State Violence Update: Michael Lewis Exposes Wall Street Pathology In Concert With State Pathology Have Rigged The Stock Market
Ya think? First off, 60 Minutes starts this video by stating that stock ownership is at record lows. This is absolutely false. The U.S. stock market ownership remains very near record highs. This false meme is used by propagandists to perpetuate a meme that the stock market can rise to infinity because more investors will drive the market higher. But beyond that, Lewis is up to his same antics in this interview. That is, a decades-long crusade to expose Wall Street’s endless frauds. That’s a good thing.
This really isn’t anything new. Don’t kid yourself. There are no good ole days of class-based, private, for-profit corporate capitalism before our economy was financialized. Before we were prey for capitalist financiers, we were fodder for capitalist industrialists. We simply go through these long cycles of industrial predators then financial predators then back again. You know where we are going next if you appreciate this. That is, unless this system collapses as I have written on here for years that it most likely will. We saw financial predators in 1776 under the king’s capitalism. And, we saw them again in the longest depression in our history of 1873 and a few times in between and since. And we’ve countless examples of private, for-profit capital’s industrialist predators in between including Robber Barons, child labor exploitation, Pinkerton guards murdering workers, a history of work and wage slavery, a history of toxic environmental damage, and on and on and on.
Today’s criminal activity is just another manifestation of a private, class-based, profit-driven financial systems endless evils. And, let’s be honest with ourselves and call it what it really is. It is evil. Remember, it was Reagan who deregulated private, class-based, for profit capital. And, the world didn’t have to wait long to see the consequences. Within Reagan’s second term, the U.S. economy teetered on the precipice of literal collapse with its greatest massive fraud since the Great Depression. Hundreds of Reagan appointees went to prison or were forced out for impropriety. And, thousands of prosecutions in the financial sector took place. But, it was Clinton who completely deregulated the borders of private, class-based capital. Now the fraud is well beyond anything most people can imagine. Literally everything Wall Street touches involves some level of state violence. Don’t delude yourself to believe one political party or the other is responsible. It is the state that creates and perpetuates this violence. This violence benefits the state and its many actors. That includes the financial industry, politicians, corporations, universities, lawyers, etc.
Clinton says he made a mistake in some of his decisions to deregulate the financial industry. He chalks it up to bad advice. Okay, if you are serious, then you and Al Gore should have no problems giving back the $500 million you made because of these decisions. So, give it back. Ahem. That was my April Fool’s joke a day early.
We still haven’t seen the true extent of this violence. It is still being suppressed. I dare say that while high frequency trading, while a serious infraction of state violence, is a serious criminal activity, it is peanuts in comparison to financial fraud enabled by state violence. Small peanuts. Just another rent extraction scheme. I wrote on here years ago that Wall Street was the greatest evil in the world today. That certainly is well true and there is little to argue with that assertion. Wall Street is the enabler to state violence. It funds the state’s endless violence around the world. Mass murder, spying, fomenting violence, war, torture, bullying, terrorism and countless other sinister and more covert examples of violence against the American people. Why do we see a wholesale collapse of the human condition in this country? State violence. This while those who enrich themselves at the expense of that violence are living large. Remember, Wall Street and corporate capitalism are the enablers. The source of that violence is the political class. In other words, the state.
In closing, Lewis remarks that this type of front-running, which is the source of everything Wall Street does as a crime syndicate racket, is legal. Now, how is that possible? I return to my favorite quote from Bastiat-
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve. But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime."
The state actors involved in perpetuating this wholesale fraud are wide and varied. The military-industrial and police state complex benefits by extending its megalomania power. Corporate capitalism benefits by extending its reach of rent extraction globally. The investor class benefits by thieving the entire world. The political class benefits through global domination. Universities pump out the financial program graduates and MBAs to create and run this criminal racket. And, the law profession and law university programs legalizes it. Then there are the financial predators themselves. And on and on and on. The entire system is rotten. Probably rotten beyond fixing. But, then there is not and never will be an intent to fix it. Doing so would mean the state would lose all of the violence it has empowered itself with due to the rot it created. That ain’t happening. The state exists for one reason and one reason only. That is, to perpetuate its violence. So, the implosion of modern corporate capitalist society continues.
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