The Ultimate Class-Warfare Struggle

The wealthy bankers and capitalists have finally put the noose around their own necks. And now, they want the rest of the world to save them. A large portion is in danger of collapsing upon itself. Whatever it takes to survive, they will do.

The working and middle-classes are expected to sacrifice whatever it takes to save the capitalist system. Trillions and trillions of dollars are in the pot. If the bankers and capitalists win this war, the poor and working classes will suffer tremendously. Because, it cannot be done without hyper-inflation. Working folks always suffer with inflation. Just as they suffer with the temporary deflation we are experiencing at the moment.

They lose their jobs. They lose their homes. They lose their savings. The only winners in this class struggle are those at the very top. And they can only win with the assistance of their victims. Labor is not going to have any more value than it does at present, once this struggle is finished.

The bankers and capitalists understand that this is a war for their survival. They wish to convince everyone else that their survival also, is dependent upon the present system surviving. Many, if not most, agree with the capitalists and the bankers. We are at their mercy. And, in the end, they will show no mercy.

Fuck 'em.

you're going to have to allow a few institutions to survive. Like it or not, those key institutions in the world we have now are the banks.

However, instead of throwing money we don't have to prop them up so they can conduct business as usual, we need to nationalize them in the short term, returning them to sound practices until they are solvent enough to move back into the private sector.

The executives who caused this mess will be sent back to street corners to play three card Monte.

Which, by the way, is the wrong term. What they're doing is more like receivership.

Why do you want the Ruling Class to get the toxic-free banks back?

:shrug:

with regulation and the threat of re nationalization to keep them honest.

The problem with a fully nationalized banking system is that there is no reason to compete on interest rates and loan terms.

The "ruling class" doesn't own the banks outright. The stockholders do.

:shrug:

I prefer to deal with the world as it is.

They've been likin' it just fine.

I think the vast majority of community banks are healthy. Why do we have to have the international investment banks??

because the small community banks are the ones that are failing every week.

We have the international investment banks because we have an international trade system. Unless you're prepared to give up things like coffee, chocolate, and a dozen other things we can't produce here, we're going to have to keep that system.

they can be managed. We have no idea where the money has gone or is going with the big investment banks.

... as far as I've been able to tell ...

The bankers, of course, are hoping we don't realize this, and that we'll simply hand over the money.

We have the political power if we use it wisely.

... in those negotiations, and not just puffing smoke up our asses while shoveling money to the fat cats.

at best.

...in the classical sense, that is when the new rulers would absolve all debt.

It is the only way to reset a system that is terribly out of balance.

It should be done internally in nations, and externally between nations.

There may be fine points, ways it would have to be tuned for our modern world. But basically we need a reset. It's just ridiculous to talk about paying off trillions of dollars that never existed in the first place -- they were insurance taken out again and again on assets that were never worth what the multiple insurance policies had them at.

Friggin' evil idiots.

Remember, insurance is regulated.

They are evil, and I agree a reset is most definitely needed.

...on some sort of financial instruments that were bundled up mortgage backed securities and are now regarded as "toxic assets". By providing this insurance, they allowed the sellers to pass off the instruments as AAA rated, just like AIG. They insured these items for many different buyers, and ultimately when it all started to collapse, they were on the hook to pay a lot more claims than they expected -- in fact, more than the securities are worth.

The question at hand, though, is this: who will pay for their folly, the long-suffering taxpayers who had nothing to do with it, or the shareholders who arguably should have paid more attention to how their money was being invested? The little guys who are getting shoved out of their homes in droves, or the rich thieves whose ill-gotten gains have them living in virtual palaces?

I know what my answer is. Historically, these sorts of things tend to not end well. A jubilee could help to alleviate the simmering anger, and provide real relief to those who need it most -- i.e., not the friggin' bankers.

On edit: here's a link describing Credit Default Swaps and noting that AIG insured these:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_default_swaps/index.html

It is well worth a read.

Is not insurance as defined and regulated by the various state and federal agencies. CDS were an end-run around regulated insurance products.

If AIG had only stuck with their annuities, life insurance and property casualty insurance, they would not be in the shitpile they're in now.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite explanations of how AIG finds itself in its present -ahem- predicament comes from Ben Stein (of all people.)

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/109609

SNIP
The crisis occurred (to greatly oversimplify) because the financial system allowed entities to place bets on whether or not those mortgages would ever be paid. You didn't have to own a mortgage to make the bets. These bets, called Credit Default Swaps, are complex. But in a nutshell, they allow someone to profit immensely - staggeringly - if large numbers of subprime mortgages are not paid off and go into default.

The profit can be wildly out of proportion to the real amount of defaults, because speculators can push down the price of instruments tied to the subprime mortgages far beyond what the real rates of loss have been. As I said, the profits here can be beyond imagining. (In fact, they can be so large that one might well wonder if the whole subprime fiasco was not set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse...)

