Science is base on experiments. Experiments are based on observation. This process of drawing conclusions by observing the physical world is called empiricism. Empirical observations are the building blocks of science. This process also applies to moral and ethical behavior. Morals and ethics are rooted in observing and practicing human behaviors that have proven to yield the highest quality of life for individuals and communities. The positive effects of moral behavior have been proven throughout human history. Contrary to the theory of moral relativism, the beneficial effects of moral behavior are based on proven scientific fact, not transient perception.
Take greed for example, how many parents intentionally teach their children to practice greed within their own family? Few, if any. Why? It would create a miserable family experience. Greed is NEVER good if the objective is a just, moral society based on the rule of law. This isn’t rocket science and this self evident truth didn’t change because 9-11 “happened”. The proven benefits of moral behavior are not relative, and their relevance does not diminish because of technology, terrorism, the passage of time, or a culture of corruption.
Most of the founding fathers believed in God and drew on the moral values of the Enlightenment when creating our founding documents. Wall Street’s 650 TRILLION derivatives market is referred to as “dark money” because it’s unregulated. The values represented by dark money are a direct attack on Enlightenment values codified in the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights. The principles codified in our founding documents are based on thousands of years of empirical evidence and represent an enlightened, moral view of government and the world. Fascist elites refuse to accept the self evident truths and moral principles of enlightened government. So they’re using the immoral power of dark money to enslave sovereign nations and create a world governed by the principles of organized crime.
Unlike contracts traded on exchanges (NYSE, CME, CBOT), dark derivative contracts and the risks associated with them are hidden from controlled exchanges and regulators. The unregulated derivatives market gives fascist elites the leverage necessary to extort concessions from sovereign nations. This is possible because a 650 TRILLION unregulated market is much larger than the combined GDP of all the world’s nations. A small group of global banks control the derivatives market and use it to threaten nations with economic collapse if they don’t give up their sovereignty. Two examples are the TARP bailout and Dodd-Frank’s Resolution Authority. Members of Congress were threatened with martial law after voting down TARP and Dodd-Frank gives the executive branch authority to spend TRILLIONS on future Wall Street bailouts, without Congressional approval.
Most derivative contracts are nothing more than bets like those placed in a Vegas casino, and Dodd-Frank makes taxpayers responsible when enough bets go bad. Propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Larry Krudlow call this the “free” market. In reality, it’s a market free from moral and legal Constitutional constraints, a.k.a. organized crime. Propagandists on the left pretend to oppose Wall Street’s socialist agenda while advocating for more socialism. Oops! Maybe they didn’t get the memo, Too Big To Fail banks epitomize socialistic fascism. Securities lawyer Lynn Stout wrote an excellent article explaining the deregulation of derivatives and how returning to common law regulation would prevent another disaster. It’s a fairly short article and you don’t need knowledge of financial markets to understand it.
Free market disciples believe markets are amoral, i.e., “free” from any judgment, whether moral or immoral. But when one considers that markets are created and run by humans, the argument that markets are amoral falls apart. Every nation on earth has laws against fraud, theft, murder, etc., and these laws are based on moral judgments. So the argument that manmade markets are amoral is just a clever attempt to place financial elites above the law. Google “amoral markets”, you’ll find some interesting information.
Four thousand years ago, King Hammurabi of the Babylonian Empire had created a sophisticated code of laws governing the behavior of individuals and businesses. The Code of Hammurabi covered such matters as false accusation, witchcraft, military service, land and business regulations, family laws, tariffs, wages, trade, loans and debts. The main principle of the code was that “the strong shall not injure the weak.” The code set up a social order based on the rights of the individual and backed by the supreme authority of the law. These basic principles are found in ancient Greek democracy, the Roman Republic and America’s founding documents, just to name a few. So in a just, moral society markets are not “free”, they are subject to the rule of law and subordinate to the government that enforces the law.
Our founders instituted a government based on equality before the law, not equality of income or outcome. Equality before the law means everybody plays by the same rules. This creates a level playing field and a competitive, efficient economy based on merit, not privilege. The role of government in a capitalist economy is similar to that of a referee in professional sports, i.e., fairly enforce the rules so the game is competitive. If one team is allowed to step out of bounds without being penalized, the game would be rigged. This is precisely the situation with Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks. TBTF banks are the product of a market “free” from the rules of capitalism. Businesses must be allowed to fail if they exercise poor judgement, this is one of the fundamental rules of capitalism.
To varying degrees, the U.S. economy has always been a public/private partnership. An example that best illustrates the proper use of a public/private partnership is Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. But even Jefferson acknowledged that as President, he may have exceeded the Constitutional limits of the office with the Louisiana Purchase. In spite of stretching Constitutional limits, it may have been the most successful economic development program in U.S. history. However, to the greatest degree possible, public/private partnerships should facilitate a competitive, efficient market based on merit, and not crony crapitalism that’s based on privilege. Today’s public/private partnerships almost always subsidize a global network of cronies while dumping the cost of subsidizing this system on U.S. taxpayers. Bipartisan leaders and CEO’s of multinationals try to justify their global system of subsidized cronyism by calling it free market capitalism and free trade.
