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