General Discussion

Octafish

(55,745 posts) Sat Oct 27, 2012, 11:30 AM Oct 2012

Know your BFEE: Chinese and American Ruling Elites In Bed Together for Fun and Profit

Last edited Sat Oct 27, 2012, 02:47 PM - Edit history (1)

Ever wonder what happened to our standard of living? You, know, the Middle Class?

Well, it's been off-shored -- both in terms of money to Switzerland and manufacturing jobs to China.

Of course, I mean, don't worry! -- at a profit.

Guess who made a killing? If you said, "The ruling elite" you'd be correct.

What may be surprising to some is how the "ruling elite" crosses political, ideological, and philosophical lines when it comes to money. Case in point: China.

Currently, the people of China are largely unaware at how their ruling Communist elite got rich while the people slaved their asses off.

Here in the good old U.S. of A., the people are largely unaware that their ruling Capitalist elite got rich setting the policies that offshored their money and jobs.

Oh, well. Live and learn.

17 replies

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Highlight:

Know your BFEE: Chinese and American Ruling Elites In Bed Together for Fun and Profit (Original Post) Octafish Oct 2012 OP

So much for communism Anthony McCarthy Oct 2012 #1

The commies are so scared of their people learning the truth, they banned the news. Octafish Oct 2012 #3

China's system isn't communism. Zalatix Nov 2012 #14

Communism never had a chance. What Marx hadnt figured on was the greed of humankind. rhett o rick Jun 2014 #15

after the Bo scandal, the Chinese have a pretty good understanding; eom amborin Oct 2012 #2

Separate issues, yet connected. Octafish Oct 2012 #4

yes, i've been following it all intently....good question! amborin Oct 2012 #5

What Deng Xiaoping told TIME: ''Let some become rich first.'' Octafish Oct 2012 #6

Photo ID: Wen Jiabao and Henry Paulson Octafish Oct 2012 #7

If corporations are people - what does that make entities like Bain Capital? Serial killers? Initech Oct 2012 #8

Killer analogy... Octafish Oct 2012 #9

Obama and Holder could have changed the course of this country..... Hotler Oct 2012 #10

Obama is getting blamed for a lot of things he's not responsible for. Initech Oct 2012 #11

WHAT! Remember Obama went on Sixty Minutes and said the bankers did nothing illegal. Hotler Oct 2012 #12

That I do agree with. The banks should not have been allowed to get away with their crimes. Initech Oct 2012 #13

I am not sure that "Obama and Holder" could have or can "change the course of this country." rhett o rick Jun 2014 #16

A people's revolution will not solve the problem of world oligarchy. We must find a group of rhett o rick Jun 2014 #17

Anthony McCarthy

(507 posts)

1. So much for communism

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 11:42 AM

Oct 2012

The revolution, the disastrous multi-year plans and great leaps and cultural revolutions and pogroms.... And what do they get after all of that? One-party ultra-capitalists who bring the worst of Victorian wage-slavery into the 21st century.

Dump communism, democratic socialism is the only way forward.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

3. The commies are so scared of their people learning the truth, they banned the news.

Reply to Anthony McCarthy (Reply #1)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 12:20 PM

Oct 2012

Not everyone from Mao's collectives can become a Wall Street billionaire, just the connected. It's almost odd how their rise coincided with that of those on this side of the Pacific, principally those connected by blood to "ambassador" George Herbert Walker Bush and his late brother, Prescott Bush and the U.S. China Chamber of Commerce.

PS: A hearty welcome to DU, Anthony McCarthy! Agree whole-heartedly about the need for a change of economic system and climate.

