News & Articles

In 1987, a Wall Street investment banker gave some sage advice to a young stockbroker under his supervision: “The richest One Percent of this country owns half of our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest, interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip... Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you are part of it. You’ve got the killer instinct. Stick around pal, I’ve got a lot to teach you.”
Later the same banker addressed stockholders at an annual meeting of a paper company: “America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. In the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company! Management owns less than three percent of the stock! Stockholders, you own the company. The stockholders are being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes.”
   After reading these summations of Wall Street, one recognizes that not much has changed in the 27 years since Michael Douglas, playing the role of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street,” spoke these words in his “Greed is good” speech. A massive recession has not cured the economic dogma of today that business is “good” and must be exclusively based on profit. These words by Gekko are still in vogue today: “Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit... Greed is good.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt On Democracy And The Role Of Business

In 1932, over a half-century before Gekko’s speech, FDR took on capitalism and big business: “No business which depends for existence by paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. Big business and finance are unanimous in their hatred of me—and I welcome their hatred. The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism—ownership of a government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
   Perhaps the best symbol to illustrate that power and profit are now on their dual path to destroying democratic governments around the world is the 1,004-foot “Billionaire’s Haven” being built in downtown Manhattan. It even looks like a gigantic finger of fate directed at the little people, the 99 Percent who actually make the world work. Nine full-floor apartments on the top of the building have sold for between $90 million and $100 million. Each apartment is over 11,000 square feet. Two duplexes have sold for more than $90 million each. The first five floors of One57 make up an elite hotel for the One Percent. The apartments between the hotel and the top nine full-floor residences sell for $40 million to $50 million. Of the total of 92 apartments in the building, fewer than 40 remain to be sold. Just think. Ninety-two psychopathic and sociopathic billionaires living in the same building. How many shrinks is it going to take to maintain a modicum of togetherness in the building? The buyers are American, Russian, Chinese, Canadian, British, and Nigerian billionaires so far. What happens when the “Condo Committee” meets to discuss security, garbage pickup, repairs, modifications, and noise by fellow billionaire owners? Fascinating stuff.

When Do Billionaires Turn To Socialism For Profits?

Pope Francis says capitalism is “savage.” Others blame “cutthroat” capitalism practiced by Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers for huge suicide rate increases of up to 49 percent among boomers since the Great Recession of 2008. Even Mitt Romney believes “stuff” happens when eight million jobs are lost in a few months. In her book “The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” Naomi Klein claims that the average U.S. family subsidizes each One Percent family with a trickle-up $6,000. It’s a fairly accurate supposition.
   Strange bedfellow Art Brooks, president of the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute, is criticizing the “materialistic” capitalism of the Republican Party. Brooks says capitalism must be moral and regulated in order to help all people make a fruitful enterprise of their life. He says every person must experience the joy of achievement through productive work. Brooks is so concerned about the unregulated, gouging capitalism supported by his big donors that he has written a magazine piece called “Be Open-Handed Toward Your Brothers.” Not exactly something the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist are known for.

Is Jerry Jones Of The Dallas Cowboys A Follower Of Karl Marx?

What is really ironically funny about the many “savage” billionaires who own National Football League franchises (only the Green Bay Packers franchise is owned by thousands of Green Bay pissants!) is that they don’t practice savage, cutthroat, disaster capitalism in making their big football bucks. They incorporate all of the Karl Marx and Scandinavian socialistic practices to share the extreme wealth. The owners have instituted revenue-sharing, which effectively transfers wealth from rich teams to poor teams. They all agree to have salary caps to limit spending. The player draft system ensures that the teams with the poorest records can sign contracts with the best college players of the year so they can be more competitive the next year. That’s really socialism at its finest!
   The owners even agree to negotiate pensions, life and health insurance, workers compensation, and injury protection with the players’ union. They have agreed to set aside $765 million to compensate players with dementia and brain trauma—except a federal judge said it wasn’t enough. Even TV profits are split equally among all teams regardless of the size of their respective TV markets. Isn’t that all just good old Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels socialism? To the billionaire owners, sometimes the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Simply amazing socialist economics.

