The Deadly Spiral of Corporate Crime and the Rise of Government By Organized Money

"Last year Simon & Schuster released The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by the Pulitizer Prize winning journalist at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger. If you read nothing else this summer, you should read this book followed by Nomi Prins’ Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World.

The two books provide Americans with a comprehensive understanding of how the Justice Department, Federal regulators, a growing number of Federal judges and the central bank of the United States known as the Federal Reserve have been corrupted by corporate influence. To a large degree, they now serve their corporate masters, not the American people."

Pam and Russ Martens, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, “The Chickenshit Club,” and Spiraling Corporate Crime


"How worried should the government be if a punishment causes a company to go out of business? Should regulators worry about the cashiering of innocent employees? What about customers, suppliers, or competitors? Should they fret about financial crises? From this rather innocuous mention, the little notion of collateral consequences would blossom into the great strangling vine that came to be known after the financial crisis of 2008 by its shorthand: “too big to jail.” Prosecutors and regulators were crippled by the idea that the government could not criminally sanction some companies—particularly giant banks—for fear that they would collapse, causing serious problems for financial markets or the economy.

Today’s Department of Justice has lost the will and indeed the ability to go after the highest-ranking corporate wrongdoers.”

Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club


"Central banks and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank are overstepping the boundaries of their mandates by using the flow of money to control global markets and dictate economic policy both at the domestic and global level. These public institutions have become so dependent on funding from private banking and the revolving door between the two worlds is so smooth that public and private banks are effectively working toward the same goals."

Nomi Prins, How Central Banks Rigged the World

Fear of collateral damage that harms innocent people and the economy is just the cover story and a means to provide a rationale for those who are reluctant to participate in this terrible erosion of justice and the violation of oaths.

The reason why corporate crimes are not adequately prosecuted, the reason why the powerful can break the law with near impunity, the reason why the regulators turn a blind eye to increasingly egregious violations of the public trust, is the oldest reason in the world— the corrupting power of Big Money on people in positions of public trust.

And the greatest enabler is the us vs them, red vs blue partisan politics driving by richly funded propaganda that drives people to vote with their emotions rather than to think for themselves.   This has always existed, but now it is predominant.  Opioids are not the only addiction that people turn to in their frustration and despair.   People become addicted to propaganda, and the emotions it stimulates to stop the pain of thinking.

It is time to wake up, and stop rewarding those who are getting rich and powerful by manipulating you.  It is time to stop wallowing in media outlets and internet sites that are just propaganda platforms for demagogues and the powerful few.

People go mad in herds, but come back to their senses one at a time.  It is time to wake up and start thinking for yourself again.

The power, at least for now, is in our refusal.

 Shun them.   Refuse to patronize or serve them.  Stop the flow of money that feeds them,  and the corruption will die of itself.

"For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Second New Deal, 31 October 1936

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Coming to a Market Near You

This is going to get so ugly before it's finished.

Mayhem.

I think it will likely crescendo before the next Presidential election.  Or when Trump leaves office, whichever is sooner.

Major stock dislocations are very tough to predict, and almost impossible to time.  It is easy to predict an accident when you see someone driving drunk nearly every day in a car that is not maintained.

But timing it, well, that's the issue for most, and a preoccupation for just about every amateur and the pundits that make their living selling them the 'inside scoop.'  If they really knew, they wouldn't sell that kind of information.

Traders make up for this kind of uncertainty with their reflexes, and if they are good, with an aversion to betting their egos rather than their wallets.

We may even see a Goldfight at the OK Corral before then, if these paper pushers keep it up too long.

Have a pleasant evening.

No Sustainable Recovery - US Household Income and Income Inequality - The Men Who Saved Sold the World

“In progressive societies the concentration [of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”

Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History


"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that come after us have the power.

There is the word. It is the king of words— Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel


Tsar Nicholas II: I know what will make them happy. They're children, and they need a Tsar! They need tradition. Not this! They're the victims of agitators. A Duma would make them bewildered and discontented. And don't tell me about London and Berlin. God save us from the mess they're in!

Count Witte: I see. So they talk, pray, march, plead, petition and what do they get? Cossacks, prison, flogging, police, spies, and now, after today, they will be shot.   Is this God's will?   Are these His methods?   Make war on your own people?   How long do you think they're going to stand there and let you shoot them?   YOU ask ME who's responsible?  YOU ask?

The US is indicated in red.   It is surprisingly low in disposable household income and rather high in income inequality.

It is not two much of a stretch to say that the US is now divided into two nations, not entirely separate but increasingly unequal.

Not only will there be no sustainable recovery until more of the income is given to the labor of production and the locus of consumption, but the badly strained social fabric may not hold together.

Financialization and Healthcare, which includes Big Pharma, have been taking an increasing share of the profits from the real economy from already historic highs.

And they do so with the effect of distributing the bulk of their profits to the one percent through ownership and dividends.

Real household net disposable income is defined as the sum of household final consumption expenditure and savings, minus the change in net equity of households in pension funds. This indicator also corresponds to the sum of wages and salaries, mixed income, net property income, net current transfers and social benefits other than social transfers in kind, less taxes on income and wealth and social security contributions paid by employees, the self-employed and the unemployed. Household gross adjusted disposable income additionally reallocates "income" from government and non-profit institutions serving households (NPISHs) to households to reflect social transfers in kind.

Income is defined as household disposable income in a particular year. It consists of earnings, self-employment and capital income and public cash transfers; income taxes and social security contributions paid by households are deducted. The income of the household is attributed to each of its members, with an adjustment to reflect differences in needs for households of different sizes.

Income inequality among individuals is measured here by five indicators. The Gini coefficient is based on the comparison of cumulative proportions of the population against cumulative proportions of income they receive, and it ranges between 0 in the case of perfect equality and 1 in the case of perfect inequality. S80/S20 is the ratio of the average income of the 20% richest to the 20% poorest; P90/P10 is the ratio of the upper bound value of the ninth decile (i.e. the 10% of people with highest income) to that of the first decile; P90/P50 of the upper bound value of the ninth decile to the median income; and P50/P10 of median income to the upper bound value of the first decile. The Palma ratio is the share of all income received by the 10% people with highest disposable income divided by the share of all income received by the 40% people with the lowest disposable income.

US Tax Receipts By Category - God Bless the Child

The notion that the corporations are going to use their windfalls for productive expansion and higher wages for workers is utter fantasy.

They have not done so for over twenty years, and they are hardly urged to change that, and certainly not by anything in this latest change in tax policy.  Its purpose is to put more money in the pockets of the powerful and fortunate, pure and simple.

Increased taxes on consumption and consumables, including imports and sales taxes, are generally regressive taxes, falling most heavily as a percentage of income on the broader public.

The promises of great growth, investment, and trickle down prosperity are the same old canards and misdirection, put forward by the moneyed interests' flim flam men and their carnies.

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