 This reading is from censored 131, and before I give the title, etc., I'd like to read a few biblical quotes before we start. Prove all things, hold fast that which is good, and that's 1 Thessalonians 521. He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he that gives to the rich shall surely come to want. And that's Proverbs 22 verse 16. He that makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent. And that's Proverbs 28 verse 20. As the nail sticks to the stone, so sin sticks to buying and selling, Ecclesiastes 27 verse 2. And now to the article entitled, The False Economy. By William J. Eisenman, PhD. Excuse me. As far back as the 1890s, it had become clear to objective observers that unregulated financial capitalism enriches a powerful minority and subjects everyone else to the vagaries of a volatile economy. Ever since, forces have been selling us on, excuse me, the idea that our brand of capitalism is the only way to see that we all have a chance to prosper. In the meantime, we've found that our brand of capitalism does not honor a free market. We've also found out that corporatism is not a free market. Excuse me. Over 30 years of deregulation and deferring to corporations and the wealthy has brought us ways of borrowing and new financial instruments so complex, that not even the banks that produced it and sold them really understood what they were handling. All of this resulted in corruption and changing laws to make the illegal corruption legal. In politics, we call a bribe a campaign contribution. And many of us maintain our Christianity in the face of thou shalt not take a bribe. Exodus 23, verse 8. For a long time, the elites among us have used religion for their own ends. But in economical terms, corruption is bad for growth. Corruption can become a tax. In simple terms, the 2007-2008 financial meltdown was caused by a global failure of regulation. Fantasy financial assets were created. Speculation became the reason for existence resulted in reckless behavior. History has taught us that greed is inherent in financial markets. Still, we do nothing about it. Our hands are tied by fantastical illusions such as regulation is bad and government can't do anything right. We have come to the point where finance is too big to fail. Yet in the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, both deregulation and liberalization failed. Wall Street financial crises used to occur regularly every 10 years until Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us 50 years without any. Wall Street rose in 1792. How did we ever live happily ever after without it? Deregulation became the rage in the late 1970s. President Jimmy Carter oversaw deregulation of rail, truck, transport, communications, and finance. At this time, the regulation propaganda was portrayed as a conspiracy against the public. This gave birth to the Washington consensus, which involved tax cuts, business deregulation, balance budgets, privatization of public services, free trade, hostility to unions, and interest rates set to Wall Street, not Main Street. The economy of a country is not something that occurs magically out of nowhere. An economy has rules and standards, weights, and measures. Consumer spending drives 2 thirds of our economy. If the 2 thirds don't have the money to spend to buy things, the economy suffers and certainly cannot grow. It has been tried before. The wealthy alone can't sustain our economy. We can't boost growth with unlimited debt. Financialization has made the financial sector more important than the real sector of our economy. It has increased income inequality and contributed to wage stagnation. It redistributes wealth from some people to other people. In at least the last 30 years, our economy has seen a sharp upward redistribution of income. Economic growth in 2008 was 1.5%. And in 2009, it was 2%. While a month later, it was 1.4%. Wall Street enriched itself at the expense of ordinary Americans. When will Americans say enough is enough and stop supporting this kind of behavior and those who support this behavior? We have a right to control the private sector. We need to downsize the private sector and make it less important, less powerful. At this time, the private sector has control over many people's very survival. No job, no paycheck, no eat. This was not always so, and it is immoral. Our liberties and freedoms have been restricted while the financial interests have been freed in past issues of censored. In past issues, censored has shown that our economy is not working for at least 80% of us. Its rules are arbitrary and biased. Our economy needs supervision and not by the paid whores in government. Deregulation has proved to be a disaster. Our economy needs structuring. Capitalism is flawed. Our economy must serve us. Wall Street produces little. And the financial meltdown of 2007, 2008 showed us that ethics are lacking on Wall Street. The basic role of finance is to, one, transfer capital from those who want to save it to those who want to put it to more immediate and productive uses. Policies that take money away from the poor and middle class contributes to the dismantling of the entire economy. We are witnessing a time when the poor are being screwed. Upward mobility in America is a myth for 90% of us. We have come to a point where wealth equals worth. Wealth comes from a country's resources and labor acting on those resources, according to Adam Smith. In other words, wealth is created. By now it has become clear to many that the rich don't produce or make money. They seize it. In America, in 1900, the super rich were an overbearing presence. In 1928, the 1% were taking in 25% of the national income. And by the 1950s, this had been whittled down to 10%. By 2007, it had risen to 23.5%, a figure close to the 1928 figure of 23.9%. Since the 1980s, it has become clear that making the rich richer amounts to robbery. Our middle class was built on a foundation of trade unions and progressive taxes. During the 1890s, the plutocracy dominated both political parties. As a result of this, a new party, a people's party, the populist party was born. The populist presidential candidate in 1896 was William Jennings O'Brien, who was defeated by the rich and their nominee, William McKinley. The populists