Hillary Clinton is the Bomb!

Hillary Clinton is the Bomb!

I responded by saying that I thought that “defeating fascism and communism is a pretty big deal.” In other words, that the U.S., on balance, has done a good job of advancing the cause of freedom.

Clinton responded to this idea with great enthusiasm: “That’s how I feel! Maybe this is old-fashioned.” And then she seemed to signal that, yes, indeed, she’s planning to run for president. “Okay, I feel that this might be an old-fashioned idea, but I’m about to find out, in more ways than one.”

Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS, The Atlantic - Jeffrey Goldberg - Aug 10, 2014

“History merely repeats itself.  It has all been done before.  Nothing under the sun is truly new.”  Ecclesiastes I, Chapter One, Verse Nine.

By J.M. Hamilton 8-23-14

No, Mrs. Clinton, bombing oil rich countries to do U.S. multinationals, and the MICs, bidding isn’t “old-fashioned,” it is a timeless distraction from domestic politics and real U.S. problems (i.e. Ferguson/income inequality/tax avoidance/political reform).  And it is a practice that has failed the U.S. and indigenous peoples throughout the world, repeatedly.  Foreign misadventure has left the U.S. martially winded, fiscally bankrupt, and led to blowback with unintended consequences for the U.S. and the world, time and time again. 

Among the political elite, nation building, despite the fact that the FED is printing money to keep our nation afloat, apparently, never goes out of style.  Particularly to enforce arbitrary nation state lines established by two colonial powers, post WWI.  Nation building is an expensive and repeatedly failed concept (e.g. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq). 

Bombing nations is old-fashioned, particularly when we can often utilize sanctions and international banking to achieve the same geo-political outcomes.  Witness, Mr. Putin’s stalled empire-building efforts in the Ukraine. 

But where’s the “fire-works” in sanctions and international banking?  America needs a show of force and a bogeyman to justify all that extravagant military spending.

In an economically interconnected world, the MIC doesn’t want to hear that it is obsolete.  The fable surrounding the most recent U.S. bombings in Iraq, that the cavalry had come to save Yazidi, is nothing new (read Ecclesiastes I); arguably, the latest Iraqi bombings are nothing more than an excuse to protect U.S. multinational, oligarch, and sovereign foreign interests operating in resource rich Iraq. 

Our puppet, P.M. al-Maliki, blew it, and now we have to clean up the Cheney administration’s mess, yet again.  Senator Clinton, of course, voted to support Cheney’s war in Iraq, and so maybe she’s looking for justification and vindication for that hawkish vote.  That the U.S. set current events in the Middle East in motion with the 2003 Iraq invasion, is conveniently, rarely discussed.

Neo-conmen and unintended consequences?  You bet.  You’re looking at them right now on CNN.

Our corporate owned and run U.S. news media has embedded ISIS, chronically, into the 24-hour news cycle.  Concern over a rag-tag group of mercenaries and “jihadis” has reached a fever pitch.  “This is an organization(ISIS) that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated,” said the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, as reported in the NY Times.  Clearly, something must be done, even though the U.S. is energy independent, and the U.S. has already burned at least two trillion dollars in an Iraqi money-pit.  (That’s two-trillion that could have gone to disadvantaged youth, the poor, to pay down student loans, or to rebuild America’s infrastructure.  Hell, we could have given $2 trillion to the Wall Street cartel to check again, and learn one more time that “trickle-down” economics really is a dead-end ideology.)

Haven’t we heard this fever dream before, from the Joint Chiefs?  Gulf of Tonkin, weapons of mass destruction, yellow-cake…. Oh yes, we’ve heard it all before.  Conveniently, omitted from the dialogue is that the GOP's hero, Ronald Reagan, defeated the Soviet Union without starting up a hot war. Conveniently, omitted from today’s scare-mongering from the military brass is the former Soviet Union was once declared the “evil-empire.”  It’s like each enemy we encounter is larger, more evil and malevolent than the prior.  The American public has grown so inured/jaded to the Joint Chiefs chronic cries for war, that the generals have to top themselves with each new call.  Really, ISIS is more scary than the former Soviet Union?  Yet, ISIS has no air force, no nukes, and is supported by captured U.S. military surplus, left behind in Iraq.  

