Who is to Blame for Economic Decline?

[Blaze Pascal]

Robert Rubin, Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson etc are one and the same as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc. You simply can't distinguish government from the private sector in America. --DA Champion

Is Big Government or Investment Banking or both responsible for economic decline?

[DA_Champion]

I'm going to try and bump this before it fades from the first page and disappears forever.

Famous Goldman Sachs alumns, look at these ultra-powerful positions:

Robert Rubin, Former United States Treasury Secretary
John Corzine, Governor of New Jersey
Henry Paulson, Chief Executive, U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush
Robert Zoellick - United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President. 2007-
Reuben Jeffery III, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (2007-)
Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout
Mark Patterson, Obama’s Treasury chief of staff, former Goldman lobbyist
Ed Liddy, whom Paulson put in charge of bailed out insurance giant AIG, the former Goldman director
Neel Kashkari, Head of TARP
Gene Sperling, Deputy Dept of Treasury
Gary Genzler, CFTC Chair
Robert D. Hormats, Dept of State Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs (2009 -)
Phil Murphy, Democratic Party’s national finance chairman, represents the United States in Berlin [14]
Other notable Goldman alums: [13]
George Herbert Walker IV - member of the Bush family and current managing director at Neuberger Berman
Robert Steel - Chairman and President, Wachovia.
Jim Cramer, MSNBC Commentator
Michael Cohrs, Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank
Mark Carney, Current Governor of the Bank of Canada [92][93]
Malcolm Turnbull, Australian politician, currently the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
John Thain,former Chairman and CEO, Merrill Lynch, and former chairman of the NYSE.
Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy twice (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004)[94]
Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- )[94]
Massimo Tononi, Italian deputy treasury chief (2006-2008)[94]

More here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... dman_Sachs

As people move back and forth between government and the private sector, it no longer makes sense to distinguish the two. I believe this style of rule is called "oligarchy".

[The Devil's Advocate]

Pretty much, oligarchy is rule by "a few", i.e. a relatively small privledged group. If they all happen to be wealthy, that's a plutocracy.

[DA_Champion]

Pretty much, oligarchy is rule by "a few", i.e. a relatively small privledged group. If they all happen to be wealthy, that's a plutocracy.

I don't think it's a plutocracy. I think there's still a lot of power among the top military brass and the think tanks.

Lawrence Summers for example gets "rewards" from the rich, but he's the one making decisions when he's in office. His own wealth is probably in the 8 figures.

[Blaze Pascal]

I'm going to try and bump this before it fades from the first page and disappears forever.

Famous Goldman Sachs alumns, look at these ultra-powerful positions:

Robert Rubin, Former United States Treasury Secretary
John Corzine, Governor of New Jersey
Henry Paulson, Chief Executive, U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush
Robert Zoellick - United States Trade Representative (2001-2005), Deputy Secretary of State (2005-2006), World Bank President. 2007-
Reuben Jeffery III, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (2007-)
Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout
Mark Patterson, Obama’s Treasury chief of staff, former Goldman lobbyist
Ed Liddy, whom Paulson put in charge of bailed out insurance giant AIG, the former Goldman director
Neel Kashkari, Head of TARP
Gene Sperling, Deputy Dept of Treasury
Gary Genzler, CFTC Chair
Robert D. Hormats, Dept of State Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs (2009 -)
Phil Murphy, Democratic Party’s national finance chairman, represents the United States in Berlin [14]
Other notable Goldman alums: [13]
George Herbert Walker IV - member of the Bush family and current managing director at Neuberger Berman
Robert Steel - Chairman and President, Wachovia.
Jim Cramer, MSNBC Commentator
Michael Cohrs, Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank
Mark Carney, Current Governor of the Bank of Canada [92][93]
Malcolm Turnbull, Australian politician, currently the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.
John Thain,former Chairman and CEO, Merrill Lynch, and former chairman of the NYSE.
Romano Prodi, Prime Minister of Italy twice (1996-1998 and 2006-2008) and President of the European Commission (1999-2004)[94]
Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy (2006- )[94]
Massimo Tononi, Italian deputy treasury chief (2006-2008)[94]

More here:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... dman_Sachs

As people move back and forth between government and the private sector, it no longer makes sense to distinguish the two. I believe this style of rule is called "oligarchy".

