The U.S. Stock Market’s Body Count
That diagnosis was right, as far as it went, but this goes beyond Boeing. The ultimate cause of the disaster was the drive to raise profits at any cost—and the cult of the stock price, to which so many venerable companies have conceded.
- How Boeing and the F.A.A. Created The 737 MAX Catastrophe – The New Yorker
By J.M. Hamilton (9-20-2020)
It’s been a couple of weeks now, remember it quite clearly … I saw it online. A washed-up Hollywood celeb, was celebrating Trump’s stock market and how great – and truly American – the stock market was.
And I remember thinking, there are some people who actually buy this, that really believe the stock market is the be-all, end-all of the United States.
Despite the fact that the stock market celebrates and rises on: the evisceration of American labor; is anti-union; the offshoring of American labor; loves Communist China supply chains; the Gig Economy; stock market welfare – courtesy of the FED & the US taxpayer; rigged markets – juiced by derivatives & swaps; the formation of labor & market crushing cartels & monopolies; financial engineering, enriching corporate insiders; and the creation & magnification of untold wealth & power, that is, in turn, used to purchase Federal & State governments. Then there’s the money laundering operation the stock market has become, as the birthright of this and future generations – the US credit line – is transferred into nefarious corporate boardrooms & C-suites, via the Federal Reserve and its policies.
What exactly are we celebrating here, when we praise the stock market? A knife in the back of American democracy, the elimination of the Main Street economy, the leveraged buyout of government & regulatory bodies (i.e. the eradication of the only check & balance against monopolistic power & fascist, authoritarian, corporate rule)?
And then I remembered, the American stock market has a body count… quite an extraordinary one. Let’s take a look:
Boeing was all over the papers last week. A US government study came out and it turns out the Boeing boardroom and C-suite – not content to have killed over 300 passengers – was perfectly willing to sacrifice those lives, and more, in return for higher bonuses and stock-options. At the center of the complete moral collapse of Boeing management, an aircraft that was rushed into production, w/ critical errors and omissions, and a captured regulator, the FAA. Boeing management is the boomer generation personified, tempted by the get-rich-quick scheme, that is the US stock market. In short, a complete failure, at every, alleged, meritocratic level.
And then there’s Mr. Woodward’s new book, Rage… where Trump admits he played down the pandemic (aka lied to the American people) to avert a “panic.” Since Trump has gambled nearly his entire presidency on stock market valuations, remarks on it, seemingly, constantly, and he’s advised by numerous Wall Street cronies (sorry, Captains of Finance) … it’s pretty safe to assume the “panic” Trump sought to avoid was in the stock market. Tens of thousands of Americans died so that the US stock market could maintain its nosebleed valuations and the rich could grow absurdly richer.
Of course, this same collective of Wall Street thieves want their employees sent back to work, in the middle of a pandemic, so that they could preserve their corporate cultures of: systemic racism, homophobia, and misogyny. And this too, blew up, as the plague, predictably, arrived on trading floors.
We learned last week that the Middle Market corporate aid program… Federal Aid under the CARES Act for the Main Street economy … is not trickling out. Seems the banks (already bailed out ad nauseum, with trillions), and/or the Treasury, and/or the FED are hell-bent on destroying the Main Street economy, like it’s 2008 all over again. What the architects of the failed Wall Street economy seem to have forgotten is that it is Main Street that employs the majority of Americans and keeps the whole house of cards afloat. Tens of millions of US workers are on – grossly inadequate - unemployment insurance, and tens of thousands of businesses have gone belly up. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s arsonists are setting fire to mom & pop and mid-sized corporations for what?
Answer: The fireside sale, and industry consolidation, that will surely follow for the connected & the powerful? Another predatory spike in the stock market? Or perhaps, for banksters, the thought of millions of working families facing eviction, hunger, and possible suicide brightens Wall Street’s and the stock market’s day? How quintessentially Robber Baron.
It’s truly remarkable how Congress & the POTUS delivered trillions in aid & support for Wall Street & the stock market, last March, in record time… while delivering, one time, $1200 checks for American labor. The stock market clearly didn’t have a problem with it and quickly exceeded pre-pandemic highs, from March lows.
Big Oil & Gas is burning up the West Coast, just like the industry burned up Australia last Winter. And not a peep from members of Congress, as Trump did a California fly by.
Move over Midwest …. Turns out, the West Coast is now, fly over country.
The Big Oil & Gas fires are: liquidating tens of thousands of homes; making air unbreathable; destroying businesses, jobs and livelihoods; and is creating a public healthcare problem, right as flu season and a second pandemic wave draws near. But heh, Wall Street, banks, hedge funds, insurance companies still have big bets that the Oil & Gas Industry will make a comeback, post-pandemic.
So shhhhh… best to ignore the apocalyptic orange skies, millions of acres burned, the unbreathable air, and the encroaching cloud of doom hanging over the left coast. Besides, that’s Pelosi country, and they don’t vote Big Oil, I mean GOP.
We could go on and on.
It’s not even the real economy. The stock market is make-believe, it’s a fiction, rigged on taxpayer money. And further juiced by eliminating the interest on pensions and retiree savings, so that private equity Robber Barons and the stock market can rally further on the FED’s interest rate suppression policies.
And like Mickey D’s… which serves millions annually, the US stock market kills tens of thousands annually. (We haven’t even touched upon the military industrial complex or the US healthcare system.)
I guess that makes the death dealing stock market as American as mom and apple pie.
Humble suggestion… shut it down. It just might allow the geniuses in government and the boardrooms to focus, if even for a few brief minutes, on the real economy, and lowering their body count.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2020
So what would you recommend as an alternative to the stock market as a place to grow your saving? The bond market pays nothing and may not be safer at these high bond prices. I ask this as a bond ladder investor being forced into stocks.
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