Capitalism and the Rope.

[kentuck]

There is an old saying that a capitalist will sell the rope to hang himself.

In the late 1990's, Bill Clinton, Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin, and most of the Republican Party gave capitalism that rope. When they repealed the Glass-Steagal Act and permitted banks to gamble with derivatives and any exotic instrument they could imagine, the gallows were set.

Now, we read how Greece, Portugal, and Spain have become victims in the worldwide crisis. It is not separate from the shenanigans perpetrated by the big bankers on Wall Street. As Paul Krugman noted in his NYTimes article today: "Then came the global financial crisis. Those inflows of capital dried up; revenues plunged and deficits soared; and membership in the euro, which had encouraged markets to love the crisis countries not wisely but too well, turned into a trap.

What’s the nature of the trap? During the years of easy money, wages and prices in the crisis countries rose much faster than in the rest of Europe. Now that the money is no longer rolling in, those countries need to get costs back in line."

Everybody is looking for a bailout, including countries like Greece.

Capitalism has taken one step too far. Will it be able to turn back? Will the politicians be able to save it? They have bitten the apple of easy money. Invisible money created out of thin air. Everybody can be a millionaire. But can they?

If the Congress cannot separate these "derivatives" from normal banking practices, without the guarantee from taxpayers, then we will see the present situation worsen. The Congress will only be wallpapering over the problem. The major difficulty is that the capitalists on Wall Street want to sell more ropes. And they are bribing the politicians to let them continue.

Can capitalism survive? That is a legitimate question as far as the present capitalist system is concerned. Before they go, they will suck the last ounce of blood from the American people. Bet on it.

[Beer Snob-50]

1. i think this all shows that capitalism in its purist form is bad

by its very nature, it's goal is to make lots of money. and if you can screw people and make the money good for you. and if you can do it, the rest of the moneyhunger capitalist will do the same thing.

that is why the government needs to intervene.

[blindpig]

4. There is no other kind

Dress it up how you want, it always comes to this.

[SharonAnn]

10. "The problem with socialism is socialism. The problem with capitalism is capitalists themselves."

Or something like that.

The point is that capitalism must be regulated.

A quote from the recent Time article, "The Case Against Goldman Sachs", "If running the economy off a cliff make you money, you will do it. And you will do it every day of the week." Philipp Meyer, former trader.

Just sayin'.

[fasttense]

2. We no longer have capitalism.

We have a Corporate Welfare Fraud economy. When the banksters were bailed out that ended Capitalism because Capitalism does not involve free handouts by the government. When banksters were allowed to mark imaginary numbers on their accounting sheets, no longer was anything being sold, it just became one giant scam.

Capitalism is DEAD, long live Corporate Welfare Fraud.

[JackRiddler]

6. Actually, this is the capitalism we have always had.

The New Deal era for a time served to obscure the realities of capitalist political economy. The "free market" never existed. The reality has always been about the freedom of the big fish to enlist the state in its effort to eat, banish and exterminate little fish.

No country developed industrial society without protectionism and subsidy. All capitalist societies sooner or later fail without massive government intervention to restore the supposedly natural operation of the free market. The New Deal as FDR said saved capitalism from the capitalists.

There must be one, but can you name a major industry that developed without government aid? Real-existing capitalism - aptly named because it is the rule of capital - has always been about socializing costs (or externalizing costs) and privatizing gains.

[zeemike]

9. you know what came to mind when I read your post?

A question.
What one thing is at the bottom of all of this?
and my answer was money...take away the money from this and it ceases to be a problem.

Now can you imagine a world without money?...would it seem crazy to say that I can?

[blindpig]

11. money, money...

That which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?

If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as the real binding agent – the <...> chemical power of society.

SNIP

If I have no money for travel, I have no need – that is, no real and realisable need – to travel. If I have the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study – that is, no effective, no true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it. Money as the external, universal medium and faculty (not springing from man as man or from human society as society) for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections and tormenting chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras – essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual – into real powers and faculties. In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general distorting of individualities which turns them into their opposite and confers contradictory attributes upon their attributes.

Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm

[blindpig]

3. There will be no real help from Congress,

just platitudes and cheap facades. It can do nothing else because it is in total thrall to capital and things cannot be any other way in a capitalist system.

Capital does not just want it this way, it needs it to be this way, the financialization of the economy is the only way they can get the profits they require for their shareholders.

Marx predicted this, that quote was from Lenin.

[kentuck]

5. I think we may have reached that point.

Maybe we need to read Marx again??

[blindpig]

8. There's been some discussion lately

though it is largely reviled in these quarters. Pm me if you are interested.

[zeemike]

7. they have no intent for capitalism to survive.

And there has never ben an ism that has survived that I know of.
And that is because these ism's become a mater of faith and seeing that the sociopath sees a clear path to the top, because he knows that he can make most people believe that he is the best one of them ever. And when the time is right take that power form the faithful.

I think the best example of this is the communist revolution in Russia...Trotksy was the true believer in the cause of the mass of Russian people...and communism was his true belief.
But Stalin made every one think that he was even more committed to the cause than anyone and eventually seized power.

But in this ism of capital the path to power and control is money and greed is the motivator and the natural progression of this is an oligarchy or a feudalism state....where the few rule as kings.

[kctim]

12. Who is

the biggest employer in those countries?

[Lilith Velkor]

13. !

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Lenin

And, then brag about the killing they made.

[William Z. Foster]

15. of course it can't survive

Capitalism can't survive, any more than a fire can survive. Eventually a fire consumes all available fuel and goes out. The only question is this - will we survive?

[Duer 157099]

16. That saying doesn't apply anymore

If it did, then the reckless capitalists would all be dead, but they're not, they're saved by the GOVERNMENT. That's socialism for the corporations.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. If this were capitalism, sure you'd have a point

but here are some of the things that Adam Smith postulated in the Wealth of Nations...

1.- Monopolies are bad and they stifle the economy

2.- Living Wages are necessary for the nation to prosper.

3.- Labor (wage earners in his parlance) need to be able to organize to get better wages, which was illegal at the time, and in some places still is illegal.

4.- Progressive taxation is necessary for the wealth of the nation.

Oh and that famous invisible hand was mentioned ONCE with a LOT of caveats.

I have said it many a times... what we call Capitalism is not... and we need to be careful with the language.

Now if you said, Fascism... you'd have no argument from me, even if this is something new... what I like to call CONSUMERISM.

<------- slugging through the Wealth, next is his theory on Morals and of course a little Riardo on the Theory of Taxation, and of course Good ol' Karl Marx... Suffice it to say, this is not capitalism... whatsoever. That said... this will not survive, but hey, I am willing to go back to the future and adopt Classical Economics, which includes quite a bit of... regulations.