We didn't declare the class war, but we're in one. It is new kind of economic warfare. It is unlike the trade wars of the past, where nations square off for access to scarce resources. It is not the US complaining about rare earth metals from China, or the now provincial battles of yesteryear between the Caribbean and American corporations such as United Fruit and US Sugar.
This is a war declared by what can only be called The Monied Class. They are a group of financiers who care for nothing more than the bottom line in their portfolios. They have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow countrymen. They will gladly and repeatedly sell out their own nations.
I found myself saying, as I researched this Diary, that Comic Book Villians aren't supposed to exist in the real world. Still, the Monied Class are selling us up the river with impunity and, with a twist of the mustachios, laughing all the way to the bank.
We, the taxpayers, have been paying these people billions to do grievous harm to us. They've been fooling us for decades, and we're falling for it, hook, line and sinker.
I could focus on any aspect of the economy. If you can think about it, and research it, you'll see where it's controlled by the super rich. I'm going to focus on three areas: Patents, The Media, and Financial Institutions.
Patents
Did you watch that video? If you didn't, go back and watch it, I'll wait.
So lets say you're an inventor with a bad mortgage and a great product. Are you going to wait three years for your patent pending product's application to be opened, or are you going to sell it for less than it's worth to some company so that you can get out of debt?
Neither, you're going to have your product stolen by a company that say's it's trying to help you cut through the red tape, and then steals your idea because they have the money and the lawyers to bury you. The HuffPo headline says it all: Patent Theft as a Business Strategy.
Gordon Gekko would be proud.
Rachel Maddow had a great segment the other night about satire being overrun by horrible reality. Satire is not supposed to be prophecy.
If you've seen the movie Wall Street, then you're familiar with one of the best satirical figures ever created in America. Gordon Gekko is the symbol of everything America should despise about the avarice and greed of wall street. He is held up as an over the top, absurd example, and he's designed to make a point.
He's now an object of worship for wall street.
Vanity Fair:
To wit, not long before hedge-fund manager Seth Tobias was found dead in his Florida swimming pool, with an unlucky mixture of cocaine, Ambien, and alcohol in his bloodstream, he gave an interview for Wall Street’s DVD bonus reel, in which he said, “I remember when I saw the movie in 1987. I recall saying, That’s what I want to be. I want to start out as Bud Fox and end up as Gordon Gekko.”
Michael Douglas often expresses his astonishment at the many Wall Street males who have sought him out in public places just to say, “Man, I want to tell you, you are the single biggest reason I got into the business. I watched Wall Street, and I wanted to be Gordon Gekko.” The film’s equally perplexed screenwriter, Stanley Weiser, has made the same point, in a different way. “We wanted to capture the hyper-materialism of the culture,” he said. “That was always the intent of the movie. Not to make Gordon Gekko a hero.”
That's like growing up watching and reading Superman, only to decide that you want to be Lex Luthor.
The Media
For many of us, hell would be being forced to listen to conservative talk radio. The reason it exists, and the reason that voices like Alan Berg wont be heard again, is Clear Channel Communications.
Clear Channel controls 50-90% of the radio stations in the top 50 markets in the US. That's a 40% variance city to city, but they own most of the radio stations you can tune into. They own billboards, and they've made a habit of buying out entertainment venues. They exercise a practice called Negative Synergy. Essentially, they own all of the concert venues and all of the radio stations. You want to perform? You do it at a loss. You either accept their terms, or you don't get access to Clear Channel's listeners. Groups like CorpWatch have criticized clear channel, but the criticism doesn't just come from the left.
Charles Goyette, a principled anti-war conservative from back when those actually existed, lost his job at clear channel for questioning America's casus belli with Iraq.
“Imagine these startling headlines with the nation at war in the Pacific six months after Dec. 7, 1941: “No Signs of Japanese Involvement in Pearl Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited; Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made.”
Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline from the European theater: “German Army Not Found in France, Poland, Admits President; Rumsfeld: ‘Oops!’, Powell Silent; ‘Bring ’Em On,’ Says Defiant FDR.”It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war, it should be self-evident. The Secretary of State should not need to convince a skeptical world with satellite photos of a couple of Toyota pickups and a dumpster. And faced with a legitimate casus belli, it should not be hard to muster an actual constitutional declaration of war. Now in the absence of a meaningful Iraqi role in the 9/11 attack and the mysterious disappearance of those fearsome Weapons of Mass Destruction, there might be some psychic satisfaction to be had in saying, “I told you so!” But it sure isn’t doing my career as a talk-show host any good.The criterion of self-evidence was only one of dozens of objections I raised before the elective war in Iraq on my afternoon drive-time talk show on KFYI in Phoenix.
He was fired for arguments like these. He was replaced with two gentlemen, "one of whom, who upon learning that 23-year-old Mideast peace activist Rachel Corrie had been run over by an Israeli bulldozer shouted, "Back up and run over her again!'"