Thomas Hoenig is President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve. He says TBTF banks are “inconsistent with the concept of capitalism” and have the availability of “different rules”. Senator Sherrod Brown said large companies can risk bankruptcy at the expense of society, “this is not capitalism in any sense of the word”. Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the economy is severely distorted by large banks who privatize profits and socialize losses, ”this isn’t capitalism”. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron said “capitalism without failure is like religion without hell”, there must be consequences for failure. Thomas Hoenig believes TBTF banks are too big to exist and should be broken up by reinstating the Glass Steagall Act, which was enacted after the financial crash of 1929 and kept Wall Street speculation in check until it was repealed in 1999. Click here and listen to Mr. Hoenig’s entire speech. It’s about 25 minutes.
Neil Barofsky was the Special Inspector General for the TARP program. Regarding the nine largest banks, he said ”it didn’t matter if they were cooking the books on their balance sheets, Treasury was giving them money anyway. In fact, if they had even larger holes on their balance sheets due to FRAUD, that would’ve been only more reason for Treasury to give them money.” Fannie and Freddie executives were cooking the books and walked away with tens of millions in bonuses, without facing any criminal prosecution. William Black was Deputy Director of the Savings and Loan Corporation during the S&L meltdown and helped obtain 1000 criminal convictions of bankers. He says the public cost of the 2008 financial crisis is “seventy times greater” than the S&L crisis but in spite of compelling evidence demonstrating massive bank fraud, there have been few criminal prosecutions. Click here and listen to a radio interview with Mr. Black where he presents evidence for prosecuting financial fraud. Bottom line, if America is going to have a competitive, capitalist, market economy, government must equally enforce the rule of law and rules of capitalism.
Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations is often cited by free market disciples as a justification for getting government out of the way of business. They want a market “free” from moral constraints and capitalist rules, so they never mention another book by Smith titled The Theory of Moral Sentiment. He concludes that morality plays a significant role in economic activity, and as a result, human beings do not make decisions based solely on greedy self interest. Smith recognized the innate human quality known as enlightened self interest, i.e., the instinctual understanding that helping the less fortunate serves ones own self interest. Helping the less fortunate does not include bailing out Wall Street banks whose fraud will cost taxpayers 8.6 TRILLION dollars.
One example of enlightened self interest is the creation of public utilities to deliver electricity. If left solely in private hands, poor people and small businesses could be priced out of the market. Electricity is considered an essential service so public utilities were created and they’ve delivered cost efficient, high quality services that serve individual and commercial interests very well. This same model should be applied to delivery of basic healthcare services. Public healthcare utilities, managed by the states, could exist along side private companies and provide cost efficient services without heavy handed mandates requiring everyone to purchase a particular product.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said governments are instituted in order to secure our unalienable rights. A capitalist economic system provides the greatest amount of freedom for individuals to exercise those rights, and government’s role is to protect those rights from all enemies foreign and domestic. Authoritarian ideologies like Communism are a threat to our Constitutional and economic freedoms so government must protect the U.S. economy from authoritarian regimes. That’s why during the Cold War, bipartisan leaders prohibited the oursourcing of America’s manufacturing base to the Soviet Union, even though labor costs were much lower under the authoritarian boot of the Communist regime.
From 1783 to 1999 the U.S. government engaged in trade protection, and as a result, the U.S. economy became the most prosperous, powerful economy the world has ever seen. But that came to an end in 1999 when the Clinton administratIon ramped up “free” trade. Free trade is based on the idea that there’s nothing exceptional about America, we’re just one nation among many so trade policy shouldn’t be used to protect American values and freedoms. This is on its face treason. Why? Free trade gives brutal dictatorships like Communist China, which tortures its citizens, competitive advantage over America. The Chinese gov’t uses strong arm tactics to force people to work for slave wages, so in order for U.S. citizens to compete with slavery, they must first become slaves. The terms “free” market and “free” trade literally describe an economic model free from moral and legal Constitutional constraints. Free trade is being used to subsidize totalitarian regimes at the expense of Western democracies.
Free trade has yielded a 600 Billion annual trade deficit with the world, 300 Billion with the Communist government of China. Pat Mulloy is a member of the US/China Economic and Security Review Commission. He says trade deficts will result in the Communist government of China owning large chunks of the U.S. economy, and Chinese investments are not coming back to buy our goods, they’re coming back to buy America. Rep. Brad Sherman said the “cancerous” trade relationship with China is driven by enormous corporate power. This is similar to what King George III and his private sector cronies were doing to the American colonies. King George had given the British East India Company a monopoly on the tea trade and they used tea taxes to extract wealth for investments in other parts of the British Empire.
