STOCKS

STOCKS 

 

The stock market - under neoliberalism - is a device to transfer money from the public to banks, billionaires, members of congress, and multinationals.  

 

By Gregg Wall (5-27-2023)

 

Sometimes there’s a topic that you want to write about, crave to write about, but you know mentally, intuitively… you’re just not ready to give the topic the attention it deserves.  It festers like an itch that cannot be scratched, a song that buzzes in your head that you cannot name.  Until the day arrives and there it is.

 

The idea that the stock market is the source of much that ails American society today seems alien, foreign.  Rubs up against almost everything Americans are taught, like America is a bastion of democracy, the two political parties are looking out for the American people, and the members of the Supreme court are divine, incorruptible arbiters of the law.  

 

It’s simply not true. 

 

The stock market celebrates everything that is wrong with the United States.  A company announces layoffs and engages in union busting tactics, and often the stock rises.  An industry consolidates, forms a cartel or monopoly, the market is elated.  America’s leadership announces the country is going to war or supports war, and defense stocks move upward.  Bailouts, corporate welfare, and regulations - that protects Americans and the country - are rolled back… and there it is, stocks climb higher.  Private equity has a terrific quarter, destroying another company, consolidating another industry, and PE stock rises. 

 

The economy, under the failed globalization and neoliberal paradigms was offshored, the tax based was offshored… we made authoritarian nations and dictatorships great… and what did we leave in the United States:  financial services, the Gig economy, predatory monopolies, speculation, the stock market and $35 trillion-plus in national debt.  Financial services are coveted jobs, which means we must tolerate and protect the industry?  Right?  Even though banks, monopolies, shadow banking, and private equity act like buccaneers looting and pillaging the United States, investing in fossil fuels, preying upon the American public, and turning the country into a Superfund site.  In sum, financial services have taken far more out of the nation, then they will ever pay in or can repay. 

 

If money is the source of all evil, then the stock market is hell on Earth.  America has placed so much importance on the stock market that no less an institution than the Federal Reserve deemed it worthy of being backstopped, what the Street and writers referred to as a “FED put.”  Meaning the stock market was too big to fail.  And given that the economy was offshored… America relies upon the cashflow from foreign nations and the purchase of U.S. financial services and stocks to right-side the balance of payments.  Because America has so little to offer the world anymore, indeed America has so little to offer itself, but systemic corruption, endemic poverty, rigged markets -- totalitarian control over government, prices, and wages (via monopoly, oligarchy, & Wall St.) -- and last but not least, endless war.

 

What remains is entirely corrupt: billionaires, high net worth individuals, multinationals, & the four branches of the Federal government, including the FED.  Billionaires and multinationals buyoff politicians to dodge taxation, the government funds itself by printing money, and the increased money supply finds its way into markets. The policies of QE and interest suppression throw jet fuel on the asset classes of the wealthy and the stock market.  Even the recent FED rate hikes have merely returned interest rates to a highly accommodative historical norm.  There is nothing contractionary or punitive about 5%, particularly for price gouging monopolies and utilities. 

 

Of course, the congress is a source of insider information and congress front-runs trades based upon insider information and pending legislation favorable or unfavorable to a given industry. It’s an insider’s game.  Labor is cynically told to vote & work harder, while labor’s real wages (adjusted for inflation/price gouging) drop lower and lower in terms of purchasing power.  And the stock market eats it all up.  Congress doesn’t lift a finger, instead abdicating to the FED to fight serial price gouging. 