It does look rather suspicious. I would feel better if we could tie it to the Left somehow.

[The Devil's Advocate]

Pretty much, oligarchy is rule by "a few", i.e. a relatively small privledged group. If they all happen to be wealthy, that's a plutocracy.

I don't think it's a plutocracy. I think there's still a lot of power among the top military brass and the think tanks.

Lawrence Summers for example gets "rewards" from the rich, but he's the one making decisions when he's in office. His own wealth is probably in the 8 figures.

You're probably right. It's funny you mentioned the Romans in another, completely unrelated thread. That was an oligarchy, and really a plutocracy -- the wealth of some of the ruling elite would blow your mind. Thing too was that all the magistrates, praetors, consuls and such, these were unpaid positions. As such the risk for corruption was equally mind-blowing.

[DA_Champion]

There is plenty of treason to go around for both parties.

It was Reagan's government that began to slash taxes on the highest earners and unleashed the era of "greed is good". The 1980s were the period of the leveraged buyouts, during which a lot of historical American businesses, run by families, were financialized and thus eventually destroyed.

It was Clinton's government that repealed Glass-Steagal, Free trade in conjunction with a strong dollar, and that gave us this:

If you read the caption on the cover, you'll learn that those two democrats plus the Ayn_Randian Alan Greenspan were being credited with pushing off the depression to the future ... to 2007 it turns out.

Obama's record is one of explicitly turning the federal government into a subsidiary of the banks.

That brings us back to how we got this thread started, the failures of Marxist analysis. A few years ago I was listening to a Marxist analysis, and he said that historical forces would inevitably lead to a government nationalization of the banks. I've heard this from other Marxists too, so it is clearly hinted by the theory though it is possible they're getting it wrong. In this case, they got it totally right, up to a point. There was a confluence of historical forces that would lead to a banking crisis and a marriage between the banks and the government. They just screwed up the power relations. Rather than the government nationalizing the banks, the Banks expropriated the government. It is true that the Marxist theory failed in this case, but it went further and did better than virtually all other economic theories, most of which didn't foresee any problems.

[Blaze Pascal]

How do we make it stop? What do we do about it?

[DA_Champion]

How do we make it stop? What do we do about it?

When a cancer reaches stage 4 it becomes difficult for even the strongest doses of chemotherapy and radiation to stop the spread.

I don't think there is anything to be done. I think the disease is terminal and we're on a collision course with a major confrontation a few years down the line, perhaps with Russia. If the neocons succeed in their long-term goal of exterminating the Russian population they may be able to install a new world order.

What we should do as individuals is safeguard our own interests. Be mobile, stay fit, stay skilled, and try and keep some cash reserves.

[Free_Reign]

How do we make it stop? What do we do about it?

Zero growth economics. Abolish, do not reform, the Federal Reserve System to return to free market , to do away with centralized planning. Gradually abolish fractional reserve banking, to require 100% reserves. Don't be duped into reforming a centralized system that only returns to another centralized system.

[DA_Champion]

How do we make it stop? What do we do about it?

Zero growth economics. Abolish, do not reform, the Federal Reserve System to return to free market , to do away with centralized planning. Gradually abolish fractional reserve banking, to require 100% reserves. Don't be duped into reforming a centralized system that only returns to another centralized system.

You're proposing we overpower the richest people in society and that we remove their henchmen at nearly every elected office, in the mainstream media, and in the police forces.

How many people would die in this violent revolution and who will step up to be our leader?

