About That Plutonomy.

In a "plutonomy", according to Citigroup global strategist Ajay Kapur, economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.

This is from a Citigroup memo in 2006. A blogger on DailyKos picks up on it - it's worth the read. There's no question that this is what we're now saddled with.

BTW, you gotta love a title like, Stopping Banks From Fleecing, Looting, Scamming, Robbing, Swindling, Tricking, Cheating, Conning, and Generally Ripping Us Off, and begins with,

In the last several years we have all been fleeced, looted, robbed, swindled, thieved, tricked, cheated, scammed, exploited, ponzied, stung, conned, extorted, ripped off and bankrupted by the banks and other big financial companies.

Finally, William K. Black, Associate Professor, University of Missouri, St Louis has an interesting piece, How the Servant Became the Predator, Finances Five Fatal Flaws.

The financial sector harms the real economy.

Even when not in crisis, the financial sector harms the real economy. First, it is vastly too large. The finance sector is an intermediary -- essentially a "middleman". Like all middlemen, it should be as small as possible, while still being capable of accomplishing its mission. Otherwise it is inherently parasitical.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/how-the-servant-became-a_b_318010.html

Second, the finance sector is worse than parasitic. In the title of his recent book, The Predator State , James Galbraith aptly names the problem. The financial sector functions as the sharp canines that the predator state uses to rend the nation. In addition to siphoning off capital for its own benefit, the finance sector misallocates the remaining capital in ways that harm the real economy in order to reward already-rich financial elites harming the nation.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/how-the-servant-became-a_b_318010.html

FYI, the Real Economy is the trading of actual goods and services. The Financial Economy or financial sector deals in abstractions of that called money, stocks, bonds, and a plethora of exotic inventions generically called derivatives, or what is commonly referred to as Wall Street.

Tonight on Jeopardy there was a clue, "A criminal that charges exorbitant interest" and the question was, "What is a loan shark?" I like to tell people that when I was young, the "exorbitant interest" rate the loan sharks charged that was against the law was twelve percent. What are the rates on your credit cards. Twenty four percent? Thirty? I've read of those rates.

The U.S. Government: Wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America.

As if we needed any more proof that our present government is truly wholly bought and sold by the corporations and the wealthy, even with the election of Barak Obama, 350 former congresscritters and staffers have been hired by the healthcare industry to lobby 535 present day congresscritters regarding the healthcare reform legislation. They say they are spending $1.4 million a day for these new hires - really temps, but not bad pay in this economy. It works out to four thousand dollars per lobbyist per day. Of course this does not count how much moolah is being promised to the various congresscritters for said congresscritters next campaigns. They used to call them bribes and the politicians who took them corrupt. Now they call them campaign contributions and the politicians representatives and senators.

The last time they got into this sort of thing we got Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that was a big kiss to the pharmaceutical industry by mandating that the government had to pay retail (as opposed to Canada which buys wholesale from the same companies.) It's also designed to go broke. Unless the legislation has a good public option, not one that is designed to fail to show how "government care" doesn't work, it won't be worth spit to us. Of course you already know my view. Why we're talking about anything other than Single Payer is because of the health insurance companies dominance of the media and congress. Polling shows that anywhere from 72 to 80% of Americans want at least a public option, if not outright single payer. There should not even be a question.

But that's not the situation we find ourselves in, is it? This is how it boils down to me: I can't get healthcare without going broke because somebody else wants to get rich. Sorry but I don't see anything good or right about that.

As has been said for so long, our government operates as of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. This is not metaphor or hyperbole, but cold reality. It is no longer of the people, by the people and for the people. What was set up to be a democratic republic is now a corporatocracy. A silent coup has been executed and the very foundations of government have been altered.

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