Our Money in Their Banks: Why?

As Republicans stride in the direction of hard-core fascism and Democrats mince toward a soft-core police state, America endures a campaign with no substance allowed to interfere with corporate capital’s electoral show. Unless the Green Party attracts citizen attention by adhering to the substance of democratic ideals that contrast with the political pimping of the major parties , the people will face endless television mudslinging battles between political pornographers trying to entice them to vote for a lesser evil. As usual.

Unmentioned by the mainstream candidates and their media paparazzi are the crises that are regular parts of capital’s economic anarchy but are occurring with a regularity that not only frightens the majority enduring the losses but even some of the minority collecting the profits.

Present systemic chaos is due in part to the deregulation craze which has brought us closer to a pre-depression state of totally uncontrolled markets. A return to past New Deal/Keynesian control - which was never more than a way to forestall total collapse by making taxpayers the investors of last resort – is the argument entertained by supporters of the system who haven’t yet seen the handwriting on the wall. But even if that return to the past achieves lesser evil victory in November, it will be short lived.

Capitalism has radically changed, not in essence but in the way it presently extracts profits at society’s loss.

The financial sectors which replaced manufacturing as primary players in the vast casino we are taught to think of as democracy and free markets are operating at a speed that cannot be turned back to the industrial era. Behind the wealth walls of this gated community , privateers circulate currencies which do not represent physical product or tangible goods but exist only as speculative electronic blips. These impulses of immaterialism are borrowed, loaned, rented and sold by the trillions, and then re-rented, re-borrowed, re-loaned and re-sold in an endless daisy chain ponzi scheme of superstition based gambling practiced in an electronic church that makes the supernatural seem embedded in solid rock by comparison.

This massive scam, rooted in past industry but only now nearing a collapse with the blinding speed of its transactions in the ether, has taken us from millions lost in the 1930s market crash, to billions lost in the 1990s market bust, to trillions lost in the 21st century market  breakdown. So far.

And  even more critical than these fanatic monetary matters are the environmental threats that forecast a deadly future for humanity if we do not transform our method, means and purpose of survival.

How long can this go on without a collapse that doesn’t only curse tens of millions with hardship and suffering in capital’s usual fashion, but plunges billions into simultaneously experienced horror?

Part of the salvation of profit and loss economics has been capital’s ability to keep majority suffering on the fringes of society while trickling down enough wealth so that many workers could achieve a middle class life style, mostly dependent on debt but enabling the purchase of enough creature comforts to make it all seem worthwhile. But as growing numbers sink below that standard and even descend into poverty, how can mind managers continue urging consumption of physical and mental commodities if people don’t have the money to buy all the material waste and are running out of patience with all the immaterial torture?

When so many are going broke, becoming mad , or openly rebelling, what’s a minority to do to maintain its power?

The increasing number of crises are being dealt with by more obscene financing for war while cutting public budgets in order to further protect private profits. We are expected to accept less and less as a society and get less and less as individuals, while we pay more and more to endanger ourselves, our future and the life of the  planet itself. All too slowly, we seem to have begun seriously questioning this madness.

Uncritical faith is necessary to perpetuate any myth or legend, but when it fails, so does the legend or myth. Recurring breakdowns and legions of  new sufferers are causing many more to question what was previously perceived as acceptable or inevitable reality. Once that reality is understood to mean that we have no future if we go on this way and in some cases are running out of a present, all bets are off.

Belief in a deity can vanish when it doesn't answer prayers, but faith in banks, always tenuously based on the authority of military power protecting the vault , is beginning to disappear for material and not metaphysical reasons. Scandals among the grossly rich minority rulers are getting worse and encouraging more people to demand political but also economic change in the way societies produce and distribute their wealth and where they stash their cash. The idea of  an unelected private minority controlling majority public wealth, always a dim witted notion in an alleged democratic system, is beginning to be seen as stupid as it always was.

When no one believes in or accepts the private bank as deity and public ruler, its power isn’t there anymore. We haven’t reached that collective consciousness yet , but we need to, and soon, before a future financial tsunami makes all the present financial flooding seem trivial by comparison.

Democratic control of the economy can begin with public banks investing in what majority society needs and not what minority billionaires and their professional class servants want. If that seems too difficult to achieve, then democracy is no longer a goal and we should just prepare for the worst. Only our rulers and their most pessimistic, defeatist servants can possibly want such a thing. People before profits; an idea whose time has come. Which side are you on?