were later swallowed up by the Democratic Party. Today's inequality of distribution of income is nothing new. That is not to say that it is a natural phenomena. In 1910, the richest 2% owned 60% of this country's wealth. And the poorest 65% held only 5% of the wealth. Even President Woodrow Wilson understood that there was a problem when he said, the government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes. Of course, the rich and the corporations used their twistic logic to excuse themselves from having any part in the problem. J.P. Morgan said, directors of corporations are not responsible for the labor condition existing in the industries in which they are the directing power. Inequality was thought to be a natural outcome. It was clear to many at that time that the wealthy will not listen to reason. By 1912, few Americans trusted the rich and the powerful. Lewis Brandeis said that bigness must be restrained. The reasonable understood that inequality of income distribution was artificially created. And Lewis Brandeis understood that by taxation, bigness could be destroyed. The top tax rate in 1919 and 1920 was 73%. The first socialist labor party in the United States came into being in 1876. And the new socialist party of the United States was born in 1901. Socialists understood that capital itself produces nothing. And Eugene Debs went to jail for 10 years for speaking the truth. Quote, the master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought the battles. Unquote, he was prosecuted under the newly written Espionage Act, the same act many wanted to use against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden After World War I, socialism became the red menace. Communism. Socialism was never able to shake off this label. During the 1920s, it became clear that the wealthy could not spend enough to keep America's economic engine humming. After all, how many refrigerators can the rich buy? Our economy needs customers with cash to grow. Mass production needs mass consumption. In order to enjoy mass consumption, we need a relatively equal distribution of wealth. Inequity won't do the trick. Much like today in the 1920s, purchasing power was taken out of the hand of mass consumers. Even Herbert Hoover understood that excessive fortunes are a menace to true liberty by the accumulation and inheritance of economic power. At that time, even the Council of Churches understood that the concentration of wealth carries with it a dangerous concentration of power. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the most vocal rich traders to democracy. In our day, this would include the Koch brothers and their ilk. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President Henry Wallace noted that Americans had won freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom from fear of the secret police. But we had not yet won freedom from want. How can we honestly claim we have freedom and liberty if we, without a job, are not free from want? If free enterprise means anything, it should at least mean freedom from unemployment. It should mean freedom from abuses of monopoly and freedom from inequality in the distribution of income. In his second Bill of Rights, Franklin D. Roosevelt said we need adequate employment, food, shelter, education, health care, freedom to do enterprise without unfair monopoly competition. FDR's New Deal was portrayed as a communist agenda by political conservatists. In 1958, 64% of Americans were in favor of unions. President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated that government needs to help the people, help the people do what the people cannot do for themselves. In the 1950s, Americans regarded the rich as dead weight. They were an obstacle in the way. In 1936, two-thirds of Americans were living in poverty. No one should be living in poverty in the United States. Huge financial firms in America have no fear of failure. They are too big to fail. For well over 30 years, these firms had special protection from the United States government and government subsidization grew the financial industry. Today, the financial industry is immune to free market discipline. In the 1980s, under President Ronald Reagan, the financial regulatory infrastructure began decaying. In the mid-2000s, banks were borrowing more, keeping less capital on hand, low reserves. They were using securitized debt for speculation, and there were no limits and disclosure concerning derivatives, even though it was known that they posed unknown risks to the United States economy and to financial stability around the world. Before 2007, 2008, financial meltdown, the industry was making short-term profits out of long-term assets. After 2003, interest rates were at 1% and cheap money created a giant credit bubble. Financial firms took all of tomorrow's profits today. In all of this, common sense was lacking. And now, in our time, nobody is responsible for the entire financial system. In the aftermath of the 2007, 2008 financial meltdown, 62 million Americans were left with zero or negative net worth, and 9.3 million workers were without jobs, while 25% of teens could not find jobs. What some of us have come to understand is that morality was hijacked by economics. It has become clear that capitalism is a source of society's ills. Many of us no longer treat capitalism as a theology, as God-given. We no longer allow capitalism to be hostile to, moral questioning. We have come to understand that if one Timothy 6.1 states that the pursuit of money is the root of all kinds of evil, we will not allow a twisting and resting of the scripture to make it more conservative-friendly. There is no longer any doubt to the fact that big corporations pose a danger to democratic institutions by their size and influence and indifference to public interest. It is time to decide if we will continue, as President Rutherford B. Hayes said. This is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. Or will we have the courage to acknowledge and make the changes that are necessary? The end. Hi, this is William H. Morrow. The best way to join our organization is to get your free annual subscription to Newsletter Censored with your gift to support this work. 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