Money“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.” The scam was this: The banks unloaded their debts onto the taxpayer, and then the fiscal hawks dutifully began screaming about how we were drowning in debt and how Social Security and Medicare were responsible. Cuts in your earned benefits will pay for the banks bad loans. Beautiful !: Mike Lofgren, The Party is Over When enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Justice Steven Breyer, McCutcheon v FEC. "...pitting market values against human values, is the real culture war of our time." James Gustave Speth: America the Possible There is ... an obvious risk of political capture by the financial elite. In the United States, to a greater degree than in any other advanced democracy, politics is driven almost entirely by money. Wealthy individuals and the organizations they control can mold government policy through political contributions and lobbying, often producing outcomes that are clearly at odds with what the public actually wants. As those at the apex of the income distribution become increasingly detached - living in a kind of bubble that insulates them almost entirely from the realities faced by typical Americans - there is a real risk that they will be unwilling to support investment in the public goods and infrastructure upon which everyone else depends. The soaring fortunes of those at the very top may ultimately represent a threat to democratic governance." Martin Ford: The Rise of the Robots America is ... the international kleptocrats’ favorite place to launder money. In a 2011 forensic study of grand corruption cases, the World Bank found that the United States was the leading jurisdiction of incorporation for the entities involved in the money laundering schemes. “The money is coming from everywhere,” says John Tobon, head of the Department of Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, where its Foreign Corruption Investigations Group is headquartered. This should not be the case if the U.S. AML system were fit for its purpose. Money Laundering for 21st Century Authoritarianism by Ben Judah “You can’t have the mass radicalization that we’ve seen without extraordinarily wealthy people funneling money in.” Michael Edison Hayden Although the tax system is a crucial tool for tackling inequality, it also faces potential obstacles. Tax evasion ranks high among these, as recently illustrated by the Paradise Papers revelations. The wealth held in tax havens has increased considerably since the 1970s and currently represents more than 10% of global GDP. The rise of tax havens makes it difficult to properly measure and tax wealth and capital income in a globalized world. While land and real-estate registries have existed for centuries, they miss a large fraction of the wealth held by households today, as wealth increasingly takes the form of financial securities. Several technical options exist for creating a global financial register, which could be used by national tax authorities to effectively combat fraud. World Inequality Report 2018 "If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program." Noam Chomsky If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again… the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. Keynes. "Nothing can be passed by Congress that is opposed by Wall Street or large corporations. Nothing." Senator Bernie Sanders “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.” ~ Cree prophecy Billions in ‘dark money’ is influencing US politics. We need disclosure laws (8/29/2022)
Links
Big Money vs. American Democracy Revenues
of State and Local Governments: 2009 Stiglitz Lecture on Monetary Policy. (1/3/2013)
"If you wonder why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you're asking why we pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs, or why we spend more money on the military than the rest of the world combined, you are talking about campaign finance. You are talking about the unbelievable power that big-money interests have over every legislative decision." Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt)
Elizabeth Warren: Silicon Valley Bank Is Gone. We Know Who Is Responsible. (3/13/2023)Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy (10/15/2022)Is the “Pyramid of Money” Corrupting US Democracy? (8/6/2022)Inflation for Americans at each age (7/13/2022)Who Is Financing Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Caucus? Corporations You Know. (6/15/2022)We need to talk about the real reason behind US inflation (11/11/20210) Robert ReichAbolish the debt ceiling before it commits austerity again (9/27/2021)This sedition is brought to you by… (6/23/2021)Bankrolling the Disenfranchisers (from Public Citizen 1/11/2021)
We elected a government of billionaires who rewarded themselves with large tax cuts, increased funding for the military, militarized the police, continued universal surveillance, continued to concentrate mass media to strike fear into the people, and they will not hesitate to use force to discipline the people. The unifying, underlying principle of the Republican agenda is directing public money to private profit. That explains the world's most expensive healthcare, tax cuts for the wealthiest, life threatening fossil fuel subsidies, harsh privatized prisons, proliferation of charter schools, the senseless gun culture, deregulation that sacrifices the public interest, cuts to social programs, force for the military-industrial complex, and, in general the massive extraction of wealth from the people. The middle class has been sinking since Reagan was President. To pay for these gifts to themselves, they will say that they need to fix Social Security by cutting it, cannot afford health care for anyone not able to pay, heap obscene debt on to college students, and to enable corporations to extract as much wealth from people as possible. Republicans proclaim Christian values, but what they really worship is money. Corporations actually do run government through lobbyists, campaign funding, and the revolving door, and other corruption. It's the very definition of Fascism. As the ruling elite game the system further (as in North Carolina), elections become a sham. Mass rallies replace press conferences. Actions of government is increasingly secret. Whisleblowers punished harshly. Media ever more corrupt. As people sink into poverty, they resist, there will be a need to discipline them by force as has already happened in poor communities mostly of color. The U.S, has, by far, the world's largest prison population, is militarizing the police, has the largest military in the world, and has troops in 150 countries. Its empire overthrows many popular elected governments and installs dictators, exploits poor populations for the benefit of corporate investors who are our ruling elite. We will relearn the lesson from Syria. A minority elite government will judge the poor unworthy and deserving of destruction. When you see Republicans campaigning posed with guns, believe them. Considering the Trump actions, we may be punished even earlier. He alone can decide to use nuclear weapons. We fought the rise in Fascism in WWII, but it is rising again here at home. It looks like we lost WWII. What we learn from Aleppo, Syria that an elite, ruling government will suppress or even destroy its people by force if it is threatened. The Nazis and other right wing governments made enemies of their people as well.
