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Title: "Burying the middle class, or the fall of the Golden Billion" Post by: WhiskeyGirl on September 04, 2011, 05:54:48 PM Quote Well, globalization is not entirely to blame. A crisis like the present one has never befallen such an affluent society, one that has become accustomed to prosperity and opportunities on a mass scale. ... The industrial age unwittingly gave birth to its own gravedigger in the form of a bloated, top-heavy financial and banking sector whose loans were crucial to sustain the manufacturing and consumption boom. In the early stages of the current downturn, some noted economists claimed that it heralded a war pitting corporations against banks. Guided by the inertia of the status quo, the elites sided with the banks, pumping them with money to prop them up.... Quote Fear is in the air. In early July, The Wall Street Journal published a poll indicating that 94% of millionaires feared "street violence." This was followed in August by rioting in London. "We keep hearing England's riots weren't political - but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery," a prominent Canadian author, Naomi Klein, wrote in The Guardian. She reflects on Argentina in 2001, when outraged residents "stormed foreign-owned superstores and came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford - clothes, electronics, meat..." "Argentina's mass looting was called el saqueo - the sacking," Klein continues. "That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. The government called a "state of siege" to restore order; the people didn't like it and overthrew the government." Reminds me of Greece...'they have assets'...use the public lands and property for collateral... What will America put up for collateral? The White House? read more here - http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20110903/166387808.html (http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20110903/166387808.html) |