Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker Warns About US Becoming a Plutocracy
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- Опубліковано 15 жов 2024
- Paul Volcker had a historic role in shaping the US economy over several decades, but increasingly he has been warning about an out of control financial sector that is dominating US society. Former financial regulator Bill Black discusses Volcker's views
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After serving the rich, he's now grown conscious.
Yep!
Excellent point , that should become obvious to all !
The Howard Cosell syndrome.
Alot of people on their way out all of sudden grow a "concious". All it really is is just trying to protect his legacy and not come off as one of the enablers of the plutocracy/kleptocracy after he's dead. He's trying to make himself into the good guy who tried but the problem was just too big. Guy is nothing more than a crook himself.
Becoming? That's a good one! lol
Exactly. Decades.
lol yep same thought exactly
Becoming? LMFAO
When death smiles they all will confess
The US IS an oligarchy, has been for at least 40 years. As for a plutocracy, the US is an oiligarchy wrapped up in a plutocracy. You don't need to be a political scientist to know that, just to ignore corporate media and have an open and analytical mind. The Supreme Court granting corporations the same Constitutional rights as a person, Wall Street connected Treasury Secretaries and a revolving door from Government to the private sector. Public money bailing out criminally operating financial institutions with no prosecutions and business as usual. No gold standard giving currency no tangible value. No Glass Steigals Act or any regulation. Corpations and billionaires evading taxation. Shit jobs. Shit wages. 23 trillion of debt. Budget deficits. Uncontrolled Pentagon funding. Social Security fund raiding. I could go on, but you get the idea!
I do get the idea. Most other people don't. It won't be fixed though. Horrible shit coming from every direction. So many black swans flying overhead. Peace.
The U.S. has always been an oligarchy. We just had a slight reprieve thanks to the New Deal.
I upvoted you, Garry, but I think it is redundant to say "oligarchy wrapped up in a plutocracy". I think the two words both describe the same basic idea.
@@pete1853 Pete. Agreed! They are. Cheers mate.
So true - well said. Preach on!
I remember those interest rates. I paid 25% on a used car loan in 1982.
I had a 15% CD. I used all cash when buying a used car for about $1000 back then. The middle class does not have to help create bubbles and otherwise feed so much to the wealthy.
Also: Saudi Arabia might become a monarchy someday.
Not a fan of establishment power, and former Chair of the Federal Reserve is about as establishment as it gets, but Paul Volcker's interview in the NY times was really interesting. While true, many could argue (easily argue) that we are already a plutocracy, it is still exciting that someone so high up in financial power is actually starting to vocalize what many on the bottom of the economic pyramid have been arguing for decades. Definitely going to buy the book when it comes out.
Hey Professor Black - When can we start calling them "The Criminal Class." They would hate that.
too bad volker didnt understand what money is -----he rammed interest rates to 21 per cent int he early 80's -----caused huge recession
I guess we should have just let let inflation keep skyrocketing huh?
He unmasked all the evil bankers and gave them a whipping. We should have let the bastards fail in 2008 too and took the consequences and rebuilt a fair economy. AND not one of those evil bastards went to jail.
Weird comment that Volker "didn't understand what money is." Maybe you are just referring to a gold standard?
no i am not --what is your idea of what money is
Billionaires and the working/middle classes (if there is a difference) all share a common trait. Both think about money all of the time. The former thinking how they can make more even though they have enough to live a privialged life, and the latter thinking how they can make more just to pay the fucking bills or live a life that offers some value and not simply existing.
What is "good government"? How much can government do to affect positive change? How much privacy are citizens willing to give up for an ideal society? How dangerous is it for governments to seek to create an ideal city, state, nation, world? How welcome should government be welcome in our homes? Private property vs public good?
These strike me as a fee basic questions from which policy should flow. It seems we squabble about policy but the foundation has been lost.
Gee, thanks Paul. That really means a lot to us now. You bastard.
Famously, Gore Vidal referred to late modernity as socialism for the rich and free enterprise for everyone else, but that doesn’t quite capture the obscenity. The British and American societies display all the worst features of feudalism, without any of that system’s meager benefits. Do we have an intensive, undemocratic centralisation of power? Yes, yes and yes. (Only, at least when the commons existed, that mattered little to peasants. They had a democratic right not given much credence today - at work.) Is political clout correlated with the amount of property one owns? Depressingly so. Have our elites initiated cynical wars with the veneer of defending something holy? No doubt.
What the powerful of present now lack is any feeling of responsibility; it’s not even given lip service. No, the lowly hordes are on their own, ours is a dog-eat-dog world.
Rather than acknowledging they should be thankful, if at all, for an accident of birth, the whining 1 percenters believe, and wish everyone else to believe, that their wit, their virtue and their graft alone got them to the top. They won’t even allow underlings their righteous indignation: “if you’re unhappy, you’re simply lacking what makes me so special”.
We don’t live in a meritocracy; and, to the extent that we do, it favours sociopaths.
medium.com/@lukeob/rather-than-liberation-brexit-has-ensured-thralldom-1a921e6e3f70?sk
The people have no voice. Only the rich can be heard. That's worse than a shame. It's criminal.
Billy is a bad ass!
