How Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts, Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy
September 1, 2015
How Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts, Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy
by Pam Martens
The riveting writer, Michael Hudson, has read our collective minds and the simmering anger in our hearts. Millions of American have long suspected that their inability to get financially ahead is an intentional construct of Wall Streets central planners. Now Hudson, in an elegant but lethal indictment of the system, confirms that your ongoing struggle to make ends meet is not a reflection of your lack of talent or drive but the only possible outcome of having a blood-sucking financial leech affixed to your body, your retirement plan, and your economic future.
In his new book, Killing the Host, Hudson hones an exquisitely gripping journey from Wall Streets original role as capital allocator to its present-day parasitism that has replaced U.S. capitalism as an entrenched, politically-enforced economic model across America. This book is a must-read for anyone hoping to escape the most corrupt era in American history with a shirt still on his parasite-riddled back.
Hudson writes from his most powerful perch in chapters describing how these financial parasites have tricked our society into accepting them as a normal, productive part of our economy. (Since we write about these thousands of diabolical tricks four days a week at Wall Street On Parade, poignant examples came springing to mind with every turn of the page in Killing the Host. From the well-placed articles in the Wall Street Journal to a front groups pleas for more Wall Street handouts in a New York Times OpEd, to the dirty backroom manner in which corporate speech was placed on a par with human speech in the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, to Wall Streets private justice system and the Koch brothers multi-million dollar machinations to instill Ayn Rands brand of greed is good in university economic departments across America America has become a finely tuned kleptocracy with a sprawling, sophisticated public relations base.
How else to explain, other than kleptocracy, the fact that Wall Streets richest mega banks collect the life insurance proceeds and tax benefits on the untimely deaths of their workers all codified into law by the U.S. Congress making death a profit center on Wall Street. Or, as Frontline revealed, that two-thirds of your 401(k) plan over a working lifetime is likely to be lost to financial fees.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/01/how-wall-street-parasites-have-devoured-their-hosts-your-retirement-plan-and-the-u-s-economy/
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)
and share it with my sister, who after starting out in life with better math skills than I, does not get it. She thinks down markets just happen and "it comes back". At this point, I find myself wanting to scream.