We Are Screwed... [View all]

[kpete]

MONDAY, JULY 23, 2012
Randy Wray: Why We’re Screwed
By L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from Economonitor

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After 1990 we removed what was left of financial regulations
following the flurry of deregulation of the early 1980s that had freed
the thrifts so that they could self-destruct. And we are shocked,
SHOCKED!, that thieves took over the financial system.

Nay, they took over the whole economy and the political system lock,
stock, and barrel. They didn’t just blow up finance, they oversaw the
swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen.
They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of
their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they
screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.

Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments,
senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing
national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the
highest bidder. Everything must go in firesales at prices rigged by
twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions
the world has ever known.

And since they’ve bought the politicians, the policy-makers, and the
courts, no one will stop it. Few will even discuss it, since most
university administrations have similarly been bought off—in many cases,
the universities are even headed by corporate “leaders”–and their
professors are on Wall Street’s payrolls.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/randy-wray-why-were-screwed.html#5QdUhkSiydxXqpBQ.99