compassion, collaboration & cooperation iN transistion
IF capitalism IS
to survive as ...
THE BASIS of a “NEW Humpty Dumpty” model of global significance, the peoples of the world have to awaken to the FACTS; and collectively address the underlying problems of the CRISES of politics, religion and science.
FACT 1 – Monetary Wealth can ONLY be generated as a result of the labours of the people; unless of course, money itself becomes a commodity as it has done since Reagan & Thatcher’s DE-regulation, and having done so, has led to the most severe economic crisis that the totality of our species has thus far experienced.
FACT 2 – Bankers have forever tapped into that wealth at the expense of those labours of the people and always utilised it to their own selfish ends, counting on the fact that the capitalist model accepted the fact that banking was too large/important to fail.
FACT 3 – “Capitalism is about the link between effort and reward. It is about the creation of wealth according to the quality of one's enterprise. Without wealth creation there is no scope for the taxation that enables the functions society deems moral: a welfare state, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of law and order.”
FACT 4 – 40% of global GDP has been wiped out as a result of the actions of bankers, quants, politicians and their regulatory framework colleagues, following the “massive expansion of the money supply in western economies and in the developing ones too, whether China, India or Brazil. This expansion, which was the fault of governments because it is they who control the money supply, put trillions of dollars of cheap money at the disposal of bankers and other institutions who make a living by buying cheap – in this case buying money cheap – and selling dear.”
AND NOW the peoples of the globe
During the early phases of this development the strongest took control and the spiritual was delegated to a.n.other as a partner in the process of control of the feminine and devine feminine perspectives of LIFE. The dual, parallel forces of politics and religion were established side by side, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in unison, until such time as the advent of the concepts of church and state as one and church as state were embodied.
As our species spread over the earth an adherence to this tribal pattern led to animalistic territorial confrontation, conflicts and wars, often at the behest of “religious advice”, and the consequent pillaging of goods and subsequent trade of those goods, for the ever increasing collective good. A collective good, however, which became to be controlled by a corrupt partnership of state and religion, supported by the new politics of Machiavelli.
Bankers and banking appeared on the scene, primarily to fund these conflicts and wars as the catalyst to the process of an ever increasing accumulation of material wealth and power over the people, amply supported by the observations of scientific experiment and the development of ever more appropriate technological solutions; and along came protestant reformation, the commonwealth, the industrial revolution, the “seeds” of democracy through revolution and capitalism.
Capitalism can best be described as a system in which private capital or wealth is used in the production or distribution of goods, for the mutual benefit of ALL stakeholders, in support of the very best values of democratic society. Capitalism has provided the mechanism by which the potential benefits of global free trade could be made available to ALL 7 billion souls on our planet.
IT IS the breakdown of the, inherently required, responsibility to adhere to the ethical standards first incorporated into the capitalist model, by the likes of Josiah Wedgewood and Henry Ford, in combination with the predominately patriarchal mind-set of our new masters of the globe, which has now resulted in the latest global recession/depression and has brought US ALL to the “abyss” which we - the peoples of this planet - are NOW staring into.
The OLD MODEL of an economic system which generates and gives power to the self-sophisticated, arrogant and greedy nature of capitalists, bankers, and politicians – which has led to the dominance of the private owners of capital and of production of profit for the few rather than the mutual benefit of the many and the subsequent destruction of 40% of global gross domestic product - HAS been found wanting and collapsed into a multitude of diverse pieces, as a result of their collective inability to manage, let alone administer the system for the benefit of the people and now they come to us “cap in hand to ask for more.”
The particular OLD WORLD interpretation of the European version of that OLD ORDER MODEL of an economic system has EVEN developed hand-in-hand with the creation of a European Government led by a small unelected exclusive group of MEN who have the supreme power of the EU in their hands.
An anti-democratic oligarchy IN FACT.
An oligarchy which at present, as the spokesman of the 25 nations of the EU, is preaching to the foremost democracy on earth about its proposed BUY AMERICAN policy - whilst being locked into a system of monetary union which was never designed to cope with the inevitable global boom and bust which we are now experiencing - as one of its NON-EMU member states is “Lording” its special relationship with that self same democracy.
IS IT NOT somewhat ironical that the buy American commitment IS of the people, by the people, for the people in the face of the predominately elitist “DO what I say NOT what I DO control” of the peoples of Europe and the rest of the so called civilised world by that small, unelected, exclusive group of MEN. The leaders of the EU, UK, Russia and China “spring to mind”.