Charles Goyette's article in The American Conservative Magazine, How to Lose Your Job in Talk Radio, should be one of the most famous articles bouncing around on the internet. It explains the early days of a Media paradigm that led to Glenn Beck.
Some of you may remember internet activist groups such as ClearChannelSucks.com and StopClearChannel.org. There was a movement to end their monopoly of the airwaves. You may be wondering to yourselves "What ever happened with that?" It's dead. Clear channel won.
The Monied Class owns the Airwaves. They own Fox News. They even own MSNBC, and Kieth Olbermann's departure is more unsettling in this light, though Rachel will soldier on until she says or does something inconvenient. Then, maybe, she'll join Kieth over at Current TV. It isn't just Radio and Television that are ruled by the ultra wealthy.
Many of you are probably creative people like me. You might have a screenplay bouncing around in your head. The sad truth is that you don't have a bishop's chance in hell of seeing any of your work end up on screen, unless you produce it yourself.
That script you're writing will be treated by the industry as a spec script. Essentially, it's an audition that proves you know how to write. Films don't begin with writers, actors, or any other creative individual. They begin with the Monied classes.
They begin with producers.
A producer will decide on an idea that appeals to two of the four main demographics, dumb the idea down for the international market, decide on which actors will be in it and who will direct it, then secure investors. Once all this is done, he calls a screenwriter to copy down his ideas, and turn them into simple dialogue that appeals to the lowest common denominator, for almost no pay.
That's part of what the writers guild strike was all about. Well, that last part. The rest just leads to bored writer on board.
Let's say that you're disgusted with this system and decide that you want to make an independent film. Chances are that if it has a single swearword in it, it'll end up stamped with an NC-17 rating, which almost guarantees death on arrival at the box office. Take a look at that list, and you'll see a lot of independent films. But hey, if you're from a big production company, and you've got a lot of money, don't worry, no matter how much sex you cram into a film like American Pie, it'll still only get rated R. NC-17 is reserved for indie flicks that the Monied Class wants to fail, because how dare they try to make art without the permission of the captains of industry?
So lets say you decide not to bankrupt yourself making an indie film, and your script gets bought by a studio? Chances are still 10-1 that it will never be produced. These companies buy out scripts just to make sure that nobody else ever produces them and makes money. They'llsit on international releases.
Your only chance to get out of this is to have some celebrity take up your cause. That's the only reason Good Will Hunting ever saw the light of day: the intervention of Robin Williams.
From Radio, to Television to Film, there isn't a single area of the main stream media that isn't controlled almost completely by the superwealthy. And that still isn't enough. This is why Net Neutrality is so important. Companies like Clear Channel and News Corporation want to do the same thing with Internet Access that they've done to Radio, Television, and Film.
They want to shut down access to websites like this one, because how dare you read something that doesn't make them money? How dare you read something that questions them? Why, they own the companies that allow you to access this, you ingrates! You wouldn't be reading this if it wasn't for them! How dare you use bandwith for anything but Hulu! We gave you almost free television! Why isn't that enough?!
Debt Slavery
I mean-
Fiduciary Instruments and Institutions
That's better!
There are already hundreds of diaries focusing on things like forclosure and student loans. We all know about that.
But there's a new system of obfuscating financial instruments designed to hoodwink everyone. They exist not to make money, but to be so complex that they defy regulation.
Michael Moore in Capitalism, A Love Story:
A discussion of the math of a specific type of derivative can be found here.
Complex Financial Instruments exist only for the purpose of tax evasion. The purpose of these instruments is to swindle naiive investors and the nations in which investments are made out of billions of dollars. The economic collapse caused by systems that most investors don't even understand led not to convictions, but to bailouts and bonuses. They crashed the economy by trying to make it so complex that it can't be regulated, and then, we rewarded their bad behavior with 700 billion dollars, obedient peasants that we are.
Elsewhere
If you look around, you'll see the influence of the Monied Class sneaking its way into every single aspect of our lives. From Charter Schools and the education system, the destruction of labour unions to end our ability to defend ourselves from class war, the financial debt it now takes to purchase anything of value, from cars, to housing, to a decent education, every aspect of our economy is now controlled by the Monied Class.
This isn't just America. This is a global phenomenon. If you haven't read The Atlantic Magazine's article The Rise of the New Global Elite, then you should.
Honestly, we need to start talking about international financial regulation treaties, coupled with trade sanctions and investment barriers for nations that refuse to sign on. An international regulatory framework is the only thing that will give us some level of control over our own lives again. The problem isn't that there's a class war. The problem is that the Monied Class, the New Global Elite, is winning. Globally, we're giving them tax cuts, and bailouts, and deregulation, the top 1% has more than the bottom 95, and it still isn't enough.
But hey, at least we've still got our Witty Banter™.