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Non-Tech : Derivatives: Darth Vader's Revenge -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Worswick who wrote (1962)	10/4/2011 1:45:37 PM
From: axial	1 Recommendation Respond to of 2794

Hi Clarke - It was 2008 when the posted hope was that ordinary people would realize what's been done to them, and take to the streets as they did in the 30's. The warning was "social unrest". Three years later, it's finally happening. Analysis of who or what is at fault is a chicken-and-egg problem. Many confuse effect with cause. Bernanke is not the problem, nor was Greenspan. The Fed wasn't the problem, nor was Greece. The problem isn't Obama, or Clinton, or Bush or Reagan, Blair or Thatcher. It's the ideation that they all blindly followed, and still do: neoliberal economics. It started in the UK during the 70's, was propagated globally by dominant US financial academia, and is drawing to its inevitable conclusion now. To be sure, many economies were laboring under post-war top-down economic policy: change was needed. But what eventuated went way past constructive change. In the guise of economic policy and deregulation, the old evils rose again. They bought political influence, neutralized regulators and sold financial "innovation" with a generous burden of debt. They called it economics, but it was ideology. Over decades ordinary people watched, not understanding, as their leaders signed away their future to a financial sector that was buying the politicians they trusted. The debts piled up. The gap between rich and poor got wider and deeper. Criminal conduct multiplied across the world: huge corporations bilked the public and their own investors for billions. Pension funds were bled dry and abandoned. Unions were attacked. Jobs were exported; everywhere and every day, ordinary people were exposed to the risks of labor arbitrage. Industrial output declined, even as the economically unproductive financial sector became a larger portion of GDP. And every time the financial sector got it wrong bought politicians rode to the rescue with taxpayer money -- and more debt. So people blame Greenspan, they blame Obama, they blame Bernanke. They blame Wall Street. It's right, but it's wrong. Because these oft-named players are puppets to a greater force: belief. Economic theory and ideology have driven the world to the brink of the abyss. Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the players are helpless to stop what they started. The old enemies, the ones we thought were defeated by regulation, prudence and ethical conduct, are risen again. Ordinary people have been robbed. They're taking to the streets. What's surprising? That it took them so long to begin. Jim