IF every individual one of the peoples of the globe,
now decided to lodge their earnings and/or savings into a mutual building society, savings and loan, credit union or for that matter under the mattress, the banking industry would be starved of funds and as Nobel Prize winning economist and former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Professor Stiglitz has recently suggested, “perhaps it would be best to allow ALL the banks to default on their own debts as a result of being made bankrupt” – but ONLY, I would suggest, on the basis that the banks should become an extinct species, such that capitalism as well as democracy should become a function of the people, for the people, by the people.
A commitment to establishing a social networking site of global significance, based on the concept of conscious capitalism was, I truly believe, the driving force behind Brian’s “zaadz” initiative and its incorporation into the community of GAIA.
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Views: 385
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Comment by Michael Grove on July 7, 2012 at 22:51
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Finally, the British political classes are starting to get it.
Finally, a head of steam is building. Over the past week, calls to impose a proper division between investment and commercial banking have become louder, more authoritative and part of mainstream debate. Pressure for the introduction – or reintroduction – of this crucial split could soon become irresistible, however much the politicians wiggle and the investment bankers deceive.
Liam Halligan goes on to say - Until now, it’s been mainly nerds like me who have advocated a full Glass-Steagall separation. Given the vested interests that would lose from this change, we’ve been lampooned for our “hot-headed” views.Ever since the sub-prime crisis began in the spring of 2007, most British political leaders and regulators have resisted serious banking reform.
Sir John Vickers’ measures, years in the making, have now been exposed for what they are – an elegant political compromise, with not a chance of reining in London’s rapacious investment banking culture, so all but guaranteeing another crisis a few years down the line.
While hopelessly weak in and of themselves, even Vickers’ proposals, imposing a “firewall” between investment and commercial banking, rather than a full institutional split, have been watered down by the Government. Legislation implementing Vickers has yet to be passed and, anyway, won’t come fully into effect until 2019.
As one of those nerds all I can say is BRAVO and ALL hail to Liam Halligan -
for this excellent piece of logical & rational common-sense.
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CREDIT - credere - to believe; put faith in - and without faith there can be no finance.
IT WAS of course Brooksley Born at the CFTC who first raised any kind of questions about the validity and integrity of the Over The Counter Derivatives Market. As a result of her initiatives it became ever more apparent - at the highest level of both politics and finance - that those in charge subscribed to their own self-serving faith in the OTC derivatives market operation - to the extent that Brooksley Born's "constructive criticism" was entirely without foundation.
6 weeks after congress threw out any chance of acknowledging the problem - let alone fixing it - major panic ensued in the market as the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management collapsed towards potential bankrupcy!
"For someone whose eyes would go glassy when hearing "derivatives" or "hedge funds", this programme was a revelation. In an entertaining and clear narrative, it made sense of the issues involved for the first time. It is also the story of a real American hero, Brooksley Born, who unfortunately had to learn, in Gore Vidal's mot, that America provides every freedom, including the one not to be heard. But PBS is there to fight that attitude, and as a Canadian I congratulate you for this magnificent documentary which had me riveted from beginning to end."Maarten van Dijk Oct 21, 2009 12:29
"We have to go back to the glass-steagall act and purge what Bill clinton signed into law replacing the glass-steagall act.. All executives of public corp. should be held personally and jointly liable for bad business practices.. tough regulations should be in place.. Bring Volcker and Brooksley Born into the mix.. They are the real financial experts... They have high standards of morality and have a honest heart to protect the public from corrupt executives..
They used their God-given talent for the common good."
Florendo Navaleza Oct 22, 2009 01:40
This was truly a political and financial "case study in arrogance" in the context
of the absolute truth that neither GOD or POLITICS or the FINANCIAL system are
"religion in any shape or form" - because it was the faith in self-serving religion
rather than the faith in common-sense which eventually brought the financial
system to its knees in late 2008 at the expense of the peoples of this world who had
absolutely no say in the matter because of the total lack of representation in Congress.
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IT is a lonely task sticking up for the Greeks – given the sins of their elites over the last decade – but do we really have to put up with the false narrative coming from the EU's creditor core, and the self-serving eyewash by the policy architects of this disaster in Brussels, Frankfurt, and indeed Washington?