[Free_Reign]

Herman Daly, Emeritus Professor University of Maryland School of Public Policy, doesn't seem to think that abolishing the U.S. Federal Reserve to be replaced by the U.S. Treasury is such a deadly proposition.

Nationalize Money, Not Banks by Herman Daly July 30, 2012
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/07 ... rman-daly/

[Blaze Pascal]

Why are the neo-cons trying to exterminate the Russian population? What sort of methods are they using?

[DA_Champion]

Why are the neo-cons trying to exterminate the Russian population? What sort of methods are they using?

Russia is extremely rich in natural resources. It is also an important salesman of military technology, the only true competitor to the US defense industry.

The primary directive of US foreign policy in the past 20 years has been to encircle Russia. In the 1990s they committed genocide against Serbian Christians on the basis of "human rights violations", with Yugoslavia being one of Russia's main ally at the end. Sarajevo hosted the Olympics in 1982 and is now a dump. There were fake color revolutions all over Eastern Europe. This took a break during Bush's campaign in Iraq (which actually helped Russia), but was again on the radar in 2007 when Georgia invaded South Ossetia. Now, they are trying to dismember Syria, a Russia ally and host to the Russian navy.

It's clear that the eventual goal is the dismemberment of Russia.

Anyway, there are better people to explain the neocon policy on Russia, Patrick Buchanan has done a decent job:
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-encircling ... russia-260 article from 1998
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan96.html article from 2008
See also chapter 2 of "A republic, not an Empire".

Also, chapter 11 through 13 of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. She documents the immense efforts to liquidate Russia during the Yeltsin years, when their leader was too busy drinking Vodka to rule his country. The use of economic shock therapy led to declining birth rates and increased death rates, which can be seen in their rapidly declining life expectancy in that period. A lot of economists went to Russia to suggest an acceleration of the process.

[Blaze Pascal]

Why are the neo-cons trying to exterminate the Russian population? What sort of methods are they using?

Russia is extremely rich in natural resources. It is also an important salesman of military technology, the only true competitor to the US defense industry.

The primary directive of US foreign policy in the past 20 years has been to encircle Russia. In the 1990s they committed genocide against Serbian Christians on the basis of "human rights violations", with Yugoslavia being one of Russia's main ally at the end. Sarajevo hosted the Olympics in 1982 and is now a dump. There were fake color revolutions all over Eastern Europe. This took a break during Bush's campaign in Iraq (which actually helped Russia), but was again on the radar in 2007 when Georgia invaded South Ossetia. Now, they are trying to dismember Syria, a Russia ally and host to the Russian navy.

It's clear that the eventual goal is the dismemberment of Russia.

Anyway, there are better people to explain the neocon policy on Russia, Patrick Buchanan has done a decent job:
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-encircling ... russia-260 article from 1998
http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan96.html article from 2008
See also chapter 2 of "A republic, not an Empire".

Also, chapter 11 through 13 of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. She documents the immense efforts to liquidate Russia during the Yeltsin years, when their leader was too busy drinking Vodka to rule his country. The use of economic shock therapy led to declining birth rates and increased death rates, which can be seen in their rapidly declining life expectancy in that period. A lot of economists went to Russia to suggest an acceleration of the process.

This is fairly wild-eyed analysis if you ask me. Let me correct some things.

The bombing of Serbian troops was to halt their advances into Muslim Bosnia.

The colour revolutions were the "European Spring," the naive attempt to inaugurate freedom following liberation from the Soviet Union.

Georgia did not invade anyone. It was invaded by Russia in revenge for aligning with the West.

Who is this "they" who are trying to dismember Syria? Syria is being attacked by from within by Muslim fundamentalists with the aid of all Qaida.

Russia is not being dismembered. It is dying out and soon will be a Muslim country.

Nobody engineered a Russian fertility decline through economic sabotage. That belongs in the Conspiracy Theories forum.

And Naomi Klein is an ignorant hag. She belongs in the dumpster of history.

Your analysis is flying off in every direction. Please, reign it in.