 

And the rationalization for all this, who always gets held up as the human shield: the public, we have to protect the public; labor, we have to protect the labor and their pensions or their 401Ks.  The evil that is the stock market has to be protected, because the elderly depends upon it for retirement income (if this is true, and the government is funding a large part of this nonsense, why not dispense with the middleman: the stock market & Wall St?).  It’s a pack of lies.  Industry consolidation, monopoly, private equity… and the stock market … are a destroyer of democracy, economy, jobs, innovation, labor, opportunity, and real benefits and wage gains.  Lousy wages… thanks to 33% of Americans earning less than $15, thanks to 36% of Americans working Gig… well, those workers should be investing in the stock market (let's ignore the fact that many of these workers don’t earn enough to survive).  Meanwhile, the number of billionaires and multimillionaires have soared, as congress has transferred the nation’s credit line into banks, corporations, the stock market, and wars.  And the public... mom and pop retail investor in individual stocks?  They get crushed.

 

The stock market is little more than a money laundering operation.  Bailouts, corporate welfare, privatization schemes funnel public money, taxpayer money into corporations.  The boardrooms and CEOs, in turn, lobby & payoff congress with taxpayer money, management & ownership do stock buybacks, the stocks rise, and congress cashes in.  The cycle repeats and the national debt soars.  The very definition of moral hazard: congress controls the purse strings, they give welfare to corporations and the rich… the executive, legislative and judicial branches protect a highly corrupt system… social services/public services are gutted to pay for welfare for the rich, and the wealthy show their gratitude by kicking back to Washington and pumping up the value of stocks (often via buybacks and dividends).  Add money printing and repeat.

 

Everyone is happy except for the American public, which is disenfranchised.  And then, Americans are treated to the spectacle of a debt ceiling media event, where they and their children are on the menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 Is it redeemable, is it even worth saving?  What to do with a stock market that incents management and ownership to buy off and own the government, crush labor, embrace cartel & monopoly, gouge consumers, pay no taxes, poison the land & oceans, and manipulate stock?  Like Big Tobacco, and possibly gun manufacturers, the courts and litigation appear to be one answer.

 

Prosecute and sue the bourses and the stock markets out existence… under RICO, for fraud, for money laundering, for stealing, for funding war and terror… in the case of big oil, the destruction of the planet.  If RICO doesn’t apply to what Wall St and the stock market have become, what does?   And there’s civil litigation, lots and lots of civil litigation.  If litigation and the courts can take down Big Tobacco, if they can hold gun manufacturers to account, why not the stock market?  

 

If capitalism is going to continue to regress, like its enabler, its handmaiden - the stock market, to the lowest common denominator, a force for unbridled avarice and evil…  shouldn’t it be eliminated? 

 

At the end of the day, there is no greater embodiment of greed, than the U.S. stock market.  The stock market places greed on steroids; the stock market magnifies exponentially the economic violence waged against the American people.

 

At the end of the day, there may be no greater threat to democracy, our system of government, directly leading to the nation’s fall… than the U.S. stock market. 

 

It may be time to sue the Intercontinental Exchange, Investors AB, Borse Dubai, and CME Group – and their investors & ownership - right out of existence? 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

Exorbitant Privilege

Exorbitant Privilege 

 

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." 

 

-       Stein’s Law, Herbert Stein, Counsel of Economic Advisers (Serving Presidents Nixon and Ford)

 

By Gregg Wall (5-13-2023)

 

It’s that magical time in the political cycle where the two far-right political parties, Dems and GOP, pretend to care deeply about America’s national debt.  The fact that both parties spend like drunken sailors, when in power, and that both parties are responsible for running up the national debt, notwithstanding. Worse still, the fact that America is in the middle of yet another Wall St. banking crisis, also appears completely underreported & under analyzed by the MSM talking heads & members of congress.  (But that money printing, that debt run up to bailout Wall St, yet again, is perfectly okay).  Another Wall St crisis spawned by America’s preeminent failed ideologies: deregulation, laissez-faire, neoliberalism, and let Wall St and billionaire sociopaths do as they damn well please. 

 

Because if we truly believed the neoliberal, supply-side, trickle-down lies, the public was fed from the ‘80s forward…. There’d be no national debt.  Right?  

