Learning To Loot 2

2 comments

1. George Smith

   July 16, 2016 at 5:55 pm

   Just a symptom/reaction, long term. Stiglitz, the Nobel economist has maintained, and I’m condensing it, that the US has created an economic system in which speculation is superior to all other types of economic activity/wealth making. That is, there’s no incentive or point to labor or making things because the compensation can never rival the money made through financialization.

   At the extreme end you see this, as reported by the New York Times over a year ago, and noted in the book, Takers and Makers, by a Newsweek economics beat writer, of firms like Goldman Sachs becoming “holding companies” in which they actually possess a large piece of the commodity on which they speculation.

   Goldman Sachs did this with the aluminum market in the country. It bought a warehousing company responsible for the national aluminum pool and then it had the warehousing company start a meaningless cycle of shipments of aluminum metal between its buildings. This jammed up the timely supply for fulfilment of aluminum orders and caused a large raise in pricing, from which the company benefited.

   When the NY Times wrote about it, Sachs quietly got out of the business.

    
2. Frank

   July 16, 2016 at 10:47 pm

   Enron is the new economic ideal. Our one percent rolls in corruption as dogs roll in excrement.

   Only the sweet smell of their $1500 suits hides the stink.