Blowback? Talk about your unintended consequences. Oops.

The economic and political elite in this country have been given a freehand on foreign affairs for so long, to such deleterious effect upon the U.S. and its citizens, and our federal budget, that the alleged “isolationist,” Senator Rand Paul, is now one of the leading GOP contenders for this nation’s highest office.  And if he was running against Hillary today, he’d have my vote without question, based upon their respective positions on foreign policy alone.

We have yet to learn the true consequences of the latest wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Right out of the playbook, true to character, the Federal Reserve is busy printing money to inflate away U.S. war debt.

If the U.S. military is so damn effective, why are we having to go back into Iraq yet again?  If dropping bombs and playing army is the end all be all of foreign policy, why is a similar Afghanistan fiasco almost guaranteed?

Where are our so-called European allies in this matter… you know, the folks who actually are not energy independent, and do rely on Middle East oil?  Nowhere to be seen…  it’s August and the Europeans are all vacationing on the French Rivera (along with the legal community in this country).  And the Arab-League…. ?  Forget about it.

Meanwhile, back in the Sudan, Christians have been persecuted, run over, and massacred by Muslims for years…. But Khartoum isn’t oil or resource rich, Sudanese Christians are not white, and there are no U.S. multinationals operating in the region. 

Where’s the U.S. cavalry in the Sudan?  Why aren’t we bombing the Muslims in the Sudan, who are slaughtering and butchering Christian women and children, by the hundreds of thousands? 

That our “altruistic” U.S. foreign policy is based upon a foundation of hypocrisy (and is detrimental to ordinary Americans, who can’t escape paying taxes, and must pay for these foreign adventures – in some cases with their very lives), is on full display for all the world to see.  That U.S. multinational corporations, who enjoy U.S. military support globally to protect world markets, are now fleeing off shore to dodge paying taxes for their own military protection is outrageous.

And to think, we are about to put this relic from a by-gone era in the White House.  Four words:  Complete freaking horror show.  I’m all for putting a woman in the White House, but lets put the right woman in the White House.  Like, I don’t know, a person who’s ready to break with the last five decades of incredibly bad foreign policy; a person who might campaign on reinstating the draft, so that the war burden is shared by all U.S. citizens and not just the poor; a future President, who will actually make multinationals pay for their fair share of the U.S. war machine.

Has it ever occurred to our “foreign policy experts” that the reason there is so much turmoil in the Middle East is because the U.S. and Western democracies keep: propping up thug dictators who terrorize their citizens; that there is no or limited economic opportunity in these countries, and no rule of law (Middle East unemployment is the highest in the world); and so joining jihad and Allah in paradise is perhaps their only and best option?   

If you keep people poor, under-educated, and w/out the basic necessities of life, or a shred humanity, than there is bound to be war, fundamentalist religion, and rebellion (not necessarily in that order)… which keeps the MIC and the war machine humming. 

See, it works out for everybody.

It’s so much easier, and less expensive, to do a drive by, I mean fly by, and a bombing in Iraq, than to address the root causes of the problem.  Right? 

President Clinton III will show the world.  A fiscally bankrupt U.S. will be knee-deep in global blood in no time.  When one examines Mrs. Clinton’s advocacy of a jingoist and bellicose foreign policy (a rehash of Bush/Cheney), President Obama’s foreign policy of not doing “stupid stuff,” sounds exceptionally brilliant.  (Then again, with Hillary enjoying a near lock on the Democratic nomination for 2016, perhaps she’s just pandering to the political right and the foreign policy hawks, in the hopes of obtaining their vote?)

No greater authority than General Stanley McChrystal said that when you kill an enemy combatant in the Middle East, you are likely creating ten terrorists.  At the rate we are going, the U.S. actually might have something to fear.