These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America.

SNIP

Note he writes, 'as insurance is written.' This is key, because if credit default swaps were truly insurance they would not be profitable if they lost money. The fact that many of these private contracts were written by business units owned by insurance companies does not make them insurance contracts.

...they were in effect used as insurance. Insurance is a guarantee, AIG served to make the guarantee that these were AAA financial instruments.

I'm no financial genius, and I don't claim to know all the ins and outs. But then again, look at where the financial geniuses have gotten us.

I'm all for insurance being regulated, and yes, obviously these very smart people figured out where the loopholes were and how to game the system. And yes, obviously it was the bets that were allowed by parties with no standing, that allowed the amounts to grow staggeringly large and have no relation to reality.

In any case, not trying to pick an argument, and appreciate the information you have passed on.

Gaak what a mess.

I'm kind of sick at the amount of dis- and misinformation being spread, even here on DU. We need to pick a side, and realize that if we continue to listen to the financial geniuses that got us into this mess, it will only get worse.

I think if anything is going to work, we are going to have to suspend (or permanently remove) all of the bad actors -- e.g., hedge funds. Remove them, and give the recovery plan a chance to take root and grow.

their toxic assets schemes, a "house of credit cards" and overvalued homes, everybody waiting for the music to stop, so some other sucker would be left holding the bag.

Yes, the Big Boys didn't think it would be them. No, it's not right for the Little Guy to bail 'em out.

Maybe the Big Boys knew that would be the end game and had no worries; maybe the Little Guy didn't think any of it through.

Just like with jobs being outsourced for close to 20 years -- it takes 15 for the mainstream to understand they're buying up cheap goods at their own expense, until We're Screwed.

What I wonder is why this debacle is not being seen as the "October Surprise" financial suitcase nuke that Bushco perpetrated as their "attack" during the transition of power.

No need to declare martial law when everyone's unemployed and/or forced out of their homes.

There is only enough actual wealth in the world to support about 1% of the world's current lifestyle. Capitalism has been so popular because it gave people a way to pretend that the other 99% was there. Of course, this other 99% is completely imaginary--it is nothing but imaginary air inside an imaginary balloon. For years, the high priests of monetarism have broken out their imaginary bicycle tire pumps at any sign of the imaginary balloon starting to lose some of its imaginary air. They'd pump away madly and chant the sacred and magic words ("lower interest rates" and "free markets" and "invisible hand" and the like) and those whose limos and penthouses depended on a safe cushion of imaginary air would once again pretend that the whole imaginary construct was real. "Oh! I see the air!" I see it! Look! There! You can see it too!" they'd all clammer, their faith restored. Soon the "balloon" would re-inflate and all would be well in free-market land once again.

But now the magic words have lost their power. Now, real people are suffocating because of a real lack of real air to breathe. Hell with balloons. People are turning blue-for real! Now Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, (alas) Obama and other champions of the status quo are madly and mutely pumping their imaginary bicycle pumps, waving their hands and trying to get someone--anyone!--to "see" the imaginary air going back into the imaginary balloon. But without the magic words, they just look foolish. They look more and more like clowns and less and less like priests. And despite the uncounted millions of people turning blue and flopping on the sidewalks of every Main Street in America like so many carp on the banks of some county reservoir, they are using what little is left of our real air to help pump up those penthouses and those limos.

It is times like these and priests like these that cause even the most faithful to doubt.


So where is the bottom? The bottom is either at about the 1% mark, or at whatever point someone who is not a clown claims to see the imaginary air and we all believe him.

:thumbsup:

:evilgrin:



and politicians are full of hot air...

imaginary heat

LOL

all the wanking.

:yoiks: :wow:

A global financial circle jerk, spent.

Traitors, all of them.

middle and lower income strata it is called miraculous capitalism; When the lower strata become outraged over their being flagrantly fleeced and fight back, it is called dastardly class warfare.

We are definitely within a social-warfare state of capitalist greed. The very wealthy bankers, politicians, etc. are the modern day equivalent to feudal kings. They WILL go to war against the poor and middle-class in order to keep their prevalence and power in society.

The Black Death was catastrophic to human life in Europe but gave the workers a lot more leverage simply by the laws of supply and demand.

I wonder what the pandemic will be this time... The "kings" will keep their status no matter what it takes or how many innocent "commoners" have to suffer for their station.

> wonder what the pandemic will be this time

seems like a pretty good bet. Nick the Greek is giving 5-2 odds...

:evilgrin:

of the week. So long as "the other guy" suffers worse (other guy being slave labor, brown people who speak other languages, women with either low education or high student loan debt, etc.)

Republican 'bootstrap' rhetoric is so much easier than admitting you're the Empire's dupe.