“The world’s five largest companies together generate annual sales greater than the combined incomes of the 46 poorest countries in the world. Multinationals have gained such wealth and power because governments have systematically removed barriers to trade, while failing to balance these new market opportunities with global rules to prevent exploitation of the environment and local communities. This potent cocktail of greater power and weaker regulation is contributing to growing levels of environmental damage: Half of the world’s forests have now been completely destroyed. Half of the world’s rivers are seriously depleted and polluted. Over a third of the world’s fish stocks are either depleted or over-exploited. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the world’s population now survives on less than US$2 a day, 50,000 dying from malnutrition even in a good year.”
According to Rajesh Makwana in Economic Sharing: A Shift In Global Values,
“Whilst financial wealth soars to new heights for the few, the majority world are growing relatively poorer in the face of unfair trade, debt-based finance and grossly insufficient international aid. At the same time, developing countries have to endure the harsh environmental consequences of the industrial growth that fuels the skewed generation of wealth. Instead of being given the tools to end poverty they find themselves forced to systematically abdicate democratic control over their economies and resources to economically dominant countries and corporations.
This all rests within a corrupt and unstable global financial architecture based largely on speculation and bearing no relevance to the lives of most people. Within this structure, multinational corporations have thrived and shaped the thwarted ideals of consumer society, ensuring grave environmental neglect through over consumption. In the meantime, the scourge of mass poverty has been neglected and left to commerce and damaging export-oriented trade and agricultural practices that prioritize profit over food security.
With climate change, financial instability and political and economic competition between nations, humanity finds itself at the edge of a dark abyss.
An effective and uniting global framework for economic and political activity must supersede the restrictive and often divisive prescriptions of socialism, communism and capitalism.”But rather than quote the words of critics, let us quote John Maynard Keynes, credited with molding the techniques of government intervention that saved the capitalist system after the Second World War. In his retirement he expected,
“in a more enlightened future, a return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional value – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the detestable love of money as a possession – as distinguished from love of money as a means to the enjoyments realities of life – will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to specialists in mental disease.”A most devastating indictment of the capitalist system Keynes promoted all his working life from a wiser and more honest perspective of his maturity.
From another of establishment’s powerful insiders, William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
"Our upside down welfare state is "socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor." The great welfare scandal of the age concerns the dole we give rich people."From George Soros, that creator and manipulator of multi-billion dollar hedge funds credited with sinking the currencies of Asian nations and earlier even those of Sweden and Great Britain,
“Perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business. This is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called fascism...The outward appearances of the democratic process are observed, but the powers of the state are diverted to the benefit of private interests.And from the highest of technical bureaucrats, an elucidating in depth 1937 warning from Lord Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England,
“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The most astounding piece of sleight of hand ever invented. If you want to be slaves of bankers, and pay the costs of your own slavery, let the banks create money. Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."
Apropos the January 25th announced $7.2 billion ‘magic fraud’ discovery by the giant French bank Société Générale, we can open for critical discussion and meaningful investigation appropriate to study and understand how fictitious money in the form of fiduciary inventions function to shift, slide, slip, and top off various complex forms of physical wealth representations and ‘documentations’ into the accounts of the power hungry unethical trading elite who control much of life on earth.
French Bank Says Rogue Trader Lost $7 Billion, New York Times, Jan.
25, ‘08
"PARIS — A French bank announced Thursday that it had lost $7.2 billion, not because of complex sub prime loans, but the old-fashioned
way — because a 31-year-old rogue trader made bad bets on stocks and hen, in trying to cover up those losses, dug himself deeper into a
hole.
Davos Diary: L’Affaire Kerviel Is the Topic du Jour (January 24,
2008) Managing Globalization Blog, The Fraud Keeps Getting Bigger
One unanswered question that authorities will investigate is why it
took so long for the bank to uncover the fraud.
Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, the nation’s central
bank, said that the losses had put Société Générale in “a very
dangerous situation,” but that the bank’s plan to seek 5.5 billion
euros ($8 billion) in fresh capital from shareholders would return it
to financial health. [?]
In 1995, Nick Leeson, a Singapore-based trader, incurred the
equivalent of $1.4 billion in losses over $27 billion in bad bets on
Japanese markets. (Similarly, Mr. Kerviel bet on European stock
indexes.)
In the end, Mr. Leeson brought down the venerable British bank
Barings. After spending four years in prison and writing a book, he
is on the lecture circuit. [!]
…
While Société Générale will survive — in contrast to Barings, which
was broken up and sold — the loss is an embarrassment to a venerable
French institution. It was founded in 1864 under Napoleon III, and
today has 120,000 employees and 22.5 million customers worldwide.
When the fraud was unveiled, Mr. Bouton said, it was “imperative that
the enormous position that he had built, and hidden, be closed out as
rapidly as possible.” [?]
…
The scandal brought more scrutiny to European banks, which have been riticized for their lack of transparency. … SocGen, as it is widely known, as been criticized for a reluctance to be more forthcoming about its subprime xposure, [?] but the bank was generally well regarded in the financial world.
This month Risk Magazine, a British publication, named SocGen
“the equity derivatives house of the year,” praising its ability to manage its risks.
[note: the word 'Risk', also the name of a gambling board game]
The bombshell for the bank came as mounting losses from
subprime-related investments have raised questions about risk
management at institutions, and must have influence the U.S. Federal
Reserve’s decision of how much to lower the prime rate.
Howard W. Lutnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald,
“One person could engineer it — but how could one person finance it?”
Mr. Lutnick said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. “The
question for the risk management department is, how was this kind of
fraud financed? Where did that money come from?”
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