Saturday, October 01, 2011
by Anthony Wile
The Blame Wall Street meme
is back. A popular movement called Occupy Wall Street is attracting
attention by protesting in and around the US financial district. In this
editorial, I want to examine what the protest means in a larger
context.The impulse of the demonstration is surely correct insofar as it goes. Today's monetary system is likely creating a kind of globalist society verging on feudalism. But are the fingers pointing in the right direction? I'm not so sure. We've written about this in the past, here:
Goldman Sachs the Anti-Christ?
Rolling Stone and Taibbi's Dilemma
In fact, we've been waiting for this subdominant social theme to make progress for some four years now since the economic meltdown of early 2008. People are very angry, and it's handy to blame stockbrokers and bankers for what's gone wrong.
It's not entirely right, of course. Wall Street, or much of it, provides an essentially transactional function. It wouldn't exist as it does without the larger economic system of the Western world driven by central banking.
There are very large centers of money power in Wall Street such as Goldman Sachs; and Goldman Sachs is certainly an integral and purposeful part of the modern corporatist system. But even much of what Goldman Sachs does is essentially transactional. It's fundamentally a business, an intermediary, and its employees are paid (a lot, admittedly) to perform certain functions. The real control, I'd argue, lies elsewhere.
To get at the root of the problem, one should be protesting, say, in London's City where central banking originated. Or protesting in front of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC. These are real seats of power. But the shadowy and excessively powerful and wealthy individuals who have created the modern economic system are quite satisfied no doubt to have Wall Street take the blame. It suits their purposes.
In fact, the handful of powerful Anglosphere families that control central banking have done everything they can to focus the blame on the financial industry (the evil intermediary part) since 2008. The record is plain to see. Just Google "banks" and "regulation" and you'll get an idea of how pervasive the attack on the securities industry and commercial banking has been.
It started right after the economic crisis took hold and it continues even now. America's regulatory system has been restructured and so has Britain's and Europe's. And the reforms have given government more power than ever (and thus provided more leverage to the central-banking families that have a hold over Western governments). Everything that was wrong with the current system has been reinforced.
The results of this restructuring have been ever-more massive centralization of power by federal governments and unelected bureaucrats. The increased regulation perversely will only benefit the powers-that-be who thrive on regulatory capture. Regulation ALWAYS benefits the largest players at the expense of the smaller.
What we call the Internet Reformation – the era of the Internet – has provided a good deal more information on the way the world works. It's helped people understand why government doesn't work and why regulations are generally pernicious and usually encourage the very trends they are supposed to prevent.
But education only goes so far; and it's an ongoing process. In response, the Anglosphere power elite that we write about regularly has fought back. It's been trying to crank up the "blame Wall Street" theme for several years now. Finally, it's catching on. (CONTINUE READING)
