Jamie Galbraith is one of my favorites: He speaks clearly and holds nothing back. Elsewhere he has called for the destruction of the Financial System and a clean rebuilding of it. Makes sense, since in its current form it serves us not, and instead extracts the value of our labor and output. Finance should be a utility: Moving money from where it is to where it is needed. However, the reality is that Finance instead preys upon the majority, stripping the value from our assets (via loans and speculation), pocketing money they create akin to Counterfeiting.
As Finance grows and extracts all they can from a particular market, it continually moves on. Currently its intended prey is our public institutions: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and even perhaps our public lands. Through its tools in the House and Senate, they pretend that it is the only way.
But there is a another reasonable way of viewing the current situation. Finance promised us jobs and prosperity if we cut taxes on Capital and High Incomes. We did so in 2003, with dismal job growth and stagnate gains since. It was a loan that didn't pay off. It is time to call it in: If we have learned anything over the past 20 years is that leaving money in the hands of the Finance industry and the excessively wealthy does society no good - and there is no credible argument that the majority of society need to give anything up to pay for the misdeeds of the members of the Finance Industry.
Galbraith here explains the global state of affairs very nicely, and reveals in commonsense terms how what is happening in America is not distinct or separable from what is happening in Europe - that Finance is currently in the advanced stages of destruction of the World Economy. Although speaking to a European Audience, he reveals many things about the global economy, the US Economy, and exactly how and why there are different current outcomes, but that all is not stable...
Galbraith: Change of Direction
