Greg Palast: 'There is no such thing as a victimless millionaire'

[Corncrake]

"There is no such thing as a victimless millionaire ....

When a Cohen sells soon-to-swoon Wyeth stock to some schmuck who's not clued in, the "counter-party" loses his shirt. When JP Morgan labels financial feces as “prime” mortgages and dumps it on Fannie Mae, the US taxpayer gets a hosing. When Goldman Sachs and billionaire John Paulson sell the Royal Bank of Scotland "synthetic CDOs" that are as valuable as a chocolate kettle, the Bank of England pays and the people of England lose two million jobs. When hedge fund predator Paul Singer mounts a vulture attack on the Congo and makes a killing, Oxfam says he's taking cholera medicine away from kids who are facing death."

Read Greg Palast's latest quirky article for Truthout here:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19906-steven-cohen-cant-make-his-mommys-monkey-jump

[Zelig]

What used to be called 'money' was essentially fossilized labour -- tokens of some form representing our ability to do more work than was required to sustain ourselves. If we acquired enough money/tokens, we had the ability to carry ourselves through periods of lower productivity and to remain housed, clothed and fed until conditions improved. People that were somehow able to accumulate larger sums than could possibly represent their own labour were considered shrewd or clever, but were really just assholes that found ways to pocket the money of others.

What we mistakenly call 'money' today is not the same thing. Because of the fiatization of the economy, 'money' today is a hybrid of what we (the little guy) still treat as our fossilized labour, but also includes a magically-created component that dilutes our hard-earned savings and grossly enriches the new generation of clever assholes. This artificially-created component of currency differs from fossilized labour in that it effectively represents a theoretical 'future labour' that will most likely not be performed by the holder of the token, but by the people that chose to remain moral amidst the growing immorality of today's economy. 'Eat or be eaten', 'Survival of the fittest' or whatever phrase you want to use for the thing we mistakenly call 'capitalism', is nothing but a self-deceptive justification for deciding to join the assholes.

[donk]

Damn Zelig that's the best way I ever heard it put, well done, I agree!

[Crystine]

Avalon, we need a like button. Be not afraid to speak the truth.