http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29039.htm
A COMMENT BY NORMAN HARMAN TO THIS ARTICLE:
It's not China! It's globalization!
You write, "No economic theory can explain this trend . . ." Of course there is and it's called Free Market Fundamentalism (a.k.a., Friedmanism). This always happens when we turn our economy over to a bunch of shortsighted morons obsessed with ever-increasing profits and no restrictions or oversight.
During the 80s the Reagan idiots de-regulated the corporations and freed them up to take their capital (and their entire industries as well) overseas in search of cheaper labor and lax environmental regulations. It worked brilliantly; virtually the whole of the American manufacturing sector of the economy picked up and moved to Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Indonesia and other parts of South East Asia. And kept moving, eventually ending up in China by the early 90s. Corporate profits soared, even as the majority of populations throughout the 3rd world were plunged into poverty.
The huge hole left in the American economy was "filled" by the service industries and the financial "industry" (a more apt term would be "scammers'). Clinton and his gang of economic vampires rushed to de-regulate (and protect from scrutiny) those financial "masters of the universe" who quickly created the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history: Mortgaged-backed Securities (which in reality were nothing more than un-payable, bad loans who's intrinsic value was $0 to $negative).
All the "smart guys" - the bankers and investment-firm managers - lapped this worthless shit up like it was mothers milk and they were starving infants. Why? Because there were no regulators looking over their shoulders to say, "no way, that's worthless garbage and you have no right to risk investors' money and the overall economy so recklessly" (actually there were still a few regulators around but they had long since been co-opted by the corporate and political classes into nothing more than fancy-titled lapdogs). Everybody at or near the top of the American economy were in on the game; the regulators, the government (Congress[both parties], the banks, corporate management, the media. All of them hyped the "new economy" and told the rest of us (the "lower" 98%) this was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And they fucked it up so badly they can't figure out how to fix it.
In America they ran to a government more than eager to transfer taxpayers money into their bottomless pockets but they ran into a problem there too. After more than 30 years of cramming the free market garbage down our throats ("government bad, private enterprise good") and telling us of the evils of deficit spending, they had built-up quite a constituency for their crackpot ideas and created a political climate and (with all of that free-flowing corporate cash) a political class unable to do a goddamned thing about the problem.
And now they're running scared and shitting their pants. I'm inclined to just say "fuck-em" but, unfortunately, it's the "other 98%," us, who's going to be left to pay the piper and carry the brunt of the hard times to come. So we're going to have to figure out how to once again elect governments who are willing to wrap their regulatory hands around all those corporate throats and squeeze the thieving bastards until they bleed. And then keep them under control from now on.
How we're going to do that is . . . well, that's the question of the age, isn't it? I think a good start would be to take a close look at all candidates in the next primary round of elections and VOTE AGAINST THE MONEY! At least that's a start.
P.S. China didn't create this shitty mess, they're merely the lucky beneficiaries of a problem created by the American-driven corporate globalization/free market/free trade scheme developed in the late 70s and nurtured through its infancy by a succession of American presidents and Congresses and media and supported by them right up to the present. In fact, you might say corporate America created China.
No comments:
Post a Comment