Zalatix

(8,994 posts)

14. China's system isn't communism.

Reply to Anthony McCarthy (Reply #1)

Fri Nov 2, 2012, 02:01 AM

Nov 2012

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)

15. Communism never had a chance. What Marx hadnt figured on was the greed of humankind.

Reply to Anthony McCarthy (Reply #1)

Fri Jun 6, 2014, 08:35 AM

Jun 2014

Ayn Rand never figured on that either. Unregulated capitalism is greed gone wild. Even democratic socialism wont work unless we figure out how to deal with greed.

amborin

(16,631 posts)

2. after the Bo scandal, the Chinese have a pretty good understanding; eom

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 11:45 AM

Oct 2012

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

4. Separate issues, yet connected.

Reply to amborin (Reply #2)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 12:28 PM

Oct 2012

Bo Xilai's wife was convicted of killing a British businessman who objected to a change in the rules. I'd argue most all will never get the full story.

The Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai scandal masks the battle for China's future

The melodrama of Bo Xilai's fall has been used to press for privatisation, but the global crisis demands an alternative

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 August 2012 17.20 EDT
Jump to comments (135)

The murder trial of Gu Kailai and downfall of her husband Bo Xilai has lurched from Shakespearean tragedy to Victorian melodrama. All the essential elements are there: overweening ambition, a poisoning, a sink of corruption, treachery and blackmail.

Add in the alleged British spy Neil Heywood's rendezvous with death at the Lucky Holiday Hotel in Chongqing and Gu's reported comment to investigators to "write up anything they'd like" she couldn't remember for her confession, and China's greatest political scandal for a generation seems like a cross between an airport thriller and a Stalinist show trial.

There's no reason to believe we'll be any the wiser as to what actually happened when the court gives its verdict and sentence – or if Bo himself, sacked as Chongqing's Communist party secretary, is put on trial for "serious disciplinary violations".

The evidence suggests at least that Bo's family, like those of other Chinese leaders, enriched themselves on the back of his position – and that Heywood was up to his neck in that. What's much clearer is that the fall of Bo, who attempted to use his left-leaning Chongqing administration to secure a commanding place in the party's Beijing leadership, has been seized on to change China's political direction.

As the scandal erupted earlier this year, powerful forces out for full-scale privatisation made a concerted bid for decisive "reform". In February, a World Bank report, backed by elements in the government, demanded sweeping deregulation and a "complete transition to a market economy". The call was taken up at the National People's Congress. Corporate interests that had chafed against a system in which they claimed "the state advances, the private sector retreats" launched a neoliberal offensive.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/14/bo-xilai-scandal-masking-chinas-future

Wonder who'll win? The people or the state (political elite)?

amborin

(16,631 posts)

5. yes, i've been following it all intently....good question!

Reply to Octafish (Reply #4)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 12:30 PM

Oct 2012

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

6. What Deng Xiaoping told TIME: ''Let some become rich first.''

Reply to amborin (Reply #5)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 12:50 PM

Oct 2012

Seems like it's going well for some. Coincidentally, they happen to be connected to the connected, like here.

The average wealth of China’s richest 1,000 stands at $860 million, down 9 percent from last year but still up 96 percent since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Their average age is 54, most live in the capital Beijing (12 percent), are born in years of the rabbit (13 percent), and by an increasing margin are male (87 percent). Almost half have made their fortune in either manufacturing or real estate, or both. The country has 2.7 million millionaires when measured in U.S. dollars, according to Hurun. But even with a boom of wealth entering China, the country’s richest are still dwarfed by their U.S. counterparts. China’s richest man would rank 25th on the Forbes List of America’s Richest.

SOURCE: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/25/the-red-rich-list-meet-chinas-5-wealthiest-men/

Thanks for being in the fight all these years, amborin. I know you understand there are more important things than money, people for instance.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

7. Photo ID: Wen Jiabao and Henry Paulson

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 02:35 PM

Oct 2012

Two regular, fun loving guys.

Wen's thing is geological structures, useful trade for those in the mineral extraction industries.

http://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Wen_Jiabao/bio

Henry's a BFEE banker royal:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7490955

Talk about trillion dollar smiles...

Initech

(100,097 posts)

8. If corporations are people - what does that make entities like Bain Capital? Serial killers?

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 02:44 PM

Oct 2012

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

9. Killer analogy...

Reply to Initech (Reply #8)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 02:57 PM

Oct 2012

Mitt's mitts are covered in blood...

