whether or not roberts is right, i just wish the house of cards would go ahead and collapse...
from counterpunch...
The enormous cost of the financial crisis has one single
source–financial deregulation. Financial deregulation is likely to
prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization. While we
quake in our boots from fear of “Muslim terrorists,” it is financial
deregulation that is destroying us, with help from jobs offshoring.
[...]
Financial deregulation has had dangerous and adverse
consequences. Deregulation permitted financial concentration that
produced “banks too big to fail,” thus requiring the general public to
absorb the costs of the banks’ mistakes and reckless gambling.
Deregulation permitted banks to leverage a small amount of capital
with enormous debt in order to maximize return on equity, thereby
maximizing the instability of the financial system and the cost to
society of the banks’ bad bets.
Deregulation allowed financial institutions to sweep aside the
position limits on speculators and to dominate commodity markets,
turning them into a gambling casino and driving up the prices of energy
and food.
Deregulation permits financial institutions to sell naked shorts,
which means to sell a company’s stock or gold and silver bullion that
the seller does not possess into the market in order to drive down the
price.
[...]
The dollar in its role as world reserve currency is the
source of Washington’s power. It allows Washington to control the
international payments system and to exclude from the financial system
those countries that do not do Washington’s bidding. It allows
Washington to print money with which to pay its bills and to purchase
the cooperation of foreign governments or to fund opposition within
those countries whose governments Washington is unable to purchase, such
as Iran, Russia, and China. If the dollar was not the world reserve
currency and actually reflected its true depreciated value from the
mounting US debt and running of the printing press, Washington’s power
would be dramatically curtailed.
[...]
It is ironic that the outcome of financial deregulation
in the US is the opposite of what its free market advocates promised. In
place of highly competitive financial firms that live or die by their
wits alone without government intervention, we have unprecedented
financial concentration. Massive banks, “too big to fail,” now send
their multi-trillion dollar losses to Washington to be paid by heavily
indebted US taxpayers whose real incomes have not risen in 20 years.
The banksters take home fortunes in annual bonuses for their success in
socializing the “free market” banks’ losses and privatizing profits to
the point of not even paying income taxes.
[...]
Will Western civilization itself survive the financial tsunami that deregulated Wall Street has produced?
i think the day when the dollar is not the world's reserve currency is rapidly approaching... Labels: capitalism, Counterpunch, currency crisis, empire in decline, financial deregulation, free markets, Paul Craig Roberts, too big to fail, U.S. dollar, Wall Street
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