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J P Morgan Chase and other big banks are accused of running a frightening scam collecting on
credit card debt. California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who filed suit against J P Morgan Chase
last Thursday, says that from January 2008 to April 2011 -- just as people were reeling from the
Wall Street-driven financial crisis -- the megabank unleashed over 100,000 lawsuits against
consumers over uncollected credit-card debt in the state of California alone. That includes 469
lawsuits in a single day. Now, it usually takes time and money to pursue lawsuits through the
court system. So how in the world did Chase keep up this breakneck pace? The lawsuit claims
that the bank took a number of little shortcuts, like robo-signing, in which bank employees
produce sworn documents and other legal filings without bothering to check bank records
or examine cases for accuracy ...
PLUS Ca CHANGE !!!
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Michael said
In the context of the FACT 3 reference to the maintenance of law and order, Barack Obama has included, in his thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream, the following statement …
“FOR in the end laws are just words on a page - words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.”
… as I would further suggest, our new masters of the globe continue to poke their fingers in the “Honey Pot” with nary a thought for the worker bees who have facilitated its content; such that Barack Obama was further motivated to conclude …
“INSTEAD, they involved the question of whether those in power were bound by ANY rules of LAW at all.”
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Michael said
Since 1979 the incumbent political party of the government of the UK and its opposition, have ONLY ACTED as if they were collectively above the LAW, that they expected the electorate to abide by. Self-interested politicians, in politics ONLY for what they could squeeze out of the system for themselves and their family and ”friends” and at the same time prioritize government spending policies to KEEP them in politics.
My long-standing experience of the EEC, EU and EMU mirrors this situation.
As Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University,
wrote in the Financial Times …
”The reality being repressed is that the western world is suffering a
crisis of indebtedness.”
… and as Jeff Randall has said in today’s Daily Telegraph - ” In which case, pumping out yet more debt will not be the answer. It is simply a short-term fix that in the long-run creates an even bigger disaster, like giving a shivering alcoholic a case of Special Brew. Yesterday’s half-point rate cut was a panic measure from a central bank whose excessively loose monetary policy in the first half of this decade encouraged a catastrophic borrowing binge. Now, desperate to mitigate the consequences of its own failure, it is trying to inflate another bubble. In so doing, as Dr Ros Altmann, a former adviser to Number 11, points out:
“They punish those who actually did the right thing [savers], while benefiting the very groups
(the banks in particular) whose actions caused this mess.”
ps. for more on Niall Ferguson’s History of the Ascent of Money do follow the link copied from the main text of this zBlog@zaadz …
The OLD MODEL of an economic system - IT IS well worth watching to truly understand the really BIG GLOBAL PICTURE.
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Michael said
The New Capitalism ” There’s next year, and then there’s the next decade. Economic conditions in 2009 will be treacherous. There’ll be a formal recession in most developed economies, and the economic contraction is highly likely to be more severe in the UK than almost anywhere else. Companies and consumers will continue to tighten their belts. There’ll be a sharp rise in unemployment. The extraordinary volatility we’ve experienced in the price of sterling, commodities, energy, shares and capital - which makes it so hard for businesses and investors to plan - is unlikely to dissipate. ”
Robert Peston
IN the context that INFORMATION IS POWER and that POWER to the PEOPLE IS ITSELF dependent on INFORMATION and IT IS ”THE MEDIA” which invariably provides access to that INFORMATION the BBC iplayer video of the treasury sub-committee hearing IS a MUST for ALL the peoples of this planet …
IF they wish to truly UNDERSTAND the FACTS of the GLOBAL ECONOMIC PICTURE
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Michael said
” But the biggest lesson of all is that we are a million miles from having created the political and regulatory institutions to help us contain the risks of globalisation. We and most of the world may
well have been beneficiaries of the open global economy. But as millions lose their jobs in Europe and the US in the coming year, the benefits will be forgotten. If the unfettered movement of capital, goods and services is going to survive, if there’s not going to be a retreat into national fortresses that could
impoverish all of us over the longer term, we’ll have to find a far better way of monitoring global risks and of bringing governments together to deal with these risks. Some may see this as a threat to national sovereignty, as the thin end of an antidemocratic wedge that’ll see the world ruled by unaccountable bureaucrats. Reconciling our political traditions with the imperative of making safe the globalised world will be a challenge, to put it mildly. But it’s not a challenge we can shirk.“
Robert Peston, 8 December 2008
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Michael said
“SO does it all come down to how we interpret human nature?” and IF SO when are we going to come to terms with the priority NEED for ”the children within as well as the children without” to BE free to think their own thoughts?
