Are We Really Still A Capitalist Nation?
It really is a good question... It's what we were raised being told. It's what every business class you can take will tell you. But how much truth is there to it? Are we living a financial lie? And how long can this charade keep going?
Those are just a few of the questions on my mind this morning, and I'm not finding the answers to my liking at all. If you look at the state of our economy, not just how it functions, but the overall big picture of power structure, you will find that every day we tread closer and closer to being the definition of a fascist nation.
The definition of fascism is "the merger of state and corporate powers", and that is exactly what we have seen happen since the financial crisis of the past few years. Terms like "too big to fail" and "taxpayer bailout" entered the lexicon when if we were a true capitalist society none of those things would have ever happened. Yes, the crisis may have been worse in the beginning as the biggest banks on the planet fell into the trash bin of history, but it still would have been the right thing to do.
Ron Paul has pointed out many times that to really fix the problem we must allow the correction to occur as happened in the crash of 1920/1921. The crisis itself was just as bad as the crash that caused the Great Depression, but instead of being 25 years of suffering, this crisis was over in 18 months and gave rise to the "Roaring 20s" and some of the biggest economic growth our country had ever seen. Now why is that? How could there be 2 nearly identical problems but the outcomes be so drastically different? Easy answer is, government intrusion into the markets. After the crash of '29, the Federal Reserve took drastic actions just as they have done today. But if you look at the results both times it did nothing except for prolong the pain, and not allow for the markets to sort out on their own.
Now, after nearly 5 years and unknown TRILLIONS printed and pumped into the banks, we still have super restrictive credit, enormous consumer interest rates, rising food and fuel prices, a dying dollar, a housing market that refuses to hit bottom, and all the while those same bankers that begged for a bailout took the money and did the only thing that gambling addicts like these know how to do... DOUBLE DOWN... They took 2 steps in the bailout that ensured they would continue to get richer and you will continue to stay poor. Step one: Socialize the risk (back up all the risky bets they've made with taxpayer dollars)... Step two: Privatize the gains (once the bailout money was secured, they used the money to buy up all the smaller banks which in turn consolidated their power and influence over the markets, then gave all that taxpayer money to themselves and their buddies by handing out giant bonuses)
All of this is not even mentioning all of the TRILLIONS of taxpayer money that has flowed overseas to London and to the rest of the European banks who have done the same thing, and now those European bankers have taken total control over all the people of Europe, kicking out elected leaders at will and installing UNELECTED bank CEOs as Presidents and Prime Ministers, leaving the people with no hope of recourse, just endless budget cuts, rising retirement ages, and desperate poverty.
If you're not angry yet you might want to go check your pulse, but sadly there is more. The one other thing I want to touch on is how our leaders decry monopolies but we have plenty of them in this country. Coke/Pepsi... Verizon/AT&T... Nike/Reebok... Wal Mart/Target... Democrat/Republican... These are merely monopolies disguised as duopolies... Giving you the illusion of choice when you never really had one to begin with.
So the next time someone starts talking about capitalism, just remember that we have strayed very far from what our forefathers intended for our economy. And when you hear the liberals blame capitalism for all of our ills, as if communism would be any better. You tell them that they can't blame our problems on an economic system that doesn't even exist anymore.
Brandon D. Kirk 7/12/12
