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The failure of Obama's
Justice Department to engage in any
systemic investigations and indictments
of a thoroughly rotten
and corrupt financial
system that has laid waste
to the real economy is an
almost perfect example of the credibility
trap.
A credibility trap
is a situation in which
the regulatory, political
and/or the informational functions
of a society have been thoroughly taken in by a corrupting
influence and a fraud, so
that one cannot address the situation without implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure and the status
quo who at least tolerated it, if not profited directly from it, and most likely continue to do so. They become
susceptible to various forms
of blackmail. And so a failed policy
can become almost self-sustaining long after it is
seen to have failed, and even become counterproductive,
because admitting failure is not an option for those holding power.
Another example
is the blatant fraud, and principles not of productivity but of prey, that prevail on the financial asset exchanges and
the monetary system, the stealing
of customer funds, and
the manipulation of commodity markets
such as silver. And it expresses itself in the frivilous coarseness of
spectacle, and careless brutality
of decline.
"Happy Hunger Games.
And may the odds be ever in your
favor."
Normally a two
party system or a balance of powers
would correct such a
situation, but if the fraud is
pervasive and enduring enough, those remedies can lose their effectiveness
since the fraud binds even seemingly
diverse elements in its grasp. And therein lies the trap.
There is a general loss of honor, a disparagement of moral
principles, the common welfare, and a sense of
'service.' People in power are creatures of the
system, 'getting their
ticket punched' in Washington, as resume builder on their way to an even more lucrative position back in the corrupt system where they can leverage
their connections and knowledge
of the system to further undermine
the rule of law. Their guiding principles are self-referential
greed and power.
After one of the most outrageous periods of widespread fraud in a major developed country, prosecutions
for fraud are at twenty year lows.
Who expected this outcome from an election in which the theme was change and reform?
Here is a recent article, Why Can't Obama Bring Wall St to Justice, asking
the broader question inferred
by this video interview. Why? And the answer is not to be found in making excuses and allowing him to hide behind the incompetency or disengagement defense so popular
in American management circles.
And if you think that voting for the other guy in this case, the emotinally engaging but fatally flawed red v. blue paradigm, is going to provide
a cure you are sadly mistaken. The other guy in this case is the poster child for most of the problems that face a nation under siege by a financial elite engaged in an economic, ideological, and political coup
d'etat.
As Glenn Greenwald recently
put it:
"You can often,
and I would say more often than not, in leading opinion-making elite circles, find an expressed renouncement or repudiation of that principle [of the rule of law]...All of these acts entail
very aggressive and
explicit arguments that the most
powerful political and financial elites in our society should not be, and are not, subject to the
rule of law because it is
too disruptive, it is too divisive,
it is more important that we should
look forward, that we find ways
to avoid repeating the problem...the rule of law is not that
important of a value any longer...
The law is no respecter
of persons, but the law is also a
respecter of reality, meaning if it is too
disruptive or divisive that
it is actually
in our common good, not
the elite criminals, but
in our common good, to
exempt the most powerful from the consequences of their criminal acts, and that has become the template used in each of these instances."
And thanks to the apathy
of the people and the gullibility of the badly used, self-proclaimed 'patriots' they are winning.
“The
disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our
moral sentiments.”
Adam Smith
Such unsustainable
social arrangements are backed by force and fraud. And as the fraud loses its power over time,
force must increase, until
there is an end in genuine reform, or evenutal self-destruction.
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