Marx Admired Capitalism For its Ability To Mass Profits And Create Wealth

Marx died in 1883 still believing that capitalism is simply one stage to get to the final economic stage: socialism. He gave credit to capitalism for developing the early middle classes that transformed the world’s political and economic systems. The wealth of the middle class destroyed aristocracies, freed slaves around the world to some extent, promoted feminism and female job creation through the women’s vote, supported the creation of an artistic culture emphasizing art and music, and, in a sense, created the foundations of a global community through trade.
   But on the liabilities side of the economic ledger, Marx understood that capitalism was “savagely” exploitive because of human nature. “Greed is good” still motivates much of humanity. That’s why socialism, not capitalism, had to be the last step in the growth of human culture. Marx thought that socialism was all about leisure, not work. He wrote that socialism would make it possible for men and women to be free from some work and “all forms of degrading toil.” He recognized that capitalism fostered famines (like the Irish potato famine and the various African famines) and world wars.
   Marx also agreed that socialism could work only in relatively “well-off” societies. He realized that poor socialist countries would remain poor. Backward nations cannot build socialism because they are isolated and often destitute. This is why so many poor countries in Africa and Asia are led by despotic dictators instead of socialists. Marx determined that the hunt for the Almighty Dollar and English Pound would still govern the politics in both developed and undeveloped countries, resulting in wars, child labor, prison labor, and the stinking, rotten slums surrounding many of the largest cities in the world.

A $2 million Bonus For A Rookie Baseball Pitcher, $63 A day For Sub Teachers

Marx knew that the savage drive for profits would eventually lead corporations to produce more and more goods while screwing workers until they could no longer buy the stuff they made. He really did not want to write about “economic crap,” but he also predicted 150 years ago that “fictitious capital” like credit default swaps, hedge funds, derivatives, sub-prime mortgages, and other economic crap created by psychotic Wall Streeters would eventually crash capitalism. The huge chasm between the rich and the destroyed middle class makes stock market and real estate crashes very noisy.
   The pissants of the world are now becoming convinced they have to sharpen their pitchforks. A letter to the Star Tribune from Robert Idso of St. Peter really describes the world situation in three sentences: “There was an inspiring story on the Sports page about Alex Meyer, the young pitcher picked up by the Twins who works as a substitute teacher during the off-season. He signed for a bonus of $2 million, yet he teaches for $63 a day in his hometown in Indiana. I don’t know what is more shocking: $2 million for a rookie baseball player, or $63 a day for a teaching job that requires a college education.”
   Let’s remember a simple detail about who is paying for what. A billionaire is paying for the baseball pitcher and local pissants are paying for the teacher. This raises “savage” capitalism to a new height—or depth. Is an untested rookie pitcher worth more than a good teacher? Is this a moral crisis? When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $17 billion, was each of the 55 WhatsApp employees worth $345 million when the average starting teacher in the U.S. is paid about $30,000, with some as low as $16,000? What are the priorities of the One Percent and 99 Percent in this country and in the world?

Why Is Ukraine The latest Country To Explode?

The simple fact is that Ukrainians are fighting and dying in Kiev and other cities because the Ukrainian One Percent virtually stole $37 billion out of the country’s resources. Ukraine is an absolute economic basket case, losing almost ten percent of its population to other countries in the region who are smaller basket cases. President Viktor Yanukovych, who is now hiding in Russia, is accused of having $13 billion in Swiss banks, and left evidence in his six garish estates, private golf course, personal zoo, and other properties for which he has stolen other billions to support. Ukraine is such a mess that I see absolutely no reason for us to get deeply involved. Perhaps we can help the European Union resolve some issues with Putin, but we should stop listening to Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham pontificate about President Barack Obama being “feckless and weak.” Every time McCain opens his mouth, he proves he ranked 894th out of 899 in his Naval Academy graduating class. Lindsey Graham has a South Carolina Tea Party Neanderthal running against him, so he is scared s--tless of becoming an un-senator.
   With our Congress auctioned off in the Washington slave market by a very poor class of immoral billionaires, we have little idea of how our democracy will fare in WW III between the rich and the poor. If our politicians had to wear the badges and patches of their owners, they would look like NASCAR drivers and their cars at the starting line. I just don’t know what to think when the editorial board of the Republican Fargo Forum states, “Defenders of the ‘free market’ preach that the apartment rent in Williston ‘is just the way it is.’ But a free market unleashes forces that are amoral... Those players, however, cannot excuse the damage they may cause. They cannot justify cowering behind the amorality of the market.” Heavens to Betsy!! Is the Forum admitting capitalism may be “savage, cutthroat, and gouging”?