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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-05-12
© 2010 Peter Belmont
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People think that the most important and most dangerous unregulated market is something like the market in derivatives. It’s bad, but it’s not the worst.
The most important and most dangerous unregulated market is the market in Congressmen.
In America, the ship of state is unregulated, because the folks who should be steering it are busy bargaining in a wonderfully unregulated market, the market that USAers call “democracy”; and the market that the USA is so busy—using the wonderful persuasive skills of our enormous military—selling to the rest of the world.
We call that selling “Making the world safe for democracy”, that is, arranging that the whole world shall be subject to the unregulated control of big corporations unfit either by motivation or skill or knowledge to determine or pursue the public interest.
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The housing boom, the criminally-bad mortgages, the re-packaging and re-selling (and “AAA”-ing) of the bad-mortgages, the insurance “products” (products with no substance, insurance sold to people without insurable interests)—taken together with the revision of US regulations into a seriously de-regulated “market”—-- is an example of a QUITE BAD UNREGULATED MARKET, but not the worst.
The worst is the market known in Amreeka as “democracy” and known elsewhere as “corruption and bribery of government.” In short, and even without the recent help of the US Supreme Court, the buying of political favors through use of “campaign contributions” and “lobbying” is an even MORE UNREGULATED MARKET wherein the monied can buy with offers of money to you for co-operation and offers of money to your opponents if you do not. Not only legal and unregulated, but so fantastically open and constantly on-going that Congressmen are said to spend most of their time on “fund raising” and very little on anything else, such as governing in the public interest.
And what are the perils of this market? Let us count the perils.
First, you get Congressmen whose particular skill-set is in fund-raising (a skill not notably useful for legislating in the public interest, or legislating at all) rather than anything more substantial.
Second, you get laws passed because the “National Interest”—that is, that constant balancing of monied interest against monied interest without particular concern for the welfare of “the people”—has determined that such and such a law should be passed, and passed by Congressmen who don’t know and don’t care to know and cannot predict anyhow the purpose or likely outcome or effect of the law.
Third, you get laws passed because one or more BIGs—BIG BANKS, BIG OIL, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG INSURANCE, BIG MERCENARIES, and the like—want the law passed, and have the money to purchase its passage, but the particular BIG involved, or combination of them, is too stupid or uncaring (and being uncaring when you are BIG is a form of being stupid) to determine if they themselves will be harmed by the very laws which they cause to be passed.
OK, OK, so the BIG BANKS had the fall-back of “too big to fail”, which is to say that they had purchased a very special insurance policy through their “insurance broker”—Congress and FED and Administration, all premiums paid in advance and promised in future, of course.
But consider global warming as a consequence of the “oil depletion allowance”, a tax-break for BIG OIL. This “allowance” helps keep the government broke, as does every other tax break. But it also helps keep BIG OIL in business and abundantly healthy, so healthy that it can even afford (can you believe this?) to make handsome contributions to politicians of both parties, buying up loyalty in State and Federal legislatures, and lobbying in all relevant administrative agencies. And lest we forget, it is so healthy that it can pay its executives very healthy salaries and perks and bonuses so that—you guessed it already—the executives can also make campaign contributions lavishly without threat to their comfortable life styles.
So we have Congress (“the best Congress money can buy”) helping BIG OIL along, just as BIG OIL helps the congressmen along, and meanwhile the burning of all this oil (and also coal and natural gas) produces the greenhouse gases that are bringing on global warming which will disrupt all human societies (and thus disrupt BIG OIL and the children and grandchildren of those ever so well paid executives).
The unregulated market known as “democracy” wouldn’t be so dangerous and so clearly contrary to the national interest if the BIGs knew what they were doing. But they don’t. Their responsibility is to their stockholders, not to society, and they interpret this responsibility as a responsibility to increase the value of the corporate shares in the short term, not over 5 or 10 or 25 or 50 years.
(In fact, they have written this particular “measure” for “effective corporate governance” into their salary packages, basing their fat salaries and huge perks and bonuses on short term motions of share values, not on longer term motions. The share-holders themselves, by acquiescing in such salary-perk-bonus provisions, condemn themselves to the results of decision-making based on THESE short-term goals, these and not others, and condemn society as a whole to the same results.)
So, the BIGs don’t know what they are doing. And the Congress doesn’t know what it is doing, either. After all, it isn’t paid to know what it is doing. It is paid to do what it is told. And it really doesn’t have time for a lot of thinking, after all, because trolling through the “suq” bargaining for campaign money takes most of the available legislative time.
And the ship of state floats along, often in a strong wind, and no one is at the helm, not Congress, not the BIGs, not the Administration.
The ship of state is unregulated, because the folks who should be steering it are busy bargaining in a wonderfully unregulated market, the market that USAers call “democracy” and are so busy—using the salesmanship of our enormous military—selling to the rest of the world. Making the world safe for “democracy”.
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