“It will take a renewed understanding of children's needs – above all, an understanding of their need for the stability of parental commitment and parental responsibility.”
Kathy Gyngell
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Artemisilke said
YOU'VE SAID IT!!!
Right on!!!
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Michael said
Beyond Bailouts | How a Circulation Charge
Can Help Save and Transform Global Finance
Jordan Bruce MacLeod
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Michael said
In the first account of its kind on television, award-winning journalist Andrew Rawnsley last night presented the inside political story of the credit crunch.
As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has presided over the biggest recession in 75 years. Rawnsley examined the key moments, showing how Brown as Prime Minister inherited the economic problems of his own 10 years as chancellor. The programme charted the roller coaster journey of Brown's fortunes from the moment the credit crunch began.
The Channel 4 Dispatches programme featured exclusive interviews with senior figures close to the economic crisis, including cabinet ministers, senior politicians and former treasury insiders.
I can only concur with BARBARA COSTELLO's most succinct comment in response to the first showing of this particular Dispatches episode, namely that …
I have to say what a fabulous job Andrew Rawnsley did in presenting to us a serious, unbiased view regarding the state of our country both politically and economically. A true eye opener.
THE ONLY conclusion one can make from this televisual account and the plethora of books and
journalistic reports written about the capitalistic model, which brought the PEOPLES of our species to the brink of the abyss, IS that the present model IS BROKEN and that any new model must based on a more caring attitude towards economics, politics and the planet.
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Michael said
Greed isn't good - it's dangerous
” What is needed now is NOT a rejection of capitalism but rather a radical reform of some of its institutions and practices. In a way, this is nothing new. What we now think of as capitalism did not emerge fully formed in an act of creation, but rather evolved.
So why should it have stopped its process of evolution now?
We have been trying to live comfortably in a completely new era with a system of controls fashioned for an age long past. This is not the end of capitalism but the beginning of a new phase of it, a phase in which it is not controlled or suppressed, but channelled and marshalled, rather like a great river whose course is managed.
Such a thought will offend those who tend the flame of the free market ideal. But an effective market system is like democracy: how it operates in practice can be very different from how it works in theory. Effective market systems and effective democracies are fuzzy. In both cases there is a theoretically pure version that appears to embody the essence of the thing, whereas in practice the presence of this thing alone often sees the essence escape.
The essence of democracy, you might think, is free elections. Yet it is comparatively easy to establish elections that are free in a system that is democratic in only the most tenuous sense. For markets, it is a similar story. Paradoxically, markets need the state to keep them on the straight and narrow. They even need the state to keep them competitive.
Capitalism always throws up problems and failings. This is neither surprising nor a fatal criticism. Society has to find a way of either living with them or correcting them. However, as capitalism evolves, so the nature of its failings and problems changes. So too must be the way in which society copes with them.
Moreover, financial markets do not offer a blueprint for the whole of society. Society cannot live by greed alone. Even if it can cope perfectly well if some of its members are motivated in this way, it needs millions of people to be motivated by duty, responsibility, and a sense of public purpose.
These are feelings that the triumph of unbridled greed in the financial markets threatens to overwhelm. The market was made for man, not man for the market. “
Roger Bootle - The Trouble with Markets
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Michael said
WHY we can't GO BACK to the old economy !
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Michael said
SocGen braces clients for “global collapse”
with 178 comments thus far, the following brought a smile to my face …
It is a slow day in a small Florida town and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit. A rich tourist drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.
As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, .the Farmer's Co-op
The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.
The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.
The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.
At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves town.
No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today
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Michael said
” SO from where we stand, the way ahead forks. One path leads to further economic and fiscal disaster and a re-run of the 1930s. Another leads to future prosperity, stability, and a new era of close international cooperation.
I cannot pretend that I am confident we will take the decisions that will lead us down the right path, although I am certain that we could do so. Those who argue that we are helpless before the steamroller of disastrous events are as wrong as those who argue that although we could do something, we will be better off by doing nothing. Theirs is a counsel of despair, leading to disaster.
IT IS as weak a theory as IT IS poorly grounded in history. It betrays an ignorance of human nature as much as an insouciance toward human suffering.
GIVEN both the will and the understanding, WE CAN DO so much better.
Facing similar threats, our parents and grandparents tried and failed.
WE OWE it to them both to try and to succeed.
WE OWE this even more to our children.”
Roger Bootle - The Trouble with Markets