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.
