In order to understand any situation a clear understanding of the situation must first be set forth. Capitalism is a economic system and crony capitalism is a manipulation of a capitalistic economic system.
Capitalism, however, is not the system we live in today. That system would be more accurately described as crony capitalism or state capitalism. You won’t hear that from the politicians, economists or media lapdogs though; they are too busy blaming capitalism for everything that’s wrong with the economy. Source
What is capitalism?
According to Merriam-Webster – an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
What is crony capitalism?
According to Merriam-Webster the word crony is defined as – a close friend especially of long standing. So, we must begin by looking beyond the two words that are usually associated with a corrupt economic system.
Who is the “close friend” that would be considered a “crony” of “capitalism”?
We described the most noteworthy of “friends” to capitalism in this manner
In October 1929 the Federal Reserve decided it was time to flex their muscles and see how much more could be stolen from the American people and the Great Depression was engineered by the banking cabal along with their newest member, the Federal Reserve Bank. What most people do not understand is the Federal Reserve Bank is a private corporation. Source
The logical answer would be company owners, CEO’s and the like that make the decisions of both large and small businesses that are “friends” of people that would be able to influence the success or failure of companies operating within an economic system.
For example the CEO of a restaurant chain may want to implement safety codes for the sole purpose of crushing competition. The cost of implementation and maintenance of these new safety codes would be cost prohibitive for someone wishing to open a new restaurant that would be in competition with the chain restaurant. And thus, crony capitalism is born from a sneaky corrupt relationship between the chain restaurant owner/CEO and member(s) of a political body that oversees regulations and laws governing restaurant safety.
All of this is to say what we have in America is not a capitalistic system. It is more closely related to fascism, socialism or communism than any other economic system. I know some of you are rolling your eyes or huffing and blowing like a Great Blue Whale, to which I say, go right ahead – facts matter and here are a couple of facts to support what I just said.
Too big to fail that morphed into too big to jail banks. In 2008, the taxpayers of the United States, were held hostage and forced to hand over trillions of taxes (labor hours) to the banking cabal that had made bad decisions, bad loans and were bleeding billions of dollars in loses.Under a capitalist economic system these banks, everyone of them, would have filed for bankruptcy, closed their doors and would now be lost to time.
This is an important milestone in America and, indeed, for the global economic system. Everything changed. The banks we – that’s you and I – the taxpayers in America, “bailed-out” have only grown larger, more corrupt and instead of the restaurant chain owner “donating” to the ruling class to influence regulations/laws, we now find these large corporations participating in corporate stock buy backs.
This program of corporate stock buy backs has allowed zombie companies to stay afloat. The corporations buy back their stock from the retail investors, once again that’s you and me, as our personal situations continue to deteriorate we sell our stock, the company then uses these stocks to prop up the stock price, or in most cases, push the stock value higher, and the people with the largest stock share benefit the most. Usually the CEO and a handful of other cronies of the company.
To date, not one person has been indicted much less gone to prison for banking crimes.
- LIBOR – London Inter-Bank Overnight Rate six banks fined for having been caught rigging one of the most important banking rates on the planet. If you have a loan and are paying interest on that loan, odds are this inter-bank interest rate has a direct impact on your life
- MBS – Mortgage Backed Securities, another banking problem, created by the banks that actually created the entire 2008 financial meltdown. Directly tied to home mortgages and has a massive impact on economies globally.
- FOREX – The foreign exchange market is a global decentralized or over-the-counter market for the trading of currencies. This market determines the foreign exchange rate. It includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices. This market was/is rigged by the same banking cabal that brought us the LIBOR fraud and MBS fraud. Do you think this market may have an impact on your daily life when it impacts all the major currencies on the planet?
These are just a handful of the banking crimes that have happened over the past decade that all point toward a crony based economic system instead of a free-market capitalist system. For all the young people calling for an end to capitalism and that wish to embrace socialism you really should make an attempt to understand the current socialist/communist system that is in place. If you think what we have today is capitalism it may time to trade in your “humanities” degree and begin studying, outside the college/university system, exactly what capitalism is all about.
On any given day one can usually find a plethora of articles written about the evils of capitalism. It is not uncommon to find something exactly like this
The uproar also hints at something deeper: what FT columnist John Authers has called “a toxic national mood of disaffection” with capitalism itself. Frank Luntz, a right-leaning pollster, agrees. Speaking before a business-friendly audience at the Milken Institute this month, Luntz said words like “metric”, “process-driven”, and “capitalism” all now come with negative connotations, implying you put profits over people. The word “CEO” can inspire fear and loathing: “They’re the people who fire you,” Luntz quipped.
Luntz advised his audience to avoid these words altogether, or risk alienating the public. He tweeted: “‘Capitalism’ is becoming a dirty word, as more Americans see it as greedy CEOs ripping off working-class people.”
Young Americans have especially soured on capitalism. In a Harvard University poll conducted in 2016, 51% of 18 to 29 year-olds in the US said they opposed capitalism; only 42% expressed support.
We quote Grayson Sussman Squires, a college student interviewed by Bloomberg: “I’ve seen the failings of modern-day capitalism. The notion of a well-functioning capitalist order is something recounted only by older people.” Source
The handful of words above are not discussing capitalism. The author is using the word, however, it is being used incorrectly. Our economic system is not free-market capitalism by any stretch of the imagination.
The first example I used was that of a restaurant chain – like McDonalds, Olive Garden or any of several dozen others. These companies make it extremely difficult and costly for new operations to get started. What about a TV station? Are cameras very expensive? What about warehouse space or to produce a video at your kitchen table as Mark Dice does 5 days a week? Why is it so ridiculously expensive to start a TV station and broadcast locally, regionally, nationally or globally? What about simply getting a show on an existing TV network/station? Why should it be so exclusive to six corporations that control 70% or more of all broadcast TV? Does anyone watch CNN any longer? Seriously?
How do you keep the “riffraff” out of a neighborhood or business? You price them out. If we were functioning in a free-market capitalistic economy TV stations like CNN would no longer exist. Air time would be reasonably priced and those that wanted to start a network would be able to do so. Regulations, licenses’ and other obstacles are put in place by the cronies that own the current system and they have no intention of sharing or allowing for reasonable competition.
The next time you hear or read where someone is bashing “our capitalistic system” be sure to remind them it would be nice to have one to complain about.