Warning about plutocracy? A little late don't you think.
We have to launch tuition free education, universal healthcare and a Universal Basic Income so we can welcome the oncoming automation revolution with open arms rather than with fear and capitalism will become less and less relevant in the process. #getALLmoneyOut!!
When you recommend something so unorthodox, you should probably be more clear about your alternative.
Despite the title of the book #Fear, I don't think we're even discussing the properly framed problem, nor the big picture solutions yet. Fear is the problem. Fear is the root of insecurity, bullying, narcissism, misogyny, racism, bigotry and greed. Fear allows people to mentally wall-off their own empathy to as low as virtually zero.
Three of the biggest generators of fear are 1) this historically unsustainable and exponentially growing wealth and income inequality level of late stage, out of control capitalism (if you lose your job you might lose healthcare access, your home, car, spouse, child custody, etc), 2) fear-mongers like Fox News, the GOP, etc. (‘they’ ’re all out to get you, all the time), and 3) religions (evil is waiting around every corner, all your life with eternal unimaginable fiery torture as a deterrent).
American Republican fear is historically extraordinary. Every single American Republican policy is more fear and greed based than the progressive alternative. Fear (and the empathy it kills) is what separates the left from the right.
We must realize that no amount or size of Great Walls, or military spending, or nuclear arsenal, or non US soil military bases and ops, or international weapons sales, or personal weapons and magazine sizes, or of privatized, militarized and systemically racist police and mass incarceration, or of mass deportations including the Dreamers, or of bans of entire groups of people, or torture of immigrant children as a deterrent, or torture of POWs, or control over women, or anything else will ever Make American Republicans Feel Safe enough...
All of their policies harm people (especially women and minorities) and the planet for their virtually insatiable fear and greed and ironically Republicans are doing things like ending social safety net programs creating yet more societal fear in a downward spiral. Let's fix the problem. Their fear is our problem and we’re going to have to reduce their fears and educate ourselves out of this.
With tuition free education, universal healthcare, and a Universal Basic Income replacing hundreds of individual federal, state, etc social safety net programs including things like Social Security, unemployment insurance, etc, together we’ll take a giant leap in reducing day to day societal fears and in increasing equality. We also need to end giving microphones to Fear-mongers like Fox News.
We should tax billionaire-ism into rapid extinction and further adjust our tax policies back to where they were 50 years ago bringing those wealth and income inequalities under control, ending this late-stage, out of control capitalism.
We should also unite the world into nicely but forcefully asking/requiring the US to close all 1,000+ non-US soil military bases and ops in 135+ countries. And we should also end the nuke program and with all of this, reduce and cap our military spending to no more than the next 3-5 countries combined, rather than the next 10-15 as now, including ending the Space Farce.
With tuition free education, doctors and medical professionals will not justify millionaire-maker salaries and fees but rather could be paid reasonable salaries and will have zero education debt, helping medicine be about helping people again, not about the money with kids growing up aspiring to become millionaires and so choose to become doctors…
The medical insurance industry will be freed to do something productive for society, as just one more example of our productivity gains.
With all of these savings and productivity gains, we could not only pay for everything above, but could also end world hunger and much more in the process.
#BanMeToo #DeportMeToo
College is not where you get educated. If you want to get educated you go to a library, if you want to get laid go to college. It’s astonishing how many dumb people are in college who are subsidized and spend the vast majority of their time drinking, partying, and doing drugs. They are able to do this by selecting easy majors like communications and have poor jobs prospects after college.
HE's one to talk about plutocracy.
it is here along with a worsening third world wealth divide
Volcker is too modest. "Becoming" plutocracy?
The fact is "the US regime has been a classic case of plutocracy on top of being kleptocracy for more than two centuries.
Never seen an interview with Bill Black where he fails to toot his own horn by bringing up the Savings & Loan debacle. This one is no exception.
Thanks cpt obvious
Excellent presentation. America's fragile Democracy seems doomed on many fonts, AI being one and rising Plutocracy, Technocracy and Kleptocracy are some among others.
Madison the framer of the constitution did not want democracy because it favored the majority over minority, the opulent! It all started at the Continental convention in 1787.
All discussion elite can do but no real action to educate the mass and create a pressure on government...in power.
The Invisible Hand of the free market will save us. Fear not.
By my count , we became a full fledged plutocracy right around 1980.
A little late on the warning.
And where does Trump's swamp fit into all this?
he works for the plutocrats, not just for once in America but also for ones in Israel and Saudi Arabia
Word on the streets is Jeff bezos logged in to multiple accounts to dislike the video.
Little late for a warning don’t you think
The guy who taught Reagan how to break the working class issues a *mea culpa*. We've seen this all before, eh?
That dude just trying to get into heaven.....
Too late.
Remember France !!
way too late, and I'm sure he did his share to make it hapen
There is no "real news".
Becoming??? ha ha ha
The inflation was the result of going off the gold standard. Volcker stopped inflation by contracting the money supply and appreciating the dollar. Strong dollar causes outsourcing. So fixing one problem created another problem. U would need to address the root of the problem, which started with LBJ and his promises that u can spend without paying for things. Adults are not supposed to believe promises like that but seems that it works everytime.
Haha "becoming" LOL.