 

To be sure, like everything in Washington, the debt ceiling is all a choreographed stunt. The two-parties will strike a deal at the 11^th hour, the Republicans will be able to say that they exacted spending cuts, the Dems will be able to say they protected the sanctity of the dollar and America pays its debts; and of course, per the usual, the American people will bear the brunt of the spending cuts. 

 

As for the billionaire welfare state, the deep state, the aforementioned failed economic ideologies, and complete lack of accountability & systemic corruption in Washington… all that will remain untouched.  Which, conveniently enough, sets America up for the next debt crisis down the road. 

 

Left entirely out of the debt ceiling analysis & discussion is how does a country like the United States manage to run up $35 trillion plus in national debt to begin with?  Amazing how the root causes of American malaise never get addressed by the elite sociopaths, the Wall St and Washington brain trust, and the MSM. 

 

To answer that question, we go directly to America’s exorbitant privilege, which is a pretty phrase to describe the American dollar as the reserve currency to the world, and America’s seeming ability to print money ad nauseum without repercussion.  That is, until – as observed by economist Herbert Stein, the system no longer works – the currency breaks down, the world loses faith, and the dollar is toppled (as happened to the British pound, post-World War Two).  Like America today, the British were deeply, deeply in debt when they lost the reserve currency.

 

But I digress, back to exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, and America’s catastrophic national debt.  What has America received for its national debt, for $35 trillion in credit card spending?   

 

We have possibly the worst medical system in the developed world, where Americans pay double, per capita (vis-à-vis most other Western nations); and yet, in America, medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy, forty percent of Americans can’t afford a doctor’s visit, and life expectancy is dropping. Here, blame rests squarely on our for-profit healthcare system.  America can’t afford it.  Here, blame the oligarchy exorbitant privilege has created and bought off politicians, who are all too willing to do multinational bidding. 

 

With the rise of catastrophic debt, backed by exorbitant privilege, the nation's money & wealth have been transferred to a rising number of billionaires, multinationals, and multi-millionaires… who is turn use their wealth to corrupt and subvert federal & state governments.  There isn’t a branch of government, facet, or body of policies and laws that have not been entirely corrupted by this massive wealth transfer.  Thank exorbitant privilege for endemic American corruption, and it’s only growing like cancer.  It's quite simple.  As wealth is transferred and accumulated by the rich, they refuse to pay taxes, more debt and money are created, which fuels asset classes of the rich (as interest rates are suppressed to keep debt service levels manageable and assets are further aggregated, leveraged, and backstopped by the taxpayer, see Fed put)... feeding a monetary doom loop.  (By the way, this is exactly why both parties are frauds.  If they ever are truly serious about controlling the national debt, they'll have to start by ditching the kleptocracy/multinational tax code.)

 

Tax cuts for the rich, Wall St & billionaire bailouts, the deregulatory state -- where profits are privatized but known costs, cleanup, and remediation are shifted onto the disenfranchised taxpayer -- can only be achieved on the scale seen in America, by virtue of America’s ability to print money (i.e., exorbitant privilege).  America now possesses what can only be characterized as a billionaire welfare state, thanks to exorbitant privilege. 

 

Perhaps the most hideous and lethal outcome of America’s exorbitant privilege is astronomical DOD and Security State budgets, where the U.S. spends more than the next ten nations combined on weapons and endless for-profit wars.  Is America any safer as a result of all this military spending?  That's highly doubtful, but that's not the point either.  Clearly, the resulting debt has made the U.S. economy and the nation weaker.  Americans now find themselves enslaved and indentured to the debt accumulated feeding the war machine, fighting aimless, meaningless wars, so that generals, military contractors, politicians, and Wall St can be made fabulously wealthy destroying, indenturing, and seizing the assets of nation states.  Who said colonization is dead?  But the fun doesn’t stop here, the U.S. deep & surveillance state often turns loose, what it learns overseas, on an unsuspecting & docile American public (and vice versa). 

