It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Financialization = Inequality
There are a number of factors behind the widening canyon of economic inequality, but the primary driver is financialization. Financialization has given those with capital and access to financier expertise ways to skim great wealth from the system without creating any value whatsoever.
In other words, financialization isn't a consequence of having capital: it's the consequence of having access to unlimited credit, leverage and low-risk, low-tax skimming operations (for example, tax codes enable hedge funds to declare income as low-tax long-term capital gains).
From the financier point of view, the upper-middle class tax donkeys who keep all their investment capital in mutual funds are the marks who supply liquidity to the system. The wealthy who park money in hedge funds are marks of a higher order, as their cash enables fund managers to gamble with other people's money and then return a thin slice of the gains (if any, after fees) back to the investors.
The point is financialization is about leverage and skimming the existing system for immense profits. It's not about hedging legitimate industries' risks or investing in productive enterprises; it's all about skimming wealth while providing no value to the real economy or society.
The hidden toxin in financialization is the resulting concentration of wealth can buy concentrations of political power. Financialization is thus self-perpetuating: once the skimming operations generate billions of dollars in profit, it only takes a relatively small piece of these profits to buy/influence the political class. Once the politicos are in your pocket, the regulators and judiciary fall into line or are marginalized by new statutes or gutted budgets.
Financialization is the disease eating away the heart of the economy and what's left of democracy.
The corporate change during the 1980s to make shareholder value the ultimate goal.
The deregulation of Wall Street that allowed for the creation of a vast array of new financial instruments for gambling.
Allowing private equity firm to buy companies, load them up with debt, extract enormous returns, and then kiss them goodbye.
The growth of hedge funds that suck productive wealth out of the economy.
The myriad of barely regulated world financial markets that finance the globalization of production, combined with so-called "free trade" agreements.
The increased share of all corporate profits that go to the financial sector.
The ever increasing size of too-big-to-fail banks.
The fact that many of our best students rush to Wall Street instead of careers in science, medicine or education.
In short, financialization is when making money from money becomes more important than providing real goods and services.
Originally posted by SimonPeter
Take a look at the Protocols of Zion and you can see exactly the plan of Foreclosure on the world and who is doing it .
The US Military Intelligence confirmed that the Protocols were NOT a fraud in 1919 . But today you will see that the last hundred years has provided undeniable evidence to prove them to be absolutely real .
Originally posted by SimonPeter
reply to post by FortAnthem
A blind person is able to see that the Jews are in every position prescribed to accomplish their evil deed . And the Protocols were proven to be real by the US Military Intelligence in 1919 . Of course the Zionist would go to any extreme to hide their plot . One only has to check out the TALMUD to see the inspiration for the Protocols .
Jews control Banking world wide , News and Media except the Internet as of yet , policy making such as the ACLU which has been attacking primarily Christian beliefs and Jesus and the preaching of the Gospel of Christ now even sticking their fingers into the church houses .
The evidence of the Zionist Jew prosecuting the plan of the Protocols of Zion is overwhelming today even if it was not in the early 19th century . That kind of circumstantial evidence would convict in court .