P.S.

Do you think China would be rattling their saber in the South China Sea, and Putin would be pulling his stunt in the Ukraine, if the U.S. wasn’t hyper-ventilating and grossly overextended, by attempting to play the world’s beat cop?

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2014

Ethical & Moral Collapse

Ethical & Moral Collapse

 

UNITED NATIONS, May 23 (Reuters) - United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Friday said Israel has only authorized for Gaza what "amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required" and again signaled that the U.N. won't take part in a new U.S.-backed distribution plan.

 

-             Israel has only authorized a 'teaspoon' of aid for Gaza, UN chief says, Reuters

 

Gregg Wall (5-24-2025)

 

How many innocent babies, children, and women lie dead in Bibi Netanyahu’s Gaza concentration camp & morgue?  Aljazeera says at least 61,709 dead, 17,492 of these children, with 111,588 injured, as of February 3, 2025; but Trump, attempting to rationalize a future Trump Plaza - Gaza and a real estate boom, places the body count much higher, suggesting several hundred thousand dead, perhaps closer to 500,000.  That was mid-February.  For Trump, the number of dead is reason to complete the job of ethnic cleansing, not halt it... paving the way for a real estate developer’s dream & profits.  Gazans are starving now, in an entirely engineered and manufactured crisis.

 

The lies, misinformation, and bodies surrounding the West’s genocide in Gaza are piling up so fast and so high, it’s challenging to keep track.  But one thing can be counted on:  Western leaders continue to support mass murder, fund and support the State of Israel’s pogrom, with intelligence, logistics, material support, and military equipment.  And the Western corporate media, particularly the United States press, has come down almost universally on the side of the Israeli government.  Even America’s Palantir is said to be planning and organizing bombing raids and drone strikes… atrocities that would have, should have ceased long ago but for the complete ethical and moral collapse of the West. 

 

Just this week, Monday to be precise, Messrs. Carney, Macron, and Starmer… leaders of Canada, France, and the UK, respectively…  came forward with condemnation and threats to take “concrete steps” if Israel did not stop its military offensive and starvation campaign inside Gaza.  The leaders also took the opportunity to express support for formal recognition of Palestine and a two-state solution.  But as is often the case, the words ring hollow.  Why not announce recognition of Palestine, why not announce immediate support for splitting the State of Israel and Palestine in two or along U.N. recognized borders, along with a demand at the U.N. for an international peace keeping force?  The banker, Macron, has made plenty of observations about Israeli and Western barbarism before, expressed concerns, made recommendations with zero, or limited, follow through against the Israeli government (against Bibi’s reign, who is wanted for war crimes in the Hague).   

 

This week, here in Canada, the Globe and Mail tried to put a political spin on PM Mark Carney’s & friends’ condemnation and threats.  Carney, also a banker – see a pattern, was praised by the Globe and Mail (G&M) for showing independence from the United States and not toeing the Trump, Netanyahu party line.  The paper went onto to note, Carney will likely have scored points with the Global South, namely Brazil and South Africa, and greased the skids for election to the UN Security Council.  Who knows, G&M went onto to note:  ... “it‘s possible that Mr. Carney’s decision was also based on humanitarian concerns – that he was picking a fight on behalf of children and other helpless civilians.”  Gee, cast in this light… it’s as if the point of the entire exercise, from Team Carney, Macron, and Starmer, was about absolving themselves from obvious war crimes and scoring political points with the right countries and organizations.  Saving children and women, that’s an afterthought.

 

And in the UK, a country that has been providing air and weapons support for the American/Israeli genocide all these many months, was said to have held up on condemnation for political reasons.  Namely, that the Labour party had faced allegations of antisemitism during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (which in retrospect, now looks increasingly like a smear campaign directed at, and to remove, the lefty, Corbyn).