 

Of course, all this money printing, debt, and exorbitant privilege comes at a time, when Americans have been made worse off.  Not only can they not afford medical care, but 33% work for less than $15, 36% work Gig, 63% can’t manage a $400 emergency; and 63% live check to check.  This is by no accident.  America’s oligarchs like their labor pool destitute, desperate, and down & out. It makes American workers easy to exploit. Moreover, child poverty is soaring, Americans can’t afford to procreate, and America is way behind many other Western democracies in the social service provided to backstop a failed libertarian economic paradigm.  Add in systemic price gouging on essentials, such as food, fuel, rents, and utility bills, and America is a powder keg of instability and social unrest (w/ a corporately controlled MSM stirring the cauldron 24/7/365). 

 

Moreover, thanks to exorbitant privilege… resulting exorbitant national debt, and money printing & interest rate suppression in support of that national debt…  Wall St has enjoyed a phenomenal period of free money welfare, from the Federal Reserve.  This money has been used to consolidate big biz into a monopoly economy, where concentrated power, indeed totalitarian economic power, now resides in the hands of a privileged few.  Thanks to exorbitant privilege the U.S. has become both a kleptocracy and an oligarchy. CEO’s, monopolies, and oligarchs use their power to dictate wages and price, demand corporate welfare from global governments … as there are no markets, only corporate and economic hegemony.  That is to say, totalitarian control over consumers, politicians, and to a large degree, labor, as monopoly limits choice for both consumers and labor.

 

The fun & games with exorbitant privilege doesn’t stop with the persecution of the American people, however, it is also exported offshore.  Petrodollars, dollar denominated commodities, and America’s war machine means America is able to export inflation, deflation, and its failed economic models overseas, by the power of bankers, dollar denominated debt, holding the reserve currency to the world, and at the barrel of a gun. 

 

      

 

 

 

 

There’s so much evil to unpack, as a result of America possessing the world’s fiat currency, that I’ve just scratched the surface.  The spillover effects and impact of exorbitant privilege, from the dictators we prop up to the bloodshed, human rights abuses, & repression America supports, both domestic & foreign… in the furtherance of commercial dominance, to the make the oligarchy richer still, in the name of profits, and in order to be the world’s banking, corporate, and military hegemon sickens the soul.

In the U.S. some are quick to point out that red states take in from the federal government far more largesse than they pay into the federal government in taxes. But what is rarely discussed, if ever, is how the kleptocracy, monopolies, and oligarchy take in far more than they pay into the federal government & society.  How else do we explain $35 trillion plus in national debt, accumulated funding billionaire & Wall St. bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, corp welfare, privatization schemes, rampant speculation & greed, the MIC, and endless for profit wars (backstopped & funded by exorbitant privilege and the central bank).  This is to say, when the empire falls, blame will squarely rest on the socialist, some might say a communistic, 1%, who have turned wealth extraction, and mining & statism, from the U.S. government into a business model.  Leaving everyday Americans to suffer the fallout: higher taxes, the elimination of the middle class & the American dream, and endless austerity.  The red states take more from the feds than they pay in?  Indeed, they do... just like our out of control socialists, the billionaires and multinationals.

 

And what’s truly amazing is that exorbitant privilege, the world’s fiat currency is merely a tool.  And like any tool, just as it can be a force for great evil, it can be a force for great good.  The potential for fiat currency to do great things, to be an instrument to further aid and help humanity, instead of crush, destabilize, kill, injure, and maim – in the name of greed – are equally infinite.

 

Presently, however, under the American regime, one nation under oligarchy, exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, the national debt, and the failed two-party system… are all being used to do hell’s amount evil to the American people and to the world.  It also explains why the Federal Reserve is both the most powerful and least understood U.S. government branch. 

 

Exorbitant privilege reminds us that democracy doesn’t die in the darkness… no, democracy dies in broad daylight, under azure skies of the deepest blue, like semi-automatic weapons fire inside an American school. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023