"Both globally and within most nations, the patterns of consumption required to sustain existing social arrangements are inconsistent with the distribution of the fruits of production. Social and economic stability, therefore, depend upon redistribution for which there is not overt legal framework or political consensus. To square this circle, the financial and government sectors have evolved means of hiding redistribution in complex, continually improvised arrangements", Steve Waldman at Interfluidity, 14 February 2010, link:
Welcome aboard Steve. I've said this for decades. That's why we have: Fannie and Freddie, Social Security, the Fed, education reform and who knows what else? Sooner or later, our entire edifice of deception will collapse. Look at California and how it concealed the effects of illegal immigration from its taxpayers. It's gotten so bad, even Sacramento can't hide the dead elephant in its living room anymore. See my 11 October 2009 post:
2 comments:
The truth is that there is plenty of everything to go around... except oil...
This old, false edifice needs to collapse...so we can move to one that is more fair and sustainable.
Pres-O has favored Wall Street and the TBTF banks because he thinks that will be sustainable. Our current system is inherently unstable and no amount of fancy Fed magic will keep it propped up indefinitely.
Wall St. was tacitly encouraged to take the risks they did to finance the projects and expenditures of government; as long as fat tax revenues were pouring in, the future of the welfare state seemed assured. The bankers got filthy rich, and more people went on some form of subsidy, Washington crowed about their achievements. and the regulators went to sleep. But this arrangement was inherently unstable because it was a fiction, a chimera, and the gig is up; we simply do not do enough that is productive in the world to cover the entitlements, or the growing debt used to hide the issue for the past several decades.
It's not just the financial system that's a mess, the entire presumption of the modern welfare state is what's going down in flames.
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