 

In response to international pressure, Israeli leadership let less than ten trucks cross the border initially, at the same time the UN reported 14,000 babies are on the verge of starvation and death.  As of Friday, the Israeli government now claims about three hundred trucks have been permitted to cross into Gaza, after eleven weeks of Israeli blockade, but the UN claims only a third of those truck have actually delivered to warehouses and the trucks allowed in amount to a “teaspoon,” versus the aid that is required to turn the situation around.  Meanwhile, the bombing, murder, and mayhem from the United States and Israel continues.  The Israeli government and its military leadership are so unhinged that warning shots were fired at international diplomats, including Canadians, visiting the Jenin refugee camp.

 

Lost in all this was the thousands of Israeli citizens, and thousands of pilots, reservists, and troops protesting Bibi’s war and genocide, some refusing to serve.  Lost in all this is the majority of Israelis, now, want the hostages brought home and the war… ahem, genocide… to end, many fearful that Israel is now a pariah state.  There is rebellion brewing in Israeli society but one would not know this from American politicians and many of the American press, who still trot out the AIPAC/ADL party line, to wit: Israel has right to defend itself against terrorism and do you condemn Hamas.  No few in number repeating some of the vitriolic rhetoric used inside the Israeli Knesset itself.  Trump, of course, promised to end the war on the campaign trail but has supported Bibi’s ethnic cleansing campaign, since entering office.  And the latest wrinkle, just as Carney, Macron, and Starmer raised their voice this week and the media started to criticize the Israel gov, two employees of a Jewish Museum in Washington were gunned down.  Beyond a doubt a deplorable and repugnant act, but the American MSM and Netanyahu used the event, to once again conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, as cover for America’s and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.  Netanyahu has accused Carney, Macron, and Starmer of fueling antisemitism.

 

So just to recap, three world leaders (members of the G7) went on the offensive this week against the Israeli government and called out the campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, simultaneously, Western media seemed increasingly willing to criticize Israel’s genocide & draw attention to the man-made famine inside Gaza… moreover, Western diplomats were shot at this week by Israeli soldiers.  Israeli society also appears to have turned the corner, with the majority supporting an end to the war and bringing the hostages home.  And out of the blue comes the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers and the news cycle, seemingly, turns 180 degrees on a dime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conveniently left out of all this by the American & much of the Western press, but widely covered in the Israeli MSM, are the events leading up to Oct 7 itself: Bibi’s fourteen years of support for Hamas; how Bibi, on trial for corruption charges and facing possible prison, had the most to gain from Oct 7; how the Hamas attack was launched from the Gaza concentration camp, under the Israeli government’s oversight, supervision, & control; how the Israeli government knew and was repeatedly warned of the pending attack for a up to a year in advance; and how Israel murdered its own under the Hannibal directive on October 7^th.  Arguably, the end goal of all these events was to stir up Israeli public support for destroying Palestinian homes & livelihoods, the pogrom aimed at Palestinian women & children, and annexing Gaza…  and with the aim, the clearest goal of all, propping up Netanyahu on the Israeli throne.  That’s right, so much of this ocean of blood is about gratifying the egos of diseased, old, white men.  All this, with blind deference by the American government, from the Biden and Trump administrations.

 

The world is watching, the complete ethical and moral collapse of Israel, the United States, and the West.  Bibi & the Western MSM uses the term, antisemitism, like a weapon to keep Western leadership in line, with the same expertise that the Israeli gov and artificial intelligence sends drones into Gaza to murder starving women and children in tents.  The term, antisemitism, has been completely weaponized by the entirely corrupt American and Israeli governments and Western MSM.  As for the tens of thousands of victims, including the two Israeli staffers, it’s clear that this is the natural outcome of a radical, white supremacist ideology called Zionism… a hate based belief system, not unlike America’s de facto policy of Manifest Destiny, colonialism, and hatred of indigenous peoples, globally, that goes on to this very day (but was clearly self-evident at the nation’s founding).  

