We hold these Truths to be self-evident...
NY Times Bestselling author of Economic Hitman, John Perkins, explains in excerpts from his new book, Hoodwinked: An Economic Hitman Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them, that the US lives under a corporatocracy, with US policy captured to serve corporate profits rather than the public good.
This captured regulatory function of government is evident in US taxpayer transfers of TRILLIONS of our dollars to corporate elites in the last year alone. Goldman Sachs has deep connections throughout the US Treasury Department. Chair of the House Oversight Panel for the so-called bailout, Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren, calls our economic policy rewarding reckless gambling by giving taxpayers’ trillions back to the gamblers without asking where the money was going. The US Senate reported banks are the new Enron in creating profits for themselves through trading that produces only higher prices for Americans. The economic statistics we do get are manipulated to make our economy appear more productive than it really is. Among the top few global forecasters, Gerald Celente, calls our corporate/government collusion as mafia-style theft that rapes taxpayers and is evident to anyone with eyes to see.
This stunning transfer of wealth is unprecedented in recorded history.
Perkins explains that US agricultural subsidies of close to $20 billion every year allows US agribusiness to overproduce from US guaranteed price floors. Excess produce is then dumped in developing countries at below their market prices. The effect is to put local farmers out of business. For example, Perkins quotes the Organic Consumers Organization:
Since NAFTA came into effect on January 1, 1994, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have almost doubled to some 6 million metric tons in 2002. NAFTA eliminated quotas limiting corn imports . . . but allowed U.S. subsidy programs to remain in place—promoting dumping of corn into Mexico by U.S. agribusiness at below the cost of production. . . . The price paid to farmers in Mexico for corn fell by over 70 percent. . .
Perkins also explains a consequence of poverty is what our press reports as “terrorism.” Driving local producers out of work can also be a function of large corporate pollution, as he describes with Somali “pirates”:
Finally, NPR’s Morning Edition on May 6 aired a report from Gwen Thompkins; she interviewed a pirate who went by the name Abshir Abdullahi Abdi. “We understand what we’re doing is wrong,” Abdi explained. “But hunger is more important than any other thing.” Thompkins commented, “Fishing villages in the area have been devastated by illegal trawlers and waste dumping from industrialized nations. Coral reefs are reportedly dead. Lobster and tuna have vanished. Malnutrition is high.”
The answer to US economic catastrophe can be replicated around the globe, if we choose to do so. Governments can pay off national debt by transforming their monetary systems from bank-created debt to government created money (what most people assume is done, but are disinformed). In the US, the benefits are over a trillion dollars every year. The government can become the employer of last resort to hire for infrastructure improvement. This would eliminate poverty in almost all cases, and it’s cheaper to house and care for those who refuse work than leaving them on the streets according to every cost benefit analysis.
This policy has had historical support from many of America's brightest minds.
While waiting for federal monetary reform, states can end their own debt problems through state-owned banks.
Below is a 6-part interview of John Perkins by Alex Jones, where John walks the audience through his experience as an economic hitman and his perspective of what must be done today.
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Comments
Well what a surpises, you only bashed America once in this article...
WAH3:
You're counting the economic rip-off of Americans by trillions of our dollars as only one "bash"? Do you dispute the facts that we socialized the gambling losses of banksters, or are you a willing slave to those masters and resent my bashing them?
Carl great article once again, is their a way for followers to get updated whenever you write a new article?
ansel:
Thanks and yes: just click on the subscribe button under the article title to receive notification (it's free).
"... the US lives under a corporatocracy,..."
That's like putting a headline on the annual race in Kentucky of "Horse Wins Derby"
However, EXPANDING the role of government seem likely to have the opposite effect of what you claim, increasing the incentive for the rich to influence the powerful.
wow:
Alright, bright guy: what's your economic suggestion? Either promote a better idea, or follow your mother's advice.
And all you got from this economic analysis and extensive links on upgrading our monetary policy from a Robber Baron era structure created by the banks and for the banks is that I want to EXPAND the government???
You show the capacity for detail in other comments, wow. Given the benefits of monetary reform I document, what's your better idea than that?
It seems to me that the primary co-conspirators within this system has been, and continues to be, the Federal Government itself. This becomes evident by only watching one or two rounds of questioning provided by congress when they do their dog and pony show with the Fed Chairman. If only they would take of their gloves and use this time to ask relevant questions in a manner that would expose the real structure behind this financial system. The solution is so simple it seems highly unlikely that these people within the government are being unwhittingly complicit .It is also so very interesting that there is a currently a bill proposed that calls for the transfer of control over the monetary system from private hands into the public domain, but this proposal has recieved virtually no publicity.
As time goes on it becomes more and more apparent that this system persists primarity because the government is broken in that there continues to be a plethora of people holding office with inappropriate intent.
Yes, the Federal Government is criminally complicit. The Fed cannot achieve its purposes as stated by having a "debt supply" rather than a money supply. Our "leaders" either know, or should know, as managers. Their obfuscation tells what they do. The crimes John Perkins explains are lies of omission when our "leaders" don't mention them.
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