Among nations, the U.S. has become a pariah. It bombs other countries that pose no threat, tortures,
assassinates using drones, does not honor international agreements, works to undermine the U.N.,
continues to expand its nuclear arsenal (feel safer ?),
"TeleSur" - An international poll found that the
United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world
peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even
close. (1/17/2015)
or (10/21/2014) As the reality of climate change becomes evident, there will be crop failures, droughts, fisheries collapse, the majority will sink into poverty, there will be mass migration causing a right-wing extreme politics and a decline in democracy and culture.
“As I have said for many years, I happen not to believe that within the framework of the two-party system, the Democratic Party and Republican Party, that we are going to be able to bring about the real changes in this country that are needed to benefit the vast majority of our people. Essentially, it is my view that the leadership of the Democratic Party and Republican Party are tied to big money interests, and that neither of these parties will ever represent the people in this country who are demanding the real changes that have to take place.” – Bernie Sanders
Dark Money and Climate Denial (5/18/2021)List of Dead Bankers (updated to 2020)Even the loonie is rising against the U.S. dollar as the Fed faces currency threat: Don Pittis (7/29/2020)Our Cash-Free Future Is Getting Closer (7/6/2020)Julian Assange called. To talk about the pandemic’s effect on capitalism & politics! (6/13/2020)Benjamin Braun: Socialize Central Bank Planning (5/18/2020)The Pandemic Is Shaking the Dollar’s Supremacy (5/18/2020)how Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Trump cemented its role ‘as a reckless institution’ (2/4/2020)
Big Banks Got The Sweetest Deal From The Covid-19 Bailouts (5/15/2020)
US cites reports Oleg Deripaska helped Vladimir Putin launder cash (02/14/2020)Goldman Sachs’s Shell Game (1/8/2020)Another Banker Suicide: Intriguing Parallels Between US and Estonian Deaths (11/28/2019)Trump Isn’t the First President to Make War on the Federal Reserve (11/16/2019)Banks Want Efficiency. Critics Warn of Backsliding. (8/20/2019)Beware Facebook's Libra: A Corporate Surveillance Leviathan With No Precedent Outside the Realm of Science Fiction (7/18/2019)Survival of the Wrongest, Evidence has a well-known liberal bias. 4/24/2019What’s at Risk if the Fed Becomes as Partisan as the Rest of Washington (4/6/2019)Trump’s Kakistocracy Is Also a Hackistocracy (3/25/2019)Democrats, Debt and Double Standards (2/11/2019)Goodbye to the Dollar (2/4/2019)Hard-Money Men, Suddenly Going Soft (12/20/2018)You Want It Darker? (12/10/2018)Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’ (10/23/2018)Ex-Wall Street Banker Sounds the Alarm: Ten Years After the Financial Crisis, 'We're Going to End Up In the Same Situation' (8/5/2018)Democrats, the Real Fiscal Conservatives (4/16/2018)Fraudulence of the Fiscal Hawks (2/8/2018)GOP Angles for More Campaign Cash, Less Disclosure (12/8/2017)Republican Senate sides with Wells Fargo and Equifax over their customers. (10/24/2017)Why Banks Want To Save The National Flood Insurance Program (10/23/2017)
“Money flows across frontiers, but laws do not.” Until this situation changes, the lawyers, bankers and drafters of deliberately loose financial laws will continue to prosper. Meanwhile, governments will continue to be starved of revenue, global inequality will grow, economies will be destabilized and struggling voters will blame everyone – poor immigrants, liberal elites – except those actually responsible for creating the destructive offshore world. From a Review of Moneyland
"Money, money, money - it whispers everywhere in politics. It twists a little here, bends a little there. And far too often, it tilts in the same direction: in favor of those with buckets of cash to spend." Elizabeth Warren A Fighting Chance Pg 250.
"...it is hard to escape the sense that debt panic was promoted because it served a political purpose -- that many people were pushing the notion of a debt crisis as a way to attack Social Security and Medicare. And they did immense damage along the way, diverting the nation's attention from its real problems -- crippling unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and more -- for years on end." Paul Krugman NYT 7/21/2014 MAMMON, 'The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is the holy city of New York. --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1887
The people who are risk-averse are the rich, who become like Fafnir in Wagner's Ring. You know in Wagner's Ring, the gold is cursed. The two brothers fight each other over the gold. Fasolt gets killed. And Fafnir gets the gold and what does he do? (From the viewer's point of view for the next 12 hours in Valkyrie and Siegfried,...) In real life, for a long time, until Siegfried becomes mature, he sits immobilized, having turned himself into a dragon guarding the gold. So what was the gold for?" Leon Botstein, President of Bard College. The credit system, which has its focal point in the allegedly national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers that surround them, is one enormous centralization and gives this class of parasites a fabulous power not only to decimate the industrial capitalists periodically but also to interfere in actual production in the most dangerous manner— and this crew know nothing of production and have nothing at all to do with it. — Marx, Capital, vol. 3, chap. 33 quoted in Doug Henwoods Wall Street (free to download) Why The Only Answer Is To Break Up The Biggest Wall Street Banks: Prof. Robert Reich (6/2018)Paul Krugman: Will Trump Trumpify the Fed? (10/6/2017)Stark New Evidence on How Money Shapes America’s Elections (8/2016)Crazy About Money (3/25/2016)
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