 

Antisemitism has been deliberately conflated with Zionism and anti-Zionism, especially by the American and Israeli governments, so that allegations of same issuing forth from Netanyahu’s, Trump’s, or Biden’s mouths have been rendered a mere propaganda tool, a verbal assault weapon designed, purely, to keep the public & world leaders deferential and in full support of the Israeli state.  That is to say in some instances and some contexts, the word, antisemitism, has been rendered virtually meaningless.  The term, antisemitism… in the context of being used by Christian charismatics & evangelicals… likewise is used to provide cover, support, and drive fear for the continuation of the mass murder that is being live streamed throughout the world for going on two years.  And in American and Israeli leadership’s mind, strengthen the Zionist state.  (In the case of the extremists in America’s fascist, Christian charismatic & evangelical denominations, all of this is supported with the goal of bringing about the end times, the second coming.  Ideas and a genocide that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ.  Christ would not condone the mass murder of women and children… is America’s evangelical Christian community insane?)

 

Make no mistake about it, real antisemitism, like all racism and islamophobia, is disgusting and must always be condemned.

 

However, condemnation and protest against Zionism, itself, like American & Western barbarism and colonialism, is entirely legitimate and should be encouraged, not attacked (which is why Trump’s crackdown on 1A and the Constitution are obscene).  Anti-Zionism, as the world is quickly discovering, is inevitable, given the ever-growing list of crimes and ever-rising body count of women & children inside Gaza and the West Bank and throughout the Middle East.  (By the way, none of this is news.  Analysts and scholars... like Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Norman Finkelstein, Erin Galvin, and Rania Khalek, and many other brave souls... have been condemning Zionism for abuse and as a fascist movement.  And they are one hundred percent correct.)

 

Antisemitism… along with Islamophobia, misogyny, & racism… must always be condemned.  And no small measure of the antisemitism that afflicts the world is the outcome of the American and Israeli governments’ deliberate policies in Palestine.  Arguably, the goal of antisemitic blowback is the de facto policy of the Israeli government, again to provide legitimacy or rationalization for decades of colonialism, genocide, and the Zionist project.  Antisemitism, fostered and produced by the State of Israel and the United States, as a direct result of government policy, leaves some of Jewish patrimony with the belief that Israel and Zionism are all that can be counted on and is their salvation.  Therefore, completing the cycle, the circle of Zionist violence.  In brief, Netanyahu uses racism directed at Jewish people as a weapon, a cudgel to keep Western leadership controlled and in line and to keep the Israeli public and those of Jewish ancestry fearful and in line.  But used in this capacity, dripping with misappropriation and hate, coming from both the American and Israel governments, ultimately, charges of antisemitism are no more powerful than Hitler or white supremacist ravings about Jews or “the other.”

 

At the end of the day, Zionism is political ideology no less virulent than white supremacy and right-wing nationalism, that uses antisemitism, Jewish people, the Holocaust, and the Jewish faith as shield for its colonial projects, extremism, & violence.  As such, it is time for the American, Israeli, and Western governments to be held fully accountable by the world, so that the plague of antisemitism and racism does not spread further.

 

And it’s time for world leaders… like Messrs. Carney, Macron, and Starmer… to actually walk the walk and not merely, talk the talk (for purposes of political expediency and to provide a smoke screen to hide their own special brand of cowardice).  Nothing less than the moral degradation & disintegration of the Western world, and any claims to moral superiority, are on full display… claims that are presently burning on the ash heap of history.

 

Finally, Israeli Zionists are not the only ones to claim victim status… take a look around, from White Supremacists to Conservatives and Christian evangelicals… many “leaders” are quick to sell fear & victimization as way to keep the flock frightened and in line, build up a political or religious following, and strengthen the leader's hold over their followers.

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

Here today, gone tomorrow?

Here today, gone tomorrow?

On Tuesday, the chief executives of the world’s largest public companies will be receiving a letter from one of the most influential investors in the world. And what it says is likely to cause a firestorm in the corner offices of companies everywhere and a debate over social responsibility that stretches from Wall Street to Washington.

Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of the investment firm BlackRock, is going to inform business leaders that their companies need to do more than make profits — they need to contribute to society as well if they want to receive the support of BlackRock.

