The Free Market is Corruption

Submitted by Grace Kelly on July 18, 2008 - 11:45pm.
We, in America have had to learn the hard way what the oldest religions on earth had written, the pursuit of pure wealth is corruption and will eventually destroy our civilization. The religions have a name for it "usury", which has come to mean "excessive interest". I think it could also mean excessive profit or simply greed. The mortgage crisis is a case of greed killing the golden goose that lays the golden eggs. It shows that the neocon concept of unregulated free markets is totally wrong. And we are paying the price of painfully learning how important government regulation is!

Any sane person could tell you - that the worst possible thing that can happen to a house is for no one to live in it and for no one to want to pay for it. In a short amount of time, the house is worth less than a empty lot of land, then the neighborhood loses value. Then cities have to do more with vacant houses while have less property value to support city services. Any one holding the mortgage has lost all value. Yet the state didn't stop foreclosures and the federal government didn't act to keep homeowners in houses. Instead the government waited to act until the big companies are failing. It is too late. Let them fail. Only then will the financial markets start to care about what they own. Only then will the markets stop the foreclosures - for anyone paying anything in a house is better than an empty house. The government fix has to be to keep homeowners in houses, not let whole cities become more empty foreclosed houses.

The principle of caring is important in keeping a civilization. A homeowner has to care about the house to maintain it. A mortgage owner has to care about the homeowner and the house to take care of both. The mortgage owners, these days are so removed from what they own that they don't even know what they own or who they have lent money to. They can't even change the rules or stop the process that is draining away their wealth. How insane is this?

Let the big institutions fail or become nationalized. Poor and working people's taxes should not be used to bail out the rich as "institutions too big to fail". That way lies madness, where an institution only has to be big enough and then it will never be allowed to fail. Soon only big institutions will be left and they will still not be working properly. The gold-sucking-vampires have now sucked so much wealth into the top non-working part of our civilization that our financial institutions are failing. For if anyone looks, they realize there is no real substance.

For years now, we have been building financial institutions that separate people from what they own and the responsibility of that ownership. We have built speculation markets. Now the speculation markets are failing. The financial people call speculation failures, "burst bubbles". When "burst bubbles" are just rich people losing portfolio value, that does not affect real life. However when people lose jobs, when businesses cannot function and when homes become empty, that is a sign of a financial system that has stopped functioning.

Universities are partially to blame, they stopped teaching about the danger of monopolies, unregulated markets, speculation, excessive interest or excessive profits. History gave way to a wealth fantasy. The MBA logic was theme that only profit mattered. Along the way, truth stop mattering where fraud, lies, and deception are only bad only if you are caught. Then instead of doing a job, the job became managing the risk. And managing the risk, means someone else taking the risk. In this case, poor and working people are paying taxes, while earning less and less to guarantee the profits of the rich. In every way, the richest are killing the goose that lays golden eggs. The goose is very sick, but will the rich even notice that? Do they even realize there is a goose? Perhaps with the financial paper now involved, the rich don't even realize that golden eggs or a goose are involved in the financial process.

A more in depth rant is in Bill Moyers Journal.

http://www.mnblue.com/node/1866

Loved this:

In every way, the richest are killing the goose that lays golden eggs. The goose is very sick, but will the rich even notice that? Do they even realize there is a goose?

And therein lies perhaps the most frightening part of this- if it was easier and more profitable to milk us like a cow, why are they now slaughtering us instead?

the Adam Smith Institute!

It's an old scam, once it all collapses, the private central banks get to buy it all back pennies on the dollar, with money they have created out of thin air, no goose is involved...