Worth a close reading. The revealed conflicts of interest and probably high crimes and misdemeanors and nothing less than expected, but astonishing all the same.
As a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, the American people have experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college. Small businesses have been unable to get the credit they need to expand their businesses, and credit is still extremely tight. Wages as a share of national income are now at the lowest level since the Great Depression, and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high.
The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression. Why? These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital). These planners:
Make lots of VERY bad decisions. Wall Street and EU planners routinely attempt to sink the entire economic and financial system with excessive leverage and risk. These systemic threats have become so commonplace now, it's nearly inevitable that one will cause a major collapse.
Become morally and ethically depraved. They operate on a continuous stream of fraud and lies. Too many instances to count. These planners are unencumbered by ethical or cultural norms. They actually believe these rules are below them. In reality, by doing so, these planners are eviscerating their own decision making (i.e. in terms of an OODA loop, they aren't orienting themselves to the deep/rich cultural experience these rules represent).
Completely arrogant and unapologetic. They are never wrong. Nobody could have foreseen it. It's a one in 10,000 year event.
Of course, this situation will persist until it doesn't. At that point, we'll be in for a long rebuilding process.
The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.
The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.
. . . . . . .
I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.
This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.
The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.
Moyers is a sanctimonious preacher who sometimes speaks the truth.
Bill Moyers: “Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy”
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Public Citizen 40th Gala
Washington, DC
October 20, 2011
I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.
The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.
The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.
“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”
William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.