Mr. Fink has the clout to make this kind of demand: His firm manages more than $6 trillion in investments through 401(k) plans, exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, making it the largest investor in the world, and he has an outsize influence on whether directors are voted on and off boards.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote in a draft of the letter that was shared with me. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

-      BlackRock’s Message: Contribute toSociety, or Risk Losing Our Support, NY Times

By J.M. Hamilton  (11-5-2018)

If the obituary for capitalism is ever written, among the key factors in its demise will likely be:  its complete moral collapse; concentrated – economic & political - power into too few hands (to the detriment of nation states & society as a whole); and an inability to provide an acceptable standard of living, enough well paying jobs, and opportunity for the majority of the globe’s citizens.

The idea that capitalism is at the crossroads, and possibly flirting with disaster, and certainly hanging w/ the wrong crowd, is not as far fetched as it sounds.  Empires thrive and wane.  Monarchies in the eighteen, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were considered to be the foundation of good government – at least by the aristocracy – until they were consigned to the dustbin of history.  The Czar and his ministers, here one day and gone tomorrow, replaced by communists and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, until they too, were: here today, gone tomorrow (but not before becoming a military superpower w/ the aspirational objective of world domination).

It doesn’t seem inconceivable.  As JMH predicted, establishment political parties throughout the West have been falling like dominos, one after another… w/ the latest being, Brazil and Germany.  The centrist parties - based upon an economic foundation of neoliberalism & free trade (dictated by multinationals), and a political foundation of allowing the oligarchy/political patrons to loot governments, while insisting upon austerity for everyone else – have failed a great many citizens.  In fact, the majority.  The public has responded, and in doing their democratic duty, have turned out centrist parties that have bankrupted nation state, after nation state.  The public, in turn, and throughout the West, is looking for a new earthly messiah.  In many instances, that savior comes in the form of a strong man or woman, a right-wing authoritarian (who consistently, scapegoat migrants & minorities as the problem, when it's the economic system itself).  While in the recent German election w/in the state of Hesse, left of center Greens doubled their popular vote haul to 20%.  Populism comes in many stripes & flavors.

So if the West’s citizens are willing to overturn governments and centrist parties, who through gross fiscal mismanagement have racked up unsustainable amounts of nation state debt in favor of the oligarchs, and the resulting populist parties, ultimately, are not able to perform as expected, or become co-opted into the mainstream (i.e. become the next centrist parties) --- as the financial establishment/elites use national debt, and markets, as a means to defang & discredit populist parties --- it’s only a matter of time before citizens turn their attention to the puppet masters (a/k/a CEOs of multinationals, the financial elite, and the billionaire class), and demand economic & financial market reforms, if not outright socialism. 

Yes, many democracies have checks & balances established against the various branches of government, but where are the checks & balances against the obscene amounts of concentrated wealth w/in this Neo-Gilded Age?

Under the financialization of the economy – where banking, hedge fund, and private equity own nearly everything and dictate public policy through campaign contributions, dark money, and lobbyist  - we’ve seen, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the very worst of what capitalism has to offer.  Private equity, in particular, uses unseemly amounts of debt to front load profits, dodge paying taxes, eviscerate the middle and working classes, and burn the tax base and government with it.  All too often, PE shafts their bondholders & provides subpar returns to their shareholders, as well.  (The private equity biz model is so malevolent that Germany’s Spiegel magazine once likened its dark arts to a plague of locusts; the private equity model has become so ubiquitous – and requires so little thought – that it is now deployed as matter of corporate policy, even in publicly held companies, under the rubric of financial engineering.)  Once a corporation - and its bondholders -  have been looted by said private equity firm, there is nothing left, but a huge gaping hole, that cartels and monopolies are only too happy to fill. 

All forms of power, even economic, abhor a vacuum.