Our founders limited the power of corporations, and after the Revolution, they remained small institutions chartered at the state level for specific purposes. By law, they could not make political contributions, could not own stock in other companies, were required to serve the public interest, and could only exist for a limited period of time. And corporate owners were liable for losses and crimes committed by the corporation. Robber baron John D. Rockefeller led efforts to change laws requiring corporate owners to serve the public interest and be liable for losses and crimes. President Sherman passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as a means to curb the power of monopolistic corporations who are able to destroy competitive markets. This led to the break up of Rockfellers Standard Oil monopoly, and in 1902, President Roosevelt used anti-trust law to break up J.P. Morgan’s banking monopoly. This is the role government needs to play in order to maintain a competitive market economy. Click here for a brief history of corporations in the United States of America.
Large multi-national corporations prefer Communist China’s command and control economy and are using free trade to subsidize the communist economic model. Traitors who support free trade and Communist China’s takeover of America, say U.S. citizens must bend over for China because they own so much of our debt. But as Rep. Sherman said, there’s no way for China to collect on the debt unless the traitors running America give it to them. And unless we stop them, they will continue giving U.S. land, resources and infrastructure to China’s Communist government. Their objective is to give China’s totalitarian regime increasing control over the U.S. economy. One example is the sale of the Long Beach Naval base to the Chinese government. The base was one of only two deep water ports on the West coast capable of providing dry dock serivces to the U.S. fleet.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, industrialized nations have dominated the world economy. Why? Because the technology, jobs, and exports generated by an industrial economy are the engine of wealth creation. America sends Trillions to Communist China to buy their manufactured goods. Then China uses that money to buy US debt and assets. Multi-national corporations are using China as a back door way to bring a command and control economy to America. This is not capitalism. It’s an imminent threat to our economic freedoms, Constitutional Republic and the unalienable rights it guarantees.
Free trade is literally trade protection for China’s communist economic model. The U.S. could destroy China’s economy, and by extension the communist threat, just by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports and rebuilding U.S. manufacturing. Trillions of dollars now going to China would stay in America and grow the domestic economy enough to pay down government debt. In a capitalist economy based on the rule of law, the government’s role is to use trade policy as a means to protect Constitutional rights and the domestic economy. To do otherwise is treason and should be treated as such. Why? Because free trade is funding China’s military build up while crippling America’s ability to defend itself.
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. whine about Obama’s progressive agenda to redistribute wealth to the poor, including the poor in other nations. But out of the other side of their lying mouths they support free trade, which is the single largest redistribution of wealth in history. They tell citizens free trade is the result of a new global economy and globalization is driven by the invisible hand of the market. This is a lie. First of all, the economy was already global when Columbus stumbled on America in search of a new trade route to the East Indies. So what are lying traitors like Beck and Limbaugh talking about when they babble about a “global economy”? They’re talking about government policy to redistribute massive amounts of capital and technology to emerging market countries, a.k.a., the BRIC. The BRIC is Brazil, Russia, India and China. Charlie Rose discussed free trade and globalization with Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The show began with Mr. O’Neill taking credit for coining the term BRIC and talking about how he came up with the term. He said Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein wanted to call the emering market countries CRIB, but O’Neill insisted on BRIC as the term to symbolize their new world order.
The invisible hand of the market bacame visible at 12min/43sec into the interview. Charlie asked O’Neill about the possibility of China’s bubble bursting and Jim said, “Some days I wake up and think, what have I created with this damn thing? I worry about that.” Goldman execs were leaders in restructuring trade policy to favor Communist China. At 29min/45sec O’Neill said, “In order for the world to progress, we have to let some things go to other people.” Charlie then alluded to the massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. to China and asked, “What are the political implications for all this, especially for this country which has been on top for so long?” Jim responded, “I’d like to hear President Obama say, how do we adjust before he says how do we compete” and referred to Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers saying, “he understands [China's] relative advantage in international trade.” Free trade is designed to pick winners and losers in the global economy and Goldman Sachs picked America to lose. This is Beck and Limbaugh’s idea of a free market.
Because of their influence in Washington DC, Goldman Sachs is referred to as Government Sachs. Financial elites have achieved regulatory capture and subverted representative government. The quickest way to break up Wall Street’s monopoly is to remove their safety net by repealing Dodd-Frank, which has turned Wall St. banks into GSE’s like Fannie and Freddie. Then reinstate Glass-Steagall which breaks up TBTF banks by separating FDIC insured commercial banking activities from the high risk, high leverage gambling of investment banks. To watch the Charlie Rose interview with Jim O’Neill, click here and then click on Jim’s picture.
For more information click on the pdf Knowledge is Power.