Free markets killed capitalism: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Wal-Mart, Amazon and ...
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/29/free_markets_killed_capitalism_ayn_rand_ronald_reagan_wal_mart_amazon_and_the_1_percents_sick_triumph_over_us_all/
Free markets killed capitalism: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Wal-Mart, Amazon and the 1 percents sick triumph over us all
Ayn Rand, Jeff Bezos, Ronald Reagan (Credit: AP/Reed Saxon/Salon)
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Barry Lynn and I sat down and talked it over last week. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Monopoly: It sounds like a very old-fashioned problem. It sounds like an economic issue from the 19th century. Is it still a problem today?
Yes, absolutely, a huge problem. The American economy is more concentrated today than its been in more than a century, since the days of the plutocrats. Pretty much every sector of the economy is dominated by a few Goliaths, sometimes a single dominant corporation. And this poses immense economic and political dangers, to growth and the quality of our jobs, and to our democracy itself.
But to really understand what this means, lets start at the very beginning. It was a huge problem a century ago. That was the plutocratic era. You had a guy named JP Morgan who pretty much ran Wall Street and pretty much determined who did what in this country and where they did it, who made steel and who didnt make steel.
Howd he do that? If he controls Wall Street, how does he
Because he determined who got credit and who didnt. There was a cartel of bankers, and it was under JP Morgans control, and thats one of the things they found out in the 1907 crash. It wasnt anyone in the government that saved the world from that crash, it was JP Morgan sittin there in the middle of things and
So hes a hero then.
[Laughter]
Well, at the time, he was the central banker of the country. Then along came Teddy Roosevelt. The first company he went after with an antitrust case was Northern Securities, and his aim was precisely to take on JP Morgan.