And so it is with the moral collapse of capitalism.  Google employees marching the streets over C-Suite sexual harassment, & protesting over DOD contracts and development of a censored search engine for Communist Red China; Senator Sanders extracting living wage concessions from Amazon (thwarting monopsony power); California initiatives and referendums taking political power back from oligarchy owned centralized/state government. The economic & political pressure is mounting, not merely to remove owned centrist political parties, but also to address the unseemly influence & power of the billionaire class.

In short the financial elite, increasingly, have a credibility problem.  For instance, how to square a dying planet in flames with the power elite’s inability to quit Big Oil (particularly when renewable technology is abundant & readily available)?  How does a sitting US President (from both political parties) rationalize selling billions in military weaponry to the most nefarious regime on the planet, so the Saudis can commit war crimes?  And how is it Wall Street, and national banks, blow up the global economy, contributing to the bankrupting of the federal government in the subsequent bailout process… only to continue, unabated, the greatest crime wave ever seen, since the 2008 crash?  (Such are the perils of placing one’s entire economy into the hands of monopolists… citizens, as well as political leadership, are basically at their mercy; such is the power of capital flows & capital strikes).

Meanwhile, despite low unemployment, wages stagnate in our monopoly/monopsony economy, which is just another coercive, and highly manipulative, form of wealth transfer.  Not only is the government rigged, but the private sector is even more rigged: against you, the consumer, and you, the employee.

Things are so bad, and the writing is so clearly on the wall, that none other than Blackrock’s CEO, Mr. Larry Fink, writes an epistle to CEOs telling them to clean up their act, and not only grow a social conscience, but to deliver.  Operating the world’s largest asset management firm, Mr. Fink certainly, has the power – the power of imprimatur & leverage – to push such an agenda with the companies and countries Blackrock invests in and services, respectively.  But as w/ many CEOs, the language & talk all too often dissipate and fall short of real actions.

Does Blackrock invest in planet killing Big Oil?  Yes.

Does Blackrock invest in the military industrial complex, which is so pervasive & powerful, that in no few instances, it drives US foreign policy decision making?  Often in ways that are unconscionable?  Yes.

Does Blackrock work w/ highly repugnant global dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia?  Yes again.

Does Blackrock invest in job killing private equity firms, and provide capital to same?  Yes.

And the list could easily go on.

In short, there’s a sizable chasm between Mr. Fink’s words to his fellow CEOs and his, and Blackrock’s, actions.  

Fortunately, not all CEOs and entrepreneurs are the same.  Elon Musk, of Tesla fame, manufacturers planet soothing electric vehicles in defiance of Big Oil; and despite engaging, previously, with the Saudis about possible financing for taking Tesla private, Mr. Musk came out against Saudi financing last week. 

Reasons Mr. Musk may have considered in his Saudi decision: war atrocities in Yemen to serial human rights abuses w/in the Terror Kingdom; the selling of a genocidal petrol product; and the financing & spread of terror globally, all the way, to killing a Washington Post journalist (who merely had the audacity to write the truth about the Saudi monarchy).

Whether he was a recipient of Mr. Fink’s letter or not, Mr. Musk – whose skills & talents are considerable – seems to have chosen an ethical path.

Shame that Mr. Fink has not followed through in a more socially conscious manner.  The two business leaders then define the dichotomy found in capitalism today:  one leader – increasingly rare - is providing a highly innovative products array that challenges entrenched interests & the status quo, and presents evolutionary change for the betterment of mankind & planet; the other leader is still in bed w/ rent seeking ventures, dictatorships, the military industrial complex, and the most evil form of capitalism on the planet today, the private equity business model.

Capitalism will undoubtedly play some future role in the global economy.  This writer, however, fully anticipates that the predatory economic institution capitalism has become – one dominated/marred by cartels & monopolies, a debt explosion, the looting of governments, and financial engineering (all of which works at cross interests w/ the majority of the Earth’s citizens) - has a limited future.

The people are woke, and the blowback is just beginning, in ways both real and unimagined.

Crony capitalism, cartel & monopoly, and the private equity model, like the monarchs of old:  here today, gone tomorrow?

P.S.  Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018