Open Left: The Power Of Finance Is Killing America-It Needs To Be Stopped

[marmar]

The Power Of Finance Is Killing America-It Needs To Be Stopped
by: Paul Rosenberg

Sun Apr 05, 2009 at 18:45


Yesterday, I published a couple of diaries dealing with William Black, his criticism of the role of criminality in the financial meltdown and his prescriptions-along with James Galbraith-for a minimal program of what ought to be done to clean up the mess. Quite a bit of energy went into responding to a DKos-sourced attempt to discredit him, and while it's certainly important not to ignore the substance of the narrow charge against him (a charge of misrepresentation that increasingly seems anything but clear-cut), it's even more important to maintain our focus on the bigger picture-that being the role of the financial industry in wrecking our economy, and how to save ourselves from it.

It's important to note three things right off the bat: (1) There is a long-standing history of demonizing finance, which in the Western World has repeatedly been intertwined with anti-Semitism. (2) There is a similarly long-standing history of finance being involved in recurrent economic catastrophes. (3) There is no good reason in the world why responsible figures in the world of finance should want to bring about financial ruin. Above all, the anti-Semetic narratives implicated in (1) are utterly nonsensical, based on a demonic narrative about the nature of the Jews. Yet, the unreal, even hateful nature of the narratives referred to in (1) in no way serves to invalidate the historical reality of (2). We need to be able to walk and chew gum here, people. PArticularly given the enormous growth in the size of the financial sector over the past few decades:

Charts: http://www.openleft.com/diary/12697/the-power-of-finance-is-killing-americait-needs-to-be-stopped


Naturally, this has enormous implications in terms of political money and power as well--as we'll examine more closely on the flip.

The simple resolution to the conflicting tensions embodied in the above three points is that historical cycles of accumulation lead to changed social circumstances in which the temper and judgment of entire populations grows increasingly unrealistic compared to longterm objective reality. In those circumstances, financial bubbles arise along with a bubble of self-referentially concsiousness that screens out the normal long-term reality that ultimately has the last word over everything. While the financial bubbles are the immediate causes of harm, it's the bubble consciousness, with it's wildly distorted sense of reality and perverted norms that stands as the greatest obstacle to tacking corrective action after the fact. And that is the situation we find ourselves in today. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.openleft.com/diary/12697/the-power-of-finance-is-killing-americait-needs-to-be-stopped