Revealed: Romney’s Bain Capital Invested in Grotesque Chinese Sweatshop, Detailed at Boca Raton Fundraiser

Far from the respectable businessman he claims to be, Romney has long engaged in horrific practices that mock American values.

October 4, 2012 |

Republicans like to paint Romney as an entrepreneur whose activities at Bain Capital have benefited Americans. In a campaign full of whoppers, that’s one of the biggest lies of all. Economist Paul Davidson recently pointed out the truth on AlterNet : “Romney has spent his career offshoring and outsourcing American production processes -- and associated jobs -- to countries like China where human labor is valued in the market at a very low wage rate.” The sub-human conditions at these production facilities represent things that Americans are strongly opposed to: child abuse, squalor, forced overtime, and peanuts for pay.

Romney’s penchant for bragging about his business activities at fundraisers helps underscore just how vile his brand of capitalism really is. While CEO of Bain, Romney invested in a Chinese sweatshop which he appears to be describing in detail at the very same Boca Raton fundraising event where he made his infamous case that nearly half of all Americans are freeloaders.

A report recently released by the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights reveals that while Romney was deeply invested at a firm called Global-Tech, low pay and horrific conditions were status quo at its Chinese appliance factory.

Was Romney aware? Let’s take a look at the presidential hopeful's own words:

“When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married. And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. Three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen, you've seen them? (Oh…yeah, yeah!) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can't believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/revealed-romneys-bain-capital-invested-grotesque-chinese-sweatshop-detailed-boca-raton

We the People could use an Attorney General who wasn't dependent on Wall Street business after government service.

Hotler

(11,440 posts)

10. Obama and Holder could have changed the course of this country.....

Reply to Octafish (Reply #9)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 03:52 PM

Oct 2012

Instead they chose to look the other way. It's more important to put pot smokers in prison than the crooks on Wall St. and the war criminals. Sure wish Obama had a spine but, he's bought and paid for just like the resr of them and the ones to come. I have no hope. I see no future. I have have no fight left in me.
Thank you Octafish for another great read.

Initech

(100,097 posts)

11. Obama is getting blamed for a lot of things he's not responsible for.

Reply to Hotler (Reply #10)

Sat Oct 27, 2012, 04:19 PM

Oct 2012

This is definitely one of them. That's more the states and the prisons that control that than he does.

Hotler

(11,440 posts)

12. WHAT! Remember Obama went on Sixty Minutes and said the bankers did nothing illegal.

Reply to Initech (Reply #11)

Sun Oct 28, 2012, 06:50 PM

Oct 2012

he could have told Holder to find something to arrest the bankers on even if it was jaywalking. Obama didn't even point a finger or or get mad at the bankers. Obama could have also arrested Bush/Chaney Co. for war crimes but intead gave them a pass. Obama could have at the very least made the bankers lives hell for awhile. Obama talked some tough words before he got the nod in Denver, than after he got the nomination it was "Now Is not the time to point fingers.".

Initech

(100,097 posts)

13. That I do agree with. The banks should not have been allowed to get away with their crimes.

Reply to Hotler (Reply #12)

Sun Oct 28, 2012, 11:53 PM

Oct 2012

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)

16. I am not sure that "Obama and Holder" could have or can "change the course of this country."

Reply to Hotler (Reply #10)

Fri Jun 6, 2014, 09:17 AM

Jun 2014

Just because one become elected doesnt mean the power passes to you. I believe there are those that hold more power than the president. There is a whole lot of money that doesnt want the country changed in the way you mean.

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)

17. A people's revolution will not solve the problem of world oligarchy. We must find a group of

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Fri Jun 6, 2014, 09:24 AM

Jun 2014

elites that will recognize that if the oligarchs continue they will kill the goose and then eventually kill each other. An elite group must step forward and decide that a balanced world economy would be best for themselves.

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