The naturally 'efficient
market' hypothesis never dies when money grubbing oligarchs have the funds to
pay economists and 'train journalists' to mindlessly repeat their propaganda
against meaningful reform and honest market regulation.
That hypothesis is that all people, including the worst of the worst in
global finance, are as naturally good as saints and selflessly rational as
angels, and that it is the evil government that interferes with their noble
efforts at creating perfectly unregulated markets.
If only we can get rid of government, then all will be well.
Alas, there is a kind of partnership between the corruptors and the
corruptible, between those who seek power and money above all in any walk of
life. And corporatism is the foul partnership between the worst of
those in commerce and their counterparts in government. But as not all
in business are bent to crime, hardly so as it is a small minority of the
worst that taints it, so it is with government and other segments of a modern
society.
But there are times when, for whatever reasons, the worst seem to prevail.
What is ignored is the vastly corrupting influence of money on the weak
willed and shamefully dishonest men and women in politics, as well as the
media and the legal and economic professions, that eats into the fabric of
society like a cancer of corruption. Greed is the ultimate good to
them, and the will to power is the poison that taints their honesty and
honor.
And from time to time the many, in their preoccupation with daily life, are
easily led and made apathetic and complacent by the few of the worst among
them, covered with the fig leafs of fantastic fabrications of economics and
political philosophy. For it is a sad truth that only a few are gifted
with a strong enough moral compass to stand against the tide, while most
merely follow the flow and fashions of the day. So much greater then is
the sin of those who lead these simple souls to their ruin, for they have
been called to a higher purpose and given the talents for protecting and
perfecting, not for looting and polluting.
And even today, after all that we have seen, there are still those doyens of
deceit who sling this foul package of lies and slogans, and those simple
souls and willing wantons who repeat it, endlessly as a substitute for
thought, as though it was some bastion of purity and good living. What
a mockery of virtue!
If only we get rid of all government, then corruption will cease and markets
will be free to flourish in their natural virtue. How can any adult who has
inevitably encountered the darker parts of this fallen world believe this
load of fantastically romantic rubbish? And yet they sometimes do, and
the gullible listen.
This is so contrary to all history and human experience as to be laughable,
if it were not for the many that have fallen for their slogans and illusions
and willfully sell their souls to it, and make themselves and the innocent
its victims.
Yes of course there is the corruption of big money in politics. One has only
to look at our current election process to see where it has taken us.
And it must be among the first of our priorities in order of reform.
But merely to address that and to ignore all the rest is to strike at the
more visible manifestations of our decline, and to ignore the root of it.
And it will take determined action to change the effects of years of
the marketing of disinformation and the tradecraft of corruption, with the
abandonment of common sense and decency and the blessings of the god of the
market. The negative emotions of hate and fear are a powerful drug, and
this is the basis of the appeals of the worst. It will not die off of
its own.
While there is still a dollar to steal they will not stop. They have no
shame, and they want it all.
The Kochtopus Strikes Out at The Big Short Movie
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
January 4, 2016
Call them astroturf organizations or neoliberal think tanks or corporate
front groups – it all adds up to the same thing: big corporate bucks are
engaged in a vicious propaganda war to recast the 2008 financial crash and
its depression-like aftermath as the product of big government meddling
rather than corporate lobbyists strong-arming deregulation of banking and
Wall Street.
The corporate cartel simply cannot allow mandates for tough new regulations
to gain footing in Washington, otherwise the multi-decade work of the
Kochtopus goes poof. (Kochtopus is short-hand for the political and front
group money machine run by billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch.)
The Koctopus now has its knickers in a twist over the release of the movie,
The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay and based on the bestselling book by
Michael Lewis, a former Wall Street insider...
The Kochtopus is further inflamed by Lewis showing up on 60 Minutes on March
30 of 2014 to promote his latest Wall Street expose, Flash Boys, revealing
how hedge funds, stock exchanges and investment banks across Wall Street are
rigging the U.S. stock market. None of this fits neatly with the Kochtopus
mantra that free markets are perfectly able to police themselves if big
government will just get out of the way...
Read the entire article at Wall Street On Parade here.