Quote from Michael Hudson:
We live in a capitalistic society, and much of the world does too. If you’re going to have capitalism, then you’ve got to have capital, and you’ve got to have organizations like Goldman Sachs that are in business to take capital from savers, people who have the capital and want a return on that money, to the people who need it all around the world, and that’s what they should be doing as opposed to gambling with our money but you need to have that functioning properly for capitalism to exist.
Ok, I don’t know about you, but every investment account I’ve ever looked at says “may lose value”. Nowhere is it guaranteed that our investments will make money, thus they are a gamble. I’m not sure if Mr. Hudson was just talking to fast, or didn’t quite articulate his point very well, but it sounded an awful lot to me like he was advocating more regulation on where investment firms can put our money. Now, the context of this quote is a discussion surrounding the occupy wall street movement on Democracy Now podcast(about 52 minutes in is where this quote is), so I’ll let you draw your conclusions. I don’t think there is ever going to be an answer to this that makes everyone happy, when you invest in wall street, you are taking a risk, the size of the risk depends on what you invest in. If you let other people invest your money for you, you are still taking a risk, they aren’t guaranteeing that they are going to make money for you. In this case, as in all others where things exchange hands, buyer beware. You had better do your homework on who you are investing your?money with, as I shouldn’t be bailing you out if you don’t (nor vice versa). I don’t think there can be any other answer, look at what’s happening when they try to regulate the investment industry. People think that because it’s being regulated, they don’t have to do their due diligence selecting an investment firm, then you get what we have now, a lot of people p-o’d because they got the wool pulled over their eyes and fleeced. So is more regulation the answer? Why would it be? That’s what happens whenever government starts sticking its nose in places it doesn’t belong. “Oh, our rules made things worse? Well, here, have some more rules to make it better.” Then everyone’s resources are spent trying to follow the governments inane rules instead of whatever they should be doing (look at Sarb-Ox).
In further reading on Mr. Hudson’s website:
What is easiest for most people to accept is the idea of restoring the way the economy used to be more in balance ? back when people earned income by being productive rather than getting rich by transferring other peoples savings and public giveaways into their own pockets.
Gee, hello? Does the get rich scheme work for the people that buy into it? No, only for the people selling it!
But what I sensed in New York was anger not only at this economic problem, but the fact that the political system is broken. There is no one to vote for as an alternative to pro-bank
No kidding, really? Like we haven’t noticed there isn’t a thin dime’s difference between the big two parties? But we’re a two party system, so nobody from outside of those two has a snowballs chance. That and people just don’t want to vote for someone that would make them take responsibility for their own lives. Cradle to grave baby, cradle to grave.
Suppose you were going to design a society from scratch. Would you create what we have now? Or would you start, for instance, by reforming the most egregious distortions of campaign finance? As matters stand, Goldman Sachs has been able to buy the right to name who is going to be Treasury Secretary. They selected Geithner, who gave them $29 billion from A.I.G. just before he was appointed. It’s like that all down the line in both parties. Every Democratic congressional committee chairman has to pay to the Party a $150,000 to buy the chairmanship. This means that the campaign donors get to determine who gets committee chairmanships. This is oligarchy, not democracy. So the system is geared to favor whoever can grab the most money. Wall Street does it by financial siphoning and asset stripping. Politicians do it by getting money from the beneficiaries ? the 1%
On these points I pretty much agree with Mr. Hudson, the government is waaay to geared toward grabbing and holding on to as much power (/money) as it can. We need to get away from that, but how do you do that when the people you put in office are now part of the system you are trying to defeat? One first step might be term limits on every federally elected or appointed member (including judges, why in hell are they appointed for life, maybe that made sense when they had maybe 10 years of life left after getting judgeship, but no one needs to or should be sitting on the judiciary for 40 years).
Once people realize that they’re being screwed, that’s a pre-revolutionary situation. It’s a situation where they can get a lot of sympathy and support, precisely by not doing what The New York Times and the other papers say they should do: come up with some neat solutions. They don’t have to propose a solution because right now there isn’t one without changing the system with many, many changes. So many that it’s like a new Constitution (or how about the old one). Politics as well as the economy need to be restructured. What’s developing now is how to think about the economic and political problems that are bothering people. It is not radical to realize that the economy isn’t working. That is the first stage to realizing that a real alternative is needed. We’ve been under a radical right-wing attack and need to respond in kind. The next half-year probably will be spent trying to spell out what the best structure would be.
I absolutely agree here, the economy and politics are totally screwed. It would take an army to list all the things that have added up to get us here, and one thing’s for sure, it’s not going to be easy to get out, IMO it is going to take a revolution. Politically we have a situation where people have realized they can vote themselves largesse, so they’re going to vote for the person that promises to give them the most stuff. The people that want to do for themselves are now screwed, as all their stuff is taken to give to those who are “less fortunate” (meaning they don’t want to get off their asses). So now they don’t want to work. Where does any production come from now? Our economy is based on a fiat currency with no intrinsic value, and the government is printing money like a kid with a new toy. Look at prices of gold, silver, platinum, etc. Those don’t really change value, the dollar does. Ok, I think that’s enough rambling and ranting for one post, back to Left4Dead2.