THE INGREDIENTS OF GLOBALONEY
Most economists are only too happy to repeat the absurd litany
of globaloney. But everyone should remember the warning that
sausage-eaters should stay out of the sausage factory, since they
are sure to be shocked when they see how their favorite snacks are
really made. So it is with that most dubious sausage, globaloney.
Here are some essential components of this new creed:
1. Floating exchange rates among currencies, with wild gyrations
and no gold convertibility.
2. Hot money speculation, stockjobbing, and usury, culminating
in hedge funds and the $200+ trillion worldwide bucket shop of
financial derivatives.3. Privately owned and privately controlled
central banks, with the private Bank for International Settlements
as the flagship, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, etc.
4. Free trade, dumping, and the runaway shop, as in NAFTA, GATT,
the European single market, etc.
5. Secular deflation; depression as cure for inflation (Keynes
in reverse), with high interest rates expressing the political
ascendancy of the bondholders.
6. Deregulation, especially of financial markets, with growing
domination by oligopolies and cartels.
7. Stagnating and declining world production, especially in
basic industry and especially in per capita terms.
8. Casino society, frantically seeking monetary wealth under the
constant threat of systemic crisis.9. Permanently high unemployment
and declining standards of living, with weak labor unions,
union-busting, a shrinking middle class, and fabulous wealth for a
tiny, parasitic oligarchy of financiers of about 500,000 persons
worldwide.
10. Anti-statism, with the withering away of the national state,
its infrastructure, and its social safety net, except when the
insolvency of financial institutions threatens systemic crisis
(Bush S&L bailout, Greenspan's backdoor bailout of US banks at
Treasury expense, $50 billion Mexican bailout fund, $500 billion
Japanese bailout fund, and IMF bailouts funded by taxpayers of IMF
member states).
11. A race to the bottom among nations (and even among states
and provinces) to gut health, environmental, safety, and other
regulations, while offering tax incentives to venture
capitalists.12. Oligarchy, more often referred to under such terms
as "the establishment," "the elites," "the market, "market forces,"
or "market democracy."
13. Class war of the tiny finance oligarchy against the vast
majority of humanity.The ruling passion of the oligarchic spirit is
greed -- the concupiscence of wealth.
In Plato's typology, the oligarchic state passes into a state of
mob rule called democracy.
