Equity Inns, Inc. (Hotels)
- KarstadtQuelle property group (Retailer)
- Nursefinders Inc. (Healthcare)
- Latin Force Group, LLC (Media)
They have a healthcare investment. They will want to make sure it does well, so whether or not they want reform depends on what their business needs. They have an investment in renewable energy. Think they care about oil?
The Google investment is interesting. What do you think they expect to get for their money?
BTW, the above listings are from a terrific site called Open Secrets. Check it out.
