Robber barons are back (maybe they never left)

In the Grand Banana Republic capitalist robber barons used to “employ” young boys, maybe around 11 or 12 years old or even younger, to work in coal mines fourteen hours a day. Robber barons practiced the same thing in Britain. Looks like they’re starting up again. Here.

Corporatism (i.e., unbridled capitalism) gotta go

I watched this documentary the other night on Netflix Streaming. Incredibly, the U.S. is even worse off now than it was when Moore made this film.

Some items of corroboration

• U.S. economy near point of no return
• The financial conspiracy
• Jobless millions signal death of American dream
• Economic fear
• Wall St and second wave of recession
• Third World America
• Ugly world of monopolies
• Commercial real estate getting ugly

The gamers

” ‘The system is built to be gamed’ ….”The voices of dissent are not being heard.’  These are the words of an anonymous executive [known as the fourteenth banker] at one of America’s 10 largest banks, who after many years of watching the worst of Wall Street’s ethics transform his company, has decided to speak out.. Despite the obvious risks to his banking career, the executive, who’s been in the industry for more than 20 years, says he can’t bear to keep quiet any longer: ‘I decided that I cannot live with the extent of the compromises to my value system.’ “Read more here.

Moore and Ratigan on Wall St

Children of the Grand Banana Republic

“…Over the past two years, government officials and experts have seen an increasing number of children leave home for life on the streets, including many under 13. Foreclosures, layoffs, rising food and fuel prices and inadequate supplies of low-cost housing have stretched families to the extreme, and those pressures have trickled down to teenagers and preteens…” Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways

Das Ice Kapital

How a nice northern country was plopped out the bowels of Capitalism–in other words,  how Iceland ended up in the toilet.

“Along a narrow strip between downtown Reykjavik and the northern coastline lies a jumble of half-built high-rise buildings that was to be the new Manhattan of the north. By Spring this year, the place had become an urban graveyard. Someone has scrawled “CAPITALISM R.I.P.” on the side of one of the buildings. Squatters have moved in, converting an abandoned house into a cosy café. The Reykjavikers cheerfully welcomed the presence of some kind of life to this ghost town. The developers, however, did not approve. So, just after Easter, the riot police were sent in with a chainsaw to hack through barricaded doors and pepper spray to disable the young squatters. The clean-up was nasty, brutal and short: it was the official end of Niceland…” Here.

Compared to Capitalism even Feudalism smells like sexy perfume.

Is capitalism sicko?

I’m not a big fan of Michael Moore; but I’m even less of a fan of corrupt Wall Street and its sycophantic congressional lackeys

Bankers’ holiday Inc.

“I’d been working for the bank for about five weeks when I woke up on the balcony of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. It was midnight and I was drunk. One of my fellow management trainees was urinating onto the skylight of the lobby below us; another was hurling wine glasses into the courtyard. Behind us, someone had stolen the hotel’s shoe-polishing machine and carried it into the room; there were a line of drunken bankers waiting to use it. Half of them were dripping wet, having gone swimming in all their clothes and been too drunk to remember to take them off. It took several more weeks of this before the bank considered us properly trained…” Read aticle here.

Bailed out wife’s sad new life

Writing anonymously, a bailed-out CEO’s wife complains about the ebbing of her shopping life:

“…I haven’t even looked at spring clothes; God forbid someone catches me out in something new. Keeping up with fashion seems somehow decadent in this new era, like getting Botox injections or catered dinners… If I buy a present for someone, I have the package sent to their home. I don’t want to be spotted climbing into a taxi, laden with Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags…”

Gee whiz, I wonder who this piece of whining fecal matter is?

The black hole of the consumer society

So this is where our corrupt Capitalist system has brought us: Are you an idiot to keep paying your mortgage?

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Related:

Here’s what you can do to save the Consumer society from the money you’ll have from not paying your mortgage.

Everyone, right now as we speak, go out and buy a new car.

Starting with Wal-Mart enter store and fill up three carts with Chinese STUFF (and don’t worry about its toxicity), pay for purchases, then go to J. C. Penny and do the same, then go to Macy’s and buy OTHER STUFF, then go to every shop in the Mall and buy at least one piece of STUFF…

Buy a third and fourth computer (equally divided among Apple and Other), then buy at least one printer; also be sure to buy at least two reams of printer paper.

Oh, for that new car, purchase at least one extra set of tires and three pairs of headlights, and yeah, buy an extra one of those plastic doodads for your dashboard (oh, yeah, right, buy at least one extra dashboard).

To keep the housing industry, such as it is, going, go to Home Depot and buy at at least two 4×8 foot sheets of drywall (don’t worry, you can easily break them up and throw them away when you get home). Also get three tubes of caulk in various colors (again, if you don’t need them give them to the kids to play with);also purchase at least one cabinet even if it’ll just end up in your garage (and yes, it would really help if you bought a new garage).

These are of course just some of the help you can render Consumerism, and hence our Economy, if you act now. Remember, buy enough STUFF and you can keep the economy going for another five years.

Related:

“American socialite Paris Hilton has declared herself a saviour who shops for the greater good in tight economic times. In Sydney to host an exclusive New Year’s dance party, the 27-year-old heir to the Hilton hotel fortune this week drew criticism for spending 5,560 Australian dollars (3,844 US dollars) in a 40-minute shopping spree. Local charities accused her of callous excess but Hilton Wednesday defended the splurge.  “I’m in Australia, I think it’s important to help out, you know, the economy out here, everywhere in the world,” she told reporters, ahead of her New Year engagement.  “And what’s wrong with doing a little shopping? It’s New Year’s, I need a New Year’s dress.” American socialite Paris Hilton has declared herself a saviour who shops for the greater good in tight economic times.” (Quoted from Breitbart.com news.) Now a lot of people may laugh at Ms Hilton for this, or maybe just shake their heads over another shopping lifestyle spree of the rich and famous. But actually, if you analyze the consumer economy and what it takes to keep it going–buying, buying and more buying–Paris Hilton’s remark,  “shopping for the greater good,  makes perfect economic sense.

The Avengers

Why is it that the absolute best writing about American politics always seems to come from the Brits? It never ceases to amaze me how some British thinker will seize an American dilemma by the horns (like one of those English 1930′s big game hunters with a 300 lb Serengeti antelope), analyze it, put it in totally bleeping  perspective and publish it. Even the best writer in America today is an ex pat Englishman, Christopher Hitchens.

Case in point. Gerard Baker from the London Times takes on the myths surrounding the American bailout:

“There’s something curious about the human imagination. Confronted with unprecedented events of unfathomable scale, it seems to find the shocking reality insufficiently interesting and reaches instead for even grander, more cosmic explanations of what’s going on. The financial crisis is precisely that sort of moment. It’s a vast drama, with consequences that will ripple steadily from immediate economic hardship to changes in short-term political fortune to a broad recasting of the way our economies and societies work. But that’s not enough, apparently, for the drama queens and kings of our political and media establishments. Hastily, they’ve constructed a grand historical narrative in the last couple of weeks, composed largely of overarching myths that are in danger of hardening into conventional wisdom. So at the risk of being accused of missing the historical boat, let me try to take a few of them on…:continue with That rubbish they talk about the credit crunch.