Monday, March 28, 2011

The Business of Bread and Circuses

Business is neither good nor evil. Business has no soul or conscience. The primary objective of business is to make a profit.

The free market is a concept. In concept the free market should be unaffected by normative judgment. However, whenever people are involved, and there are always people involved in business and the markets, the free market will be influenced by their perceptions, beliefs, and objectives; as well as the power they wield in influencing the market. Put as simply as I know how to, markets are influenced by the people that participate in them and the people that control them.

The more economic democracy we have, the "freer" the markets are. Please understand that I believe that free markets are good and that people should be rewarded for work and merit. I do not believe that the vast majority of the American population should be denied "the pursuit of happiness" because ostensibly free markets are rigged and being controlled and manipulated by politicians and lobbyists  for the benefit of the wealthy and global corporations. And I certainly don't believe that markets that are manipulated by theft, deception and fraud, should masquerade as free markets.

I cannot think of one free market that is operating in the world today; though I can enumerate many "kinda" free markets. The most obvious one is the oil market.

Friedmanites argue that the free markets are alive and well and support their position with flawed data. One disciple of Friedman and Kuznets recently stated that consumption in America is at an all time high, and in the same breath denounced TARP as being a failure. He continued by stating that intervention by the public sector is "forcing out private sector participation."

Have we forgotten September 2008? It comes back to human beings, and perceptions, beliefs and objectives. Without government involvement there is no indication and certainly no reason to believe that the private sector will act according to b school paradigms. And a sick, impoverished population is not able to purchase much in the way of goods and services.

Today, many Americans are acting like the little boy who is whistling in the dark; all the while waving the American flag and consuming McDonalds and watching NASCAR and the WWF.

I will leave you with a couple of quotes. The first one may explain the "rabid dog" demeanor of many Republicans which is characterized by the lower incisors protruding up, onto the upper lip. "It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured." Tacitus

The second quote requires no explanation. "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator. " George W. Bush

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Republican "Private" Sector Vampires


Republicans and their constituents don't want to pay taxes and don't want government to do anything for the benefit of the middle class and working people. However, they are very adroit at extrapolating government funds on all levels. In an odd sort of way they are like addicts that know they are wrong but blame their suppliers for their transgressions.  In current politics, that would be the Federal Government.

The adjustable rate mortgage debacle has been discussed extensively in the April 2010 posts in this blog. Fortunes were made by the top percents and the Federal Government is paying their profits, through a whole array of programs and federal guarantees. As you may know, the government is the rest of us. The most important factor, which many overlook when making comparisons of one administration to another, is that when you severely damage a country's economy, tax revenues go down significantly, even if all other components remain constant. Hence, the deficit went up as a result of the extrapolation by the top percentages.

In Florida, newly elected governor, Rick Scott, an "outsider", is trying to exorcise teachers of their collective bargaining rights. Teachers in Florida are already 47th in terms of pay and benefits. You see paying teachers a living wage will leave less public monies for the top 2% to extrapolate. And we really don't want an educated population anyway.

As previously mentioned in this blog, Scott made his money the old fashioned way. He stole it from the Federal Government and your children's futures. His company, Columbia, HCK, pleaded guilty to Medicare and Medicaid fraud and paid a 1.7 billion dollar settlement, the largest fraud settlement in US history at the time.

The "best and the brightest" are at it again. Now pay attention to this fact. In the United States, student loan debt currently exceeds credit card debt. Republican private sector wizards are working on a scheme whereby students do not have to repay their loans. They take a hefty fee for helping the students and grads stiff the Federal Government, which again is you and me. The punch line is, because the loans were given by private sector entities, and were merely guaranteed by the government; and then traded and sometimes packaged as derivatives, the loans are not valid. The private sector caused the problem and is now profiting again from the situation that it created and already profited from. There is one thing the Tea Party is right about. America is running out of blood. It's time to get out the wooden stakes.